Click image for page. Solar-Terrestrial Data via Paul L Herrman, n0nbh
Solar Weather from Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC)
Solar physics research department of the Royal Observatory of Belgium
and ISES Regional Warning Center Brussels for space weather forecasting.
Solar Terrestrial Activity Report
Current extent and position of auroral oval at North pole. Click image for page.
Current extent and position of auroral oval at South pole. Click image to go to page.Note: During the day I casually monitor a waterfall (1) (2) (3) on 20m, +/- 14,070 MHz and during early evening 40m, +/- 7,035 MHz, using PSK31, 5 watts QRP, for solar decline propagation studies. If I catch a signal directed at my call, I will QSL via email.
European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre
Worldwide earthquakes with M4.0+ Last 24 Hours ~ ARPSN ~ PSNMake Amateur Radio Part of Your Plan
from Dan Bell ~ https://vimeo.com/62132778 ~~ LicenseHow to become an Amateur Radio Operator in the USA
Quiero, Casa Verde Colectivo from Israel Solorzano ~ https://vimeo.com/131798364
'This is why people hate Congress':
politics stymies fight against Zika virusLawmakers have tried to allocate funding against the disease- but attached ‘poison pill’ measures and a seven-week recess haven’t helped matters [Click to Continue reading]
First case of baby born with Zika-related
microcephaly reported in New York CityNew York City department of health officials say the baby’s mother was infected after traveling to an area with ongoing Zika transmission [Click to Continue Reading]
Pregnant women told to delay travel
to Florida over Zika virus fearsPublic Health England updates travel advice after first cases of mosquito-borne disease are transmitted on US mainland [Click to Continue Reading]
Democrats demand Congress end its
vacation to approve Zika fundingDoctors’ fears of low funding and the first mosquito-borne infections in Florida prompt senators’ demand that Republican peers return for emergency funds [Click to Continue Reading]
'None of the Above' should be a choice on voter ballots.
Nobody for President
"You're being ridiculous," S. [?The Snake?] Silverman
WHOTF ASKED YOU, SARAH?
A 75 year old speech in the 21th century
from Bertrand Thomas ~ https://vimeo.com/90663890Bernie Sanders voted against an unread Patriot Act of 2001.
Bernie Sanders voted against an illegal Iraq war.
Mrs. Bill, also known as Neocon Hill, voted for an unread Patriot Act.
Mrs. Bill, a.k.a. Baby Killer Hill, associates with a known liar & cheat, and voted for an illegal Iraq war, knowing fifty percent of the Iraqi population were children under the age of 15.
Hillary’s Lies ~ FBI’s Cowardness
from Toby Dodd ~ https://vimeo.com/173563677The Patriot Act was used to remove U.S. Citizen Freedom & Liberty and was created by the same Republicans who lied about WMD, started an illegal war in Iraq, murdered thousands of children, women, civilians, U.S. Military, was totally supported by the Democrat Party, and No Politician went to jail.
Ride the Fence ~ NOT WORK SAFE (language)
from Rip & Roy ~ https://vimeo.com/113735218Nobody will eliminate an unread Patriot Act, detain politicians, who voted for illegal Iraq wars with no personal/outside contact or media for a minimum of 15 years at Gitmo, and love you forever !!!
Nobody should have that much power _and_
None of the Above should be a valid choice on voter ballots
Enough With the Shooting & Killing
Jesus said, Love One Another, ...not Kill or Harm!Florida police shoot black man lying down with arms in air
Video shows therapist moments before he was wounded by police marksman while trying to get his autistic patient to comply with officers
WTF: When I was a child, you were known as
"Peace Officers"
What Happened?
How to survive a bear encounter
(and what to do if it all goes wrong)
Keith Lampe ~ Co-Founder of YIPPIE & Progressive Activist Groups + Video Channel
Keith Lampe
Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine
Remembering Our Dear Missed Friend
July 25, 1931 ~ November 11, 2014
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine ~ Volunteer ~ Photo: James StarkUS ECO-MOVEMENT'S 40TH ANNIVERSARY
by keith lampeDear Friends and Colleagues,
Today's installment from my issue number two of Earth Read-Out (ERO) at the end of May '69 gives us an opportunity to understand how much more confidence people had in themselves then than now. For example, do AFT locals talk now the way they talked then? Or do high-ranking U-C officials talk now the way Robert Greenway (all honor to his name) talked then? Or does the despicable Washington Post ever play a positive role at rallies as it did at this one?
And this information is critically important today--especially for our last hope, the campus generation. It helps all of us grok that in fact we've been enormously dumbed-down and intimidated.
Given the intense uncompromising integrity of this teach-in, it's quite easy to understand why the MIAC (Military-Industrial-Academic Complex) thought it necessary a year later to murder four peaceful students at Kent State, then make a point of not punishing the murderers. They needed strong writing on the wall:
We'll kill you whenever we wish
and nobody's gonna stop us.Please note that you can learn hardly anything about this immensely important stuff in the twerpy-hustler Limited Hangout "alternate" histories of Howard Zinn and Carolyn Baker.
I must confess that I hadn't read my material for many years and--though I expected to find it quite significant for our current times--I am blown by just how significant it in fact is. I almost wish I'd let Herder & Herder publish it back in '70. But as you can see from the spirit of the times--so many people (mainly hippies and hardly any leftists) gallantly taking-it-to-the-limit over and over again!--my role as a socalled environmental leader (ERO quickly became the central info vehicle for the movement and remained so till autumn '70) was to try to force the sleazy corporate publishing world to start being transparent about their various immensely negative eco impacts. Today it is even more important that they start doing so.
Now that you understand how much was happening environmentally in the late '60s aren't you at least a bit exasperated when the pimps and whores of CNN, etc, act like they invented TEC (True Environmental Concern) a few years ago? Or when Bill McKibben acts like he invented it twenty years ago?
Yours for waking to the quantum ether,
Keith Lampe aka Pondo
Volunteer and Complete Unknown
Click to open United State CafeTUESDAY NIGHT CLASS
United State Cafe ~ featuring Keith Lampe in this recording
Click to play July 29, 1975, Tuesday Night Class ~ MP3 Audio
Click to open page on the United State CafeEARTH READ-OUT
(#002:29V69) May 29, 1969
by keith lampeAbout 2000 persons attended--off and on--a six-hour teach-in on "Ecology and Politics in America" May 28 on the U-C Berkeley campus.
Idea was to relate the People's Park issue to broader questions of planetary survival.
A lot of language under a hot sun--but hopefully the thing will get made into a book to help people past the old politics and into a root politics of ecology.
Sponsors were American Federation of Teachers locals 1474 and 1795. Their leaflet for the occasion put it succinctly where it's at:
"The battle for a people's park in Berkeley has raised questions that go far beyond the immediate objects of public attention. They are questions about the quality of our lives, about the deterioration of the environment and about the propriety and legitimacy of the uses to which we put our land. The questions raised by this issue reach into two worlds at once: the world of power, politics and the institutional shape of American society on the one hand, and the world of ecology, conservation and the biological shape of our environment on the other.
"The People's Park is a mirror in which our society may see itself. A country which destroys Vietnam in order to liberate it sees no paradox in building fences around parks so that people may enjoy them. It is not at all ironic that officers of the law uproot shrubbery in order to preserve the peace. It is the way of the world! Trees are anarchic; concrete and asphalt are orderly and tractable. Defoliation is Civilization!
"Our cities are increasingly unlivable. The ghettos are anathema to any form of human existence. Our back country is no retreat; today's forest is tomorrow's Disneyland. Our rivers are industrial sewers; our lakes are all future resorts; our wildlife are commercial resources.
"The history of America is a history of hostility and conquest. We have constituted ourselves socially and politically to conquer and transform nature. We measure 'progress' in casualties, human and environmental, in bodies of men or board-feet of lumber.
"Ecology and politics are no longer separate or separable issues. . ."
Biggest mindblow of the day came from Robert Greenway, vice president for academic planning at U-C Santa Cruz. Greenway's contract isn't to be renewed because he's acting up--and the U-C regents got a court order forbidding him to make speeches because he's "inflammmatory".
Greenway told his audience "we have to go down to People's Park Friday with our women, children and neighbors and we have to say we're going to pull up the fence--gently--and then say to the National Guard 'Go ahead and shoot'".
Greenway said the fight for People's Park is part of a larger fight for physical and psychic space: "We must take every shred of university land that's not already built and make it a park."
He invited everybody down to Santa Cruz "where we have 3000 acres for dancing and singing and holding each other--and it would take them a year to fence it".
Prof. Sim van der Ryn, a member of the U-C Berkeley Chancellor's Committee on Environment, explained why we often have heavily polluted air in the Bay Area even during early morning hours: the air-pollution surveillance bureaucrats do only a 9-to-5 thing, so most of the biggest industries release their poisons after dark or in early morning.
Van der Ryn reminded everybody that DDT is killing enormous numbers of crabs on the West Coast, that high concentrations of DDT have been found even in High Sierra lakes--and that lots of people get busted for LSD, but nobody for DDT.
Dr. Tom Bodenheimer warned that DDT may get banned but be replaced by something even worse--that there are certain pesticides in use now (e.g., Parathion) which originally were developed as nerve gases. He said pesticides are the direct cause of about 150 deaths annually in the U.S. He said the nerve-gas leak which killed 6000 sheep in Utah last year might well have wiped out much of Salt Lake City also if it hadn't been for a shift in the wind.
Bodenheimer said the concentrations of CS gas on the Berkeley campus are probably still so great that "next time it rains it'll be like a gas attack." [Ed. Note: he refers here to the spraying of gaseous toxins onto innocent students by the infamous U.S. military.] He said the regime possibly soon may try to control demonstrations entirely from the air. He said the regime considers students, like insects, to be pests.
Cliff Humphrey of (Berkeley) Ecology Action said he plans to turn his auto into a piece of sculpture so it can't continue poisoning the air. "My Rambler is a pig," Humphrey said. "There are all kinds of pigs."
Dennis Maynis, a mountain climber, told the audience he's been watching Yosemite being destroyed. "They've paved trails, ripped out trees and flowers--but we're watched by telescope to make sure we don't break any rules."
Barry Weisberg, of the Bay Area institute, said 95% of all fresh water on the planet is being used faster than it's being replaced. He said Amerika constitutes only 7% of the world's population--but is presently consuming about 70% of the world's resources.
Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who was busted several weeks ago trying to stop Army engineers from wrecking Tamalpais Creek in the name of flood control, equated the creek with People's Park: 'each little blade of grass is important."
Wolf von Eckhart, architectural critic of the Washington Post, sent a wire saying "the city belongs to the people".
Folk singer Malvina Reynolds sang "God Bless the Grass."
Paul Goodman sent a wire from New York expressing outrage at "the vandalism committed by the authorities".
Jane Jacobs sent a wire from New York saying universities traditionally have used parks as a cover-story for land grabs in order to "lull lazy liberals". To those battling for People's Park she said "be brave but be careful: against armor and sadism your weapon must be ingenuity".
Among many other speakers was Stanley Smart, a Paiute who recently was busted for--dig--hunting without a license. "We don't believe in the white man's law," he said.
Forester Don Harkins urged street people to spend some time in the wilderness. He said he knew that some street people thought the wilderness was counterrevolutionary--"but they'll pull a lot of power into themselves by getting out there." He offered to teach street people how to move through snow and storms in mountains.
Poet Gary Snyder said we must "recover gut knowledge of our relationship to nature" through which "nature becomes the supernatural". He called for establishment of an "Earth People's Park because nations and corporations are not going to do anything because it calls for renunciation instead of profit and growth".
He said the Soviet Union, China, Amerika and Europe all are equally culpable.
