In your car, driving, anywhere, anytime, is where you are most likely to get hurt or killed. Terrorist crap is irrevelent compared to driving. The idiot on your tailgate is much more dangerous to you than Usamabama Muhamabed will ever be.

Pay attention when you are driving. Death is at your fender, countless times every day. Pay attention when you are driving and drive like a person of sense.

Or you won't get to live to see doomsday. Wouldn't that suck !

Being in a car , on a road, is the most dangerous thing you do.

Probably.

Hegel on the global police state:

"The progress of man toward the realization of freedom has been and will continue to be costly; wars and conflicts of all kinds, being the essence of the dialectical process, create misery for mankind. But, again, happiness is not the goal of man, the goal is freedom, and this can be accomplished only through an understanding of the process of and through subjection to the state, the material means by which the Idea progresses. As the state is necessary to the march of the World Spirit and is a means to that end, so the individual is a means to the end of the state which serves that purpose."

-Hegel

Jim Eagle Feather said...

Firearms are useful for defense against crime. Little more. Those who think they could band together to defeat the Globalist Powers are mindless nincompoops or crypto-Zionist provocateurs like Jeff Rense. Anyone with a bit of ground force military experience knows that scattered rabbles of rebels are over rated in a true total war. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya and such like were not total wars. The American Civil War was a total war (or became one by the time Sherman marched to the sea). In a total war, such as where a government seeks to survive AT ANY COST – protesters are not tolerated, news is controlled or shut down, things like the Geneva Conventions are thrown totally away. Total wars resemble what took place on the German Eastern Front during WWII. Actually they more resemble the Battle of Verdun in WWI. If you don’t know what I mean, then you should study them.

By early 93 there was said to be 3 million militia volunteers who were arming, and practicing to defend liberty because of Ruby Ridge and Waco. By 95, because of the Oklahoma City attack, and an economy that was picking up, those potbellied heroes scattered to the winds. Units that once had 200 men fell suddenly to 12 and so on. But that was just as well. During 1994 I asked many of them what their local plan of action was. Almost every one stated that their MASTER PLAN was, in the event of a Government show down, to retreat to their individual homes, and trailers, and to die defending their guns. Anyone who has read even a modicum of military history knows that such a plan was little more than collective suicide and the romantic self-aggrandizement of bigmouthed potbellied men.

While North Vietnam had the whole communist block behind them, the Afghan rebels had refuge in Pakistan, and even the Iraqis have helpful friends in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, an American revolutionary force would have no safe haven, nor even the French army and navy that they had in the Revolutionary War. Canada will not offer safe haven. Mexico could give a rat’s ass about helping a bunch of armed gringos with an attitude. Not only that, but the US government or the Globalists are ready to attack such a force with a total war – not the playacting wars they have leveled at third world rebels. Why? Because the USA has one of the most dangerous nuclear forces in the world – not to mention a lot of other really powerful arms and abilities. The Globalists are not about to ALLOW all that power to fall into the hands of a rabble of Constitutionalists. Do you think they have spent over 150+ years, countless lives of their victims, and vast treasures just to lightly throw it all away to a pack of small-arms-rebels? Believe me, in that fight they will be so dirty, so evil, so violent that it would make Stalin blush!

There was a war fought against the early members of the N.W.O. right here in the USA. It was called the American Civil War. Even though the South was weaker in manpower and arms, because of its valor and abilities the conflict started out with an almost 1 to 1 odds. It was slightly in the North’s favor, but only if it could hold out long enough for its naval power to starve the South of arms. A modern war today would not be anything like that. Today’s odds would be more like 30 to 1 against the freedom fighters. And anyone who knows anything about wars, knows that 5 to 1 is usually certain defeat for the lesser.

In a modern civil war the dark powers WILL use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical warfare (NBC war). This is not going to be your grand pappy’s musket skirmish line. Back in late 93 I recall one of the big discussions on the patriot radio programs was where to by an NBC protective suit. As if, if a few guys could scrounge those up that all would go well. Since my brother had gone to a full NBC school I knew how utterly foolish these patriots were. Though it never reached the World press, my brother’s military class was privy to a deadly chemical attack launched by the Egyptians on the Israelis during the 73 war. The attack followed the very same format that was S.O.P. for the US Army at the time: 1st salvos are an LSD gas. No, (repeat NO) gas mask, filtering system, or suit is able to prevent a few molecules of LSD from seeping in. It only takes a few such molecules to render soldiers silly. In the case of the Israelis who where hit at the targeted bunker, all had lost their senses and had then taken off their gas masks. That’s how the LSD gas works. 2nd Salvos were a nerve agent, a blood agent, and mustard gas. So the 1993 patriots were day dreaming how they would withstand a “gas attack”, not knowing at all that by US Army S.O.P. such an attack would involve 4 agents, not one, and the likelihood of anyone surviving it was about nil (just as it was for the Israelis at the bunker attacked by the Egyptians). As I recall they patriots also wanted to buy atropine shots to protect themselves from nerve gas. My brother told me the story about a military officer at his school who accidentally got a small whiff of VX Nerve gas. It took almost 100 atropine shots just to keep him alive long enough to get him to the hospital!! The single atropine shots that are issued to soldiers in the field are worthless. They are little more than psychological armor.

