Any astrologer would have advised them not to start a war then because this position means they’ll become extremely bogged down, and the Iraq War will never end for them. the UP! , April 21.
contents
p.2 Returning to the SexualRomantic Joust 2003 - by fraser
p.3 NOW WHAT WAS THAT OTHER LIE?.... Oh YES! LIMITING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES!
p.4 BLOWING THE SMOKE OFF THE SMOKING GUNS a round-up on the LIES
p.8 ANTI-DRUG LAW RALLY DRAWS 50,000!!
p.16 I’ve no choice but to boycott Israeli products - Oona King, Jewish Labour MP
p.18 G.I.S IN IRAQI CITY ARE STALKED BY FACELESS ENEMIES AT NIGHT
p.19 BEGINNING OF END OF FEDS’ WAR ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA
* * * * * * * * * * * * * ASTRAL ENERGY ANALYSIS FOR WEEK OF JUNE 11 - 18 * * * * * * * * * * * *
“SECURITY THROUGH PARTNERSHIP”
IS THE SUMMER SEASON’S THEME.
Desire is strong this weekend.
It can manifest in romantic dreams of love or in excessive greed
which tempts us to barter our souls away.
On Saturday, Summer Solstice sets in motion
the waning half of the year, dominated by Moon.
We are asked to let go of something.
From Sunday through Tuesday, we have many new beginnings.
Security through partnership is the key to these new cycles.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * *
UP!
returning to the
SexualRomantic Joust 2003
WARNING: THE IDEAS BELOW MAY BE SO REVOLUTIONARY
AS TO DESTABILISE (OR INFURIATE) CONVENTIONAL MINDS
i decided, around the turn of this year, and for a number of reasons, to end the celibacy i’d found myself in for nearly a decade. since my Great Drought had followed a lifetime of being a Freelovin Hippy, celibacy had arrived like blessed rain. what a relief it was to continue whatever i was doing and not be adrenaline-driven in search of i knew not what and anyway, mostly, never found.
returning to the SexualRomantic Joust 2003, now as a Connoisseur, has been full of personal delight and discovery, as well as of confusion and uncertainty, and masses of insight, as well as some fantastically erotic times. and, coming back, with all the illusions of my youth filtered through the mind, body and experience of a 60 year old human, has made me realise that this is an area of Human Activity that merits more attention and investigation than War is currently getting. of this i have no doubt.
i’d begun trying, anyway, to move the UP! away from war, death, lies and tragedy to the Bigger Picture, but how to do it meaningfully? well, here i was actually working nearly daily on a book about intimacy isn’t that the very opposite of war?!!! isn’t making love the opposite of making war? one explores the killing fields, the other explores the erogenous zones around birth.
so why, it suddenly occurred to me, why not include the piece i’m currently working on?! (MORE BELOW)
UP! Laughing is like jogging on the inside.
NOW WHAT WAS THAT OTHER LIE?.... OH YES,
LIMITING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES!
A minimum of 5,000 civilians were killed during the Iraq Invasion, according to an independent research group, and it could reach 10,000, they say, as more evidence is collated.
2,278 civilians died in Gulf War 1, according to the Iraqi authorities at the time. But that’s not counting the Slaughter on the Bazra Road, one of the most disgustingly cruel and horrific terror acts of the last century (which is saying something).
Iraq Body Count (IBC), a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers who compile their civilian casualty statistics from media reports compared these new estimates with 14 other counts which, it says, bear out its findings.
3 completed studies suggest around 2000 civilian deaths in the battle for Baghdad alone.
IBC's total includes a figure of at least 3,240 civilian deaths based on an Associated Press survey of 60 Iraqi hospitals from March 20 to April 20, when the fighting was declining. But many other bodies were either buried quickly in line with Islamic custom or lost under rubble. And we’re not even mentioning the thousands of poor guys in army uniforms (or not) shovelled into mass graves and all the degrading rest of it.