Of the Amerikan scene he said "the materialistic, exploitative, white-western mentality swept across the continent east to west, destroying the passenger pigeon, the bison, the indian and the topsoil till finally it came right up to the Pacific and polluted the offshore waters there.
"Now it is time for us symbolically to become indians--people of this land--and take Amerika back from west to east. People's Park is the first little piece of liberated territory in Amerika and I hope we keep going and take the whole thing."
Poet Lew Welch said: "My goddess is Mt. Tamalpais and I sit on the rocks of her slopes and ask her questions and she gives me answers. . . the last cliff on the continent. . . This is the Last Place. . . There is Nowhere Else to Go. . . There is Nowhere Else We Need to Go."
STATE OF THE HIPPIE
February 2, 2005
by keith lampeDear Friends and Colleagues,
As part of my ongoing efforts to improve human mood, I'd like on this annual occasion of my State of the Union Address to talk about the State of the Hippie instead.
I think that a return to Hippie spirit and values provides our best opportunity to improve significantly average human mood at this time. Not till we've achieved elation much more frequently can we resist the Fourth Reich effectively.
Currently I'm working on a Lost History of Hippie for all our dear high school students because they've been down so long it looks like up to them. That is, they've endured a merciless US police state for so many years now that they've forgotten anything better and thus can't imagine anything better. I'm so eager for them to become able to imagine something much much much better!!!
Before continuing, I'll sketch a brief summary of that history.
Most of you already know that Hippie began in San Francisco in the mid-60s and quickly spread around the nation and planet because smaller numbers of Hippies in New York City relayed the sense of it into various huge media machines there.
By '67 Hippie had become the main influence behind new forms of activism. For example, in that year a few of us in NYC started a number called Support-in-Action in order to provide support from middle-aged people (I was already 35) for young draft resisters. Most of us were Hippies -- though the venerable Karl Bissinger also was quite helpfully present. This idea then spread to a bunch in the Boston-Cambridge area who called themselves Resist.
Despite the fact that they were mainly Straights they came up with a statement very nearly as firm as ours -- e.g., their language risked a five-year-federal-felony bust. Two of the Straights among them -- Noam Chomsky and Benjamin Spock -- became the media character actors of that occasion. (Alas, it has been all downhill for poor Noam ever since: these days he's never in the streets and has kept his mouth shut about the US Government's cover-up of its murders of JFK, MLK, RFK, the OKC-Murrah explosion victims, the nearly 3000 9/11 victims, the Wellstone Family and also about the stolen presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.) So Hippies initiated the concept but Straights got credit for it from all the Straight academic histwhorians.
The great Initiating Genius at this time was Hippie Robert M. Ockene, then executive editor of Bobbs-Merrill Publishing Company. It was he who in late '67 gave us Yippie!
During the major demo and exorcistic levitation of the Pentagon in autumn '67 Judith Lampe and he slipped quietly into the Pentagon itself (behind Sy Hersh's NY Times credentials) -- he to check out the vibes and she mainly because she was pregnant with our dear daughter and didn't want to risk getting her belly bashed by the crude vicious federal marshals outside.
This gave Bob the perspective necessary to notice that the great intramural injustice of that action was the New Left Short-Hair Straights -- e.g., Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Carl Oglesby -- who totally controlled the rhetoric with their bullhorns but fled when the marshals moved in and left us voiceless Hippies to take the skull bash, tear gas and jail time.
So Bob suggested we start a group to give Hippies a voice -- and that the group should have a sense of humor to heal the psychic wounds caused by the continuing upsurge in police terrorism. In December we split around sixteen phone calls and the ensuing meeting resulted in Yippie -- a deft label provided by Paul Krassner in response to the need for humor. As most of you know, the late Abbie Hoffman and the late Jerry Rubin became the main character actors of the Yippie occasion. Bob died in autumn '69 -- evidently taken out by the dreaded US secret police.
This pattern of Hippies initiating a concept and Straights getting credit for it can be seen most clearly in the early history of the environmental movement. In autumn '69 in Berkeley three Hippies (Gary Snyder, Michael McClure and I) had dinner together because we'd played the major roles in getting that movement started and we wanted to talk about ways to protect it from corruption, co-optation, etc. The vicious secret police stomp-out of the Hippie at that time made it easy for come-lately fame-craving Straight David Brower (now also deceased) to move over into this new movement from the quaint conservation movement (I helped him) and get himself depicted among histwhorians as the "father" of it.
What a ludicrous irony! We Hippies had been in the streets risking our asses (e.g., several of us busted blocking a truck carrying redwood corpses in early spring of '69 and 1500 folks paralyzing traffic in downtown Eugene (OR) later that year) and now here comes "father" to lure the movement from street to office, from disobedient actions to obedient gestures -- e.g., write-yr-Congressperson. So Brower was the greatest individual human disaster that the biosphere had experienced till George Boosch.
I did the introductory press relations for the US women's-lib movement even though the originators were mainly Straight. The occasion was the Atlantic City (NJ) beauty pageant of September '68. Women journeyed there from Manhattan Island to remove their lipstick and brassieres and make statements about gender equality. It established Robin Morgan as the media character actress -- and she was rather Straight. Several weeks later Gloria Steinem suddenly popped up as Women's Lib Media Character Actress Number Two -- and she was so breathtakingly straight that one must suspect that she was planted by the sly CIA to prevent the movement from targeting capitalism as macho.
In late '68 or sometime in '69 a bunch of marvelous feminist Hippies in Marin County (CA) mounted a formidable challenge to Straight NYC women's-lib. They wanted to run the movement on yin energy rather than yang, wanted to link psychedelics with the liberation of both genders and lots of other interesting stuff. But they were swiftly taken over by women representing the East-Coast Yang Straightness which they'd organized to oppose. The manner of the take-over has to make one wonder whether the East Coast infiltrational energy had been instigated by the dreaded US secret police. In '71 I picked up with one of those Originating Hippies and her experience led her to say: "I have no more illusions about the women's movement." I felt lucky to be with her because I knew that most US women hadn't even begun to have their illusions yet.
So as we fold Hippie into the thick broth of Recent US History, it starts to look quite different from what was fed you by the professwhores of the military-industrial-academic complex back at your college or university -- right? The reason you know almost nothing about early eco-movement history is I didn't let Herder & Herder publish my Earth Read-Out news service in book form (despite their urgings) because they couldn't or wouldn't tell me how many sentient brother/sister trees would be sacrificed to its first printing.
The pattern of Initiating-Hippie and Straight-Getting-Credit continues to this day -- though at a much slower pace because of much tighter corporate control of the info flow. For example, fourteen years ago in San Francisco during the bombing of Baghdad I started the US Pro-Democracy Movement (USPDM) and just last month I was pleased to find a reference to "the mushrooming pro-democracy movement" in a piece by Straight Ted Glick. It's reasonable to assume that professwhorial histwhorians still are so inept and corrupt that they won't be able to trace it back very far -- and thus Ted or some other Johnny/Jeanny-Come-Lately Straight will get proclaimed the "father" of it. Fine! I'm glad not to have to go around Famous and I've used three different names as part of a strategy for avoiding such. Fame is a trap because it always slows down your evolution as you bask in it and repeat yourself within it. Meanwhile, let's hope those active in the current pro-democracy movement take it into the streets rather than merely getting paid writing books and making speeches about it.
In any case, I think it's time for high school students to know the truth rather than be victimized by all the "history" bullshit waiting for them in the wings of their onrushing colleges and universities. Of course, the history bullshit is much broader than just Hippies. For example, Ross Gelbspan -- a relatively effective climate-change commentator -- said on a radio show yesterday that warnings about climate change have been occurring since '88. Such warnings in fact go back at least to '68. These paragraphs from a letter I wrote in '01 bring that out:
Okay. Let's now take a look at my transition from anthropocentric activism to biocentric activism. In spring '68 Bob Ockene had noticed that the sinister U.S. MonoMassMedia (MMM) were conditioning Americans to accept the Vietnam War for an utterly indefinite period of time. So we did a caper called The War Is Over so people could at least imagine such a possibility. We dashed exultantly up Fifth Avenue, disrupting traffic. I can't remember whether the late great Phil Ochs did his song "I Declare the War Is Over" just before the caper or just after. (Hey, all honor to Phil's name, too!)
Anyway, I was co-ordinating the number as we gathered in Washington Square Park for the dash. The police didn't like our idea, had surrounded us and were playing with their batons somewhat menacingly. Old friend Allen Ginsberg (I met him in Calcutta in '62) came up to me and began talking about the Dialectics of Liberation conference in London from which he'd just returned. I was so concerned about the police that my unspoken attitude towards him was: Hey, can't you see I'm busy?
But what he told me led several months later to perhaps the biggest single change I've ever gone through. At the conference -- besides Stokely Carmichael and Bertrand Russell -- was an anthropologist from Hawaii by the name of Gregory Bateson. In his speech he said the planet was heating up and rather soon the polar caps would melt, inundatng the continents. Wow!
Thus soon after moving to Berkeley at the beginning of '69 I started the planet's first environmental newsservice. It was called Earth Read-Out (ERO) and it ran as a column in fifteen or twenty newspapers. It was the main information conduit for the new environmental movement, which had begun with a civil-disobedience action in Marin County about six weeks before my first issue on May 15.
The movement began when several of us sat down on a road north of Bolinas to stop a truck loaded with redwood corpses. We stopped it and were busted. So we started with a victory (extremely rare since then): never again has there been logging of that sort in that county.
All the bloody flotsam historians will tell you that the movement began with Earth Day '70 -- but that actually was the occasion that swiftly led to the movement being co-opted by effete bureaucrats using movement-sounding rhetoric in order to suck foundation grants and get book contracts. I was asked to make an Earth Day '70 speech in Denver or Boulder (can't remember which) but told them I was unwilling to expend so much petrol getting there and they should get a local person instead.
So a vibrant predominantly Hippie volunteer in-your-face movement was taken over by people like Stewart Brand, the late David Brower and Jerry Mander -- people who manipulated the eco-emergency on behalf of their personal desire to get famous and become adulated.
In autumn '69 Gary Snyder (whom I'd met in Kyoto in '60), Michael McClure and I had dinner together because we'd played the major roles in establishing the movement and wanted to discuss ways of keeping it from being co-opted and corrupted. We'd opened up a rather wide media-niche for it -- enough that David Brower, then a book editor in the quaint conservation movement, sensed he might be able to get in front of more TV cameras as an environmentalist than as a conservationist and so started moving our way. I actually helped him with the transition by doing press relations for a speech he made in Berkeley.
It was lewd of Jerry Mander to aid and abet Brower's ego-ridden fantasy that he was the fuckin father of the eco-movement. Jerry is easily bright enough to know the difference between the father of a movement and the oldest person in it. Between '71 and '99 Brower was more responsible for the breathtaking weakness of the movement than anyone else. The Backroom Boys controlling MonoMassMedia were delighted to feature David as a leader because they knew he was abjectly obedient to both their nefarious legal system and nefarious tax system and would advocate only the very most effete gestures of resistance to their ongoing destruction of the biosphere. David specialized in cutie-pie environmentalism. In a way, it's appropriate that Berkeley was selected for a David Brower Day. The citizens there already live with so many illusions that they might as well add one more.
In '69 I felt our strength lay in anonymity rather than fame. So I stopped signing my pieces with "Keith Lampe" and started using "K.L." Or if I could find somebody to add a paragraph or two, I'd then use "Members of the Staff." In late '69 or early '70 I did an issue which included poetry by Ginsberg, McClure and Snyder. I used only their initials and they were pissed -- though Ginsberg less so. They'd become junkies of their own names! Their names were their ticket-to-ride!