Are small arms and .50 cals and such like really the stuff of taking on the N.W.O.? Yes, but only if the N.W.O. wants to stage a media show like Afghanistan or Iraq. Even Fallujah was little more than a retard effort. Here is how I would have dealt with the town: 3 AM, large planes swoop in and drop anti-personnel mines in a ring around the town. 5 AM saturation bombing from as many B52s and B1s as is possible around the clock. During this time arty is brought up and takes over by nightfall. 6 AM next day, powerful ground force moves in behind mine-sweepers. That would not be a media show. That is almost the way the US Army dealt with small German villages near the end of WWII who offered any resistance. Some were bombed and others were shelled flat. The Arab has never actually seen real warfare.

The truth is the N.W.O. is looking for a fight with American patriots – not quite yet, but soon. The fight they plan for will look nothing like the media war shows you have been used to seeing. It will involve truly sinister and scientific means to exterminating you and your families. If Robert E. Lee was here today, he’d suggest you seek a court house in Appomattox immediately! What you face today and the odds against you are many orders more dangerous than what he faced in Virginia in 1865 when he surrendered his army. Are guns of any real worth defending freedom? Not in a real all out conflict – and that his how American civil wars are fought: total and all out.

November 24, 2007 2:58 AM

"The increasing desolation of nature, the exhaustion of resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been brought about by humanity's trying to accomplish something."

- Masanobu Fukuoka

" He alone is great and happy who requires neither to command nor to obey in order to secure his being of some importance in the world."

Goethe

The fundamental difference in this, between people like The Viking and people like me is that he feels he lives in a safe, fair place, where everything is orderly and above board, and good is rewarded, bad punished. For myself, i feel profoundily ill at ease in the world of human society. i see it as The Matrix, a lie, a system rigged to punish original thought and integrity, and to reward stupidity and servility. My whole life’s experience has led me here; whether that qualifies me to see clearly, or merely explains why i’m wrong, i myself cannot judge. We all think we’re right, of course.

My parents were ill-meaning buffoons. My first memory of school is, age about 5, being run into by a girl in the playground; we both fell down, she started crying; a teacher came over, pointed at me and shouted accusingly, “I saw what you did!” And so on. At every stage of education, my teachers have largely been dysfunctional morons. i did badly at school, my brain not really waking up till i was 19. i found university to be largely a self-serving system of bullshit, in which patronising lifers stifled any real thought or learning, encouraging servility either in the overt form of Literary Theory or, slightly more subtly, giving bad marks to anything that deviated too far from the official line. The exceptions had either been sacked or relegated to tiny offices and treated like scum.

i’ve been unemployed for two years, and temped - mainly at minimum wage data entry - for another three. i’ve been rejected for about 250 jobs.

Looking at myself from the outside, how could such a temp not distrust authority? 95% of the ‘authority figures’ i’ve met were fakes. i’m not enough of a Gnostic to hate the physical world; but the world of human society seems almost purposefully designed as a prison.
-Elberry

When that happens, we won't be having these fireside chats.

It will be "Mad Max" time.

Just imagine Argentina with 100 million pissed off starving lunatics.

We're faced with the same dilemma as the deep-sea diver who hears the message from the ship above, "Come up at once. We are sinking."

-Jeff Clark

And then the witch doctor, he told me what to do
He said that
ooh-ee, ooh-ah-ah
ting, tang, walla-walla bing-bang
ooh-ee, ooh-ah-ah
ting, tang, walla-walla bing-bang

Witch Doctor, Sha-Na-Na

"Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing; nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously. Adultery? Phooey! You should never subjugate yourself to another nor seek the subjugation of someone else to yourself. If you follow that Crispian principle you will be able to say 'Phooey,' too, instead of reaching for your gun when you fancy yourself betrayed."

-- Quentin Crisp

Note that this (US Dollar Index) chart spans the entire Bush Presidency. Quite a report card, isn't it? Talk about "Dead Country Walking."

The Herculean market manipulation effort by our government over the past couple of years is more than apparent. Clearly, they are near the end of their string, as well.

To the Technical Analysts among you, this chart literally screams that the dollar is about to plunge beneath 70. Once that happens, the game very likely is over and they will nuke either Tehran or Des Moines, depending upon which they believe will get them the most mileage. Regardless, things then will spiral out of control and the world as we know it will be over.

