Monday, January 30, 2006
Person A: "I hear voices, they tell me that really I am the reincarnation of Napoleon"
Person B: "I am sorry, but you are obviously having a psychotic attack and hallucinate"
Person C: "God spoke to me, and told me to spread his Word"
Person B: "God? Did you say ...GOD? Yes? That's ok then, obviously you are a sound and pious man! Talk to me, I hang on your every word!"
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Scholars claim government's account violates laws of physics and engineering.
These experts contend that books and articles by members and associates have established that the World Trade Center was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions and that the available relevant evidence casts grave doubt on the official story about the attack on the Pentagon. They believe that the government not only permitted 9/11 to occur but may even have orchestrated these events to facilitate its political agenda. [...]
Read the whole press release here.
Check also www.scholarsfor911truth.org
Also watch this video.
Friday, January 27, 2006
62. ON THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIONS. -- How can any one regard his own opinion of things as a revelation? This is the problem of the formation of religions: there has always been some man in whom this phenomenon was possible. A postulate is that such a man already believed in revelations. Suddenly, however, a new idea occurs to him one day, his idea; and the entire blessedness of a great personal hypothesis, which embraces all existence and the whole world, penetrates with such force into his conscience that he dare not think himself the creator of such blessedness, and he therefore attributes to his God the cause of this new idea and likewise the cause of the cause, believing it to be the revelation of his God. How could a man be the author of so great a happiness? ask his pessimistic doubts. But other levers are secretly at work: an opinion may be strengthened by one's self if it be considered as a revelation; and in this way all its hypothetic nature is removed; the matter is set beyond criticism and even beyond doubt: it is sanctified. It is true that, in this way, a man lowers himself to playing the role of "mouthpiece," but his thought will end by being victorious as a divine thought -- the feeling of finally gaining the victory conquers the feeling of degradation. There is also another feeling in the background: if a man raises his products above himself, and thus apparently detracts from his own worth, there nevertheless remains a kind of joyfulness, paternal love, and paternal pride, which compensates man -- more than compensates man -- for everything.
297. CORRUPTION. -- The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
484. ONE'S OWN PATH. -- If we take the decisive step and enter upon the path which is called our ‘own path’, a secret is suddenly revealed to us: all those who have hitherto been our friends and familiars have imagined themselves superior to us, and are now offended. The best of them are lenient with us and wait patiently for us soon to find our way back to the ‘right path’--they know, it seems, what the right path is! The others resort to mockery and act as though one had become temporarily insane, or they make spiteful allusions to the person they suppose to have misled us. The more malicious declare us to be vain fools and seek to blacken our motives, while the worst former friend of all sees in us his worst enemy and one thirsting for revenge for a protracted dependence--and is afraid of us.--What are we to do? My advice is: to inaugurate our sovereignty by promising all our acquaintances a year’s amnesty in advance for all their sins."
Starting Tuesday, a huge truck with this billboard on the side will begin driving around the U.S. Capitol.
On the other side of the truck will be this:
Velvet Revolution owns the truck, so there's no expense there, but signs cost a heck of a lot to produce. VR is looking for ideas for more signs and for the money to pay for them:
http://www.velvetrevolution.us/donate.php
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Father Fedele Bisceglia, above in a moment of 'Catholic piety', was recently arrested in Italy for raping a nun, sometimes in group.
He claims he is being "persecuted like Jesus Christ", but phone recordings, videos and other findings prove that is not the case.
The counts regard sexual and physical violence (the nun has also been beaten up), threats, and extortions.
It turns out that the nun who had the courage to reveal the horrible experience she went through was not the only one. At least ten women might have been raped or forced to have sexual affairs with the Catholic priest. In one case, when a immigrant from Romania refused, the priest yelled at her and told her "you are a bitch... you don't know that all women here have been with me, and you arrive and play the part of the precious."
Articles have appeared on the Italian "Il Corriere della Sera" (here) and on "La Repubblica" (here) the most widely read and authorative newspapers in Italy. An article in English here, from the Times.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
"The president has been giving us doublespeak for years'"
Read here.
(compare the quotes in bold with the ones after them)
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
- George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist.
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, Aug. 26, 2002.
"Saddam Hussein is a man who told the world he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, but he's got them."
- George W. Bush, Nov. 3, 2002.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist.
"The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one."
- Adolf Hitler
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." - From the leaked secret "Downing Street Memo"
“Why, of course the people don’t want war. Why should some peasant on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist.
"I'm finished crying for Casey. I'm crying for all the other mothers."
- Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, while visiting her son's cross at the Arlington West memorial in Santa Barbara, California, on Mother's Day, May 7, 2004
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
- Barbara Bush, mother of George W. Bush's, (ABC/Good Morning America, 18 March 2003)
"You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to,"
- George W. Bush, asked if he consulted his own father before attacking Iraq.
