Gilliard Takes Down Giuliani

Steve is rockin' at the convention. No prisoners. As usual.

Moving Update

Karen and I continued to clean the old apartment until after 2:00 this morning, getting to bed at the new place at 3:00. I woke to a rude alarm at 7:00 and am sitting like a zombie in front of my work computer. There's a little more cleaning to do, and our walk-through is at 5:00 tonight, so I'm leaving work early to get all that started. Tonight we should be free of the time-constrained part of moving, and will start the agonizing task of emptying boxes....

I enjoyed falling asleep in the new place, where I couldn't figure out the noises the house produces. Ghosts? Water pipes? At one point someone's sprinklers kicked on, then off 20 minutes later, followed by a rhythmic sound I could not decipher -- it reminded me of a Zen monk who walks around town beating his drum. But it wasn't him, not at four in the morning. Anyway, my four hours' sleep were enjoyable and grounding, and I'm looking forward to a long weekend of getting settled. I hope to be posting with more regularity by Thursday.

Pentagon/Israel Spy Case...

...according to Juan Cole...

...and Joshua Micah Marshall...

...and then we ask ourselves, What's really going on?

Moving Day

It may be several days before regular posting resumes. We'll see.

Our Strange and Seductive Backyard

Tibetans and extraterrestrials live here.


Great Sand Dunes National Monument, east of Alamosa, north of Mt. Blanca, south of Crestone, southern Colorado.

Since moving to the Colorado Front Range almost 15 years ago, it's clear that the place has fully adopted me. These photos are from the San Luis Valley, looking east at the Great Sand Dunes with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the background.

Karen's father and stepmother have drafted us into the land-buying game down there, at least on a small scale. We've purchased and sold a number of plots south of Blanca Peak, which is a corner of the ancient Anasazi domain. When we visit the area we stay on the side of Blanca, fully aware that she is rumored to be a UFO base and that spaceships are frequently reported zooming in and out of the her glacial lake.

BLANCA PEAK - Mt. Blanca [Massif] is located in the mysterious San Luis Valley of Colorado, which has been a "hot spot" for UFO sightings and animal mutilations. Also Southwestern tribes have legends involving caverns below the Mt. Blanca, San Luis Lakes, and Great Sand Dunes National Monument region, through which their ancestors migrated during a time of surface natural disasters before emerging onto the surface once again. There have been some rumors of an attempted government attack upon an underground alien [Grey] base beneath Mt. Blanca, using a deadly nerve agent, which backfired or failed. Blanca peak is located between Alamosa and Walsenberg.

There's something going on down there; it's awesome and frightening, and it's difficult to stay away once it's put its claws into you. Tibetan monks established a retreat center and stupa at Crestone, which is less than an hour north of where these pictures were shot. They decided that the east side of the Sangre de Cristos are downright Himalayan. Maybe not as high, but just as ominous.

New Kids On the Block

Robert J. Lifton exposes a long history of veterans questioning their wars:

ON THE FRINGE of the recent Democratic National Convention in Boston, there was a miniconvention of a group called Veterans for Peace. Most of the 400-plus participants were Vietnam veterans, though there were smaller contingents of veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the first Gulf War. But the most dramatic presence was that of a group of new kids on the block, veterans of the war in Iraq. These new veterans could come to have a powerful influence on our country. Iraq veterans undergo the same psychological struggles of all survivors over images of deaths , how much to feel and not to feel, pain and guilt from the deaths of buddies and their own behavior. Above all, war survivors hunger for meaning -- for some kind of moral judgment about their encounters with death.

In this quest for understanding, it turns out that Iraq veterans have much in common with their older compatriots who fought in Vietnam. Both groups were involved in a confusing counterinsurgency war conducted in an alien, hostile environment against a nonwhite enemy as elusive as he was dangerous. The result in both cases was an atrocity-producing situation -- one structured militarily and psychologically so that ordinary soldiers with no special history of violence or antisocial behavior were suddenly capable of killing or torturing civilians who were loosely designated as "the enemy."

[snip]

But there is already a personal and primal connection between veterans of Vietnam and Iraq: They are literally fathers and sons or daughters. Generational transmission of war experience has always had enormous psychological importance. Men who fought in Vietnam told me decades ago of having heard, on their fathers' knees, tales of courage and heroism in fighting the "good war." Those World War II fathers were often perplexed and angered by their sons' disillusionment with and bitter opposition to their own war. But Vietnam veteran fathers may have no such difficulty with the disillusionment of their children.

Begin rant:

It's sad that teenagers must kill, destroy, die and be brutally injured before finding out that they were lied to all along. It's not just Iraq or Vietnam. It's all wars, whether "defensive" or "offensive" -- inevitably, they are fought for the benefit of the ultra-wealthy, who seek more wealth through the blood of the poor.

End rant.

Jesus in India

Hmm....

...[T]here is one tomb, in Srinagar, capital of Kashmir, the contested northern province of India, which has never become such a centre – although there are millions of people around the world for whom its purported occupant is the holiest of all holy men.

The tomb, known as the ‘Roza Bal’ (or ‘Rauza Bal’), lies in the Kan Yar district of this bustling city. Standing in front of a Muslim cemetery, it is an unassuming building, with whitewashed walls and simple but elegant ancient wooden fittings and frames. Inside, until recently, stood an elaborately carved wooden sepulchre; it has been replaced with four glass walls, within which lies a wooden sarcophagus. The occupant of the tomb, though, actually resides below in an inaccessible crypt. A sign outside states that the tomb contains the body of one Yuz Asaf. There’s nothing – either outside or inside – to suggest that anyone of particular importance is interred here. Nothing, that is, until you notice a somewhat puzzling carved imprint of two feet, bearing significant marks, on the floor near the sarcophagus. The marks would seem to coincide with the puncture wounds of someone who has suffered crucifixion (below).

So could this obscure tomb, a long, long way from the Holy Land, really be the tomb of Jesus Christ?

Other, further reading: Here and here.

Personally, this wouldn't surprise me at all.

A Large Degree of Self Similarity

Uno

Dos

Tres

More here.

The basic concept of fractals is that they contain a large degree of self similarity. This means that they usually contain little copies of themselves buried deep within the original. And they also have infinite detail.

Kind of like humans.

Massacre Interrupted

Link:

Sistani's dramatic return posed a potentially significant new complication in the confrontation between security forces and Sadr's militia. Although Sistani has quietly disagreed with Sadr's militant tactics, it is not clear what he wants to accomplish through his march.

Iraqi political leaders expressed concern that the march could be co-opted by Sadr's supporters and that an injection of thousands of noncombatants into the war-torn city could interfere with ongoing military operations and allow the militiamen to escape. But, the political leaders said, it also could reduce tensions by pressuring Sadr to relinquish control of the shrine to more senior Shiite leaders, perhaps leading some fighters to lay down their arms.

You can almost feel the disappointment in this WaPo piece....

The 9/11 Cell Phone Calls

Michel Chossudovsky exposes More Holes in the Official Story:

According to industry experts, the crucial link in wireless cell phone transmission from an aircraft is altitude. Beyond a certain altitude which is usually reached within a few minutes after takeoff, cell phone calls are no longer possible.

In other words, given the wireless technology available on September 11 2001, these cell calls could not have been placed from high altitude.

The only way passengers could have got through to family and friends using their cell phones, is if the planes were flying below 8000 feet. Yet even at low altitude, below 8000 feet, cell phone communication is of poor quality.

The crucial question: at what altitude were the planes traveling, when the calls were placed?

[snip]

United Airlines Flight 175 departed for Los Angeles at 8:00:

"It pushed back from its gate at 7:58 and departed Logan Airport at 8:14."

The Report confirms that by 8:33, "it had reached its assigned cruising altitude of 31,000 feet." According to the Report, it maintained this cruising altitude until 8.51, when it "deviated from its assigned altitude"

[snip]

American Airlines Flight 77 was scheduled to depart from Washington Dulles for Los Angeles at 8:10... "At 8:46, the flight reached its assigned cruising altitude of 35,000 feet."

[snip]

At least ten cell calls are reported to have taken place on flight 93.

The Report confirms that passengers started placing calls with cell and air phones shortly after 9.32am, four minutes after the Report's confirmation of the plane's attitude of 35,000 feet. In other words, the calls started some 9 minutes before the Cleveland Center lost UAL 93’s transponder signal (9.41) and approximately 30 minutes before the crash in Pennsylvania (10.03)

[snip]

A large part of the description, regarding the 19 hijackers relies on cell phone conversations with family and friends.

While a few of these calls (placed at low altitude) could have got through, the wireless technology was not available. On this issue, expert opinion within the wireless telecom industry is unequivocal.

In other words, at least part of the Commission's script in Chapter 1 on the cell phone conversations, is fabricated.

According to the American Airline / Qualcomm announcement, the technology for cell phone transmission at high altitude will only be available aboard commercial aircraft in 2006. This is an inescapable fact.

In the eyes of public opinion, the cell phone conversations on the Arab hijackers is needed to sustain the illusion that America is under attack.

The "war on terrorism" underlying the National Security doctrine relies on real time "evidence" concerning the Arab hijackers. The latter personify, so to speak, this illusive "outside enemy" (Al Qaeda), which is threatening the homeland.

Embodied into the Commission's "script" of 911, the narrative of what happened on the plane with the Arab hijackers is therefore crucial. It is an integral part of the Administration's disinformation and propaganda program. It constitutes a justification for the anti-terror legislation under the Patriot acts and the waging of America's pre-emptive wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

I know that, in the world of Realpolitik, it's a non-starter to engage in debunking governmental whitewash. No one wants to be labeled "conspiracist," and no one wants to be excluded from "serious" discussions that are, in the end, conducted at the fringes of truth. But when I read something like this -- and there are dozens of holes this large in the Official Story -- my passion for participating in the political charade is weakened. Our "democracy" begins to resemble a stage show, a consumer spectacle that keeps wonks entertained while the world implodes and a select few live in golden castles.

