michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Sept 28, 2006 9:39:03 GMT 4
ALL KINDS OF CENSORSHIPThis is our third posting for the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week. Today we look at censorship. The rationale for censorship is different for various types of data censored. There are five main types: [ from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship ] Moral censorship is the means by which any material that contains questionable morality is removed. The censoring body disapproves of the values behind the material and limits access to it. An example is pornography. Military censorship is the process of keeping military intelligence and tactics confidential and away from the enemy. This is used to counter espionage, which is the process of gleaning military information. Additionally, military censorship may involve a restriction on information or media coverage that can be released to the public such as in Iraq, where the U.S. government restricts the photographing or filming of dead soldiers or their caskets and its subsequent broadcast in the U.S. This is done to avoid public reaction similar to that which occurred during the Vietnam War or the Iran Hostage Crisis. Political censorship occurs when governments conceal secrets from their citizens. The logic is to prevent the free expression needed to revolt. Democracies do not officially approve of political censorship but often endorse it privately. Any dissent against the government is thought to be a “weakness” for the enemy to exploit. Campaign tactics are also kept secret: see the Watergate scandal. Religious censorship is the means by which any material objectionable to a certain faith is removed. This often involves a dominant religion forcing limitations on less dominant ones. Alternatively, one religion may shun the works of another when they believe the content is not appropriate for their faith. Corporate censorship is the process by which editors in corporate media outlets intervene to halt the publishing of information that portrays their business or business partners in a negative light. Privately owned corporations in the business of reporting the news also sometimes refuse to distribute information due to the potential loss of advertiser revenue or shareholder value which adverse publicity may bring. Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.
Increasingly in our world today, the forces of government and religion have become alien to knowledge and wonder; they work to regulate, remove, and sanitize our speech, news, books, and films that offend them and therefore say that much is not suitable for us. What is at stake here is the right to read and be exposed to controversial thoughts and language. Even more serious, the truth of world situations is suppressed by a desire to promote favored political or religious views or to exclude certain political or religious views. The people and institutions who censor our right to recieve information work to crush and abort a society rich in freedom and variety of thought, broad in its understanding of diverse views and cultures.
Quite a responsibliblity they have taken on; who asked for it, you...me? J.B.S. Haldane once wrote, "So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination."
Of course, there are some amongst the common man who look to their institutions to tell them what to do, what to think, what to read, what to eat, and what to wear. This turning over of personal discretion to institutions reflects a part of society who lacks confidence in themselves to make their own decisions. They do not help us in our defense against would-be censors and the continuing thrust to supress ideas.
In 1952, Georges Bernanos, who left France because he refused to live under the Nazi occupation, wrote a book called Tradition of Freedom, and toward the end he wrote:
I have thought for a long time now that if, some day, the increasing technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth, it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction...but the docility, the lack of responsibility of the common man, his base, subservient acceptance of every common decree. The horrors which we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untameable men, are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase, a stupendously rapid increase, in the number of obedient, docile men.
On that note, I offer the following recent article......MichelleRead a Banned BookPosted by Jason Bellows on February 12th, 2006 at 9:58 pm A woman named Clare Booth Luce said, “Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.” It’s a good philosophy, and one we could all adopt—there’s no need to allow things to which you object into your homes, but there’s no need to try to say the world at large should be disallowed to have them. But sometimes censorship seems so reasonable that some of us accept it, or even encourage it. Take for example the recent conflicts revolving around papers in Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain publishing a series of cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The newspaper France Soir first stated that it choose to print the cartoons “to show ‘religious dogma’ had no place in a secular society”, but after the riots erupted they sacked their managing editor. Having reviewed the cartoons in question, I do feel like they are in poor taste—the story of Muhammad universally tell of a man didn’t ostracize other faiths, but rather told he was sent by god to complete the teachings—but are crass cartoons enough to fire people, start riots, and set fire to things? If you don’t like it, I say, you can retaliate in kind: write a letter or publish a cartoon. Don’t let it in your home. Don’t censor it. Censorship is the act of cowards. Every book that’s ever been banned contains an idea that someone doesn’t want you to know. Some, like The Chocolate War might provoke a junior high school kid to question authority, or like Harry Potter might promote an occult, or even worse, Captain Underpants for being a bad influence. Someone has challenged all these books, and more, these challenges have come in the last twenty years. We live in an age where censorship is striving to take root. Certain factions of Islam try to quash cartoons, television media play “live” events with a delay for fear of a conservative Christian might see a nipple (as if there’s no difference between nudity and pornography), or a dissident might rally the people against an unjust law. Librarians have always been the loudest voice against censorship; they know the value of a good book. Thus it is the American Library Association (ALA) who has taken up the charge against the banning of books, and the warhead of their attack is “Read Banned Books Week”. For 2006, Read Banned Books Week is 23-30 September, and the idea is to use this week to embrace that what others would take away. Grab a book where they write about nudity, or thinking independently, cursing, cussing, or a harmless flight of fancy that can be mistaken for consort with the devil, and revel in ideas. Rebellions are brought about by realization that there are better ways—ideas that incomplete governments manned by inadequate people don’t want you to have. In 2003, the US Constitution was banned in Cuba. Governments hate well-informed people, and I say we should help piss them off. Buy a banned book:Of Mice and Men - Violence, language, and promoting euthanasia. The Chocolate War - Language and rebellion against authority. 1984 - Because it's too like the Bush administration. Source: www.damninteresting.com/?p=407
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Sept 30, 2006 5:53:32 GMT 4
"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."The quote is by Erasmus but it could have been written by me. I can't imagine my life were I not able to read or obtain books. I must admit that reading is nearly a vice with me; literally, I live in a vertical pile!
These days, it sometimes saddens me that my precious works of literature are neglected to hunt for truth in news articles and essays. Reading from a computer screen also lacks the many pleasures I get from reading a book while lying under a tree or sitting in a comfortable rocker. I miss being transported to other times and worlds, lost to the harsh realities that engulf our current world.
So, it is with great happiness that I post during Banned Books Week. Today, I'm posting a variety of links for you to follow. Enjoy, and remember: "The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most---The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty."-----Theodore Parker Michelle **************************************************** Google Book Search has also created a special page about banned books:"To Kill a Mockingbird. Of Mice and Men. The Great Gatsby. 1984. It's hard to imagine a world without these extraordinary literary classics, but every year there are hundreds of attempts to remove great books from libraries and schools. In fact, according to the American Library Association, 42 of 100 books recognized by the Radcliffe Publishing Course as the best novels of the 20th century have been challenged or banned." "Google Book Search is our effort to expand the universe of books you can discover, and this year we're joining libraries and bookstores across the country to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week – a nationwide initiative to help people learn about and explore banned books. You can start by browsing these 42 classics – books we couldn't be more pleased to highlight." To view these 42 books go to the following link. I have read them all; see how many you have:books.google.com/googlebooks/banned/*************************************************** In Canada, various organizations associated with the book trades mark the Freedom to Read Week every year. The next time will be February 25–March 3, 2007:"Freedom to read can never be taken for granted. Even in Canada, a free country by world standards, books and magazines are banned at the border. Books are removed from the shelves in Canadian libraries, schools and bookstores every day. Free speech on the Internet is under attack. Few of these stories make headlines, but they affect the right of Canadians to decide for themselves what they choose to read." Go to: www.freedomtoread.ca/One of the resources produced by the sponsors of the week is a list that provides information on more than 100 books that have been challenged in Canada in the past few years. You'll be surprized to see some on this list; some really good books. Most challenges have to do with sex, homosexuality, religion or race.www.freedomtoread.ca/docs/challenged_books.pdf**************************************************** From Amnesty International: [These bring me no joy in posting....M]Banned Books WeekDuring Banned Books Week, Amnesty International directs attention to the plight of individuals who are persecuted because of the writings that they produce, circulate or read. Traditionally, Banned Books Week activities take place at the end of September -- but the featured cases are not confined to a week. They continue to need your action. The freedom within us is larger than the jails that we're in . . . Syrian poet Faraj Birqdar, a former prisoner of conscience2006 CASES:Aloys Kabura (m) detained journalist BURUNDI On trial for exercising his right to freedom of expression. Shi Tao (m) prisoner of conscience poet, journalist CHINA Sentenced to ten years in prison for e-mailing text abroad. Serkalem Fasil (f) prisoner of conscience publisher ETHIOPIA She is among journalists and opposition leaders on trial for alleged treason. Arzhang Davoodi (m) prisoner of conscience poet, documentary maker IRAN He has been arrested, tortured, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Stanislav Dmitrievskii (m) on probation editor RUSSIA Harassed for publishing articles calling for peaceful resolution of the Chechen conflict. Mohammed Abbou (m) prisoner of conscience internet writer TUNISIA Imprisoned, after an unfair trial, for critical articles denouncing torture. Source:www.amnestyusa.org/bannedbooks/index.htmlBanned Books Week Updates Recent Focus CasesTohti Tunyaz CHINA - still imprisoned Banned Books Week 2002-2006Tohti Tunyaz Mozat, a 46-year old ethnic Uighur historian and author, remains in prison. Arrested in 1998 when he traveled back to the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region to research his thesis on the region's pre-1949 history, he was charged with "inciting splittism" and "illegally procuring state secrets" in February 2000. When he was visited by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in November 2005, he said that he does technical work eight hours a day, has received visits from his family, and writes letters. Such statements are difficult to assess as prisoners may not be able to speak openly. Since Tohti Tunyaz has been convicted of a political "crime", possibly on the basis of torture, the Special Rapporteur appealed for his release. Fessahaye Yohannes ERITREA - still jailed Banned Books Week 2003-2005Approximately ten editors and journalists jailed since the mid- September 2001 crackdown on privately owned newspapers in Eritrea have virtually disappeared, since authorities have refused to provide information on their health, whereabouts or legal status. The detainees reportedly are accused primarily of having published interviews with political leaders who had been calling publicly for "democratic reforms" in the country. Yu Dongyue CHINA released Banned Books Week 1995After 16 years of wrongful imprisonment, Tiananmen dissident Yu Dongyue, journalist and deputy editor of the Liuyang Daily, was freed on 22 February 2006, but with his mental health impaired after periodic beatings, torture and years in solitary con- finement. Other inmates said that on one occasion he had been tied to a pole and left in the sun for several days before being locked in solitary confinement for another two years. According to a fellow dissident who visited him later in another prison, he was scarred, did not recognize life-long friends, and kept repeating words over and over. Upon his release, he reportedly could not recognize family members and kept mumbling to himself. Zafaryab Ahmed PAKISTAN - deceased Banned Books Week 1996The journalist & defender of child bonded laborers, Zafaryab Ahmed, a former prisoner of conscience who had faced death by hanging for alleged sedition in Pakistan, lived in the United States from 1999 to the end of 2005. He was given the CJFE Press Freedom International Award in 1999 in Toronto, Canada, for meritorious services to journalism. Zafaryab Ahmed died of cardiac arrest at age 53 in Lahore, Pakistan, on 25 January 2006. 1990–2005 CASES-prisoners released:Jack Mapanje, poet in Malawi Nguyen Chi Thien, Vietnamese poet Miriam Firouz, Iranian writer Nguyen Khac Chinh, novelist & poet, Vietnam Wang Xizhe, Chinese writer & editor María Elena Cruz Varela, poet in Cuba Duong Thu Huong, Vietnamese writer/dramatist 6 Indian theater artists in the United Arab Emirates Münir Ceylan, Turkish union spokesman Nguon Non, editor of Khmer newspaper, Cambodia Zikrayat Mahmud Harb, newspaper editor in Kuwait Tri Agus Susanto, Indonesian student magazine worker Wei Jingsheng, Chinese writer & democracy advocate Christine Anyanwu, news magazine editor in Nigeria Kim Ha-ki, South Korean novelist Thich Quang Do, scholar/monk, Vietnam Usama Suhail 'Abdallah Hussain, journalist in Kuwait Drs Adnan Beuransyah, Indonesian journalist Ma Thida, physician/writer in Myanmar Gao Yu, economics editor in China Ragip Duran, Turkish journalist Zhang Jingsheng, Chinese songwriter, activist Mohamed Nasheed, journalist in the Maldives Freddy Loseke, DRC newspaper editor Faraj Birqdar, Syrian poet Esber Yagmurdereli, Turkish playwright Daw San San Nwe, activist/writer in Myanmar Mirtha Bueno, student in Peru Lucien Messan, Togo journalist José Gallardo, general & critic, Mexico Hassan Bility, Liberian journalist Ibtisam al-Dakhil, jounalist in Kuwait Zouheir Yahiaoui, Tunisian website operator Ali Lmrabet, newspaper editor in Morocco Le Chi Quang, Vietnamese writer Zaw Thet Htwe, Myanmar sportswriter Bui Minh Quoc, journalist & poet in Vietnam Ko Khun Sai, activist/writer in Myanmar Jamphel Jangchub, Tibetan leafleter Nguyen Dan Que, Vietnamese writer Sein Hla Oo, news editor & film critic in Myanmar * Ilker Demir, after the first year of AI Banned Books Week observance: “I would like to thank all Amnesty members who worked on my behalf. I will never forget what you have done for me.” Ilker Demir, Turkish journalist*Source:www.amnestyusa.org/bannedbooks/updates06.html**************************************************** Wikipedia has information on censorship for these countries. If you scroll down the page, they also have an extensive list of banned/challenged books over the years:Australia Bhutan Canada China East Germany France Germany India Iran Republic of Ireland Pakistan Samoa Singapore South Asia Soviet Union Taiwan Thailand (Radio and film) United Kingdom United States Go to:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_books**************************************************** I'm also posting a book review for you to read under one of Anwaar's articles: "This Ramadan" tinyurl.com/m3fw7 It is titled: Extremism Born of Politics Not Religion Les Identite's Meutieres (Deadly Identities) By Amin Maalouf This is my 4th and final post celebrating The 25th Anniversary of Banned Books Week; I hope you have found it to be useful to your reading. Look here again because I will continue to list news of censorship and occasionally a book or two. Thank you for your time.....MichelleBanned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, the annual event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Oct 21, 2006 8:23:05 GMT 4
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE a synopsis and analysis of the play by Henrik Ibsen
HENRIK IBSEN (1828-1906) In the entire history of literature, there are few figures like Ibsen. Practically his whole life and energies were devoted to the theater; and his offerings, medicinal and bitter, have changed the history of the stage.