"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
- George W. Bush commenting to Texas evangelist James Robinson in the run-up to his presidential campaign
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
- Aristotle
Monday, January 23, 2006
Sunday, January 22, 2006
U.S. accused of spying on those who disagree with Bush policies
BY WILLIAM E. GIBSON
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
WASHINGTON - While the White House defended domestic surveillance as a safeguard against terrorism, a Florida peace activist and several Democrats in Congress accused the Bush administration on Friday of spying on Americans who disagree with President Bush's policies.
Richard Hersh, of Boca Raton, Fla., director of Truth Project Inc. of Palm Beach County, told an ad hoc panel of House Democrats that his group and others in South Florida have been infiltrated and spied upon despite having no connections to terrorists.
"Agents rummaged through the trash, snooped into e-mails, packed Web sites and listened in on phone conversations," Hersh charged. "We know that address books and activist meeting lists have disappeared."
[Read the whole article here]
They lie, they start illegal wars, they torture, they bombard villages in foreign countries - without authorisation, and killing innocent people - in the attempt of getting a single person, they give a spectable of the worst cronyism and incompetence, they show disrespect for the Constitution, they spy. What would they NOT do?
A cartoon by Ruben Bolling:
Saturday, January 21, 2006
More and more news emerge on abuses in institutions, so called "boot camps", supposed to rehabilitate teenagers or even younger kids who have had problems with the law. It turns out that in various cases such camps are more similar to nazi concentration camps run by sadists. And in some cases young people die.
In one case, a 14 yo kid, Anthony Haynes, was obliged to stand in the desert, without water under the beating sun, until he died de-hydrated (see here).
In another case, Christening "Mikie" Garcia, a 12 year old kid suffocated while under restraint (read here).
And the above cases are not exceptional or so rare and of course, likely, for every death hundreds of non-fatal abuses take place.
A nation which allows similar abuses on children in structures meant to rehabilitate them cannot be considered civil.
From the Web site:
- A youth trainer at a juvenile facility
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
AN ITALIAN judge has ordered a priest to appear in court this month to prove that Jesus Christ existed.
The case against Father Enrico Righi has been brought in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, by Luigi Cascioli, a retired agronomist who once studied for the priesthood but later became a militant atheist.
Signor Cascioli, author of a book called The Fable of Christ, began legal proceedings against Father Righi three years ago after the priest denounced Signor Cascioli in the parish newsletter for questioning Christ’s historical existence.
Yesterday Gaetano Mautone, a judge in Viterbo, set a preliminary hearing for the end of this month and ordered Father Righi to appear. The judge had earlier refused to take up the case, but was overruled last month by the Court of Appeal, which agreed that Signor Cascioli had a reasonable case for his accusation that Father Righi was “abusing popular credulity”. [...]
[Read the whole article here.]
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Bush's Spy Program and the Fourth Amendment
Geoffrey R. Stone has written an interesting article on Bush's Spy Program and the Fourth Amendment.
Excerpt:
[...] The most relevant precedent is United States v. United States District Court (Keith). Decided in 1972, Kieth involved a prosecution for conspiracy to blow-up a CIA office. The Executive argued that in order “to gather intelligence information” that was “necessary to protect the nation from attempts . . . to attack and subvert the existing structure of the Government,” it was constitutionally entitled to engage in electronic surveillance of American citizens without complying with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. In Kieth, the Supreme Court unanimously and unequivocally held that, even in national security investigations, the President had no constitutional authority to conduct electronic surveillance of American citizens on American soil without a judicially issued search warrant based on a finding of probable cause.
In reaching this decision, the Court carefully considered and emphatically rejected the Executive’s demand for an exemption in national security investigations from the ordinary requirements of the Fourth Amendment. It is worth setting out the Court’s reasoning in detail:
• The President has a fundamental responsibility and power “to protect our Government against those who would subvert or overthrow it by unlawful means. . . . In the discharge of this duty, the President . . . may find it necessary to employ electronic surveillance to obtain intelligence information on the plans of those who plot unlawful acts against the Government.”
Read the whole article here.
The new book by New York Times reporter James Risen, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration", is already known for revealing the unsurprising but illegal and impeachable eavesdropping on American citizens authorised by George W. Bush.
The book also casts further light on the period preceding the onset of the war on Iraq: CIA knew that Saddam had no WMD. But as we know "evidence was fixed around the policy".
You can read an article on the book here.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Byron Calame, public editor of the NYT. He recently sent 28 questions to the executive editor of the NYT. None were answered.
The questions raised by Byron Calame, public editor (that is readers' representative) of the New York Times, in his article "Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence" (you can read the whole article here too) are surely troubling.
When a newspaper considered one of the best in the world swaps its duty of informing people and being a watchdog of power with the role of loudspeaker of the White House, omitting to report news that could cause embarassment in the current administration or, possibly, change the public perception of a presidential candidate (the eavesdropping story was held back since before the elections), what's the point of reading it? It's simply humiliating for democracy, freedom of press and readers' intelligence.
The New York Times ought to revise deeply its policies if it hopes to recover some credibility, and stop acting as a pathetic lackey of the neocon bunch. Mind you, the same applies to various others newspapers and TV stations.
No wonder more and more Americans now look for proper information on independent news providers and foreign papers.
Kudos to Byron Calame.
