The King of Sets

Ganesh or Ganapati (translated as the King of sets) is the elephant headed son of Lord Shiva and is widely worshipped by the Hindus. He is the God of the Beginning (so much so that to Ganesh is to begin in many Indian languages), the God of elimination of troubles, and a deity who is easily pleased (with good food).

Ganapati is considered god of wisdom in mythology. Though name "Ganapati" appears in Rigveda, he is not the same God who is worshipped as elephant-headed God today. "Gana" represents a clan and "Pati" is considered chieftain. In Vedic times, image worship did not exist and "Ganapati" stood for Brihaspati or Brahmin. The concept of Ganapati as elephant-headed God evolved in later age. In Hindu mythologies, every deity has a animal vehicle of his own and Lord Ganesh has mouse as his vehicle!

The elephant in Indian ethos occupies significant place. Due to its enormous strength, huge form, sharp memory an cleverness, Indians who visualize divinity in all living creatures naturally ascribe super qualities in this great animal. In our vast tropical forests, roaming elephant herds are led by powerful youthful elephant who commands respect for young and old ones. Among early Aryans and native tribes, elephants evoked fear and respect and it did not take long to conceptualize elephant God who was full of contrasts. For a heavy god, with enormous body and appetite, he rides a small mouse! He has big ears, and small eyes. For his super intellect and sharp memory, he is humble and serves as a scribe to great Vyasa who wrote (dictated) the Mahabharata. He is considered Ameya (beyond measure), and Aprameya (beyond visualization (riddles)). It is perhaps only to represent omniscience form of Almighty that Ganesh is worshipped.

Too hot to handle

Recent efforts to censor Jim Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist, are only the latest. As his message grows more urgent, we ignore him at our peril.

By Bill McKibben | February 5, 2006

JIM HANSEN, the director of NASA'S Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is a dangerous man. Not a brash man or a rebel-I remember interviewing him many years ago, and when I asked him what he did to relax, he replied, ''mow my lawn." He's spent his whole career on the NASA payroll, but never looked up at the beckoning stars, at least professionally. Instead, from a floor of offices above Tom's Diner, of ''Seinfeld" fame, on New York's Upper West Side, he's fixed an unwavering gaze on our home planet and the narrow envelope of atmosphere that surrounds it.

It's in that process that he's acquired the data, including one of the most comprehensive and accurate temperature records for the entire globe, that makes him so unsafe-data he's repeatedly tried to spread to the world, but always against resistance, mostly from politicians but also from scientists.

The latest dust-up came last week, when The New York Times reported that the public affairs staff at NASA was trying to censor Hansen's contacts with journalists-not to mention postings on his website, his lectures, and his future papers-after he told the American Geophysical Union, in a speech on Dec. 6, that 2005 had been the warmest year on record. Not that they acted out of any untoward motive, NASA officials insist, just to make sure that he wasn't misquoted.

Hansen has had to deliver unpopular news before, and he's always persisted-and this time, as usual, he managed to turn the gag order into a megaphone. In fact, if you follow the thread of the controversies that have marked Hansen's career, you can understand how the idea of global warming first came to light, how it's been resisted, and why we seem now to be entering into the most dangerous era of all, when theory turns ever more quickly into reality.

Got Questions?

Help us reach the people of India with the Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ and the teaching of God's Word!

---

And this:

Information is NOT affiliated within any Religions , Churches , or Cults .

Would YOU like to escape the pain , torture , and mental misery ?

Would YOU like to bring into your life more power ?

Would YOU like to have more happiness ?

Would YOU like more body health ?

Would YOU like more love life ?

Would YOU like more wealth ?

Would YOU like the secrets ?

^“ Your secret answers are here.<sup>”

24 Life Coach Lessons Can Penetrate Any Human Desire</sup>
Metaphysical evidence is provided by : Professor Wm. James VERIGIN

---

Ack!
-Ib.

Slave Species of God

In an age where technology has allowed us to expect instant reward and provides us with immediate solutions, humankind seems to have all the answers. Our confidence as a species is higher than ever before and the knowledge of the universe we live in, is expanding faster than most people can keep up with. We can compute and calculate the landing of a small probe on a planet 100 million miles away; we know what the atmosphere on Jupiter consists of; we can regenerate new organs in our bodies and genetic engineers can create new life in any shape or size they want to. There are however three fundamental questions that we have not been able to answer. Who are we?
How did we get here? And, why are we here?

As we steadfastly march on the road to an unknown destiny, our ignorance has become our weakness and our arrogance has become a congenital disease threatening us with our own annihilation. In this book we will deal with the latest breakthroughs in science and technology, to reach back into the distant past in an attempt to unravel the extremely vague origins of humankind. It simply makes no sense at all, that as advanced as we have become, we have no absolute answers dealing with our origins and ancestry. Why has humankind been so obsessed with gold? And why are slavery and gold the two common denominators that can be traced all the way back to the very dawn of humankind?

The global population is torn between hundreds of religions and cults, all claiming to have the answers. Any semi-sober person will realise in an instant that they cannot all be right. Right? And yet it is religious dogma that has held billions of people captive through preaching death and destruction, threatening punishment by the ‘all mighty’ to disobedient pilgrims and promising reward and salvation to those who submit to blind faith.

