Circle of 13Circle of 13Dismantling the propaganda matrix - Love, peace, freedom, art, beauty, empowerment Articles
'The clear purpose of the "special groups" alarm is to implicate Sadr as an
2008-04-14 12:26:00 From: Endless Enemies by Justin Raimondo It used to be that the Sunni "dead enders," as Donald Rumsfeld called them, were the face of the enemy in Iraq. Then the administration very quickly learned that in order to sell the war to the American people, they had to somehow connect it to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Osama bin Laden, and so al-Qaeda in Iraq ? a group that never existed prior to the invasion ? was given top billing. But what are these "Special Groups " who have suddenly stolen the limelight? Supposedly they are armed "rogue" elements of the various party militias that have been funded and trained by Iran, and ? significantly ? Lebanon's Hezbollah organization, to carry out terrorist activities in Iraq, and, presumably, kill American and Iraqi government soldiers. An elaborate demonology has grown up in the War Party's circles to buttress this shaky and ill-defined concept: go here, here, and here to examine its many twists and turns. This narrative is... More About: Purpose , Alarm , Clear
Food riots to worsen without global action - UN
2008-04-14 12:08:00 Food riots in developing countries will spread unless world leaders take major steps to reduce prices for the poor, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Friday. Despite a forecast 2.6 percent hike in global cereal output this year, record prices are unlikely to fall, forcing poorer countries' food import bills up 56 percent and hungry people on to the streets, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said. "The reality is that people are dying already in the riots," Diouf told a news conference. [ ... ] Diouf called on heads of state and government to attend a food crisis summit at FAO headquarters in Rome on June 3-5. He said the priority was a "massive seed transfer" -- to ensure farmers in poor countries could buy seeds, fertiliser and feed at prices they could afford. Other necessary measures include creating financial mechanisms to ensure poorer food importing countries could continue to buy the food they need and give a larger p... More About: Food , Action , Global , Riots
"Sheikh Osama Bin Laden is in good health"
2008-04-07 12:25:00 From Zawahri says bin Laden in good health : Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was well and reports speculating about his sickness were false, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri said in a recording on Wednesday."Sheikh Osama bin Laden is in good health," Zawahri, who is also a doctor, said in response to questions compiled by Islamist Web sites. "The ill-intentioned always try to circulate false reports about him being sick."Zawahri, who, like Saudi-born bin Laden is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan, also denounced the United Nations and vowed to attack Jews both within and outside Israel."The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims," he said. "It has legalised the creation of the state of Israel and its seizure of Muslims' land ... it has legalised the crusader presence in Afghanistan ... and Iraq," he said in a 104-minute audio recording posted on the Internet.He defended attacks on U.N. offices in an apparent reference to twin bomb attacks on U... More About: Health , Osama Bin Laden , Good , Bin Laden
Porsche goes to court over congestion charge
2008-04-07 12:21:00 The introduction of the higher London congestion charge could leave Porsche nursing tens of millions of pounds in lost sales, the sports car maker said yesterday as it stepped up its attempt to have the higher tax overturned. Porsche and other claimants, including London businesses and residents, yesterday formally launched a High Court challenge to London Mayor Ken Livingstone's plan to hike the congestion charge in the capital from £8 to £25 for gas-guzzling vehicles. ~ more... ~ More About: Congestion , Charge
Israel to hold 'routine' nationwide emergency drill
2008-04-07 12:17:00 From CNN : Israel 's plan to test its nationwide emergency response this week "is only a drill" and has nothing to do with "exaggerated" reports of heightened tensions with Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday. "I would like to make it unequivocally clear that this is a routine drill," Olmert said before the start of his weekly Cabinet meeting. "The State of Israel is not intent on any violent confrontation in the north. On the contrary, we have said more than once that we have an interest in holding peace negotiations with Syria," he said. "They know exactly what our expectations are. I can also say that we know what their expectations are; if these conditions will bear fruit, then this is what we are intent on and nothing else." The drill will include a minute and a half-long siren that will sound across Israel at 10 a.m. Tuesday (3 a.m. ET) except in the southern town of Sderot, a frequent target of rocket attacks launched by Palestinian militants in G... More About: Hold , Emergency , Drill
Hopkins health site restores 'abortion' as search term
