031709StPatricksDay
1812
At home, preparing the finishing touches on a traditional Irish stew, though none of us have ever been to Ireland and certainly not been there for St. Patrick’s Day.
The Confession of Saint Patrick translated by John Skinner
http://www.lovetolearnplace.com/Books/MiddleAgesList.html
http://www.catholicplanet.com/ebooks/Confession-of-St-Patrick.pdf
“For this reason I had in mind to write, but hesitated until now; I was afraid of exposing myself to the talk of men, because I have not studied like the others, who thoroughly imbibed law and Sacred Scripture, and never had to change from the language of their childhood days, but were able to make it still more perfect. In our case, what I had to say had to be translated into a tongue foreign to me, as can be easily proved from the savour of my writing, which betrays how little instruction and training I have had in the art of words; for, so says Scripture, by the tongue will be discovered the wise man, and understanding, and knowledge, and the teaching of truth.
But of what help is an excuse, however true, especially if combined with presumption, since now, in my old age, I strive for something that I did not acquire in youth? It was my sins that prevented me from fixing in my mind what before I had barely read through. But who believes me, though I should repeat what I started out with?
From out of slavery comes Liberation. Is this the lesson to be learned on this holiday? There is only Liberation, though life is slavery. Is this what was meant by Maya?
Each day is a memory of the life we have lived and a dream of the life we could live. “So therefore it is our duty to fish well and with loving care, just as the Lord urges and teaches us.” 40 P58-59
Tonight I begin with one of the early historians: Livy from Roman Times.
Livy – The Early History of Rome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livy
How different the World is based on the language used to interpret it. I should have studied Latin, like my brother:
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/liv.html
Second book: From Dawn to Decadence 1500 to the Present (1982) 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun
Its nice to be able to listen to people who know how best to communicate and share what they undertand:
http://archives.theconnection.org/shows/2000/07/20000705_b_main.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Barzun
http://www.risefallandsurvival.org/jacques_barzun.htm
From Roman History through the humanist revolution to American Post-modernistic Imperialism
Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics by Nancy Murphy
http://isbndb.com/d/book/anglo_american_postmodernity_a01.html
There is a lot of history to have an understanding of if you are to make a difference in this world. They say knowledge is power and though we have some of the most esteemed Universities in the World, we have failed at educating our citizenry to prepare them for the Massive Reconfiguration that must occur in order for this country to continue as a land of liberty, an example upon the world of a what a great Republic of Free People can truly be: Peaceful, Compassionate, Equal and Just. A country in which truth is spoken on the free airwaves on a daily basis, instead of being bombarded by advertisements – the internet is proving that TV is a medium that lends itself to monopolization that the Internet does not, so we must do all we can to ensure that the Internet remains a Free Medium, as all mediums ought to be for they are expressions of a Free People to express themselves Freely. And who share the right to assemble and publish their information. Only through complete transparency can a Free people truly pariticipate in their self-government.
How can the government spend Trillions of dollars without accounting for every penny? This money comes from an illegal tax on the american people that focuses on reducing the amount of money a person can earn through their labor after being negotiated with the people who provide the capital to start the business. But the business owners can do with their profit, whatever they want and are not regulated by how they spend the money we give them. It has been a plan put in place over the last 100-250 years. American supremacy has been an illusion propelled by the men who have the “power” and “authority” to kill and annihilate entire populations: The Indians, The Mexicans, the Hawaiins, the Spanish, the Filipinos, the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Grendadians, the Panamanians, the Iraqis, the Afghanistani, and all the others we have bombed to death over the past 100 years. Ours is a long history of destruction upon other people, often to the benefit of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant Males. This Imperial Class has served as King and Queen, Emperor and Divination, God-incarnate – the people of the Temple have continued to dominate those they can convince ought to obey without complaint. Slavery? This is the glory of Western Civilization and now we are witnessing the “End times” of this reign of Terror.
Thanks be to God.
I like how looking for things you often find new things:
Learn Everyday
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/08/phyllis-bennis-and-the-post-modern-anti-war-movement/
Phyllis Bennis and the Post-Modern Anti-War Movement
by Gabriele Zamparini / August 1st, 2007
It’s official. Phyllis Bennis, the spokesperson of the US peace movement, stated, “the U.S. peace movement doesn’t embrace the Iraqi resistance. Right.”