The past 50 years have seen an explosion of new archaeological discoveries which have stunned scholars all over the world with its body of information. Over 500 000 clay tablets have been excavated and many of them have been deciphered. It is only in the past 30 years or so, that the true meaning and relevance of the tablets has been identified by a handful of broad thinkers. What was originally believed to be myth or fantasy, mainly due to ignorance by so-called scholars, has turned out to be documented historic evidence so fantastic, that it shakes
the very essence of our existence.

Acid Seas Wiping Out Ocean Corals

The Sunday Times February 26, 2006 Acid seas kill off coral reefs Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

THE world’s coral reefs could disappear within a few decades along with hundreds of species of plankton and shellfish, according to new studies into man’s impact on the oceans. Researchers have found that carbon dioxide, the gas already blamed for causing global warming, is also raising the acid levels in the sea. The shells of coral and other marine life dissolve in acid. The process is happening so fast that many such species, including coral, crabs, oysters and mussels, may become unable to build and repair their shells and will die out, say the researchers. “Increased carbon dioxide emissions are making the world’s oceans more acidic and could cause a mass extinction of marine life similar to the one that occurred on land when the dinosaurs disappeared,” said Professor Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s global ecology department.

Carlin's New Rules

George Carlin's New Rules For 2006


New Rule: Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass. And it translates to "beef with broccoli." The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual. You're just high.

New Rule: Ladies, leave your eyebrows alone. Here's how much men care about your eyebrows: do you have two of them? Okay, we're done.

New Rule: Competitive eating isn't a sport. It's one of the seven deadly sins. ESPN recently televised the US Open of Competitive Eating, because watching those athletes at the poker table was just too damned exciting. What's next, competitive farting? Oh wait. They're already doing that. It's called "The Howard Stern Show."

-etc-

Tune in, turn on . . . evolve?

Tune in, turn on . . . evolve?

MICHAEL POSNER

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

On the walls of dozens of caves in southern France and northern Spain lie some of the most majestic works of art ever painted. Drawn 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, the paintings have puzzled anthropologists since they were discovered more than four decades ago.

Where did this astonishing display of talent come from? Why did these prehistoric societies decide to paint these scenes in such remote locations? And what inspired them to paint the strange array of bisons, horses and therianthropes (part animal, part man)?

A scientific consensus of sorts has finally emerged on one of those questions: Although there are still dissenters, a majority of anthropologists now champion the theory that the paintings in Europe were the work of shamans, and in part the product of trance states, likely induced by psilocybin (the psychoactive ingredient in some species of mushrooms).

Similarly, South African anthropologist David Lewis-Williams maintains that the remarkable rock art of the San people of southern Africa, also painted at least 25,000 years ago, is the result of shamanic trances created by drumming and ritual ecstatic dancing.

"If you pause to think about it," he (Graham Hancock) says, "the essence of a human being is consciousness. Without it, we are nothing. So it's a transgression of my sovereignty as an individual that some other individual can rule on what experiences I may or may not have with my consciousness, doing no harm to others."

Mind Reader

click
me

Tideland

Tideland

Parrot Prophecy

Many scientists, biologists and animal intelligence researchers are reluctant to admit that parrots can use context and speak in some form of conversational language. Some guardians who have had exceptional talking budgies and thought they were speaking in context, were never believed.This site not only proves that they can talk in context but shows how they can learn, speak and understand sophisticated conversational language. Over and over again, it clearly demonstrates a keen understanding of concepts and intelligence equal to or even greater than humans. It is a doorway into the mind of an animal that goes far beyond what most people ever thought possible.

The main focus of the study is about a budgie named Victor who had a vocabulary of more than 1000 words. It shows how he pronounced these words and understood their meanings as well. You can hear him talking about feelings and emotions that most think are restricted only to humans. Recently other budgies have started to talk in similar context as well. You can hear some of their recordings here as well. We believe these recordings to be some of the most important examples of animal intelligence ever provided. While you explore this site, all we ask is you keep an open mind and spend enough time on it to adjust yourself to the budgie accent. All audio recordings have captions to teach you how to understand them and how they really are communicating with us.

Nostradamus Predicted Talking Birds

Did you know that Nostradamus predicted what is happening here. He said, "The voice of the unusual bird is heard, In the pipe of the breathing floor:"

He also said, "House pets finally communicate with man. Life then possible outside the planet. A new tyrant sows terror. Events to come."

Even the bible predicted it as well. Ecclesiastics 12 says, "And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;"

Least Wanted

Psychology of Cyberspace

John Suler, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
Science and Technology Center
Rider University

This hypertext book explores the psychological aspects of environments created by computers and online networks. It presents an evolving conceptual framework for understanding how people react to and behave within cyberspace: what I call "the psychology of cyberspace" - or simply "cyberpsychology." Continually being revised and expanded, this hypertext book originally was created in January of 1996. See the article index which indicates the articles most recently added and revised.

In order to make these readings accessible to as many people as possible, I have written them in a style that is not overly abstract or technical. Important concepts in psychology and psychoanalytic theory appear throughout the book, but I try to present them in an "experience-near" rather than "experience-distant" way that I hope makes them useful in understanding everyday living in cyberspace. The emphasis is on practical concepts rather than purely academic ones. Other versions of these articles appear in various professional journals. These publications are indicated within the articles and in the article index.

Quantum Crunch

Is our universe about to be mangled?

* 17:43 23 February 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Maggie McKee

Our universe may one day be obliterated or assimilated by a larger universe, according to a controversial new analysis. The work suggests the parallel universes proposed by some quantum theorists may not actually be parallel but could interact – and with disastrous consequences.