2008-04-07 12:14:00 The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has restored the word "abortion" as an acceptable search term on a reproductive health Web site that's funded by the government. The restriction on searches about abortion drew criticism from some health advocates and librarians who called it censorship. After learning that the word "abortion" was being ignored by the site's search engine, the dean of the Bloomberg school ordered it restored. Doctor Michael Klag says he'll be asking questions about why the decision was made to limit searches. The site, known as POPLINE, is funded by the United States Agency for International Development. ~ source ~ More About: Abortion , Search , Site
Ghost of human rights advocacy past
2008-04-07 12:08:00 After 40 Years, Let's Ratify U.N. Bill of Rights To the Editor: Richard N. Gardner, in ''Eleanor Roosevelt's Legacy: Human Rights'' (Op-Ed, Dec. 10), recounts the integral participation of Mrs. Roosevelt in drafting the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights on the 40th anniversary of the declaration's adoption. ''Mr. Reagan's Human Rights Conversion,'' an editorial the same day, congratulated the Administration for paying increasing attention to human rights in regard to United States foreign policy. Both pieces justly praised the declaration and its contribution to raising consciousness of human rights around the world. What was missing was mention of the declaration's three companion documents: the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Civil and Political Covenant's Optional Protocol. Together with the declaration, these documents compose the United Nations International Bill of... More About: Ghost , Past
Eugenics: Molloch's paring knife
2008-04-07 10:34:00 From The Forgotten History of Eugenics : Eugenics fed off of the fears of white middle and upper class Americans. In the early 20th century, the United States was experiencing rapid social and economic change. As the nation became more industrial and urban, millions of poor immigrants from southern and eastern Europe flocked to the United States seeking a better life. Simultaneously, thousands of African Americans were beginning a great migration to northern cities from the Jim Crow South. Competition for jobs intensified existing frictions along class and racial lines. Periodic economic recessions created further social unrest. Labor unions, civil rights groups, and the woman's suffrage movement pressed for greater equity. At the same time nativist and racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan pulled in the opposite direction. It was out of this cauldron of social upheaval that the American eugenics movement emerged. It promised prosperity and progress, not through... More About: Knife
Kansas City's 'Shadowy Anti-Fun Directorate'
2008-04-07 09:56:00 From PLOG - The Pitch group Blog : Ren McCormack for City Council: I'd never heard of the Alcohol Beverage Advisory Group before, but doesn't it sound absolutely kick-ass? Unfortunately, its name is deceptive, just like the American Center for Wildlife Conservation Policy, a conservative think-tank advocating for anti-Mexican eugenics programs. It's all trickery. Ideally, the Alcohol Beverage Advisory Group would consist of Jimmy Buffett, Vince Vaughn, David Lee Roth and most of the people that I work with, including two Jen Chens. However, the reality is that the board consists of "12 members of the community" and "the manager of Regulated Industries Division," otherwise known as the Division most likely to push for the adoption of race-based eugenics programs due to sheer sociopathic misanthropy. [ ... ] I think I heard that they made dancing illegal, too. Anyway. They're meeting to discuss the "proposed ordinance changes" by which they make the city's fun... More About: Kansas , Anti
Globalization and Nationalism - The New Deal
2008-04-07 09:50:00 From The Edinburgh Lectures - March 4, 2008 : Source: Scottish Government " ... The underlying puzzle has always been not why there are so many nation states and distinct ethnic cultures but - why are there so few. In his classic Nations and Nationalism (1983) the social anthropologist Gellner observes that, although no one will ever know exactly, there can't be less than somewhere between six and eight thousand identifiable ethno-linguistic populations scattered round the globe. Why, then, are there less than two hundred or so national states? When he was writing in 1983 there were well under two hundred U.N. representatives, and though this number has grown, forecasts for the later twenty-first century don't usually envisage more than something between two hundred and twenty or thirty new (and naturally mostly smaller) independent states. Gellner's characteristic explanation of this disparity was in terms of overall social and cultural development. Th... More About: Globalization , Deal
Fluoride reconsidered
2008-04-07 09:36:00 From 'Second Thoughts about Fluoride,' Reports Scientific American : "Fluoride, the most consumed drug in the USA, is deliberately added to 2/3 of public water supplies theoretically to reduce tooth decay, but with noscientifically-valid evidence proving safety or effectiveness," says lawyer Paul Beeber, President, New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation. Fagin, award-wining environmental reporter and Director of New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program, writes,"There is no universally accepted optimal level for daily intake of fluoride." Some researchers even wonder whether the 1 mg/L added into drinking water istoo much, reports Fagin. After 3 years of scrutinizing hundreds of studies, a National Research Council (NRC) committee "concluded that fluoride can subtly alter endocrine function,especially in the thyroid -- the gland that produces hormones regulating growth and metabolism," reports Fagin. Fagin quotes ...