Bennis wrote,
“I never supported Saddam Hussein, who was ‘resisting’ the U.S. during the sanctions years, and I didn’t — and don’t — support what is called ‘the Iraqi resistance’ today.”
Note that “what is called.” One could try stop for a second and reflect why so many people use that “what is called” when addressing what is called the anti-war movement Bennis now has become the official spokesperson for.
The US peace movement’s spokesperson explains why “the U.S. peace movement doesn’t embrace the Iraqi resistance”:
[W]hat is understood to be “the Iraqi resistance” against the U.S. occupation is a disaggregated and diverse set of largely unconnected factions, in which the various often-antagonistic armed movements (including some who attack Iraqi civilians as much as they do occupation troops) hold pride of place. There is no unified leadership that can speak for “the resistance,” there is no NLF or ANC or FMLN that can claim real leadership and is accountable to the Iraqi population as a whole. There is no unified program, either of what the fight is against or what it is for. We know virtually nothing of what most of the factions stand for beyond opposition to the U.S. occupation — and from my own personal vantage point, of the little beyond that that we do know, I don’t like so much.
The Western post-modern anti-war movement got to the point to decide which resistance movement we like and which one we “don’t like so much.”
So now you know!
You, the resistance movements around the world that are resisting this rapacious Empire whose fat belly we live so comfortably in, you must be approved to have our respect, sympathy and intellectual support.
Approved by whom?
We shall create a special office for this task. We may call it the Empire’s anti-war movement’s department for the right to exist of the indigenous peoples. If you have a better name, please, send your suggestions. We are tolerant and encourage politically correctness to make you feel at home.
But please remember. We have become a little fussy, you know. Try to look a little more like those resistance movements we so much admire in those romantic Hollywood movies. And since you are at it, shave and get a shower.
Let’s go back to the peace movement’s spokesperson.
On another point, she writes,
As to our movement. Cockburn is wrong when he claims the peace movement is dead. How does he think that 70% anti-war opinion he notes was created? Certainly spontaneous opposition has played a part, based on rising casualty figures from Iraq (unfortunately only U.S. casualties seem to have this effect, not the enormously larger Iraqi casualties) and the lengthening litany of Bush administration outrages. But the peace movement’s work has been critical as well.
Unfortunately indeed! Especially when it’s that anti-war movement to conceal the real extent of the horror the Anglo-American invasion, [read: our leaders, our troops, our money, our will and our indifference] brought into Iraq.
But the post-modern anti-war movement doesn’t do resistance.
Bennis is even more explicit, I would say honest, in her realpolitik approach:
“I don’t think we gain strength by making sympathy with resistance fighters a demand of our movement.”
Indeed. To know why, please read my two pre-emptive replies:
Once upon a time in Iraq… Money makes the world go around
Once upon a time in Iraq… A Nobel Peace Prize for the Anglo-American Peacekeepers?
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Truthout:
Using the “T” Word
Tuesday 17 March 2009
by: Editorial | Visit article original @ The Baltimore Sun
A detainee looks through a steel grate as guards pass at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The International Committee of the Red Cross interviewed Guantanamo detainees about what they were subjected to while they were held in CIA prisons. (Photo: Brennan Linsley / AP)
A report by the International Committee of the Red Cross lifts the veil of secrecy from the torture of detainees in CIA prisons.
Many Americans have long suspected the Bush administration wasn’t being completely truthful about the interrogation techniques used to extract information from terrorist suspects captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Officials conceded some methods were “harsh,” but they insisted no detainees were tortured or seriously mistreated.
Now a long-suppressed report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has surfaced to give the lie to those denials. The report’s contents, presented to U.S. authorities in 2007 but made public only this week, describe in graphic detail officially sanctioned beatings, torture and abuse of prisoners in secret CIA prisons around the world that clearly violated U.S. and international law.
The ICRC investigators, who interviewed 14 “high value” detainees at Guantanamo in 2006, cited cases in which prisoners were soaked with water and forced to stand naked in icy cells for days at a time, or confined in coffin-like wooden boxes too small to stand up in.
Prisoners were deprived of sleep, food and medical care, punched, slapped or slammed into walls, and subjected to simulated drowning in a technique known as “waterboarding.”