Another thing that happens when I read something like this -- and it's worth clicking on the link to read the whole thing -- is that I'm reminded that the answer lies within. Change begins within the individual, at an energetic level, down in the emotions. Ripples move from one person to another, beneath the radar of surface control. This is the mechanism that "they" would suppress through pharmaceuticals and new technologies of collective management. It's a race to see which process reaches a critical mass first.

Since the alternative is unspeakable, my money is on universal transformation in the direction of survival, creativity and higher consciousness.

Chris Allbritton Inside the Imam Ali Shrine

From Back to Iraq 3.0:

NAJAF, Iraq — There’s a storm brewing over the Imam Ali Shrine in the old city here, and it’s going to get ugly.

We made it into the shrine today after an early morning dash to the city of Najaf from Baghdad. I had to hunker down in the back while traveling through Mahmoudiya and Latifiya, because those are the two hot spots where most journos seem to get themselves kidnapped. We made it through without incident, however, mainly because we were going about 180 km/hour and we were there before any of the kidnappers were awake. It was 6:30 a.m. when we blasted through the twin burgs.

[snip]

...As the exchange died down, incredibly, some guy came up and sold us all ice cream. I asked him what he was doing.

“I’m supporting the Mahdi Army,” he grinned. “They like ice cream and I have a lot of customers.”

It was good ice cream, I’ll admit. So while bullets whizzed around and over us, we crouched by the side of a wall that radiated heat from the mid-morning sun and snacked on a rainbow swirl. Unreal.

Actual war reporting from an American correspondent. Go figure. The entire post is a great read.

DOJ Publishes Al Qaeda Training Manuel

We were unaware that the Department of Justice was in the business of training terrorists. We thought that the CIA had this responsibility. We learn something new every day.

[Courtesy Orlin Grabbe]

Death of a Dark Mother

"On Death and Dying" Author Dies at 78

PHOENIX - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist who revolutionized the way the world looks at terminally ill patients with her book "On Death and Dying" and later as a pioneer for hospice care, has died. She was 78.

Published in 1969, "On Death and Dying" focused on the needs of the dying and offered her theory that they go through five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

"Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life," she once wrote. In another passage, Kubler-Ross wrote: "Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you have lived."

She died Tuesday of natural causes at her Scottsdale home, family members said.

In terms of Jungian archetypes, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was a rare positive expression of what I call the Dark Mother. This archetype is depicted in astrology as Scorpio and Pluto. In the Tarot she is Death, the Prince of Cups, and has a presence is several other cards. In mythology she is Queen of the Underworld, the Sex Goddess, the mysterious, exotic, forbidden female whose power is a threat to the male notion of dominance. She is death/rebirth, depth transformation, sexuality (including wounds associated with incest and other abuse), profound intuition, and watery emotion. Within the current 5000-year Wounded Patriarchy, she is the most wounded archetype: the witch burning at the stake, and subjugated woman, the disempowered prostitute.

Kubler-Ross, in seeking to confront the issue of death within a Western culture that fears and avoids the subject, provided a platform for making the Dark Mother available to a depth-deprived society. Whatever shock or discomfort may have met her early work, it was a needed beginning that has since transformed the way we talk about death. There has not been a complete discussion of death in the context of its overall archetypal milieu, but that doesn't matter. The milieu is engaged whether it is named or not, and we are free to make further connections as time goes on.

QT's Diary

New addition to our blogroll.

If I had to bet, I'd say that someone with a lot of time on his or her hands is gettin' creative with Quentin's persona.

It sort of sounds like QT, though. So, maybe.

Fame Has Descended

Somehow, Skippy has discovered our blog and posted it to his own site, immediately increasing our traffic threefold.

Skippy likes our alphabetical prowess.

Thank you, Skippy....

Getting a Little Jittery...

... because I miss Billmon and wonder when the hell he's coming back from his boat trip.

Billmon withdrawel symptoms include: suicidal thoughts, general malaise, dreaming in color, lonely strolls down the beer aisle at Liquor Mart, hair cowlicks, strange skin bumps, LSD flashbacks and the uncanny sensation of "being lived." I don't know how much longer I can take it.

Props Where Deserved

In the interest of full disclosure, most of the esoteric, metaphysical posts I've been putting up lately were found at J. Orlin Grabbe's site.

Grabbe strikes me as a Libertarian with a strong interest in economics, who must have some Scorpio going on with all the spy, conspiracy and secret spiritual science stuff he posts. Check out his When Osama Bin Ladin Was Tim Osman for a clue that none of my favorite Lefty blogs talk about.

Oh, and whatever you do, don't scroll to the bottom of his home page....

Chess and Life

In the modern world, we use games mostly as a means of entertainment, of escape from the realities of life. But to ancient man, games were a way of reflecting upon life, and more often than not, a way of divining the future, or interpreting the movements of the stars in the heavens. Many of them, like the “Game of 58 Holes” played in ancient Babylon, involved moving pegs along a pegboard, or rocks upon a path, in simulation of heavenly bodies moving through the passage of time. The “Royal Game of Ur”, a precursor to the modern game of backgammon, was played in Mesopotamia 2600 years before Christ, using a board of 20 squares with a set of pawns and three triangular-shaped dice for each of the two players. (One set of pawns was white, the other black.) One the back of the tablet was a table of zodiac signs, each with an associated fortune, and the play of the game determined which of the fortunes applied to each of the players. As one author (1) put it, “The scribe has described the fate of each pawn in a poetical way, the wins and losses corresponding to the same efforts required to win enough food, drink, and love.”

A similar game called Senet was played in ancient Egypt, on a 30-square board representing the 30 days of the Egyptian calendar month. The board specifically reflected the first month of the Egyptian year, that of Thoth, the god of writing, astronomy, and mathematics, to whom the invention of the board was ascribed. The last fifteen squares of the board contained 360 stations, the number of days in the Egyptian year. In addition to being a divinatory aid for foretelling the future, the Senet board served as a recreation of the soul’s journey to the Egyptian underworld after death. Senet boards have been found painted onto tombstones and carved onto coffins. H. Peter Aleff reported on recoveredscience.com that, “Many tomb paintings and vignettes in mortuary papyri from [The New Kingdom] depict the deceased playing Senet against an unseen opponent for the ultimate sake of his admission to eternity.”

This notion of eternity may be connected to the fact that the board was also used to measure time via the passage of heavenly bodies. Aleff notes that the Egyptian hieroglyph for the word “men” - meaning “to endure” - is a Senet board with the game pieces aligned at the top. The word “men” was also used by the Egyptians to denote the sky, “that which endures.” Aleff writes: “... the use of the Senet picture to express the concept of duration confirms that this game was associated with the passage of time to begin with.” He also notes that the word “Senet” in Egyptian means “to pass”, describing the actions of the pieces, and he suggests that, “This ‘passing’ name indicates again that the Senet board and pieces had evolved as a means to understand the passing of time.”

The majority of these early games were merely race games, the object of which was to be the first player to complete the track. Chess, however, was a different kind of game, simulating, instead, a battle, involving direct interaction between competing pieces, and therefore it required strategy. However, the objective of divination remained.

Full story here.

Liberating Iraq

William Blum, author of an excellent critique of the CIA called Killing Hope, offers a sobering report on the current chapter of the Perpetual War:

This is what the Brave New World of Iraqi Sovereignty looks like:

• US military bases remain, with more being built.
• Some 160,000 troops of the United States and its allies remain, the Americans for at least five years.
• US military commanders will continue to exercise final authority over not only these troops, but also all Iraqi police, security and army units.
• Immunity from Iraqi criminal charges for US military and contractor personnel continues.
• A giant American embassy is being built, to hold a thousand employees.
• Before his departure, the US administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer, issued a raft of edicts. The new interim government has very limited power to change these laws and regulations, one of which is an elections provision that gives a commission the power to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support.
• Bremer also appointed at least two dozen selected Iraqis to key government jobs with multi-year terms.
• The prime-minister, Ayad Allawi, who was chosen by Bremer, is a former (?) CIA asset. (Allawi has a vicious, ruthless background, including working with Saddam Hussein, and reportedly has personally engaged in horrible, sadistic acts as prime minister.)
• The United States retains custody of Saddam Hussein.
• The United States continues to bomb the people of Iraq and smash down their doors wherever and whenever it wishes.

Click on story-link (above) for his analysis, which tells it like it is.

The Epistemology and Technologies of Shamanic States of Consciousness

Big paper on the subject. I'll post a few paragraphs here:

Although the term "shaman" is of uncertain derivation, it is often traced to the language of the Tungus reindeer herders of Siberia where the word šaman translates into "one who is excited, moved, or raised" (Casanowicz, 1924; Lewis, 1990, pp. 10-12). An alternative translation for the Tungus word is "inner heat," and an alternative etymology is the Sanskrit word saman or "song" (Hoppal, 1987). Each of these terms applies to the activities of shamans, past and present, who enter what is often described as "an ecstatic state" in order to engage in spiritual practices that benefit their community (pp. 91-92). The adaptive character of shamanism is confirmed by its ubiquitous appearance around the world, not only in hunter-gatherer and fishing societies, but in centralized societies as well.

Karen and I watched a PBS show on the reindeer herders of Siberia. They make potent magic mushroom brews and have bawdy celebrations with the stuff. When participants go outside to pee, the reindeer lap it up and have a deer-version of a mushroom trip. They showed the reindeer prancing and dancing after imbibing.