"The totality is now producing an unassailable sense that there were a hell of a lot of civilian deaths in Iraq" said John Sloboda, professor of psychology at Keele University and an IBC report author.
Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a US defence department spokesman, said that under international law the US was not liable to pay compensation for "injuries or damage occurring during lawful combat operations".
Right.
http://www.iraqbodycount.net Visit
UP! You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
370HSSV-0773H
After numerous rounds of "We don't even know if Saddam is still alive", Saddam decided to send George W. a letter in his own writing to let him know he’s still in the game.
Bush opened the letter, which appeared to contain a coded message:
370HSSV-0773H
George couldn't figure it out so he typed it out and emailed it to Colin Powell.
Colin and his aides had no clue either so they sent it to the CIA.
When they couldn’t crack it either it went to the NSA and then to MIT, NASA and finally the Secret Service, but with no joy.
Someone there was, however, smart enough to ask Mossad for help.
Cpt: Moishe Pippick took one look:
"Tell the President he’s looking at it upside down” was his instant advice.
[Joey Ruiz]
UP! When you fall down, wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
introduction
but first a little introduction. i’d just returned from a date which i thought i’d blown and for which, i decided afterwards, i’d been unprepared. it seemed clear in my mind that i was not familiar enough with the erotic approach i’ve fully decided to attain, it’s philosophy. and i felt i needed to write it down, to marshall the arguments, to familiarise myself with the general logic and emotion of my position SO I’D BE MORE PREPARED NEXT TIME!
so, while it’s discussing in a general way, it’s actually PRACTISING for LIFE, which accords more with my new approach, direct and practical, not fluffy and wait-and-see-what-fate-dishes-up. fate will dish up what she wishes in her own good time, but maybe we’re talking here about what happens in the meantime.
like jesus said “God helps those who help themselves”. (MORE BELOW)
UP!
BLOWING THE SMOKE OFF THE SMOKING GUNS
On Sunday, Condoleezza Rice admitted that President Bush used a forged document in his State of the Union speech to prove Iraq represented a nuclear threat: "We did not know at the time maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency
> called ‘covering your ass’
but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course it was information that was mistaken."
UNITED NATIONS INSPECTORS, BELATEDLY PRESENTED WITH THE SAME DOCUMENT, REALIZED WITHIN HOURS IT WAS A CRUDE FORGERY.
> that couldn’t be why the General Disaster’s US Occupation Council don't want them in iraq - to blow the smoke off the smoking gun when they 'find' it, ‘course not!
A LIE A DAY KEEPS THE NEWS MEDIA AT BAY
OR
IMPEACH THE SCOUNDRELS & GIVE EM THE MOST EXPENSIVE THERAPY MONEY CAN BUY!
The Bush administration protected its continuing lie about a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein by repressing the results of interrogations of captured top Al Qaeda leaders. As Monday's New York Times reported, Al Qaeda honchos in separate interrogations told a consistent story a year ago: The terrorist group, and Osama bin Laden in particular, had shunned any connection with Hussein and his government.
The administration was unable to come up with a shred of verifiable evidence, the closest being a purported meeting in Prague between an Al Qaeda member and an Iraqi diplomat. THIS HAS BEEN REPUDIATED BY THE CZECH GOVERNMENT.
Keeping secret all info that contradicted the pro-war line allowed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to fabricate what he called a "bulletproof" connection between Al Qaeda and Hussein. We were expected to believe that our government had hard, definitive intelligence we couldn't be shown just as we were told to trust that U.N. inspectors wouldn't be able to find all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in time to avert disaster!
Thus, with the pattern established, it was not surprising last week to read in the Los Angeles Times of a leaked report from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency secret since its completion last September that indicated the depth of our government's confusion as to the nature of the Iraq WMD threat.
In the same month that U.S. officials were telling The Times that the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency’s report had found “no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities," Rumsfeld was telling Congress that Hussein's "regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas."