On the spring equinox of '70 I did an issue devoted to regionalizing North America. Fourteen years later Peter Berg would come up to me at a bioregional gathering and say, "So what do you think of this?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Hey, man, the two of us started this thing." That was accurate except for some major male chauvinism. In alphabetical order the actual founders of bioregionalism are: Judy Berg, Peter Berg, Judy Lampe and Keith Lampe (I was still using my human-chauvinist name). Sadly, I must report to you that a few years later Peter had become so ego-ridden that he failed to relay to flotsam historian Kirkpatrick Sale that I was a co-founder.
I must also sadly report that within just a few years after that dinner with Snyder and McClure, both of them had degenerated into fashionable eco-lapdogs. Perhaps they'd been frightened by the infamous U.S. military's murders of those four well-intentioned Kent State University students in spring '70. In any case, these days I'm not willing to be seen in public with either of them.
One reason you don't know anything about all this is that I did not allow Herder & Herder to publish Earth Read-Out in book form. They were eager but I said I wanted to know the number of sentient arboreal beings who would be screamingly sacrificed for the first edition. I wanted to include the number in the volume. I felt that minimal human decency called for at least that gesture. They couldn't or wouldn't give me a number.
And obviously there was lots of other important climate-destabilization info made available between '70 and '88 -- when Ross starts catching on to it.
Hippies also were the predominant influence in the early days of the Back-to-the-Land Movement. The first Hippie rural commune evidently was Drop City in Iowa in '65. Peter Rabbit, now living in Taos, is widely regarded as one of the venerable mentors of that movement.
Perhaps the most helpful suggestion from the heyday of Hippie was Gary Snyder's about "the transfer of prime human attention from objects to states of mind." If applied today in the form of massive boycotts it could be an effective tool of resistance to the Bush Junta, which, after all, is impervious to moral appeals but fetishistic about profits. More attention on states of mind also can significantly improve average mood. Most important of all, such a transfer would greatly lessen the pressure on our fragile home-planet life-support systems.
Meanwhile, there obviously should be additional categories of lost history for high school students. I hope you have suggestions for how they should be labeled and organized.
I hope this has been more interesting for you than that Brand X State-of-the-Union Speech delivered today by that ignominious Fourth Reich puppet.
Yours for all species,
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine
Transition PrezGOVERNMENT OF THE USA IN EXILE
Free Americans Reaching Out to Amerika's Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free
A local page on Keith Lampe and "Earth Readout" is located at:
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Scrapbook/UnitedStateCafe/uscpage021.html
Keith and Curtis ~ Photo: James StarkVOCAL ENERGY HEALTH
Keith Lampe (Ponderosa Pine), Vocals & Doug Adamz, Tibetan Bell
Part One: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/pinevesone.mp3
Part Two: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/pinevestwo.mp3
With VEH (Vocal Energy Health), after a few sessions of imitating these sounds, one can start doing them alone or --even better-- with others; creating an effective practice that requires no gear. ~ Ponderosa Pine
Click to view local page on Keith Lampe
Co-Founder of YIPPIE and Progressive Activist Groups
Boptime with Even Steven + The Legends of Wilmington Jazz
On Saturday's Boptime we'll spend the first two hours visiting this day in 1961, beginning at 6am (EDT) with the Broadway musical Camelot. During the 7am (EDT) hour you'll hear a little bit of Larry Ferrari and because this day in 1961 was a Sunday, we'll read some of the funnies from the Sunday newspaper, along with what was playing at the movies, and on television, as well as some current events. At 8am (EDT), and for the remainder of the program, we head back to this day in 1944. There wasn't a lot of new recordings during World War II because of the wartime demand for shellac, from which records were made, and because the musicians' union was on strike against the major record labels. Much of the new music came from the movies, as well as from radio programs, and we'll provide a sense of this by matching up movies at local theaters on this day in 1944 with song selections from them. ~ Steve
BOPTIME: Saturday, 6 AM Eastern time, 3 AM Pacific time
Go To: http://www.wvud.org/?page_id=24
Click on a listening link below the WVUD logo:
Today's Secret Question:
Is plagiarism more important than GOP wanting to know if Monica swallowed, truth about mass murders of 9/11, or incompetent 9/11 cOmmission findings?
GOP to launch investigation into allegations that Michelle Obama plagiarized Melania Trump. via Vicki
GOP, with Democrat support, spent seventy million dollars ($70,000,000) to discover if Monica swallowed.
GOP, with Democrat support, spent three million dollars ($3,000,000) on the 9/11 cOmmission to look into fraudulent claims about 9/11 mass murder.
The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions
by David Ray GriffinPage 284: At that point, in any case, the obstacles to be placed before the Commission's work had only begun. The president refused to give it adequate funding. Whereas the investigation of the Challenger disaster received $50 million, Bush promised only $3 million for the investigation of the much more deadly and complex disaster of 9/11. He then initially resisted when the Commission asked for an additional $8 million. After that we witnessed delays in issuing security clearances; resistance to providing documents; insistence that federal employees have "minders" present when they were testifying; resistance to having White House officials testify, especially under oath; and resistance to extending the deadline when the Commission realized that, because of the many delays, it needed more time.
REMEMBER KIDS, every time you hear
"PLAGIARISM" Scream Real Loud:
Pee Wee's Punk Rock Pogo Party with Cowboy Curtis
from Robert Lyons ~ http://vimeo.com/24793063
The 9 Scariest Theories Known
by J0AID ~ Article Source
1. False Vacuum
This is a short scientific hypothesis that proposes our own universe is actually in a false phase state as part of a much larger universe, meaning that our own universe and everything we know is temporary. The false vacuum that we are in will eventually pop and the larger universe will return to its normal state, meaning everything we know in our visible universe will cease to exist almost immediately without warning.
2. The Great Filter
Ever wondered why space is so vast yet we've never encountered another species? the great filter theory goes some way to explaining why in a universe that has so much potential for life we still haven't found any yet. It says that somewhere between the beginning of life itself and human evolution the Great Filter stops their advancement and ends life. If this is true then humans as of right now fit into one of three scenarios, either we've passed the great filter already like other civilizations and we are on our way to finding life elsewhere, we are the first to pass the filter and other advanced species also stand a chance of doing the same, or we haven't hit the filter yet. The last scenario is the scariest and finding evidence of extinct life on other planets would mean the filter is more than likely in front of us as opposed to behind us.
3. Brain in a Vat
This theory is often use in experiments to study our perception of knowledge, reality, truth and relies on the idea that the brain is the source of all consciousness, no spirit, no soul, just the brain being operated via electrical impulses. It argues that because the brain can be influenced and stimulated from external impulses it can't determine between simulated stimulation and natural stimuli. This means that for all you know your brain could be in a jar which is being fed false impulses, making your entire life and existence out of your control and you'd never know.
aka Matrix Theory
4. Higher Dimensional Beings
This is the idea that higher dimensional beings exist, however they choose not to interact with us. Imagine a 2D human, when you look at them from a certain angle you'd never even know they were there. Living life in 2D would mean that the person would never be able to even comprehend that some is looking down at them, everything they have ever known is 2D.
Now imagine us, 3D, and a higher dimensional being able to look at you from a 4 dimension that we will never understand. They can be right next to you and you would never know. They 4D person could interact with us but if they choose not to we would never know they existed. Checkout the video link below by Carl Sagan which explains better.
5. Fermi Paradox
This theory is perhaps the most well known. The Fermi Paradox says that even if there were advanced civilizations out there, they may look at us the same way that we look at ants. Say there is an ant hill in the middle of a forest and right next to that ant hill we are building a highway, would the ants be able to understand what a highway is? probably not. So if there was life out there somewhere it could be that they are so advanced we would never understand what they are trying to do, meaning they would never stop to make contact.
6. Roko's Basilisk
Those familiar with the Terminator series will understand Roko's Basilisk theory which states the creation of an all-powerful artificial intelligence in the future may have repercussions if it tries to punish those who did not bring about its existence in the first place. It's a future version of Pascal’s wager which argues we should either be open to the idea of an all powerful AI right now or even go as far as to donate money to the development of an AI as a precaution in case of any future punishments. It even suggests that just knowing about AI now could mean punishment in the future!
7. Terror Management Theory
This idea is a little too close to home. Everything that we as a species have ever accomplished has been motivated by one factor, the irreducible fear of non-existence. All of our motivation and desire is driven from the idea that one day we will cease exist, placing value on the achievements we make based on their projection beyond the grave. It's a theory that holds true in the sense that much of modern western life is devoted to avoiding death itself, with scientific advancements all geared towards ensuring the survival of humanity. Essentially everything we have done and will do is motivated by our own existential fear in confronting death.
8. Transcension Hypothesis
This theory is pretty cool and says that once a civilization reaches a high enough intelligence it could be capable of reaching microscopic technological singularity and creating a black hole in order to leave our visible universe, therefore expanding their growth, complexity and intelligence, disappearing from the universe and reaffirming the Fermi Paradox theory. Our current developments in science suggest that this is a possibility, or at least we'd like to think that this is where the human race is heading. You'll find a better explanation here on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQOyJUDTKdM
9. Sixth Mass Extinction
This is perhaps the scariest and most 'real' threat to the human species right now. Many biologists believe that we are already living through the sixth mass extinction. Why? well it's all to do with the earth's population. At around 1800 the earth's population reached 1 billion, a number that took thousands of years to reach. In the 215 years since then it has grown to a staggering 7.2 billion. This growth is taking its toll on our planet and creating negative effects that will get worse until we eventually die off.
The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina
They ReturnedThere was nothing natural about the disaster that befell New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath.
James Ridgeway, AUG. 28, 2009 7:00 AM ~ Mother Jones Source
Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren't too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely "natural" disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude—a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain.
But there's an even harsher truth, one some New Orleans residents learned in the very first days but which is only beginning to become clear to the rest of us: What took place in this devastated American city was no less than a war, in which victims whose only crimes were poverty and blackness were treated as enemies of the state.
It started immediately after the storm and flood hit, when civilian aid was scarce—but private security forces already had boots on the ground. Some, like Blackwater (which has since redubbed itself Xe), were under federal contract, while a host of others answered to wealthy residents and businessmen who had departed well before Katrina and needed help protecting their property from the suffering masses left behind. According Jeremy Scahill's reporting in The Nation, Blackwater set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Armed as they would be in Iraq, with automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, and pockets overflowing with ammo, Blackwater contractors drove around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates.
"When asked what authority they were operating under,'' Scahill reported, "one guy said, 'We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.' Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, 'He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.' The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck.''
The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods," as if they were talking about Sadr City. When National Guard troops descended on the city, the Army Times described their role as fighting "the insurgency in the city." Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, who commanded the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force, told the paper, "This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."
Ten days after the storm, the New York Times reported that although the city was calm with no signs of looting (though it acknowledged this had taken place previously), "New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers." The local police superintendent ordered all weapons, including legally registered firearms, confiscated from civilians. But as the Times noted, that order didn't "apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property…[who] openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles." Scahill spoke to Michael Montgomery, the chief of security for one wealthy businessman who said his men came under fire from "black gangbangers" near the Ninth Ward. Armed with AR-15s and Glocks, Montgomery and his men "unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. 'After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said.'"
Malik Rahim, a Vietnam veteran and longtime community activist, was one of the organizers of the Common Ground Collective, which quickly began dispensing basic aid and medical care in the first days after the hurricane. But far from aiding the relief workers, Rahim told me this week, the police and troops who began patrolling the streets treated them as criminals or "insurgents." African American men caught outside also ran the risk of crossing paths with roving vigilante patrols who shot at will, he says. In this dangerous environment, Common Ground began to rely on white volunteers to move through a city that had simply become too perilous for blacks.
In July, the local television station WDSU released a home video, taken shortly after the storm hit, of a local man, Paul Gleason, who bragged to two police officers about shooting looters in the Algiers section of New Orleans.