Much of the behavior of other animals is instinctive, and their experience modifies these complex, inborn patterns of behavior. However, drives and biological propensities, not innate behavior patterns, characterize humans. Non-human animals, especially gorillas and chimpanzees, probably compare environmental stimuli to the memory images from past interactions. Humans fall on this continuum as well, and the satisfaction of their vital needs was once highly dependent on their ability to use these images to produce the tools and procedures appropriate for drive satisfaction. Eventually, these procedures included a variety of social interactions including speech and ritual behavior (Guryev, 1990, p. 124; V. Turner, 1968).

Ritual afforded an opportunity to express the community's conceptions of reality into a social setting. Ritual, a step-by-step social performance, is the key to the structure of a group's mythology, or worldview. In shamanic societies especially, ritual is a stylized technology, one whose symbols and metaphors may well trigger healing, relieve suffering, and provide a link between the ordinary world and those realms purportedly traversed by the shaman (Krippner, 1993; E. Turner, 1992, p. 14; V. Turner, 1968).

[snip]

A variety of procedures, agents, and other technologies are available to evoke limbic system slow wave discharges that synchronize the frontal cortex (Mandell, 1980). In addition, shamans can be characterized as "fantasy-prone" (Wilson & Barber, 1983), endowed with capacities, genetic to some degree, that facilitate their use of imaginative processes. Fantasy-proneness exists on a continuum; most humans engage in fantasy,imagination, and play (especially "pretending" and "role-playing")periodically, but shamans draw upon this trait for their specialization.

Many of the early shamans may not have been dependent on transient consciousness alteration but manifested a heightened perceptual style that was part of their everyday state of consciousness. Berman (2000) suggests that "heightened awareness" may be a more accurate description of shamanic consciousness than "altered state" because their intense experience of the natural world is described by them in such terms as "things often seem to blaze" (p. 30). Paradoxically, shamans are characterized both by an acute perception of their environment and by imaginative fantasy. These traits (the ability to construct categories, the potential for pretending and role-playing, and the capacity to experience the natural world vividly) gave shamans an edge over peers who had simply embraced life as it presented itself, without the filters of myth or ritual (Berman, 2000, p. 81).

All of these traits may be related to the evolution of the human brain, namely the development of specialized subsystems that are activated during shifts in consciousness. The hallmark of cortical evolution is not the ever-increasing sophistication of specialized cortical circuitry but an increasing representational flexibility that allows environmental factors to shape the human brain's structure and function (Gazzaniga, 1994; Quartz & Sejnowski, 1997). Pinker (1997) suggests that the "mind" is made up of many modules, each honed by aeons of evolution, and shamans may have learned to integrate these modules (Winkelman, 2000, p. 7). If so, shamanic technologies represent the initial institutionalized practices for this integration, both through shifts in consciousness and community bonding rituals (Winkelman, 1997). These practices became codified in the form of myth, ritual, and ceremony, providing for social solidarity and specialization.

I can't help wondering what a world we'd have if, instead of prohibiting and criminalizing so-called altered states, we "codified" them "in the form of myth, ritual, and ceremony, providing for social solidarity and specialization." Sigh.

What was Bush doing with his youth? He was drinking.

Juan Cole is on fire today:

The debate that a handful of Texas multi-millionnaires close to the Bush family have cleverly manufactured over John Kerry's war record is absurd in every way. The charges that they have put some vets up to making against Kerry are false and can be demonstrated by the historical record to be false. Most of those making the charges have even flip-flopped, contradicting themselves. Or they weren't eyewitnesses and are just lying.

But to address the substance of this Big Lie is to risk falling into its logic. The true absurdity of the entire situation is easily appreciated when we consider that George W. Bush never showed any bravery at all at any point in his life. He has never lived in a war zone. If some of John Kerry's wounds were superficial, Bush received no wounds. (And, a piece of shrapnel in the forearm that caused only a minor wound would have killed had it hit an eye and gone into the brain; the shrapnel being in your body demonstrates you were in mortal danger and didn't absent yourself from it. That is the logic of the medal). Kerry saved a man's life while under fire. Bush did no such thing.

What was Bush doing with his youth? He was drinking. He was drinking like a fish, every night, into the wee hours. For decades. He gave no service to anyone, risked nothing, and did not even slack off efficiently. At what point he became addicted to cocaine, in addition to demon rum, is unclear.

The history of alcoholism and cocaine use is a key issue because it not only speaks to Bush's character as an addictive personality, but tells us something about his erratic and alarming actions as president. His explosive temper probably provoked the disastrous siege of Fallujah last spring, killing 600 Iraqis, most of them women and children, in revenge for the deaths of 4 civilian mercenaries, one of them a South African. (Newsweek reported that Bush commanded his cabinet, "Let heads roll!") That temper is only one problem. Bush has a sadistic streak. He clearly enjoyed, as governor, watching executions. His delight in killing people became a campaign issue in 2000 when he seemed, in one debate, to enjoy the prospect of executing wrong-doers a little too much. He has clearly gone on enjoying killing
people on a large scale in Iraq. Cocaine use permanently affects the ability of the person to feel deep emotions like empathy. Two decades of pickling his nervous system in various highly toxic substances have left Bush damaged goods. That he managed to get on the wagon (though with that pretzel incident, you wonder how firmly) is laudable. But he suffers the severe effects of the aftermath, and we are all suffering along with him now, since he is the most powerful man in the world.

We all know by now that Bush did not even do his full service with the Texas Air National Guard, absenting himself to work on the Alabama senate campaign of Winton "Red" Blount. Whether he was actually AWOL during this stint is unclear. But it is clear that not only did Bush slack off on his National Guard service, but he also slacked off from his campaign work.

Cole includes the transcript of an NPR interview with Bount from earlier this year. That Cole, who is known as an understated and dispassionate disseminator of Middle East news and insight, sometimes throws down the gauntlet. This is one of those times, and I'm noticing that this post is stirring comment all over Bloglandia.

Secret Life of Plants and Trees

This webpage is based on a book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.

Many little kids -- especially those who carry strong doses of the Mystic (Neptune/Pisces), Dark Mother (Pluto/Scorpio) and Idealist (Uranus/Aquarius) archetypes -- pass through a stage wherein they talk to trees, plants and spirits of all sorts. Many will tell you that the trees, plants and spirits talk back, with amazing things to say. At some point, culture oppresses this behavior to the point where it is sublimated in most children. A few never lose the gift.

Study of Music Promote Intellectual Development

The study, led by Dr. E. Glenn Schellenberg, examined the effect of extra-curricular activities on the intellectual and social development of six-year-old children. A group of 144 children were recruited through an ad in a local newspaper and assigned randomly to one of four activities: keyboard lessons, voice lessons, drama lessons, or no lessons. Two types of music lessons were offered in order to be able to generalize the results, while the groups receiving drama lessons or no lessons were considered control groups in order to test the effect of music lessons over other art lessons requiring similar skill sets and nothing at all. The activities were provided for one year.

The participating children were given IQ tests before and after the lessons. The results of this study revealed that increases in IQ from pre- to post-test were larger in the music groups than in the two others. Generally these increases occurred across IQ subtests, index scores, and academic achievement. Children in the drama group also exhibited improvements pre- to post-test, but in the area of adaptive social behavior, an area that did not change among children who received music lessons.

This study is published in the August issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society. View a PDF (78k) of the full article.

So... those grueling piano lessons I was forced to endure when I was 6 and 7 may have paid off afterall....

Third Eye and the Pineal Gland

The symbol of the All-Seeing-EYE has always been part of Earth's creation mythologies and mysteries.

In Ancient Egypt is was symbolized by the Eye of Horus.

The symbol was passed down through the ancient mystery teachings and and can be found on the American dollar bill.

Why the symbol of the EYE?

The eye is the observer of reality - or the illusion of reality.

In the physical body your eyes look outward - though it views objects upside down. It next sends the message of what it observes to the brain, which interprets the image and makes it appear right side-up to us.

But the human body has another physical eye whose function has long been recognized by humanity.

It is called the 'Third Eye' which in reality is the Pineal Gland. It is the Spiritual Third Eye, our Inner Vision, and it is considered the Seat of the Soul. It is located in the geometric center of the cranium.

The Pineal Gland is about the size of a pea, and is in the center of the brain in a tiny cave behind and above the pituitary gland which lies a little behind the root of the nose. It is located directly behind the eyes, attached to the third ventricle.

The true function of this mysterious gland, has long been contemplated by philosophers and Spiritual Adepts. Ancient Greeks believed the pineal gland to be our connection to the Realms of Thought. Descartes called it the Seat of the Soul.

This gland is activated by Light, and it controls the various biorhythms of the body. It works in harmony with the hypothalamus gland which directs the body's thirst, hunger, sexual desire and the biological clock that determines our aging process.

When the pineal gland awakens one feels a pressure at the base of the brain. This pressure will often be experienced when connecting to higher frequency. A head injury can also activate the Third Eye - Pineal Gland.

While the physiological function of the pineal gland has been unknown until recent times, mystical traditions and esoteric schools have long known this area in the middle of the brain to be the connecting link between the physical and spiritual worlds.

Considered the most powerful and highest source of ethereal energy available to humans, the pineal gland has always been important in initiating supernatural powers. Development of psychic talents has been closely associated with this organ of higher vision.

[snip]

Again, well worth a full read.

=======================

EDIT: Sorry, Blogger is messing with font colors and sizes this morning....

Gnosticism, The Matrix and Philip K. Dick

A perennial source of fascination for Karen and me:

Yet, the question remains why Gnosticism should prove of special interest to increasing numbers today. Are there particular characteristics of today’s society that resonate with the Gnostic worldview? One answer is provided if we consider the popularity of “The Matrix” movies and the influential ideas of science fiction author Philip K. Dick.

Philip K. Dick deserves a post of his own. Soon.