-Conspiracy PenPal

Future historians will stand aghast that anyone believed the crap being shoved down our throats in this period.

-

They teach you to stretch the leg this way in Bikram yoga also. You really feel you're getting that "super stretch" (Bikram's words) on the hamstrings. You're really just screwing up your knees.

Here's a question: Will hypermobility (and the possibility of permanent, irreversible joint damage) help you drop some drunk in a bar on his ass faster? Let me know. I'm on my way to a bar.

If one defines inflation as an expansion of money and credit, then one look at M3 soaring for decades while gold sinking from $800 to $250 shows that for long periods of time (decades in fact) gold is an extremely poor hedge against inflation. In the longest of timeframes, however, every fiat currency in history has gone to zero and that is an unbeatable track record, unfortunately not a very playable one in and of itself.

-Mike Shedlock

The memory of the past unfulfilled desires traps energy, which manifests itself as a person. When its charge gets exhausted, the person dies. Unfulfilled desires are carried over into the birth. Self-identification with body creates ever-fresh desires and there is no end to them unless this mechanism of bondage is clearly seen.

It is clarity that is liberating, for you cannot abandon desire unless its causes and effects are clearly seen. I do not say that the same person is reborn. It dies, and dies for good. But its memories remain and their desires and fears. They supply the energy for a new person.

- Nisargadatta

Thought u got on this forum to warn ppl against this supposed religious cult?
The kool aid hasn't changed flavors since u left it.

You can practice more basic exercises or less. It doesn't really matter. Basic exercises are nothing more than just some examples of principles related to natural movement. Yiquan is not about learning fixed exercises. Ideally you would want to learn as little as possible in order to achieve ability of using your body in free way.

-Andrzej Kalisz

In the meantime, please remember the first rule of panic: If you are going to panic, do so before everyone else does.

Just an attempt to add beautiful colors to shadows.

- Yen

It will become the habitation of jackals and vultures.

- Roland Watson

If all is good, they fuck each other's brains out, watch a movie or a look at the stars and tell each other sweet secret somethings that matter to them, and pass the day.

-Yen

Maybe the eagle doesn't hunt flies.

But I believe the main reason a suicide attempt devastates and fascinates us is it reminds us how fragile our own hold on life is. "Here I am struggling along with my problems," Michael Simpson said, "and here's a guy who's given up. Is it possible I'm wrong in bothering so hard to try to live? Once you start discussing suicide you're asking what the grounds are for killing ourselves. The other side of that question is, 'What am I living for?' That's an ugly question for most of us because we don't usually know."

Let me ask you something... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish they have their homeland, Jews their tradition; even the niggers got their music. But what about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

- The Good Shepherd

I grabbed a pile of dust and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust. I forgot to ask that they be years of youth.

~Ovidius, Metamorphoses

All this begs the grand philosophical question of who is fooling whom, and who really cares? The answer is quite simple. Nobody cares so long as the majority feels no pain. So long as the global system alongside the majority of its citizenry remains flush with the sensation of wealth, everything else sells itself.

-Joseph Russo

Martial law only as a last resort- if the tax revolution breaks out at the same time there's a big push from the 9-11 truthers, and the antiwar protesters join in as well. Otherwise it would be 'too much too soon,' as long as the herding is progressing nicely there's no need to risk stampeding the flock.

dd

Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: 'What does his voice sound like?' 'What games does he like best?' 'Does he collect butterflies?' They ask: 'How old is he?' 'How many brothers does he have?' 'How much does he weigh?' 'How much money does his father make?' Only then do they think they know him.

If you tell grown-ups, 'I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof,' they won't be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, 'I saw a house worth a hundred thousand dollars.' Then they exclaim, 'What a pretty house!' That's the way they are. You must not hold it against them. Children should be very understanding of grown-ups.


- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Rose paused and let the room stay silent for a moment before speaking again. "Truth is kind," he said finally. "If you're weak, it keeps it's distance. It won't reveal itself until you're strong enough to take it."

"A couple of years ago, for instance, my daughter Ruth was home from college on summer break. I'd just finished writing The Albigen Papers, and I hoped maybe it might stir something spiritual in her if she read it. But I had to give it to her at the right time and in the right way. One morning I came into the kitchen and she's at the sink, finishing up the breakfast dishes. Did you notice how low the sink is?"

I nodded.

"My mother was a tiny woman and my father put that sink in for her. So anyway, Ruth is standing there and I figure this might be a good time to ask her. So I gave her the manuscript and told her I wanted to get some feedback, to find out if it was worth trying to get the thing published. Which was also true. I did value her opinion--she's always been a bright girl, sensitive and level-headed. She said, 'Sure.'