DID RUMSFELD KNOW OF THE DIA REPORT?
IF SO, DID HE KEEP THAT INFORMATION FROM THE PRESIDENT?
OR DID HE AND BUSH KNOWINGLY DECEIVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?
AND ISN'T THAT AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE?!
HAS BUSH LEARNED HIS LESSON OF COURSE NOT
IT’S A DELIBERATE PATTERN OF SERIAL DAILY LYING
Only last week, on his trip to Europe, Bush pointed to the 2 mobile trailers that have been dismissed in serious circles for weeks now.
One expert went so far as to say the government's "white paper" on the labs "was a rushed job and looks political." Others questioned myriad technical claims and suppositions in the report that led to the government's conclusion.
"It's not built and designed as a standard fermenter," one top U.S. scientist told the New York Times. "Certainly, if you modify it enough you could use it. But that's true of any tin can."
[Robert Scheer remix]
"I’m not accusing them of cooking the books. I’m accusing them of hyping - it's different. They took the truth and they embellished." Joe Biden, senior Democrat on Senate foreign relations committee.
“It’s not just a case of hyping intelligence, but of asserting something that’s already been flatly discredited” Nicholas D. Kristof / New York Times
US Commanders Say Iraq Fight Is Continuing
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/061403A.shtml
Iraqi Resistance to Occupation is Growing
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/061403B.shtml
Hans Blix: 'We Had No Proof of Iraq WMDs'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/061403C.shtml
Us Oil Pipeline in Iraq Sabotaged
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/061403D.shtml
Mr Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector who retires in three weeks' time, accused:
· the Bush administration of leaning on his inspectors to produce more damning language in their reports;
· "some elements" of the Pentagon of being behind a smear campaign against him; and
· Washington of regarding the UN as an "alien power" which they hoped would sink into the East river.
The Washington Post has cited a former National Security Council counterterrorism aide under Bush as saying the administration's focus on Iraq undermined domestic security and counterterrorism alliances and could fuel al Qaeda recruiting efforts. The evidence used against Iraq, according to the aide, Rand Beers, was "pretty qualified" and many of his government colleagues thought Iraq was an "ill-conceived and poorly executed strategy."
Beers resigned shortly before the Iraq war and is now security adviser for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
"I continue to be puzzled by it. Why was it such a policy priority?"
UP! When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.
monogamy
one more thing: i’ve spent haffa dozen years living moment by moment with each of haffa dozen ladies, 30 years out of 40, so i’ve no wish whatever to spend the remainder of my active years on this planet in any kind of ongoing settled monogamous style relationship - unless it grabs me by the back of the neck which i,of course, don’t rule out :)
but actually where i think i’ll now be operating is a totally changed external world since i was last here, a sexually freed world in which it is all there for those who have freed themselves internally of outdated superstitions and church-driven lies. and i am, and fully intend to explore the most beautiful creations the Goddess has put me among. let’s face it, none of the sociological ideals in whose cause i’ve spent my life fighting have yet succeeded, nor have they rewarded me. but on the sexual frontier we have achieved Total Victory. and sex (in its very widest & deepest meaning)should certainly be my just reward while i’m still active enough to enjoy and explore it :)
bonobos, the last branch of the Great Apes, have something like 28 orgasms daily, on average. somewhere between where we are and where they are must lie our healthy balance, that’s my working theory
here’s the current diary entry am working on. (MORE BELOW)
UP!
OTHER CRAZY HEADS
Hey dudes having a mad time trying to fuck the system. Got tear gassed interrogated looked up all in a day! Bev’s fine. Now travelling to Romania with 8 other crazy heads to a no border camp. love you, lisa and bav.