”The ill-treatment to which [prisoners] were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture,” the ICRC stated flatly. Because the group is responsible for monitoring compliance with the Geneva Conventions, its findings, while confidential, have the force of law. Clearly, U.S. officials knew in 2007 that the outrages at Guantanamo constituted war crimes under international law.
Who is to be held accountable for these acts committed in the name of the American people? Notwithstanding former Vice President Dick Cheney’s disgusting attempt over the weekend to paper over CIA misdeeds as vital to national security, denial is not an option.
President Barack Obama is understandably reluctant to launch a criminal investigation of the spy agency whose support he still badly needs, even after having repudiated the Bush administration’s acquiescence in torture outlined in internal Justice Department memos released last week. But Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is vowing to get to the bottom of the matter in public hearings, and his inquiry need not turn into a partisan witch hunt if properly handled.
President Obama has said his administration won’t countenance the torture of prisoners. But finding out exactly how the nation went so wrong over the last eight years is an essential first step toward ensuring it won’t happen again.
»
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Comments
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A bit understated. I cried
Tue, 03/17/2009 – 23:35 — NYCartist (not verified)
A bit understated. I cried when I heard details on the WBAI evening news tonight: hanging from the ceiling by chains and chained at ankles, sleep deprivation in detail, so cold a prisoner was blue at the interview….This calls for more than a commission. Shame. I feel shame as an American. I want a special prosecutor and charges and prosecution for the CIA operatives on up to the highest office in the Bush Administration.
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Mr. President, have you considered the Value of Education in a Free Country? Is it not more important than the murder, slaughter, rape and pillaging of other people? How do you justify the billions more in Defense, which we all understand as a misnomer, since the Executive has taken upon himself the role of Commander in Chief to mean that he can send our military any where in the world to attack without provication or justification anyone He wants. This is the explicit education that you are giving our people and our children for generations to come – will we persist in this violence?
Will it not incite the World to rebel against us?
Global Disorder: How to avoid a fourth world war by Robert Harvey
War Without End: The rise of Islamist Terrorism and Global Response by Dilip Hiro
If the Muslim response to our Empirical rule is the destruction of Israel, then we must be ready to apologize for supporting Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine since 1948. There are some who say that Palestine was created, and it was called Transjordan , but the British occupation of the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after world war 1, was syllogistic with our current war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have understood the value of the Middle East for this brief moment of prosperity if we could only monopolize the natural resources of any country. This was a lesson learned through the Dutch East Indies Company and the British East Indies Company who had sole power to control the natural resources of any people they encountered for the benefit and profit of a few white anglo saxen protestant males. This ‘Club’ has had exclusive Rights to LIberty and it is always appropriate to learn from their actions and their words.
Power Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present (2003) by Michael B. Oren
P. 313
“Learning of the impending attack, Chekib Bey, the Ottoman ambassador in Washington, burst unannounced into the office of Secreatry of State Hay. “We have allowed the missionaries reat liberties, and with waht result?” Chekib protested. Rather than expressing gratitude, the missions had plotted to “wipe [his] country off the map,” by inciting the Armenians to rebellion. “Suppose I should establish…a school for [American] Negroes, and my teachers should tell the Negroes…that they ought not to submit to lynching and should rebel?” the diplomat asked. “Do you think I would remain in this country long or that my school would flourish?”
Al Jazeera today 1949
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UPDATED ON:
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
14:21 Mecca time, 11:21 GMT |
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Mr. President, when you speak, you speak to the world. They hear you giving commands to continue the unjust, illiegal, and disgusting war with Iraq and Afghanistan and with the fake “War on Terror” propose to continue spending billions on death and destruction.
What would our world look like if America had developed technologies of Peace, Prosperity and Justice?
What would the world look like if we truly honored and celebrated Life by taking a vow of non-violence against the people of the World who the Club has selected as their flavor of the year for destruction. If we speak honestly about the present, we must know our history better.
We must not forget China:
2012
S.Korea warns of action if North blocks border again
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By Jack Kim Jack Kim – 18 mins ago
AP – A member of the Inter-Korean Transit Office walks by gateways to North Korea at the Inter-Korean Transit …
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea warned Wednesday that it would respond with decisive action if Pyongyang again blocked access to a joint factory park in North Korea, but said it was too early to consider shutting the project down. In the past week, the North has blocked movement across the heavily defended border to an industrial park run by South Korean companies in the city of Kaesong out of anger over joint military drills by South Korean and U.S. troops.