The principles of Ibsen's teaching, his moral ethic, was that honesty in facing facts is the first requisite of a decent life. Human nature has dark recesses which must be explored and illuminated; life has pitfalls which must be recognized to be avoided; and society has humbugs, hypocrisies, and obscure diseases which must be revealed before they can be cured. To recognize these facts is not pessimism; it is the moral obligation laid upon intelligent people. To face the problems thus exposed, however, requires courage, honesty, and faith in the ultimate worth of the human soul. Man must be educated until he is not only intelligent enough, but courageous enough to work out his salvation through patient endurance and nobler ideals. Democracy, as a cure-all, is just as much a failure as any other form of government; since the majority in politics, society, or religion is always torpid and content with easy measures. It is the intelligent and morally heroic minority which has always led, and always will lead, the human family on its upward march. Nevertheless, we alone can help ourselves; no help can come from without. Furthermore -- and this is a vital point in understanding Ibsen -- experience and life are a happiness in themselves, not merely a means to happiness; and in the end good must prevail. Such are some of the ideas that can be distilled from the substance of Ibsen's plays.
In An Enemy of the People the struggle is between hypocrisy and greed on one side, and the ideal of personal honor on the other.
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE a synopsis and analysis of the play by Henrik Ibsen The following essay on An Enemy of the People was originally published in The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. Emma Goldman. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1914. pp. 34-42.
DR. THOMAS STOCKMANN is called to the position of medical adviser to the management of the "Baths," the main resource of his native town.
A sincere man of high ideals, Dr. Stockmann returns home after an absence of many years, full of the spirit of enterprise and progressive innovation. For as he says to his brother Peter, the town Burgomaster, "I am so glad and content. I feel so unspeakably happy in the midst of all this growing, germinating life. After all, what a glorious time we do live in. It is as if a new world were springing up around us."
BURGOMASTER: Do you really think so? DR. STOCKMANN: Well, of course, you can't see this as clearly as I do. You've spent all your life in this place, and so your perceptions have been dulled. But I, who had to live up there in that small hole in the north all those years, hardly ever seeing a soul to speak a stimulating word to me -- all this affects me as if I were carried to the midst of a crowded city -- I know well enough that the conditions of life are small compared with many other towns. But here is life, growth, an infinity of things to work for and to strive for; and that is the main point. In this spirit Dr. Stockmann sets to his task. After two years of careful investigation, he finds that the Baths are built on a swamp, full of poisonous germs, and that people who come there for their health will be infected with fever.
Thomas Stockmann is a conscientious physician. He loves his native town, but he loves his fellow-men more. He considers it his duty to communicate his discovery to the highest authority of the town, the Burgomaster, his brother Peter Stockmann.
Dr. Stockmann is indeed an idealist; else he would know that the man is often lost in the official. Besides, Peter Stockmann is also the president of the board of directors and one of the heaviest stockholders of the Baths. Sufficient reason to upbraid his reckless medical brother as a dangerous man:
BURGOMASTER: Anyhow, you've an ingrained propensity for going your own way. And that in a well-ordered community is almost as dangerous. The individual must submit himself to the whole community, or, to speak more correctly, bow to the authority that watches over the welfare of all.
But the Docter is not disconcerted: Peter is an official; he is not concerned with ideals. But there is the pess -- that is the medium for his purpose! The staff of the People's Messenger -- Hovstad, Billings, and Aslaksen, are deeply impressed by the Doctor's discovery. With one eye to good copy and the other to the political chances, they immediately put the People's Messenger at the disposal of Thomas Stockmann. Hovstad sees great possibilities for a thorough radical reform of the whole life of the community.
HOVSTAD: To you, as a doctor and a man of science, this business of the water-works is an isolated affair. I fancy it hasn't occurred to you that a good many other things are connected with it.... The swamp our whole municipal life stands and rots in.... I think a journalist assumes an immense responsibility when he neglects an opportunity of aiding the masses, the poor, the oppressed. I know well enough that the upper classes will call this stirring up the people, and so forth, but they can do as they please, if only my conscience is clear.
Aslaksen, printer of the People's Messenger, chairman of the Householders' Association, and agent for the Moderation Society, has, like Hovstad, a keen eye to business. He assures the Doctor of his whole-hearted cooperation, especially emphasizing that, "It might do you no harm to have us middle-class men at your back. We now form a compact majority in the town -- when we really make up our minds to. And it's always as well, Doctor, to have the majority with you.... And so I think it wouldn't be amiss if we made some sort of demonstration.... Of course with great moderation, Doctor. I am always in favor of moderation; for moderation is a citizen's first virtue -- at least those are my sentiments."
Truly, Dr. Stockmann is an idealist; else he would not place so much faith in the staff of the People's Messenger, who love the people so well that they constantly feed them with high-sounding phrases of democratic principles and of the noble function of the press, while they pilfer their pockets.
That is expressed in Hovstad's own words, when Petra, the daughter of Dr. Stockmann, returns a sentimental novel she was to translate for the People's Messenger: "This can't possibly go into the Messenger," she tells Hovstad; "it is in direct contradiction to your own opinion."
HOVSTAD: Well, but for the sake of the cause-- PETRA: You don't understand me yet. It is all about a supernatural power that looks after the so-called good people here on earth, and turns all things to their advantage at last, and all the bad people are punished. HOVSTAD: Yes, but that's very fine. It's the very thing the public like. PETRA: And would you supply the public with such stuff? Why, you don't believe one word of it yourself. You know well enought that things don't really happen like that. HOVSTAD: You're right there; but an editor can't always do as he likes. He often has to yield to public opinion on small matters. After all, politics is the chief thing in life -- at any rate for a newspaper; and if I want the people to follow me along the path of emancipation and progress, I mustn't scare them away. If they find such a moral story down in the cellar, they're much more willing to stand what is printed above it -- they feel themselves safer. Editors of the stamp of Hovstad seldom dare to express their real opinions. They cannot afford to "scare away" their readers. They generally yield to the most ignorant and vulgar public opinion; they do not set themselves up against constituted authority. Therefore the People's Messenger drops the "greatest man" in town when it learns that the Burgomaster and the influential citizens are determined that the truth shall be silenced. The Burgomaster soundly denounces his brother's "rebellion."
BURGOMASTER: The public doesn't need new ideas. The public is best served by the good old recognized ideas that they have already.... As an official, you've no right to have any individual conviction. DR. STOCKMANN: The source is poisoned, man! Are you mad? We live by trafficking in filth and garbage. The whole of our developing social life is rooted in a lie! BURGOMASTER: Idle fancies -- or something worse. The man who makes such offensive insinuations against his own native place must be an enemey of society. DR. STOCKMANN: And I must bear such treatment! In my own house. Katrine! What do you think of it? MRS. STOCKMANN: Indeed, it is a shame and an insult, Thomas ... But, after all, your brother has the power---- DR. STOCKMANN: Yes, but I have the right! MRS. STOCKMANN: Ah, yes, right, right! What is the good of being right when you haven't any might? DR. STOCKMANN: What! No good in a free society to have right on your side? You are absurd, Katrine. And besides, haven't I the free and independent press with me? The compact majority behind me? That's might enough, I should think! Katrine Stockmann is wiser than her husband. For he who has no might need hope for no right. The good Doctor has to drink the bitter cup to the last drop before he realizes the wisdom of his wife.
Threatened by the authorities and repudiated by the People's Messenger, Dr. Stockmann attempts to secure a hall wherein to hold a public meeting. A free-born citizen, he believes in the Constitution and its guarantees; he is determined to maintain his right of free expression. But like so many others, even most advanced liberals blinded by the spook of constitutional rights and free speech, Dr. Stockmann inevitably has to pay the penalty of his credulity. He finds every hall in town closed against him. Only one solitary citizen has the courage to open his doors to the persecuted Doctor -- his old friend Horster. But the mob follows him even there and howls him down as an enemy of society. Thomas Stockmann makes the discovery in his battle with ignorance, stupidity, and vested interests that "the most dangerous enemies of truth and freedom in our midst are the compact majority, the damned compact liberal majority." His experiences lead him to the conclusion that "the majority is never right.... That is one of those conventional lies against which a free, thoughtful man must rebel.... The majority has might unhappily -- but right it has not."
HOVSTAD: The man who would ruin a whole community must be an enemy of society! DR. STOCKMANN: It doesn't matter if a lying community is ruined!... You'll poison the whole country in time; you will bring it to such a pass that the whole country will deserve to perish. And should it come to this, I say, from the bottom of my heart: Perish the country! Perish all its people! Driven out of the place, hooted and jeered by the mob, Dr. Stockmann barely escapes with his life, and seeks safety in his home, only to find everything demolished there. In due time he is repudiated by the grocer, the baker, and the candlestick maker. The landlord, of course, is very sorry for him. The Stockmanns have always paid their rent regularly, but it would injure his reputation to have such an avowed rebel for a tenant. The grocer is sorry, and the butcher too; but they can not jeopardize their business. Finally the board of education sends expressions of regret: Petra is an excellent teacher and the boys of Stockmann splendid pupils, but it would contaminate the other children were the Stockmanns allowed to remain at school. And again Dr. Stockmann learns a vital lesson. But he will not submit; he will be strong.
DR. STOCKMANN: Should I let myself be beaten off the field by public opinion, and the compact majority, and such deviltry? No, thanks. Besides, what I want is so simple, so clear and straightforward. I only want to drive into the heads of these curs that the Liberals are the worst foes of free men; that party-programmes wring the necks of all young living truths; that considerations of expediency turn morality and righteousness upside down, until life is simply hideous.... I don't see any man free and brave enough to dare the Truth.... The strongest man is he who stands most alone.
A confession of faith, indeed, because Henrik Ibsen, although recognized as a great dramatic artist, remained alone in his stand as a revolutionist.
His dramatic art, without his glorious rebellion against every authoritative institution, against every social and moral lie, against every vestige of bondage, were inconceivable. Just as his art would lose human significance, were his love of truth and freedom lacking. Henrik Ibsen demanded all or nothing, no weak-kneed moderation -- no compromise of any sort in the struggle for the ideal. His proud defiance, his enthusiastic daring, his utter indifference to consequences, are Henrik Ibsen's bugle call, heralding a new dawn and the birth of a new race.
