THE WORLDPEACE JOURNAL
a personal perspective of current events

March 15, 2004

RELIGION - Episcopal congregations defy diocese, hold service -  FAIRLAWN, Ohio ? Launching a new front in the Episcopal Church conflict over the appointment of an openly gay bishop, six defiant congregations joined yesterday in a confirmation service led by bishops acting without permission from the Diocese of Ohio.  Under Episcopal law and liturgy, confirmations are performed only by local bishops or visiting bishops approved by the head of the host diocese, in this case, Bishop J. Clark Grew II of Cleveland.  The six congregations are part of a nationwide protest movement of conservative Episcopalians who oppose homosexual activity on biblical grounds.  The issue exploded last year when the church's national convention approved the elevation of the denomination's first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Grew joined a majority of Episcopal bishops in voting for Robinson, and yesterday's service was a snub of Grew's authority.  A message left seeking comment from him was not returned. * Religion in America is in crises because bureaucratic religion is not democratic, but autocratic more closely associated with kingships.  http://www.presbyterians-r-us.com

SPACE - NEW PLANET -  It is a frozen world more than 8 billion miles from Earth and believed to be the farthest known object within our solar system.  NASA (search) planned a Monday press conference to offer more details about Sedna (search), a planetoid between 800 miles and 1,100 miles in diameter, or about three-quarters the size of Pluto.  Named for the Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic, Sedna lies more than three times farther from the sun than Pluto (search). It was discovered in November.  "The sun appears so small from that distance that you could completely block it out with the head of a pin," said Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology who led the NASA-funded team that found Sedna.  That makes Sedna the largest object found orbiting the sun since the discovery of Pluto, the ninth planet, in 1930. It trumps in size another world, called Quaoar (search), discovered by the same team in 2002.  Brown and his colleagues estimate the temperature on Sedna never rises above 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, making it the coldest known body in the solar system.  Sedna follows a highly elliptical path around the sun, a circuit that it takes 10,500 years to complete. Its orbit loops out as far as 84 billion miles from the sun, or 900 times the distance between the Earth and our star.  Brown and Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University, discovered Sedna on Nov. 14, 2003, using a 48-inch telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory east of San Diego.  Within days, other astronomers around the world trained their telescopes, including the recently launched Spitzer Space Telescope, on the object.  The team also have indirect evidence a tiny moon may trail Sedna, which is redder than all other known solar system bodies except Mars.  

SPAIN - IRAQ FALLOUT - Spain's ruling conservatives crashed to surprise defeat in elections overshadowed by anger over terrorist bombings, becoming the first government that backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq to be voted out of office.  In one fell swoop, voters ousted Aznar, whose party was favored to win just days ago, even though he brought Spain eight straight years of economic growth, made it a founding member of the euro single currency, cut unemployment in half and brought a degree of prominence to a long-ignored country.  But on election day voters expressed anger with the government, accusing it of provoking the Madrid attacks by supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which a vast majority of Spaniards opposed.  The government had insisted that its prime suspect in Thursday's rail bombings was the armed Basque separatist group ETA, even as evidence mounted of an Islamic link in the bombings.  The government was accused of withholding information on the investigation to save the election. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040315h.htm *  There are three banditos responsible for the Iraq invasion: Bush, Blair and Aznar.  The first national elections for the three sociopaths has ousted Aznar.  Let us hope that Blair and Bush are soon to follow.  More than any other crime, Bush invaded Iraq without provocation.  In fact, he invaded Iraq based on a lie about weapons of mass destruction that was cooked up by DICK Cheney and Perle and Wolfowitz, Bush's high placed Zionist.  The thing that worries me the most is that AlQuada distinctively influenced the Spanish elections.  Now we have to consider what more significant demonstration of terrorism may be foisted on America prior to the November elections.  Will another 911 cause people to abandon Bush or cause people to rally behind him to their detriment.  The ring leader of the Iraqi invasion was Bush.  The best thing for AlQuada to do is to refrain from any more attacks in the U S if they really want Bush gone.  On the other hand, the real question is: what is it going to take to get our leaders to speak to the issue of what causes terrorism.  That is going to be tough because the answer is undeniably the U S imperialism worldwide.