<email to a parent>
UP! Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
(CURRENT WORK IN PROGRESS)
what do i/we want?
why are we not getting it?
after my eye opener (or eyes-closed actually) yesterday with N, when i caught myself with nowhere to go, i think i need to cogitate some of this thru on paper, step by step by argument. i need to get more familiar with the terrain, develop a bit of a groove so i can confidently open my mouth and at least not jar anything that’s already growing.
if i do this honestly and thoroughly, i should soon be sitting talking to a woman i wish to get to know more intimately and, whatever outdated and unreal moral attitude is holding her back from a full life, the words, ideas and visions should suddenly start pouring from my lips, familiarly, at home with what i’ve thought/felt through.
and let me also remember that this is not designed to fool anyone or impress them (or not on my behalf!) but to prevent what is real and true from being darkened and misled by those olde confusionnes & guilte.
QUESTION:
what izzit i actually want; what do i have to think thru; and then what do i have to do if i want it to come about?
ANSWER
we all want to live in a much more erotic world. a more sensitised, conscious and adventurous world. with more erotic, sensitised, conscious and adventurous people.
i’m good at being on a mission - as long as i have an overall mission, i can trust and allow myself to just create it spontaneously as i go along, with always a way back to my Centre, my Mission.
now i can see that i went on my ‘date’ with N yesterday with no ‘intention’, and no clear sense of my mission. indeed i embarked on it much like i used to.
as i’ve already ruefully noticed, a mere decision to get more involved in this whole world of eroticism is not enough. habits have to change too, which takes a lot more time than a ‘mere’ decision.
i sallied forth on this date, then, with just a forlorn hope, that it would just sort of magically kindle. well, that will happen sometimes (less as i get older) but most times i shall have to work at my play. and i should enjoy it as i’m doing it, that has to be key!!! indeed that should be my enjoyment!! the actual CHANGING them, encouraging it forth in them. that should be my enjoyment, however far it goes. just pushing that edge in a friendly anarchist way tho with Intention, and always enjoying the edge and giving them that edge. sounds great, yummy. that’s what i want!
i’ve always been an experimenter, an existentialist, and must find that again. (MORE BELOW)
UP!
R U GOING TO JUST SIT THERE
AND LET THEM GO ON CALLING THIS A DEMOCRACY?!
ANTI-DRUG LAW RALLY DRAWS 50,000!!
AND GETS TOTALLY BLANKED BY U.S. MEDIA
Despite rainy conditions, more than 50 thousand people showed up at the Anti-Drug Law Rally in front of New York's City Hall... plus an array of Hip Hop artists including Fat Joe, Sean P-Diddy Combs, Mariah Carey, Joe Budden, Memphis Bleek and Reverend Run. Called 'Countdown to Fairness' it was designed to demand a repeal to New York's draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws,and came a day after Hip Hop Mogul Russell Simmons and other activists sat down and had a 2 hour meeting with Governor Pataki to convince him to do the right thing and get rid of the laws.. So far nothing has happened.
For those who don't know, these drug laws, passed in 1973, can hand you a 15 year sentence for a first time drug offence. Among the first mandatory minimum drug law ever passed, it became the prototype for all the laws around the country that followed, a key example being California's 3 strikes laws. The main concern is that the law has been selectively applied as a tool to lock up mostly Black and Brown folks. According to Ben Muhammed of the Hip Hop Summit Action network which helped organise the rally along with a large consortium of grassroots and social justice organizations, a whooping 94% of the people incarcerated under this law are either black or Latino.
The rally had been heavily promoted on local radio stations, thanks to Russell Simmons. Unfortunately you would not have known if you’d glanced at the 11 o'clock newscasts that were shown in NYC, nor much of the Nat'l news.. Of course we should expect that, when does the mainstream ever really give us much love? However, its interesting to note how it was covered.
None of the 11 o'clock local news casts in NY showed anyone speaking, despite the star-studded line-up which also included actors Susan Saradon and Tim Robbins and all sorts of elected officials in addition to all the Hip Hop acts.