“We are at this point not considering shutting down the Kaesong industrial zone,” Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told a forum of journalists.
“But if the North repeats the border traffic suspension after the end of the drills, the government will consider it a very grave situation and will take appropriate measures,” Hyun said, without elaborating on possible steps.
The four-day blockade, which was lifted Tuesday, stranded more than 400 South Korean managers in the Kaesong industrial park and nearly dried up supplies and materials for factories there, casting doubt on the prospects for a project that had been a lucrative source of income for the cash-strapped North.
The project was born under a policy of engagement by a previous South Korean government that saw it as a way to ease tensions with the North and allow firms from the South to use cheap labor there to make goods like pots, watches and apparel.
“If North Korea breaks the agreements with the South and causes enormous losses to the companies there, creating a situation where it is difficult to make investments in Kaesong a success, Kaesong will not be able to develop in a stable way,” Hyun said.
North Korea has directed increasingly acrimonious rhetoric against the conservative government in the wealthy South and its President Lee Myung-bak, who ended a decade of no-questions-asked aid to the North.
The anger intensified last week when South Korea and the United States began annual military drills scheduled to end on Friday.
Hyun said much more was at stake in the Kaesong project than the 700 billion won ($494.4 million) invested by the 101 companies operating there.
“I believe the Kaesong situation has dashed the hopes that the North and the South would embrace each other despite the grave military and security conditions between the two,” Hyun said.
The blockade comes as North Korea has raised tension on the Korean peninsula by announcing plans to launch a satellite between April 4 and 8, which officials in Seoul and Washington believe is a long-range missile test in disguise.
Hyun repeated the warning that going ahead with the launch would violate a Security Council resolution.
North Korean Premier Kim Yong-il is visiting China, one of the communist state’s last remaining allies. China has avoided even muted threats against the North’s missile plans.
($1=1415.7 Won)
(Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090318/wl_nm/us_korea_north_minister
——————–
Freedom of the Press: http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/212.htm
Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do
PART II: WHY LAWS AGAINST CONSENSUAL ACTIVITIES ARE NOT A GOOD IDEA
CONSENSUAL CRIMES CORRUPT THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
A free press
is not a privilege
but an organic necessity
in a great society.
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WALTER LIPPMANN
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A FREE PRESS, WHICH leads to an informed populace, is essential to liberty. As Thomas Jefferson put it,
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.
“The press” is an extremely broad term and includes all systems that make information available to people: newspapers, television, radio, books, lectures, movies, art, dance, telephone, cassettes, CDs, video discs, magazines, electronic bulletin boards, computer networks, billboards, video tapes, you name it. It’s generally known as “the press” in our country because, when the founding fathers wrote freedom of the press into the Bill of Rights, the printing press was the most popular form of mass communication. Today we call it “the media.”
All of the world’s major religions, philosophies, schools of political thought, and systems of government were spread through writing. In fact, the spread of civilization, religion, and the written word occurred simultaneously, each dependent on the other. The written word inspired, and the inspiration was passed on to others through the written word. All of the great religions were based on a “book”—a collection of writings—even before there were books. The Egyptians had the Book of the Dead; the Hindus had the Upanishads; the Jews had the Torah; Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey told of the Greek gods; and the writings of Zoro-aster, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Buddha, the Jewish prophets, and the Greek poets made the sixth century B.C. a remarkable century indeed. Without writing and the ability to circulate this writing (a “free press”), these traditions would have influenced very few and would probably be entirely forgotten today.
A man has only to murder
a series of wives in a new way
to become known
to millions of people
who have never heard of Homer.
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ROBERT LYND
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Christianity first spread due to the freedom-of-speech tradition of the Jewish synagogues: any adult Jewish male was free to have his say. Jesus (and, later, his disciples) used this freedom to spread his teachings. Although Jesus never published a word,variation of “Ain’t nobody’s business if she do.”> selections of what he said were written down and circulated on scrolls. These “sayings” scrolls were very popular and, considering that each had to be copied by hand, they were what we would now call bestsellers—sort of a Lord’s Little Instruction Book.
The literature of a people
must so ring from the sense
of its nationality;
and nationality is impossible
without self-respect,
and self-respect is impossible
without liberty.