"A few days later I come home from work and she's at the kitchen table with the manuscript open in front of her, staring straight ahead, like she's in a trance. I stood there for a minute but she didn’t say anything so I just picked up manuscript and walked away.

"I figured eventually she'd tell me what was on her mind, but a couple of weeks went by and she still hadn't said anything about the book. So finally one day when we were alone I brought it up. 'By the way, Ruth,’ I said, ‘I never got a chance to talk to you about my book. What did you think?'

"I'll never forget the look on her face when she turned around, almost angry. She looked me in the eye and said, 'Daddy, I know you're God. But I've got games to play.'"

- story from Richard Rose

extract From Sterling Hayden's book, Wanderer:

"To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm
foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine
traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea --
"cruising," it is called.
Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or
will not, fit in.

If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the
venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is
all about. "I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford
it." What these men can't afford is _not_ to go. They are enmeshed in the
cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling
our lives beneath the wheels of routine -- and before we know it our lives
are gone.

What does a man need -- really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and
shelter, six feet to lie down in -- and some form of working activity that
will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all-- in the material sense.
And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end
up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous
gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the
charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie
caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is
sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be:
bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?"

You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,

By Li Po
(701 - 762)

English version by Sam Hamill

You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom,
The water flows.

In humility is the greatest freedom.

As long as you have to defend the imaginary self
that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart.
As soon as you compare that shadow
with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy,
because you have begun to trade in unrealities
and there is no joy in things that do not exist.

- Thomas Merton

Another way to get more flexibility gains for your splits is to use the wall. Lay on your back with your butt against the wall and your legs up on the wall. For more intensity put light ankle weights on. You slowly open your legs in a "V" as far as they will go and just stay there for some minutes. Try to keep your knees straight and toes pointed. After the initial tightness goes away, open your legs more. Do this for 5 minutes. To get up, close legs while bending your knees rolling to one side and sit up. Try it. You will be amazed at the progress you will make.

"Atta loved gambling, cocaine, alcohol, pork, and lap dances."
-David Ray Griffin

We plant our face in the dirt at the feet of these people, who have taken a name and fame-lusting slickie and turned him into a lion of peace and a divine saint.

"Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore."

--Lord Byron

"Senator, my offer is this: nothing. Not even the price of the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally."

-Michael Corleone

People want you to be happy.
Don't keep serving them your pain.

-Rumi

“One recent example I cannot pass over in silence. Pope Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power in asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would observe it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to his wishes, because he well understood this side of humanity.”

-Dante

"Not by the Vedas, or an austere life, or gifts to the poor, or ritual offerings can I be as thou hast seen me.
Only by love can men see me, and know me, and come unto me.
He who works for me, who loves me, whose End Supreme I am,
free from attachment to all things, and with love for all creation, he comes in truth to me."

-Krishna
chapter 11, Bhagavad Gita

INTL - British Multiculturalism - One Man's Experience

---

British Multiculturalism - One Man's Experience
We received a testimonial from one of our readers, of his experiences of the current climate in Britain. We shall call him "Doug" to disguise his identity. In his own words, unedited, this is his account:

Why its time to go

This story starts in Bristol city in the SW of the United Kingdom. In June 2003 I decided to leave that city to return to Scotland the Country of my youth. The reason for that return was simple, I had witnessed a series of events, which had shocked and depressed me.

The worst of these was a serious assault against a student, he was walking home from a night out, he was causing no harm, the area was St Pauls, a notoriously crime ridden area, favoured by immigrants, and Afro Caribbeans. The student was set upon and his mobile stolen, he was left bloodied and unconscious, we went to help but we were no match for the attackers who fled instantly.

The other events in Bristol, which prompted my return North, included the introduction of armed police onto the streets of part of Bristol, this was done to combat the armed gang violence between black gangs. Bristol is the UK's crack capital. These gangs were a mix of Afro Caribbean "Yardies" and Somalian tribesmen, as well as a few indigenous hangers on. People who lived in these areas where subjected to endless robberies and assaults by drug addicts, crackheads etc. I decided that this was not for me. I packed my car and left. As I was leaving I noticed a large queue on the pavement I had seen the queue many times full of people of African and Middle Eastern extraction, they were outside the local Asylum seeker help centre. I paid little attention.

I was originally brought up in the Scottish lowlands a beautiful area of rolling hills and moor land, one of the least populated parts of the UK. On my arrival at my parents house I knew I had made a good decision, I immediately felt at home, amongst the trees and hills.