I personally made phone calls to Channel 4 which didn't show anything during the 11pm newscast, and CBS news which only showed a 10 second clip. Both TV stations said they had 'more important news stories'’. Among these was a cancelled rock concert, Sammy Sosa's bat, and the creators of the Taco Bell dog getting paid 30 million bucks for copyright infringement.
The guys from Channel 4 directed me to their website so I could peep the feed they showed at 6pm.. It featured a reporter named John Noel who said only a 'hundreds' of people showed up, when in fact more than 50 thousand came through. There were no news stories on the CBS news website.. There was no coverage of this rally on a national level.. In fact one is able to read stories that were carried nationally that talked about Hot 97's Summer Jam concert where Nas and Nelly got booed and how 50 Cent dissed Ja Rule and Lil Kim while wearing a bullet proof vest. No where was there coverage on 50 thousand people attending an anti-drug rally which consisted of Hip Hoppers and mostly people of colour... The Sin of Omission is something we definitely need to keep in mind...
Others who attended were former Mayor Andrew Cuomo, and former Mayor David Dinkins.
http://www.allhiphop.com/hiphopnews/?ID=1967
UP! No matter how hard you try, you can't baptise cats.
GRASS ROOTS CALL FOR RESPONSIBLE NANO POLICY
Two new organisations - the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and the Nanotechnology Policy Forum - are addressing public concerns (fuelled by Bill Joy's article in Wired Magazine and Michael Crichton's novel Prey) about the risks of nanotech.
Governments and venture capitalists invested more than $3 billion in the nanotechnology sector in 2002
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=1960&m=5435
UP!
(CURRENT WORK IN PROGRESS)
tantra
N made 2 mentions of sex where i basically made none. what an idiot i can be! one of them was that she’d been given a book on Tantra Sex . and i let it pass! (she wasn’t that beautiful, but that’s not going to prevent me any more from seeking the real thing between people)
TANTRA could be a key portal into this subject as it’s a current ‘hip’ concept in which everyone’s at least slightly interested. it suggests something that’s not just boring old bonking SIX TIMES A NIGHT! a la SUN newspaper. most of all it suggests in the conventional mind that an alternative approach to the whole subject exists. its very indefinition almost makes it appealing because most sex ISN’T, most sex is laid out in straight lines that people race down like express trains going for it, never daring to look out the windows, let alone alight in some nice place for a while - like a week!
TANTRA suggest something that is somewhat ‘spiritual’ and therefore ‘good’ in most people’s minds. since they also don’t know much about it, and since anything is made up of the wisdom people can put into it, try these lines:
“Tantra’s the closest our spiritual life comes to our physical/ emotional lives. the spiritual life involves the attempt to live beyond our mere personal destiny and certainly our social destinies. Tantra’s similar in that it’s outside social conventions. and it’s also outside the personal destiny.”
(now make it personal, you’re not giving a lecture.)
“like, for example, let’s say you or i have another ‘loving friend’ at the moment, what does that actually mean!? some of our personal relationships will be destined to last for years, perhaps. but are they necessarily about the same thing as a tantric relationship, which is actually outside Time itself, like when 2 lovers are under the covers and the door’s locked?” ain’t nobody’s business but our own, right?”
getting there? am i familiar with the terrain yet? no, but getting there. need to be able to reach my Mission from any starting point, and easily if she mentions Tantric Sex!
“Romantic, after all, was a reaction against the arranged loveless marriage. it didn’t necessarily mean anything monogamous, but they had to insist to their Critics that, oh, of course it would lead to marriage and stability, and of course it didn’t mean open fornication in the streets, but actually Romantic covers the full range of how people can relate personally erotically consciously adventurously with other people, from the 2.3 kids in a semi terraced average to full dissolving of the personal ego in the superpersonal, far beyond any ‘mere’ personal relationship.