Central to both the Matrix and to Dick is the creeping perception that things are not as they seem: our perception of reality, both individual and collective, is an artificial construct masking the unnerving truth. In ripping away the façade of normality, we come face to face with our true dilemma – we live in a maze of illusions and self-delusions from which we must extricate ourselves. This is, of course, a fundamentally Gnostic worldview.

I'm noticing that my recent story-beginnings veer off in this direction. Can't keep from falling through the cracks of our illusory reality. Dick could pull it off, of course.

The ancient Gnostics were aware that material existence is, at its root, a beguiling and temporary illusion. (Hindus called this “Maya.”) Modern physics has confirmed this at the sub-molecular level, where one can see that apparently solid objects are, in fact, composed of moving bits of energy that are neither wholly particle nor wave. The closer one looks, the less there is to see. The vast emptiness of outer space is mirrored by the vast emptiness within matter itself.

This is where modern science and ancient tradition converge into New Science. It's why being alive during the "End Times" is so exciting, if not frightening.

Esoteric traditions around the world teach that consciousness can exist independent of the body, and that the ability to deliver our consciousness from its addiction to sensory input and compulsive thought patterns can lead to an experience of divine consciousness (gnosis). The message of the Christ of the Gnostics was not that he considered himself the unique and only Son of God, but that each person has the potential to expand their consciousness across the vast emptiness to the level of godhood or Self-realisation.

If the illusoriness of daily life was self-evident in the relatively simple world of two millennia ago, it is becoming even more so, for those with the eyes to see, in the present world of cybernetic virtual realities, Hollywood dream-worlds, instant messaging, corporate branding campaigns, and information warfare. The ancient Gnostics were resigned to the fact that the majority of humans were fatally caught in the illusion, and for this they were called elitists. Similarly, modern Gnostics perceive that most people around them are inextricably locked into a delusory existence in which their potential consciousness is siphoned off in exchange for corporate profit and material survival. This, too, is a minority perception, but it is steadily growing.

The Gnostic rush many of us felt upon first seeing the Wachowski Brothers’ “The Matrix” was the heady sensation that somehow a deprogramming meme had made it through the corporate maze of AOL-Time-Warner, and that the dream factory itself had been tricked into promulgating a flash of gnosis. Millions responded and suddenly there was much more money on the table. All too predictably, the second and third Matrix films smothered the first film’s spark of insight under tons of ever more dazzling special effects, violence, and pretentious symbolism. The still small voice of the wake-up call embedded in film one was drowned out by the din of its own success. The series’ degeneration was an uncanny recapitulation of the suppression of ancient Gnosticism by the early Church. In the end, the Matrix – like the Church before it – emerged triumphant.

I disagree. Love all three Matrix films. But I know I'm not part of concensus opinion here. Go figure.

Of course, it is a bit of a leap from perceiving daily life as delusory to embracing an ancient cosmology that specifies a false god, a True God, a malevolent pantheon of Archons, and a hieros gamos (divine marriage) of Christ and Sophia. Unless one is in the market for a ready-made dramatic cast of spiritual entities to believe in, the Gnostic myths best serve as metaphors for one’s dilemma – and, in fact, that may have been the role they played for the early Gnostics, as well.

There are two ways to view the Gnostic myths as potent metaphors: one inner and one outer. The inner way is to see the Gnostic cosmology as a visionary description of the hurdles one must leap in meditation. In trying to ascend to a contemplative state of pure consciousness, one must move beyond the incessant activity of the mind (the Demiurge), and past one’s fears and compulsions (the Archons), before one can arrive at a consciousness beyond time and space (the Pleroma). The successful achievement of this gnosis while still “in the body” prepares one for the similar passage that one’s consciousness must take after death.

An outer reading of the Gnostic cosmology, on the other hand, might consider the Demiurge to be anyone’s flawed and limited image of God, which must be seen through and surpassed on the way to true spiritual insight. The Archons would be the many social laws, institutions, and corporate entities that hamstring one’s existence. On this level, a kind of external gnosis would be one’s realisation of the ultimate inability of these earthly captors to imprison our higher self. In this reading, Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection serve as metaphors for our own daily immolation and extrication. In this instance, a Gnostic motto might be: “Don’t let the bastards get you down!”

The whole article is well worth the read.

Pigs of War

John Pilger version of War Pigs:

Most of the US's recent wars were launched by Democratic presidents. Why expect better of Kerry? The debate between US liberals and conservatives is a fake; Bush may be the lesser evil.

On 6 May last, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution which, in effect, authorised a "pre-emptive" attack on Iran. The vote was 376-3. Undeterred by the accelerating disaster in Iraq, Republicans and Democrats, wrote one commentator, "once again joined hands to assert the responsibilities of American power".

The joining of hands across America's illusory political divide has a long history. The native Americans were slaughtered, the Philippines laid to waste and Cuba and much of Latin America brought to heel with "bipartisan" backing. Wading through the blood, a new breed of popular historian, the journalist in the pay of rich newspaper owners, spun the heroic myths of a supersect called Americanism, which advertising and public relations in the 20th century formalised as an ideology, embracing both conservatism and liberalism.

In the modern era, most of America's wars have been launched by liberal Democratic presidents - Harry Truman in Korea, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson in Vietnam, Jimmy Carter in Afghanistan. The fictitious "missile gap" was invented by Kennedy's liberal New Frontiersmen as a rationale for keeping the cold war going. In 1964, a Democrat-dominated Congress gave President Johnson authority to attack Vietnam, a defenceless peasant nation offering no threat to the United States. Like the non-existent WMDs in Iraq, the justification was a non- existent "incident" in which, it was said, two North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked an American warship. More than three million deaths and the ruin of a once bountiful land followed.

[snip]

Black Sabbath version of War Pigs:

Generals gathered in their masses
just like witches at black masses
evil minds that plot destruction
sorcerers of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning
as the war machine keeps turning
death and hatred to mankind
poisoning their brain-washed minds
Oh Lord Yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away
they only started the war
why should they go out to fight
they leave that role to the poor

Time will tell on their powered minds
making war just for fun
treating people just like pawns in chess
wait till their judgement day comes

Now in darkeness the world stops turning
as the war machine keeps burning
no more war pigs of the power
and as God has struck the hour
Day of judgement God is calling
on their knees the war pigs crawling
begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
All right now!

Short Blogging Day

Lots of box hunting and packing, and I have a reading scheduled this afternoon. More of the same until after the move, when I find out what sort of Internet access we'll have. I'll try posting something later today.

Oy....

Global warming to devastate Europe first�

Democrats' pro-war nominee difficult to explain

By R.W. Bradford
Special to The Times

The membership of the Democratic Party is overwhelmingly opposed to the Iraq war. So why has the party nominated a man who supports the war even more enthusiastically than George Bush does?

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on July 16, well after he had secured the nomination, John Kerry said he hoped that by "the end of my first term," the U.S. will have "reduced the number [of troops in Iraq] significantly." (Earlier this week, he said he might aim for some reductions within the first six months of taking office.) In the meantime, he intends to get more help from other governments, and, the Journal reported, "consult with military commanders to determine how many more troops might be needed to make Iraq more secure."

For the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, he said in the interview, three conditions must be met: Iraq must be "stable"; "the outlook for the stability to hold" must be good; and we must be assured that Iraq's armed forces can provide "security sufficient for the government to stand on its own."

Until these conditions are met, he said, "I will provide for the world's need not to have a failed state in Iraq." He then accused Bush of being less resolute about continuing the effort in Iraq and, as a "political move," possibly withdrawing troops before the election.

The conditions that Kerry insists upon before ending the Iraq conflict are far more stringent than any set by Bush. And until withdrawal, he is likely to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. In short, Kerry is even more committed to the war than Bush.

To underscore his support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Kerry told reporters on Aug. 9 that he would "have voted for the authority" for the war even if he had known that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction and that there were no ties between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks on America.

[snip]

The reason for Kerry's anti-Democratic war stance is obvious, but this guy is too chicken-shit to blurt it out: Kerry is owned and operated by the same elite interests that pull Bush's strings. To play the Presidential game, you have to do the bidding of your masters, and perpetual war is good for business. Kerry will say and do that which most fully ingratiates him with the shadowy figures behind the screen. What's different about this election, however, is that they've softened up the voting public with the worst Presidency ever, so even the rabidly anti-war Democratic rank and file will race to the polls to elect a war monger. War is peace, y'all.

Waking Up to Najaf

NAJAF, Iraq — For centuries, the world's 120 million Shiite Muslims have revered the gold-domed mosque of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib — named after the slain cousin and son-in-law of Islam's prophet Muhammad — as a place of pilgrimage.

Historians say the mosque was built in 977 in Najaf, a city regarded by Shiite Muslims as the faith's third holiest in the world after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It is said that the family of Ali buried his body secretly in Najaf soon after his death in 661.

His burial place stayed a secret until the eighth century. His tomb was said to have been burned and rebuilt in 1086, before being rebuilt yet again in about 1500. The mosque sits atop Ali's tomb.

Since the eighth century, Shiite families have moved from the nearby city of Kufa to Najaf to be close to the shrine and to serve pilgrims. Shiite Muslims looking for religious education have also been studying in Najaf for centuries.

Shiites believe Adam, the biblical first man, is also buried at the same mosque.

[snip]

From Juan Cole this morning:

It is very good news that no assault will have to be made on the shrine. That could have sparked widespread violence and protests. But even what the US military has done to Najaf in the past two weeks while fighting the militiamen has already deeply hurt the reputation of America in southern Iraq and indeed in much of the Muslim world. Although the American public seems somehow unaware that the US has just been bombing the sacred cemetery and parts of the city, some parts of which have been reduced to rubble, everyone in the Muslim world knows exactly what has been going on. They are not amused.