Random quantum fluctuations mean the behaviour of particles and photons of light cannot be predicted exactly. The quantum equations that describe them contain a variety of different - and opposing - outcomes in their solution, such as a particular particle causing a bell to both ring and not ring in an experimental setup. Physicists then have to use an equation called the Born rule to calculate the probability of the bell ringing, and countless experiments have shown the rule works.

But researchers have long struggled to understand why a bell will ring – or not ring – in any given run of an experiment, since in theory it has the option of doing both. This conundrum, known as the quantum measurement problem, has led a small subset of physicists to argue that in fact the bell does do both - but that each possible outcome takes place in a different, parallel universe that pops into existence during the experiment.

"This is what the math suggests if you take it literally," says Robin Hanson of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, US. But the idea that "every microsecond, the universe splits into a bunch more universes boggles the mind."

Jurassic Beaver

Jurassic beaver swims into view

Large early mammal was first to get furry.

Michael Hopkin

Bit like a beaver, bit like an otter: researchers have found the earliest-known aquatic mammal. © Science/Image courtesy of Mark A. Klinger/CMNH

As a Jurassic predator, it was hardly in the big league. But compared with the shrew-like stature of the earliest mammals, it was a fearsome giant.

Meet the Jurassic 'beaver' from China. Living 164 million years ago, it's the oldest known furry member of the mammal family, and the first known to master swimming.

The specimen, described in Science this week¹, was found by palaeontologists trawling the collections of the Jinzhou Museum of Palaeontology in China. Zhexi-Luo, of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and his team christened the creature Castorocauda lutrasimilis, meaning beaver-tailed and otter-like.

Like today's river otter, C. lutrasimilis probably lived in a burrow and hunted fish. And, a bit like a modern beaver, it sported a broad, flat, scaly tail.

At almost half a metre long, the animal is the biggest-known mammal-like creature of its time, and shows a hitherto unsuspected diversity in the shapes and sizes of the earliest mammals.

MI6 Secret LSD tests

MI6 payouts over secret LSD Tests

A "volunteers programme" started at Porton Down in 1916

Three UK ex-servicemen have been given compensation after they were given LSD without their consent in the 1950s.

The men volunteered to be "guinea pigs" at the government research base Porton Down after being told scientists wanted to find a cure for the common cold.

But they were given the hallucinogen in mind control tests, and some volunteers had terrifying hallucinations.

The Foreign Office said the secret intelligence body MI6 had made the settlements after legal advice.

"They stick to the old maxim: never apologise, never explain. But I think in this case they have decided to pay some money. I think that is as near to an apology or an explanation I'll get."

lsd

'Naked' Skunk

'Naked' skunk found under Oil City porch
By SHEILA BOUGHNER-BLAIR

The critter, estimated to be a year old, is missing its hair, but shows no signs of lesions or disease.

When local wildlife removal expert Eric McCool peered into a trap Wednesday, he encountered a strange sight - a hairless skunk.

McCool, who has provided wildlife removal services for 20 years from Ohio to Florida, said he has "never seen anything like it."

The unusual specimen was living under a home on North Street in Oil City.

On first glance, the creature enclosed in a small box trap resembled a ferret. Its bare skin contained numerous folds, and the telltale black and white markings (that would have enlivened its coiffure if it had one) were faintly visible on the skin, like a faded tattoo.

America's Religious War

By Bonnie Erbe

We're at war, all right, but not just against terrorism. We're fighting an even more massive and ultimately divisive conflict: our internecine battle over America's religiosity and the extent to which we want our secular laws dictated by certain religious beliefs.

Example A: Went down to observe the abortion-rights march in Washington last weekend. Stopped at the spot along Pennsylvania Avenue where pro-life opponents of abortion had reserved a permit to protest. The sprinkling of protesters perorated evangelical themes as wave after wave after wave of marchers walked by. Very few marchers carried signs with religious messages except for the occasional proclamation, "Catholic for Choice," or "Please, Lord, Deliver me from your followers."

The pro-life protesters, on the other hand, relied heavily on images of Jesus. One sported a huge picture of Jesus with the caption, "Don't Kill Jesus' Children." Another carried a sign with evangelical overtones proclaiming the merits of murdering abortion providers. (Of course, not all evangelicals support this view. Let's hope quite few do. What's shocking is that even one would feel free to publicly display a sign of this nature.)

Example B: Last week's pronouncement by a top Vatican cardinal ordering priests to deny communion to Roman Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. Cardinal Francis Arinze stopped short of saying whether it was right for presidential candidate John Kerry to receive communion (Kerry subsequently did), but rarely in recent times have church officials felt so free to meddle in the political realm. One Catholic friend asked, "What's next? Denial of communion for Catholics who use birth control?"

Whether they are Buddhist monks, Wiccans, Episcopal priests, Methodist ministers, followers of the Dalai Lama or rabbis, etc., church officials ask for nothing short of armed conflict when they meddle in politics.

