What is Acceptable Reality?[FIXED]

[renots]

What is acceptable reality?

by renots

How do people determine what reality is acceptable or not? Is it the reality that takes the least effort for a work-addled mind to digest? Is it what makes someone feel happy or content? Is it a false sense of contentment or security worth accepting the facade of truth covering up reprehensible practices?

For me, a mid-twenties American living in California, things are pretty good right now. I'm living where I want to live, doing what I want to do(like playing 14 non-stop hours of Diablo 2), and I am pretty much satisfied with my current economic situation. Life is Good...

...But...I look around at all my DVDs, CDs, PC Games etc and think to myself:

My purpose in life, why I came to this planet, was to do more than work, eat, sleep, and entertain myself.

Being the information junkie that I am, everyday I am confronted with many realities that are not in the mainstream, that confront my preconceptions, that can be initially be frightening or disconcerting.

Some backround. I spent a large part of my childhood growing up in 1980's (http://deoxy.org/pc.htm#raygun) Washington DC, reading the Washington Post. To be honest, I was a young Reaganite. Every piece of propaganda that administration put out I ate up. They say drugs are bad, drugs are bad; the communists are worse than satan, you bet its worth running an illegal war; poor people are stealing millions from government, cut them off.

You name it, I ate it up. After all the news couldn't be lying to me, right? My mindset was that we were in very good hands and that people in government, media, and multi national corporations only had the American People's best interest in mind and would never ever betray that trust out of altruism.

People like Ralph Nader (http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9496), Howard Zinn (http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9486) or Noam Chomsky (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/3761/) were people on the lunatic fringe who were just apologists for those to lazy to prosper in our economic utopia. How naive I was.

My first suspicions came over the the subject of ETs. Around the time ET was released, the white house made an announcement that there was a federal law on the books that PROHIBITED all contact with extraterestrials under the penalty of a huge fine and/or imprisonment. And that was it. No further information than that.

Huh, I thought to my self. A law against contacting entities which most part did not officially exist. How funny, but at that time I was in the mindset that more laws led to a better society so I figured that the law was just in case some day it might have to be applied.

Only later did I learn it was mostly to silence the public discourse on this matter.

The next instance came in 1988, if my memory is correct, when a 2 hour 'documentary'(more like a C!A disinformation project) ran on CBS(!) on Aliens:Are they among us (I don't remember the exact title). It actually interviewed officiers in the American and Russian militaries along with certain members of the US government.

What was most interesting was the 'spin' the program took , mostly an attitude of hey this is wacky stuff and we really don't expect you to believe this. This was reinforced through disingenous depictions of grey aliens in a betty crocker kitchen with platitudes of how they probably weren't all that different from us. I'm not making this stuff up.

As I grew older and more experienced my attitudes towards acceptable realities started to change. I learned more history for instance. Take the Nazis for instance. Today, as the History Channel constantly reminds us, the Nazis and Adolph Hitler represent the pinnacle of evil in the 20th Century. Or do they?

Was it something in the german gene pool that predestined such despicable actions? OF COURSE NOT. You talk to any young educated german today and they are as progressive and opened minded as any other bright young person. Most germans who lived between 1930-1944 don't want to talk about it.

Don't forget the National Socialist party that ran germany during those years was lauded by the western world as a great way to run a government. Ever see those pictures of Henry Ford and Adolph ? They were apparently really good penpals as well. Hey, one of the reasons George Bush enlisted in the air corp was to help redeem his family's honor, especially after it came out that they couldn't stop lending money to the enemy until 1942[Good for him, we need more people to stick their necks out to do the right thing].

Anyways. what allowed the german citizens, supposed civilized people, to carry out all the nasty things they did? Propaganda. Nazi germany had a propaganda network so efficient and widespread that it was unrivaled by any other system in the 20th century except the current American system. Too many people fell into the nasty trap of letting something else do all the thinking for them. The germans of identifiable jewish descent learned that harsh lesson in 1938.

When you have a large body whose basis of power is identifying 'undesirables' (http://www.remember.org/hist.root.what.html), don't think it will stop when it has marked off most of its original targets. It's inevitably a downward spiral.

This is the role I've seen the United States Federal Government take on itself more and more in the later part of the 20th century and as a American Citizen it really saddens me.

A national body of government should lay the basic groundwork for it's citizens to be able to interact civily, without institutionalized exploitation, and that's it. The open access (http://www.osopinion.com/Opinions/TomNadeau/TomNadeau43.html) regulation for long distance is a beautiful example of this type of legislative elegance in action. It should not be a quik onestop shop for everyone's grevances. This gets to be very expensive (http://www.osopinion.com/Opinions/JamesFreeman/JamesFreeman2.html) after a while.

A national military should support civility and peace, i.e. its definately great to have around when natural disasters strike and to keep the French from retaking Louisiana ;0) It is not there to fight wars to support private interests. If an oil company wants to take over resources in a militaristic manner, let them hire their own private mercenary army and pay their own money to do it. It's in their rights as far as the the UN doesn't put up much of a fuss.

What is not acceptable is to defer that cost onto some one else, namely the American people.

Let me clarify. If exxon wants to spend billions of dollar to take over canada using their own air force of F14's it's no one's problem but the canadians. If exxon gas goes to $10 I can grumble but oh well. Now, if those companies (or the people that own them)don't want to spend that money and instead insist on brainwashing the willing segments of American society through their owned subsidiaries and defering the expensive costs on them, I have to speak up.

That is the big ugly secret behind overly profitable trans-national enterprises: they ultimately are able to defer costs which they rightly should be paying on their own to someone else.

Whether its a factory that chooses to dump it toxins into a river because its cheaper and the residents downriver are to poor to complain, getting fat tax breaks (http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9464) or using prisoners as workers, corporations without borders have very little remorse when it comes down to the bottom line. I like to think things are changing for the better , but it definately won't happen unless ordinary people, like Got|Apexheads, keep these companies honest.

Eternal vigilence is the price we pay for freedom. In the information age that means we must always look at the foodchain of the information we are asked to digest and ask ourselves why someone thinks this information is important.

:0)

[sbp]

This is familiar. 8)

[coleslaw]

renots, this must be your pride and joy. your baby. your life force.

on another note, you mentioned something about the lunatic fringe. here in cincinnat, i hear on the radio quite often: "WEBN - The lunatic fringe of American FM."

[for20]

Please, Senator, More God

David Corn, AlterNet (http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9752)

September 11, 2000

Joe Lieberman is right, and the Anti-Defamation League is wrong. There should be more public discussion of politicians' personal faith.

The ADL got into a funk after Lieberman, during campaign stops in Detroit, declared, "There must be a place for faith in America's public life. Morality cannot be maintained without religion." The next day, the ADL asked Lieberman to stop "hawking" his faith, but Lieberman refused to concede and observed, "This is the most religious country in the world."

Forget the ADL's admonishment; inquiring minds should want Lieberman to further expound and explain his remarks. His assertion regarding morality and religion demonstrated tremendous intolerance toward people of no faith. Does he hold that only God-believers can walk the righteous path of morality? And is the United States truly the most religious country? More so than, say, Iran?

What does it mean to Lieberman that the "most religious country" has the most child poverty, most murders, most prisoners, most guns, and most state-sponsored executions among the industrial democracies? Would he care to see America become more religious, and, if so, in what direction and toward what end? Since he is seeking the second-highest office in the land, it is not unreasonable to pose such questions, for the matter does seem to be on his mind.

A would-be leader's views on faith and religion should not automatically be rendered immaterial or beyond the bounds of political debate. Lieberman and the other national-ticket candidates are vying for the right to rule the most powerful nation in the world and to command a nuclear arsenal that can obliterate all life on the planet. The public has the right to know whether their religious views might affect policy decisions.