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HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
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After the death of Jesus, the “quote books” continued to be popular and the letters (epistles) from various church fathers were copied, widely circulated, and studied. The surviving letters of Paul make up the majority of the New Testament. Thirty years or so after the death of Jesus, the sayings books were expanded by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and, later, John into the story of Jesus that we now know as the first four books of the New Testament. Four hundred years after the time of Christ, the Bible as we know it was compiled.
The Bible was to become the most banned book of all time. For centuries, reading the Bible was forbidden—it was said that the ordinary person could not handle the power conveyed by direct contact with God’s holy word. In fact, banning the book allowed religious and political leaders to manipulate the populace into submission, threatening eternal damnation for disobedience.
Gutenberg’s decision to use the Bible in 1455 as the first book printed on his new press is portrayed by many as an act of great faith—he was so much a man of God that he chose to print a holy book instead of a romance novel. It was, in fact, an act of rebellion—a major statement for freedom of the press.
Prior to Gutenberg, all Bibles were copied by hand by monks in monasteries. The Catholic church had a monopoly on the production and distribution of Bibles. Not only were they very expensive, but their distribution was carefully regulated. Buying a Bible was part of a package deal: you usually had to build a chapel to house it and hire a priest (one who could read and write) to interpret it. Like buying a computer in the 1950s, it was a major commitment only a handful could afford.
Gutenberg changed that. His Bible was relatively cheap (by Bible standards of the day), and available to anyone who could pay the price. For the first time, the word of God could be read and studied without the permission or interpretation of the holy mother church. Some say that this one act of freedom of the press was the greatest single factor behind the Reformation. The Bible, religion, Christianity, and the world would never be the same.
The ink of a scholar
is more sacred
than the blood
of the martyr.
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MOHAMMED
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In our own country one book, more than any other single cause, was responsible for the revolutionary war: Common Sense by Tom Paine. This book (more a pamphlet, actually) was published in January 1776. The mood at that time in the British colonies was to continue negotiations with the mother country. A war against king and crown—the direct representatives of God on earth—was still, for many, unthinkable. Common Sense changed that. It sold more than 500,000 copies within a few months—that’s one copy for every eight people living in the colonies. Certainly everyone who could read back then read it. It changed people’s attitudes from placation to rebellion almost overnight.
In July of 1776, the moment the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, it was “off to the press.” Copies were printed and reprinted throughout the colonies. A good number of the colonists had read and studied it by the time the official signing took place in early August. The document was translated and widely circulated throughout Europe, where the mere possession of it in some countries was punishable by death. The Declaration fulfilled its intended purpose, and a nation prepared for war.
Whenever people are
well-informed
they can be trusted
with their own government.
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THOMAS JEFFERSON
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After United States Constitution was written in 1787, it had to be “sold” to the electorate. This was done through a series of eighty-five articles—written primarily by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton—printed in newspapers throughout the country. The articles are now collectively known as The Federalist or The Federalist Papers. Without these, it is doubtful that the radical experiment known as the United States ever would have happened. Clearly seeing the power of the press, the founding fathers guaranteed its complete freedom in the very first amendment they added to that Constitution.
Probably the most influential book of the entire 1800s was a novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. (The alternate title was Life Among the Lowly.) Published in 1852, it portrayed slaves not as chattel or animals, but as human beings, and (gasp!) portrayed their white owner, Simon Legree, as the villain. Talk about your book burnings in the South! Of the 300,000 copies sold during the first year, who knows how many were purchased in the South specifically for burning. The book and its 1853 follow-up collection of factual documents, The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, swayed popular opinion in the North toward the abolition of slavery. Without these books, anti-slavery might never have been a major theme of the Civil War.
In 1906, a book by Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, took a hard look at the meat-packing industry in the United States. A novel filled with many frightening and disturbing facts, The Jungle changed the way all food products were processed and packaged in the United States, and made major strides toward the enactment of worker protection and child-labor laws.
Radio found its stride in the 1930s. Some say Franklin Delano Roosevelt literally talked the nation out of its depression. By the late 1930s, while storm clouds gathered over Europe (as the more dramatic histories of the day like to put it), the mood of the American people was fiercely isolationist. “No more European wars!” was the battle cry. And yet, Americans were gently prodded into taking sides by what they heard on the radio. The major protagonists in the “European War” were England and Germany. What we heard from Germany were the unintelligible sounds of a ranting lunatic followed by the lock-stepping masses shouting, “Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!” England, on the other hand, had the warm, gentle, sometimes roaring, sometimes humorous voice of Winston Churchill. Surely it would be okay to lend this nice man a few boats and lease him a few airplanes. And so, lend-lease was born, and the United States was no longer neutral.