CHINA - DEMOCRACY COMING - RELIGION - Communist-led China took the historic step Sunday of amending its constitution to protect the property rights of capitalists who are driving its economic boom, while promising to focus on helping farmers and millions of others left behind.  The nation's parliament, making changes dictated by the Communist Party, also passed an amendment declaring respect for human rights but not promising free political expression -- a key issue for government critics.  The changes came as the figurehead National People's Congress closed a 10-day annual session dominated by promises to shift development to the poor countryside, where 800 million Chinese live.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040315f.htm  * It seems that China is moving very rapidly toward a democratic capitalistic society.  When they do, no doubt they will eventually make amends with Japan and the world will split into two economic spheres of influence, China/Japan and America/Europe.  When this happens the Jewish, Christian, Muslim religious wars that have plagued the west will be confronted by Buddhism and Confuscism which generally speaking do not have the on going violent history of their western counter parts.  The warring Gods, Jehovah, Yahweh, and Allah are going to look primitive and paganistic compared to Buddhism.  WorldPeace is based on law which is founded on economics and secularism.  WorldPeace has never been a goal of exclusionist religious bureaucracies of men with their alleged mandates from their God.

THE PASSION OF CHRIST - I learned a lifelong lesson during my recent interview with Mel Gibson?s father, Hutton Gibson. The interview took place on the eve of the release of Mel Gibson?s new movie, ?The Passion of the Christ.?  I learned that there actually were no concentration camps during the Holocaust, only work camps.  I learned that the Holocaust was a fiction, a fabricated business tool used strategically to siphon hard-earned money from the coffers of innocent governments worldwide.  I learned that there are too many survivors left in the world for there ever to have been a Holocaust.  I learned that the Jews just walked off the plazas of Europe right onto the streets of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Sydney and Los Angeles. In fact, I learned that the Germans were such an efficient people that if they had wanted to murder 6 million people, well then by golly they would have done it!  But this was only the beginning of my education. by Steve Feuerstein PoliticalCommentary2004/e040315e.htm * The vast majority of articles that I have seen about the Passion are written by Jews.  Most of them are negative of course.  The Zionist run the news media in America and consequently everyday we see one Jewish writer or another bashing the film because the "Blood of Christ is on the Jews" and because like everything that reflects negative on the Jews, true or not, is classified as anti-Semitic by the Zionists.  I am sick of it.  I am particularly sick of it because of the abuse that the Zionists are foisting on the Palestinians whose land they stole by terrorism that began in the late 1800's when the Zionists began to push for a return to the land that their God allegedly gave them.

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS - Neither Sandy Hunt nor Kathy Griffin likes nasty political ads. Indeed, both are already "horrified" by the hostile tone of this year's presidential campaign.  But no matter how unpleasant it gets, both small-business executives plan to vote Nov. 2. The threat of terrorism and troubled state of the economy have made politics central to them as never before.  But there's also another dynamic at play - the polarizing nature of the Bush presidency. Ms. Hunt is determined to vote for George Bush because she doesn't like the feeling that people have a "vendetta" against him. Ms. Griffin is just as adamant about supporting John Kerry because "Bush is a runaway train ... and I feel very strongly about stopping him."  Their comments reflect a truism about campaign 2004: Even though the election has turned nasty earlier than any in modern history, experts predict voters will remain engaged in the political process - and probably go to the polls in large numbers.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040315d.htm  * The election is going to come down to the war in Iraq and the economics that prevail in November.  One thing for sure, Bush is either admired or hated by the majority of the people.  There are not many who have ambivalent feelings about little George.  It is hard for me to imagine that the intensity of political rhetoric will continue for another nine months.  That will create a tremendous amount of tension in society and that much tension will find an outlet which may be violence in the streets.  The Democratic and Republican conventions are going to be fraught with demonstrations, maybe as dramatic as those associated with Vietnam.