Morrisey Grilled

MORRISSEY QUIZZED BY FBI

Also see: MORRISSEY FBI GEORGE W BUSH Singer MORRISSEY was quizzed by the FBI and British intelligence after speaking out against the American and British governments. The Brit is a famous critic of the US-led war in Iraq and has dubbed President GEORGE W BUSH a "terrorist" - but he was baffled to be hauled in by authorities. Morrissey explains, "The FBI and the Special Branch have investigated me and I've been interviewed and taped and so forth. "They were trying to determine if I was a threat to the government, and similarly in England. But it didn't take them very long to realise that I'm not. "I don't belong to any political groups, I don't really say anything unless I'm asked directly and I don't even demonstrate in public. I always assume that so-called authoritarian figures just assume that pop/rock music is slightly insane and an untouchable platform for the working classes to stand up and say something noticeable. "My view is that neither England or America are democratic societies. You can't really speak your mind and if you do you're investigated."

The New Middle Ages

Information Age?
More like the New Middle Ages

By Eric Jager, Eric Jager teaches medieval literature at UCLA and is the author of "The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France."

IT'S ONLY 2006, and people have already dubbed this new century the Information Age, the Digital Age or the Connectivity Age. I have a more accurate name for the 21st century, and I encourage us all to start using it today: The New Middle Ages.

With the resurgence of legalized torture, rampant religious fanaticism, widespread poverty and illiteracy, the threat of mysterious plagues, fascination with magic and the occult and suspicion of science, what else would you call it?

Nearly 30 years ago, when Barbara Tuchman published her bestselling book, "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century," her title hinted that we could catch our own reflection in the medieval past. We now live even further from the 14th century's disastrous wars, popular revolts, religious strife and epidemic plague — yet the mirror no longer seems so distant. Tuchman wrote her epochal book after the worst horrors of the last century, including an influenza pandemic that killed millions, two devastating world wars and the Holocaust but before AIDS, Ebola and now the avian flu raised the specter of modern plague, before the fall of communism unleashed civil war and genocide in the Balkans and before religious extremists seized power in Iran and Islamic terrorists began attacking Western cities, giving dangerous new life to medieval words like "crusade" and "jihad."

One of my students once wrote, "Medieval people were so ignorant, they had no idea they were living in the Middle Ages." He was partly right. Medieval people thought they lived in modern times — just as we think we do today. The word "modern" was actually coined by medieval people to distinguish themselves from the ancients. The Renaissance stole the label of modernity for itself and invented a prior "middle age" when classical civilization lay dormant, awaiting a glorious rebirth. The Enlightenment made the "barbaric" and "superstitious" Middle Ages seem even more obsolete. -more-

Nipple Dye

Nipple Dye

I'll bet that, like me, you often find yourself thinking, boy, I would look so much better if my nipples were purple.

Well, you're in luck! Hennaking.com offers "areola and nipple dye" for the low, low, price of just $14.95.

As their website says, 'Why, because you can!'


via: the15minutehipster
nipple

How to Spot a Psychopath

Other signs to look for:

• Deviant Musical Taste
  Marilyn Manson and "industrial" electronic music are the current chief suspects, but Judas Priest, Deep Purple, AC/DC, The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry have not yet been exonerated. Anything sung in German to a heavy beat sounds like a Hitler Youth recruiting song, which means it probably is.
• Drug Use
  Excludes alcohol and tobacco, unless the suspect is over the age of 18 (or 21 in some jurisdictions). In some communities, use of alcohol, tobacco or caffeine is always evil. Check your local regulations.
• Internet Use.
  Internet access permits disturbed individuals to find recipes for bombs and poisons. Restricting Net access only to persons over the age of 90 and kept under constant armed guard will drive other persons seeking this subversive information to actually visit public libraries, in which they can be trapped and burned.
• Pornography.
  Erotic books, videos and computer files are obviously associated with murderous rampages. Name one mass murderer that didn't masturbate.
• Quietness.
  For safety's sake, whenever you see anybody of whom it could be said "he was a quiet man", perform a Citizen's Arrest at once.
• Strong interest in war and/or firearms.
  90% of teenage boys should, for this reason, be incarcerated immediately.
• Mood swings and depression.
  We'd better make that 100% of all teenagers, regardless of gender.
• Sympathy for offenders.
  Any student who admits to understanding how people who have been bullied might rather like to shoot the bullies is probably about to run amok.
• Possession of weapons.
  Any weapons. Remember, pocketknives don't kill people - people who own pocketknives kill people.
• Belief in evolution.
  It is well known that evolution requires atheism, and that all atheists are amoral creatures, many of whom eat human flesh.
• "Goth" tendencies.
  A teenager with an interest in fastidious dressing is clearly deeply aberrant. Note, however, that some particularly flamboyant apparent Goths may in fact be science fiction geeks dressed up as Centauri noblemen. Since no science fiction geek has yet killed a load of people, the plastic battery-powered phaser is not yet considered to be dangerous.
• Disrespect for authority.
  Today's youth should be as morally upright as are the leaders of the free world, and should never consider violence as a way of settling disputes, regardless of provocation, any more than the USA or NATO do.
  

via: blubloodunlimited

Secret Mysteries of America

“Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings”

" The Greatest "Whodunit" Mystery of the Past 500 years"

Volume One: The New Atlantis

Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings unfolds the fascinating history behind the founding of America, and exposes the esoteric underbelly of its design. Why is Washington D.C. build on the 77th Meridian? Are the Revolutionary War cities really built in perfect alignment with Stonehenge? If America was founded as a Christian nation, why are many of its symbols based on Pagan traditions? There is no doubt that much of America’s national heritage was Christian, but just as a coin has two sides, our national heritage has a second side – one based squarely on occult secret societies and their values.