Anyway after a few months I started to set my mind to careers and money, without which we all know you don't get very far. I had friends in Glasgow a hundred miles North I decided to head up and look at opportunities. I have always liked Glasgow, it was once the richest city in the British Empire (per capita). A place with a chequered history but a good vibrant city. Well after a while I decided to move there, I chose to move to an area in the south side of the city, Pollokshields. This is area was one of the UK's first garden suburbs, massive houses, and beautiful large tenement apartments. I decided to purchase an apartment; it was one of the few areas I could afford given the UK's housing price boom. I had high hopes and was full of ideas and expectation.

It began the first night, the upstairs neighbours began shouting and screaming, a man was hitting his wife, the noise was unbearable, they were Pakistani, the area was home to the largest Pakistani Muslim community in Scotland. I had looked at the area and was bedazzled by the ornate Georgian architecture; I had forgotten to take a look at the more important social dimension.

Pollokshields is large area, E Pollokshileds where I live is majority Pakistani Muslim neighbourhood. I walked the streets I smiled at my neighbours they mostly ignored me. A car drove by one day a youth stuck their head out of a car and shouted, "White bastard" at me. A week later I noticed a young man driving aggressively on to a junction nearly hitting another oncoming motorist, he jumped out of his car shouted "White Bitch" at the driver then sped off. The same week I was walking past my Local Park, I watched as a young boy off about eight was chased from the Park crying by two young UK Pakistanis, I shouted as the boy was obviously very distressed, the other boys looked at me confused, and shouted something in another language I did not understand.

I took all of the above in my stride, I put it down to teething troubles in the "Multicultural garden" It would get better just give it time.

Well a week after that mid March 2004 a young Native Glaswegian boy was abducted, at the end of my street by four Pakistani Muslims, tortured and then burned alive, I won't go into details but as you may know Kriss Donald suffered an horrific death and for no apparent reason whatsoever other than he was white.

It was at this point I knew that I had fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire. My Multicultural fantasies were in tatters. I tried to sell my apartment no body was buying except the Muslims, I tried to rent it, and people loved the flat but the area was a hard sell. Few months later my German neighbours moved to Greece, my only friends in the community, their flat was sold to Muslims, they opened an Islamic School in the apartment, I complained, I was ignored, the whole block of flats became home to mostly Muslims and me, plus one seventy year old lady upstairs! I was stuck!

This week beginning of February 2007 I am finally able to sell up, I will be out of here by May. I have learned a lot, I have lived with the Muslims, I have learned that they have no desire to integrate into European culture or the European value system, I have learned that they have no interest in UK culture or anything else, they have Islam. Islam consumes them, it owns them, and it is them. That is what they are they are Muslim, a Muslim is loyal to Islam, Islam is a theocratic ideology, its goal is the spread of Allah's will, this task is the task of all Muslims. Muslims engage with us the "Kuffar" Not because they want to, but because they have to, if they did not have to they wouldn't.

I have met kind and courteous Muslims, I believe there are many types of people in this world, but Islam cancels this out, it homogenises whole nations, it takes away individual reason and liberty, I see this first hand in the eyes of uneducated Pakistani women who have been brought to Glasgow from the far off mountains of Kashmir. I also see it in the eyes of second and third generation Muslims, who just don't like the West, they live in a world which is ultimately incompatible with European values, they seek solace in a religion which blew out of the desert 1400 yrs ago, they seek solace in Mosques paid for with Wahabist oil dollars, the Muslims are at war with themselves, they want the lifestyle of the West, but they just don't like us! And I have decided that I can't like Islam, like many like-minded people I see it as an unmitigated threat to the values Europe should hold dear.

Now that Tony Blair is about to vacate office, people ask him what he believes his legacy will be. It will not be Iraq, it will be the beginning of a process of the Islamisation of the UK, Balkan Britain is upon us, I have seen it first hand, I have lived a small version of it, and when Britain finally appears out of its economic boom, and there is pressure on jobs, and services, the real effects of Multicultural polarisation will appear. Shattered unconnected communities in competition with each other but with no common value system or identity, unable to join together to achieve a common goal.

The New Labour government has ridden the world economic boom and told us it was their skill which has brought us prosperity, all I see is a Britain awash with disconnected and bitter asylum seekers, some battle hardened, mix with drunken drug addled youth. I also see the rise of superstition of which Islam is a large part.

The policies of the Neo Marxists with their reliance on abstractions such as "Human Rights" are leading us down a very very dangerous path; their international global misery is upon us.

The world is on the move, the invasion of Europe is not a conscious thing on the part of the Muslims and immigrants but it is inevitable, given the pressure on global resources, ideological expansionism in Islam, and the plummeting birth rates amongst indigenous Europeans. I am afraid that people like Tony Blair should heed the cliché statement "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" The West is making a Faustian pact with Islam, and we will pay the price, if things don't change.

I am still looking for a home.

