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"An adult is one who has lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child,
who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated,
who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy,
and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep.
The wise man is a happy child."  -Arnaud Desjardins.


Polonium-210
 IT’S IN TOBACCO AND CAUSES 90% OF LUNG CANCERS!!
by Gregory Sams.
The UK press, in their main story on airborne radiation, continuously refer to polonium-210 as a rare isotope.  It isn’t!  It’s even available at a discount from most international airports.   Whilst it appears as though the death of a Russian spy has alerted us to an exotic new poison, Polonium-210 is already killing tens of thousands of Britons annually!!!
 
In 1990, the American Surgeon General declared on national TV that radioactivity, not nicotine or tar, accounts for at least 90% of all smoking-related lung cancers.

Yes, cigarettes are lightly radioactive .  Tobacco itself is particularly good at absorbing radioactive elements from the air and soil, but the majority of its radioactivity arises from the fertiliser used in tobacco growing, based on rock-mineral apatite.  This mineral contains radon, which decays to deposit deadly polonium-210 in the fine hairs of tobacco leaves, which then embeds in smokers¹ lungs, beaming out alpha radiation for years.
 
Increasing usage of these radon-rich fertilisers, from 1940, is thought to account for an 18-fold increase in the per capita incidence of lung cancers in the USA between 1930 and 1980.  During the same period, though smoking had gone down by 20%, the levels of polonium-210 in tobacco leaves tripled.  In 1982 the New England Journal of Medicine) estimated that a 30-cigarette per day smoker will accumulate radiation in their lungs that is equivalent to 300 chest x-rays per year.
 
Of 33,000 UK deaths per annum from lung cancer, 90% would equate to 30,000 caused by radiation .  Whilst the death of Alexander Litvinenko fixates the media, it is sobering to realise that some 575 Britons die every week as a result of gradually ingesting the same substance that poisoned him.
 
Of course it is neither in the interests of the government nor the tobacco industry to publicise the radiation situation, which they jointly brought about.  Nor do anti-smoking campaigners wish to give attention to confusing data which might show that smoking is not, of itself, the killer. They are well aware of the situation, and their reluctance to do anything about it is nothing short of criminal.
 
Perhaps we could benefit from the polonium-210 publicity bonanza by recognising it as the unnecessary toxin in a common drug.  However socially undesirable is the smoking of tobacco, it need not lead to the suffering and tragic death by lung cancer of so many users.
 
The tragic loss of one Russian ex-spy could turn out to be for the greater good if, through raising this issue, the lives of millions of future smokers can be saved.  SPREAD THE WORD!

Just google Polonium 210 tobacco to verify all this information for yourself.
 http://www.acsa2000.net/HealthAlert/radioactive_tobacco.html
 up!

“Never be an adult in this society,
it means someone who has stopped growing.”  Timouthy Leary.
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Get UP! Stand Up For Your Rights! (and everybody’s too of course! :)
u can’t understand the world without innerstanding yourself
the up! 0047 // 06  11  06
LA- LA- LA- LAP-TOPPLING DA SYSTEM!
u cant innerstand yourself without understanding the world
 Get UP! Don’t Give Up The Fight! (only we don’t mean violence, ok? :)
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.. contents...
p. 02     Long Goodbye = Long Hello
p. 04     Ravers NOT Simulating Weapons Of Mass Destruction! - "They're packed in there, groping each other, having sex, this hippy stuff has to end!'
 p.05     Sensuous Septuagenarian Sex - 9 residents kicked out of retirement home due to orgy.
p. 06     How to Handle a Mugger.
p. 07     The Earth Is Alive - She is a Being   comprised of, and covered and permeated by living matter!
p. 11    Quit Looking For A Way To Win.  We Can't Win. We've Lost.  Sometimes You Lose. This Is One Of Those Times.  Be Brave And Admit It - Michael Moore
p. 14    Letter To The American People by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 29 November 2006.
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\ \) )))) /
______,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,, __fraser
The Long Goodbye = The Long Hello
we have now, as a species, moved into the next stage of our evolution   the Long Goodbye to the Era of the Dinosaurs’ Last Stand .  history will record it as the official end of the Middle Ages.

and while we almost feel sorry for them as they stumble off into jail and onto the Fossil Record to become the nighmares and Fairy Tale monsters of our children, i begin to sense the gigantic cultural paradigm shift that’s begun to replace it.  indeed, the 3 rd millennium, having shrugged off the 2 nd millennium, has now begun!

it’s gonna be so much huger than we CAN imagine!  remember our minds have been conditioned all our lives to not even CONSIDER that such a new way of life could ever  become possible.  such ideas have been made to seem like pot dreams  u with me?  but that natural ally’s gonna replace the alcohol religion, mark my words).