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Nov 12, 2006 15:49:47 GMT 4
The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens (Paperback) by Elizabeth Holtzman, Cynthia L. Cooper Customers who bought this item also bought: Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush by Center for Constitutional Rights Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney by Howard Zinn The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying by John Conyers Jr. The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind Editorial Reviews
From Publishers WeeklyWith the midterm elections—and the possibility of majority shifts in both the House and Senate—talk of presidential impeachment is in the air. Holtzman, former congresswoman and Brooklyn D.A., and Cooper, a journalist and lawyer, have assembled a compact but thorough legal and constitutional accounting of five major issues upon which they claim the current president could be impeached. They are "Deceptions into Taking the Country into War in Iraq"; "Reckless Indifference to Human Life in Katrina and Iraq"; "Illegal Wiretapping and Surveillance of Americans"; "Permitting Torture"; and "Leaking Classified Information." While the authors have a clear political agenda, their book also provides a useful guide to the theory behind and the legal mechanisms of presidential impeachment, clearing up many misunderstandings readers might have, such as the fact that "high crimes and misdemeanors are not limited to actual crimes" and the correct use of the Independent Counsel Act (which Holtzman helped author in 1978). The book argues its points based on examples from the impeachments of Nixon and Clinton (Holtzman sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment). While this volume will be read and cherished by those who agree with its political stance—and dismissed and argued against by those who don't—it's an important, comprehensive argument and document for our current political moment. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Book DescriptionNo one is better placed or qualified to call for the impeachment of George W. Bush than Elizabeth Holtzman. She is a former Congresswoman and Brooklyn District Attorney who was a vital member of the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. In The Impeachment of George W. Bush, Holtzman and her coauthor, acclaimed journalist Cynthia L. Cooper, have written a clear, lucid and damning legal brief that reveals that the 43rd President of the United States of America has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. This book focuses on four articles of impeachment: The Offense of Wiretapping Surveillance in Defiance of the Law; the Offence of Lying and Inducing America to Support a War; The Offense of Reckless Indifference to the Lives and Welfare of American Troops; The Offense of Torture in Violation of U.S. Laws and Treaties. It also provides an invaluable guide to how citizens can get involved in campaigning for impeachment, as well as an important historical analysis of impeachments past. The publication of this book is a summons to action in this process. Customer Reviews Average Customer Review: ***** An important work that clearly and succintly makes the case., October 13, 2006 Reviewer: Brian J. Mich (Brooklyn, New York, USA) - See all my reviews Bringing the credibility of her many years of public service, most notably her work as a Congresswoman during the Watergate Committee and as a prosecutor, Elizabeth Holtzman, with Cynthia Cooper, has produced an important work that is, at the same time, both lawyerly and accessible. They provide the reader with the background - both historical and legal - of the important role of impeachment in the maintenance of our democratic system and then proceed to seamlessly lay out the evidence that overwhelmingly supports their conclusion. While I may not have been the hardest person to sell on their conclusion, the argument is so well-drawn that it is hard to imagine that anyone approaching the book with an open-mind wouldn't come away thinking that impeachment is a necessity or, at least, an option that needs to be explored more in the public discourse. The most amazing (and, unfortunately, troubling) point made so well by this book is how close the parallel is between the behavior and attitude toward our democratic principles of the current White House and that of Nixon Administration. All the elements that moved the impeachment process after Watergate exist now: dishonesty in proceeding with military action, illegal electronic surveillance of American citizens, the retaliation against persons who challenge the Administration's actions, and the contempt of Congress and the democratic process. Add to those the additional factor that President Bush has demonstrated a total disregard for human life in his irresponsible execution of an unwinnable war and his failure to respond effectively to the devestation created by Hurricane Katrina and it is clear, as was the case over thirty years ago, that action needs to be taken. As Ms. Holtzman and Ms. Cooper point out, the necessity to act comes not only from the need to remove the President from office, but, also, the need to send the message to all future Presidents (one that should have been clear from the Watergate years) that the disregard of our Constitution and laws will never be tolerated. It is for that reason alone that every person needs to read this book. Every American Should Read this Book, September 25, 2006 Reviewer: Angela Bonavoglia - See all my reviews Holtzman and Cooper have created a brilliantly organized, succinct, and vivid analysis of President George W. Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors. Their book is engrossing and enraging; it makes abundantly clear why it is crucial that Congress take steps to impeach this president, for the very survival of our increasingly threatened democracy. It's all here, September 23, 2006 Reviewer: Karen Charman - See all my reviews This book is clear, crisp and compelling. After reading it you will wonder what is holding up the process. Holtzman's expertise and experience shows. The historical perspective is enlightening and the legal arguments are airtight. review , September 21, 2006 Reviewer: Barbara Baer - See all my reviews This is an important, do not miss book. Well written and absorbing, it sums up the historical and constitutional background of impeachment and makes a convincing case for its use now against President Bush. Even skeptics might be persuaded. Holtzman, a Harvard trained lawyer, brings excellent credentials, having served on the House Judiciary Committee during its consideration of the impeachment of President Nixon. Illuminating volume about Bush and impeachment, September 20, 2006 Reviewer: Rebecca Jones "R.Jones" (New York) - See all my reviews Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia Cooper have produced an illuminating and vitally important book about the impeachment process, explaining clearly the case for impeaching President Bush. The book is very readable and, in describing the history and standards for impeachment, shows why impeachment is especially needed now. I was very impressed by the chapters explaining Bush's personal responsibility in the torture scandals; his reckless indifference to human life in Katrina during which, according to the book, he -- and he alone -- could have mobilized all of the federal resources, but did not; and, his astonishing deceptions leading to the war in Iraq. The book shows how democracy itself will be damaged unless President Bush is held accountable. Holtzman's experience in Congress during Watergate and the impeachment of Nixon, and Cynthia Cooper's contribution as an author, lawyer and journalist make this an extremely valuable book. Definitely recommend it. To order these books: tinyurl.com/yhmq2c
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Dec 3, 2006 14:32:52 GMT 4
Your Money Or Your Life
As promised, here is info on the book, Your Money Or Your Life. The link provided goes directly to the author's site, where you can purchase it if you so desire. It's been awhile since I've read it, so I'm pulling from my memory here. Aside from some very useful information on how to change your relationship with money, there is a section which tells of how Congress actually met and discussed ways to motivate citizens into buying more. At one time in our history, people only worked overtime to SAVE for and buy a needed item like a washing machine. The population was content with what they had; to put oneself in debt was insanity. How this has changed! This planned attack to change our behavior really picked up speed after W.W.II. Much of the technology created for war also proved useful for creating time saving devices for consumers. With returning vets needing work and housing it seemed logical to 'nudge' citizen's into buying more, which created jobs and boosted the economy. During the late 50s and 60s the US population was doing very well indeed; life was good, money flowed and continued to flow [to us] until, as time continued, it all went very wrong. I don't need to speak anymore on our insane behavior as out of control consumers; I just wanted to give you a little intro to this book and how it 'enlightened' me......Michelle Your Money Or Your Life Transforming Your Relationship With Money And Achieving Financial Independence By Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin Penguin Putnam Inc. (1992, 1994) Copyright © Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, 1992 How this book came about This book is not based on theory, good ideas or a new philosophy. It is the result of 50 years of combined experience (30 years for Joe Dominguez, 20 years for Vicki Robin) in living the principles presented here. This book just didn't happen, it evolved. Joe Dominguez was a successful financial analyst on Wall Street before retiring at the age of 31, never again to accept money for any of his work. Vicki Robin graduated with honors from Brown University and later left a budding career in film and theater in New York. Her open mind allowed her to recognize the value of Joe's new road map for money and apply it to her own life. He and Vicki Robin were founders of the New Road Map Foundation, an all-volunteer, non-profit organization that promotes a human, sustainable future for our world. Joe Dominguez died on January 11, 1997. His work and message live on in the transformed lives of program followers throughout the world. Your Money Or Your Life is full of examples, stories and experiences of many people who have followed their nine-step program in their journey to financial independence. Ask yourself these questions: Do you have enough money? Are you spending enough time with family and friends? Do you come home from your job full of life? Do you have time to participate in things you believe are worthwhile? If you were laid off from your job, would you see it as an opportunity? Are you satisfied with the contribution you have made to the world? Are you at peace with money? Does your job reflect your values? Do you have enough savings to see you through six months of normal living expenses? Is your life whole? Do all the pieces -- your job, your expenditures, your relationships, your values -- fit together? If you answered, 'no' to even one of these questions, read on. The purpose of Your Money Or Your Life is to transform your relationship with money. That relationship encompasses more than just your earning, spending, debts and savings; it also includes the time these functions take in your life. In addition, your relationship with money is reflected in the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that you can get from your connection to your family, your community and the planet. Once you have changed the nature and function of your interaction with money, through following the steps, your relationship with money will be transformed -- you will reach new levels of comfort, competence and consciousness around money. Many books on money are available today. What these books have in common is that they assume your financial life functions separately from the rest of your life. This book is about putting it all back together. It is about integration, a 'whole systems' approach to your life. It will take you back to basics -- the basics of making your spending (and hopefully your saving) of money into a clear mirror of your life values and purpose. It is about the most basic of freedoms -- the freedom to think for yourself. What you can expect from this book Through the hundreds of letters we've received, we know some of the ways people's lives have been enriched by following the program in this book. They finally understand the basics of money. They reconnect with old dreams and find ways to realize them. With a great sense of freedom and relief, they learn how to distinguish between the essentials and the excess in all areas of their lives and how to unburden themselves. They find their relationship with their mates and children improve. Their new financial integrity resolves many inner conflicts between their values and their lifestyles. Money ceases to be an issue in their lives, and they finally have the intellectual and emotional space to take on issues of greater importance. At a tangible level, they retire their debts, increase their savings and are able to live happily within their means. They increase the amount of their 'free time' by reducing expenses and the amount of time on the job. They stop buying their way out of problems and instead use such challenges as the opportunity to learn new skills. Overall, they heal the split between their money and their life -- and life becomes one integrated whole. The old road map for money has trapped us in the very vehicle that was supposed to liberate us from toil. The landmarks of the old road map were clear: 'nine to five till you're sixty-five'; 'owe your soul to the company store', pushing for a higher 'standard of living' regardless of moral, ethical, emotional, cultural, spiritual, marital, environmental and political consequences. And it delivered -- but only as long as people really needed more material possessions. When we are not taking our identity from our jobs, we are identified as consumers. According to the dictionary, to consume is to 'destroy, squander, use up.' We consider shopping to be recreation, so we 'shop till we drop.' We want a good future for our kids, so we work harder or become a two income family and delegate raising the kids to day care centres or nannies. We buy them the newest toys to prove our love. We are spending so much of our precious time earning in order to spend that we don't have the time to examine our priorities. Our old financial map, instead of making us more independent, fulfilled individuals, has led us to a web of financial dependencies. From birth to death we have become financially dependent -- on our parents for our first financial sustenance, on 'the economy' in order to get a good job, on 'the job' for our survival, on 'unemployment' handouts to tide us over between jobs, on our pension to pay our way in old age and on Medicare if we get sick before we die. The material progress that as supposed to free us has left us more enslaved. At some point in the last forty years, though, conditions began to change. For many people, material possessions went from fulfilling needs to enhancing comfort to facilitating luxury -- and even beyond to excess. Unlike the past, problems began to emerge that could not be solved by providing more material goods. The planet itself began showing signs of nearing its capacity to handle the results of our economic growth and consumerism -- water shortages, topsoil loss, global warming, ozone holes, species extinction, natural resource degradation and depletion, air pollution and trash buildup are all signs that our survival is in question. Even though we 'won' the industrial revolution, the spoils of war are looking more and more spoiled. New tools for navigation are needed. What we need is a new financial road map that is based on current global conditions and offers us a way out. CREATING A NEW ROAD MAP -- FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT THINKING How do you find a new road map for money? It requires thinking in new ways. One of the keys to creating your new road map is what we call Financially Independent 'FI Thinking.' This is the process of examining those basic assumptions that you have unconsciously adopted, of evaluating your own road map. Until you can deliberately and dispassionately question your own inner road map for money, you will be stuck in classic financial dead ends, such as: Spending more than you earn. Buying high and selling low. Not liking your job, but not having a way out. Needing two paychecks to make ends meet. Being so confused by money that you leave it to the experts, who in turn feed on your ignorance. Exploring the following concepts will transform your relationship with money and will lead you to FI -- Financial Intelligence, Financial Integrity and even Financial Independence. Financial Intelligence In order to gain Financial Intelligence you first need to know how much money you already have earned, what you have to show for it, how much is coming into your life and how much is going out. But that isn't enough. You also need to know what money really is and what you are trading for the money in your life. One tangible outcome of Financial Intelligence is getting out of debt and having at least six months of basic living expenses in the bank. If you follow the program we present, it will lead to Financial Intelligence. Financial Integrity Financial Integrity is achieved by learning the true impact of your earning and spending, both on your immediate family and on the planet. It is knowing what is enough money and material goods to keep you at the peak of fulfillment -- and what is just excess and clutter. Financial Independence Financial Independence is defined as having an income sufficient for your basic needs and comforts from a source other than paid employment. It is also independence from crippling financial beliefs, from crippling debt, and from a crippling inability to manage modern 'conveniences' -- from repairing your car to fixing your central heating. Financial independence is an experience of freedom at a psychological level. You are free of the guilt, resentment, envy, frustration and despair you have felt about money issues. Financial Independence has nothing to do with rich. Financial Independence is the experience of having enough -- and then some. The old notion of Financial Independence as being rich forever is not achievable. Enough is. Enough for you may be different from enough from you neighbor-- but it will be a figure that is real for you and within your reach. Your Money Or Your Life If someone thrust a gun in your ribs and said that sentence, what would you do? Most of us would turn over our wallets. The threat works because we value our lives more than we value our money. Or do we? Where's all the life we supposedly made at work? For many of us, isn't the truth closer to 'making a dying'? Aren't we killing ourselves -- our health, our relationships, our sense of joy and wonder -- for our jobs? We are sacrificing our lives for money -- but it's happening so slowly we barely notice. Eventually we may have all the comforts and even luxuries we could ever want, but inertia itself keeps us locked into the nine-to-five pattern. Psychotherapist Douglas LaBier documents this 'social dis-ease' in his book Modern Madness. He found that focussing on money/position/success at the expense of personal fulfillment and meaning had led 60 percent of his sample of several hundred to suffer from depression, anxiety and other job-related disorders, including the ubiquitous 'stress.' What do we have to show for it? If the daily grind were making us happy, the irritations and inconveniences would be a small price to pay. Our levels of debt and our lack of savings make the nine-to-five routine mandatory. Participants in our seminars, whatever the size of their incomes, always said they needed 'more' to be happy. We asked people to rate themselves on a happiness scale of 1 (miserable) to 5 (joyous), with 3 being 'can't complain' and we correlated their figures with their incomes. In a sample of over 1000 people, from both the United States and Canada, the average happiness score was consistently between 2.6 and 2.8 (not even a three), whether the person's income was under $1000 a month or over $4000 a month. If this were just a private hell it would be tragedy enough. But it's not. Our affluent lifestyles are having an increasingly devastating effect on our planet. The creation of consumers Perhaps we cling to our affluence -- even though it isn't working for us or the planet -- because of the very nature of our relationship with money. We project onto money the capacity to fulfil our fantasies, allay our fears, soothe our pain and send us soaring to the heights. In fact, we meet most of our needs, wants and desires through money. We buy everything from hope to happiness. We no longer live life, we consume it. We have come to believe, deeply, that it is our right to consume. If we have the money, we can buy whatever we want, whether or not we need it, use it or even enjoy it. And if we don't have the money ... heck, what are credit cards for? We have taken our right to consume to heart, and perhaps placed it above other rights, privileges and duties of a free society. At the same time, between the ads, our televisions, radios and newspapers are reporting the bad news about the environment. Product packaging is clogging the landfills. Product manufacturing is polluting the groundwater, deforesting the Amazon, fouling the rivers, lowering the water table, depleting the ozone layer and changing the weather. Transforming our relationship with money and reevaluating our spending activity could put us and the planet back on track. We need to learn from our past, determine our present reality and create a new, reality-based relationship with money, discarding assumptions and myths that don't work. The beginning of a new road map for money There is a word that provides the basis for transforming your relationship with money. It's a word we use every day, yet we are practically incapable of recognizing it when its staring us in the face. The word is 'enough'. Enough for our survival. Enough comforts. And even enough little 'luxuries.' We have everything we need; there's nothing extra to weigh us down. It's appreciating and fully enjoying what money brings into your life and yet never purchasing anything that isn't needed or wanted. So what's all that stuff beyond enough? It's whatever you have that doesn't serve you, yet takes up space in your world. Clutter! To let go of clutter, then, is not deprivation, it's lightening up and opening up space for something new to happen. Enough is a wide and stable plateau. It is a place of alertness, creativity and freedom. From this place, being suffocated under a mountain of clutter that must be stored, cleaned, moved, gotten rid of and paid for on time. NINE MAGICAL STEPS TO CREATE A NEW ROAD MAP Continue Reading At: www.yourmoneyoryourlife.org/fom-about-summary.asp
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Dec 27, 2006 6:33:56 GMT 4
Robert Fisk on Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid....MBanality and barefaced lies Here in America, I stare at the land in which I live and see a landscape I do not recognise Published: 23 December 2006 I call it the Alice in Wonderland effect. Each time I tour the United States, I stare through the looking glass at the faraway region in which I live and work for The Independent - the Middle East - and see a landscape which I do no recognise, a distant tragedy turned, here in America, into a farce of hypocrisy and banality and barefaced lies. Am I the Cheshire Cat? Or the Mad Hatter? I picked up Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It's a good, strong read by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation, the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon this denuded, subject population, and what he calls "a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights". Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is "afraid that we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship...". A proposed but unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, "is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them". Needless to say, the American press and television largely ignored the appearance of this eminently sensible book - until the usual Israeli lobbyists began to scream abuse at poor old Jimmy Carter, albeit that he was the architect of the longest lasting peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbour - Egypt - secured with the famous 1978 Camp David accords. The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print", ho! ho!) then felt free to tell its readers that Carter had stirred "furore among Jews" with his use of the word "apartheid". The ex-president replied by mildly (and rightly) pointing out that Israeli lobbyists had produced among US editorial boards a "reluctance to criticise the Israeli government".
Typical of the dirt thrown at Carter was the comment by Michael Kinsley in The New York Times (of course) that Carter "is comparing Israel to the former white racist government of South Africa". This was followed by a vicious statement from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who said that the reason Carter gave for writing this book "is this shameless, shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially when it comes to the media. What makes this serious is that he's not just another pundit, and he's not just another analyst. He is a former president of the United States".