[snip]

Even though the crisis at the Shrine of Ali seems to have passed, the U.S. military actions in the holy city of Najaf have been deeply unpopular with American Muslims. A major demonstration was held by Shiite Iraqi-Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, last week. It demanded that US troops get out of Iraq. These expatriate Iraqi Shiites had been the most gung-ho group about the US going to war against the Saddam regime in 2003, and they were big Bush supporters. But now they are filled with second thoughts and regrets. The US military campaign in Najaf has deeply offended their religious sensibilities. They have made an about-face and now want the US out of their country, immediately.

[snip]

The fighting in Najaf has also inflamed the Iraqi South, which exports a majority of Iraq's oil, and has interfered with exports and also caused the price to rise just out of jitters. $49 a barrel petroleum has a negative effect on the economy, and the effect is delayed. Any organization that uses a lot of gasoline (school districts e.g.) and has a fixed income suddenly has found its costs going up, and will have to cut back someplace, probably in employment. Airline and trucking executives must be apoplectic and thinking of all they people they could fire and still run their businesses.

The Ann Arbor News reports Thursday that Michigan's jobless rate has risen again, to 6.8% in July. Kerry has a lead in Michigan of %46 to %42. Some ten percent are still undecided, and they will determine the outcome. (Michigan voted twice for Clinton and went for Gore in 2000, so it has been trending Democrat.) Between the continued poor economy (which may well worsen given the high oil prices) and the new antipathy of Muslim-Americans and Arab Americans to the Bush administration because of its Iraq policies, Michigan could well be in the bag for Kerry. Kerry is leading by 6% in Pennsylvania and by the same in Florida. He and Bush are dead even in Ohio. So, Bush can't afford to have the Republican Arab Americans of Toledo, OH (many are restaurateurs and businessmen) desert him. But they may well do so.

[snip]

It's nice to wake up to news that world war has not begun in Najaf.

Aren't There Rules Against This?

Sen. Zell Miller to Be GOP Keynote Speaker

"In 1992, Senator Miller delivered the keynote address in the very same arena at the Democrats' convention," GOP chairman Ed Gillespie said in making the announcement. "We're honored he'll be taking the stage at the Garden this year for President Bush."

He'll no doubt announce a Party switch, really whip up the faithful. Sheesh.

You have to take off the gloves off...

...or the Rovians will slime you to death.

Kerry hits back ....

...finally.

Tesla Wireless and the Tunguska Explosion

Russian media (plus at least one Western scientific site) have offered a spate of stories claiming that UFO crash debris has been found at the site of the famous Tunguska explosion. Did Tesla's wireless transmission experiments attract our brothers and sisters from beyond our space-time dimension?

Here's a piece that discusses how Tesla fits into the legend.

'Til After the Massacre, Part II

Juan Cole gives us the latest poop on al-Sadr, Najaf and the threatened destruction of one of the Islamic world's most holy sites. In terms of official "confusion" over what al-Sadr wants, Cole brings clarity:

I don't understand this confusion. Muqtada has given many sermons and interviews in the past 16 months outlining his goals exactly.

1) He wants the US troops out of the country immediately, which is to say, an end to Occuption. If there have to be foreign troops in Iraq, he wants them under a United Nations command.

2) He refuses to cooperate (he would say "collaborate") with the caretaker government of Iyad Allawi, which he sees as a puppet regime installed by the United States. He insists that no legitimate Iraqi governmental process can begin until the US is out.

3) He wants the reestablishment of a strong central Iraqi government with a strong military, but which has cut all ties with the Baathist past.

4) He wants Iraq to stay together rather than being partitioned, and has denounced Kurdish demands for loose federalism.

5) He wants Iraqi Shiism to emerge from Iran's shadow and to establish its independence from Iran. His movement is rooted in the Shiite ghettos of Iraq and is very indigenous. He is not Iran's catspaw in Iraq, quite the opposite. He is strong Iraqi nationalist.

6) He sometimes talks about "democracy" in post-American Iraq, but probably just means populism. Like Peron and Franco, his populism implies his ability to maintain and direct his own militia, who provide "order" (read puritanical morality imposed by force) to Shiite neighborhoods.

7) In the long term, he would like to see a system in Iraq similar to the regime in Iran. He wants Islamic law to be the law of the land, and he wants clerics to rule. His father studied with Ayatollah Khomeini and accepted the notion of clerical rule. So does Muqtada. That is, there may be a place for elections (as in Iran), but true power would rest in the hands of the clerics. He has admitted all this in Arabic press interviews.

But hey, something significant is going on in the Peterson trial, and Kobe's judge just relaxed his gag order.

Gag.

Church Aisle

by Scott Mutter

Escalator

by Scott Mutter

Revolving Door

by Scott Mutter

Persecuted Hero Speaks

Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Risks Arrest, Again

An Interview
with Mordechai Vanunu
By AMY GOODMAN

Mordechai Vanunu worked as a nuclear technician at Dimona, Israel's secret nuclear installation from 1976 to 1985. He worked there at a time when Israel was insisting it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. What Vanunu discovered is that Israel had secretly developed an extensive nuclear program, hiding its existence from the Israeli people and parliament, and the world.

Vanunu leaked information and photos of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the Sunday Times in London. He was subsequently kidnapped by Israeli spy agency Mossad in Italy and then jailed. He would go on to spend 18 years behind bars including 11 in solitary confinement.

He was released on April 21 under strict government restrictions.

Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman reached Vanunu on his cell phone in East Jerusalem where he has been staying since his release in April. He defied the Israeli government's restriction on speaking with foreigners to talk with us.

The nationally syndicated radio and TV program Democracy Now! aired the first part of its interview with Vanunu on its Aug. 18th broadcast. (The remaining portions of the interview will be aired on Aug. 19th)

Click here for transcript of interview.

Paul Krassner: Woodstock 35 Years Later

ON THIS 35TH anniversary of Woodstock, everyone who was there has their own specific memories and associations. The 60s were over. Negroes had become blacks. Girls had become women. Hippies had become freaks. Richard Alpert would become Ram Dass. Hugh Romney would become Wavy Gravy. San Francisco Oracle editor Allen Cohen would become Siddhartha and move to a commune, where everybody called him Sid.

There was the music and the mud. There was the dope and the dancing. There was the free food and the free love. There were the Port-o-Potties and the politics. Most of all, there was a sense of community. The political contingent was encamped in a red-and-white-striped tent called Movement City. In the afternoon, Yippies were churning out flyers proclaiming that the festival should be free, and at night they were busy unscrewing the chain-link fences.

While The Who was performing, Abbie Hoffman, tripping on acid, climbed up on the stage with the intention of informing the audience that John Sinclair (manager of the band MC5 and chairman of the White Panthers) was serving 10 years in prison for possession of two joints—that this was really the politics behind the event—but before he could get his message out, Pete Townshend transformed his guitar into a tennis racket and smashed Abbie in the head with a swift backhand.

[snip]

I would turn 7 three months later. I got a green Huffy Stingray-style bike and a red pogo stick.

The Cosmic Serpent, Ayahuasca, and DNA

Ayahuasca is, botanically and chemically speaking, the most complex of all hallucinogens. There are almost fifty some different species of plants known by the name of ayahuasca. Not every one grows in the same place, so it is important to know all of them to be able to prepare the mixture and tea.Carlos Shuma, a shaman, explained to Jeremy Narby that ayahuasca makes the "spirits" come to the shamans and give them all possible explanations and correct answers to their questions in any field of knowledge: arts, building techniques, technology, astronomy, sculpture, plants and how to cure diseases with them. The art of asking has its secrets. Similarly to the Chinese "I-Ching", THE BOOK OF CHANGES, the questions have to be asked succinctly and straight, and address specifically each and every issue to be presented to the "maninkare" so that they are comprehended and addressed wisely.

Jeremy Narby formulated a hypothesis suggesting a demonstrable connection between the active components in ayahuasca and the DNA contained in nerve cells of the human brain. This led him to study molecular biology.

THE DNA

Narby found, following a hard path of studies and researches, that the DNA probably corresponds to the "essences" - the "maninkare" - with which the shamans communicate with each other and from which they take their KNOWLEDGE. Up to now, the so-called modern biology has contradicted the anthropologist. That "modernity" holds as a dogma that Nature does not have an intelligence, thus it is CANNOT COMMUNICATES"!

However, that "modernity" is a heritage from the 18th and 19th centuries, which were gagged by Religion, which shut the up naturalists, forbidding them to say anything which was contrary to what is written in the Bible or that could pose a threat to the total veracity of their texts. This is no news, all one has to do is check religion's meddling into the history of sciences! Unfortunately, that attitude became a materialistic tradition which lingers on till nowadays!

The shamans' daily diet held the anthropologist attention, because of its efficiency. When the shamans retire into the forest, they virtually live on bananas and fish. Those are food which are very rich in serotonin. The long period under the hallucinogens effect diminished that neurotransmitter concentration in the brain. His colleagues, also anthropologists, unaware of that, call that wise diet "irrational taboos!"

[Click image to read more.]

Swedenborg, Blake and the Sexual Basis of Spiritual Vision

According to the Kabbalistic theories adopted by Zinzendorf, God and the universe are composed of dynamic sexual potencies (the sephiroth) which interact with each other and produce orgasmic joy when in perfect equilbrium [13]. In the Holy of Holies of the Temple in Jerusalem, a golden sculpture of male and female cherubim guarded the Ark of the Covenant. The Kabbalists claimed that the cherubim were entwined in the act of marital intercourse, thus forming an emblem of God's joyful marriage with his female emanation, the Shekhinah (or Jerusalem). When the Temple was sacked by pagans, the erotic statuary was paraded through the streets in order to ridicule the Jews. That Blake was aware of this tradition is suggested by his reference to the defilement of Jerusalem, "Thy Tabernacle taken down, thy secret Cherubim disclosed." [14]

After the destruction of the Temple, the re-joining of the cherubim (and thus the reintegration of the male and female within God) depends upon the reverent act of sacramental intercourse by the devout Kabbalist and his wife [15]. This reintegrative process can also take place within the adept's mind, while he meditates upon the male and female potencies of Hebrew letters and numbers until he reaches a state of visionary trance. God's androgynous essence is manifested in the microcosmic body of Adam Kadmon (the Grand Man), and the Kabbalists portray the divine processes within that body "in vividly sexual terms." [16] Blake's declarations to a confused Crabb Robinson that "we are all coexistent with God; members of the Divine Body, and Partakers of the Divine Nature," which was originally androgynous and manifested in "a union of sexes in man" reveal his familiarity with this Kabbalistic tradition [17].