i’ll give two examples i’ve noticed in the uk over this past month which offer an awesome gape down the cultural chasm our culture is just setting off to cross.  both are to do with david cameron, the Tories’ last throw of the dice before Mrs Thatcher’s old once-dominant Conservative Party disappears.  (yes, she finished off the far right as bush has now done in the US by taking it to its obvious and very public extreme).  (why public?  because the ruling elite, the Roman Xtians, hitherto preferring to hide behind the curtains, were forced out into the open by the evolving social scene around them)

now, this is not an argument about david cameron himself, he may or may not actually carry forward the proposals his advisers have been exploring to try shift the political battlefield away from New Labour.  rather, it’s about the kind of ideas his advisers are prepared to contemplate.

if i’d predicted these ‘new ideas’ just 6 months ago you would have laffed in my face.  and i did :)

poverty
the first is about poverty (hardly a sexy topic recently for launching a political campaign u will agree!)  poverty can be defined in 2 ways, you see, and the first is now accepted throughout the West to a greater or lesser degree.  it’s the safety net principle and it came in after the Second World War.  in this social model nobody is allowed to fall below a certain very minimum level.  you could almost sum up New Labour’s (and Gordon Brown’s) position as precisely this.

thus we hear constantly that the poorest in our society have ‘higher employment”, dvd players and mobiles etc and we are reassured every day that their position is improving and it’s mildly okay and all very positive.  WRONG!  we’re also informed every day how alienated the lower orders are becoming, crime in the street, social violence, indeed we’re also beginning to hear of a permanently disadvantaged underclass who may work very hard but at such low wages that they are permanently stressed and can never break free.  and their kids grow up with low expectations and crime, hopelessness, “unsatisfactory” education, wrong-drug addiction and so on...  THAT can’t be good for a society, can it??!!  and do you sense it’s getting better or WORSE ?!  precisely.  isn’t that a very real issue that hardly ever gets mentioned?!

relative poverty
and so we come to poverty’s other  definition, which is VERY different.  it’s called, on the few occasions it gets a mention (UNTIL NOW!), relative poverty.  perhaps we should consider, say these tory advisers, comparing a Society to a camel train on a journey through the wilderness together (yanks can consider a wagon train perhaps).  now, if the riders at the back fall too far behind and those at the front get too far ahead, AT SOME  POINT IT IS NO LONGER A CAMEL TRAIN!   (and it doesn’t make a scrap of difference if the third at the back have dvds!)  IT HAS SPLIT!   do we want our society to go this way?  it wouldn’t actually BE a society any more it would be 2 or 3 separate (and almost certainly hostile) communities.  ever notice the signs around you?  precisely.  they’re ALL around!

the Tories, then, are asking society to seriously consider such things as LEGALLY LIMITING the gap between the top earners and the bottom.  they point to £50,000 rises among bosses this year compared to 5% for the poor.  now i KNOW this must sound like Total Pie In The Sky to amurdericans, but there it is, it is being proposed by the once dominant Conservative Party  and it could well begin in the Republican Party after a spell of Democrat dominance  who will probably assume a New Labour Safety Net kinda approach.

"Hug A Hoody" [young troublemaker]
have yankee readers heard how cameron has placed himself at the forefront of the ecological debate?  have you also heard of his term “Hug A Hoody” ?  he has actually dared to suggest that we look at our increasingly alienated youth with “Love”   yes, he uses the word!  and, just tonight, on Newsnight, the BBC’s leading politics program, there was a long documentary on what’s really going on among the poor forgotten underprivileged youth of our society.  it’s nothing LIKE the image we get from most media who normally only report them when they act unsociably, or make a million overnight.  latest research shows the psychologically disturbed, self-harming and suicidal tendencies of most of those in our courts, the Dinosaur-harsh treatment they receive (if ‘treatment’ is even the right word), and it basically shows that all the money government spends on our present penal(ising) system is exactly the OPPOSITE of what they need.  and we need, if we are ever to be free of it.  could we EVER be free of such social malaise?!  sounds almost like socialism to me, and this is the Tories!

and of course they’re right!   our alienated youth (and the rest of the extreme poor) do need love!  and our society needs to divert funding away from penalising to Loving them!  helping them!  look, you may have understood this for years, but did u ever expect to hear a possible future Conservative prime minister proposing it?!  (i did :) 

The Tosser Within
or take the Conservative Party’s current tv campaign  tho much criticised by the media (always the last to grok the bigger things that are going on) it is an attack on the “Tosser Within”.   a tosser is a sort of greedy spiv who thinks of nothing else than buying all the latest gadgets and fashions to impress others, and who runs into massive debts.  SO THE TORY PARTY (THE BUSINESS PARTY) IS TELLING PEOPLE TO FIGHT THE TOSSER WITHIN!  don’t be stupid and waste money on useless shit!  a far cry indeed from Bush’s post-9/11 exhortation to “keep on shopping” !