I am entirely persuaded
that the American public
is more reasonable,
restrained and mature
than most of the broadcast
industry's planners believe.
Their fear of controversy
is not warranted by the evidence.
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EDWARD R. MURROW
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On CBS Radio, Edward R. Murrow reported firsthand the devastation of German bombings on London during the blitz. This further tilted American sympathies toward the underdog, England. His voice did more to fight Hitler than probably any other. In 1954, he was to use television to take on yet another monster, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunt. “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” said Murrow on that historic telecast. “We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular.” In both instances, he risked his life; in both instances, he won. (He lost the battle with cigarettes, however, dying of lung cancer in 1965.)
In our own time (well, I suppose that depends on when you were born, doesn’t it?—in my own time, at any rate), we saw a president toppled by a couple of reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, who inspired thousands of young people to take up investigative journalism. Then, after Woodward and Bernstein were portrayed in the movies by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, tens of thousands applied to journalism schools.
The media I've had a lot to do with
is lazy.
We fed them
and they ate it every day.
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MICHAEL DEAVER
Former top aide to President Reagan |
Through the media we learn about our world, our life, medical breakthroughs, scientific advances, toppling regimes, the truth about history, useful news, trivial news, useful trivial news, good news, bad news—news.
We rely on it, depend on its accuracy, and, if it turns out to be inaccurate, we expect another news organization to expose the expos. Freedom of the press is a fundamental right, up there with freedom of speech and freedom of and from religion. A free press is not a luxury; it’s a necessity.
How do consensual crimes corrupt our free press? Several ways.
First, since committing a consensual crime is breaking the law and since breaking the law is news, reporters are often sent out looking for video on drug busts, hookers, or stories on who is sleeping with whom and whether they’re married to someone else. In the end, none of this has much to do with our lives (certainly not in the way that murderers, rapists, robbers, polluters, price-fixers, and bribe-takers do). So—like the police, courts, and prisons—the reporters’ time and the media’s space are overburdened with fluff. And not very interesting fluff at that. (You’ve seen one drug bust on TV, you’ve seen ‘em all.)”you’d think America was populated solely by naked women and cinema stars.”> There’s plenty of international tension, domestic strife, real crime, corruption, and consumer activism to keep every reporter and his or her place of reporting busy, productive, highly rated, and of service to the community. There might even be a little time to dig up some good news.
If a nation expects
to be ignorant and free . . .
it expects
what never was
and never will be.
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THOMAS JEFFERSON
1816 |
Second, since consensual crimes are not based on hurting others but on religious interpretations by a handful of moralists, some journalists have been turned (some willingly, some not) into professional gossips and busybodies. Gossip is fine, gossip is entertaining, but it belongs on Entertainment Tonight and best-seller lists, not the network evening newscasts. “The things most people want to know about,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, “are usually none of their business.” Did Gary Hart really deserve to lose all of his political credibility because he took a boat ride with a young beauty? Mr. Hart’s wife did not object; his ocean-going companion did not object; one must assume Mr. Hart himself did not object. To quote a television commercial of roughly that same time frame: “Where’s the beef?”think that commercial happened at about the same time as Gary Hart’s aborted presidential campaign. I cannot be sure. History for me is broken into four phases: (1) before I was born, (2) from the time of my birth until now, (3) now, and (4) has it happened yet? I do know that both Gary Hart’s being caught in adultery—not quite in the act, but at least in the yacht—and that dear lady asking “Where’s the beef?” happened some time during Phase 2.> Was this one seagoing sexual misadventure really sufficient grounds to completely ignore everything political about him, everything this man stood for, spent a lifetime building, and was doing a fairly good job bringing to the arena of public discussion? Gary Hart was sacrificed to a group of yapping moralists who claim that “an adulterer” is not fit to run for president. The yapping was served up by a “free” press bound by the chains of delivering late-breaking scandals with photos, video, and sound bites if at all possible. And what did the American people get in exchange? A truly dull campaign: Dukakis versus Reagan. Yawn. As Jay Leno observed, “Dukakis is Greek for Mondale.”
The media.