But well, yes, that's the point, isn't it? This is no tract by a Harvard professor on the power of the lobby. It's an honourable, honest account by a friend of Israel as well as the Arabs who just happens to be a fine American ex-statesman. Which is why Carter's book is now a best-seller - and applause here, by the way, for the great American public that bought the book instead of believing Mr Foxman.But in this context, why, I wonder, didn't The New York Times and the other gutless mainstream newspapers in the United States mention Israel's cosy relationship with that very racist apartheid regime in South Africa which Carter is not supposed to mention in his book? Didn't Israel have a wealthy diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn't Israel have a fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? Am I dreaming, looking-glass-like, when I recall that in April of 1976, Prime Minister John Vorster of South Africa - one of the architects of this vile Nazi-like system of apartheid - paid a state visit to Israel and was honoured with an official reception from Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, war hero Moshe Dayan and future Nobel prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin? This of course, certainly did not become part of the great American debate on Carter's book. At Detroit airport, I picked up an even slimmer volume, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report - which doesn't really study Iraq at all but offers a few bleak ways in which George Bush can run away from this disaster without too much blood on his shirt. After chatting to the Iraqis in the green zone of Baghdad - dream zone would be a more accurate title - there are a few worthy suggestions (already predictably rejected by the Israelis): a resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, an Israeli withdrawal from Golan, etc. But it's written in the same tired semantics of right-wing think tanks - the language, in fact, of the discredited Brookings Institution and of my old mate, the messianic New York Times columnist Tom Friedman - full of "porous" borders and admonitions that "time is running out".
The clue to all this nonsense, I discovered, comes at the back of the report where it lists the "experts" consulted by Messrs Baker, Hamilton and the rest. Many of them are pillars of the Brookings Institution and there is Thomas Freedman of The New York Times.But for sheer folly, it was impossible to beat the post-Baker debate among the great and the good who dragged the United States into this catastrophe. General Peter Pace, the extremely odd chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said of the American war in Iraq that "we are not winning, but we are not losing". Bush's new defence secretary, Robert Gates, announced that he "agreed with General Pace that we are not winning, but we are not losing". Baker himself jumped into the same nonsense pool by asserting: "I don't think you can say we're losing. By the same token (sic), I'm not sure we're winning." At which point, Bush proclaimed this week that - yes - "we're not winning, we're not losing". Pity about the Iraqis. I pondered this madness during a bout of severe turbulence at 37,000 feet over Colorado. And that's when it hit me, the whole final score in this unique round of the Iraq war between the United States of America and the forces of evil. It's a draw! Source: news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2097774.ece
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Feb 2, 2007 15:09:58 GMT 4
"Censure pardons the ravens, but rebukes the doves." Juvenal11th-hour bid to halt Iraq war revelationsForeign Office says envoy's book 'risks damaging morale' Jamie Doward, home affairs editor Sunday January 28, 2007 The Observer The foreign office has made a last-ditch attempt to stop one of its former senior diplomats from publishing a book claiming that the government knew that Iraq did not represent a significant threat to the West in the run-up to the Iraq war.Last night Carne Ross, who was a member of the British mission to the United Nations, declined to comment on a letter asking him to 'reconsider' his decision to publish his book, Independent Diplomat, other than to describe it as 'unpleasant'. A spokesman said: 'The Foreign and Commonwealth Office disagrees fundamentally with much of the book and is disappointed that Mr Ross has chosen to misrepresent the FCO. In doing so, he risks damaging the credibility and morale of the FCO and the relationship of confidence and trust within government.' Ross, who signed the Official Secrets Act, has already been forced to censor the book on the grounds of national security.The row mirrors Foreign Office concerns over attempts by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador to the UN, to write his account of the war in Iraq. Greenstock, Ross's boss, subsequently dropped plans to publish his own book. Ross's book is likely to make uncomfortable reading for ministers as it raises questions about why the government continued to support the Iraq invasion if it did not believe that Saddam Hussein was a genuine threat.A diplomat for 15 years, Ross resigned in 2004 after giving secret testimony to the Butler inquiry on the war. It included the allegation that between 1998 and mid-2002, when Ross worked at the UN, Britain and the United States assessed that Iraq was not a threat. Ross says that the book, to be published next month, is a serious critique of the government's foreign policy rather than a 'kiss and tell'. As it has been written by someone who has been at the centre of the government's foreign policy-making during a crucial time in recent British history, it is likely to provoke a debate that the Foreign Office will not want to see aired.Ross admitted his decision to give evidence to Butler was the end of his relationship with his former employer. 'I had written many resignation letters over the years, but after Butler I knew there was no going back,' he said. 'It is not done to speak out.' Ross, who described himself as a 'rottweiler' at the UN in his ferocious defence of British foreign policy, came to question his beliefs when he took time off from the Foreign Office. 'I had become more and more disillusioned with the way the Foreign Office had practised foreign policy,' he said. 'I took a sabbatical in 2002 and that's when I really started to question my personal role. I did many things I'm not proud of.'He said many people in the Foreign Office who had vetted the book sympathised with his arguments, which focus on the idea that foreign policy is concentrated in the hands of too few people and that those it affects are not involved in its formation. Submitted to the Foreign Office for clearance in August 2006, the department finally approved it - with cuts - last December. Last night the Foreign Office confirmed that it had sent Ross a letter but said this was not an attempt to halt the book's publication. Source: www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2000433,00.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Mar 9, 2007 17:42:56 GMT 4
ABFFE Condemns FBI Investigation of Literary WorksThe books mentioned below are some of the greatest books I have ever read: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors, was recently made into a movie, which I saw....I did not read the book so I can't comment on that....the movie was bizarre, but I liked it. It was an autobiographical piece on Burroughs’ early life and the totally sick screwed up people who were in charge of him.
When the FBI is asked to step in to interfere with and censor a school's curriculum, we might as well be living in Ray Bradury's Fahrenheit 451; some in the FBI can work in the subsection: FFC, Fireman First Class:'Montag thinks back: "Thirty years ago....the final library burnings...." "On target," Beatty nods. "And having no job, and being a failed Romantic, or whatever in hell, I put in for Fireman First Class. First up the steps, first into the library, first in the burning furnace heart of his ever blazing countrymen, douse me with kerosene, hand me my torch!"If this is where we're headed....I am a criminal in the first degree.....Michelle For further information, contact: Joan Bertin, National Coalition Against Censorship, (212) 807-6222, ext. 15 Chris Finan, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, (212) 587-4025, ext. 15 For Immediate Release ABFFE Condemns FBI Investigation of Literary WorksNEW YORK, NY, March 1, 2007 -- The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) today condemned the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan for asking the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate a complaint that books used in the public schools of Howell, Michigan, are obscene. The complaint was filed by a woman who was unsuccessful in persuading the Howell Board of Education to remove several books that she dislikes, including Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. “It is absolutely bizarre that a high official in the Justice Department would take such a step. Under the law, the books cannot be found obscene if they have literary merit, which in this case cannot reasonably be questioned,” NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin said. ABFFE President Chris Finan said that U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy III had abdicated his responsibility to protect free speech. “We are told that Murphy ‘routinely’ refers all obscenity complaints to the FBI. But he has a duty to reject frivolous claims to ensure that there is no chilling effect on books that are protected by the First Amendment,” Finan said. He added that Murphy has been nominated to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. “This is not the kind of judgment we expect from a man who has been nominated for a seat on one of our highest courts,” Finan said.The challenged books are used in 11th grade English class in Howell and many other schools around the country. On February 12, the Howell Board of Education voted 5-2 to retain the books challenged by the Livingston Organization for Values in Education (LOVE), a group of parents and other community members that charged that the books are inappropriate for minors because they contain sexual themes and profanity. When the LOVE challenge failed, one of its members, Vicki Fyke, filed a complaint with the Livingston County prosecutor, the Attorney General of Michigan and the U.S. Attorney alleging that the Morison, Wright and Vonnegut books are legally obscene and also violate the laws against child pornography and child sexual abuse. (The Bluest Eye describes the rape of a child.) LOVE also asked for a ruling on the legality of Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors, another book used in the Howell schools. Newspapers in the Detroit area confirmed today that Murphy had referred the books to the FBI. “Absolutely. We’re looking into it,” Gina Bilaya, a spokesman for Murphy’s office, told the Daily Press & Argus. “We do it with all complaints,” she said. The local prosecutor and the Michigan Attorney General are also reported to be conducting investigations. In early February, ABFFE and NCAC joined a number of free speech advocates in sending a letter to the school board opposing the censorship of the books targeted by LOVE. A copy of the letter is online at www.ncac.org/literature/20070206~MI-Howell~Award-_Winning_Books_Challenged_in_Michigan_School.cfm. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ UPDATE:Joint Press Release: Free Speech Groups Welcome Decisions Clearing Challenged BooksNEW YORK, NY, March 8, 2007 - The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) today welcomed decisions by federal, state and local prosecutors upholding the right of students in Howell, Michigan, to read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, and Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors. U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy III and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced yesterday that there is no merit in the complaints made by the Livingston Organization for Values in Education (“LOVE”) that the books are obscene. Murphy, who had referred the books to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a decision, declared that neither “[t]he material submitted nor its inclusion as part of the school’s required English curriculum constitutes a violation of federal law.” Livingston County Prosecutor David Morse cleared the book last week. “We are pleased to see that the U.S. Attorney, Attorney General, and County Prosecutor have made the right decision in this case and deferred to the school officials, who had undertaken an appropriate and thoughtful review of the educational value of these books,” NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin said. She added, however, that “the case demonstrates the need to educate more parents about how the First Amendment applies in public schools.” ABFFE President Chris Finan added that U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy III had taken the case too far on March 1st when he sent Fyke’s letter to the FBI for investigation. "It is disturbing that it has taken the U.S. Attorney so long to conclude that he has no jurisdiction in this case,” he said. “It should never have been referred to the FBI in the first place."While expressing satisfaction in the outcome of the Michigan case, Bertin and Finan noted that there has been a rash of censorship incidents in recent weeks involving books used in public schools. Parents have challenged Chris Crutcher’s Whale Talk in Missouri Valley, Iowa and Carolyn Mackler’s Vegan Virgin Valentine, Eddie de Oliveira’s Lucky, Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes, Robert Cormier’s Beyond the Chocolate War, and Kevin Henkes’ Newbery Honor-winning Olive’s Ocean in Duval County, FL. In addition, school librarians have hesitated to purchase this year’s Newbery award-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, for their school collections because the word, “scrotum,” appears on the book’s opening page. Founded in 1974, NCAC is an alliance of 50 national non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties groups. ABFFE is the bookseller's voice in the fight against censorship. It was founded in 1990 by the American Booksellers Association. ----------------------
ABFFE Update is published by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the bookseller's voice in the fight against censorship, www.abffe.com.
CELEBRATE BANNED BOOKS WEEK--September 22-29, 2007.
SUPPORT ABFFE! Call (212)587-4025 ext.13 or donate online, secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2055.
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Sept 9, 2007 10:09:34 GMT 4
ABFFE Urges Supreme Court to Support Free SpeechSeptember 7, 2007 Volume 9, Number 7 The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE), the bookseller’s voice in the fight against censorship, is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a lower court decision that struck down a provision of a federal child pornography law that bans “pandering” advertisements for books, magazines and other works that are protected by the First Amendment. Under the PROTECT Act of 2003, a producer, distributor or retailer can be sentenced to up to 20 years in jail for advertising a work “in a manner that reflects the belief, or that is intended to cause another to believe” that it contains sexually explicit pictures of minors. ABFFE President Chris Finan said the PROTECT Act goes too far. “It is already against the law to advertise child pornography,” he said. “What this law does is to punish speech about books that are protected by the First Amendment.” In striking down the law, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, a conservative court, concluded that it could be used to send someone to jail for 20 years for advertising as “child pornography” works that neither depict children nor are sexually explicit, including Walt Disney’s Snow White, Finan said. A person can even get 20 years for offering to sell a work that doesn’t exist. In an amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court, ABFFE has joined the Association of American Publishers, the Freedom to Read Foundation and other book industry groups in warning of the potential chilling effect of this provision of the PROTECT Act. It argues that producers, distributors and retailers must be free to advertise First Amendment-protected books and other works without the fear that a prosecutor will charge them with a crime. For example, a prosecutor who is unhappy about the sale of photography books that contain pictures of nude children might indict a bookseller for advertising child pornography based on the jacket blurbs promoting the books. (In 1997, two Barnes & Noble stores in Alabama were indicted for violating the child pornography laws by offering to sell books by photographer Jock Sturges. The charges were later dropped.) “First Amendment rights should not be limited by a prosecutor’s surmise as to the intent of a publisher or retailer, particularly when the underlying material is lawful,” the brief states. (To read the amicus brief, click here: www.abffe.com/USAvWilliams.pdf ) The 11th Circuit concluded that the pandering provision of the PROTECT Act runs counter to the Supreme Court decision in 2002 in Free Speech Coalition v. Ashcroft. In that case, the Court ruled 6-3 that the Child Pornography Prevention Act violated the First Amendment by banning the sale of “virtual” or simulated depictions of minors when the purpose of the law should be to protect real children from being used in the creation of pornography. It also rejected a provision of the act that banned the pandering of non-obscene material as child pornography. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in this case on Oct. 30.The current case, U.S. v. Michael Williams, originated in the prosecution of a Florida man for both advertising and possessing child pornography. Williams agreed to plead guilty to both crimes and is now serving two concurring five-year prison terms. His prison term will remain unchanged no matter what the Supreme Court decides in this case. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note from Michelle: Celebrate the Right to Read! Banned Books Week will be held from Sept. 29-Oct. 6. Watch for upcoming posts.....