Ronald Reagan was intrigued with Armageddon and the prophesies of Revelations. As interpreted by some evangelicals, Revelations predicts that a final, destroy-all battle must occur between the forces of light and the forces of darkness before the second coming of Christ. In the 1970s and 1980s, some Armageddonists believed this final confrontation would be a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. (You can guess who represented the forces of light.)

Suppose Reagan shared such a view. If relations between Washington and Moscow came to a brink and nuclear conflict was near, might Reagan have thought he would be fulfilling a biblical prophecy by pushing the button? During a 1984 debate with Walter Mondale, Reagan was asked if he believed the Bible predicted an imminent nuclear war between the two superpowers; he dodged the question[quite the poker player raygun was].

George W. Bush and Al Gore each have some explaining to do about their own religious views. Bush once told his mother that only Christians gain entry into heaven. In a pseudo-retraction, he later said that it was not up to G. W. to say who passes through the highest gates. But -- notice -- he did not acknowledge he had been wrong. If he still considers heaven reserved for only certain Americans, might that cause him to look at other Americans -- or at heathens abroad -- with lesser regard? Such an attitude could affect how he approached policy matters.

A former theology student, Gore has told people that when he confronts a tough call he asks himself, "what would Jesus do?" (WWJD, as the faithful say.) This statement deserves testing. Last year, South Africa, which is home to millions of people infected with the HIV virus, passed laws that rendered it easier for the nation to obtain highly expensive, anti-AIDS medicines at lower prices -- a move that pissed off drug manufacturers.

If the Big J were around these days, whose side do you think he would have taken? Gore initially allied himself with the pharmaceutical firms and pressured the South African government to change course. He only shifted once Act Up activists started dogging him at campaign events. If Gore claims to make decisions using the WWJD method, he should be grilled about his views on Christ. Here's a question for the debates: Mr. Vice President, would Jesus skirt campaign finance law and raise soft money from corporations looking to gain influence within the legislative and executive branches?

The notion of separation between church and state does not, of course, rule out the mixing of religion and politicking. If religion is a crucial part of a leader's life, the public should know that fact, and citizens can ponder how that may influence decision-making.

In 1991, during the temptuous Clarence Thomas hearings, I paid several visits to his church in Fairfax, Virginia. It was a charismatic house of worship, where people spoke in tongues.

A previous rector there had been a key endorser of Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign. The church was part of a religious movement that adhered to the notion of "spiritual warfare." In this view, what takes place in the secular world is a reflection of the never-ending struggle between God and Satan, and true Christians engage daily in actual, not metaphorical, hand-to-hand combat with the Prince of Hell. They are taught to regard the Bible literally and to follow the instructions of God and the church above all else.

Assume Thomas accepted these teachings. Did that mean he believed Satan controlled the politicians, movie producers, civil liberties lawyers and others who act in ungodly fashion, that legal conflicts reflect the ongoing tussle between God and Lucifer, and that Thomas' obedience to his religious faith transcended his duty to the Constitution? Might his adherence to such beliefs affect the manner in which he reached decisions that would affect millions? After all, if he believed the ACLU was fronting for the Evil One (wittingly or not), could he impartially hear its arguments? I wrote an article raising these questions and was blasted elsewhere in the press for daring to politicize a man's faith. A Democratic aide to the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed this was fair game, but she could find no Senator willing to approach such a sensitive subject during Thomas' confirmation hearings.

In the case of Lieberman, it's easier to deal with the matter, because he has repreatedly referred to his faith. He also has interjected faith into the public arena before the current campaign. Several years ago, he became the honorary chair of the Center for Jewish and Christian Values. According to its website, this outfit "works to improve the moral climate in our country" by supporting "programs that bring faith and shared religious values back into public life."[and chill freedom of expression] The Center was concocted by another group called the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which maintains, "We as a nation, have paid a dear price for having religious expression effectively banned in our schools." That price, the group insists, includes an increase in out-of-wedlock births, juvenile crime, teen drug and alcohol abuse, and "a breakdown in basic morality." Urging "a return to the basic Godly principles on which this nation was built," the Fellowship has called for outlawing gay marriages and late-term abortions[not exactly Tolkien's type of Fellowship].

What's Liberman doing in the same holy bed with this right-wing religious gang? Perhaps he's being ecumenical or showing how broad-minded he can be. But the advisory board of the center he chairs -- which is loaded with conservatives, such as Jack Kemp, William Kristol, Gary Bauer, and William Bennett -- includes persons whose commitment to morality deserves challenging: Elliott Abrams, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Ralph Reed.

Abrams, a top State Department official during the Reagan years, pled guilty to withholding information from Congress during the Iran-contra affair. (An unrepentant Abrams was pardoned by President Bush, a month before Bush left office.) Abrams also lied to Congress about the infamous El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, when a US-trained, elite battalion of the military slaughtered 800 peasants. Abrams, who disparaged press reports about the incident, claimed the United States possessed no intelligence on what he depicted as an alleged massacre. But that was untrue.

In power, Abrams committed other pernicious acts. He canned US ambassadors who were bold enough to report human rights violations in countries deemed friendly to Washington. And he sided with the Reaganites who wanted to protect Panamanian drug-thug Manuel Noriega because Noreiga was helping the Reagan-backed contras in Nicaragua.

Jeane Kirkpatrick, when she was UN ambassador for Reagan, gladly hobnobbed with the anti-Semitic generals of the Argentine junta and Augusto Pinochet, the tyrant of Chile. Each regime had disappeared thousands, yet Kirkpatrick -- placing anti-communism ahead of the thou-shall-not-kill commandment -- declared her support for their anti-leftist efforts.

Ralph Reed became famous establishing Pat Robertson as a political force. Where's the morality in assisting a man who has equated Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists with "the spirit of the anti-Christ," who has written that President Bush was literally a tool of Satan, and who has said that Hinduism is "Devil worship"[obviously not a southpark fan]?

Lieberman wants to be seen as a man of faith and morality. But in pursuit of that he has kept some bad company.

"I think faith has a constructive role that it can play in American life," Lieberman recently said. That may be, though he's rather fuzzy on the how. But an examination of a candidate's religious views -- and the relationship, or lack thereof, between those views and his or her actions -- can be constructive. You often can tell a lot about a politician by what he says -- and does -- when the subject is God[especially the meany p#ss#d god from mars; he needs to chill out]

(0:

[renots]

The Meaning Of Labor

By Diane Harvey <[email protected]>

9-5-00 (http://www.sightings.com/general3/labor.htm)

We ourselves are a labor of love. Even our material bodies, the least part of us, are fashioned from living stardust. The same energy that pulses in the hearts of stars pulsates quietly in our own wrists. The same unimaginably creative dynamo spinning out galaxies, spins out in our own thoughts. The Milky Way itself flows through our veins, eddies in our muscles, and spills over in our conscious acts.

And not a single particle of this vastness has been found in isolation, somehow separated from the whole. It is all working together, unceasingly in a single multidimensional connectedness. Each human being then is an investment in the future, backed by the entire cosmos.

We bright specks, self-aware god-sparkles, here on our exquisite floating mote in the dazzling sea: can we do less than honor this with our life s work? By means of our labors, we can consciously participatein this vast ongoing act of creation and perfection.

The work of creation is still unfinished, because we are born. That we are here at all implies a work to be accomplished, and a love meant to be let loose in a new way. What then shall we turn our hands to?

The infinite ocean of loving intelligent energy we call life moves in us and through us. This motion, a tide carried forward onto a new shore, becomes our labor here on earth. The universe works well. By working well ourselves we honor the inestimable treasure of self-conscious individuality within this great whole. Mysteriously bestowed upon us here is the god-like power to choose how to participate in the ongoing work of creation. When we work beautifully and honorably, we dissolve the illusionary barriers between us and the greater existence we are already part of. As above, So below. In the rhythm of meaningful labor, there is a deep harmony with the workings of the stars.