It sounds like
a convention
of spiritualists.
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TOM STOPPARD
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Third, just as when cops need some easy collars and round up some consensual criminals, so too, reporters—when there’s dead air to fill or an article to embellish—go out and round up some consensual crime stories. Need some quick video? Take a female reporter, put her in some fishnet stockings and a dress cut low enough to reveal her journalistic integrity, have her meander the sidewalk with the streetwalkers, and follow her with a hidden camera. (The camera can be hidden in a van marked ACTION NEWS with a little satellite dish on top and you’ll still get good video—men are terribly unobservant of all but one thing when their testosterone is raging.) If you really want ratings, put a male reporter in the same costume and situation.
Finally, as with police, journalists should regain the respect they are entitled to. Reporting a lot of “trash for cash” has tarnished the good name of reportage. Remember when Walter Cronkite, as the anchor of an evening newscast, was considered “the most trusted man in America”? Why not return to those thrilling days of yesteryear? It wasn’t just Walter Cronkite; Huntley and Brinkley were well respected. Brinkley’s still at it, saying wonderfully honest things, such as “The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.” There are, of course, other contemporary examples: Hugh Downs, Larry King, John Chancellor, and Bill Moyers.
The press not only cheapens itself by playing tattletale and reporting the consensual exploits of others; it also “eats its young” by reporting on the consensual activities of its own. An absurd example of the latter involves an attractive female “reporter” who invited Larry King up to her hotel room, which just happened to have more hidden cameras than Allen Funt’s bathroom. Well, the tape went on and on and on, and Mr. King made nary an improper move. But, dull as it was, they showed the tape anyway. After all, Larry King is a star; there’s air time to fill; and, even if he didn’t do anything, it will make a great teaser: “Larry King follows our reporter up to her hotel room! What happens then? Tune in tonight and find out!” (Although I don’t remember the name of the show, why do I have the sneaking suspicion it was on Fox? “All the networks are struggling now with their desire to put on live executions, if they could, to get the ratings,” said Gary David Goldberg; “I think the difference is that Fox would put on naked live executions.”)
Newspapers have degenerated.
They may now be
absolutely relied upon.
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OSCAR WILDE
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We’re entitled to a free press, and the press is entitled to be free from rumor-mongering and reporting on the latest scandal from Gossip Central.
Later, in the chapter, “Pornography, Obscenity, Etc.,” we’ll explore how censorship even more directly corrupts the freedom of the press
http://www.freedomofthepress.net/
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Noam Chomsky has a lot to teach us and if he were president today, I imagine, the American Military would be withdrawn from all occupied foreign territory. Perhaps we would maintain a global naval presence with our fleet of 20+ aircraft carrier groups and our 50+ nuclear powered and armed submarines. We can destroy the world from the water or from space with our continued deployment of militarized satellites that pose as Global Positioning Satellites. Global positioning so we can shoot you better, says the big bad wolf. Noam believes in peace which is why he continues to speak out against American aggression overseas and at home.
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I’m very curious to understand the development of the Temple in the social architecture and its function in society as the controlling tool used to enslave and dominate foreign people.
Ziggurats and the Greatest of them – Sumerian Ziggurat of Ur at Wayfaring Travel Guide
Published by nerdeff in ACTIVITIES, Asia, CONTINENTS, COUNTRIES, Iraq, Monuments, Relaxing, TOPICS, Travel Stories, Walking
A ziggurat “to build on a raised area” is a temple tower of the ancient Mesopotamian valley and Iran, having the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories. Ziggurats were a form of temple common to the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians of ancient Mesopotamia.The earliest examples of the ziggurat date from the end of the third millennium BCE and the latest date from the 6th century BCE.
Built in receding tiers upon a rectangular, oval, or square platform, the ziggurat was a pyramidal structure. Sun-baked bricks made up the core of the ziggurat with facings of fired bricks on the outside. The facings were often glazed in different colors and may have had astrological significance. The number of tiers ranged from two to seven, with a shrine or temple at the summit. Access to the shrine was provided by a series of ramps on one side of the ziggurat or by a spiral ramp from base to summit.
Notable examples of this structure include the Great Ziggurat of Ur and Khorsabad in Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamian ziggurats were not places for public worship or ceremonies. They were believed to be dwelling places for the gods. Through the ziggurat the gods could be close to mankind and each city had its own patron god. Only priests were permitted inside the ziggurat and it was their responsibility to care for the gods and attend to their needs. As a result the priests were very powerful members of Sumerian society.