To find the answer to these questions, we follow the journey of secret societies from England to the New World and learn of their ancient hope: to rebuild the lost empire of Atlantis.

In the 16th century, Sir Francis Bacon was at the helm of the secret societies in England. When Bacon penned his classic work, ‘The New Atlantis’ he believed that America and Atlantis were one and the same. He outlined his vision for the perfect society, and some suggest the program he set forth has been the driving force behind the course of modern history. While he did not originate the concept, it was Bacon who articulated an ancient plan to be carried out by all the secret orders.

As Chief of the Rosicrucians and the first Grand Master of modern Freemasonry, Bacon sent his followers to the new world. A 1910 Newfoundland stamp with his image upon it reads, ‘Lord Bacon: the Guiding Spirit in [the] Colonization Scheme.’ Because of his influence, Francis Bacon is considered by some to be ‘the real and true founder of America.’ For centuries, controversy has surrounded this figure who is said to be the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I, and secret author of the Shakespeare plays; the man whom Thomas Jefferson considered one of the three most influential men in history.

Is it possible that Bacon’s vision guides America today?

Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War

The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War New Pentagon Doctrine: Mini-Nukes are "Safe for the Surrounding Civilian Population" by Michel Chossudovsky

February 17, 2006

GlobalResearch.ca

This article elaborates on two earlier texts by the author: Nuclear War against Iran , January 2006 Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran , May 2005 "Current US nuclear weapons policy is immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous. The risk of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably high. Far from reducing these risks, the Bush administration has signaled that it is committed to keeping the US nuclear arsenal as a mainstay of its military power - a commitment that is simultaneously eroding the international norms that have limited the spread of nuclear weapons and fissile materials for 50 years. Much of the current US nuclear policy has been in place since before I was secretary of defense, and it has only grown more dangerous and diplomatically destructive in the intervening years." (Robert S. McNamara, US Secretary of Defense under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations) The Bush administration's new nuclear doctrine contains specific "guidelines" which allow for "preemptive" nuclear strikes against "rogue enemies" which "possess" or are "developing" weapons of mass destruction (WMD). (2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations (DJNO) ). The preemptive nuclear doctrine (DJNO), which applies to Iran and North Korea calls for "offensive and defensive integration". It explicitly allows the preemptive use of thermonuclear weapons in conventional war theaters. In the showdown with Tehran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, these Pentagon "guidelines" would allow, subject to presidential approval, for the launching of punitive bombings using "mini-nukes" or tactical thermonuclear weapons. While the "guidelines" do not exclude other (more deadly) categories of nukes in the US and/or Israeli nuclear arsenal, Pentagon "scenarios" in the Middle East are currently limited to the use of tactical nuclear weapons including the B61-11 bunker buster bomb. This particular version of the bunker buster is a thermonuclear bomb, a so-called Nuclear Earth Penetrator or NEP. It is a Weapon of Mass Destruction in the real sense of the word. Its utilization by the US or Israel in the Middle East war theater would trigger a nuclear holocaust. B61-11 NEP Thermonuclear Bomb

DU SCANDAL EXPLODES

Horrendous US Casualties

Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com

The Preventive Psychiatry Newsletter has written to its subscribers telling them that the real reason the former Veterans Affairs Secretary, Anthony Principi, recently resigned was because he has been involved in a massive scandal covering up the fact that Gulf War Syndrome was caused by the use of depleted uranium, according to the SF Bay View.


In the article Arthur Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law, reportedly wrote that “thousands of our military have suffered and died from, [and depleted uranium] has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.” Bernklau went on to detail several alarming statistics. The historical disability rate amongst soldiers last century was about 5 percent, although it approached 10 percent during Vietnam. But due to the use of depleted uranium in the battlefield, 56 percent of the 580,400 solders that served in the first Gulf War were on Permanent Medical Disability by 2000. 11,000 Gulf War veterans are already dead. Now 518,739 Gulf War Veterans, almost all of them, are currently on medical disability.

Principi, under the order of the Bush Administration, had been allegedly covering up the disastrous results of using depleted uranium since 2000. However, with so many soldiers having serious health problems it has become impossible to keep secret.

A Scanner Darkly

'A Scanner Darkly' Reveals Near Future Police State

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | February 22 2006

A new movie set to hit the big screen this summer depicts a near future America that has lost the war on drugs and capitulated into the tentacles of a pervasive control grid. A Scanner Darkly represents the latest example of a refreshing and burgeoning trend in Hollywood that seeks to enlighten the viewer into recognizing the real world prison barriers being erected around society today.

The movie is based on the book of the same name by Philip K. Dick and is filmed in interpolated rotoscoping style, whereby live action photography is overlaid with an advanced animation process. This gives the impression of a graphic novel come to life and has the same unique impression as director Richard Linklater's previous cult classic, Waking Life.

The brand new second trailer has just been posted online. Click here for Windows Media, click here for QuickTime.

The next few years will see a rash of new releases that closely parallel reality as the New World Order seeks to put in place the final jigsaw pieces of totalitarian control, empire and tyranny.