[Click imgage to read more.]

Mommy....

Image of My Magnet

Sankara (goes with previous post)

A Magnet In My World

Sankara's Life

Though I've been aware of Sri Sankara for many years (his name and works come up in any serious conversation about Advaita Vedanta, India's main nondual spiritual tradition), I sort of skipped over him in favor of the simpler, more direct teachers who target Western seekers -- like Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Papaji and Ramesh Balsekar. The simple teachings ultimately turned out to be unsatisfactory to me, partly because they led to "narcissistic paralysis" (why get up in the morning if everything is preordained and there's no such thing as free will?), partly due to a lack of cultural perspective.

Having practiced vipassana-style meditation these past dozen or so years, and recently getting into Theravada Buddhism, it's interesting that I'm coming home to Sankara all of a sudden. There's an intuitive draw to him, possibly aligning with a persistent need to learn Jyotish astrology. Maybe I lived in India in previous incarnations, I don't know.

Anyway, if you're interested, click on the title link to learn a little about Sankara.

Peace Can Wait 'Til After the Massacre

Peace delegation 'can't find escort'

17/08/2004 - 10:49:42

A delegation of Iraqis meant to help negotiate an end to the uprising in Najaf was forced today to delay its mission to the holy city when it could not get a military escort for the dangerous journey.

The 60 mediators from Iraq’s National Conference had planned to leave early today to meet radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and appeal to his followers to put down their arms and join Iraq’s political process.

However, by early afternoon, they still remained at the conference site in central Baghdad.

“The US troops and Iraqi police refused to escort the delegation, they are afraid for its safety because they themselves are being targeted by militants,” said delegate Ahmad al Hayali.

Explosions and gunfire shook the streets of Najaf today as the clashes there persisted and US troops entered the flashpoint Old City neighbourhood.

Sooooooo... we're to believe that the peace delegation is prevented from meeting with militants because the attackers are afraid?

I think not. I think a decision in favor of violent resolution has been made -- just like the decision to attack Iraq in the first place -- and any effort to prevent bloodshed is viewed as a nuisance by the occupiers.

I hope I'm wrong.

----------------------

UPDATE:

Now this is confusing. Reuters turns the table and says that it is al-Sadr who refuses to meet with the peace delegation. But if you read a little ways into the story, you see that it's for the same reason given by U.S./Iraqi forces:

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Tuesday refused to meet an Iraqi peace delegation because of "American aggression" as U.S. troops pounded militia positions in Najaf near the country's holiest Islamic sites.

------

A Sadr aide told reporters accompanying the delegation that Sadr refused to meet them "because of continued aggression by the Americans."

Another aide in Baghdad, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Soudani, said: "He declined to meet them due to security reasons and heavy shelling in Najaf."

The delegation had met Sadr's top aides and waited for the young cleric for three hours at the city's holiest shrine, the Imam Ali Mosque, where many of Sadr's militiamen are holed up.

Sadr's top aide Sheikh Ali Smeisim, who met with the delegation, tried to soften the impact of Sadr's failure to show up.

"What we heard (from the delegation) contains positive indications. We are willing to discuss them," he said. He had told the delegation that Sadr was at a "secret location" and would come if the U.S. forces eased its noose around the shrines.

------

After the snub the group drove to the governor's headquarters as fighting raged in the cemetery, where U.S. gunship helicopters fired on rebels who responded by firing mortars and machine guns at U.S. and Iraqi government forces. Witnesses said they later returned to Baghdad.

The delegation flew in on U.S. Black Hawk helicopters from a meeting in Baghdad where 1,300 delegates sought to select an interim national assembly to oversee the government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

So which is it?

I'll keep looking....

---------------------

UPDATE TWO:

According to BBC, the delegation didn't really want to see al-Sadr anyway.

The head of the delegation, Sheikh Hussein Sadr, said his mission was not to negotiate with Mr Sadr.

"This is a friendly mission to convey the message of the national conference," he said.

But a spokesman for Mr Sadr, Heidar al-Tarfi, said the cleric had reservations about the envoys.

He added that Mr Sadr considered them messengers rather than negotiators.

However another of the rebel cleric's aides, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Soudani, told reporters in Baghdad that Mr Sadr declined to meet the team "due to security reasons and heavy shelling in Najaf".

Fine, said al-Sadr; I don't want to see you, either.

Siesta

Self-Expression

...is a beautiful thing.

Yes, It Can Always Get Worse

There are no adequate words for this:

7 Texas Kids Found in Nigeria Orphanage

HOUSTON - Seven Texas children were discovered abandoned at a Nigerian orphanage, suffering from disease and malnutrition, and have been brought back to the United States.

Child Protective Services, which received emergency custody of the children Monday, is investigating accusations that the children's adoptive mother abandoned them in Nigeria in October and later went to work in Iraq as a private contractor. The Houston woman, whose identity was not released, allegedly left them at a Nigerian school that later discharged them for nonpayment of tuition.

The children returned to Texas on Friday.

Three of the children were hospitalized with malaria and later
released, said CPS spokeswoman Estella Olguin. The all were thin and covered with mosquito bites and scars, officials said.

-----

The woman took all the children in October to Nigeria, where a relative of her fiance lived. The children were enrolled in school and the mother returned to Houston about 30 days later. She went to work in Iraq in April.

But the children were removed from school because payment for their tuition stopped. Nigerian child-protection authorities found the children in a wooden shack, malnourished and sick, and moved them to an orphanage in late July.

Not to diminish the horror of something like this, but a few thoughts about racist attitudes in this country may be in order. It's appropriate that we feel compassion for these American kids -- but what about the Nigerian children who are living and dying in that orphanage? Are they just African mud spawn? The only acknowledgment of injustice is in the fact that American kids were abandoned in a subhuman environment, but if it weren't for Western standards of living, which depend on Third World suffering such as in that orphanage, there would be no stories like this!

Connect the dots, that's all I'm asking....

For the Kundalini Active

Here's an email group designed to support you in your experiences. Jeff Brooks (Internet handle: "Jhanananda") is a great guy; Karen and I met him at a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat earlier this year. He is a modern-day mystic who is spending the summer in the desert near Bishop, CA. He runs into town every few days to maintain his many Yahoo groups, but the rest of his time is spent in quiet and solitude. He established a daily meditation routine 35 years ago and has not missed a day since. He is filled with information and wisdom around all aspects of spiritual awakening, so check out this group if interested.

Oh, and I have a Yahoo group of my own. See sidebar ---->

Election Fiasco 2004: Same As All The Other Fiascos

It's amazing to me that Krugman is allowed a NY Times column, forthright and honest as he is. Could it be because he's by far the most popular scribe on their roster? Could it be because he sells newspapers?

Anyway, his piece today lays it on the line: electronic voting machines with no paper trail will render the November elections "suspect," if not downright fraudulent. When added to purged voter rolls (i.e., knocking out the black vote, which is overwhelmingly Democratic), it looks bad. Krugman simply says what we're all thinking somewhere underneath the fear and anxiety:

How might the election result be suspect? Well, to take only one of several possibilities, suppose that Florida - where recent polls give John Kerry the lead - once again swings the election to George Bush.

Much of Florida's vote will be counted by electronic voting machines with no paper trails. Independent computer scientists who have examined some of these machines' programming code are appalled at the security flaws. So there will be reasonable doubts about whether Florida's votes were properly counted, and no paper ballots to recount. The public will have to take the result on faith.

Yet the behavior of Gov. Jeb Bush's officials with regard to other election-related matters offers no justification for such faith. First there was the affair of the felon list. Florida law denies the vote to convicted felons. But in 2000 many innocent people, a great number of them black, couldn't vote because they were erroneously put on a list of felons; these wrongful exclusions may have put Governor Bush's brother in the White House.

This year, Florida again drew up a felon list, and tried to keep it secret. When a judge forced the list's release, it turned out that it once again wrongly disenfranchised many people - again, largely African-American - while including almost no Hispanics.

I've said it again and again: The whole thing is an elaborate hoax. It's staged, the players are carefully vetted to play their parts with the conviction of the blackmailed, and all the commentary you read (including mine) serves to perpetuate the illusion that your vote matters.

That said, Kerry seems less blatantly evil than Bush, so I'll vote for him.

Chavez Kicks Elite Butt

I've been monitoring things through Al Giordano's Narcosphere (see blogroll on right sidebar), and will draw attention to three post-election posts:

The Opposition's Game Plan

Fraud Talk Falling On Deaf Ears

Top Ten Fraudulent Claims of Fraud in Venezuela

Basically, Venezuela's master class is bursting its collective pancreas over being smacked down by that country's proud working and indigenous class. This is symbolic of universal loathing directed toward all things globalized, all things American, all things corporate... thanks to the current White House squatters.

Pass the popcorn. We can make more in November.

Family of Iraq Abuse Whistleblower Threatened

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Relatives of the U.S. soldier who sounded the alarm about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison said on Monday the family was living in protective custody because of death threats against them.

Reservist military police officer Staff Sgt. Joseph Darby alerted U.S. Army investigators about the abuse by fellow soldiers of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, a move his wife says has angered people in their community in western Maryland.