"Did you have any problems with looters," [sic] asked an officer.
"Not anymore," said Gleason.
"Not anymore?"
"They're all dead," said Gleason.
The officer asked, "What happened?"
"We shot them," said Gleason.
"How many did you shoot?
"Thirty-eight."
"Thirty-eight people? What did you do with the bodies?"
"We gave them to the Coast Guard," said Gleason.
Gleason told his story with a cup of red wine in one hand and riding a tractor from Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World.
Although the government's aid efforts were in chaos, those involved in the self-generated community rescue and relief efforts were often seen as a threat. Even so, Common Ground, founded in the days after Katrina hit, eventually managed to serve more than half a million people, operating feeding stations, opening free health and legal clinics, and later rebuilding homes and planting trees. But they "never got a dime" from the federal government, says Rahim. The feds did, however, recruit one of Common Ground's founders, Brandon Darby, as an informant, later using him to infiltrate groups planning actions at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
And while the government couldn't seem to keep people from dying on rooftops or abandoned highways, it wasted no time building a temporary jail in New Orleans.
Burl Cain, the warden of the notorious Angola Prison, a former slave plantation that's now home to 5,000 inmates, was rushed down to the city to oversee "Camp Greyhound" in the city's bus terminal. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the jail "was constructed by inmates from Angola and Dixon state prisons and was outfitted with everything a stranded law enforcer could want, including top-of-the-line recreational vehicles to live in and electrical power, courtesy of a yellow Amtrak locomotive. There are computers to check suspects' backgrounds and a mug shot station—complete with heights marked in black on the wall that serves as the backdrop."
In the virtual martial law imposed in New Orleans after Katrina, the war on the poor sometimes even spilled over into the war on terror. In his latest book Zeitoun, published in July, Dave Eggers tells the story of a local Syrian immigrant who stayed in New Orleans to protect his properties and ended up organizing makeshift relief efforts and rescuing people in a canoe. He continued right up until he was arrested by a group of unidentified, heavily armed men in uniform, thrown into Camp Greyhound, and questioned as a suspected terrorist. In an interview with Salon, Eggers said:
Zeitoun was among thousands of people who were doing "Katrina time" after the storm. There was a complete suspension of all legal processes and there were no hearings, no courts for months and months and not enough folks in the judicial system really seemed all that concerned about it. Some human-rights activists and some attorneys, but otherwise it seemed to be the cost of doing business. It really could have only happened at that time; 2005 [Note: See JOHN TITOR ON CIVIL WAR posted below] was just the exact meeting place of the Bush-era philosophy towards law enforcement and incarceration, their philosophy toward habeas corpus and their neglect and indifference to the plight of New Orleanians.
Through all the time that the federal and local governments, in concert with wealthy New Orleanians, were pitching their battle, there was virtually no one fighting on the other side. Reviewing the "available evidence" a month after Katrina, the New York Times concluded that "the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations." The reports of residents firing at National Guard helicopters, of tourists being robbed and raped on Bourbon Street, and of murderous rampages in the Superdome—all turned out to be false.
Since then it has become increasingly clear that the truth of what happened in New Orleans—vigilantism and racially tinged violence, a military response that supplanted a humanitarian one—is equally sinister.
JOHN TITOR ON CIVIL WAR
I remember 2036 very clearly. It is difficult to describe 2036 in detail without spending a great deal of time explaining why things are so different.
In 2036, I live in central Florida with my family and I'm currently stationed at an Army base in Tampa. A world war in 2015 killed nearly three billion people. The people that survived grew closer together. Life is centered on the family and then the community. I cannot imagine living even a few hundred miles away from my parents.
There is no large industrial complex creating masses of useless food and recreational items. Food and livestock is grown and sold locally. People spend much more time reading and talking together face to face. Religion is taken seriously and everyone can multiply and divide in their heads.
Life has changed so much over my lifetime that it's hard to pin down a "normal" day. When I was 13, I was a soldier. As a teenager, I helped my dad haul cargo. I went to college when I was 31 and I was recruited to "time travel" shortly after that. Again, I suppose an average day in 2036 is like an average day on the farm.
There is a civil war in the United States that starts in 2005. That conflict flares up and down for 10 years. In 2015, Russia launches a nuclear strike against the major cities in the United States (which is the "other side" of the civil war from my perspective), China and Europe. The United States counter attacks. The US cities are destroyed along with the AFE (American Federal Empire)...thus we (in the country) won. The European Union and China were also destroyed. Russia is now our largest trading partner and the Capitol of the US was moved to Omaha Nebraska.
One of the biggest reasons why food production is localized is because the environment is affected with disease and radiation. We are making huge strides in getting it cleaned up. Water is produced on a community level and we do eat meat that we raise ourselves.
After the war, early new communities gathered around the current Universities. That's where the libraries were. I went to school at Fort UF, which is now called the University of Florida. Not too much is different except the military is large part of people's life and we spend a great deal of time in the fields and farms at the "University" or Fort.
The Constitution was changed after the war. We have 5 presidents that are voted in and out on different term periods. The vice president is the president of the senate and they are voted separately. ~ John Titor
Altering Timelines & Stuff
Timelines can be altered, but events & denstiny never change.
"Why do you post crap like this?" is frequently asked and the answer requires an example.
During Apollo 11's return from the moon astronaut Neil Armstrong said, "A hundred years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage to the Moon. His spaceship, Columbia, took off from Florida and landed in the Pacific Ocean after completing a trip to the Moon. It seems appropriate to us to share with you some of the reflections of the crew as the modern-day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the planet Earth and the same Pacific Ocean tomorrow" (source) and simply, the above example shows science fiction is able become real.
Multus* discovered that posting science fiction stories and false flag information can prevent certain things from happening because powers that be prefer not to give any credibility, whatsoever, to "crap posters."
*Multus ~ Latin word for multiple & an alleged highly educated secret order.
Members of Multus, also known as "Multies," work, on occasion, with "Singulars."
Singulars are most common (87%) and usually educated in one field of study. Multies (3%) are educated in a variety of scientific and related fields of study.
It is alleged one has to have an "Above 33" secret clearance (no president of the United States has ever had) in order to know the true purpose of Multies and ... that they are peaceful, positive beings involved with preservation of humanity.
In order to understand a little more about Multus, ARPA, established during 1958, was renamed "DARPA" (D for Defense) in March 1972, then renamed "ARPA" in February 1993, and then renamed "DARPA" again in March 1996 because Multies refused to harm any living thing. They turned DARPA back into ARPA, for a while, in order to get some important classified work done.
What do we want? TIME TRAVEL ~ When do we want it? IT'S IRRELEVANT!
Call for United Nations Human Rights Council
To Have Human Rights Observers at the
Democratic & Republican National Conventions?Amnesty International To Monitor Dem, GOP
Convention Protests For First Time
AP Photo / Wolfgang KummBy KRISTIN SALAKY JULY 14, 2016 ~ TPM source via Vicki
Amnesty International announced Thursday that for the first time ever it is sending human rights observers to monitor protests outside both the Republication and Democratic National Conventions.
In a news release, the group cited what they said were reports of human rights violations at protests of fatal shootings by police in recent weeks as an impetus for monitoring the conventions this year.
“We are deeply concerned that people’s fundamental human right to peacefully assemble and protest may be violated during the conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia," Eric Ferrero, Amnesty International USA’s Deputy Executive Director for Strategic Communications and Digital Initiatives, said in a statement. "Amnesty International’s independent, trained observers will monitor the protests to ensure that human rights are protected. Our goals are to protect the rights to peaceful assembly and expression and to monitor whether or not authorities are interfering with those rights.”
Large protests are expected in both Cleveland, where the Republican National Convention will be held, and Philadelphia, where the Democratic National Convention will be held, with some planning to protest at the GOP convention saying they plan to come armed.
Amnesty International said it notified police in both cities of its plans to monitor the protests. In letters to those police departments, the group outlined the following expectations its monitors would be looking for:
The decision to disperse an assembly should be a last resort and should be communicated clearly and with ample time for people to comply.
If a small minority tries to turn a peaceful assembly into a violent one, police should protect the peaceful protestors and not use isolated violence as a pretext to impede the rights of the majority of protestors.
Police should not use force against protestors simply for assembling; the decision to disperse an assembly should only be taken when there are no other means available to protect public order from an imminent risk of violence; and the type of equipment used to disperse an assembly must be carefully considered and used only when necessary, proportional and lawful.
Police should not selectively enforce laws against the media, legal observers, or protest organizers.
Arrest and detention should be carried out in accordance with the law and should not be used as a means to prevent peaceful protest or to intimidate or punish people for participating in a public assembly.
If people are arrested, police should not use restraints in an excessive manner; people who are arrested should have access to food and water, restrooms, medical attention, and legal counsel.
NOBODY WILL KEEP ADULTERERS OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE
Hand Shadow from Arts And Melon ~ https://vimeo.com/119979477
Boptime with Even Steven + The Legends of Wilmington Jazz
Saturday's Boptime begins at 6am (EDT) with the Broadway musical "I Can Get it For You Wholesale," from this day in 1962, and a debut for Barbra Streisand. At 7am (EDT) we continue from this day in 1962, with who was on Bandstand and at the movies in local theaters and drive-ins. At 8am (EDT) we give the same treatment to this day in 1955. At 9am (EDT) we have our 2nd Dream Hour of the season, this time for Mike from Ohio, with many rare and curious tunes. For the early bird, at 3am (EDT) on the Freebox, we'll be chock full of rockabilly, rare rockers from the late 50s and early 60s. ~ Steve
BOPTIME: Saturday, 6 AM Eastern time, 3 AM Pacific time
Go To: http://www.wvud.org/?page_id=24
Click on a listening link below the WVUD logo:
Walt Handelsman cartoon on spinning the big wheels for today's top headline
Malignant Narcissism, Rush, HD Conversion
from Ed ~ https://vimeo.com/150316560Is Amerika Drowning
In A Cesspool of Malignant Political Narcissism?Presented in Quadraspeak because Strings allow 4th Dimension!
A very intelligent person with a keen sense of observation presented an enlightening psychological profile of a specific situation using narcissism, which I had never considered, but now find true, and have applied its extremes to the current presidential race in Amerika.
Brief History
The social psychologist, Erich Fromm first coined the term "malignant narcissism" in 1964, describing it as a "severe mental sickness" representing "the quintessence of evil". He characterized the condition as "the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity."
Are presidential candidates subject to Narcissistic Personality Disorder ?
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a disorder, characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others.
People with the disorder are often perceived as arrogant, callous, envious and tend to be exploitative in their interpersonal relationships.
They can be excessively preoccupied with personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity.
Those with NPD generally lack emotional awareness and insight into their own condition, and fail to acknowledge that their behavior is at the root of their own problems as well as the problems they cause for others because, as a personality disorder, their thoughts, perceptions, and actions are generally consistent with their sense of self.
In cases of child sexual abuse that lead to narcissism, blaming the victim expands the trauma.
Malignant narcissists are cases of arrested development ?
They are perpetually living in a mindset of a young child. The age when a child is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong but very willing to do wrong if they think they won't get caught. Like a child, they feel entitled to whatever they want. Like a child, they recreate reality to suit their fantasy about themselves and the world around them. Like a child, they want all attention focused on them. But, unlike a child, the narcissist is not subject to being molded and shaped by authority figures or reality. The narcissist is determined (read here, conscious choice) to remain a child whereas most children are driven by a desire to grow up. Children are childish and there is no crime in that. I'm not pathologizing childhood. I'm highlighting that malignant narcissists are pathological children.
They reserve to themselves the right to define reality to all in their domain.
Do presidential candidates create Phobic Symptoms for voters?