Gazing outward into a sky-full of galaxies, or inward into the infinite subjective worlds: can we shamelessly impose the words For Sale on this? Is the concept of commercialism anywhere implied in a green leaf, a hummingbird s motion, or the love of a parent for a child? Can anyone own the perfume of a flowering almond tree, the light from Sirius, or the wisdom of a sage? Equally absurd is the concept of a human being claiming rights to the fruits of another s labors. One person is not the absentee landlord of another s finest aspirations, worked out into the light of day. The work we do is the emanation of our very existence. No one has the right to drive a claim stake into our flesh. No one owns the goldmine of our best inventive thinking. No one should have proprietary rights over the sacred labor of any other being.

Yet this is what we have been convinced we have to accept. This is what we are allowing, because as a species we are still born into various types and degrees of slavery, trained up into differing varieties of slavery, and know nothing else. Many of us accept this, and depending on how well our own desires have been trained to fit into the machinery, and even love it. If our only god is still our own crude material profit, then the overall darkness will not even be apparent. If material well-being is still the leaden idol enshrined in our unawakened hearts, then we will fight to fit right into the overall heartlessness, seamlessly. It is not possible to insist on the right to a way of living one has not yet already discovered within.

A new way of living together becomes imperative only when we experience the inner connections to greater, higher and deeper realities. Slavery is unnoticeable until illuminated by the consciousness of freedom. Most of humanity is far from even conceiving of the freedom to work in useful, beautiful and meaningful ways. If all humans were magically freed from all forms of slavery tomorrow, most wouldn t know what to do with themselves: such is the eternal problem of generations of slavery. The majority would look around for someone to organize them and tell them what to do. The sad fact is that mankind is going to need leaders for some time to come, and the only question is: what kind of leadership will there be?

Unconsciously or otherwise, under every social system, in part or wholesale, we are currently forced to support a gruesome parody of leadership. We live under a vicious slave owners version of life on earth. With our life s labors, to our last breath, we are obliged to feed the raw greed of hidden parasitical overlords. The ease and comfort of being told what to do, in exchange for a strange stifling security inside the workings of the dark global machinery: this is what humanity is settling for.

This situation cannot change until a significant portion of humanity become aware of themselves as essentially spiritual beings, whose lives are intrinsically of inestimable value. Until the wellsprings of inner creativity, loving imagination and innate talents are released in sufficient numbers of people, humanity will settle for a life of fetch-and-carry for a chain of bosses, which leads upward out of sight into an invisible black hole. The best fruits of the labors of all human beings continue, business-as-usual, to roll uphill into the same few secret pockets of evil. We pick our way as carefully as we can, carrying our children, through the minefields of these variously dismal social systems we were born into. Almost all of us are also carrying the heavy baggage of unused capacities, thwarted talents, and stillborn aspirations. Not many of us will be able to say at the end of our lives: I was able to develop and express every beautiful and useful potential which was in me, to its fullest extent. Yet this is one of the most significant meanings of labor. Our personal labor is to become who we really are. The practical individual work of a human being is to outwardly manifest what is inwardly already there. And as things stand, this is practically impossible to all but a very fortunate few.

Most possibilities to manifest personal soul qualities are educated out of us, or swallowed up in the quagmires called earning a living . There is not a single social system extant which does not ultimately support the machinations of the vampires who rule this globe. All the political ideologies, the -isms which so easily inflame us to passionate debate, are, in the end, merely effective and distracting levels of mind control through paradigm-hypnosis. There is no freedom on this planet, under any system, from the basic fact that human labor is deliberately and forcibly kept to the lowest materialistic levels. New inventions, new culture, new ways of living on the earth: whatever has the potential for nourishing the freedom-loving, mutually helpful and expansive spirit of humanity is stifled by the machine, one way or another. We can still speak freely, and this gives us the illusion of freedom. Real freedom, however, is the freedom to work for what you love: to express the gifts of your body, heart, mind and spirit out in the world. Even if a few of us manage this- where are the great human experiments in new ways of living and working together? This is what our own country once was: a grand experiment in a new way of living together. But this is what all social experiments say they are, and not one is eternal. When any experiment goes sour, when dark elements seize all control, it s time to start again.

The forces of evil know perfectly well how to give every potential good a very bad reputation in manyc human minds.

They do this by means of infecting every social system ever attempted of so far. Free enterprise and the emphasis on individual rights has slowly devolved into a sick capitalism which has devoured all the most beautiful human qualities, for the sake of fattening an invisible demon called greed. Human beings are not profiting from the profit motive, but the profit motive is thriving on a diet of the bodies and souls of human beings. A democratic system has become a rubber-stamp licensing system for every imaginable type of degeneration and degradation. Thus the noble good of an experiment emphasizing individual rights has become the individual right to support insane local, state and national levels of greed, corruption and degeneracy, or be homeless. This is the result of free enterprise , and it dirties the beautiful concept beyond recognition.

In the same way, experiments whose emphasis was on cooperation and sharing have gone down in ignominious flames. Yet consider this: who is it, behind the scenes, who would like the very word cooperation to be felt as anathema to human beings? If you entertained the basic concept of cooperation, as if for the first time, would you shrink from it as evil? The entire visible universe is a naturally unforced cooperative enterprise, energetically speaking. Yet exactly like the concept of individual freedom, the concept of human cooperation has been carefully and deliberately distorted in the minds of vast portions of humanity.

The reason for this ought to be obvious. If human beings ever notice what we could do if we cooperated outside these systems of evil, then the end would be near for rule-by-vampire. There are very few of them and there are very many of us.

They keep us where we are essentially because they have successfully managed to make us afraid of each other, and literally incapable of considering the only thing that can save us: conscious cooperation. The greatest and most meaningful labor ahead for the human race is to destroy the evil that rules on our planet. And we will never do this until we are no longer hypnotized into paranoia by the concept of cooperation. The dark forces at the very top obviously cooperate fairly well, infighting aside, to keep us enslaved. That s the real intelligence demonstrated by the ruling few.

They fully understand the power of their con-spiring or breathing together . We, on the other hand, don t breathe together or cooperatively conspire to overthrow our dark masters. Divide and conquer: it has worked wonders for the forces of totalitarianism, and keeps the machine humming along nicely.

There are two kinds of meaningful labor then, with which we must concern ourselves if we are to achieve anything resembling a free sentient species on this planet. There is each individual s struggle to find a way of life that means something, and to have work that satisfies the real needs of the body, the heart, the mind and the soul. The other great labor of love is inextricably intertwined with this: the expulsion of the dark forces from this world. So long as we accept the rule of evil, so long as we allow ourselves to be comfortably hypnotized into believing nothing can be done, we will remain childish slaves.

The very thought that this is inevitably just how things are will give birth to further generations of enslaved beings. There is nothing hopeless about our situation. Of course we may choose collective cowardice and apathy, and thus ensure the self-fulfilling prophecy of hopelessness. If we won t labor to discover our spiritual identity in time, and assume our great responsibilities as conscious and innately free beings, then no one will do it for us.

What we face is probably the pass-fail test of maturity for all sentient species. There is what looks like a coming-of-age initiation presented to us here and now. We either will prove ourselves to be worthy of the treasure of self-awareness and the great gift of individualization and free will, or not. Either we continue as we have been, and fail to make the grade, or we will successfully emerge from our local provincial cocoon. If we go on much longer accepting rule by evil on our own planet, we will probably die out, no matter how lovely our potential. We will have chosen cheap comfort and bodily security to self-sacrifice and responsibility, and that would demonstrate utter failure to comprehend our own existence. We still may suddenly become interested, before it is too late, in assuming responsibility for what free will actually requires of us. If we can manage to synthesize true individuality and the spirit of cooperation, we have a chance even now to escape failure and its probably fatal consequences.