“Tantra’s about not coming, yes, everyone’s heard that, but it can even mean putting off penetrative sex until real trust has been built, a not so uncommon thing after all. really it all boils down to Patience. concentrating on the Other’s needs and desires, instead of your own.”
as michael john put it to me in california: ‘it’s not about having fun. it’s about making fun. if you find yourself complaining that you’re not having any fun, make some!’ it’s putting your own final pleasures aside in a worship of the Other’s desires.
which is, anyway, the Man’s role in the sexual relationship, his deepest pleasure being the honour She grants him of being there when She abandons Herself - in a way He absolutely can’t.
“Often it’s about discovering our fantasies, the ones we’ve only lived out so far in their own minds. my own awakening came when i realised i was rushing home after being with a woman to masturbate about all the things i hadn’t done with her! at that moment i grokked the glaringly obvious: the whole point is to live out your fantasies while you’re with the Other!
“obvious i know. but look a little deeper and you might find you’re doing a bit of it yourself.
“Living out our fantasies is Real Life. and if we can find the right tantric partners, these can be very very easily lived in this day and age.”
it’s looking better. it’s looking appealing, real, and hence attractive. and why shouldn’t it be attractive since it’s we the people simply finding ways past those dirty old social tabus!
“Tantra doesn’t even need to involve what we normally call Sex at all! it can just mean getting to know each other OUTSIDE the normal social tabus and barriers. LIKE WE’RE DOING NOW. even 20 years ago you and i talking this freely would have been very daring, even sinful, in both our minds and certainly in the eyes of society. thank god society HAS moved on, but is where it’s now reached the end? are we finally liberated?
“i don’t think so. largely we’re still controlled by those same old tabus, only we’ve internalised them. the jailers are gone but the prisoners are stuck in their old routines! we’re free on a personal level now, Society has given up trying to control us; but then it doesn’t really have to. we control ourselves.”
sex is revolutionary, it’s existential, it cuts across social conventions and frontiers. society, the alliance and finally union of church and state, best keeps control if it can hitch up each young man with one young woman, adequately programmed, for life, so that all his future energies are channelled into his family (and later his children, affairs, work and legal booze) and away from thinking about the state of society.
young men on their own, not monogamously domesticated, get ideas, get restless, start looking at things and how they’re run, but the wife (Daddy’s Girl) can usually kaibosh such ‘unrealistic’ thinking.
so TANTRA is the Freelandia beckoning beyond the social consensus. (MORE BELOW)
UP!
FINAL COURT BATTLE TO PROTECT
WHALES FROM DEADLY NAVY SONAR
The Natural Resources Defense Council needs your immediate support as they go to trial in a case that’s critical to the future of marine mammals on this planet. 2 weeks hence, NRDC litigators will face off against the Bush administration in federal court with the safety of entire populations of whales and dolphins at risk.
This long-awaited courtroom battle is the culmination of their 8 year campaign to stop the U.S. Navy from illegally deploying its Low Frequency Active (LFA) sonar system -- a new technology that blasts ocean habitats with noise so intense it can maim, deafen and even kill marine mammals.
Last year, the Bush administration issued the Navy a permit to deploy LFA sonar over 75% of the world's oceans and to harass or injure up to 12% of every single marine mammal species found anywhere in this vast expanse of ocean!
But before that disaster could unfold, alarmed supporters enabled NRDC to race to court and win a dramatic 11th-hour reprieve for thousands of whales and dolphins when the federal judge blocked global deployment of the sonar system until a full trial could be held and all the evidence heard.
That all-important proceeding, starting June 30th, will determine whether this dangerous technology is finally unleashed - or whether it should be permanently blocked until the Navy obeys the law and demonstrates that LFA would not cause serious harm to ocean life.
Scientists are warning that LFA sonar may threaten the very survival of entire populations of whales, some already teetering on the brink of extinction. At close range, the system's shock waves are so intense they can destroy a whale's eardrums, cause its lungs to haemorrhage, and even kill. Further away, LFA noise can cause permanent hearing loss in marine mammals after a single transmission. At 40 miles away, LFA noise is still so intense it can disrupt the mating, feeding, nursing and other essential activities of marine mammals.