For example:
Feelings of uncontrollable anxiety when a candidate is, or about to be exposed for
__Feelings that everything possible must be done to avoid
__Inability to function normally because of voter anxiety
__Having knowledge that fears are unreasonable or exaggerated, but feeling powerless to control them, which will sometimes lead to panic attacks.
Is the average voter being exposed to Narcissistic Abuse ?
Narcissistic abuse is one of the most pervasive forms of abuse. There really isn’t much worse and this condition is increasingly spreading throughout our society.
The increasing use of illegal drugs, abuse and the general social breakdown occurring world wide is a major cause.
A person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) will emotionally damage their families. This damage can last more than a life time, it will also affect the next 3 or 4 generations.
Many children of NPD elect to not perpetuate the craziness another generation by not having children. NPD can also be passed down through the generations. Great grandma had NPD and one of the great grand children also is afflicted with NPD.
NPDs are very good actors and actresses. They can feign love or whatever they need to get what they want. They tend to attract empaths or people that really want to help them. These make wonderful victims, especially the type that can keep turning the cheek.
1. They’re likable — at least, at first glance. ~ 2. Not all narcissists are loud and proud. In fact, some are quiet and shy. ~ 3. They can often be found in leadership roles.
Not that that makes them good leaders, notes Jean Twenge, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychology at San Diego State University and co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic with Campbell. But narcissists often find themselves in leadership positions because "people who are narcissistic want to be leaders. They don't necessarily make better leaders, but they want to do it, so they're more likely to end up in those positions."
4. They always manage to make the conversation about themselves. ~ 5. They’re also guilty of name-dropping. ~ 6. Not every story a narcissist tells is one of victory. But even in the stories of tragedy or failure, there’s an air of entitlement and victimization. ~ 7. They like nice things. ~ 8. Appearance is everything to them. ~ 9. On Facebook, they have lots of friends — and not a single bad picture. ~ 10. They are strongly averse to criticism. ~ 11. Excuses are a narcissist’s best friend. ~ 12. They leave a trail of wreckage behind them. ~ 13. And in that vein, they may be more likely to cheat. ~ 14. Everything is personal. ~ 15. A narcissistic person probably has no idea he or she is a narcissist. ~ 16. You find yourself resorting to flattery just to maintain the peace with a narcissist. ~ 17. Narcissists are not low in self-esteem. ~ 18. Men are more likely to be narcissists than women.
Are voters a target of narcissistic abuse ?
If you have been the target of a severe narcissist, severing ties may be necessary. Others may never understand why you had to make this choice. Without exposure, a capacity for insight, concern and curiosity, they cannot perceive the destructiveness. It may make you feel alone, but so be it. Do what you have to do.
Once you are removed and safe, thoughts about what happened—why, how, makes no sense, they do not care about the damage they caused, etc,—may haunt you. You may feel damaged or tainted because you are now saddled with the memories and feel you cannot get them out of your head.
You can.
Here's how: Develop the ability to change your thoughts or your relationship to your thoughts. There are many options such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
It can be done.
Regarding the incredibly seductive pull of a very skilled narcissist, be wise.
When the bombs of life hit us, our worldview is shattered. Our assumption of a fair world run by a benevolent deity is brought into direct conflict with the hell of our pain. Experiencing extreme pain affects how we view ourselves. The picture of the beautiful, happy loving world we used to live in, involved our own part of that picture. We all carry pictures of ourselves in our heads. Most of us have the belief that we are capable to wake up in the morning, shower, get ourselves dressed and proceed throughout our day making our living. The trauma of victimization changes all this. We seriously question ourselves after a narcissist victimizes us. Are we weak? Are we needy? How did we not see them for who they were? Weren’t we intelligent? How did we not pick up on the lies? Are we out of control? It makes no sense to us when we face unwarranted, irrational and undeserved mental /emotional torture by a narcissist.
The victimization of us was neither expected nor intended to be our choice. We did not want to be lied to, cheated, cheated on, stolen from, lied about, sold down the river and thrown away. We did NOT see this coming. We perceive ourselves as helpless and powerless. Our self perceptions change. Will we now always be victimized in relationships? Will we be singled out again? These new self perceptions can cause us to act out again, from this perception; becoming another victim to a narcissist.
As you can see, the skillful narcissist is a person with some pretty amazing traits. In my opinion, they can be formidable. They can be impressive in power, strength, intelligence, size, and difficulty. If you find one opposing you, they can be astounding enemies. They are not omnipotent, though they might think so. They do have limitations. Their ego is their own undoing. Many times, when they discover that you are on to them, they disappear. They do this if they perceive that you can blow their cover and expose them as a sham. For an extreme narcissist, being fully exposed to the world is the greatest pain in their lives. It is also the best medicine to their disease because it will force them to look inside and deal with their pain and wounds. If and when that happens, they will become like the rest of us, realizing that we do need others to help and love us. They will see how they need to love from a genuine heart that does not seek to use people. A former and healed narcissist can turn all his powerful assets, which he used to advance himself, to making a powerful contribution in the lives of others and being realistically liked. In the meantime, be careful and avoid being duped and drawn by the amazing magnetism of this kind of person.
Conclusion
If you have been targeted by a Malignant Political Narcissist for serious abuse, be aware that the abuse includes character assassination ~ the annihilation of who you are as a person. Just as through murder a careful criminal leaves no witnesses, a malignant narcissist is careful to abuse on the sly and destroy the victim's credibility in advance in order to "leave no witnesses." Character assassination is the premeditated murder of the target's image, their good name, their reputation, and ultimately their life.
None of the Above should be a valid choice on voter ballots!
It Might Not Be Right, Ruthie Foster
from Curtis Pollock ~ https://vimeo.com/99817452
Notes from ~@~
Heal Yourself (Movie: Road To Austin), Ruthie Foster
from Gary Fortin ~ https://vimeo.com/147882853I'd Like to Point Out
Thanks to politicians someone is now looking at whatever you do, so like it or not, always present your most charming you...
FSR house, Oak and giant Douglas Fir tree locations after Valley Fire ~ aH, 5/2016
Nobody for President ~ NONE of the ABOVE should be a choice on voter ballots
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump,
or NONE of the ABOVEEditorial Observer by Elizabeth Williamson July 9, 2016, via Hank
RALEIGH, N.C. — Hillary Clinton is ahead of Donald Trump by an average of five percentage points nationally, recent polls suggest. But both campaigns — just like all campaigns in earlier years — are hoping and praying that “independent” and “undecided” voters (who aren’t necessarily the same) can be persuaded to swing their way.
It may not be an easy sell: This year “undecided” often means “none of the above.”
Take John Sinsley, a telecommunications consultant in Raleigh, N.C., capital of a battleground state. Mr. Sinsley, 47, who says Bill Clinton was our last good president, is the type of independent voter Hillary Clinton is courting in this tossup state.
“I can’t legitimately vote for either presidential candidate,” he said. “I don’t trust Hillary Clinton. Trump is refreshing, but only so far as he’s throwing a wrench into the political system. But I’m not going to cast a vote just in protest.”
Every presidential year, the “undecideds” exasperate pollsters and partisans until November, when most of them wind up voting for a major party candidate, or not at all.
But this cycle, dissatisfaction with both major-party options — what Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah called “Sophie’s choice if Sophie hated both of her kids” — has redefined “undecided.” About four in 10 voters say they’re having trouble choosing between the two candidates because neither would make a good president, according to a new Pew Research Center study. That’s as high as at any point since 2000. Very few — 11 percent — find the choice difficult because both candidates would make a good president, the lowest proportion in the same time period.
Related, but separate, is that the share of voters calling themselves “independent” this year is at a 75-year high, according to the Pew Center. At 39 percent, they’re a plurality of the electorate.
Undecided voters might be sitting on the fence, but they’re paying attention. Fully 80 percent of registered voters say they have given “quite a lot” of thought to the election, the highest share at this point in any campaign since 1992, according to Pew.
Buzz Merchant, a construction company owner from Wendell, N.C., told me that Bernie Sanders’s loss leaves him in a quandary. “If it were life or death, I’d pick Trump,” he said.
Shamone Moise, Mr. Merchant’s girlfriend, disagreed. “If Trump gets in we’re done — I’m thinking bombs, war, boom,” she told me. “But I don’t believe a word Clinton says.”
“I may have to find another button, but I will vote,” she said.
Undecided voters like these tend to break for lesser-known candidates, says Doug Schwartz, Quinnipiac University’s polling director. That’s fueling a modest bump in the polls for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, who’s polling at about 8 percent nationally.
“Things could shift dramatically because there’s so many people still up for grabs who don’t have the anchor of party ID,” Mr. Schwartz said.
Sometimes the people who call themselves “undecided” are actually leaning toward Mr. Trump, and maybe feeling uneasy about admitting it.
I spoke with a 50ish man from Charlotte, N.C., who refused to give me his name, because he’s an independent who doesn’t want anyone to know he is “maybe 50 percent there” for Mr. Trump.
“I’ve ruled out Hillary, which is kind of sad,” he said. “But I work in a bank, and I would be fired for what she did with her emails.” Still, “Trump has the potential to divide the country, when we want to unify it.”
He sighed. “I’ve never not voted. It’s not that I’m frustrated with the process. But you’ve got to feel like you’re making the best choice.”
Back in Raleigh, Megan Healy leans the other way. “I might vote for Hillary Clinton, but only to take a vote away from Donald Trump,” she said.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter(@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this editorial appears in print on July 10, 2016, on page SR8 of the New York edition with the headline: Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump, or None of the Above. Today's Paper|Subscribe
None of the Above should be a choice on voter ballots!
She’s A Liar, Trump (Impersonator Tim Watters) on Hillary Clinton
from William Gold Entertainment ~ https://vimeo.com/161220760
Hillary’s Lies ~ FBI’s Cowardness
from Toby Dodd ~ https://vimeo.com/173563677
Mrs. Bill & Mr. Trump supported a liberty stealing Patriot Act
Mrs. Bill voted for & Mr. Trump did not oppose, an illegal Iraq war
Mr. Bernie Sanders;
Somebody who appears to be like you or me...
voted against the Patriot Act and Iraq War!
It's the end of the world as we know it...again.
A brief history of Socialist Plots to end the American way of life
by Pulitzer Prize-winning American political cartoonist
Matt Wuerker; founding staff member of Politico.
Understand ~ Maine Academy of Modern Music
from Herman Mantis ~ https://vimeo.com/153968789I'd Like to Point Out
People’s lives are circling the drain, and Nobody is even talking about it” ~ Life's getting harder. Incomes are declining. People are mad because they think D.C. isn't listening. They're right ! ~ Rep. Alan Grayson
This is a short essay on voter anger — its origin, its attributes, its meaning and its cure. Hint: Most Americans are worse off than they were a long time ago.
I started noticing voter anger around 2009. Initially, its locus was the Tea Party. They’re the ones who would form a circle around a political event, holding hands, and start chanting expletives. I attributed this to the Tea Party’s deep dissatisfaction with living in the 21st century. To them, basically, everything went south when Jane Wyatt stopped playing Robert Young’s Stepford wife on Father Knows Best, and started playing Spock’s mother, Amanda … Grayson, on Star Trek. (Does that mean that Spock and I are future relatives? I don’t know.) For them, things have never been the same since.
Generally speaking, the problem for Team Blue is not anger; it’s apathy. However, by roughly the year 2012, Team Blue had caught up in the Anger Games, and the score was tied.