"People were mean, saying he was a walking dead man, he was walking around with a bull's eye on his head. It was scary," said Bernadette Darby from Corriganville, Maryland.

Mrs. Darby said it was difficult living in protective custody, and she missed her privacy. She did not say who was providing the protection.

"There's always someone with you," she told ABC's "Good Morning America" show.

-----

I know that it only seems like all Americans have become revenge-seeking mobsters who would rather bury their heads in the sand than deal with the ugly truth... but, man, it's really sick the way the messenger is always attacked. The rest of the world probably views the American heartland as a back alley in the worst part of town. Jeb's personal State cops are harrassing and intimidating elderly black voters in Florida; Smirk is pulling U.S. troops from the rest of the world so he can attack Iran before he's trounced out of office; and the U.S. puppet government in Iraq is cracking down on journalists who cover atrocities in Najaf and elsewhere. It's like a virus has been set free on the planet, and no one can figure out how to eradicate it. Very, very frightening times we live in.

J. J. Hurtak: Mindblower

Have you read the Keys of Enoch? They say that it is encoded with a genetic triggering mechanism such that, if you read the book carefully at least once during your lifetime, your toggle switches will be flipped and it's only a matter of time before you acquire a lightbody. Based on this potentiality, I've read the book... twice. Fraction understood: 25% or less. Thrill level while being turned onto J.J.'s condensed conceptual montage: off scale.

Here's an online sample of his work.

He's on Coast To Coast A.M. tonight, about 40 minutes from now. Barbara Simpson is guest-hosting, and I was so disgusted with her Iraq War cheerleading that I've been unable to listen to her since 9/11... but I think I'll break the boycott tonight. Any excuse to prolong the weekend....

UPDATE:
(Monday moring) Fell asleep a half hour into the interview. It irks me that they waste the first hour of the show with open lines and stupid news items, forcing working folks to lose sleep if they want to get a couple hours of "meat" in. My mind was not blown.

More on Packing

Today was our first full-on day of packing, since I only filled three boxes with books yesterday. I got sent on a mission to find more boxes today. Started out in the alley behind Bart's CD Cellar, where Karen works a couple days a week. Found three usable containers there. Then, on the recommendation of a guy at Red Letter Used Books, I tried a cardboard recycle bin next to A-OK Liquors. Found two really good boxes there. Then on the way home I tried bins next to another liquor store (three shitty little boxes) and behind the Safeway near our house. Got one decent box there.

It's tough, since college students are returning and the annual mass migration in and out of Boulder has commenced, so everyone needs boxes. We have enough so that I can chip away at the books the rest of the week. Today, however, we plowed through the scattered bills we'd been stacking around the apartment. Actually, I was the one who stacked these things, most of them unopened (I pay online and scribble notes on the envelope, then stick them in piles either near the computer or next to the kitchen sink -- that pile had grown to a couple feet high). Mostly we threw stuff out, but Karen got an accordian folder the other day for the very purpose of getting our paperwork in order, so it was fun getting that started.

Anyway, it's begun. Now I really wish the move was over and we were kicking back on the front porch of our new place.

Christian Charity

A moral to this story is, never put "Christian" in your business name. You're setting yourself up for a fall.

KALISPELL, Mont. -- Until he was arrested this year in his underwear in a motel room with a nearly naked young woman who was behind in her payments to his finance company, no businessman in this town was more respected than Richard A. Dasen Sr.

He had won the "Great Chief" award, the highest honor a local business leader can receive from the Chamber of Commerce. A nominating letter for the award described him as "the epitome of the reason we all want to live in the Kalispell area."

Dasen was an energetic force in the construction of a hospital, a ski resort and a large hotel that established this northwest Montana town of 15,000 as a player in the convention business of the Rocky Mountain West. He was impressively energetic, too, in charitable and social causes, serving as a church elder, helping teenagers finish high school and volunteering his time to Christian Financial Counseling, which helped people manage debts.

Whenever I see something like this, I picture an iceburg. How many of these guys are sharking around the waters?

Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women, many of whom were in legal trouble, addicted to drugs and in debt to him, according to court documents.

[snip]

Investigators counting his checks -- he paid by check, in amounts of $1,000 to $6,000 per encounter, sometimes as much as $130,000 a month -- now estimate that Dasen spent at least $5 million, said Charles Harball, the city attorney.

"He pretty much single-handedly funded the methamphetamine trade here in Kalispell for a number of years," Harball said, as women used the money Dasen paid them to pay for their habits.

Since Dasen's arrest the flow of money to local methamphetamine users seems to have dried up, Harball said, adding that there has been a "flood of petty crime from addicts seeking cash for their habit."

A blow to the local economy....

So far, Dasen has been charged with rape for allegedly paying a 15-year-old girl for sex. The age of consent in Montana is 16. He has also been charged with two felony counts of promoting prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, and his attorney, George Best, declined to comment on any aspect of the case.

[snip]

If Dasen was "not satisfied with the sexual services that he was receiving, it was common for [him] to arrange for repossession of vehicles that he has purchased or funded for those females, through his finance company," according to a confidential informant's statement to police that is quoted in court documents.

Having grown up in a Protestant church (Dad is a minister), and having slowly gathered dirt on my family's own dark secrets since leaving the nest 22 years ago, I know that the iceburg is a massive one. We live in a "wounded patriarchy" that goes back 5000 years. Humans have been repressing the feminine during this time. We've burned her at the stake, we've hidden her body and face, we've traded her like cattle. Archetypally, the story of Richard Dasen is about the Dark Mother and how, if we express her in a fucked-up way, she will destoy us in a spectacular fashion. That this piece was offered in the Washington Post shows that Dark Mother wounds resonate within us as a culture, that stories like this are not unique, even if we don't speak to this truth. We are a culture -- especially in America -- that lives in denial of its sexuality, that severely represses its feminine side, and that is so far gone that we're all living through the natural consequences of fundamentalist conditioning.

The Dark Mother is about the Descent. She is the underworld, our shadowy interior, our collective worst fears, the Monster within. She offers to guide us through the depths in an empowering and instructive way, but we must be willing to die to our current state, to be liberated from our unconsciousness and our absurd system of beliefs. Few embrace what she offers, which is why we have stories like this one. It's why the iceburg runs so deep and wide.

Apparently There Are Crystal Cities Here

Pleiades Cluster

Where my wife, Karen, is from.

Darkness Is Light

Rho Oph Dark Cloud

If this is a dark cloud, I want one over me all the time.

Alternative Living Situation

M104, NGC 4549

Where all those flying saucers come from. They look like their star (or whatever that is...).

Surreal

Link:

The movie, made by Oscar-winning director Michael Moore, has grossed over $113 million at domestic box offices and such a blockbuster would be routinely, and quickly, ordered up by the military.

But the movie presents a scathing view of President Bush's drive to war in Iraq, and it paints an unflattering view of the conduct of some U.S. military personnel. Although to be fair, many of the men and women fighting in Iraq are depicted as compassionate and caring.

Moore has made no secret of the fact he wants Bush ousted from office, and the film is undoubtedly anti-war.

"We have made all requested materials available to them, but unfortunately, a commitment to show the film has not been made," a Lions Gate spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for Fellowship Adventure Group claimed the military was stonewalling for obvious reasons.

Please pass the popcorn.

Provocative

Titania, Bottom and the Fairies
by Henry Fuseli (1741-1825)

[Click image for link.]

Fuseli predates the pre-Raphaelites by a good margin – his works are somewhat more stylized, although they often touch on mythical themes. This one, of course, embodies the stuff of which censors' dreams are made. Is Titania really getting romantic with a donkey? Well, it has the head of a donkey, which is probably enough to qualify it as bestiality in the eyes of the morally born-again. It's my understanding that reading literature is not a requirement for public service – it may even be a detriment. This being the case, I hasten to add that Bottom, the fellow with the enlarged ears, is not really a donkey, but has merely been turned into one temporarily. This painting is a scene from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Fuseli was born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Switzerland, of Swiss and German parents. He migrated to Berlin in 1763, where his illustrations of Shakespearean themes caught the attention of the British ambassador, who convinced him to visit England. Several years later he moved to Rome. By 1779 he had returned to England, and the best of his paintings were completed in London. History notes that he has the distinction of having slept with Mary Wollstonecroft, whose daughter, Mary Shelly, would write Frankenstein.

It might well be said that Fuseli enjoyed heroic subjects above all – it's engaging to regard him as Boris Vallejo before his time. Muscular amazon women were a bit hard to find in Fuseli's day, however. Fuseli's male characters are enormously muscular in some cases, while his women are often wildly dramatic, or brazenly sexual. Sometimes they're both – dramatic sex has few equals.

One of the enjoyable aspects of Fuseli's works are the margins – as in this picture, there are frequently the oddest bits of detail and grotesque inspiration wrought in miniature around the edges of his pictures. Some of the fairies herein, for example, are truly weird.

Yes, I'm still experimenting to figure out how to present images on these posts. I think I just figured out a backdoor method. Anyway, this particular image caught my eye and I thought I'd post it, with commentary. It made me think of the Devil card in the Tarot, which teaches us to let go of tired, debilitating beliefs that no longer serve us. Break the bonds of habit, push at the boundaries of our comfort zone, invoke our true presence in the world, unencumbered by our accumulation of externally-imposed shit.

My Major Addiction

Karen and I are moving into a house with Best Man (David), on the north side of town where horses graze and deer forage.

Today I promised to start packing. We had a few broken-down boxes from when we moved into our current hippie pad five years ago, so I taped up three (didn't want to bogart all of them) and shuffled into my office. I filled the boxes with books in about 10 minutes and noticed that, as far as I can tell, this effort did not make a dent. It's going to take, like, 40 more boxes to clean this place of books. And then what? It's not like we'll suddenly have more shelves in the new house. Same shelves as in the old apartment.