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Sept 12, 2007 13:38:25 GMT 4
The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Was An Act of StateBook review and discussion on: Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. Part 1 of 2A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. . . . We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. --Martin Luther King, "Beyond Vietnam," Address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church, NYC, 4/4/67 Did you know that a civil case was brought before a jury in Memphis in 1999 by the family of Dr. Martin Luther King? No? Well listen up, folks, because the jury found that King was killed not by James Earl Ray, but as part of a conspiracy perpetrated by the FBI, the Mafia, the Army special forces and the Memphis police. There's a book written by the attorney who brought the case, Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. Yes, I know you haven't heard of it. Nobody has. This book has never been reviewed by any mainstream media outlet, and probably never will. That is telling of all that is wrong in my country. Or as Steve Bhaerman says in today's post at Wake Up World: Re: WAKE UP WORLD Reply #78 on Today at 1:55pm A Prayer For the Heart and Soul of America Time to Gather Under One Big Intent airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?board=solutions&action=display&thread=1128911552&page=6 : "And that, my friends, is the problem. Not health care, not abortion rights, not even the war in Iraq. The real problem is we are not in control of our own government, and the media has used weapons of mass distraction to keep us from noticing." Here is a review of the book. I urge you to continue on to the source for more reading at many links. I would also ask you to go to our Wake Up World thread for a complete reading of Steve Bhaerman's message. If you are a first time visitor to Wake Up World, I ask you to keep an open mind as you read posts there. Some of it may seem strange, odd, or downright crazy to you. You might also wonder on my sanity....To this I say to you: It is exactly this path that I have been following all my life, sometimes blindly and very much alone, that has brought me here to the FH Forum to post news and commentary on government and world events. It is this path which put me in every moment of my life and contact with people, situations, and information that gave me the background to be able to write here about numerous subjects. It is this path which gave me the courage to show up/stand up and speak at demonstrations, to contact government and corporate officials, to go against the grain in every area of my life when no one else around me would. So, if you still doubt my sanity, I also say to you: If given the choice, I would pick my reality over and over again against what the world has sanctioned as sane.....MichelleThe Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Was An Act of State Book Review by David T. Ratcliffe 20 January 2003 Dr. William F. Pepper was the King Family's lawyer-investigator in the 1999 Circuit Court trial in Memphis, Tennessee, King Family versus Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators. The Honorable James E. Swearengen (Division 4, judge presiding) stated to the jury after reaching its verdict: "In answer to the question did Loyd Jowers participate in a conspiracy to do harm to Martin Luther King, your answer is yes. Do you also find that others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant? Your answer to that one is also yes." The story of Martin Luther King's assassination, and the 1999 trial where the truth of this event was finally revealed in a court of law is now encapsulated in Dr. William F. Pepper's new book, released by Verso this month: An Act of State - The Execution of Martin Luther King. The dust jacket summarizes what many have intuitively known for more than thirty years: "William Pepper, attorney and friend of Dr. King and the King family, became convinced after years of investigation that not only was Ray not the shooter, but that King had been targeted as part of a larger conspiracy to stop the anti-war movement, and to prevent King from gaining momentum in his promising Poor People's Campaign. Ten years into his investigation, in 1988, Pepper agreed to represent Ray. While he was never able to successfully appeal the sentence before Ray's death, he was able to build an air-tight case against the real perpetrators. In 1999, Loyd Jowers and co-conspirators were brought to trial in a wrongful death civil action suit on behalf of the King family. Seventy witnesses set out the details of the conspiracy in a plot to murder King that involved J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Richard Helms and the CIA, the military, the local Memphis police, and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis. The evidence was unimpeachable. The jury took an hour to find for the King family. But the silence following these shocking revelations was deafening. Like the pattern during all the investigations of the assassination throughout the years, no major media outlet would cover the story. It was effectively buried. "Until now, the details, evidence, and personalities of all these nefarious characters have gone unreported. In An Act of State, you finally have the truth before you -- how the United States government effectively shut down one of the most galvanizing movements for social change by stopping its leader dead in his tracks." In his closing remarks on the last day of the trial, Dr. Pepper touched upon the underlying dynamics of what created the circumstances of Dr. King's execution: Martin King, as you know, for many years was a Baptist preacher in the southern part of this country, and he was thrust into leadership of the civil rights movement at a historic moment in the civil rights movement and social change movement in this part of the country. That's where he was. That's where he has been locked in time, locked in a media image, locked as an icon in the brains of the people of this country. But Martin King had moved well beyond that. When he was awarded the Noble Peace Prize he became in the mid-1960's an international figure, a person of serious stature whose voice, his opinions, on other issues than just the plight of black people in the South became very significant world-wide. He commanded world-wide attention as few had before him. As a successor, if you will, to Mahatmas Gandhi in terms of the movement for social change through civil disobedience. So that's where he was moving. Then in 1967, April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was killed, he delivered the momentous speech at Riverside Church in New York where he opposed the war. Now, he thought carefully about this war. . . . I remember vividly, I was a journalist in Vietnam, when I came back he asked to meet with me, and when I opened my files to him, which were devastating in terms of the effects upon the civilian population of that country, he unashamedly wept. I knew at that point really that the die was cast. This was in February of 1967. He was definitely going to oppose that war with every strength, every fiber in his body. And he did so. He opposed it. And from the date of the Riverside speech to the date he was killed, he never wavered in that opposition. Now, what does that mean? Is he an enemy of the State? The State regarded him as an enemy because he opposed it. But what does it really mean, his opposition? I put it to you that his opposition to that war had little to do with ideology, with capitalism, with democracy. It had to do with money. It had to do with huge amounts of money that that war was generating to large multinational corporations that were based in the United States . . . When Martin King opposed the war, when he rallied people to oppose the war, he was threatening the bottom lines of some of the largest defense contractors in this country. This was about money. When he threatened to bring that war to a close through massive popular opposition, he was threatening the bottom lines of some of the largest construction companies, one of which was in the State of Texas, that patronized the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and had the major construction contracts at Cam Ran Bay in Vietnam. This is what Martin King was challenging. He was challenging the weapons industry, the hardware, the armament industries, that all would lose as a result of the end of the war. . . . Now, he begin to talk about a redistribution of wealth, in this the wealthiest country in the world that had such a large group of poor people, of people living then and now, by the way, in poverty. That problem had to be addressed. And it wasn't a black-and-white problem. This was a problem that dealt with Hispanics, and it dealt with poor whites as well. That is what he was taking on. That's what he was challenging. The powers in this land believed he would not be successful. Why did they believe that? They believed that because they knew that the decision-making processes in the United States had by that point in time, and today it is much worse in my view, but by that point in time had so consolidated power that they were the representatives, the foot soldiers, of the . . . very economic interests who were going to suffer as a result of these times of changes. So the very powerful lobbying forces that put their people in the halls of Congress and indeed in the White House itself and controlled them, paid and bought them and controlled them, were certainly not going to agree to the type of social legislation that Martin King and his mass of humanity were going to require. On the King Center website, a draft from Pepper's new book, describes the role played by the media from the testimony of William Schapp, attorney, military and intelligence specialization, and co-publisher Covert Action Quarterly. The culpability of the commercial media uniformly burying this Crime Of The Century story is the most evident indicator of the true interests served by the U.S. corporate press. Half a day was occupied with the testimony of Attorney William Schapp, who we qualified as an expert on government use of the media for disinformation and propaganda purposes. . . . Schapp revealed that the [central intelligence] agency alone -- not to mention its counterparts in the rest of the American intelligence community -- owned or controlled some 2,500 media entities all over the world. In addition, it has its people ranging from stringers to highly visible journalists and editors in virtually every major media organization. As we have seen and were indeed experiencing every day of the trial, this inevitably results in the suppression or distortion of sensitive stories and the planting and dissemination of disinformation. Considering all of the aspects of the cover up in this case, the ongoing media role is the most sinister precisely because it, if not powerfully controverted, as was done with the trial, perpetuates the lies and disinformation from one generation to the next, for all time. Writing in an April 7 2002 letter to John Judge, Dr. Pepper explained further details of the manner in which disinformation serves to distract people from making the connections that lie at the heart of Dr. King's assassination. Note that the 7,000 (at its peak) protesters who lived in Resurrection City between mid-April and 19 June 1968 comprised less than 2 percent of the 500,000 people Martin King was committed to bringing to Washington that Spring to force the United States government to abolish poverty. . . . I still represent the family and monitor developments such as the recent allegations, regarding which the family asked me to respond to media queries. So far as we are concerned the truth about the assassination was fully revealed in court, under oath over a month long trial in late 1999 in Memphis. In Kings v. Jowers, et al, some 70 witnesses completely set out the details and the range of the conspiracy which was coordinated by the US Government with the assistance of state and local officials and on the site implementation of local organized crime operatives. The entire trial is on the web site of the King Center. It took the jury about one hour to find the Government liable through the actions of its agents. The identities of the shooter and James Earl Ray's handler, Raul, were also established. . . . So, John, it is not true that this case is open. It is open, officially, but unlike the other assassinations we know and have evidence of the details of the killing. The family believes that they are completely vindicated. Even the New York Times in a front page piece (never again mentioned, by their local reporter) acknowledged that members of the jury were quoted as saying that the evidence -- never before seen or heard or tested under oath -- was overwhelming. . . . Your analysis is correct. This type of [false] claim [of a supposed King assassination plotter that is not credible] distracts us from the overall coordinating role of Government and the powerful economic interests which decided that MLK had to be removed from the scene because of his increasingly effective opposition to the war and, perhaps, more significantly, his commitment to bring upwards of 500,000 of the wretched of America to Washington, not to march but to encamp and daily visit their elected representatives to demand the restoration of the social welfare/health and educational programs which had been severely, even terminally, cut in deference to the military budgetary increases. The Army knew that their demands would not be met, realized that the massive assemblage would likely become enraged and emerge as a revolutionary force in the nation's capitol -- the very belly of the beast -- and were fully aware that they did not have the troops available to put down the rebellion. (Remember, at the time, Westmoreland wanted another 200,000 for Vietnam and those were also not available). Hence, MLK had to be stopped. He would never be allowed to bring that alienated mass to Washington. A logistics officer in charge of troop movements and truck allocations at Fort Meade, passed word to me that on the morning of the assassination he was put on alert and told to be ready to bring the National Guard and other troops to Washington that afternoon. Martin King was shot at 6:01 PM. The troops were already on the move in anticipation of the rioting which was certain to break out when the news reached the capitol. On the back cover of An Act of State, Coretta Scott King sums up her understanding and appreciation of its significance: "For a quarter of a century, Bill Pepper conducted an independent investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He opened his files to our family, encouraged us to speak with the witnesses, and represented our family in the civil trial against the conspirators. The jury affirmed his findings, providing our family with a long-sought sense of closure and peace, which had been denied by official disinformation and cover-ups. Now the findings of his exhaustive investigation and additional revelations from the trial are presented in the pages of this important book. We recommend it highly to everyone who seeks the truth about Dr. King's assassination." In the 12/9/99 King Family Press Conference on the MLK Assassination Trial Verdict, Dr. Pepper described the significance of what the trial had uncovered and established: . . . Then the proof goes into the broader conspiracy. The fact that had you known that there were photographers on the roof of the fire station? Had you known that two army photographers were on the roof of the fire station photographing everything? Two cameras, one on the balcony and one whisking around the driveway and into the brush area. Did you know ladies and gentlemen that the assassination was photographed? That there were photographs buried in the archives at the Department of Defense? No, you did not know. And you know why you did not know? Because there was no police investigation in this case. No house-to-house investigation. Neighbors as late as two weeks later stated "they never knocked on my door, now let me tell you what I saw." . . . They didn't talk to the Captain who ran the fire station. No one talked to that man in thirty years. He put the photographers up there. He took the stand and stated, "yeah I put them up there. They showed me credentials saying they wanted to take pictures." Where are those pictures? That proof has existed for all of these years. It's there. It has been buried. The tragedy of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a tragedy for this family here. This family in my view is America's first family because of their struggle and for what they have stood for, going back for generations, going back to 1917, the first world war period, this family was under surveillance by military intelligence back then. Up to the present time they have been feared. So that is a tragedy for this family. It is a tragedy for this nation and to the world that this man was taken from us when he was. The third tragedy was the failure of representative democracy to deal with this as a political act. This type of act which was covered up. How was it covered up? Well, the jury heard evidence as to how it was covered up for 31 years. . . . We can end this nonsense. We can end this cover-up. We can say for once and for all that a jury has spoken. They heard everything. If there is any decency left in this system, it is the fact that you can get 12 people who can hear what other people have to say, they can review documents, there are about 50 exhibits that they were able to review, and they can make up their own minds. The defense tried several times to have the case dismissed. The Judge refused. So it did go to a jury and that jury has spoken. Let's hope this is a forum, which we can say, is healing. We have reached the truth. The family is satisfied. What the government does, the government can do. The government may do now what it has never done before. If they want to take it up now, let them take it up. The real, real ongoing, almost criminal aspect of the case that still exists, is the fact that this family privately had to do what the government has not done and would not do. Make no mistake about it, all the evidence that was heard in that court over the course of the last 30 days has been available for 32 years. It has been there right in front of them. . . . In the traditional history of the country, where a person who was a friend and a colleague of a victim, only for one year, the last year of his life, but during that year the friend and colleague of the victim decided 20 years later the convicted murderer of that victim. Then eventually came to represent the family in the final quest of justice. That has been the process that I follow. That has been the result. We have at last obtained justice. Martin King was always fond of saying in moments of trial, that truth crushed to earth, no matter how much it is crushed, will always rise again. Ladies and Gentlemen, in that courtroom yesterday in Memphis, Tennessee, finally that truth crushed to earth rose again. Today we acknowledge that truth. Jim Douglass was one of only two reporters who attended the trial proceedings from start to finish in Memphis. Writing in the spring of 2000, he emphasized that we have yet to address the fact that 32 (now 34-plus) years later, the United States government is that much more committed to representing the private interests of monied power and putting the interests of corporate power ahead of people and the public interest. Perhaps the lesson of the King assassination is that our government understands the power of nonviolence better than we do, or better than we want to. In the spring of 1968, when Martin King was marching (and Robert Kennedy was campaigning), King was determined that massive, nonviolent civil disobedience would end the domination of democracy by corporate and military power. The powers that be took Martin Luther King seriously. They dealt with him in Memphis. Thirty-two years after Memphis, we know that the government that now honors Dr. King with a national holiday also killed him. As will once again become evident when the Justice Department releases the findings of its "limited re-investigation" into King's death, the government (as a footsoldier of corporate power) is continuing its cover-up -- just as it continues to do in the closely related murders of John and Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X. Almost 35 years after Martin Luther King's assassination, the current corporate presidency pursues the global prosecution of its so-called war against and war on terrorism. This carefully orchestrated, on-going, pre-emptive war of aggression is unique in scope and ambition to anything before or since World War II. The size of the United States' arsenal of weapons of mass destruction -- the world's largest repository of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons on civilian targets -- and the power of its conventional military might stands alone, at a quantum level above the world's next ten largest militaries combined. Dick Cheney asserted in October 2001 that this war "may never end. At least, not in our lifetime." Continued....