throw in a recent Chief Inspector’s call for the UK government to supply junkies with their opium (saving millions in crime) which he says could be bought in directly from Afghanistan, thereby helping to solve the criminal networks involved there, and indeed here, and it’s pretty inescapable how the Future is trying to arrive.

it’s not going to happen next week.  and cameron could be a false dawn.  but a Gigantic Paradigm Shift is already underway, you can see it in the rush to jump on the global warming bandwagon, and i can feel it building and building on the other side of the dam which will eventually give way.  it’s all part of the Long Hello.
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Zombie Ravers NOT
Simulating Weapons Of Mass Destruction!
"They're packed in there, groping each other,
having sex, this hippy stuff has to end!'
>> notice the Paradigm Shift embodied here
Minneapolis, US -  Seven American Zombie ravers spent 3 nights in jail after Minneapolis cops charged them with "simulating weapons of mass destruction."   What they were actually doing was dancing around portable stereos on a Minneapolis street corner, and now they’ve launched a lawsuit claiming officers abused their rights.

The make-up-loving zombies' lawsuit claimed one cop 'heatedly swore he didn't CARE about the zombies' constitutional rights, and he was going to teach the Undead a lesson”, and complained that prison officers even removed one of the zombies' prosthetic legs while he was in jail.

"The musical equipment had no resemblance to weapons of mass destruction, and its purpose and use could easily be ascertained," the claim added, requesting $50,000 in damages.
>> and a trillion bucks in copy cat suits from ravers around the world as the Dinos resisted evolution?!

The case comes at the end of an anno horribilis for the much mocked underground dance sect.  Targeted in March by psycho spree killer Kyle Duff, six zombie ravers were shot dead in Seattle before he turned his gun on himself.

In a suicide note found months after the killings, Duff seethed: “They're packed in there, groping each other, having sex; this hippy stuff has to end.  I've got to do something about it.  These people are screwing up the world,"
(Twin Cities News & Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
[skrufff.com]
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Sensuous Septuagenarian Sex
Shocks Scarborough (New Zealand)
Nine Residents Lose Home Due To Orgy
Richard Kreber US) sent this story in, with this covering letter
Hi Frase - do you know about this? can you find out more?
these people need to know how wonderful & incrediblyinspiring they are
to so many of us old fogeys about never giving up your wildest dreams
and fantasies, no matter HOW old you get.
fukk Melinda and her stiff as shit cronies at Edith Scarborough Home
 - they can come live at my house anytime for the rest of their lives,
do anything they wantand take as long as they need,
and I won't be even a little scared
 - hell, I'd have told the orderlies to turn up the heat -
wish this had happened in MY country, but I hope you can find the time to look into it
and perhaps let some of them know that not everyone in the world
keeps a stick up their arse like Melinda Helterford
- a LOT of us duffers with a lot less gumption are in GREAT admiration
and wish we could thank them for their powerful example
- pass it on if you can, bro - thanks - peace

It's bound to make you smile, it's bound to make your imagination run wild, but for the old folks involved, it ended in tears.

A group of 9 elderly English residents were kicked out of their nursing home after having decided to celebrate their friend's 90th birthday party in style and with gusto ... by having an orgy in the recreation room!

The oldsters, ranging in age from 73 to 98, lit candles, slathered baby oil over themselves, and played music to create a sexy mood.  The 3 romeos and 6 seductresses boogied for about twenty minutes before a staffer, on hearing rumba music, went to investigate.

"They hadn't gotten too far -- I guess it was taking some of the gents a while to get started," said the unidentified staffer.  "But they were all naked.  Believe me, it was the scariest thing I've seen in all my life!"

Why were they booted out?

"This may sound harmless or amusing to some people, but Scarborough has a reputation to uphold.  We cannot tolerate that kind of conduct!"

Although the nursing home endeavoured to keep the story out of the press, enough detail was released to force the well respected Edith Scarborough Nursing Home to admit the bizarre story was true.

In contacting a few New Zealand rest homes to see if this activity set some kind of a precedent, it sounds like our pensioners are a much more sedate group.

"If it is going on, it's a lot more discrete and probably in someone's private room." said one supervisor.  "And that baby oil could be a bit dangerous; someone could slip and break a hip ... or anything, in fact."
 www.goofball.com
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How to Handle a Mugger
by Darren Brown
Being threatened by a violent stranger is one of the most frightening things that can happen.  But if you are unfortunate enough to find yourself in such a situation, do not try to use physical force; rather, try to disarm your assailant mentally.

Once, I found myself walking towards a young couple who were quite drunk and shouting loudly.  I mistakenly caught the man’s eye and heard him yell: “What the hell are you looking at?!”  The girl walked off, but the man lurched aggressively towards me and I had just a few moments to mentally force myself to relax.