Churches Denounce War

U.S. church alliance denounces Iraq war

By BRIAN MURPHY
AP RELIGION WRITER

In this photo released by Agencia Brasil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, speaks during the 9th Assembly by the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on Friday, Feb. 17, 2006. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged churches and religious leaders Friday to cooperate more closely to speed social and economic reforms in Latin America's largest nation. Speaking to a World Council of Churches gathering, Silva said churches have an "irreplaceable role in the task of transforming Brazil," whose economy has been growing but remains burdened by widespread poverty and limited public services in some regions. (AP Photo/Ricardo Stuckert-AGENCIA BRASIL/HO)

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil -- A coalition of American churches sharply denounced the U.S.-led war in Iraq on Saturday, accusing Washington of "raining down terror" and apologizing to other nations for "the violence, degradation and poverty our nation has sown."

The statement, issued at the largest gathering of Christian churches in nearly a decade, also warned the United States was pushing the world toward environmental catastrophe with a "culture of consumption" and its refusal to back international accords seeking to battle global warming.

"We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq, launched in deception and violating global norms of justice and human rights," said the statement from representatives of the 34 U.S. members of World Council of Churches. "We mourn all who have died or been injured in this war. We acknowledge with shame abuses carried out in our name."

"Our country responded (to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks) by seeking to reclaim a privileged and secure place in the world, raining down terror on the truly vulnerable among our global neighbors ... entering into imperial projects that seek to dominate and control for the sake of national interests," said the statement. "Nations have been demonized and God has been enlisted in national agendas that are nothing short of idolatrous."

French 'cure'

French 'cure' for excess alcohol raises safety fear By Colin Randall in Paris (Filed: 21/02/2006) France's drinkers can now buy a potion which supposedly stops hangovers and makes alcohol disappear from the blood system up to six times faster than usual. Made from a "secret recipe" based on plant extracts, Security Feel Better comes in tiny bottles and is recommended for use before, during or after a heavy lunch or party. It is already on sale in a number of French supermarkets and is being exported to Korea, Germany and Switzerland with talks in progress to launch it in America and elsewhere, though not yet Britain. The Normandy-based maker, PPN, insisted yesterday it was not trying to convince buyers they could "drink, drink, drink" without regard to health or safety.

Here Comes the Sun

Here Comes the Sun : The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison



"George himself is no mystery, but the mystery inside George is immense. It's watching him uncover it all little by little that's so damn interesting."

-John Lennon

Freegans

Freegans: The bin scavengers

They're not homeless or unemployed, yet they scavenge in bins for discarded food. Freegans, shocked at the extent of consumer waste, are changing the way they eat. Liz Scarff joins them for dinner

Published: 20 February 2006

Under the cover of night, I stealthily lift the lid of the dustbin and shine in my torch. It's below zero and my hands are shaking as I rummage inside. I'm on the hunt for food. But I'm not homeless and I could certainly afford to go to the shops if I wanted to. So, why am I doing this? Quite simply, I'm living as a freegan.

Dining on food from a dustbin may have once been the preserve of tramps, but for many it is now becoming a lifestyle choice. Freeganism - a combination of the words "free" and "vegan"- is a movement whose devotees take responsibility for the impact of their consumer choices and find alternative ways of meeting their everyday needs. This includes housing, clothing and, most surprisingly, food. Around 17 million tons of food are buried in British landfill sites every year, four million of which are edible. Sometimes, disposal is the cheapest option available to the food industry.

Bush, Blair, Bin Laden

The Sunday Times February 19, 2006 Bush and Blair have brilliantly done Bin Laden's work for him Simon Jenkins Is Osama Bin Laden winning after all? Until recently I would have derided such a thought. How could a tinpot fanatic who is either dead or shut in some mountain hideout hold the world to ransom for five years? It would stretch the imagination of an Ian Fleming. Now I am beginning to wonder. Not a day passes without some new sign of Bin Laden’s mesmeric grip on the governments of Britain and America. His deeds lie behind half the world’s headlines. British policy seems obsessed with one word: terrorism. The West is equivocating, writhing, slithering in precisely the direction most desired by its enemy. He must be roaring with delight. On any objective measure, terrorism in the West is a trivial crime. True, New York and London saw outrages in 2001 and 2005 respectively. Both were the outcome of sloppy intelligence. Neither has been repeated, though of course they may be. Policing has improved and probably averted other attacks. But incidents genuinely attributable to Al-Qaeda rather than domestic grievances are comparable to the IRA and pro-Palestinian campaigns. Vigilance is important but only those with money in security have an interest in presenting Bin Laden as a cosmic threat. Indeed if ever there were a case for collective restraint it is in response to terrorism. The word refers to a technique, usually a bomb, not an ideology. A bombing is an anarchic gesture calling for police and medical services. It becomes a political weapon only if publicised and answered with hysteria. A killing is so staged as to cause over-reaction, violent response, mass arrests and a decay of civilised values. Bin Laden’s intention in 2001 was to portray the West as scared, emotionally vulnerable, over-reactive, decadent and careless of liberal values. The West has done its damnedest to prove him right.

Joel

'A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so they shall run, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as strong people set in battle array. They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run up the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining'

THE WORD OF THE LORD UNTO JOEL, OLD TESTAMENT

The Sanguinearts Network

THE END...

THE APOCALYPSE

PART 3 of An exhibition from the Sanguinearts Network

'Hell has three doors:

lust, rage and greed.'

Bhagavad-Gita

'New World Order devotionals are hawked by digital avatars who sell faithas a method by which followers can enrich themselves (Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success). Those who despair of locating a believable human shepherd subscribe to media-sponsored scriptures of angels, or aliens, or angelic aliens. In a universe where all is for sale, the dollar sign remains the sole remaining index of belief. The more dollar signs we collect behind our names the more we earn respect, even devotion.