If the human race accepts the responsibility and hard work of ridding our own planet of evil, then we can suppose we will go on to join the greater community of cosmos. Since the same struggle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light most likely goes on everywhere in the physical universe, of what value is a species so feeble and ignorant it won t even stand up for itself on its own planet? Are we going to insist on and powerfully ensure the freedom to work as beings of light and love in all levels of our existence?

This is what it would mean to be useful, healthy, strong, and in good working order as a viable sentient species. If we refuse to work well enough together to even rid ourselves of our personal local gangsters, then we wouldn t be of the slightest use in any larger war between good and evil. The gist of all this is, we have our work cut out for us, and the only question is whether or not we will assert our spiritual will and insist on accomplishing the final Herculean task of a planet-bound sentient species.

~~~

let's see how MC Al G regurgitates this back

;0)

[renots]

...is now linked (http://www.gotapex.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=7655)

:0)

[renots]

Truth About Trade? (http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9767)

Bill Berkowitz, Culture Watch

September 12, 2000

Last year's high-profile anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle and this spring's anti-World Bank/International Monetary Fund actions in Washington, D.C. have stimulated a flurry of anti-environmentalist activity and commentary. Some of the most strident comments have come from David Horowitz, former lefty turned right-winger and head of the conservative Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Following the Seattle demonstrations Horowitz played the "red menace" card, telling Fox News that "these people [Seattle demonstrators] are communists who have obviously been sleepwalking through the twentieth century." James Taranto wrote in The Wall Street Journal that among the "green" demonstrators, "hammers and sickles haven't been this abundant since the Soviet Union fell. Every commie organization imaginable [was] represented here."

In addition to fanciful red-baiting, denunciations have come cloaked in quasi-journalistic garb. Truth about Trade (TaT), is a Des Moines, Iowa-based agriculture industry group whose chairman is Dean Kleckner, former president of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF). (You may remember the AFBF from the Sixty Minutes story that exposed how the Bureau acts mostly in behalf of large factory farms at the expense of small family farmers). Kleckner says that the organization has "an extremely important mission: to stand up for farm exports and advancements in biotechnology based on sound science." In addition, he added "environmental extremists and radical protestors should not be allowed to limit America's economic and technological potential."

In the September 2000 edition of Farm Journal an article by Patricia Peak Klintberg, entitled "Gangs Against Modern Agriculture," charges that "a growing gang of environmental organizations is targeting modern agricultural practices for eradication. Funded with tax-free dollars, establishment environmental groups are nurturing activist offspring to influence the international policy agenda."

Given the tone of the article, it's quite likely that Klintberg got much of her information from Who Props Up the Protesters, the recently released publication from Truth about Trade (www.truthabouttrade.com/TruthResearch.asp)[CRAPPY SITE DONT LOAD]. This 342-page report provides readers with "an outline of the history, goals, financial strength and level of activism for each of the groups listed in the Turning Point Project's New York Times full-page advertisement on global warming and organizations involved in the anti-trade protests in Seattle."

According to Who Props Up the Protesters, these groups are becoming more bold in their activism and are empowered by a sympathetic Clinton administration and a zealous Environmental Protection Agency. The report contains brief profiles of more than 50 "environmental groups actively opposing trade," including the Ruckus Society, Direct Action Network, Earth Island Institute, Friends of the Earth, Global Exchange and the National Wildlife Federation, and details if and how these groups participated in the Seattle protests. The study also delves deeply into "foundations funding environmental anti-trade activities."

In its profile of the Berkeley, California-based Ruckus Society, the report asserts that Ruckus uses its trainings on non-violent civil disobedience as a cover for its real agenda: "violent lawbreaking [by] leaders [who] are no stranger to violence themselves, [and who] might actually have expected the vandalism by the anarchist members of their protest."

The report highlights the Turner Foundation's support for the group. (The Ruckus Society, founded in 1995 with support from Turner, became the subject of numerous newspaper feature stories and television pieces in the swirl of interest surrounding the Seattle and Washington, DC protests).

Environment & Climate News, published by the conservative Heartland Institute, opines that "when it comes to orchestrating events, such as the riots in Seattle and Washington, much of the heavy lifting is done by the Ruckus Society." In the John Birch Society's The New American magazine, senior editor William F. Jasper takes this charge one step further -- linking Ruckus leaders to Greenpeace, which is then linked to the Baader-Meinhoff gang, "a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group based in West Germany," the Dutch Communist Party and finally to spying for the Soviet Union.

Truth about Trade maintains that the anti-trade network is bankrolled by "grantmakers [who] are funneling large sums of money to environmental groups." Among the major foundations highlighted are the Bullitt Foundation, HKH Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, Rockefeller Foundation, TurnerFoundation, W. Alton Jones Foundation and C.S. Mott Foundation.

Other sections of Who Props Up the Protesters includes: lists of foundation grants to environmental groups actively opposing trade; total environmental giving, listed by foundation; government grants to environmental groups; a collection of articles on "the protest-turned riot in Seattle, Washington during the recent WTO meeting"; and a "junk science primer & resources."

Other conservative enterprises are also taking dead aim at foundations for providing the financial lifeblood for the environmental movement. The Washington, D.C. based Capital Research Center (CRC) is one of the rising stars in the crowded universe of right-wing think tanks. Established in 1984, CRC, through its seven serial publications (Organization Trends; Alternatives in Philanthropy; Philanthropy, Culture & Society; Foundation Watch; Labor Watch; Studies in Philanthropy; Studies in Organization Trends), "analyze[s] and report[s] on [how] those organizations with tax-exempt, tax-deductible-and sometimes tax dollars-mix advocacy and 'direct action' to promote their own vision of the public interest." It also looks at how closely individuals in the corporate and foundation sectors are sticking to the "donor intent" of the founders of these corporations and foundations.

Conservatives become apoplectic when they discover that a significant amount of money earmarked for environmental groups comes from foundations established by free-market entrepreneurs who accumulated enormous wealth based on decidedly anti-environmental activities.

"The source of wealth for the Pew Trusts comes from energy exploration and development," Capital Research Center Executive Vice President Robert Huberty told the House of Representatives Resource Committee at a May hearing. Complaining about Pew support for a forest protection campaign, he said that the original intent of the founders of the foundation was to "acquaint the American people [with] the evils of bureaucracy, the values of a free market and the paralyzing effects of government controls on the lives and activities of people." Frustrated, Huberty asked, "how do the Pew Trusts honor the intentions of their donor by supporting a campaign to permanently end logging in a large portion of the national forests?" (For more on this see CRC's The Great Philanthropists & the Problem of "Donor Intent" and Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy XI: Passing the Shareholder's Buck.

The most recent Gallup Earth Day Poll clearly showed that the public supports more environmental protection, not less. More than 80 percent of Americans agree with the goals of the environmental movement. When asked who people trust as a source for environmental information, nationally known environmental organizations came in first, followed by local environmental groups and the EPA. Holding down the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth spots were small business, Congress, the Republican Party and large corporations.

In the face of public opinion, can Truth about Trade's report damage the credibility of the "anti-trade" movement and by innuendo the entire environmental movement?

Will shouting "communist" in anti-environmental publication detract from the public's support for more environmentally sound initiatives? It seems pretty clear that the time-honored conservative approach of attacking the environmental movement will not amount to a hill of beans until conservatives establish credibility with the public. This cannot be done through spin and attack-dog politics.

~~~

Down with Income Tax and the institutions that support it!

;0)

[renots]

NOTE:Got this here (http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.com/ct/open_letter_response.html) too.

Since 1991, this author has been in contact with various victims of implants. The natural first reaction of many initial listeners would be skepticism to the subject. The psychological profession has had articles in their professional journals ridiculing these poor victims. If a fair-minded person will match the experiences of what one can witness happening to these implant victims (as well as their evidence) to the cutting edge of what science is researching and capable of doing, then there is no doubt that implants are being used on an ever increasing mass scale. The World Order is using amplifiers, generators, electronics, listening devices, non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation, a snapping type sound energy that hits and burns the body, closed-circuit videos to monitor implant victims, nanotechnology, and tracking devices that scanners (incl. mobile hand-held scanners) can pick up-- JUST to name a few. This chapter will provide an indepth overview of many of these electronic mind-control gadgets.