I knew I couldn’t fight the man, but I could try to confuse him.

“The wall outside my house isn’t 4 feet high” I said.  “But I lived in Spain for a bit and you should see the walls there  enormous.”  Though this sounds ridiculous, bear with me. 

The man had come at me with a huge amount of force and adrenaline, with an intimidating question designed to put him squarely in the role of aggressor.  But because of the bizarre nature of my answer, he had to try to work out what I was talking about.

This confused him: he was wrong footed and no longer in control of the situation.  At the same time, the potential attacker will experience something of an adrenaline dump which automatically renders him less aggressive.

In this particular situation, my would-be assailant broke down and started telling me about the awful day he had had, culminating in the argument with his girlfriend.  By the time we parted, he thanked me for listening.

Although this was an extreme example, the logic is simple: if you are confronted by an aggressor, defuse their intimidation by simply playing you own incompatible mind game.  I would recommend you have a few obscure song lyrics in your head to recite if such a situation should arise.
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NATO Urged To Plan Afghanistan Exit
As Violence Soars
NATO's fragile unity over Afghanistan has begun to crack ahead of an important summit - with one public call to discuss an exit strategy from the Allied forces' bloody confrontation with the Taliban .
 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112706J.shtml
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The Earth Is Alive
The earth is alive!  She is a Being   comprised of, covered and permeated by living matter.  This living matter is comprised both of what we see as individual beings and as systems of beings. These beings expend work for the survival of the Biosphere, their local environments, and their individual and sometimes related lineages of beings.

Their activity is organised toward the conservation and elaboration of complexity and diversity accrued in    previous and present generations.  This conservation if given enough time results in myriad modalities of sentience and of elaborate potentials for resource-transformation which planets without life, or with only simple forms, dramatically lack.

Earth's inhabitants comprise a single living entity in action, structure, purpose and function .

Earth both as a living being and as a set of living processes acts with sentient and unified intention in myriads of concretely identifiable domains.  Humans represent at once both as a discrete potential in these domains and are also merely an element amongst myriads of such elements.

At any given instant, all the beings of earth may be said to be symbions ;
>> organisms living in symbiosis. 
now pay attention to this next bit cos i can’t get this any simpler.

related and interdependent in arising, persisting, and in all living activity; comprising a wholism from which emerges a verifiable and concretely observable self-awareness, intention, cognition, and sentience arising on a planetary scale. 

It’s an awareness which is not only available to every living being in all domain, but also forms, in a real sense, an aspect of the basic physical and cognitive structure of any living form which evolved or exists here.

An aspect of the 'Body' that Earth's symbionts comprise is manifestly evident in the hyper-distributed connectivity between what appear to be vastly discrete domains of living endeavour.  This ‘Body’ is also apparent in the relationships, structures, behaviours, and products of symbiotic action and inter-relation.

The intentional bio-regulation of Earth's atmosphere, for example, expends hyper-connected global cellular effort in order to conserve & preserve conditions of chemistry and temperature favourable to the survival of terrestrial life and represents one clear modality of the concerted action of this supposedly Body .

Earth's symbionts, in their native & diverse complexity, provide many avenues for the recognition, conservation & elaboration of a real and vital planetary 'Self' .  The greater their diversity, vitality & complexity, the greater the potentials for self-recognition, sentience & intentional transformative planetary bio-activity .

 Planets, once alive, strive by structure and living intention toward these accruals.  Those which have intentionally accrued diversely complex systems of living beings enjoy a liberty of potential which is a function and outcome (moment by moment) of previous cycles of conservation of living complexity and diversity - coupled with the activity of the current vehicles of these conservations.  This potential is a function & outcome of surviving diversity and complexity, and their activity, coupled with environmental flux.
 
The body of earthly symbionts (just as the body of symbiont s in a single human being) are the exponents, activity-body, and source of the Earth's self-awareness, cognitive potentials & sentience.

Earth's activity, goals, potential unity of purpose, wholism or perception of self are necessarily direct or meta-functions of the real experience/activity of its living symbionts in those domains. They are also morphologically reflected in both planetary and symbiotic activity as well as form and systemic function in living beings and systems.

Observing the interactions & inter-relatedness of living systems with a human eye (thus emotional, projective, storytelling) merged with an eye which is more objective reveals instantly that this dance of living forms comprise a single Body .   And the shape of the dances of the inter-actants reveal not only personal but planetary intention, as well as offer doorways into the intention of Life as a process & unity rather than a materialistic dance of competing motes with no sense of their intrinsic hyper-connectivity in the larger expressions of perception, experience & activity.