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Sept 12, 2007 13:44:08 GMT 4
...continued from last post:The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Was An Act of StateBook review and discussion on: Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. Part 2 of 2In An Act of State, Chapter 10 - A Vision Unto Death And A Truth Beyond The Grave, is a section headed by the latin phrase, Non nobis solum nati sumas, meaning We exist not for ourselves alone. In this subsection Pepper considers the challenge of the growing, unbridled militarism Martin King knew he faced, especially in the last year of his life. ". . . post[-1945]-war America began to breed a military establishment which would gradually grow beyond civilian control. By the year 2000, the pre-1960 warning of President Dwight Eisenhower about the power of the military-industrial complex was all too real. Martin King saw it as violating Americans' cultural heritage by making us the greatest purveyors of violence on the planet. In fact, in our lifetimes, the American military establishment has virtually become an autonomous system. It is today an entirely mercenary -- voluntary -- force increasingly separate from all but the transnational corporate interests it protects. (pp.169-170) . . . "Though he could not have predicted the details of the demise of democracy and the ultimate alienation of America from its cultural and spiritual roots, as well as the consequences of its Cold War policies upon the nation and its system of government, Martin King instinctively knew that the only alternative to disaster was to promote the perception of the oneness of humankind over the public policies of the nation. (p.171) . . . "He knew that if the torch of brotherhood were taken up, its bearers would face hatred like they had never known. So, he urged his followers not to hate those who hated them, for hate, he said, was too great a burden to bear. . . . King agreed that the challenge was not to turn new, emerging societies into mirror reflections of Europe or the United States, not even ideal reflections. Neither was it desirable to imitate institutions which had been derived from those models. Rather, he argued, new concepts must be advanced and a new man brought forward -- one who embraced the brotherhood of all. * "In order for this to occur, he said, these courageous pioneers would have to suffer being called social misfits or as he put it `maladjusted.' He said that concerning certain values and practices of the existing social order, and in particular the growth of militarism, he was proud to be maladjusted and he called upon all people to become maladjusted. He said he refused to adjust to a socio-economic order which deprived the many of necessities and allowed luxuries for the few. He refused to adjust to the madness of militarism and the self-perpetuating use of violence in the development of the American empire."(pp.171-2) ;D... *just as I said in the intro here, I'll take my form of sanity or to some, 'maladjustment'...M On 22 December 2002, columnist Eric Margolis wrote about how in Afghanistan, "Details of U.S. victory are a little premature". Near the end he cites the financial cost to the United States for maintaining its occupation: "The ongoing cost of Afghan operations is a closely guarded secret. Earlier this year, the cost of stationing 8,000 American troops, backed by warplanes and naval units, was estimated at $5 billion US monthly!" When I asked him what his source for this was he responded, "Cost derived from Pentagon's budget request to Congress." As William Pepper described above, Martin Luther King "was challenging the weapons industry, the hardware, the armament industries that all would lose as a result of the end of the war". Today, the military-industrial-corporate complex is the sole winner of a dead-end future it compulsively pursues to the detriment of all life on earth. Where does the $5 billion a month come from to finance the occupation of Afghanistan? A year ago a story by by cbsnews.com described how the Pentagon was unable to account for $2.3 trillion in taxpayer money. At this point, the Pentagon is a runaway train of feverish proportions. The current war party occupying the oval office has refined the prosecution of endless war to an heretofore incomprehensible degree. This present is the future Martin Luther King sought to alter. In the Epilogue, Pepper describes how the powerful economic interests that Martin Luther King had chosen to directly challenge in the last year of his life have consolidated their power and control under an increasingly formalized movement of corporate globalization. The poor and wretched of our country were represented and championed by Dr. King like no political or religious figure before or since. King intended "to compel Americans and their government to come face to face with the least of them -- the hidden wretched of their native land." "Martin Luther King Jr was, for the transnational corporations, public enemy number one. He stood in the way of their inexorable consolidation of power. If he had played along as have many of his peers before and after, he would likely be with us today, a wealthy and honored man, a pillar of the state. But he did not choose to play that game and as we have seen the might of the steward state was brought to bear upon him, and to this day the pillars of the American Republic continue to be supported by the same foundation stones of lies and greed which he was determined to crumble to dust and replace. (p.267) . . . "Martin King's commitments to social and economic justice went beyond the contemplative intellect into the arena of an active life. The root and branch transformations of our society, which was about the shaking of all the old foundations, will require nothing less than a struggle in whatever focus it ultimately takes against the familiar, the comfortable, and the acceptable values and inclinations which constitute a very real type of determinism for each one of us. This transcendent struggle, this exalted commitment, emerged as an all-consuming passion of Martin King. He acted upon it until he drew his last breath. "This is his living legacy to us and people everywhere." (p.272) As overwhelming as it is to face squarely the implications of this central tragedy of the latter half of 20th century American history, I am nonetheless deeply inspired by William Pepper's unflinching pursuit of the truth and of his commitment to produce a fuller and just accounting of the actions of my government in the meticulously planned execution of a man of peace who stood and died for the weak, oppressed, impoverished people of our world. Speaking to a group of us in the Gethsemane Lutheran Church on 3 December 1999 at the end of the WTO meeting in Seattle, David Korten emphasized a fundamental issue that Martin Luther King passionately committed his life's energy to addressing: "I suggest we be clear that our goal is not to reform global corporate and financial rule -- it is to end it. The publicly traded, limited liability corporation is a pathological institutional form and financial speculation is inherently predatory. As a first step both must be regulated. The appropriate longer term goal is to rid our economic affairs of these institutional pathologies -- much as our ancestors eliminated the institution of monarchy." Pepper's An Act of State expands and further informs one's awareness and consciousness of how our world actually operates. In April 2000, media analyst, author and professor Bob McChesney talked about Global Media and Democracy at the IFG Washington World Bank/IMF Teach-In. He made that point that "if you are going to change something, you have to understand how it works." God Bless America won't carry us through this transformational epoch of the human journey. God Bless Humanity just might if we can come to terms with the fundamentally interdependent nature of our species and how psychically connected we are to each other. There are many processes unfolding which we can explore and participate in to honor and serve Life's needs. Some examples are given here. See what you can find that best suits your individual nature and gifts. Local-to-ratical content includes: Read More:www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKactOstate.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Oct 26, 2007 11:08:01 GMT 4
An Apology of Sorts
Folks, I am truly sorry [more than you'll ever realize] that I missed my posting of Banned Books Week this year. In the past, I spent much time on this, posting each day of the event. This year, I didn't make space for that due to some 'icky' personal stuff going on at the time. I also have my own reading to do for my book discussion group and I lead discussions with my son's pre-teen book reading group at our library.....Forgive me for my lapse. However, I can't let it slip by and am posting this year's banned and challenged books plus a few articles of interest. I'll most likely do this over a period of time. So, without further delay, here's the list....MichelleBanned Books Week Handbook OnlineSeptember 29 - October 6, 2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABFFE's Banned and Challenged Book ListThis list was compiled by ABFFE from media resources as well as reports from those affected by the challenges. If you have any questions about any of the books listed, please feel free to contact Rebecca Zeidel, ABFFE program assistant, at rebecca@abffe.com. For the ALA list of this year's challenges, please click here. Alphabetical by Author A Paula by Isabel Allende How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez Go Ask Alice by Anonymous The Inferno by Dante Alighieri Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing by Maya Angelou B One More River by Lynne Reid Banks Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence? By Marion Diane Bauer Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Cultureby Michael A. Bellesiles Girl Goddess, #9, I Was a Teenage Fairy and Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block Deenie and Forever by Judy Blume Doing It by Melvin Burgess Family Values: Two Moms and Their Son by Phyllis Burke C My Father’s Scar by Michael Cart The Homo Handbook--Getting in Touch With Your Inner Homo by Judy Carter Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution by David Carter Dance on My Grave by Aidan Chambers Postcards from No Man’s Land by Aidan Chambers The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky The Awakening by Kate Chopin Ricochet River by Robin Cody Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier Skull of Truth by Bruce Coville Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse Athletic Shorts and Ironman by Chris Crutcher Stotan! by Chris Crutcher Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher D Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Dandicat The Teenage Guy’s Survival Guide by Jeremy Daldry My Brother Has AIDS by Deborah Davis Lost Prophet: The Life of Bayard Rustin by John D'emilio Between Lovers, Cheaters and The Other Woman by Eric Jerome Dickey Deal With It! by Esther Drill Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan E Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel F Eight Seconds by Jean Ferris The Sissy Duckling by Harvey Fierstein Life is Funny by E.R. Frank The Trouble With Babies by Martha Freeman My Heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr G Good Moon Rising and Holly’s Secret by Nancy Garden Grendel by John Gardener Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George The Drowning of Stephan Jones by Bette Greene H King & King by Lindade Haan and Stern Nijland Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Hunphrey by Margaret Peterson Haddix Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris Hey, Dollface by Deborah Hautzig The Misfits by James Howe GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Queer and Questioning Teens by Kelly Huegel J How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale by Jenna Jameson Breaking Boxes by A.M. Jenkins K Pinkerton, Behave! by Steven Kellogg One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver L What I Know Now by Rodger Larson To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee One Fat Summer by Robert Lipsyte Anastasia Again by Lois Lowry The Giver by Lois Lowry Extreme Elvin by Chris Lynch M All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich Gays/justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law by Richard D. Mohr Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers Monster by Walter Dean Myers N The Alice Series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor P Choke by Chuck Palanuik Mick Harte was Here by Barbara Park Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Captain Underpants by Dav Pilky Hot Zone by Richard Preston R On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God by Louise Rennison Coming Out in College: The Struggle for a Queer Identity by Robert A. Rhoads Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. by Luis J. Rodriguez Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling S The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Rainbow Boys and Rainbow High by Alex Sanchez Push! by Sapphire Shadow Club by Neil Shusterman Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck America (The Book) by Jon Stewart Double Date by R.L. Stine Sophie's Choice by William Styron T The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain V My Two Uncles by Judith Vigna W Peter by Kate Walker Montana 1948 by Larry Watson This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff Black Boy by Richard Wright Source: www.abffe.com/bbw-booklist.htm------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Red, white and censoredBy CHRISTOPHER M. FINAN Sun, Sep. 30, 2007 Special to the Star-Telegram Censorship is very American.After all, the First Amendment was something of an afterthought. The Founding Fathers did not plan to protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was a concession to critics who argued that the Constitution did not provide adequate protection from government tyranny. How right they were! Only a few years later, one group of the Founding Fathers passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in an effort to silence another group of Founding Fathers. We have come a long way in our appreciation of the importance of free speech. In the years after World War I, the United States saw the emergence of an organized campaign to expand the protections for free speech. By the end of the 20th century, the United States provided greater safeguards for expression than any other nation. Yet during the 26th annual Banned Books Week, Sept. 29-Oct. 6, it is clear that the fight for free speech must continue. There will always be times when concerns about national security threaten free speech. During World War I, the government prosecuted more than 2,000 people for criticizing the war; 1,000 were convicted, and many were sentenced to up to 10 years in jail. Fear of communism during the Cold War led to nearly a decade of repression: People were sent to jail for membership in the Communist Party; a blacklist silenced performers whose politics were suspect; and average Americans were investigated for the books they read, the music they listened to and the paintings that hung on the walls of their homes. The threats to free speech that have emerged in the wake of the 9-11 attacks are less overt, but they are not less serious. They lie in the growing surveillance of Americans at a time when government is demanding greater secrecy for itself. Censorship is also a threat when the nation is at peace. Booksellers, librarians and publishers celebrated the first Banned Books Week in 1982 against the background of a political and cultural counterrevolution. Many people saw the election of Ronald Reagan as a chance to strike back against the liberalization that had occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. On the local level, they began challenging hundreds of books that were used in schools and libraries. The number of book challenges has fallen during the last decade. At the peak, in the mid-1990s, the American Library Association recorded more than 700 each year. However, many school districts have established procedures for reviewing challenges, and there are fewer bans by panicked administrators. There were 546 challenges in 2006, but almost all the challenged books were returned to the shelves. Yet the desire for censorship remains strong. Books offend people for many different reasons. The most challenged title in 2006 was And Tango Makes Three, a children's book about two male penguins parenting an egg. Several "pro-homosexual" books were near the top of the censors' hit list last year. But complaints about sexual explicitness, offensive language and excessive violence continue to be common. It is not surprising that people still call for censorship. We are a diverse and vigorous society that embodies many conflicts. It is inevitable that people will be offended by something they see, read or hear and that they will respond by advocating the suppression of what they dislike. Demands for censorship come from both ends of the political spectrum and all points in between. Nor should we expect this situation to change. It is a measure of the health of our democracy that people feel free to protest. But because the fight over books will continue, so must the battle against censorship. Free speech will remain free only as long as we are willing to fight for it. Christopher M. Finan is president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and author of From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America .Source:www.star-telegram.com/245/story/252202.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Dec 11, 2007 13:17:59 GMT 4