Two years ago, the mere testing of high-intensity Navy sonar in mid-frequency range caused a mass stranding of whales in the Bahamas. Whales from at least three different species died, their inner ears bleeding from the explosive power of the sonar signal.
Just last month, a group of biologists off the coast of Washington state witnessed a "stampede" of distressed marine mammals as a U.S. destroyer, operating a powerful mid-frequency sonar system, passed through. Over the next several days, ten porpoises were discovered stranded on nearby beaches.
NOT ONLY MARINE LIFE IS AT STAKE
In preparing for the upcoming trial, NRDC has uncovered the shocking results of the Navy's own LFA research on human scuba divers. One Navy test subject, exposed to 14 minutes of LFA noise at 160 decibels -- far below the 235 decibels at which the actual LFA system will be operating - experienced uncontrollable shaking in his limbs and lapsed into a seizure-like state that recurred periodically for days afterwards. The Navy's report described him as a "casualty."
Launching a massive acoustic assault on the world's oceans is not “negligible” the Bush administration’s description. Threatening communities of whales, dolphins and humans with injury and death is not “negligible”. Indeed the Bush administration's position on LFA is arrogant, inhumane and, almost certainly, illegal.
But the deployment of this technological menace can only be stopped unless the Natural Resources Defense Council have the financial resources to fight this courtroom battle to the very end and win a permanent ban.
Please help by going to
https://www.nrdc.org/joinGive/join/lfa.asp
http://www.savebiogems.org
UP! Life’s greatest frustration is when you know the answers but nobody asks.
'OUR FINAL HOUR': GLOBAL WARNING
Britain's Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, gives civilisation as we know it only a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21st century. In his new book, he defines the risks as bioterror or bioerror (scientists trigger a matter-squeezing "big bang”, say, or a genetically engineered pathogen is released), self-reproducing nanoparticles that could eat us and every other living thing on Earth, an erupting "supervolcano" blocks the sun, etc...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=1966&m=5435
UP!
WHERE DID EVERYBODY GO?!
20th Century Fox is planning to release the animated film Robots in March 2005, featuring a universe completely inhabited by mechanical people....
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2024&m=5435
UP!
(CURRENT WORK IN PROGRESS)
social tabus
in terms of escaping social taboos, there are only 2 routes.
the first is very well known and practised everywhere. it involves lowering consciousness using narcotics alcohol loud music and various other substances and devices to distract the mind and blot them out so that one can pass UNDER the social tabus.
the downside is that you don’t remember what happened the next morning etc. it’s basically degrading to the consciousness and, hence, the moral authorities who invent and maintain the tabus in the first place can easily make you feel inferior and guilty after it’s all worn off.
the second way is by raising consciousness and passing OVER the social tabus. this Path is very little known, appearing in very few to no recorded sources of which i’m aware.
some of the reasons for this must be that, since more conscious people were involved, and because, hitherto, they were operating in a dangerously uptight society, they were forced and able to keep their behaviour secret, unlike the drunken peasantry outside in the street.
passing social tabus by raising consciousness is a new game, then, largely unexplored or, rather, leaving few records behind.
really, as defined from WITHIN the late xtian but still medieval moral climate in which we still live, the only alternative to some version of the marriage model (including ‘living together’) is a string of ‘meaningless relationships’. by ‘meaningless’ is meant no marriage (or otherwise fixed point) at ‘the end,’ and hence no children - which of course does not follow at all. and, if they’re not meaningless, then they’re ‘casual’ which soon becomes ‘superficial, and so on, i guess, to ‘meaningless’.
all right, since we’re originally drawn to each other to procreate, sex is pleasurable and something we should healthily want to do. the marriage bit was added by the church, and then state, for their own purposes, and hence are of no concern to liberated Tantrics who make their own moral choices today, and whose relationships are about much much more than written or verbal contracts.
fraser. (to be continued)
UP!