Politically, we then entered very interesting territory. For many years up to that time, polling had showed that even when Congress had a negative approval rating, most voters wanted to reelect their individual members of Congress. (It’s as though Congress had become Garrison Keilor’s Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average.) No more. Now polls showed a majority in favor of voting out one’s own member of Congress, a matter quite unnerving to one’s own member of Congress. Moreover, polls showed that most voters wished that voting booths offered a magic Shakespearean “let’s kill all the incumbents” button that would let them throw out all the bums by extending a single digit. (The middle one, I surmise.) And speaking of digits, Congress’s approval rating sank into single digits.
Why? Well, the superficial explanation is that voters feel that elected officials simply aren’t listening. We had a good example of that a few weeks ago, on the Fast Track bill. A GOP member of Congress confided in me that his calls and emails were running 100-to-1 against Fast Track. In some Democratic offices, the numbers probably were even more one-sided. (Many of the people reading these very words had something to do with that.) Nevertheless, in the Party of the People, 13 Democratic Senators initially voted against proceeding with Fast Track, and then voted for proceeding with Fast Track. So that gutless anti-egalitarian bill slipped past a Senate filibuster with no votes to spare. Then, in the House, 28 Democratic Congressmen broke ranks, passing Fast Track by only four extra votes. (Meaning that if four votes had switched, Fast Track would have been halted in its … tracks.) From the voters’ perspective, that’s a very good example of “you’re not listening to me!”
A Question Of Honour ~ Sarah Brightman
from Roland Baldwin ~ http://vimeo.com/20989311
The Yolanda Trail ~ Matt Venuti
from paul freehauf ~ https://vimeo.com/19765796
Hello, Merge Factory from Nima Reza ~ https://vimeo.com/125361169I'd Like to Point Out
There is a unique place where all living/breathing things co-exist as one and within it is a Siddhi command center which defies common reality. ~@~
The Yolanda Trail, Matt Venuti from paul freehauf ~ https://vimeo.com/19765796
Symphonic Bohemian Rhapsody Remashed from Fissunix ~ https://vimeo.com/146493033
Boptime with Even Steven + The Legends of Wilmington Jazz
On Saturday's Boptime we begin at 6am (EDT) with a musical revue of the music by Kurt Weill during the period when he had to flee Nazi Germany and when he arrived in the United States in 1935. At 7am (EDT) on The Legends of Wilmington Jazz, we'll hear about Sam Wooding who taught band at Howard High School in Wilmington when Clifford Brown was a student there during World War II, and after Wooding took jazz to Europe in the 1920s and influenced musical artists there like Josephine Baker and Kurt Weill. You'll also hear a portion of a 1976 tribute from Wilmington's Grand Opera House for Clifford Brown featuring one of Brownie's first bandmates, Rashid Yahyah, AKA Donald Criss, along with the late jazz trumpet player Marcus Belgrave among others. At at 8am (EDT) it's "Clifford's Corner." Kitty has the Saturday off 'til August, but Larry will join me playing those rare jazz and R&B sides, plus you never know who'll show up. ~ Steve
BOPTIME: Saturday, 6 AM Eastern time, 3 AM Pacific time
Go To: http://www.wvud.org/?page_id=24
Click on a listening link below the WVUD logo:
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck in the middle with WHO ?
Apathy Wins
201607.08 ~ Another tiny blurb about Chilcot's Report appeared today and apparently apathy has won again.
At this juncture I would like to point out Nobody for President's Birthday Party provided one of the easiest ways to regain political balance within all elections by suggesting None of the Above be a valid choice on voter ballots, which would eliminate "voting for lesser of evils" syndrome, etc.
Unfortunately, a two party system consistently rejects this simple fix because Nobody has all the answers and believes if a majority voted for None of the Above, rather than a lesser of evils, voters would have to find someone competent to lead them!!!
If one wants to read leading up to this Report, it is located below...
I am not saying you are stupid...
I am saying you have bad luck when it comes to thinking!13 Years Foreplay For 8 +/- Hour Climax
Media Reaction To Chilcot's Report Was Like Really Bad Sex?Today, 201607.07, there is one tiny front page blurb on the Guardian (UK News) about Bush's poodle, ...so now is a good time for a small piece on Short Attention Span.
With Transient attention being as short as five seconds and Selective sustained attention lasting as long as five minutes, Neil Postman in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, suggests attention span of humans is decreasing as use of modern technology, especially television, increases. Internet browsing may have a similar effect because it enables users to move easily from one page to another. Most internet users spend less than one minute on the average website.
However, there is hope and it is called ART (Attention restoration theory) which asserts people can concentrate better after spending time in nature, or even looking at scenes of nature. Natural environments abound with "soft fascinations" which a person can reflect upon in "effortless attention", such as clouds moving across the sky, leaves rustling in a breeze or water bubbling over rocks in a stream.
The Chilcot Report
During times of universal deceit, telling the
truth becomes a revolutionary act. ~ George OrwellPolitical Whitewash of Chilcot
Politicians get away with murder, again?In George Orwell's Animal Farm, a pig tries to whitewash history by deleting a few characters from the minds of the other animals and it is obvious politicians will defend their murder and mayhem in Iraq, no matter what it cost in innocent women, children, civilian, military death and maiming!
373 Politicians who voted YEA and 4 Politicians who didn't vote for Iraq
war should be charged with conspiracy to commit murder and mayhem?
Exclusive:
CIA Files Prove America
Helped Saddam as He Gassed IranBetween 1983 and 1992--the Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle era--the U.S. gave Iraq innumerable weapons, and issued about $2 billion in loans, most of which were used to buy even more weapons; the U.S. never expected full repayment. In addition, U.S. corporations provided Iraq with the means to manufacture chemical and biological weapons. The "point man" the Reagan administration sent to solidify U.S.-Iraqi relations--and who had personal knowledge that Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran, and who helped remove the "terrorist" label against Iraq--was . . . Donald Rumsfeld
Made In America: It's no accident that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. U.S. corporations helped supply them. by Dennis Bernstein, February 25, 1998
This is the movie you are looking for:
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/images/readmylips.mov
originally appearing at: www.almo.se/readmylips
Makeup can do wonders
The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State. ~ Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels
Saddam and Rummy sitting in a tree
Less than an hour after Sir John
reads a synopsis of his report, it is already clear
politicians will do anything to save their collective lying butts !!!Chilcot says his inquiry concluded it was American and Britain who were undermining the authority of the UN security council, because they pushed for military action when peaceful alternatives had not been exhausted.
Chilcot says Blair presented the intelligence about Iraq’s WMD 'with a certainty that was not justified'
Chilcot says it is now clear that policy on Iraq was made "on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments. They were not challenged - and they should have been."
Chilcot says the inquiry does not accept Blair’s claim that it was impossible to predict the post-invasion problems. Those problems were anticipated, he says.
Chilcot says war was 'not a last resort'
Chilcot says UK was fighting campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time when it did not have the resources to do so.
Chilcot says there was no need to go to war in March 2003 and inquiry’s report is unanimous.
Blair "overestimated his ability" to influence US decisions on Iraq, Chilcot says.
Chilcot says all aspects of any military intervention need to be debated and considered with full rigour. That did not happen in this case, he says.
Call for Tony Blair to face trial over Iraq war
John Chilcot says Iraq war inquiry
will not shy away from criticismsWhat is the Chilcot report?
An independent inquiry into the UK's involvement in Iraq and how Tony Blair led Britain into the deeply unpopular invasion was set up by Gordon Brown in 2009, following public and parliamentary pressure. It was chaired by Sir John Chilcot, a former Whitehall mandarin, and is only just publishing its report. Civil servants wanted the inquiry to be held in private but the decision was overturned after an outcry. The inquiry's mandate was to “consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath.” It is officially known as the Iraq Inquiry.
Leading Up To Chilcot
on Wednesday, July 6, 2016 ~
13 Years After Lying Politicians
Commit Mass Murder On Women & Children
It was widely known before the Iraq war
over 50% of the Iraqi population
were children under the age of 15,
and the war began with this act of sheer cowardice.1,455,590 innocent Iraqi’s murdered
in order to eliminate one man, based on lies.
Steve Bell ~ War on terror leaves human rights at 50-year low, claims Amnesty"It was criminal negligence on an industrial scale" and if there are any shortcomings in the report, "a significant number of people will say it’s a cover-up by the establishment," says Steven Kettell, associate professor in politics and international studies at the University of Warwick.
Lying Is One Thing
Conspiracy To Commit Murder Is AnotherSimply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. - Dick Cheney - August 26, 2002
Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States. - Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-CT - September 4, 2002
If we wait for the danger to become clear, it could be too late. - Sen. Joseph Biden D-Del. - September 4, 2002
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. - George W. Bush - September 12, 2002
If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world. - Ari Fleischer - December 2, 2002
We know for a fact that there are weapons there. - Ari Fleischer - January 9, 2003
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. - George W. Bush - January 28, 2003
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more. - Colin Powell - February 5, 2003
Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations. - Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY - February 5, 2003
We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have. - George Bush - February 8, 2003
So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our judgment has to be clearly not. - Colin Powell - March 8, 2003
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. - George Bush - March 18, 2003
We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd. - Tony Blair, Prime Minister - March 18, 2003
Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes. - Ari Fleischer - March 21, 2003
There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them. - Gen. Tommy Franks - March 22, 2003
One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites. - Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark - March 22, 2003
I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction. - Kenneth Adelman, Defense Policy Board - March 23, 2003
We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad. - Donald Rumsfeld - March 30, 2003
Saddam's removal is necessary to eradicate the threat from his weapons of mass destruction - Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary - April 2, 2003
Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty. - Neocon scholar Robert Kagan - April 9, 2003
I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found. - Ari Fleischer - April 10, 2003
We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them. - George Bush - April 24, 2003
There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country. - Donald Rumsfeld - April 25, 2003
Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a bit. - Tony Blair - April 28, 2003
We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so. - George Bush - May 3, 2003
I am confident that we will find evidence that makes it clear he had weapons of mass destruction. - Colin Powell - May 4, 2003
I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country. - Donald Rumsfeld - May 4, 2003
I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program. - George W. Bush - May 6, 2003
U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction. - Condoleezza Rice - May 12, 2003
I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden. - Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne - May 13, 2003
Before the war, there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found. - Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps - May 21, 2003
Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction. - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff - May 26, 2003
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer. - Donald Rumsfeld - May 27, 2003
For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on. - Paul Wolfowitz - May 28, 2003
TO THE GUY WHO CALLED ME A TRAITOR
By ARNOLD OLIVER
I haven't heard from you for a while. Three years ago you called me a "traitor", just before the invasion of Iraq. You also wrote, "Your voice against our elected government is a voice against its people, a voice against this nation."
I guess I must have set you off with my skepticism about an Iraqi nuclear weapons program and other nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the highly dubious claims being made that Iraq was involved with 9/11 or Al Qaeda.
I am sure that you had every intention to contact me and apologize since you were so utterly wrong about, well, everything. But I suppose you were busy.
As the third anniversary of the war approaches, let's review the fine mess that you've gotten us into.
The war in Iraq has become a horrendous drain of American lives and treasure. With no end in sight, we have already lost over 2300 U.S. soldiers and will spend more than $315 billion through 2006. At least 18,000 American soldiers have suffered devastating wounds, and another 50,000 show signs of acute psychological distress.
Iraqi losses have been staggering. Over the last three years, at least 100,000 have died--most killed by U.S. forces. It is estimated that U.S. troops kill three Iraqi civilians for each insurgent dispatched. As bad as Saddam's regime was, under Bush & Company Iraq has gone from being the one of the most developed and educated countries in the region to a failed state.
The insurgency rages unabated, and civil war looms; coalition forces control only the ground upon which they stand. Amnesty International reports that U.S. troops have detained thousands of Iraqis; many are innocent and many have been abused--all of which further inflames the insurgency.