Earth as a living being functionally values all the modalities of conservation and elaboration present since those modalities represent and conserve the work and transformations of vast lineages of cellular and meta-cellular beings and intentions, each in unique domains.

Earth's inhabitants can thus be said to embody individual and trans-individual natures, properties and values which are the direct results of cellular, intra-cellular, and inter-cellular work over quadrillions of life-years of co-evolutionary expression, struggle, and hope.

The living moment of any being or system is a unique embodiment of that life-intention and actual work which extends backward in every instance, at least to the inception of living matter on earth.  This living moment also embodies and represents a unique and evolving set of vehicles, sources, & exponents of planetary self-awareness, cognition, sentience, preservation, elaboration, intention... and hope.
 http://www.organelle.org/
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"Not all people from Islam are extreme Islamists and not all western people are Bush.  We should not forget that both categories are mistakes in human evolution"  Umberto Ecco (Nobel prize for literature) for Belgium television.
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______,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,_ fraser
if the whole aim of terrorists, with far less military power at their command, is to try to spread terror amongst the stronger population, then the vastly overblown efforts of tony blair prove, simply, that the terrorists are winning.

the prime minister is clearly terrorised (based, probably, in guilt for the million dead and the millions wounded), and is working damn hard to scare the rest of us.  shouldn’t we call that “doing the terrorists job for them”?   more people have died from spontaneous combustion in the last years than from external explosion and yet you would think the Vikings are at the gates! 

he’s basically a foolish chancer is our tony.  he’s never thought things through when a wry smile and a witty idealistic phrase could do the job.  in fact, come to think of it, he’s damn close to “The Tosser Within” in the Conservative’s Party’s latest ad (yankees see below).
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" Rumsfeld's Enforcer," to Resign
Stephen Cambone, the US Defense Department's top intelligence official known as the outgoing defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s "henchman", will resign on December 31, the Pentagon said on Friday.  Cambone is widely regarded as one of the architects of, for want of a better word, post-war Iraq planning!
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120206X.shtml
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Souls Of A New Machine?
Intelligence augmentation (IA) is a catch-all term for a wide variety of methods that use actual human beings, with actual human brains, as part of computer programs.  The idea is that by having a human deal with the specific parts of a problem that are difficult or impossible for a computer, but trivial for you or me, you can have a program that seems to possess real human intelligence.

Example: Google gets hundreds of people to label their images with keywords, something that would be impossible with just computer analysis.
Boston Globe, November 26, 2006
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Halliburton Unit to Pay $8 Million for Overbilling
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120106A.shtm l
A Halliburton subsidiary agreed to pay the government $8 million to resolve accusations of overbilling related to the firm's work for the Army in the Balkans .
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120106A.shtm
>> we should get to iraq by the end of the millennium  or in the first year of the Democratic president :)
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‘Tales from the Embassy.’  Volume II.  REVIEW
Dave Tomlin.  Iconoclast Press, 35 Parkhill Rd, London NW3 2YE.   0207 483 1495
a couple of years ago i mentioned an inneresting little book called Tales from the Embassy.    well, this is the follow-up.  volume 2.

the Embassy was the Cambodian Embassy’s million pound house in Hampstead, London.  in 1967, when the cambodian government withdrew its staff (for reasons nobody can remember except it was probably after the US bombed the country) a group of eccentric squatters stumbled across the imposing mansion, which still retained its former munificence and splendid contents  like a grand piano and such.

under the non-guiding zen light of dave tomlin, the writer, they transform the premises into a thriving very alternative ‘cultural centre’, “well laced”, as the synopsis says, ”with Asian gurus, crazed musicians, mad poets, flower power radicals and general purpose nutters.”

u get the picture.  the book is, in many ways, a compendium of the Great, the Good and the Plain Helpless of the hampstead/notting hill section of ‘60s counter culture.  see who you can recognise.  neil oram, author of the legendary 24 hour play, The Warp, appears as Ram O’Neil.   I think I spotted The Third Ear Band disguised as Trios Eros.

this second volume is, if anything, better than the first.  dave is finding his style.  we move out of the embassy and spend a third of the book with “the Count” and that legendary secret community of travelling aristocratic drop outs in gypsy caravans who tootled olde stylee through the leafy backtrails of the south west.  i guess the Count must be that hippy Marquis of Bath?  the one with the “wifelets” ?

all in all a damn good read and highly recommended, it approaches real literature in several places, and that’s very rare in these end days.  dave assumes the character of smith in the stories and, indeed, relates fantabulous events from an ‘ordinary’ zen perspective.  it’s way better than the american hippy writers who inflate so much that you no longer can believe a word.  dave is the opposite:  i would almost stake my life that every detail is minutely accurate.  

still, it’s all a shade too ‘ordinary’ for me.  i’m more into showing the cosmic and psychedelic in the ordinary, which is almost the opposite direction.  where i wanted to share (or at least glimpse) the author’s thrill or vision, it often seemed a bit mixed with that english character trait that’s caused by seeing too many false springs each year to ever quite believe that any AMAZING change could ever happen.  in the words of someone on radio 4 last week:  “americans know it’s serious, but they don’t think it’s hopeless.  the english know it’s hopeless, but they don’t think it’s serious.”
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Quit Looking For A Way To Win.  We Can't Win.
We've Lost.  Sometimes You Lose.
This Is One Of Those Times.  Be Brave And Admit It.
by Michael Moore
We have now been in Iraq longer than we were in all of World War II.