Unfortunately, the twilight zone of Big Brother is upon us. People (such as limosine drivers) that have been around the movers and shakers report that they brag about these technological controls. The technology described in this chapter, such as nanobots, and holographic implants are in the "R&D stage" of use. What is meant by "R&D stage" means that the World Order is using a large variety of experimental items, but the reader should be forewarned that this does not mean that these items are any indication of where the World Order's actual secret R&D is at. This author has worked with enough mind-control victims to have established several facts:

· Society is getting only the crumbs of what is known by the World Order's hierarchy.

· The World Order is releasing technology at a control rate, much of it through mind-controlled slaves who are programmed to "discover" a particular "discovery". They are in reality only disclosing what has been known in secret, and their discoveries are actually helping cover up where the World Order's secret research is at.

However, it's not difficult to see the direction the World Order is headed. They are working at making virtual reality (aka cyperspace) the "in" thing. They are fusing the human mind to computers. Computers/robots are taking over human jobs, and humans are becoming more like computers/robots. Sci-fi gurus, cyberpunks, and establishment scientists are selling and advertising this technological direction as "freedom", and the crowds of sheep are accepting things like brain implants as "survival equipment" and "freedom". The "cool" technological pied pipers of our time are teaching our children that gadgets that remove their minds from reality are giving them new freedoms. But this chapter is written because there are still a few people with the neural-receptors and the computing capacity left in their craniums to comprehend the dangers that these mind-controlling devices have for humanity.

Witnesses have told me that the creation of "robocop" type cybergs (the fusion of man & other equipment) has already been experimented on in secret.
Indeed, the government gave out research contracts for cyberg research back in the 1960's. And the use of electro-magnetic waves (esp. Tesla waves), implants, and other electronic devices by the Illuminati for mind-control is on the increase.

How much of a genuine threat do these things pose humanity? [I'll spell it out for the reader, but we must remain calm, a fear-based response only makes things worse.]

Yes, it is true that the NSA can remotely track people if they know the specific EMF waves (evoked potentials from EEGs in the 30-50 Hz, 5 milliwatt range) of a person's bioelectric field. Each person's emissions are unique, just like their fingerprint, palmprint, and their voiceprint. This means that the NSA can remotely track anyone in public.

And yes, it is true that the NSA's RNM system can remotely send EMF Brain stimulation signals which create visual images, subliminal audios, what appear to be audible sounds, and thoughts into people's minds.

Yes, it is true that body suits of implants are used to control people's minds and bodies, as well as track them.

Yes, it is true they have voice prints of hundreds of thousands of Americans and can identify & track via their computers all electronic communications in this nation. Most phone calls go through about 30 computers before they reach their destination. The phone companies' computers, according to someone who worked for AT&T and witnessed it, record ALL phone calls using computers. However, to weed out the worthless from the worthwhile, the Illuminati's fronts use a list of key words, such as names or phrases called THE WATCH LIST which the computer uses to identify conversations worthwhile to listen to. Using supercomputers, it is monitoring most communication on the entire planet so they have to squeeze the WATCH LIST as tight as possible. According to Bamford, James. The Puzzle Palace. NY: The Puzzle Palace, 1983, p. 459, "...according to Raven, programmers would simply reduce Malcolm X to the last two letters in his first name (lm) followed by a space and then the letter X. Then any time an intercepted data communications containing that particular combination of letters and spacing (lm X) streamed past the computer's reading head, it would automatically be kicked out for further analysis.

Part of the reason that the computers are swamped with Watch list submissions is that many items require numerous entries. When searching for derogatory references to President Richard M. Nixon, for example, technicians would have to program a variety of possible key words, such as "Tricky Dicky". This, according to the former G Group Chief would be converted to The new technology which is being implemented in stages includes computer imaging of a person which makes a "whole body map" of the person's body which is stored in the computer.

Something that has been only developed for a narrow use by the NWO is the downloading of the holographic image of a person's thoughts so they can be transmitted to another. (See Appendix 3 on cloning for more on this.)

The majority of the few people who know this is going on wouldn't waste time reporting it, because the public wouldn't believe it anyway. However, some prominent scientists are predicting that it is just around the corner.

The three top research institutes in this field, Stanford Research Institute, MIT, and the Carnegie-Mellon Univ. all have people saying that this capability is "almost here".

Austrian born Hans Moravec, dir. of the Robotics Inst. at Carnegie Mellon Univ., is quoted in The Indianapolis Star, 6/14/1987, in an article entitled "Immortality", "In an astonishingly short amount of time, scientists will be able to transfer the contents of a person's mind into a powerful computer, and in the process, make him--or at least his living essence--virtually immortal."

MIT artificial intelligence researcher Gerald J. Sussman states, "I'm afraid, unfortunately that I'm the last generation to die. Some of my students may manage to survive a little longer."

But as fantastic as all these powerful capabilities sound, there are gliches in their electronic control of humans. As an outsider looking inside for a number of years, this author has been able to take note of some of the success and failures of the New World Order's electronic mind-control.

First, the NSA picks up so much intelligence information, they are drowning in their own information. Only so many people can make decisions, and they can only digest so much information. They may try to manipulate people and events, but Christians (who are free of the mind-control) can step through those manipulations by having the mind of Christ.

Next, if a person understands who they are & believes in following Christ, outside visions & outside or strange voices or thoughts do not alter the course that a person will take. Most of the people this author has met who have been subjected to remote electronic control over their mind--HAVE REJECTED the instructions & harassment of their electronic handlers. Not only is it clear that the voices are being transmitted from an external source to the victim, others can also detect that something is amiss. The element of secrecy is missing.

One man spent an afternoon talking to this author about the World Order had tried to electronically control his mind, and turn him into a drug pusher. He had sucessfully foiled them for several years. Although he has had to flee & try to go into hiding to keep his own mind.

The most powerful mind-control is still trauma-based mind control built on a foundation of multiple personalities (dissociated personalities and dissociated parts of the mind). It appears that electronic mind-control is being overlaid Ofl top the mind-control based on dissociation. When this is done, the electronic mind-control is frightening, because the victim's consciousness is not able to think passed the electronic mind-control which catches their undivided attention. They are too distracted to deal with the deeper issues of trauma-based mind-control. Imagine being a programmed multiple, and your handler doesn't have to even be near you to relay complicated codes and instructions. He can use your implant.

But again, how serious is electronic mind-control? Let me relate to you about a guided tour that a civilian friend of mine took through a NWO's major beast computer center in Alaska back in the 1970's. The engineer, who was in charge of building and getting the center operational, gave him a tour of the site's capabilities.

At that point, the NWO had built a massive computer center in Alaska, one in So. Africa (believed to be located at the U.S. embassy in Johannisberg), and one in Pine Gap, Australia. These three sites were very specific, because they formed a triangle on the globe, and couldn't be located anywhere else, due to the naturally occuring lines of force of the planet. These Beast Computer Centers consist of aisles and aisles of big state of the art computers. They each have several dozen people to run them. Even in the '70's, an operator could speak into the computer and it would answer. For instance, if you asked the computer about anyone on the planet, it could usually pull up all kinds of information about that person. If you asked the computer how could you get that person to kill someone? or how can I isolate this person? The computer would spill out a plan almost instantly, telling you all the people around that subject who could be manipulated and in what fashion those people need to be manipulated to cause the end result.

This is the end result of years of "BLACK PSYCHIATRY"--which means applying psychiatric techniques to manipulate people and nations. These computers electronically connect to some of those people who are electronically controlled, so that the controllers can actually control the world from a computer. These computers also store vast amounts of personal information about people's thought processes and thinking. It is possible that electronic surveillance is being done to read the thoughts of people and that the computers are actually able to store this information in some usable fashion.