FROM THE WILDERNESS 12 CITY AD CAMPAIGN UPDATE
fromthewilderness.com have received more than $84,475 in donations towards running the ad in the Top 12 newspapers in the USA. They need less than $20K to complete the buys.
Way to go! And the full-page ad they ran in the Charleston, S. Carolina area on Friday is STILL making waves!
For full story:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052103_roaring_mouse.html
UP! You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
I have no choice but to boycott Israeli products
Oona King, Labour Member of Parlaiement for Bethnal Green and Bow
The no man's land separating Israel from the Gaza Strip gives way to what can only be described as desecrated land. Razor wire and crushed buildings line the route. Torn slabs of concrete look like tattered cardboard on a rubbish heap. In front of us two Israeli tanks block our path. Behind us, the border will shortly be sealed to prevent Palestinian reprisals for the helicopter attack launched hours earlier against the extremist Hamas leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Rantissi - who is still alive. A Palestinian woman and her young child, on their way to hospital, are dead, and 35 are injured.
Later that afternoon we hurriedly leave the building we are in when a missile lands nearby. As two British MPs travelling with Christian Aid, myself and Jenny Tonge are alarmed. For Gaza residents this is business as usual.
More than 1 million Palestinians live on a tiny piece of land smaller than the Isle of Wight 800,000 of them on less than £1.30 a day. $2!! Their life below the poverty line contrasts with the 5,000 Israeli settlers who occupy 1/3rd of the land and enjoy watered gardens, first world housing and protection by the Israeli army. This protection means Palestinians wait for hours - sometimes days - at Israeli checkpoints, trying to find work or get access to essential services.
The sun is setting on Gaza. From my hotel balcony I hear demonstrations in the street below, and it occurs to me that I can put on a headscarf and slip into the crowd as a Palestinian. No one will guess I'm Jewish, still less that I'm a British MP.
The sounds lead me to the hospital where Rantissi is being treated. Cars rush into the compound, horns blaring, people hanging out of windows. A man carries an injured girl into the hospital.
But most of the Palestinians just stand waiting, for Israelis to stamp their permits, and for a Palestinian state.
They are no different from us: deny them human rights and they will respond with “unacceptable terrorist violence”.
That's what Jews did when they blew up the King David Hotel in the 1940s, killing 94 people. The leader of the Stern Gang, on Britain's "most wanted" list, went on to become Israeli prime minister. Many Jews revere him, even while they abhor the terrorism that ruins their lives today. Israelis must be freed from terrorism - such as yesterday's horrific attack in Jerusalem. All terrorism, not least Palestinian terrorism, is abhorrent. But it is also predictable. When the Israeli government chose Tuesday to launch an attack in Gaza (as it did again after yesterday's bombing), it cannot have been ignorant of its effect on the peace process and the certainty of Palestinian reprisals.
The original founders of the Jewish state could surely not imagine the irony facing Israel today: in escaping the ashes of the Holocaust, they have incarcerated another people in a hell similar in its nature - though not its extent - to the Warsaw ghetto.
Any visitor to the Palestinian ghetto can see the signs: residents are sealed off and live under curfew; the authorities view torture as acceptable and use collective punishment as a means of control; soldiers drive families from their homes, confiscate property and demolish neighbourhoods; unemployment runs in places at 80%, and utilities such as water are withheld; the economy has "client" status, and is subservient to the occupiers in every way.
As the more powerful side in the dispute, it is Israel which must break the cycle of violence, comply with UN resolution 242, and withdraw from territories occupied in 1967. As the occupying power, Israel must uphold the fourth Geneva convention and must
- 1. END ALL COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENTS
2. DISMANTLE ALL ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS
3. IMMEDIATELY REPAIR THE WATER, SEWAGE, AND OTHER ESSENTIAL INFRASTRUCTURE