That's right.  We were able to defeat all of Nazi Germany, Mussolini, and the entire Japanese empire in LESS time than it's taken the world's only superpower to secure the road from the airport to downtown Baghdad.

And we haven't even done THAT.  After 1,347 days, in the same time it took us to sweep across North Africa, storm the beaches of Italy, conquer the South Pacific, and liberate all of Western Europe, we cannot, after over 3 and 1/2 years, even take over a single highway and protect ourselves from a homemade device of two tin cans placed in a pothole.  No wonder the cab fare from the airport into Baghdad is now running around $35,000 for the 25-minute ride.  And that doesn't even include a friggin' helmet!

Is this utter failure the fault of our troops?  Hardly.  That's because no amount of troops or choppers or democracy shot out of the barrel of a gun is ever going to "win" the war in Iraq.  It is a lost war, lost because it never had a right to be won, lost because it was started by men who’ve never been to war, men who hide behind others sent to fight and die.

Let's listen to what the Iraqi people are saying, according to a recent poll conducted by the University of Maryland:  Yes, the vast majority of Iraqi citizens believe that coalition soldiers should be killed and maimed!  So what the hell are we still doing there?  Talk about not getting the hint.

There are many ways to liberate a country. 
·        Usually the residents of that country rise up and liberate themselves.  That's how America did it. 
·        You can also do it through non-violent, mass civil disobedience.  That's how India did it.
·        You can get the world to boycott a regime until they are so ostracised they capitulate.  That's how South Africa did it.
·        Or you can just wait them out and, sooner or later, the king's legions simply leave (sometimes just because they're too cold).  That's how Canada did it.

The one way that DOESN'T work is to invade a country and tell the people, "We are here to liberate you!" -- when they have done NOTHING to liberate themselves.  Where were all the suicide bombers when Saddam was oppressing them?  Where were the insurgents planting bombs along the roadside as the evildoer Saddam's convoy passed them by?  I guess ol' Saddam was a cruel despot -- but not cruel enough for thousands to risk their necks.  "Oh no, Mike, they couldn't do that!  Saddam would have had them killed!"  Really?  You don't think King George had any of the colonial insurgents killed?  You don't think Patrick Henry or Tom Paine were afraid?  That didn't stop them.  When tens of thousands aren't willing to shed their own blood to remove a dictator, that should be the first clue that they aren't going to be willing participants when you decide you're going to do the liberating for them.

A country can HELP another people overthrow a tyrant (that's what the French did for us in our revolution), but after you help them, you leave.  Immediately.  The French didn't stay and tell us how to set up our government.  They didn't say, "we're not leaving because we want your natural resources."  They left us to our own devices and it took us six years before we had an election.  And then we had a bloody civil war.  That's what happens, and history is full of these examples.  The French didn't say, "Oh, we better stay in America, otherwise they're going to kill each other over that slavery issue!"

The only way a war of liberation has a chance of succeeding is if the oppressed people being liberated have their own citizens behind them -- and a group of Washingtons, Jeffersons, Franklins, Ghandis and Mandellas leading them.  Where are these beacons of liberty in Iraq?  This is a joke, and it's been a joke since the beginning.  Yes, the joke's been on us, but with 655,000 Iraqis now dead as a result of our invasion (source: Johns Hopkins University), I guess the cruel joke is on them.  At least they've been liberated, permanently.

So I don't want to hear another word about sending more troops (wake up, America, John McCain is bonkers), or "redeploying" them, or waiting 4 months to begin the "phase-out."    There is only one solution and it is this: Leave .  Now .  Start tonight.  Get out of there as fast as we can. 

As much as people of good heart and conscience don't want to believe this, as much as it kills us to accept defeat, there is nothing we can do to undo the damage we have done.   What's happened has happened.  If you were to drive drunk down the road and you killed a child, there would be nothing you could do to bring that child back to life.  If you invade and destroy a country, plunging it into a civil war, there isn't much you can do 'til the smoke settles and blood is mopped up.  Then maybe you can atone for the atrocity you have committed and help the living come back to a better life.