Because this is so secret, they can't give any hints of their vast ability to monitor thoughts, as well as organize and store those thoughts. This sounds like science fiction, but from people who invent & work at state of the art technology, this is actually said to be old technology.

They are limited in how they use this technology because they want it to remain secret. Meanwhile on the surface, the public system has automated fingerprint identification with the AFIS system, and has automated birth certificates electronically too. This all ties in with the intense desire of the World System to use the potential of their computers' memories. Large Neural computers that have artificial intelligence using neural processing which is a type of learning similar to learning done by the human brain are being used.

Recently, the world champion chess player was beat by a computer. This author's friend, who toured the Alaskan computer center, was shown how a war could be created between any two nations. The operator merely asked the computer what it knew about a certain country and then ask it how could a war be created with a neighboring country. This is the end result of countless studies such as the U.S. military reference book Basic Psychological Operations Study (BPS) which outlines country by country, specifying where each country is vulnerable for PSYOP operations (psychological warfare).

This kind of thing has a long history. For instance in W.W. II, the Office of War Information and the OSS cooperated in psychological warfare projects.
What this author's friend saw was a network of Cray-type computers, perhaps similar to the EMASS system of Cray computers that E-Systems developed.

Such a system can store 5 trillion pages of text and work with that data base with lightening speed. The reason this author's friend was allowed to see this technology, was that he happened to be at the right place at the right time, and the Engineer operator of the Beast Computer said that this system was obsolete. Which is true, today's 9 Beast computers are much better at speech than the computers at these three control sites were in '73.

The Beast computers can (according to another eye witness who used it) hear human voices and determine what language is being spoken and then can listen and answer in that language. These computers link directly to thousands of mind-controlled slaves and can-- via various methods-- almost instantly control the behavior of numerous people. This, along with good old fashioned phone calls, allows the elite to manipulate events very fast.
Anchorage is the site of a National Security Agency NSA listening post(LP). The Beast computer was located northeast of Anchorage, and so is the HAARP project.

The HAARP facility is near Gakona, a hamlet about 140 miles north of Prince William Sound and its signals travel on a field line to Australia. The Beast Computer is also linked to Australia as well as satellite systems. The HAARP site took a 4-wheeled truck to reach, and the Beast Computer site in 1973 was even more remote. The University of Alaska Fairbanks (which has its own super computer) and the Alaskan Poker Flat Rocket Range also were involved with the HAARP project. 30% of the U of A's supercomputer's use was for DoD projects. HAARP uses 3 powerful transmitter sites in Alaska.

Somewhat on the flip side, the human brain which they control can, IF it has a memex implant, terface with the Beast computer which acts as a vast repository of human knowledge as well as answering questions to essentially all previously answered questions instantaneously. If the human brain has some type of virtual reality holodeck attachment, the computer can even walk the slave through a realistic setting indistinguishable from the real world.
Robocop or robo-soldier has an incredible advantage with such extended memex/remote viewing capabilities.

The World Order has experimented in memex/remote viewing along several divergent paths. One method has been psychic (demonic) method, where the "natural" mental facilities of the human are trained. The other route has been high-tech. According to eye-witnesses both methods have yielded positive results, although it sounds like they are still refining their capabilities.


~~~

Just Say Know to Manchurian Candidates

;0)

[TheLoneGunman]

Renots,

one word - ECHELON

P.S. I visited Fairbanks. Quite interesting. Especially when you see what happens there when it is -60F (with no windchill)

[renots]

"Do you, like, ever let people into your meat-locker to, like, uh, you know, **** around with the meat?" I asked.

The short-haired Greek man looked at me strangely from behind the counter. Several of the waitresses glared in my direction.

"What you mean '**** around'?" the dumpy Greek asked.

"You know, like shovin' your dick in and out of the openings in the meat. Then, like, getting a bunch of smelly, sticky cream of tubesteak all over the junk that you grind into foodburgers," I informed him.

"Naw. We don't do that. You don't do that. Nobody do that," the imbecile claimed.

"I do that," I began, "and as a matter of fact, most of my pals do that too. We like it."

Overhearing our conversation, one of the waitresses gave me a sour look. She seemed to be acting like she was getting sick. The cook and the other two waitresses completely ignored everything except the random orders for patty melts and double cheeseburgers.

"Look, I don't wanna do nothin' weird or strange or anything. I just wanna **** a bunch of meat that you got in your huge ol' meat locker. Listen, don't any of you stupid ****ers understand what I'm sayin'?" I stated in an agitated manner.

"Mister, people gotta eat my food. If you stick dick in food, no can eat. Frank lose money. No can do," the Greek said.

"How much money would you lose, bright eyes?" I asked.

"Big thing of cow cost Frank $220 for a half," Greek-man said.

"Well, I wanna **** around with about 13 of them. Let's see...that's about $2860...and I'll give you...oh, let's see...$40 just for letting me do it, OK?"

"I dunno."

"OK. Look, I'll give you $3000 cash, RIGHT NOW, cause I like you an awful lot, and also cause I'm ****ing sick and tired or trying to talk to you goddamn Greek half-wits."

The Greek seemed to ponder what I had said for a minute, or perhaps he was just wallowing in incomprehension. One waitress went into the back-room and loudly threw up.

"OK. But you give Frank money NOW."

I handed the three bills over to the fool and lifted up a section of the counter and walked into the walk-in freezer.

"OK, you can **** with 13 sides of cow, but leave cheese and other gunk alone. OK?"

There was a wide variety of different kinds of food present in the walk-in freezer. Many, many eggs and other fine foods. I could see containers of pancake batter and butter. On the left was what I was after. Thirteen beautiful sides of beef!

I started to get a hard-on just looking at the beef!

"You got your cash. Get out of here!" I shouted at the geek.

I casually waltzed up to the nearest beef-side and began to sweet-talk it.

"Hi, new in town? Ever get into Satanism? Sh !t, you're cute."

The cool beef did not reply.

- (http://www.textfiles.com/100/beefstar.hum)-Original story by Don Bolles

~~~~
Put that in your pipe and smoke it :bandit:

;0)

[renots]

a good thread on technology and laws at /. (http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/10/15/1843233.shtml)

[renots]

and another one on Posse Comitatus (http://www.sightings.com/general4/pposs.htm)

[renots]

on Why Americans 'love' the death penalty (http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9923)

[renots]

New Maps of Hyperspace (http://deoxy.org/t_newmap.htm)

[renots]

http://img16.webshots.com/photos89/688/82/6888225AuZCcPuxaE_photo.jpg

[renots]

The Generation Poverty Skipped (http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10105)

[renots]