Wealthy Americans, meanwhile, have been asked to sacrifice precisely nothing. The Bush administration has cut their taxes and put the entire cost of the war on the national tab. Our children and grandchildren will pay the bill. Meanwhile, Halliburton continues to rake it in--$16 billion in Iraq war contracts so far.
From the Geneva Conventions to the UN Charter to the Treaty on Torture, the Bush regime has left the fabric of international law in tatters. Our country has become an international pariah.
And the troops have had it. A large majority of U.S. soldiers in Iraq now say it is time to leave: 72% "think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately." (Le Moyne College/Zogby International, 2/28/06)
Many of us saw it all coming. But we were censured and ridiculed, our competence and integrity questioned, and in some cases our careers were damaged.
But I should not complain. When you denounced me, I joined a distinguished group that included generals Tony Zinni and Bill Odom, hard working UN weapons inspectors, and regrettably, too few brave journalists and academics. Let's salute all who refused to be intimidated.
During another war at another time, Theodore Roosevelt put it well, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president . . . is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
But you, on the contrary, readily gave in to the orchestrated campaign of mass hysteria that was used to manipulate the American public into supporting an unnecessary and illegal war. You choose to give your support to an administration that "went to war without requesting--and evidently without being influenced by--any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq," according to Paul Pillar, recently retired from the CIA.
In blindly following incompetent leaders, you abetted taking our country into what Gen. Odom calls "the greatest strategic disaster in US history". By choosing to be an unthinking disciple you abandoned your responsibilities as a citizen in a democracy.
To the guy who called me a traitor: The one who betrayed our country was you; and the hands stained with the blood of the innocent are yours.
Arnold Oliver is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio ~ http://counterpunch.org/oliver03212006.html
YOU ARE LOOKING
AT A US GOVERNMENT LIEFrom: Rethinking 9/11
On Friday 14 December 2001 a videotape of Osama bin Laden "confessing" to the 9/11 attacks was released. The tape was supposedly found in a house in Qandahar, Afghanistan. The recording was of very poor audio and visual quality and the authenticity of the tape was questioned.
This annoyed President [War Criminal] Bush who said, "It is preposterous to think this tape was doctored."
Okay, let's have a look:
Here's 5 Osama's - which is the odd one out?Bin Laden myth "crashes down"
The real report, called "shocking" by the legislators, who have called for President Obama to declassify the entire report, proves that there was no al-Qaeda involvement, no reason to invade Afghanistan or Iraq and no reason to hunt CIA operative, Colonel Tim Osman, also known as "Osama bin Laden."
In fact, Ambassador Lee Wanta, a former White House Intelligence Chief and Inspector General of the Department of Defense under Reagan, has cited meetings between key government officials and "bin Laden" that he attended, meetings held in both Los Angeles and Washington DC while the US was supposedly hunting him.
From Wanta, who was present during these meetings,
"In early 1990, bin Laden, suffering from advanced kidney disease, was flown to an American facility in the Persian Gulf. From there, bin Laden flew to Los Angeles, landing in the Ontario airport, met by Albert Hakim, representing President Bush (41), Ollie North (free on appeal bond), Admiral William Dickie, attorney Glenn Peglau and General Jack Singlaub, one of the founders of the CIA. Hakim was the personal representative of President Bush and in overall charge of the project. 'Bud' McFarlane, an Iran-Contra figure pardoned by President Bush in 1992, was also a part of the group.
Bin Laden then left Los Angeles for Washington DC. There he stayed in the Mayflower Hotel. Meetings were held at the Metropolitan Club in Washington. Attorney Glenn Peglau stayed at the Metropolitan. While there, Peglau's room was broken into and "items" removed. At no point is there record, classified or public, that this 'working group' was ever dissolved nor is there any record that Osama bin Laden's status as a security operative working for the US government ever ended. In 2001, Osama bin Laden's last public statement denied any involvement in the 9/11 attacks. There are no classified documents tying bin Laden to 9/11 or citing him to be a 'rogue CIA operative.'"
Closing Argument
Alan Shore: When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn't.
Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.
Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.
And now, it's been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven't.
In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretapping's, prison without a fair trial - or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.
There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication that young people seem to notice.
Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we've lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.
Stop for a second and try to fathom that.
At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.
This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?
*Alan sits down abruptly in the witness chair next to the judge*
Judge Robert Sanders: Mr. Shore. That's a chair for witnesses only.
Alan: Really long speeches make me so tired sometimes.
Judge Robert Sanders: Please get out of the chair.
Alan: Actually, I'm sick and tired.
Judge Robert Sanders: Get out of the chair!
Alan: And what I'm most sick and tired of is how every time somebody disagrees with how the government is running things, he or she is labeled un American.
U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Evidentially, it's speech time.
Alan: And speech in this country is free, you hack! Free for me, free for you. Free for Melissa Hughes to stand up to her government and say "Stick it"!
U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Objection!
Alan: I object to government abusing its power to squash the constitutional freedoms of its citizenry. And, God forbid, anybody challenge it. They're smeared as being a heretic. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American!
Judge Robert Sanders: Mr. Shore. Unless you have anything new and fresh to say, please sit down. You've breached the decorum of my courtroom with all this hooting.
Alan: Last night, I went to bed with a book. Not as much fun as a 29 year old, but the book contained a speech by Adlai Stevenson. The year was 1952. He said, "The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism."
Today, it's the cloak of anti-terrorism. Stevenson also remarked, "It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
I know we are all afraid, but the Bill of Rights ~ we have to live up to that. We simply must. That's all Melissa Hughes was trying to say. She was speaking for you. I would ask you now to go back to that room and speak for her.
Boston Legal ~ Stick It ~ Season 2 ~ Episode 19 [Video at link] Written by David E. Kelley & Janet Leahy ~ Directed by Adam Arkin
Out Demons, Out
INVOCATION, as delivered by Ed Sanders
"In the name of the amulets of touching, seeing, groping, hearing and loving, we call upon the powers of the cosmos to protect our ceremonies in the name of Zeus, in the name of Anubis, god of the dead, in the name of all those killed because they do not comprehend, in the name of the lives of the soldiers in Vietnam who were killed because of a bad karma, in the name of sea-born Aphrodite, in the name of Magna Mater, in the name of Dionysus, Zagreus, Jesus, Yahweh, the unnamable, the quintessent finality of the Zoroastrian fire, in the name of Hermes, in the name of the Beak of Sok, in the name of scarab, in the name, in the name, in the name of the Tyrone Power Pound Cake Society in the Sky, in the name of Ra, Osiris, Horus, Nepta, Isis, in the name of the flowing living universe, in the name of the mouth of the river, we call upon the spirit…to raise the Pentagon from its destiny and preserve it."
"In the name, and all the names, it is you."
"Out, demons out--back to darkness, ye servants of Satan--out, demons, out! Out, demons, out!" ~ [Continue Reading]
Valley Fire ~ Loss of Flying Snail Ranch; Our Personal Paradise
Before ~ A beautiful succulent garden and giant, ancient, douglas fir tree.
After
Before ~ A beautiful view from kitchen window.
After
Mike Wilhelm ~ Charlatans, Flamin' Groovies, Loose Gravel, and more
Louie Louie, Mike Wilhelm from ed chatham ~ https://vimeo.com/52509099
The Most Astounding Fact - Neil deGrasse Tyson from Dirron ~ https://vimeo.com/57731445
Inspired by Amestizo (Crazy Horse) ~ Shaman ~ Available CuriosI'd Like to Point Out
There is a unique place where all living/breathing things co-exist as one and within it is a Siddhi command center which defies common reality. ~@~
Nima Collective ~ Float from Nima Reza ~ https://vimeo.com/129860147
Jay Multistrada from killboy ~ https://vimeo.com/34155121
Stan surprises Francine with a trip to Sacramento ~ instead of Hawaii
from Dirron ~ https://vimeo.com/90291586A Place Beyond Up & Down
A sine wave may be used to show human Ups and Downs, where Point of Ascension is an entry that reaches above the highest point of the wave; a Point Beyond Ups & Downs, attainable by using personal experience and a Control phrase like "There's that one again." ~@~
Polar Ignition, A Joe Satriani Tribute from Akin Unver ~ https://vimeo.com/29489587
Ira Cohen ~ Poet, Artist, Film Maker, Dear Friend
Curtis Spangler and Ira Cohen ~ Photograph: Robert Pruzan
Ira Cohen from 31 Squirrel ~ https://vimeo.com/15046320 via Amestizo
Nobody for President ~ NONE of the ABOVE should be a choice on voter ballots
The Economy
Due to the current financial situation caused by the slowdown in the economy, Congress has decided to implement a scheme to put workers of 50 years of age and above on early retirement, thus creating jobs and reducing unemployment.
This scheme will be known as R.A.P.E. (Retire Aged People Early). Persons selected to be R.A.P.E.D can apply to Congress to be considered for the S.H.A.F.T. Program (Special Help After Forced Termination).
Persons who have been R.A.P.E.D and S.H.A.F.T.ED will be reviewed under the S.C.R.E.W. program (System Covering Retired-Early Workers).
A person may be R.A.P.E.D once, S.H.A.F.T.ED twice and S.C.R.E.W.ED as many times as Congress deems appropriate. Persons who have been R.A.P.E.D could get A.I.D.S. (Additional Income for Dependants & Spouse) or H.E.R.P.E.S. (Half Earnings for Retired Personnel Early Severance).
Obviously persons who have A.I.D.S. or H.E.R.P.E.S. will not be S.H.A.F.T.ED or S.C.R.E.W.ED any further by Congress.
Persons who are not R.A.P.E.D and are staying on will receive as much S.H.I.T. (Special High Intensity Training) as possible. Congress has always prided themselves on the amount of S.H.I.T. they give their citizens. Should you feel that you do not receive enough S.H.I.T., please bring this to the attention of your Congressman, who has been trained to give you all the S.H.I.T. you can handle.
Sincerely, The Committee for Economic Value of Individual Lives (E.V.I.L.)
PS - Due to recent budget cuts & rising cost of electricity, gas and oil, as well as current market conditions, the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck in the middle with WHO ?
Excerpt, GRRRL documentary from Vega Darling ~ https://vimeo.com/162300937
Boptime with Even Steven + The Legends of Wilmington Jazz
On Saturday's Boptime we begin at 6am (EDT) by going back to this day in 1952 and the Broadway revival of the Rodgers & Hart musical Pal Joey from 1940. We continue with 1952 at 7am (EDT) with the music from this day in that year, a look at what was going on in the Korean War, what was playing in the movies, on radio & television, and more. After visiting "My World" from 1951 at 8am (EDT), it's The Delaware Rock & Roll Hall of Fame where you'll hear tunes from Andy & the Gigolos, Teddy & the Continentals, Carmen Poppiti, the Adapters and others. At 9am (EDT) on the Club Baby Grand we play music from Sam Wooding, Betty Roché, Clifford Brown, Lem Winchester, Gerald Price, and Wilby Fletcher. For the early bird at 3am (EDT) on the Freebox we feature Pigeon John's "At the Summertime Pool Party" and Parov Stelar's "Coco" albums, along with selections from Tricky, Chimera, Inch Chua, Joy Askew and Davina & The Vagabonds. ~ Steve
BOPTIME: Saturday, 6 AM Eastern time, 3 AM Pacific time
Go To: http://www.wvud.org/?page_id=24
Click on a listening link below the WVUD logo:
Notes from ~@~ Valley Fire
Carlin Step, DJ Steve Porter & Eli Wilkie from Roland Kardeby ~ http://vimeo.com/21162532
The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) from R Smittenaar ~ http://vimeo.com/6518109
One Day, Matisyahu from 100% ~ http://vimeo.com/11520225
Unsung Hero ~ Still Anonymous from Rattakarn Srithavatchai "Garn" ~ http://vimeo.com/90853494
Freedom of expression and freedom of speech aren't really important unless they're heard...It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. And there's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. So I dedicated this Emmy to all the people who feel compelled to speak out and not afraid to speak to power and won't shut up and refuse to be silenced. ~ Tom Smothers
Cree Prophecy
Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.