'1984: Grace Commission Report under Ronald Reagan showed IRS is a fraud th
2008-04-07 08:39:00 "100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt ... all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government." -Grace Commission report submitted to President Ronald Reagan - January 15, 1984 Ronald Reagan was promptly shot after he dared to criticize the Fed, on the same day that the Pope was shot. After recovering, he changed his mind and praised the Fed. About seven US Presidents have been assassinated for not cooperating with the Transatlantic Banking Dynasties (William Henry Harrison, poisoned, in 1841, Zachary Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and John F. Kennedy 1963; 7 if FDR's poisoning is counted). Most of us feel sick when we realize that Not one dime of IRS money goes to the US Gov't, according to Reagan's Grace Commission: it all goes to pay interest on a bogus debt to the Private Federal Reserve (FED), just to allow paper money to circulate as "Federal Reserve... More About: Fraud , Report
'India is seeing a revival of Sufi music as a buffer against the troubled t
2008-04-06 12:15:00 From India connects with Sufi music after nearly 200 years : "Bulla, I know not, who I amNot a believer inside the mosque,Nor a pagan disciple of fake ritesNot the pure among the impure…Neither fire, nor from air is my birth" These secular lyrics penned by Sufi mystic Baba Bulleh Shah in the 17th century and set to music by a folk singer on his acoustic guitar had the young and the old - Hindus, Muslims and people of other faiths - rocking in India. Rabbi Shergill was not the only one. Several contemporary Indian musicians have been travelling back in time to cull influences from Sufi music - a legacy bequeathed by 13th century poet-saint Jalaluddin Muhammed Rumi, the founder of the cult of the "whirling dervishes", the first-generation Sufi minstrels. These "spiritual rebels" sought to commune with god through their poetry, music and dance; instead of throughdogmatic religion. As the politics of violence gather force everywhere in the world, India is seeing a ... More About: Music , Troubled , Buffer
The mystic neem tree: Myth and fact
2008-04-06 12:09:00 It is considered one of the sacred trees in India from time immemorial. It is the symbol or the abode of Goddess Mariamman. To say in exact terms of the devotees 'neem tree' is considered as the 'Thala Virutcham' (a favourite tree of Goddess Mariamman). People, who go to the temples worship the 'neem' tree as well as, apply sacred tilak to it. To cap it all, recently a neem tree, whose trunk has been bulging for the last several weeks, was considered as pregnant, for the bulging of the trunk exactly resembled the belly of a woman in her third trimester. So the neem tree was adorned with bangles and flowers on Tuesday by residents of Reddypettai village in Kanchipuram district as part of the 'Valaikappu' celebrations for the tree. [ ... ] On the other hand, the neem tree is held in high esteem for its utility in other respects. Its leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds etc have a medicinal value and the wood of the tree serve as a building material. In fa... More About: Fact , Tree , Myth
Bob Fitrakis: City of Peace
2008-04-06 12:00:00 From The Free Press (via Scoop) : The great moral issue of our era is the illegal war in Iraq. Like the issues of slavery, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War in past epochs, silence on this issue equals complicity. On March 17, the Citizens Grassroots Congress presented a Columbus "City for Peace " resolution to the Columbus City Council. Notably, 283 cities, 10 counties and 17 states across the nation have passed peace resolutions, from Arrowsic, Maine to South Charleston, West Virginia to Missoula, Montana. Yet, the Columbus Dispatch, in a March 22 editorial, denounced the peace resolution as an "Empty gesture." They cautioned Council to "focus on city issues," not the war in Iraq. The Dispatch calls the resolution "symbolic and ineffectual." In 1838, when Angelina Grimke became the first woman to address a legislative body in the U.S., her plea for a resolution from the Massachusetts legislature against slavery met with similar scorn from the m...
Musical Innerlube: Enjoy Yourself
2008-04-06 11:39:00 First performed by Guy Lombardo in 1957 More About: Musical , Enjoy
Musical Innerlubes: My Life as a Ghost of Bush
2008-04-06 11:16:00 album trailer for tupahwarez More About: Bush , Life , Ghost , Musical , My Life
'A new BBC documentary supports the conclusion that the CIA planned and exe
2008-04-06 01:43:00 From Evidence That the CIA Murdered RFK : The new video and photographic evidence -- the result of a three year long investigation --"puts three senior CIA operatives" at the scene of the murder. Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its Secret War on Castro. David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations. Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated. --CIA role in Kennedy killingAs with the 1963 murder of JFK in Dallas, lingering questions dog the of... More About: Documentary
Wilson still flying the lasagna
2008-04-06 01:33:00 From Guest Reviewer Of The Month: John Rattray : Robert Anton Wilson once wrote that the Celtic temperament when not sunk in Beckett-like despair always leaps to the other conclusion and believes, whatever the evidence, that tomorrow will be better. From Friday Talking Points [23] As Robert Anton Wilson pointed out (or William S. Burroughs, if you prefer), hexagram 23 of the I Ching is "breaking apart." Anyone who subscribes to his "23 enigma" theory will note that this is the twenty-third installment of this column. If you throw hexagram 23, the I Ching cautions: "the roof is shattered, the house collapses." I leave you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusions as to how this relates to Democratic politics for this particular week... More About: Flying , Lasagna
Will Wheat-Killer Fungus be used to spread GMO wheat?