'Movie Stars. Sports Stars. Murderers. Tabloid gossip. Pop culture noise is so ever present and overwhelming that it removes the ability in the masses to believe - let alone think about - anything. The inability to read, to contemplate, to consider, is in fact a new epidemic known as dyslogia, a disease caused by the devastating overflow of information.'

'The supranational corporation spreads its doctrine through the trance of the everyday, depriving the psychic slave of instinct and self-protection. Without a sense of self and self-respect, the individual reaches for a placebo in the never-ending array of corporate products. The placebo of 'entertainment' helps to expand the NWO icon of the $. Art police are not required in an environment that convinces the masses that the $ is their leader and sole determinant of behaviour and philosophy.'

Adam Parfrey

Whether we're heading for Armageddon brought on by a God or not, we have already made irreversable changes to the world we live in, some of which will destroy countless species, and many, even all of human existence: nuclear tests, CFCs, deforestation, pollution of air and water, and so on and so on. The global climate is changing, out of our control. We do not know if these are longer patterns of change in the world or as a result of our actions, but our civilisation will come under threat. This is the kind of Apocalypse which is Now.

But we should not fear cataclysmic change. Societies have come and gone, as have species. Change is all part of the bigger scheme; the individual person/place/race might be destroyed but the overall situation continues, cycles and circulates, on and on; like Yeats' 'Winding Gyre'[huh?]; perhaps heading towards a higher evolutionary stage. This still assumes humanity and earth as the centre of the universe. What about meteorites, like that which we now believe wiped out the dinosaurs? What about other lifeforms? When the end comes chances are we won't see it coming and we will be powerless to act - a fate like that of ants: flooded, gassed, stamped on....because something else is of greater importance, sacrificed for the greater good. And if our puny scientific understanding is correct, we (as energy and matter) are not destroyed, only recreated, reincarnated, in something new.

The End is Nigh. The Beginning is Nigh.

benjamin_sanguine

Winter Picnic

Summer's fallen golder and gone
and snow is fallen where it shone,
a glowing white as pure as gold,
and I am concertina'd in the cold.

The blanket's down. The banquet is
a bitter one: iced sandwiches,
iced cakes, iced fruits and icy meats.
This picnic is too cold for me to eat.

My mouth is sealed. I try to prise
my lips apart and keep my eyes
from closing into frozen folds
while I am shrilled, doubled up in cold.

A chill descends upon the spread,
a further chill - the snow is fed
on slow death as the Summer Sun
is sustained on hot sacrifice. I'm done.

I yank and strain to raise my glass
up from where it has frozen fast;
I stick it to my lips and drink -
and drink a cool toast to my full defeat.

Monoprints after Guernica by benjamin_sanguine

'The government of Hell, in mimicry of God's dominions, is divided into seven layers, each ruled by a constituency of devils dedicated to a particular vice. Each constituency has a representative in the court of demons who answers to the ruler of Chaos - the Prince of Darkness. There is an army, a navy, and a cavalry - even an infernal orchestra.

The Devil, Tom and Genevieve Morgan (1996)

The Utopian Blues

The Utopian Blues

Why is the spirituality of the musician in "High" cultures so often a low-down spirituality?

In India, for example, the musician belongs to a caste so low it hovers on the verge of untouchability. This lowness relates, in popular attitudes, to the musician's invariable use of forbidden intoxicants. After the "invasion" of Islam many musicians converted in order to escape the caste system. (The Dagar Brothers of Calcutta, famous for their performance of sacred Hindu music, explained proudly to me that their family had not converted in Mughal times -- for worldly advantage -- but only much later, and then as Shiites; this proved that their conversion was sincere.) In Ireland the musician shared the same Indo-European reputation for lowness. The bards or poets ranked with aristocrats and even royalty, but musicians were merely the servants of the bards. In Dumezil's tripartite structure of Indo-European society, as reflected in Ireland, music seems to occupy an ambiguous fourth zone, symbolized by the fourth province of Munster, the "south". Music is thus associated with "dark" druidism, sexual license, gluttony, nomadry and other outsider phenomena.

Islam is popularly believed to "ban" music; obviously this is not the case, since so many Indian musicians converted. Islam expresses grave reservations about art in general because all art potentially involves us in multiplicity (extension in time and space) rather than in the unity (tawhid) by which Islam defines its entire spiritual project. The Prophet criticized worldly poetry; he criticized realism in art; and he relegated music to social occasions like marriages. (In Islamic societies the minstrels who supply such festal music are often Jews, or otherwise "outside" Islam.) In response to these critiques, Islamic culture developed "rectified" forms of art: -- sufi poetry (which sublimates worldly pleasure as mystical ecstasy); non-representative art (falsely dismissed as "decorative" by western art-history); and sufi music, which utilizes multiplicity to return the listener to Unity, to induce "mystical states". But this restitution of the arts has never entirely succeeded as an uplifting of the musician. In Tehran in the 1970's, one of the more decadent sufi orders (Safi-Ali-Shahi) had enrolled the majority of professional musicians, and their sessions were devoted to opium smoking.