The Soviet Union got out of Afghanistan in 36 weeks.  They did so and suffered hardly any losses as they left.  They realised the mistake they’d made and removed their troops.  A civil war ensued.  The bad guys won.  Later, we overthrew the bad guys and everybody lived happily ever after.  See!  It all works out in the end!

The responsibility to end this war now falls upon the Democrats .  Congress controls the purse strings and the Constitution says only Congress can declare war.  Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi now hold the power to put an end to this madness.  Failure to do so will bring the wrath of the voters.  We aren't kidding around, Democrats, and if you don't believe us, just go ahead and continue this war another month.  We will fight you harder than we did the Republicans. 

This is what we demand:

1.  Bring the troops home now.  Not six months from now.   NOW.  Quit looking for a way to win.  We can't win.   We've lost.  Sometimes you lose.  This is one of those times.  Be brave and admit it.

2.  Apologise to our soldiers and make amends.  Tell them we’re sorry they were used to fight a war that had NOTHING to do with our national security.  We must commit to taking care of them so that they suffer as little as possible.  The mentally and physically maimed must get the best care and significant financial compensation.  The families of the deceased deserve the biggest apology and they must be taken care of for the rest of their lives.

3.  We must atone for the atrocity we have perpetuated on the people of Iraq. There are few evils worse than waging a war based on a lie, invading another country because you want what they have buried under the ground. Now many more will die. Their blood is on our hands, regardless for whom we voted. If you pay taxes, you have contributed to the three billion dollars a week now being spent to drive Iraq into the hellhole it's become. When the civil war is over, we will have to help rebuild Iraq. We can receive no redemption until we have atoned.


In closing, there is one final thing I know.  We Americans are better than what has been done in our name.  A majority of us were upset and angry after 9/11 and we lost our minds.  We didn't think straight and we never looked at a map.  Because we are kept stupid through our pathetic education system and our lazy media, we knew nothing of history.  We didn't know that WE were the ones funding and arming Saddam for many years, including those when he massacred the Kurds.  He was our guy.   We didn't know what a Sunni or a Shiite was, never even heard the words.  80% of our young adults (according to National Geographic) were unable to find Iraq on the map.  Our leaders played off our stupidity, manipulated us with lies, and scared us to death.

But at our core we are a good people.  We may be slow learners, but that "Mission Accomplished" banner struck us as odd, and soon we began to ask some questions.  Then we began to get smart.  By this past November 7th, we got mad and tried to right our wrongs.  The majority now know the truth.  The majority now feel a deep sadness and guilt and a hope that somehow we can make it all right again.

Unfortunately, we can't.  So we will accept the consequences of our actions and do our best to be there should the Iraqi people ever dare to seek our help in the future.  We ask for their forgiveness.

We demand the Democrats listen to us and get out of Iraq now.
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com
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Nearly as Many Contractors as Soldiers in Iraq
100,000 government contractors are operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors.  This total is approaching the size of the US military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120506A.shtml
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Letter To The American People
by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
29 November 2006
Noble Americans,
Were we not faced with the activities of the US administration in this part of the world and their negative ramifications on the daily lives of our peoples, coupled with the many calamities caused by the US administration and the tragic consequences of US interference in other countries...

Were the American people not God-fearing and justice-seeking, while the US administration actively conceals the truth and impedes an objective portrayal of current realities...

And if we did not share a common responsibility to promote and protect freedom and human dignity and integrity...

Then, there would have been little urgency to have a dialogue with you.


While Divine providence has placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart, we should be cognisant that our common human spirit, which proclaims the exalted worth of all human beings, has brought our two great nations closer together.

Both our nations are God-fearing and readily embrace the promotion of human ideals such as compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, securing justice and equity, and defending the innocent and the weak against oppressors and bullies.

The pure human essence of the two great nations of Iran and the United States testify to the veracity of these statements.


Noble Americans,
Our nation has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world.

Hundreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots are living amongst you in friendship and peace, and are contributing positively to your society.  Our people have been in contact with you over the past many years and have maintained these contacts despite the unnecessary restrictions of US authorities.

As mentioned, we have common concerns, face similar challenges, and are pained by the sufferings and afflictions in the world.

We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening misery of the Palestinian people.  Persistent Zionist aggressions are making life more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine.  In broad day-light, in front of cameras and before the eyes of the world, they are bombarding defenceless civilians, bulldozing houses, firing machine guns at students in the streets, and subjecting their families to endless grief.

No day goes by without a new crime.

Palestinian mothers, like Iranian and American mothers, love their children, and are bereaved by the their imprisonment, wounding and murder.  What mother wouldn't?

For 60 years, the Zionist regime has driven millions of the inhabitants of Palestine from their homes.  Many refugees have died in the Diaspora and in refugee camps.  Their children have spent all their youth in these camps and are aging, still longing to return to their homeland.