2008-04-06 01:25:00 From the Centre for Research on Globalization : A deadly fungus, known as Ug99, which kills wheat, has likely spread to Pakistan from Africa according to reports in the British New Scientist magazine. If true, that threatens the vital Asian Bread Basket including the Punjab region. The spread of the deadly virus, stem rust, against which an effective fungicide does not exist, comes as world grain stocks reach the lowest in four decades and government subsidized bio-ethanol production, especially in the USA, Brazil and EU are taking land out of food production at alarming rates. The deadly fungus is being used by Monsanto and the US Government to spread patented GMO seeds. Stem rust is the worst of three rusts that afflict wheat plants. The fungus grows primarily in the stems, plugging the vascular system so carbohydrates can't get from the leaves to the grain, which shrivels. In the 1950s, the last major outbreak destroyed 40% of the spring wheat crop in North America... More About: Wheat , Killer , Spread
Protecting Tanzania's albinos from witchdoctors
2008-04-06 00:37:00 From the BBC : Tanzania's president has ordered a crackdown on witchdoctors who use body parts from albinos in magic potions to bring people good luck or fortune. "This is senseless cruelty. It must stop forthwith," Jakaya Kikwete said on television, AFP news agency reports. "I am told that people kill albinos and chop their body parts, including fingers, believing they can get rich when mining or fishing," he said. The order comes after the murder of 19 albinos in the last year. The BBC's Vicky Ntetema in Dar es Salaam says there is a widespread belief in Tanzania that the condition is the result of a curse put on the family. Some people hide the albino members of the family for fear of them either being rejected by the community or killed. Old women with red eyes have been killed in parts of Tanzania, after being accused of witchcraft, she says. In the past, Tanzania's Albino Society (TAS) has accused the government of turning a blind eye to the killing of al...
Not going away: That opium thing
2008-04-05 22:46:00 Warfare By Other MeansTurkey has sharpened its anti-PKK political offensive, to include increased "information focus" on the sources of PKK finances. Fundraising by Kurdish "front organizations" in Europe is a major source of PKK cash; the Turkish government has been pressing central and western European countries to shutdown the "fronts" operating in their territory. Turkey has especially put pressure on its NATO allies. The other big source of PKK money is the drug business. Yes, the PKK is involved in drug smuggling. This is old news but the kind of news that often gets little media coverage. Turkey has started pointing out that the PKK began smuggling opium in 1982, moving some of its "product" through PKK-controlled camps in Lebanon. The PKK has also provided a "connection to Europe" for the Afghanistan-Iran and Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran opium and heroin trade routes. A heroin economy of Tajikistan: luscious smell of the heroin money About 30 % of prod... More About: Thing
Thorium update
2008-04-05 21:54:00 New age nuclear Nuclear energy produces no greenhouse gases, but it has many drawbacks. Now a radical new technology based on thorium promises what uranium never delivered: abundant, safe and clean energy - and a way to burn up old radioactive waste. What if we could build a nuclear reactor that offered no possibility of a meltdown, generated its power inexpensively, created no weapons-grade by-products, and burnt up existing high-level waste as well as old nuclear weapon stockpiles? And what if the waste produced by such a reactor was radioactive for a mere few hundred years rather than tens of thousands? It may sound too good to be true, but such a reactor is indeed possible, and a number of teams around the world are now working to make it a reality. What makes this incredible reactor so different is its fuel source: thorium. Named after Thor, the warlike Norse god of thunder, thorium could ironically prove a potent instrument of peace as well as a tool to soothe the... More About: Update , Thorium
The dragon awakened: China books reviewed
More articles from this author:2008-04-05 21:14:00 From Here be dragons : There are nine types of dragon; they have nine times nine scales; they like eating swallows; they ascend to heaven on waterspouts but can also shrink to the size of a silkworm. There are celestial dragons who protect the gods, and treasure dragons who guard the pearl of wisdom. Dragon s can misbehave - one of the Taoist Immortals carries a dragon-slaying sword, and Monkey had to deal with a disobedient dragon - but they are on the whole a good thing for humanity. It is very different from the western view which, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, seems to have become obligatory for publishers and their marketing departments. Here be dragons, eight of them in the current bunch - only one short of the auspicious nine - a fearsome brood with claws outstretched and mostly coloured red. Generalisations about China , the great historian John King Fairbank once wrote, are "the sort of thing we should learn in the eighth grade" and then spend a lifet... More About: Books , The Dragon 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
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