Fisk Freely Discusses Ugly Reality of Iraq Endgame

Fisk Freely Discusses Ugly Reality of Iraq Endgame

"...The Americans will soon, if they have not already, establish contact with the insurgents, and that will mean the beginning of end. It means that the project is over. That they have accepted, as I think, you know, they have already in terms of soldiers on the ground. If you are going to talk to the colonels, and they may -- the majors and the generals in Iraq, they know that the game is up. But the generals back at the Pentagon and the Centcom and down there in old Florida and the gentleman in the State Department and at the White House, they don't accept this because this is a screen of self-delusion between them and the reality on the ground. But it's over in Iraq. It's finished. What we're going to see this year is the beginning of the endgame, which is how do we get Americans out without losing face and ultimately - I should say faith as well - and ultimately, how do you start negotiation with the insurgents...[..]

[..]..when I'm in Baghdad, and I read the American press or I turn on the television and watch CNN, what I'm reading and what I am seeing bears absolutely no physical, moral, political, or military relationship to the place that I'm living in...[..]

[...]"..it's getting worse all the time. But at least let us tell our readers and our viewers that we cannot move. But the [mainstream media] journalists don't do this, and of course neither does Mr. Allawi, who cannot even move around Baghdad. Neither does Mr. Rumsfeld, who for a long time wouldn't venture into Iraq. So, an illusion is created of calm and progress and well, things may get more violent, but that's because things are getting better, which is the most ludicrous topsy turvy I ever heard.."

--Robert Fisk, in an interview today with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now

Tsunami: Sixth Sense and Foreseeing Disasters

Tsunami: Sixth Sense and Foreseeing Disasters

" There was the account of two European tourists who were warned by an astrologer in Sri Lanka that they should avoid the beaches at all costs. The couple ignored the warning and were forced to flee for their lives the following day, but at least managed to survive. An English school girl on holiday with her parents in Thailand noticed bubbling water and a change in the pattern of the tide that coincided with the geography lesson she had absorbed at school about the lead up to a tsunami.

Her subsequent warning cries led to the immediate clearing of the local beach where an estimated 100 people were sunning themselves only minutes before the deadly waves struck the shore. Most remarkable of all are the claims that large numbers of wild animals and some pre-historic tribes people from the Andamans took evasive action to avoid being struck down by the tsunamis.





The strong implication is that these tribes people and the wild animals retain an instinct, that has vanished from the rest of the world, which allows them to sense impending physical danger... "

source: Deccan Herald

The Words of a Great US General and President

The Words of a Great US General and President



I'm all for these arms..."



"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."

--April 16, 1953 Dwight Eisenhower

This quote was seen at The Moderate Man, a new blog that I've recently discovered, thanks to Blog Explosion.

Too Great

"The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.....Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.....The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. Expect poison from the standing water. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.."

--William Blake
from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

In his ideology of the need for progress, William Blake, through his writing, drew to the idea that what some may call "Evil" is actually better than what some call "Good", because it allows progress and growth, whereas this "Good" only stunts progress. In "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", Blake wanted to reveal the duality that exists in life and he believed that true enlightenment and understanding come from the marriage of the contraries. I chose to use the tsunami photo because our minds cannot easily grasp any meaningful "good" that could come from such a horrific occurrence. One of my own hopes for "good" is that we see, with new eyes, the United Nations once again as a very necessary and worthy world organization.

A Renaissance of the Commons

credit-gaiti.com


"In our fixation on free-market dogma, we are enacting our very own ghost dance."


A Renaissance of the Commons
How the New Sciences and Internet Are Framing A New Global Identity and Order
by John Clippinger and David Bollier
pdf Link
*Thanks to Nick Lewis for the reference.


My fellow One World participant David Bollier, along with co-writer John Clippinger (Senior Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society
at the Harvard Law School), has explained how the ideas of "new insurgencies" - including the hard sciences, behavioral economics and complexity theory, robust new types of Internet-based communities, and startling new trans-national social movements - are converging around some common principles which challenge the status quo. I found Mr. Clippinger and Mr. Bollier's overall statement to be not only on the visionary cutting edge, but inspiring and exciting to people like myself. I have created a news aggregator category at One World called The New Prophesy. Read this piece and understand that you are reading two of "the new prophets". Culture can move only one way. It can only progress forward, as much as the far right in our own nation tries to use political rhetoric to hold back the tide. A tsunami is coming to wash away the old order. The internet will provide the earthquake. As long as the internet remains a free force, no fear-mongering or antiquated jargon will be able to stop the rock.