There are 32 known ziggurats near Mesopotamia. Four of them are in Iran, and the rest are mostly in Iraq. The most recent to be discovered was Sialk, in central Iran. The Sialk, in Kashan, Iran, is the oldest known zigurrat, dating to the early 3rd millennium BCE. One of the best preserved ziggurats is Choqa Zanbil in western Iran, which has survived despite the devastating eight year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980’s in which many archeological sites were destroyed.
Ziggurat designs ranged from simple bases upon which a temple sat, to marvels of mathematics and construction which spanned several terraced stories and were topped with a temple.
An example of a simple ziggurat is the White Temple of Uruk, in ancient Sumer. The ziggurat itself is the base on which the White Temple is set. Its purpose is to get the temple closer to the heavens, and provide access from the ground to it via steps.An example of an extensive and massive ziggurat is the Marduk ziggurat, or Etemenanki, of ancient Babylon.
Unfortunately, not much of even the base is left of this massive structure, yet archeological findings and historical accounts put this tower at seven multicolored tiers, topped with a temple of exquisite proportions. The temple is thought to have been painted and maintained an indigo color, matching the tops of the tiers. It is known that there were three staircases leading to the temple, two of which (side flanked) were thought to have only ascended half the ziggurat’s height.
Etemenanki, the name for the structure, is Sumerian and means “The Foundation of Heaven and Earth.” Most likely being built by Hammurabi, the ziggurat’s core was found to have contained the remains of earlier ziggurats and structures. The final stage consisted of a 15 meter hardened brick encasement constructed by King Nebuchadnezzar.
It has been suggested that the ziggurat was a symbolic representation of the primeval mound upon which the universe was thought to have been created. The ziggurat may have been built as a bridge between heaven and earth. The temples of the Sumerians were believed to be a cosmic axis, a vertical bond between heaven and earth, and the earth and the underworld, and a horizontal bond between the lands. Built on seven levels the ziggurat represented seven heavens and planes of existence, the seven planets and the seven metals associated with them and their corresponding colors.
Joseph Campbell in his Masks of God books says that there is archaelogical evidence supporting a direct link between Mesopotamian ziggurats and the pyramids of Egypt. Campbell also states that from Egypt, the Mesopotamian culture was passed on almost simultaneously on two separate fronts to Crete and India. From India it reached China and from there it crossed the ocean to the pre-columbian societies of Central and South America, which could explain the similarities between ziggurats and Mayan pyramids.
Campbell further explores the geometry of the ziggurat and its philosophical and spiritual repercussions. According to Campbell, ziggurats first appeared during a sudden scientific and philosophical golden age where such other discoveries were made such as the invention of the wheel, the discovery of the calendar and astronomy, as well as the invention of the written word. For Campbell these are all related.
The Earth needs 365 days to make a single revolution around the Sun, which is also an approximation of the number of degrees in a circle. Ziggurats, like all pyramidal structures, have a square base which could be encompassed within a circular area. The square base theoretically represents the additional five days. The five days can be seen in the four points of the square as well as the fifth point in the middle, which is the point of the square’s equilibrium as well as the point of equilibrium of whatever circle that encompasses it.
The fifth point represents the bridge to heaven represented by the circle, a universally considered symbol for infinity and perfection, and the terrestrial world in turn represented by the square. The highest point of a pyramid is a projection of the square’s center point. This can be interpreted as the earth’s highest point being heaven’s lowest.
There are examples of the philosophies surrounding the ziggurat in all major ancient civilizations of the world, which Campbell has affirmed is no accident. Examples can be observed in the seven leveled Chakra system of India as well as the dualistic Yin-Yang of China.
http://www.freewebs.com/eridu666/Beelzebub.html
How did the Temple Knowledge spread to Egypt?
http://www.wayfaring.info/2006/10/30/the-astonishing-temple-of-karnak-in-luxor-spiritual-center-of-the-ancient-egyptians/
What connection is there between the Sumerians and the Aryan invaders of hindustan?
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:Ancient_Civilizations/Sumerians
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Sumerian-civilization
http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/acegarp/898/10000bc601.htm
http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Mesopotamia
Cheers!
111509ReligionsofPeace