Other musicians were known as hearty drinkers or otherwise louche and bohemian types -- the few exceptions were pious Sufis in other, more disciplined orders, such as the Nematollahiyya or Ahl-i Haqq. In the Levant, Turkish sufi music leaked out of the tekkes and into the taverns, mixed with Greek and other Mediterranean influences, and produced the wonderful genre of Rembetica, with its witty odes to whores, hashish, wine and cocaine.

Secret Initiation of Jesus

The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran

by Robert Feather
In his earlier book The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran, Robert Feather analyzed the Dead Sea Scroll engraved on copper that is considered the work of the secretive, devout Jewish sect known as the Essenes, who lived at Qumran around the time of Jesus. To continue his research into the Essene community's way of life and how its beliefs may have influenced the beginnings of Christianity, he met with Father Jozef Milik, one of the scholars who worked on deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1950s. Feather learned that during Milik's work somewhere near the Qumran ruins, he had excavated a headless corpse that he believed to be that of John the Baptist.

Feather presents persuasive, powerful evidence illustrating the strong link between the Qumran Essenes and New Testament teachings and showing that both John the Baptist and Jesus were intimately involved with this community at Qumran. He further supports the claim that early Christians continued a belief system centered on a form of monotheism first formulated by the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and uniquely espoused by the Essenes at Qumran. A unique perspective from a masterful writer and researcher.

Who Killed Culture

From barbarism to democracy, elites seek a suspect in the reported death of art.

By Charles Paul Freund

Lower your voice and show some respect: America's cultural establishment has collapsed in mourning. Even in the best of times, the nation's elite culture regards its health as fragile and its future as doubtful. But now it sits in doleful misery, its tunic rent and ashes sprinkled liberally on its bowed head. What happened?

Bad news indeed: The cultural establishment's last line of defense--the National Endowment for the Arts--has been routed. Now nothing stands between art and barbaric pillage.

Truth is, one piece of bad NEA news came after another last fall, rather like Job's servants arriving in relays to report his compounding ruin. First, the House of Representatives voted to kill the NEA entirely. The endowment survived thanks to the Senate, but its budget was again cut, this time to $98 million, a reduction of $78 million since 1992. Then, the Hill gave the NEA permission to pursue additional private funding--in effect, a license to privatize. To the high priests who tend culture's flame, this is tantamount to defilement, because private funds have private interests attached to them. Then, NEA head Jane Alexander announced that, after four years in the role, she'd had enough and was returning to acting. Alexander is probably the most effective lobbyist the NEA has ever had, and has been instrumental in keeping the endowment alive in the face of congressional hostility; her departure was perceived as a setback for federal patronage.

But the worst blow to American high culture was self-inflicted. In October, the NEA released a report on the state of the national arts, American Canvas, that was intended to celebrate Alexander's leadership. It is an incoherent document, on the one hand rejecting commercially generated culture while, on the other, accusing the high-end cultural establishment of failing to serve a popular audience. Worse, not only did American Canvas discern an undemocratic "elitism" among America's artists, it sought to subordinate cultural activity to modish social metaphysics, especially such values as diversity and multiculturalism. That report naturally offended those who have been contemptuous of federal cultural management all along.

Still Fab

Still Fab
Why we keep listening to the Beatles

By Charles Paul Freund

Is anything more intricately intertwined with its time than the career of the Beatles? According to the usual account, the group’s shifting personae, from the original 1964 mania through the 1970 break-up, either led or reflected the period’s changing tastes and behavior. For Americans of a certain age, it was seven delirious years of teenybopper screaming, androgynous hair-doing, cartoon-India meditating, psychedelic drug taking, syncretic sitar strumming, and all-you-need-is-loving.

Is that wrong? Surely not. If the increasingly brittle idea of "the ’60s" has any meaning aside from common nostalgia, it describes the transformation of a type of cultural fandom into a type of social and political identity. The Beatles managed to remain at the center of this phenomenon -- if not ahead of it -- as long as they existed. Their fans, primarily leading-edge boomers, became what they beheld. Which of them is not part Beatle?

Now another transformation is underway. Older boomers are starting to retire, enrolling in the AARP, and leafing uneasily through its Modern Maturity magazine. It may have helped their transition when, last year, Sir Paul McCartney appeared on Modern Maturity’s cover, with an interview inside about the losses, the challenges, and even the pleasures of growing older. Another boomer milestone, another Beatles persona. Nor is that the final such crossroads: Such Beatles songs as "In My Life" seem to be cued up regularly at boomer memorials.

So how is it that this year, Rolling Stone used its cover to proclaim the Beatles as the "World’s Hottest Band"? Since the release last November of 1, that compilation of 27 No. 1 Beatles hits has been selling at a pace that could make it the biggest-selling CD ever. How is it that a huge $60 volume called The Beatles Anthology, featuring old interviews and writings, is setting new sales standards for the coffee-table tome? The black-and-white Beatles movie, A Hard Day’s Night, has been back in theatrical release. Beatles hit singles are getting increased rotation even in radio contexts where they were sparingly played, such as on classic-rock album formats. A Beatles cookbook has somehow appeared (She Came in Through the Kitchen Window), and so has the Beatles’ "first and only official Web site," thebeatles.com. Even some out-of-print Beatles books are back, including a volume of post-Beatles interviews with John Lennon, then in his Lord Byron wannabe stage, in which he expresses his utter contempt for the Beatles.

"Their music doesn’t grow old," according to Beatles authority Bill Harry, compiler of the 720-page Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia....

---

All you need is loving?
-Ib