Well these thoughts all came from a place I never imagined I would be, a place I don't feel at home in, namely my own country. The Liberal elites are the real enemy, the Muslims are just doing what they are supposed to do, I don't blame them, but they are not Europeans, and I don't like their values or ideology, because Islam is not a religion in the Western sense it's a theocratic ideological construct, with global ambitions, our leaders neglect this fact at our peril.

I hear the Canadian Rockies are nice this time of year?

• Re-education Camp Director: What's better than a big juicy steak?

Camp Detainees: Nothing is better than a big juicy steak!

Re-education Camp Director: And what's better than nothing?

Camp Detainees: A stale piece of bread is better than nothing!

Re-education Camp Director: Therefore a stale piece of bread is better than a big juicy steak.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Joe: You sent a man to a re-education camp for wearing glasses!

Thorne: The revolution is not yet perfect, I will concede that.

- from 'Land of the Blind'

What is particular to Ashtanga yoga practice is what we call vinyasa, which brings together breathing with physical movement. Each posture is connected with a certain breathing sequence, which comes before and after it. This keeps the flow of energy through the spine open. It also safeguards against injury and prevents energy from stagnating in the body. Vinyasa purifies the body, the nervous system, and cultivates the proper energetic field in the body. It is essential to yoga, we believe, and gives people a direct inner experience of their potential. To feel the energy continually flowing through the spine is the effect of vinyasa. But there is nothing that comes instantly. One needs to practice this system for many years—a minimum of five to ten years—to begin to experience these deep subtle changes in the body.

- Sri K. Pattabhi Jois

"The world is not imperfect, or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people – eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore it seems to me that everything that exists is good – death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it, and to be glad to belong to it."

-- Herman Hesse, "Siddhartha"

“There are two basic reasons why people commit evil. Some people are simply amoral. They lack sympathy and don’t think there is any morality. To them their victims are like rabbits. They think, if someone is weak or foolish enough to be a victim, they deserve no better. But most evil is committed by people who believe they are doing good.”

- Fred E. Foldvary, "The Origins of Evil"

Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein

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Saturday, December 30, 2006

For Whom the Bell Tolls:
Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein

The old monster swung from the gallows this morning at 6 am Baghdad time. His Shiite executioners danced around his body.

Saddam Hussain was one of the 20th century's most notorious tyrants, though the death toll he racked up is probably exaggerated by his critics. The reality was bad enough.

The tendency to treat Saddam and Iraq in a historical vacuum, and in isolation from the superpowers, however, has hidden from Americans their own culpability in the horror show that has been Iraq for the past few decades. Initially, the US used the Baath Party as a nationalist foil to the Communists. Then Washington used it against Iran. The welfare of Iraqis themselves appears to have been on no one's mind, either in Washington or in Baghdad.

The British-installed monarchy was overthrown by an officer's coup in 1958, led by Abdul Karim Qasim. The US was extremely upset, and worried that the new regime would not be a reliable oil exporter and that it might leave the Baghdad Pact of 1955, which the US had put together against the Soviet Union (grouping Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Britain and the US). (Qasim did leave the pact in 1959, which according to a US official of that time, deeply alarmed Washington.)

Iraq in the 1940s and 1950s had become an extremely unequal society, with a few thousand (mostly Sunni Arab) families owning half of the good land. On their vast haciendas, poor rural Shiites worked for a pittance. In the 1950s, two new mass parties grew like wildfire, the Communist Party of Iraq and the Arab Baath Socialist Party. They attracted first-generation intellectuals, graduates of the rapidly expanding school system, as well as workers and peasants. The crushing inequalities of Iraq under the monarchy produced widespread anger.

Qasim undertook land reform and founded a new section of Baghdad, in the northeast, which he called Revolution Township, where rural Shiites congregated as they came to the capital seeking work as day laborers (it is now Sadr City, where a majority of Baghdadis live). The US power elite of the time wrongly perceived Qasim as a dangerous radical who coddled the Communists.

1) The first time the US enabled Saddam Hussein came in 1959. In that year, a young Saddam, from the boondock town of Tikrit but living with an uncle in Baghdad, tried to assassinate Qasim. He failed and was wounded in the leg. Saddam had, like many in his generation, joined the Baath Party, which combined socialism, Arab nationalism, and the aspiration for a one-party state.

In 1959, Richard Sale of UPI reports,


' According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.'



CIA involvement in the 1959 assassination attempt is plausible. Historian David Wise says there is evidence in the US archives that the CIA's "Health Alteration Committee" tried again to have Qasim assassinated in 1960 by "sending the Iraqi leader a poisoned monogrammed handkerchief."

2) After the failed coup attempt, Saddam fled to Cairo, where he attended law school in between bar brawls, and where it is alleged that he retained his CIA connections there, being put on a stipend by the agency via the Egyptian government. He frequently visited US operatives at the Indiana Cafe. Getting him back on his feet in Cairo was the second episode of US aid to Saddam.