http://toogoodreports.com/column/narrett/112500.htm

~~~

Through the non-Jewish but Jewish-sounding Cohen, there is a major Middle-Eastern link to the next level of Federally declared crises and "reforms" of civil rights. Throughout 1999 as part of puffing Y2K hysteria, heads of FEMA, new Federal ‘super-Agencies´ and Cohen told several armed forces publications that they expected "domestic terrorism" to increase and that the main targets would include Jewish Americans. Michael Vatis, head of a FBI-led "interagency center" echoed this ‘alert´ as did FBI officials Robert Blitzer and Louis Freeh (Reuters, 08-31-99, "US prepares for possible Y2K violence"). Cohen claimed that terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection,[My Ass they Will!]" he told Army Times (Schlafly Report, March 31, 1999). Americans got a look at those "intrusive means of protection" [sic] during the Elian Gonzalez raid last April.

"The growing prospect of terrorism in our own country will almost inevitably trigger an intervention by the military," reported Parameters (Autumn 1997), publication of the Army War College. "Legal niceties or strict construction of prohibited conduct will be a minor concern." Hence the "according to regulations" conduct in Miami and thus the focus of Bush circle Ms. Rice on distinguishing multi-national police from combat forces. (Look for the distinctions to grow increasingly blurred).

Note that while these new "security" scenarios R being planned, Clinton Administration policy through its puppet, Ehud Barak, has brought Israel to the brink of collapse and or coup. Junior level and higher officers R angry and confused as the IDF leftist high command denies them permission to respond to the thousands of armed attacks on Jewish civilians and soldiers. Repeatedly, Barak arranges that each made for media "retaliation" (usually against buildings emptied after telephoning Arafat) gets maximal coverage by global media that present Israel as a bully guilty of taking "Palestinian" land. Thus attacks on Jews around the world R surging, even in nations like Canada (New York Times, 11-15) while the Arabs R emboldened by each concession and failure of Israel or America (as per the USS Cole) to respond strongly. On November 20, for example, the official Palestinian TV station broadcast a call for "shattering the American hegemony, boycotting American products" and "entering into confrontation with American interests using all possible means" (emphasis added, Palestine Media Watch, 11-21-00).

Clinton-CFR policy brings Israel to the point of collapse, arms, trains (via the CIA) and enflames Arab violence and Islamic terrorism. It invites attacks on the "stubborn" Jews throughout the world while preparing for police and military actions that will require "choosing between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection." Many will blame Jews for this loss of rights, thus accelerating the cycle of protective government "interventions." And government may arrange for some prominent Jews to have accidents (as happened with Rabin), in the event that random violence or some kook don´t get things rolling.

~~~

Fuck the Hegelians; Innoculate urself with the Proper Info

[for20]

http://jpfo.org/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm

Raging Against Self Defense:
A Psychiatrist Examines The Anti-Gun Mentality

By Sarah Thompson

~~~

Contrast the sincere pacifist or animal lover with the strident, angry person who wants to ban meat and who believes murdering hunters is justified in order to "save the animals" – or the person who wants to outlaw self- defense and believes innocent people have the obligation to be raped and murdered for the good of society. For example, noted [N#ZI]feminist Betty Friedan said "that lethal violence even in self defense only engenders more violence."

The truly spiritual, pacifist person refrains from forcing others to do what he believes, and is generally driven by positive emotions, while the angry person finds "socially acceptable" ways to harm, abuse, or even kill, his fellow man.

In the case of anti-gun people, reaction formation keeps any knowledge of their hatred for their fellow humans out of consciousness, while allowing them to feel superior to "violent gun owners". At the same time, it also allows them to cause serious harm, and even loss of life, to others by denying them the tools necessary to defend themselves. This makes reaction formation very attractive from a psychological point of view, and therefore very difficult to counteract.


Defense mechanisms are normal. All of us use them to some extent, and their use does not imply mental illness. Advocates of victim disarmament may be misguided or uninformed, they may be stupid, or they may be consciously intent on evil, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are "mentally ill".

Some defense mechanisms, however, are healthier than others. A safe general rule is that a defense is healthy if it helps U to function better in Ur personal and professional life, and unhealthy if it interferes with Ur life, Ur relationships, or the well-being of others. Young children utilize projection and denial much more commonly than do healthy adults. On the other hand, "if projection is used as a defense mechanism to a very great extent in adult life, the user's perception of external reality will be seriously distorted."

Defense mechanisms are also frequently combined, so that an anti-gun person may use several defense mechanisms simultaneously. For example, my unfortunate correspondent uses projection to create a world in which all his neighbors want to murder him. As a result, he becomes more angry and fearful, and needs to employ even more defense mechanisms to cope. So he uses projection to attribute his own rage to others, he uses denial that there is any danger to protect himself from a world where he believes he is helpless and everyone wants to murder him, and he uses reaction formation to try to control everyone else's life because his own is so horribly out of control.

Also, it's important to remember that not all anti-gun beliefs are the result of defense mechanisms. Some people suffer from gun phobia18, an excessive and completely irrational fear of firearms, usually caused by the anti-gun conditioning they've been subjected to by the media, politicians, so-called "educators," and others. In some cases, gun phobia is caused by an authentic bad experience associated with a firearm. But with all due respect to Col. Jeff Cooper, who coined the term "hoplophobia" to describe anti-gun people, most anti-gun people do not have true phobias. Interestingly, a person with a true phobia of guns realizes hur fear is excessive or unreasonable, something most anti-gun folks will never admit.

Defense mechanisms distort reality

Because defense mechanisms distort reality in order to avoid unpleasant emotions, the person who uses them has an impaired ability to recognize and accept reality. This explains why my e~mail correspondent and many other anti-gun people persist in believing that their neighbors and co~workers will become mass murderers if allowed to own firearms.

People who legally carry concealed firearms are actually less violent and less prone to criminal activity of all kinds than is the general population. A person who has a clean record, has passed an FBI background check, undergone firearms training, and spent several hundred dollars to get a permit and a firearm, is highly unlikely to choose to murder a neighbor. Doing so would result in his facing a police manhunt, a trial, prison, possibly capital punishment, and the destruction of his family, job, and reputation. Obviously it would make no sense for such a person to shoot a neighbor - except in self-defense. Equally obviously, the anti-gun person who believes that malicious shootings by ordinary gun owners are likely to occur is not in touch with reality.

[hapoo]

hah!!!
you missed 4:20 by 7 min. :P :heh:

[for20]

"Ancient civilisations" speak out against globalisation (http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/entertainment/afp/article.html?s=asia/headlines/001126/entertainment/afp/_Ancient_civilisations__speak_out_against_globalisation.html)

[for20]

Why Software Should Not Have Owners
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html)

[for20]

Trapped by the System: Parole in America (http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10163)

[for20]

http://download.theforce.net/troops/troops.mov

[renots]

http://www.sightings.com/general6/hardly.htm

Isolation Is Hardly The Problem

By Charley Reese

I was disappointed to hear the president-elect say that the main problem facing America was isolationism and then issue a silly, macho warning against terrorism.

Isolationism is hardly our problem. We are entangled in so many treaties and alliances, and we have American armed forces posted in 100 foreign countries, almost without exception on missions that have nothing to do with either national interests or national security.

As for warning terrorists, let's get real. Most terrorist acts are suicidal. So whom is this tough talk supposed to scare?

Certainly not men who are prepared to die as long as they can take a few of us with them.

I already fear that I will have to adopt a sort of secular prayer in which, from time to time, I will repeat, "Well, at least he's not Al Gore."

Terrorism is neither a police nor a military problem. It is a political problem. The new president ought to shut down that cottage industry on the beltway of so-called terrorism experts and concentrate on developing a foreign policy that will not give people just cause to hate us.

I hope that no one is so naÔve as to think that we are going to escape some kind of payback for having killed 500,000 Iraqi children with the cruelest embargo in human history. It isn't the government of Saddam Hussein we have to fear. We haven't harmed it. It's the Iraqi people whom we have mercilessly tortured.

I don't know why it seems so difficult for politicians in Washington to understand. We have no reason on God's green Earth to harm the people of any country on this planet. If we have a quarrel with a government, then let us confine our actions to that government, not to innocent people. Nor should we ever support, in any way, another government that is harming innocent people. When we do, we become accessories, and then their enemies become our enemies.

We also ought to stop committing war crimes by bombing or shooting missiles at countries when we are not in a state of war. Reprisals are war crimes.

When we respond to an act of terrorism by bombing a country, we are doing exactly what the German army did in World War II when it would killed 50 or 60 civilians in reprisal for an attack on its soldiers.

Some Americans have this kooky idea that if you kill innocent people with a bomb or a missile, instead of a rifle, it's not a war crime. It is. The choice of weapons makes no difference. It's just more cowardly to kill at a distance than it is up close.

I would like to see some of these politicians who profess to be Christians start acting like Christians instead of decadent and pagan Romans. We should be helping people live better lives rather than destroying them.

We should, as George Washington suggested, be extending the hand of friendship and commerce to all the nations of the world while not getting ourselves involved in their internal affairs or regional quarrels.