ABFFE Book of the Month is “You Have No Rights”A few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, was giving a talk when he was asked what he knew about the case of Todd Persche, a freelance cartoonist who had just lost his job with a weekly newspaper for drawing cartoons critical of the Bush administration. He didn’t know anything about it, but he soon found out and added a new feature to the magazine Web site to track the growing number of violations of civil liberties. Rothschild’s new book from New Press, You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression (ISBN 978159558168) contains a selection of the dozens of stories that he has documented in his column, McCarthyism Watch. [ www.progressive.org/mccarthy ] You Have No Rights reveals a distressing number of cases in which the right to protest has been violated since 2001. It is ABFFE’s Book of the Month for December.ABFFE Book of the Month [December 2007]: You Have No Rights by Matthew Rothschild Interview with the AuthorABFFE: Your book spotlights 82 violations of the First Amendment and other civil liberties abuses since the September 11 attacks. Why did you choose to concentrate on local events? MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: I want readers to understand that flesh-and-blood Americans, just like themselves or their neighbors, are having their rights violated. It's all well and good to criticize policy, but until you see the effects of those policies up close, you don't feel the impact, you don't sense the anguish that these infringements cause. ABFFE: What government agencies are most frequently involved in these cases? MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: The FBI, the Secret Service, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force of several states are the ones that I ran into the most. Also the TSA, as well as the White House Office of Advance. In addition, local sheriff's departments and police departments, even down to the campus police, were involved in some of these stories. ABFFE: What kinds of people have been targeted? MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: A man standing in line at Caribou Coffee who was reading an article his father had downloaded, which was called "Weapons of Mass Stupidity"; a couple that was trying get training in disaster relief; a retired history professor; a music group pulled over during the Olympics in Utah; grandmothers protesting for peace; student activists; teachers who lost their jobs because they opposed the war; a father of a soldier (the dad had an "Impeach Bush" sign); a nurse accused of "sedition" because of a letter to the editor critical of Bush; a group of Arab Americans denied service at a Denny's ("We don't serve Bin Ladens here!"); a corporate executive forced to apologize for signing a peace petition. ABFFE: How have they responded to government threats? MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Many have fought back successfully by going to the ACLU and filing (or threatening to file) lawsuits. I want readers to come away believing that all is not lost, that they can fight back and win. Some have failed, however. For instance, Brett Bursey, who headed the South Carolina Progressive Network, protested Bush's appearance at the Columbia airport on October 24, 2002, with a sign that said, "No More War for Oil." Though there were people there supporting Bush and Lindsey Graham, Bursey was the only one who was told he had to go to a "Free Speech Zone" a half mile away. Bursey said, "I'm already in a free speech zone: the United States of America." He was eventually convicted for violating a federal statute having to do with presidential assassinations, kidnappings, and threats. Or take the case of Tom Frazier, who works for a public anti- pollution agency in the Orange County area. On October 16,2003, he went to San Bernardino to protest Bush, who was speaking at the Radisson Hotel. Frazier had a sign that said "Shock & Awe = Maim and Murder" and another that said, "Indict Bush--Crimes Against Humanity." But as soon as he got out of the parking lot, a police officer told him to stop, and when he asked why, he was arrested for obstructing a police officer. Frazier ultimately took a plea bargain for a disturbing the peace charge because he couldn't gamble on being convicted on the more serious charge, which could have cost him six months in the klink. ABFFE: Do you think that these violations of civil liberties are having a chilling effect on political debate? MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: For many of the individuals who have had their rights trampled on, yes, they are now thinking twice about engaging in their constitutionally protected right to speak and to assemble and to dissent. And that is the greatest crime of all. ABFFE: What can an individual do to help support free speech? MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: I urge citizens to "flaunt their freedoms." If we don't exercise our rights because we're afraid, then we've essentially surrendered our rights already. So go out and protest, sign petitions, march in demonstrations, use your voice. And help out other organizations that are fighting for our rights. Here are a few: the ACLU; American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; Amnesty International, USA; the Bill of Rights Defense Committee; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Council on American-Islamic Relations; Human Rights Watch; the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Source: www.abffe.com/youhavenorights.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Dec 14, 2007 6:27:54 GMT 4
Tapes Destroyed . . . Mukasey Still Can't Decide . . . The Torture Goes On . . . Do We Want to Live in a Torture State?During the holidays, when we get together with friends and family, will be an important time to talk about this responsibility and what is being done in our name to the people of the world. DVD ordering info below"WASHINGTON (AP) December 11 -- Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Tuesday to be rushed into deciding whether he considers waterboarding a form of torture, saying simply he understands the "intense interest" in the issue now at the heart of an inquiry into videotaped interrogations of terror suspects that were destroyed by the CIA."Waterboarding IS Torture - 11/12/2007 by C. Clark Kissinger When we rolled up to the Justice Department in Washington , we didn’t know what to expect. But we knew that we had to be there. A Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Judge Michael Mukasey to be the next Attorney General would be the next morning, yet he was still refusing to say whether waterboarding is actually torture. We were there to demonstrate that it most definitely is torture. I had come down from New York only a couple days before with the idea of putting on a very graphic demonstration. Getting on the phone, I quickly found people from a number of local groups who saw the urgency of doing this, including activists from the World Can’t Wait, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Catholic Worker, Code Pink, Montgomery Peace Action, and the Democracy Cell Project. The most challenging problem came from the press trying to downplay waterboarding as simply “simulated drowning.” How could we demonstrate the awful seriousness waterboarding, yet not endanger our “victim”? Helpfully, Steve Lane from Montgomery Peace Action had already designed a face towel with a piece of plastic behind it to protect the victim from the full force of the water. We had a chance to try it out Sunday morning when Senator Diane Feinstein was scheduled to be on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. Feinstein had just announced that she would be voting for Mukasey. Code Pink suggested that we all go down and demonstrate waterboarding for her. When Feinstein got out of her limo and headed for the studio doors, the Code Pink banner suddenly moved in front of her, cutting her off, at the same time revealing Steve Lane being held to a board with a gallon of water being poured in his face. Feinstein put on her best plastic smile and hurried on. The next morning was our demonstration for the media. We announced the waterboarding for noon at 10th & Pennsylvania , right in front of the Justice Department and across the street from the FBI building. When we arrived, there was already quite a crowd of reporters, photographers, and TV cameras waiting for us. I introduced the scene for media by pointing out that those publications that describe waterboarding as “simulated drowning” are practicing “simulated journalism.” Waterboarding IS drowning. Water is forced up the nose and mouth of the blindfolded victim in a controlled manner. Any attempt to breathe only leads to inspiring more water. The sensation of asphyxiation induces terror: “what if the torturers don’t stop?” Waterboarding is, of course, part of an arsenal of U.S. psychological torture methods that include sensory deprivation, stress positions, extreme cold, loud incessant music, sleep deprivation, and disorientation through isolation and the manipulation of meal times, sleep, and light. Research studies commissioned by the U.S. government found psychological torture to be more effective at terrorizing subjects than physical torture -- plus it leaves no scars. But no form of torture is effective at obtaining truthful information. It can only force people to say whatever the torturer wants said. As a matter of fact, all students at the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego are required to undergo waterboarding and become completely familiar with this technique. Yet to promote “plausible deniability” for the military, the U.S. government regularly employs “private contractors” or CIA personnel to do this dirty work. The government’s other ploy to deny responsibility is “special rendition,” where individuals are shipped to other countries to be tortured in secret at the request of the Bush regime. The sun was shining brightly and video cameras were trained on the scene as four anti-torture activists, dressed as “civilian contractors,” dragged the victim forward. Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, a 26-year-old Iranian-American actor, had bravely agreed to be the victim. He is dressed in an orange jump suit, his hands tightly bound with duct tape. “Give us the names!” screams Marietta , a local university drama teacher in real life. “I don’t have any names. I was in Syria at a conference,” Maboud stammers. “We can do this the easy way; we can do it the hard way. . . OK, hard way.” Maboud is grabbed from where he is sitting and forced onto an inclined board, head down, with the towel thrown over his face. “Give us the names!” the interrogator screams as water is poured onto the towel. Although Maboud is protected from the full force of the water by the piece of plastic behind the towel, some water still gets past and runs up his nose. It begins getting very real. After the first gallon, Maboud is pulled up. “You like that? You like that? That was the hard way. You want to breathe? Give us the names!” the interrogator again demands. Maboud can only cough and gasp for air. Rudely he is push back down on the board and given another gallon of water in the face. At the end of the demonstration, Maboud is coughing and shaken, his hands are quivering. He has, in fact, been partially drowned, much like a swimmer pulled from the surf by a life guard. I pick up the towel and show the reporters the plastic behind the towel. “Had this not been there, this man would be unconscious or worse.” “It’s only the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had,” Maboud tells reporters. “Although it was a ‘controlled environment,’ when water goes into your lungs, you want to scream and you can’t because you know as soon as you do you’re going to choke. It’s forced drowning. That’s what it is.” “How do we know you’re not just acting?” says the smart aleck from Fox News. Maboud looks at him with withering disgust. He explains how he prepared himself by studying everything he could find about waterboarding. It was perfectly clear to everyone present that this was not play acting. With so much media assembled, it was also important to drive home some more points: “Waterboarding is not an ‘enhanced interrogation technique,’ it’s torture. Waterboarding is illegal under both international and domestic law. The U.S. is a signatory of the International Convention Against Torture, and there is a domestic anti-torture law,” I pointed out. “Yet Mukasey says that if Congress will only pass a new law explicitly outlawing waterboarding, he will enforce it. That’s like saying, if Congress will only pass a new law, then I will deign to enforce the existing law!” The media also tells us that Mukasey won’t call this torture because that might cause legal problems for those who have authorized it. “After World War II, United States prosecuted as war criminals the Japanese officers responsible for waterboarding U.S. prisoners of war. Since when is retroactive immunity provided for war criminals?” I ask the reporters. By evening, video of the demonstration of waterboarding is all over the internet. Associated Press put out a major story with video, and it is on web pages from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times, as well as printed in a number of papers. A few nights later it was shown on the PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer Yet the next morning, two Democratic Senators, Feinstein and Schumer, provide the key votes to speed Bush’s nominee Mukasey for chief law enforcement officer of the land on to the full Senate -- the same man who will not acknowledge that waterboarding is torture. When President Bush says “the U.S. does not torture,” he is lying. This in turn presents a challenge to all of us, for torture plus silence equals complicity. We must put a stop to this whole fascist direction. The open practice of torture is yet one more reason why this hateful Bush regime must be driven from office and its whole program repudiated by millions. More, plus Waterboarding Demonstration at the Justice Department November 5, 2007 video at: www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4411&Itemid=220------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From the Verdict of the Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity (2006):"As to Count 1, we find that the Bush Administration authorized the use of torture and abuse in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, customary international law, and domestic constitutional and statutory law.
"In December 2001, the Bush Administration implemented the Special Access Program that authorized the secret seizure, detention, and interrogation of persons and subjected them to torture. The torture included but was not limited to: water boarding, beatings, the administration of electric shocks, extreme temperatures, denial of pain medication for injuries, severe burning, deprivation of food and water, and threats of death and sexual assault of family members."Download the full text of the final verdict in PDF form here Download the full text of the final verdict in Word format here Available in printed form from the Commission for $10. View Bush Commission Torture Video on Line! Click here to view the first of the Bush Commission videos based on the testimony taken by the commission on torture and indefinite detention (download may take a few minutes). Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski describes the chain of command that authorized the infamous tortures at Abu Graib in Iraq. Ambassador Craig Murray describes how he discovered the horrible tortures being conducted for the U.S. and the U.K. by the government of Uzbekistan. Camilo E. Mejia, co-chairman of Iraq Veterans Against the War, tells how ordinary soldiers like him were instructed to treat captured Iraqis "like dogs." Dr. Stephen Miles describes the homicide of an Iraqi prisoner and you will see the prisoner's body packed in ice with a U.S. soldier giving the "thumbs up." Barbara Olshansky from the Center for Constitutional Rights pulls together the whole picture of this illegal grab for presidential power, unrestrained by law or morality. For all above go to:www.bushcommission.org/?q=node/26------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ During the holidays, when we get together with friends and family, will be an important time to talk about this responsibility and what is being done in our name to the people of the world.Get the full background on U.S. torture policies with the DVDs of testimony before the Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration. Order these DVD compilations on line today.Crimes Against Humanity: 48-minCRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: THE BUSH RECORD Now Available! A new 48-min DVD featuring the highlights of testimony before The International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration. Starting with Katrina, the film presents undeniable evidence of deliberate crimes against humanity by the Bush Administration, including also Destruction of the Global Environment; Destruction of International Public Health (HIV); Torture and Illegal Detention; and Wars of Aggression. This new edit includes testimony from Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former Commander of Prisons in Iraq, Craig Murray, Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Camilo Mejias, Iraq Vet & War Resister, Malik Rahim, Common Ground, New Orleans, Jeremy Scahill, author, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, Barbara Olshansky, attorney for Guantanamo prisoners, and Alan Berkman, MD, international AIDS expert from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and many others. Plus commentary by Harry Belafonte and Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Order: www.worldcantwait.net/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=17Bush Crimes Commission 2 DVD set$25.00 (1) Torture and Illegal Detention: Showing that the Bush administration authorized 1. the use of torture and abuse 2. the transfer (“rendition”) of persons held in U.S. custody to foreign countries where torture is known to be practiced 3. indefinite detention of persons from other countries 4. The round-up and detention of thousands of immigrants without charge or trial 5. Committing murder by authorizing the CIA to kill those that the president designates, either US citizens or non-citizens, anywhere in the world. Testimony by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski describing the chain of command that authorized the infamous tortures at Abu Graib in Iraq. Ambassador Craig Murray on the tortures being conducted for the U.S. and the U.K. by the government of Uzbekistan. Camilo E. Mejia, member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Dr. Stephen Miles describes the homicide of an Iraqi prisoner. Barbara Olshansky from the Center for Constitutional Rights describes the Constitutional issues in this illegal grab for presidential power (2) Global AIDS and Reproductive Rights: 1. Imposition of Abstinence-Only HIV Prevention Program, 2. imposition of gag-rule on abortion counseling or services on clinics receiving US aid 3. Attempts to suppress medical research studies in HIV prevention when it conflicts with the ideology of the Christian Right. 4. Restriction of Generics-- coercing countries into agreements that severely restrict the manufacture and supply of generic drugs, the only affordable option for most HIV positive people in the Third World. Testimony by Dr. Alan Berkman, Columbia University School of Public Health, Vanessa Brocato, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, Naina Dhingra, Advocates for Youth, Dr. Thomas Fasy, Professor of pathology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Campaign Against Depleted Uranium. (3) Destruction of the Global Environment: 1. Denial and Distortion of Scientific Consensus and Findings on Global Warming. 2. Obstructionism on International Efforts to curb the emissions of greenhouse gases. It has withdrawn from any international efforts that would impose binding restrictions, however minimal. It has done this with full knowledge of the catastrophic effects of global warming and the disproportionate U.S. share of world greenhouse gas emissions, the leading cause of global warming. Testimony by Josh Tulkin, Organizing Director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, on the relationship between Hurricane Katrina and global warming. Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network, describes the effects of global warming on indigenous peoples. Daphne Wyham, Institute for Policy Studies, Sustainable Energy & Economy Network, and Ted Glick, Climate Crisis Coalition (4) The Response of the Bush Administration to Hurricane Katrina: Before, During and After The record is very clear on this indictment. The Bush administration demonstrated a gross and wanton indifference to human life that caused thousands of Gulf cost residents to die and suffer needlessly. The suffering continues, systemically causing continuous grievous injuries due to displacement and related issues. Featuring Anette Addison, Abigail Bayer, Dr. Robert Bullard, Eric Carter, Prof. John Clark, Carl Dix, King Downing,Dionne Franklin, Arron Guyton, Chokwe Lamumba, Larry McBride, Malik Rahim, Jeremy Scahill, Devon Turner, Emma Lofton Woods, Dr. Beverly Wright, and Tony Zambado. (5) Wars of Aggression, details the violations of international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg principles. This outstanding video features testimony by: Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, on why and how the Bush administration knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Amy Bartholomew, professor of law, Carleton University, on the structure of international law that prohibits wars of aggression Larry Everest, author of Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda, on the global agenda behind the U.S. war on Iraq Dahr Jamail, independent journalist who has reported extensively from Iraq, on war crimes being committed by U.S. forces in Iraq Jeremy Scahill, writer for The Nation and former correspondent for Democracy Now!, on the targeting of journalists in Iraq Camilo Mejia, Iraq vet and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, on what U.S. soldiers are called on to do to the Iraqi people David Swanson, organizer of Camp Democracy, on the meaning of the Downing Street memo Dr. Thomas Fasy, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, on the use of depleted Uranium weapons Order:www.worldcantwait.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9&products_id=20
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on May 29, 2008 15:09:40 GMT 4
Censorship Now and Then, Trust Us...We're Experts, An Interview and Three Books for you to Consider
Rather than rush out to buy former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's new rag, here's some books where your money would be well spent. The first two deal with censorship and preserving civil liberties under unlimited extension of executive power. The third highlights the necessity to think for yourself and not trust experts.