3) In February of 1963 the military wing of the Baath Party, which had infiltrated the officer corps and military academy, made a coup against Qasim, whom they killed. There is evidence from Middle Eastern sources, including interviews conducted at the time by historian Hanna Batatu, that the CIA cooperated in this coup and gave the Baathists lists of Iraqi Communists (who were covert, having infiltrated the government or firms). Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer of the 1960s, alleged that the US played a significant role in this Baath coup and that it was mostly funded "with American money.". Morris's allegation was confirmed to me by an eyewitness with intimate knowledge of the situation, who said that that the CIA station chief in Baghdad gave support to the Baathists in their coup. One other interviewee, who served as a CIA operative in Baghdad in 1964, denied to me the agency's involvement. But he was at the time junior and he was not an eyewitness to the events of 1963, and may not have been told the straight scoop by his colleagues. Note that some high Baathists appear to have been unaware of the CIA involvement, as well. In the murky world of tradecraft, a lot of people, even on the same team, keep each other in the dark. UPI quotes another, or perhaps the same, official, saying that the coup came as a surprise to Langley. In my view, unlikely.

There really is not any controversy about the US having supplied the names of Communists to the Baath, which rooted them out and killed them. Saddam Hussein was brought back from Cairo as an interrogator and quickly rose to become head of Baath Intelligence. So that was his first partnership with the US.

The 1963 Baath government only lasted 8 months, and was overthrown by officers who had been around Qasim. The military wing of the Baath, which was heavily Shiite, was relentlessly pursued by the new government, and was virtually wiped out. The largely Sunni civilian party, however, survived underground.

4) In 1968, the civilian wing of the Baath Party came to power in a second coup. David Morgan of Reuters wrote,

' "In 1968, Morris says, the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Baath party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his ambitious protégé in 1979. "It's a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA's) involvement there was really primary," Morris says. '

As I noted in The Nation, in their book Unholy Babylon, "Darwish and Alexander report assertions of US backing for the 1968 coup, confirmed to me by other journalists who have talked to retired CIA and State Department officials." It was alleged to me by one journalist who had talked to former US government officials with knowledge of this issue that not only did the US support the 1968 Baath coup, but it specifically promoted the Tikritis among the coup-makers, helping them become dominant. These included President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and his cousin Saddam Hussein, who quickly became a power behind the throne.

5) The second Baath regime in Iraq disappointed the Nixon and Ford administrations by reaching out to the tiny remnants of the Communist Party and by developing good relations with the Soviet Union. In response, Nixon supported the Shah's Iran in its attempts to use the Iraqi Kurds to stir up trouble for the Baath Party, of which Saddam Hussein was a behind the scenes leader. As supporting the Kurdish struggle became increasingly expensive, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran decided to abandon the Kurds. He made a deal with the Iraqis at Algiers in 1975, and Saddam immediately ordered an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan. The US acquiesced in this betrayal of the Kurds, and made no effort to help them monetarily. Kissinger maintained that the whole operation had been the shah's, and the shah suddenly terminated it, leaving the US with no alternative but to acquiesce. But that is not entirely plausible. The operation was supported by the CIA, and the US didn't have to act only through an Iranian surrogate. Kissinger no doubt feared he couldn't get Congress to fund help to the Kurds during the beginnings of the Vietnam syndrome. In any case, the 1975 US about-face helped Saddam consolidate control over northern Iraq.

6) When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, he again caught the notice of US officials. The US was engaged in an attempt to contain Khomeinism and the new Islamic Republic. Especially after the US faced attacks from radicalized Shiites in Lebanon linked to Iran, and from the Iraqi Da`wa Party, which engaged in terrorism against the US and French embassies in Kuwait, the Reagan administration determined to deal with Saddam from late 1983, giving him important diplomatic encouragement. Historians are deeply indebted to Joyce Battle's Briefing Book at the National Security Archives, GWU, which presents key documents she sprung through FOIA requests, and which she analyzed for the first time.

I wrote on another occasion,

' Reagan sent Rumsfeld to Baghdad in December 1983. The National Security Archive has posted a brief video of his meeting with Hussein and the latter’s vice president and foreign minister, Tariq Aziz. Rumsfeld was to stress his close relationship with the U.S. president. The State Department summary of Rumsfeld’s meeting with Tariq Aziz stated that “the two agreed the U.S. and Iraq shared many common interests: peace in the Gulf, keeping Syria and Iran off balance and less influential, and promoting Egypt’s reintegration into the Arab world.” Aziz asked Rumsfeld to intervene with Washington’s friends to get them to stop selling arms to Iran. Increasing Iraq’s oil exports and a possible pipeline through Saudi Arabia occupied a portion of their conversation.