~~~

I think George Washington had some very good advice.

;0)

[gwilks98]

You people should be ashamed of yourselves. These posts are way to F*ckin long for the G|A staff to be reading...

I know I can't hold my attention that long. How on earth am I sporting a 3.9-4.0 this semester?

[renots]

http://unreel.netscape.com/mondo/shows/this_modern_world/16_genestwo/play.html

[MadMOO]

http://www.sightings.com/general9/death.htm

By Diane Harvey

Part I

The relentlessly purposeful relationship between the dark ruling minds of Earth and the agonizing death of the natural world is mystifying. What could possibly motivate the present owner-operators of this globe to allow planetary life-support systems to degrade into a state of toxic shock? The death-throes of nature intensify, yet the fatally destructive human operations causing this continue unabated on all levels, as if this was not happening, and as if this unfortunate state of affairs had nothing to do with human life. We must ask ourselves if those powerful and secretive men at the helm of this sinking ship, and therefore ultimately responsible for the massive poisoning of an entire planet, have therefore genuinely lost their minds. We wonder if such ardent devotees of greed have finally been overwhelmed and driven mad altogether by such a demonic master-vice. Are the ruling powers of this planet adrift then, without so much as the crudest rudder of self-preservation for guidance? Are we being carried along in a slipstream of utterly reasonless chaos, toward an irreversible fall into the abyss?

There are other possible explanations. Perhaps this is happening because the pleasures of power and wealth are so intensely gratifying to those who fuse with such phantoms that reality pales in comparison. Maybe those who are steering current civilizations as if there was no tomorrow, and all those who are enjoying the cruise blindfolded, deeply prefer not to see what is happening all around them. We wonder how many there are who know or care about the actual state of their food, water, air, all the other forms of life here, and of the earth itself. It is somewhat difficult to overestimate the sheer magnitude of denial in the human race. Is the mental defect of the ruling demonocracy and its myriads of adherents merely the lifelong habit of sheer willful ignorance? It is always possible to develop a shield of such hardened egotism and implacable denial that even immanent self-destruction cannot penetrate.
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However, another type of insanity is even more strongly indicated here. The purposeful destruction of the world may serve a larger purpose. Consider the ramifications if the death of nature is a carefully planned, well thought-out and deliberate act by the faceless rulers of Earth. The forces of global totalitarianism may actually believe they can replace all natural forms of life with man-made simulations. We need only call to mind a portion of the vast array of recent advances in the scientific realm to understand the direction of the juggernaut. Simply consider the future array of replacement possibilities through genetic engineering, cloning, and nanotechnology. Why has there been such an extreme push to bring these new technologies out into the world, regardless of resistance, and despite complete lack of real knowledge of their long-range safety? The answer is that totalitarianism seeks literally for control of the totality. There are wholesale substitutes for nature, man-made fabrications composed of false versions of life forms and life processes, already being forcibly superimposed on natural reality. From food to animals to humans, the corporate-owned replacements for natural life are being unleashed.

The darkest conceivable plan is at work here. In order to even begin to realize the full magnitude of this evil, it is necessary as never before to fathom what nature really means for the spiritual and material existence of the human race. Nature is free. The forces of totalitarianism have understood, that for this very reason, nature has to go. Until now, the dominant power structure has been unable to do anything about this dangerous oversight. Because not only is nature itself free, but it is the source of all practical freedom for our species. Nature is the living body of the world, the source of all human physical existence: the font of our health, well-being, material security, and individual freedom. The inconceivably complex web of life supporting us in this physical world is the literal bedrock of spiritual evolution for every soul on earth. Nature is our own free physical existence itself, and therefore is being methodically annihilated. The reason is because as long as the natural world exists and is free, there remains a dangerous amount of potential freedom available to human beings living in harmony with nature.

The global corporate power structures, inextricably combined with their wholly-owned subsidiary governments, militaries, and educational systems, have minutely worked-out plans for the future of the human race. Even those of us who thought we understood just how evil these people are, have perhaps misunderstood the actual scope of their greed for power and control. Because it is appears that they have engineered the continuing wholesale destruction of nature as the greatest business opportunity of all time. They have in mind to completely remove humanity from God s creation, and to force mankind into total dependency on their replacements . And then to control us absolutely through these very substitutes for natural existence they plan to sell us.

There are multilevel, multipurpose goals that would be simultaneously achieved by such an unthinkably diabolic program. Above all, the disappearance of the natural world would leave the forces of corporate/military/government as the sole custodians of the human race. Think of what it will mean if all human life in the future depends for its survival on the corporate simulations of natural life and natural processes. They may well be quite prepared to offer us solutions to all our problems , through selling mankind the means to exist at all after nature is gone. I propose that the forces of corporate totalitarianism are deliberately destroying this entire world in order to sell their simulated version of it back to us at a profit. And these pieces of fabricated technological substitutes, being fabricated, patented and owned by corporations, would be the means to implement a level of control and manipulation of the human race such as we cannot now even imagine.
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We can glimpse the gist of the future being planned for us by simply extrapolating from present developments. Corporations have already stated their plans to widely patent human genetic material. Obviously they have in mind to own all of our genetic material, and therefore our very bodily existences, preferably before birth. To achieve this they will offer all sorts of inducements to seduce the unwary: health , good looks, talents and abilities will be the bait. The natural desire of parents to provide the very best for their unborn children will do the rest, causing them naively and eagerly to swallow the hook. This plan for corporate ownership of the very bodies of human beings is already well under way. With further advances in nanotechnology, chemical, and electromagnetic manipulation, the potentials for intimate micro-control of the entire human mechanism from conception to death are staggering.

And it is far from only the human kingdom that is meant to come soon under totalitarian ownership. Agribusiness and other allied corporate interests are determined to replace all sources of food from the vegetable kingdom with their patented replacements . What they cannot profit from through worthless substitutes , they buy outright- such as water rights around the world. Drinkable water itself will be very soon owned by multinational corporations and sold to us at a profit. However unbelievably outrageous it is that the last vestiges of nature and all natural resources are coming under totalitarian ownership, humanity as a whole is blandly accepting this as inevitable . And if we are collectively this far gone as a species, and so completely out of touch with reality as to passively accept having our very lives and sustenance stolen, it certainly will be inevitable.

Then there is the little matter of the larger systems in nature coming under some sort of fancied harebrained control by a select and secretive portion of mankind. The United States Air Force, for instance, openly brags of its plans for owning the weather by the year 2025. This means that the arrogance of profit-and-control science has now dementedly progressed to include designs on the totality of all great natural world-systems themselves. There is no longer any rational limit to the thinking of those who steer this spaceship through space. They believe they can now eventually override every last part of the original software of creation and proceed to their own versions of manual controls.

There are other aspects of this monumental world-grab underway that want thinking about. Corporations have accumulated most of the wealth on this planet by polluting it. The race to extract natural resources at all costs, regardless of effects on the environment, has left the earth, water and air far more disastrously poisoned than most are willing to realize. It is beginning to vaguely dawn on even average self-absorbed people that they are now increasingly, even dangerously unhealthy, and so are their innocent children. But perhaps all this misery and suffering in nature and humanity is merely the next carefully worked-out opportunity for the next stage of profiteering. It is entirely possible that one of the next great planned global corporate businesses will be the implementation of new technologies for cleaning up various types of existing pollution. Since all parts of nature are now dangerously poisoned, the potential for fortunes derived from purification of polluted materials and elements is practically infinite. Do such secret methods exist in the hidden pipelines of the same industries that caused pollution in the first place? Could these be offered at just the right moment to save us, at a very high price? You can judge for yourself if multinational corporations could conceivably be so intelligently evil as to understand they could make immense profits both by destroying the world and resurrecting it.

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Are humans really the top of the food chain?

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"Don't Have a Cow, Man ! ~ B Simpson