Nobody for President ~ NONE of the ABOVE should be a choice on voter ballots
WILL AMERICANS CONTINUE TO ALLOW
ITS POLITICIANS TO GET AWAY WITH
MURDER AND WAR CRIMES?by Shenali D Waduge ~ Article Source
Ignorance rarely leads to happy endings. One cannot but wonder whether American politicians would have gotten away with what they have done had the American polity been more politically aware of what was going on around them both at home and abroad. Has it not been the ability of America’s politicians to sell lies the Americans bought that has led to the deaths of MILLIONS of people and the destructions of their nations?
How Media Fools Americans
96% of world media is in the hands of 6 corporate giants – should we be surprised that we are being brainwashed? Media takes advantage of the ignorance of the American public and preoccupies their time by diverting attention to more physical attributes of Presidential candidates, their spouses and the way they dress, the jokes they say or the appearances they make. When people are politically ignorant what happens – they become prey to manipulations by the “ruling class” and who are they? They are the transnational conglomerates who rule America’s political leaders, the news and entertainment media and special interest groups together who create what become history’s distortions unless we are aware of the truth.
One needs to wonder whether it serves the American Governmental apparatus well to have an ignorant populace for what would happen if 344million Americans did wake up to the ground realities of the atrocities its Government’s have been doing over decades? Would we be wrong to wonder if what happened to Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria could have been averted or stopped by pressures exerted by the American public not allowing their Governments to kill innocent people, bomb nations into oblivion and eventually drug its own soldiers leaving one soldier a day committing suicide because of the side-effects of the drugs they are taking?
It is not difficult to deduce that the American public have been conditioned and are being conditioned to think according to how their Government’s want them to think. Is it not because of conditioning that Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Gun lobby and similar big boys end up deciding who gets to sit on the hot seat of the White House?
Of the top 25 magazines in the US the only news magazine is listed at number 12 (Time – which is dictated by the Bilderbergs). Only 12.5m people actually read the top 25 magazines of which Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal is No.1. A National Civic Literacy Study conducted by Xavier University reveals that 1 in 3 native-born citizens fails the civics portion of the naturalization test compared to 97.5% pass rate among immigrants applying for citizenship. America is a nation of reality TV watchers and there are plans to induce the same catastrophe to Asian viewers now mesmerized by reality TV as well. It is good for Asian policy makers to realize this and immediately address this before Asians too end up ignoramus themselves!
How many Americans would accuse mainstream media of being a bunch of paid professional liars? They along with the new peace doves in the form of the human rights champions have no love, no decency, no shame and no fear – in fact they thrive of spewing disinformation, creating lies to deceive people and they hold laborious meetings to devise ways to deceive people to protect those who control the newsmedia.
Ignorance of Americans – Survey results
Pew Research which conducts surveys on the American public’s public affairs knowledge confirms what we perceive to be a primary reason for successive Governments to sell whatever story they like and militarily intervene and destroy entire nations and populations. A Pew IQ study has revealed that only 7% of the people surveyed could correctly answer all 13 questions – half of those surveyed did not know where Syria was on the world map, 43% did not know what the national flag of China was, 75% didn’t know the Euro symbol and thankfully 75% knew John Kerry was the new Secretary of State. How is this possible in a country where its mainstream news channels are providing 24×7 news coverage? How worse can things be when most Americans have concluded that the Boston Bomber – described as a Chechen is thought to be from Czechoslavakia!
More alerted American public could have stopped genocide
If the American people had known the lies their Governments tell would they have been able to question the logic of US killing 1,455,590 innocent Iraqi’s to eliminate just 1 man? Thousands of Iraq’s have been killed since US military intervention in Iraq on the grounds that they accused Saddam for killing “50,000” Iraqi’s without even proof? Did no American wonder why US could not have sent a professional team to strike out just Saddam Hussein and even his coterie instead of bombing an entire nation?
If the American people knew that America was murdering millions to steal Iraqi oil would they have allowed the occupation to take place given that none of these riches have benefitted the common American? Americans must now ask exactly who are profiting from these illegal occupations?
If the American people knew more about the UN laws would they have not questioned why US was invading Iraq when there was no evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Before American public officials go attributing comments such as these as Anti-American it is good for themselves to wonder exactly how they are contributing to taking their nation en route to a course that would only disintegrate their own people and possibly end up creating more enemies than friends. It is not out of any malice that facts are placed but to simply make people ask themselves whether they are going to continue to be misled by a handful of self-centred people who do not care for anyone but themselves and who are using the system to create anarchy throughout the world.
Questions Americans should ask
If the Americans knew the amounts going to these fictitious wars would they not question why US Armed Forces receive the small pay rise since 1973 while billions are going towards funding more wars!
Can Americans simply pass the blame on the Bush or Obama administration because when America declares War on Terror and America invades a nation every death makes Americans accountable because the American Government decides on the POWER the people have given them and if the Powers seated at Washington are evil and corrupt then all those under it are no different.
Do Americans think the world must think like them? Is that not being proud and arrogant? Do the other nations of the world not have cultures and civilizations that have proud histories that people do not wish to dilute them in the name of “democracy” or “liberal thinking”?
If Americans were not as ignorant as they are would they have not asked “since when did it become America’s business to interfere in the affairs of other nations”?
If Americans were not as ignorant would they have not asked why US turned a blind eye to the millions slaughtered in Rwanda when US was alerted of the plan before the outbreak of violence?
Is it not because Americans were ignorant that US officials fooled the people into thinking 9/11 perpetrators were in Iraq and not Saudi Arabia?
Is it not because Americans are ignorant that Wall Street Bankers ripped off $23,700,000,000 (2009/2010) from the American taxpayers and the People’s “representatives” cannot do anything about it?
For Americans, all their Government needs to do is use just one word “terrorist” and the people are ever ready to give killing orders to their Governments but how many even wondered why their Government is using banned chemicals like DU – depleted uranium which has resulted in abnormal children.
[Photographs of mangled babies elided]
Some US soldiers have even stored their sperms in California laboratories in case DU makes them sterile!
Do Americans even wonder that a criminal syndicate has taken control of the White House and do people wonder how proud they can be when their troops leave this message?
Do Americans know enough to question why US had no right and no legitimate reason to invade Iraq and that it was an ILLEGAL war without UN sanction and when US General James Mattis says “its fun to shoot some people” we know doom is on the way.
What if Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama were all part of that criminal syndicate but one person wasn’t and because he didn’t belong he had to go – well this happens when you do not tag the line “The high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American’s freedom and before I leave office, I must inform the citizens of this plight.” —President John Fitzgerald Kennedy – In a speech made to Columbia University on Nov. 12, 1963, ten days before his assassination! At the same time, he put a stop to the “borrowing” of Federal Reserve Notes from the Federal Reserve Bank and began issuing United States Notes (which was interest-free) on the credit of the United States. It was the issuing of the United States Notes that caused Jack Kennedy to be “assassinated.”
Upon taking the Oath of Office; Lynden B. Johnson stopped the issuing of the United States Notes and went back to borrowing Federal Reserve Bank Notes (which were loaned to the people of the United States at the going rate of interest of 17%). The U.S. Notes, that were issued under John F. Kennedy, were of the 1963 series which bore a “Red” seal on the face of the “Note.”
How many of the 344million Americans know that the Federal Reserve System is NOT a US Government owned agency? How many are aware that the member banks own all of the stock of the federal reserve banks and these heads are all members of the Council of Foreign Relations?
How many Americans know that Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law and amended the Constitution to make the federal income-tax known as the 16th amendment – once these 2 provisions became law what happens is that people are robbed of their earnings via the income-tax provision.
The day Americans start asking the correct questions either another “terrorist” attack would take place or better still the new laws in place will ensure Americans are too afraid to speak up – the fate of the whistleblowers shows enough reasons to fear the new system springing into being which will be no different under the Democrats or the Republicans.
The NSA leak and Snowden showed us that America and the world are being watched – their privacy is being violated. 30,000,000 US cars have black boxes. The nation preaching transparency and human rights have violated the rights of their own citizens.
Freedom gives people the right to BE wrong but Freedom does not give anyone the right to knowingly DO wrong.
When Americans are appearing to finally wake up and start asking the right questions that is why they are slapped with new laws and regulations to keep them in check and silenced. Surely 344million Americans can beat the tide and they must.
[Prompted by an article on abuse of politicians online and baby & women killers who continue to walk free.]
A Destructive Political Force has
reached center stage in AmericaIt makes a fight over everything. It is insatiable in its quest for wealth and power. It appeals to the worst in people, to hatred and fear. It divides groups of Americans against each other. It preys on the vulnerable and serves the privileged. And it lies in virtually all it says.
The once-respectable Republican Party has been hijacked in our times by a sick and broken spirit that damages everything it touches.
In this profound crisis, there is also an opportunity to see and to understand the workings of destructive forces that arise in civilized societies and that must be countered effectively if we —Americans, humankind —are to create a future we want.
The purpose of this site is to present a vision of how the human world works, and of what we are called to do to make that world more whole.
Read more: short version / long version ~ Main Page
Curtis Spangler & Wavy Gravy October 12, 1976 ~ Photograph: James Stark
American Dream, George Carlin ~ from Ishtar ~ https://vimeo.com/20452708Nobody should have that much power
The Heyókȟa symbolize and portray many aspects of the sacred, the Wakȟáŋ. Their satire presents important questions by fooling around. They ask difficult questions, and say things others are too afraid to say. By reading between the lines, the audience is able to think about things not usually thought about, or to look at things in a different way.
Principally, the Heyókȟa functions both as a mirror and a teacher, using extreme behaviors to mirror others, thereby forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, hatreds, and weaknesses. Heyókȟas also have the power to heal emotional pain; such power comes from the experience of shame--they sing of shameful events in their lives, beg for food, and live as clowns. They provoke laughter in distressing situations of despair and provoke fear and chaos when people feel complacent and overly secure, to keep them from taking themselves too seriously or believing they are more powerful than they are.
In addition, sacred clowns serve an important role in shaping tribal codes. Heyókȟa's don't seem to care about taboos, rules, regulations, social norms, or boundaries. Paradoxically, however, it is by violating these norms and taboos that they help to define the accepted boundaries, rules, and societal guidelines for ethical and moral behavior. This is because they are the only ones who can ask "Why?" about sensitive topics and employ satire to question the specialists and carriers of sacred knowledge or those in positions of power and authority. In doing so, they demonstrate concretely the theories of balance and imbalance. Their role is to penetrate deception, turn over rocks, and create a deeper awareness.
Oh, I hope that I see you again I never even caught your name As you looked through my window pane ~ So I'm writing this message today I'm thinking that you'll have a way Of hearing the notes in my tune ~ Where are you going? Where have you been? I can imagine other worlds you have seen ~ Beautiful faces and music so serene ~ So I do hope I see you again My universal citizen You went as quickly as you came ~ You know the power Your love is right You have good reason To stay out of sight ~~ But break our illusions and help us Be the light ~ The Promise by Mike Pinder
Without love in the dream, it will never come true. ~ Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. ~ John Lennon
The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang. But the man did not hear. So the man yelled "God, speak to me" and the thunder rolled across the sky. But the man did not listen. The man looked around and said, "God let me see you" and a star shined brightly. But the man did not notice. And the man shouted, "God show me a miracle" and a life was born. But the man did not know. So the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me know you are there" Whereupon God reached down and touched the man. But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.
Don't miss out on a blessing because
it isn't packaged the way you expect!
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