. . . The State Department, however, issued a press statement on March 5, 1984, condemning Iraqi use of chemical weapons. This statement appears to have been Washington’s way of doing penance for its new alliance.

Unaware of the depths of Reagan administration hypocrisy on the issue, Hussein took the March 5 State Department condemnation extremely seriously, and appears to have suspected that the United States was planning to stab him in the back. Secretary of State George Shultz notes in a briefing for Rumsfeld in spring of 1984 that the Iraqis were extremely confused by concrete U.S. policies . . . "As with our CW statement, their temptation is to give up rational analysis and retreat to the line that US policies are basically anti-Arab and hostage to the desires of Israel.”

Rumsfeld had to be sent back to Baghdad for a second meeting, to smooth ruffled Baath feathers. The above-mentioned State Department briefing notes for this discussion remarked that the atmosphere in Baghdad (for Rumsfeld) had worsened . . . the March 5 scolding of Iraq for its use of poison gas had “sharply set back” relations between the two countries.

The relationship was repaired, but on Hussein’s terms. He continued to use chemical weapons and, indeed, vastly expanded their use as Washington winked at Western pharmaceutical firms providing him materiel. The only conclusion one can draw from available evidence is that Rumsfeld was more or less dispatched to mollify Hussein and assure him that his use of chemical weapons was no bar to developing the relationship with the U.S., whatever the State Department spokesman was sent out to say. '



7) The US gave
practical help to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War:


' As former National Security Council staffer Howard Teicher affirmed, “Pursuant to the secret NSDD [National Security Directive], the United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing US military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required.” The requisite weaponry included cluster bombs. . . '



Richard Sale of UPI also reported that military cooperation intensified:


' During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group. . .

According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days. '



8) The Reagan administration worked behind the scenes to foil Iran's motion of censure against Iraq for using chemical weapons. I wrote at Truthdig:


' The new American alliance might have been a public relations debacle if Iran succeeded in its 1984 attempt to have Iraq directly condemned at the United Nations for use of chemical weapons. As far as possible, Shultz wanted to weasel out of joining such a U.N. condemnation of Iraq. He wrote in a cable that the U.S. delegation to the U.N. “should work to develop general Western position in support of a motion to take ‘no decision’ on Iranian draft resolution on use of chemical weapons by Iraq. If such a motion gets reasonable and broad support and sponsorship, USDEL should vote in favor. Failing Western support for ‘no decision,’ USDEL should abstain.” Shultz in the first instance wanted to protect Hussein from condemnation by a motion of “no decision,” and hoped to get U.S. allies aboard. If that ploy failed and Iraq were to be castigated, he ordered that the U.S. just abstain from the vote. Despite its treaty obligations in this regard, the U.S. was not even to so much as vote for a U.N. resolution on the subject!

Shultz also wanted to throw up smokescreens to take the edge off the Iranian motion, arguing that the U.N. Human Rights Commission was “an inappropriate forum” for consideration of chemical weapons, and stressing that loss of life owing to Iraq’s use of chemicals was “only a part” of the carnage that ensued from a deplorable war. A more lukewarm approach to chemical weapons use by a rogue regime (which referred to the weapons as an “insecticide” for enemy “insects") could not be imagined. In the end, the U.N. resolution condemned the use of chemical weapons but did not name Iraq directly as a perpetrator. '




9) The Reagan administration not only gave significant aid to Saddam, it attempted to recruit other friends for him.


' Teicher adds that the CIA had knowledge of, and U.S. officials encouraged, the provisioning of Iraq with high-powered weaponry by U.S. allies. He adds: “For example, in 1984, the Israelis concluded that Iran was more dangerous than Iraq to Israel’s existence due to the growing Iranian influence and presence in Lebanon. The Israelis approached the United States in a meeting in Jerusalem that I attended with Donald Rumsfeld. Israeli Foreign Minister Ytizhak Shamir asked Rumsfeld if the United States would deliver a secret offer of Israeli assistance to Iraq. The United States agreed. I traveled with Rumsfeld to Baghdad and was present at the meeting in which Rumsfeld told Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz about Israel’s offer of assistance. Aziz refused even to accept the Israelis’ letter to Hussein.” It might have been hoped that a country that arose in part in response to Nazi uses of poison gas would have been more sensitive about attempting to ally with a regime then actively deploying such a weapon, even against its own people (some gassing of Kurds had already begun). '



10) After the Gulf War of 1991, when Shiites and Kurds rose up against Saddam Hussein, the Bush senior administration sat back and allowed the Baathists to fly helicopter gunships and to massively repress the uprising. President GHW Bush had called on Iraqis to rise up against their dictator, but when they did so he left them in the lurch. This inaction, deriving from a fear that a Shiite-dominated Iraq would ally with Tehran, allowed Saddam to remain in power until 2003.