Enjoy! Michelle
ABFFE Book of the Month: Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice by Eric Lichtblau
The ABFFE Book of the Month for May is Bush’s Law by Eric Lichtblau (Pantheon), 978-0375424922. Lichtblau, who covers the Justice Department for the New York Times, reveals the struggle that began in the government immediately after the 9/11 attacks between those who advocated an unlimited extension of executive power to meet the emergency and those who fought to preserve civil liberties. Lichtblau won a Pulitzer Prize for his role in revealing the fact that the National Security Agency was spying on Americans in violation of the law.
Interview with the Author
ABFFE: Your book describes the panic felt by government officials over the threat of a second terrorist attack after 9/11. How did this fear shape the Bush administration's policies?
ERIC LICHTBLAU: Without question, the very real fear of another attack drove virtually every major policy decision in national security after 9/11, from the creation of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program to the harsh interrogation methods used on detainees to try and ply information from them, to the restructuring of the FBI and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. (I say it drove `virtually’ every major policy decision because the invasion of Iraq is a separate discussion; whether it was really a response to 9/11, or merely the result of a pre-conceived plan, will be debated for many years.) The edict from Bush-- ``don’t let this happen again’’—was one that bled down to all levels of government.
ABFFE: How effective were the measures taken to protect our national security?
ERIC LICHTBLAU: The White House, and in particular Vice President Cheney, point to the fact that the United States has not been hit again since 9/11 as proof of their effectiveness. There is wide debate among counter-terrorism experts about whether the absence of any further attacks reflects stronger defense at home, better offense (causing the scattering of al Qaeda), luck, or simply patience by al Qaeda. It’s also worth noting that US intelligence analysts found in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the invasion of Iraq was actually breeding support for anti-American extremists and jihadists.
ABFFE: Did the Bush administration's desire for secrecy actually undermine its effort to protect the country?
ERIC LICHTBLAU: I argue in my book that it did. In the case of the NSA wiretapping program and numerous other operations, many senior level government officials with the highest security clearances were not allowed to know about secret operations – in the case of the NSA operation, at Cheney’s direction – and that bred suspicion that ultimately undermined the integrity of these programs within the government itself. Moreover, the lack of transparency fueled distrust from Congress, the media and ultimately the public.
ABFFE: The New York Times initially refused to publish your story about the illegal spying by the National Security Administration. How would you rate the performance of the press following 9/11?
ERIC LICHTBLAU: In the months and early years after 9/11, there was no doubt a passivity among the press in looking at the government’s own actions. Our main focus, like that of the government itself, was to try to ``connect the dots’’ of the next big terror attack, and there was not the usual skepticism by the media in really examining many of the assertions put out by the government about security threats, both at home and abroad. That began to change in 2004, with a whole string of stories broken by the media – from the Abu Ghraib scandal to CIA secret prisons, Guantanamo abuses and the NSA program. The media began to get its bearings back and ask the hard questions we’re trained to ask.
ABFFE: On numerous occasions, the Bush administration attempted to retaliate against you for stories that raised questions about its policies. What impact did this have on your reporting?
ERIC LICHTBLAU: I did have my press pass confiscated by the Justice Department and was the subject of an unflattering internal email at the FBI advising agents not to talk to me, but I’d say I had it easy compared to government officials who raised concerns internally and faced the loss of their jobs, criminal investigations and worse. But for reporters, the current climate has certainly created a chill that makes it difficult to go after sensitive stories because of concern about the legal perils. That’s a day-to-day reality of the job.
ABFFE: Who are the heroes of your story?
ERIC LICHTBLAU: I tried to write an even-handed account that wasn’t a story of heroes and villains. What I set out to do was to tell the stories of how people within the government responded to a remarkable and tumultuous period in American history. My book is dotted with the stories of people like Jim Comey at the Justice Department, Jim Ziglar at the INS, Bassem Youssef at the FBI and others who began to raise uncomfortable questions about some of the tactics at play, and often paid the price for it.
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ABFFE Book Review: Mencken: The American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of the Bad Boy of Baltimore by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers
Book Review by Audrey Eisman
H.G. Mencken was a brilliant journalist and editor who was outspoken in his belief in a free press. Therefore we might say that he was an early exponent of free expression, although what he said often offended many – including several presidents of the United States.
Mencken was born in1880, and was raised, wrote and died in Baltimore. His family was extremely proud and even more prejudiced, speaking strongly against African Americans and Jews, and Mencken once said “I inherited a bias against the rabble. I come of a family that thought very well of itself for 300 years, and with some reason.”
However, when our country became involved in WWI, Mencken (a German American) realized that discrimination was expanding to include his own nationality – and so he became more sensitive to the role of the discriminated. And with the advent of Prohibition, he added that to his literary fire.
Mencken, who strongly opposed America’s participation in World War I and II, was critical of the suppression of anti-war speech. “The common notion that free speech prevails in this country makes me laugh” Mencken wrote in his diary. “Twice in my lifetime I have been forced to shut down altogether, first in 1916 and then in 1941….The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down….War in this country, wipes out all the rules of fair play.” Moreover, in his obituary for the Associated Press, that he penned himself, he wrote “I have believed all my life in free thought and free speech.”
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers has written a remarkable biography of this unique and certainly iconoclastic man.
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Trust Us, We're Experts How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
Now In Paperback! Publisher: Tarcher/Penguin Bookstore price: $14.95 U.S./$21.99 Canada ISBN 1-58542-139-1
Ask for it in your local bookstore or order it directly. To order by mail, send $20/book (includes postage & handling) to: CMD, 520 University Avenue, Suite 227, Madison, WI 53703.
"If you want to know how the world wags, and who's wagging it, here's your answer. Read, get mad, roll up your sleeves, and fight back. Rampton and Stauber have issued a wake-up call we can't ignore." --Bill Moyers
We count on the experts. We count on them to tell us who to vote for, what to eat, how to raise our children. We watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, read their opinions in magazine and newspaper articles and letters to the editor. We trust them to tell us what to think, because there's too much information out there and not enough hours in a day to sort it all out.
We should stop trusting them right this second.
In their new book, Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber offer a chilling exposé on the manufacturing of "independent experts." Public relations firms and corporations have seized upon a slick new way of getting you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral "third party," like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged to make you believe what they have to say--preferably in an "objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions."
For example:
You think that nonprofit organizations just give away their stamps of approval on products? Bristol-Myers Squibb paid $600,000 to the American Heart Association for the right to display AHA's name and logo in ads for its cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol. Smith Kline Beecham paid the American Cancer Society $1 million for the right to use its logo in ads for Beecham's Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette anti-smoking ads.
You think that you're witnessing a spontaneous public debate over a national issue? When the Justice Department began antitrust investigations of the Microsoft Corporation in 1998, Microsoft's public relations firm countered with a plan to plant pro-Microsoft articles, letters to the editor, and opinion pieces all across the nation, crafted by professional media handlers but meant to be perceived as off-the-cuff, heart-felt testimonials by "people out there."
You think that a study out of a prestigious university is completely unbiased? In 1997, Georgetown University's Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times column and advocated for changes in federal law to make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry; that the study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from Visa USA and MasterCard International Inc.; and that Bentsen himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist.
You think that all grassroots organizations are truly grassroots? In 1993, a group called Mothers Opposing Pollution (MOP) appeared, calling itself "the largest women's environmental group in Australia, with thousands of supporters across the country." Their cause: A campaign against plastic milk bottles. It turned out that the group's spokesperson, Alana Maloney, was in truth a woman named Janet Rundle, the business partner of a man who did P.R. for the Association of Liquidpaperboard Carton Manufacturers-the makers of paper milk cartons. You think that if a scientist says so, it must be true? In the early 1990s, tobacco companies secretly paid thirteen scientists a total of $156,000 to write a few letters to influential medical journals. One biostatistician received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A cancer researcher received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wall Street Journal. Nice work if you can get it, especially since the scientists didn't even have to write the letters themselves. Two tobacco-industry law firms were available to do the actual drafting and editing.
Rampton and Stauber reveal many more such examples of "perception management"--all of them orchestrated to make us buy or believe whatever the "independent expert" is pushing. They also explore the underlying assumptions about human psychology--e.g., "the public must be manipulated for its own good"--that make this kind of subliminal hard-sell possible.
Destined to be hated by P.R. firms and corporations everywhere, Trust Us, We're Experts is an eye-opening account of how these entities reshape our reality, manufacture our consent, get us to part with our money, even change our lives. A whole new spin on spin, it will forever alter the way we look at news, information, and the people who serve it up to us.
WHAT REVIEWERS ARE SAYING
"Stauber and Rampton have once again exposed the ugly underbelly of corporate America's psychological war on our citizens. Trust Us, We're Experts shows how giant corporations employ sophisticated psychiatric techniques, unscrupulous public figures, junk science, tainted studies and clever PR mercenaries in a relentless effort to market products that routinely kill, maim, deform and poison consumers and our environment."--Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President, Water Keeper Alliance
"If you want to know how the world wags, and who's wagging it, here's your answer. Read, get mad, roll up your sleeves, and fight back. Rampton and Stauber have issued a wake-up call we can't ignore."--Bill Moyers
"Trust Us, We're Experts is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism and a powerful vaccine against the stupifying effects of the corporate PR machine. Spread it around!"--Barbara Ehrenreich
"If you've ever wanted to see a TV spin doctor hog-tied and dragged through the streets, Rampton and Stauber do the next best thing. This book is modern muckraking of the best variety, skewering hype and showing us how to separate real experts from snake oil salesmen and hired corporate know-it-alls."--Jim Hightower
"Finally, a long-overdue expose of the shenanigans and subterfuge that lie behind the making of experts in America. Stauber and Rampton take us behind the scenes, inside corporate boardrooms, where marketing chiefs literally manufacture their own 'independent experts' to defend their products and practices. This groundbreaking book gives us a first look into the seamy side of corporate public relations, where academic experts of every stripe and kind are bought in various ways. An eye-opener."--Jeremy Rifkin
"Unlike many exposés, the book is a page-turner. Once you start, you will want to read it all. While your heart may sink, your passions will be aroused. It is like a sudden awareness that sweeps illusions away. This is not a casual jeremiad, but a careful, patiently researched deconstruction of corporate behavior and their so-called ethics."--Paul Hawken, author of Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism
"Rampton and Stauber's book explodes the cult of expertise and shows how easily the media and their readers can be misled by public relations claims masquerading as science. This book makes the best case I know for complete disclosure of the financial conflicts of interest of scientists and the corporate influence on university research."--Sheldon Krimsky, Professor at Tufts University, author of: Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis
"Trust Us brilliantly exposes the dirtiest public relations campaigns in America for what they are--cynical attempts to undermine our democracy so some creep can sell your kid more cigarrettes, push more Microsoft software on you or melt down the North Pole with global warming pollution."--John Passacantando, Executive Director, Greenpeace US
"This book is a must for everyone attempting to sift through the vast amount of information available in the media and on the net. It reveals how high-priced, international public relations corporations are hired to redefine facts, create confusion, and destroy reputations of accomplished scientists to protect their bottom line. The good news comes at the end of the book when the authors tell how to filter the news to remove the 'bottom-line bias' so exquisitely woven into advertisements and news items by special interests."--Theo Colborn, Senior Program Scientist, World Wildlife Fund, co-author of Our Stolen Future
"The United States today is in the midst of the Golden Age of Propaganda. Well-heeled private interests have learned how to manipulate journalism and public discourse on fundamental public health, environmental and political issues through the sophisticated use of public relations, bogus experts and junk science. In Trust Us, We're Experts Rampton and Stauber do the extraordinary and groundbreaking job of exposing these sleazy practices and rigorously holding them up to the light of day. Well organized and wonderfully written, Trust Us, We're Experts is a real page turner. It is a true masterpiece."--Robert W. McChesney author, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times
"After reading this book I couldn't possibly listen to an expert witness again, even one under oath, without a lot of healthy skepticism; and if given the opportunity, without asking: 'Who's paying you to say this?'"--Mark Dowie
"This is a great book, and I think you should buy it. But since the point of the book is to think for yourself and not trust experts, perhaps you should thumb through it yourself for a little while. I think of it as a field guide to the kinds of lies you can expect from the information age."--Bill McKibben
"Amusing... meticulously researched... Rampton and Stauber's documentation of PR campaigns proves that they are the real 'experts.'"--Kaja Perina, Brill's Content
TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments
Preface: The Smell Test
SECTION ONE: The Age of Spin
The Third Man The Birth of Spin Deciding What You'll Swallow SECTION TWO: Risky Business
Dying for a Living Packaging the Beast Preventing Precaution Attack of the Killer Potatoes SECTION THREE: The Expertise Industry
The Best Science Money Can Buy The Junkyard Dogs Global Warming Is Good For You EPILOGUE: Questioning Authority
APPENDIX: Suggested Resources
INDEX
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