You know only too well that the US administration has persistently provided blind and blanket support to the Zionist regime, has emboldened it to continue its crimes, and has prevented the UN Security Council from condemning it.

Nobody can deny such broken promises and grave injustices towards humanity by the US administration.

Governments are there to serve their people.  No people wants to side with any oppressors.  But regrettably, the US administration disregards even its own public opinion and supports the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people.


Let's take a look at Iraq .  Since the commencement of the US military presence there, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, maimed or displaced.  Terrorism in Iraq has grown exponentially. With the presence of the US military in Iraq , nothing has been done to rebuild the ruins, to restore the infrastructure or to alleviate poverty.  The US Government used the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, but later it became clear that was just a deception.

Although Saddam was overthrown and people are happy about his departure, the pain and suffering of the Iraqi people has persisted and even accelerated.

In Iraq, about 150,000 American soldiers, separated from their families and loved ones, are operating under the command of the current US administration.  A substantial number of them have been killed or wounded and their presence in Iraq has tarnished the image of the American people and government.

Their mothers and relatives have, on numerous occasions, displayed their discontent with the presence of their sons and daughters in a land thousands of miles away from US shores.  American soldiers often wonder why they have been sent to Iraq.

I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure.


Noble Americans,
You have heard that the US administration is kidnapping its presumed opponents from across the globe and arbitrarily holding them without trial or any international supervision in horrendous prisons it has established in various parts of the world.  God knows who these detainees actually are, and what terrible fate awaits them.

You have certainly heard the tragic  stories of Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib prisons.  The US administration attempts to justify them through its “war on terror.”  But every one knows that such behaviour offends global public opinion, exacerbates resentment and thereby spreads terrorism, while tarnishing the US credibility among nations.

The US administration's illegal, immoral behaviour is not even confined to outside its borders.  You are witnessing daily that, under the pretext of “the war on terror,” civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed.  Even the privacy of individuals is fast losing its meaning.  Judicial due process and fundamental rights are trampled upon.  Private phones are tapped, suspects are arbitrarily arrested, sometimes beaten in the streets, or even shot.

I have no doubt that the American people do not approve of this behaviour and indeed deplore it.

The US administration does not accept accountability before any world organisation.  Indeed the US administration has undermined the credibility of international organisations like the United Nations and its Security Council.  But, I do not intend to address all the challenges and calamities in this message.

The legitimacy, power and influence of a government do not emanate from its arsenals of tanks, fighter aircrafts, missiles or nuclear weapons.  They reside in sound logic, quest for justice and empathy for all humanity. 

Undoubtedly, the American people showed their discontent with their government’s behaviour in the recent elections.  I hope that in the wake of the mid term results, President Bush’s administration will heed the message of the American people.


My questions are the following:
Is there not a better approach to governance?

Is it not possible to put wealth and power in the service of peace, stability, prosperity and the happiness of all peoples through a commitment to justice and respect for the rights of all nations, instead of aggression and war?

We all condemn terrorism, because its victims are the innocent.

But can terrorism be contained and eradicated through war, destruction and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents?

If that were possible, then why has the problem not been resolved?

The sad experience of invading Iraq is before us all.

What has the US administration’s blind support for the Zionists brought for the American people?  It is regrettable that the interests of these occupiers supersede the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world.

What have the Zionists done for the American people that the US administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors?  Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?

Now that Iraq has a Constitution and an independent Assembly and Government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US soldiers home, and to divert the astronomical military expenditures to the welfare and prosperity of the American people?  As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness.


I'd also like to say a word to the winners of the recent US elections:

The United States has had many administrations; some have left a positive legacy, others are neither remembered fondly by the American people nor by other nations.

Now that you control an important branch of the US Government, you will also be held to account by the people and by history.

If the US Government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and Justice, it will remedy some of the past afflictions, and alleviate some of the global hatred of America.  But if the approach remains the same, the American people may similarly reject the new electoral winners.


To sum up:
It is possible to base government on an approach that is distinctly different from one of force and injustice.

It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion.

It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without threats, imposition or war.

It is possible to lead the world towards the aspired perfection by adhering to unity, monotheism, morality and spirituality and drawing upon the teachings of the Divine Prophets.

Then, the American people, who are God-fearing and followers of Divine religions, will overcome every difficulty.


What I have stated represents some of my anxieties and concerns.

I am confident that you, the American people, will play an instrumental role in the establishment of justice and spirituality throughout the world.  The promises of the Almighty and His prophets will certainly be realised; Justice and Truth will prevail and all nations will live a true life in a climate replete with love, compassion and fraternity.

I pray to the Almighty to bless the Iranian and American nations and indeed all nations of the world with dignity and success.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 29 November 2006
 http://www.finalcall.com/absolutenl/t.aspx?n=53&l=86
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