It's a sickness, this urge to buy and hoard books. I promised Karen and Best Man that I'd weed through everything, try to get rid of some -- but man, if it was just me who was moving into this new place, I'd stack these babies to the ceiling and buy more.

So there.

When I Can Afford It

Just putting this out to the omni-manifesting Universe: I want to learn Jyotish (Vedic) Astrology, and I want to learn it here.

Goes something like this:

Vedic Astrology - Jyotish - is an extraordinary and unique system of astrology. As many have realized, it can describe a life in detail so subtle that the suspicion arises that the astrologer knows the life better than the one who is living it! How can this be? In fact, the astrologer is accessing an ancient tradition of knowledge far surpassing anything known in the West. This view is corroborated by many who have journeyed to India and experienced first hand the power of this system to reveal the secrets and promise of human life.

A system of astrology that grew out of the ancient Vedic tradition of India, Jyotish differs from Western astrology in a number of significant respects. For one, it uses the sidereal or fixed zodiac instead of the tropical or movable zodiac of Western astrology. In Western astrology, the zodiac, due to a tilting of the earth on its axis, appears to be moving out of alignment with the actual star-based zodiac. Currently this misalignment amounts to slightly more than 23 degrees, nearly one entire sign. Thus, a person whose rising sign might be Scorpio in Western astrology, has a good chance of being Libra ascendant in Vedic astrology.

[snip]

Perhaps more than anything, Jyotish is valued for its predictive ability. Centuries ago Vedic seers cognized principles that allow past, present, and future events to be known. Called the Vimsottari Dasha system, this aspect of Jyotish allows the astrologer to trace not only what has gone before, but what is likely to happen in the future.

Known as the Eye of the Veda, Jyotish enjoys a degree of acceptance and reverence in the Indian spiritual tradition that many Westerners do not understand. More than just a system of astrology, Jyotish is an integral component of Vedic knowledge.

It will be mine....

I Got Yer Swiftboat...

...Right here

An Image

My favorite card right now

I'm sitting up late, goofing with my 'blog. Added a links column to the sidebar, agonized over which links to put on there, had to fake my way through a bunch of HTML editing. Also added a site meter down at the very bottom -- up to 3 at this point. Very popular 'blog. You learn a lot when you set one of these things up.

The Moon card is up for me right now. I'm a Scorpio Sun, so the lobster makes sense -- thrives at the bottom of the sea, represents the contents of the deep unconscious rising into awareness. It's also the Dark Mother archetype, our guide through the Descent. Moon is the Nourishing Mother archetype, ruled by the sign of Cancer. I have Cancer Rising. Both these energies -- Dark Mother and Nourishing Mother -- are emotional, intuitive and extremely feminine. Moon is associated with the night sky; nighttime is when we turn inward, surrendering to Dreamtime. There's also a portal depicted on The Moon card, which suggests that one must pass into and out of the watery depths in order to transcend the threshold of change -- and this journey is often conducted in darkness, realm of our fears and unknowingness. The secret is to embrace the journey, engage the adventure willingly, and learn from the rich wisdom to be gained deep down inside.

Good night....

Definition of Denial

I can hardly stand to expose myself to our simian leader, but this one jumped out at me:

BUSH: I'LL TAKE IRAQ WAR RAP

Aug 14 2004

GEORGE BUSH is ready to 'take the rap' over Iraq at the presidential election.

The US president admitted for the first time that the November ballot might go against him.

[snip]

(Larry) King asked: 'Does the buck stop with you?'

Bush replied: 'Absolutely.' King went on to remind him that JFK 'took the rap' over the botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.

Bush admitted: 'I'm taking the rap too, of course, that's what elections are all about.

'I don't know if it's going to be close or not. But I believe I'll win.

'I believe the American people know my style of leadership.

'They understand the commander in chief must not waver in this era. We must continue to stay on the offence.'

He then went on to praise the military record of his election rival, Democrat John Kerry.

Kerry served in Vietnam - while Bush dodged the war by joining the National Guard.

Yet he claimed he was still the best military leader for America.

That anyone would believe a single word out of this man's mouth is testament to a collective denial that goes so deep as to be superhuman in nature. It's as though we as a species -- Humanus Americanus -- have genetically morphed into a self-deluding, retrogressive, maleable form of anti-intelligence, and our controllers behind the curtain are rolling on the floor laughing, flabergasted that they could've engineered this level of gullibility with so little effort.

Europe, Canada and every other country in the world, on the other hand, have yet to experience the degenerative metamorphosis that we are pioneering. They've yet to drink the Kool Aid. They understand that, when Bush "takes the Iraq War rap," he is in reality maneuvering for a better opportunity to lie. He's softening up Humanus Americanus for a set of even bigger untruths, while taking credit for elevating the discourse at the same time. And the amazing thing is, he doesn't even know what he's doing. He has, in fact, morphed at a greater rate than the rest of us, so that his capacity for self-deception and external manipulation outpaces all of us combined. He is tied directly to the controllers behind the curtain; he is our mediator, our Muse, our Dear Leader.

He is, in fact, exactly what Humanus Americanus deserves.

The question is, will our penance expire in time to save the planet?

That Familiar Sick Feeling

Just woke up, turned on the 'puter and saw this:

American-led forces have surrounded the centre of the Iraqi city of Najaf, in an effort to defeat a week-long uprising by Shia militiamen.

The move follows heavy fighting as US and Iraqi troops sealed off the city's Imam Ali Shrine, inside which many militiamen are now barricaded.

But the troops, who are backed by tanks and helicopters, have so far kept out of the holy site.

US forces also targeted militias in Kut, east of Najaf.

More than 70 people are reported killed there.

US and Iraqi troops have been battling the militants in Najaf - about 160km (100 miles) south of Baghdad - for the past seven days.

Early on Thursday, 2,000 US marines and 1,800 Iraqi soldiers engaged about 1,000 supporters of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr near the city's sprawling cemetery.

The militants were forced back behind the walls of the nearby Imam Ali shrine, whose entrances are now blocked by US marines.

"Major operations to destroy the militia have begun," a US military spokesman said.

I try to imagine what the above really means, say, for the average Iraqi who lives in that area. Not so much the militia members or others actively engaged in resistance, but the everyday families who are finding out what it means to be "liberated." The U.S. Marines are dumping 500 lb. bombs on my neighborhood, they are pushing their rapidly-trained Iraqi surrogates into my streets and alleys, they are wiping out everything in their path. There is blood everywhere, body parts, burnt flesh. Screams form an eery soundtrack behind the rockets and bullets. Children cower in the folds of their mothers' dresses, huddled in dark corners of buildings that could implode at any moment. Tanks rumble past my windows. I am being liberated even more than I already was.

All of this is happening right now as I speak, somewhere on the other side of the globe. And I'm getting dressed to walk a couple blocks to Safeway, where I'll pick up eggs, butter and cheese to make a nice breakfast for me and my wife. Then I'll ride a bus downtown to quiet coffee shop, where I'll work on a short story, drink tea and read.

My country is at war, killing, maiming, destroying -- while being killed, maimed and destroyed -- but it seems to have so little to do with my life, other than me joining everyone else in an effort to pretend that all is well, nothing to be concerned about, go back to our regularly scheduled activities. I join everyone else in avoiding thoughts of how much all of this will cost, in the end.

Orwell

Haven't seen the movie, but just read an L.A. Times review of Robert Kane Pappas' "Orwell Rolls in His Grave". I was drawn to these paragraphs:

The media, according to Pappas, have evolved from the point where journalism was once a crucial component of democracy to its present state, which former ABC and CNN producer Danny Schechter refers to as a "mediacracy."

Critics such as NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller and Robert McChesney of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign point to the power of conglomerates as they buy up smaller companies and effectively become their own lobby, wielding influence that other industries can only dream about. The myth of "deregulation" and its false promise of competition is explored as corporations such as Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. benefit when laws governing ownership are relaxed and laws are passed protecting their interests.

Having read oodles of Chomsky (thinking especially of Manufacturing Consent) it astonishes me that anyone pays the slightest attention to mainstream media. Who wants to be force-fed by a corporation like General Electric, which filters into its information outlets infinite strategies to condition us into mindless consumers of meaningless and uneeded products? Who wants to be controlled like that?

Answer: a much larger percentage of Americans than we'd care to admit. It's easier to submit, to melt into the crowd, to forfeit our analytical functioning to a System that's been insinuating itself into the fabric of our being since the moment we popped out of the womb.

Solution: the Internet, blogs, alternative media... and the populace reaching a critical mass wherein it can no longer deny what's being done to it, necessitating a collective response that ultimately resets reality for another attempt at universal peace and harmony.

I also believe that a massive shift in consciousness is afoot, and that this shift arises from within the individual. Not that everyone is waking up, but a significant minority really is coming alive, and the ripple effect is what's going to move humanity to the next level of collective experience.

The Internet has a part to play in this, for sure.

Stealing Time From Work

Still don't have the concept down for what I'm doing here. In a general and unfocused way, I want to combine my interests into worthwhile posts that shed new light on what we're all looking at.

What are my interests? Well, I'm an archetypalist, so I filter the world through archetypal symbol systems (like Tarot, astrology, I Ching, dream imagery). I practice and study Eastern spiritual traditions like Taoism, Dzogchen, Zen, Theravada, Advaita Vedanta and Tantra. I'm also into geopolitics, and would label myself a left-progressive conspiratorialist whose guilty pleasure is checking in with right-populist personalities like Alex Jones -- I take their stuff with a grain of salt, but if 10% of what they say is "true," someone needs to be paying attention.

My idea is, I could offer an archetypal analysis of current events, throw in some links, and wait for feedback that leads to something better.

Meanwhile, I'm at work and will percolate something to say later on.