ISRAEL - ASHDOD, Israel (Reuters) - Two Palestinian suicide bombers killed at least 10 other people Sunday in a double-attack at Israel's port of Ashdod, prompting Israel to cancel talks on arranging an Israeli-Palestinian peace summit.  Police said at least 20 people were hurt in the blasts at Israel's second-busiest port as day-shift workers were heading home. Bloody limbs protruded from a shed that had been crumpled to a heap of twisted metal.  "People inside the workshop told us a guy came to them to ask for some water. When they gave it to him, he blew up," said port worker Rafi Mashal.  The bombing took place just as aides of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie were wrapping up talks to arrange a long-awaited summit on reviving a plan for reciprocal steps meant to lead to a Palestinian state in return for peace.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040315c.htm * The suicide bombers just keep on coming. The Israelis fire back and the suicide bombers return.  The cycle is never ending.  The wall is not going to make any difference.  The Palestinians are fighting back the only way they know how.  The Israelis cannot exist behind a wall, especially when there are so many Muslims who legitimately live in Israel.  It is going to take economic sanctions by the U S against Israel for their bad boys acts.  Nothing short of cutting off their funding is going to stop the Zionist or Muslim terrorist.  This is a stupid war that was ignited by the corrupt Ariel Sharon when he visited the wailing wall on September 28, 2000.  

VENEZUELA - THE NEXT AMERICAN COUP - The president of Venezuela was addressing an International Women's Day gathering in Caracas last week, when he broke into song. The overflow crowd, familiar with their exuberant president's penchant for singing popular songs when the spirit moves him, went wild, chanting for more. He obliged.  Sitting in the audience, I was struck by the emotional connection between the crowd and Hugo Chavez ? democratically elected president, revolutionary style leader, champion of Venezuela's poor, scourge of Venezuela's rich, and, some say, next on Washington's hit list.  Last month, Haiti's democratically elected government was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by Haiti's wealthy elite, with apparent support from Washington. That has fueled speculation Washington will encourage a similar coup in Venezuela, where the well-to-do are itching for an opportunity to overthrow Chavez.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040315b.htm  * Look out Venezuela if little George gets reelected.  You folks have the oil that Bush and his imperialist want.  Bush wants an oil democracy in Venezuela not a popular democracy.  

CHENEY - THE DICK IN THE MIX - Abraham Lincoln did it -- and won a second term. So did Franklin D. Roosevelt -- twice. Aides to President George Bush secretly looked into the possibility in 1992 before abandoning the idea.  But don't look for George W. Bush to dump his vice president in November to reverse his slump in the polls or to energize the bid for a second term.  Such a move could signal desperation, rile the conservative Republican base and expose Vice President Dick Cheney's stand-in to campaign-year scrutiny that might unearth unwanted surprises.  The latest Gallup Poll shows that Bush's approval rating has slipped to the lowest level of his presidency -- with 49 percent of Americans approving of his job performance, compared with 90 percent immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  Cheney's approval rating also has slipped to the lowest level of his term, with only 45 percent of respondents in a Gallup Poll in mid-February approving of his job performance. Cheney's favorable ratings averaged 63 percent in his first two years in office and 56 percent last year.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040315a.htm *  There is no one more dangerous that DICK Cheney.  He is corrupt.  He is queer for money and oil and power.  He is an American imperialist of the first magnitude.  One thing for sure is that DICK will cost little George some votes and considering how close the election was four years ago, that is a good thing.  The death of little George would be a very bad thing.  Unfortunately, AlQuada may be targeting Bush even as we speak.  If little George captures or kills bin Laden, you can bet his fanatics will extract a revenge on American soil.  And that revenge may well include little George himself.  George set a bad precedent when he got rid of Saddam and Aristide.  George set a precedent of removing heads of state by force.

March 14, 2004

MASONIC LODGE - UNDER ATTACK - They still greet each other with secret handshakes and use rituals that date from the Middle Ages. But members of the Free and Accepted Masons insist that none of their sanctioned rites has any connection to the death of a man who was shot during an initiation.  ''It was an accident that happened,'' he said. ``You can't blame an entire fraternity that had nothing to do with it. If this were part of some common everyday occurrence that would be one thing. It isn't.''  The man accused of shooting James is Albert Eid, a 76-year-old retiree who police say mistakenly pulled a loaded .32-caliber handgun from his left pants pocket instead of a .22-caliber pistol with blanks that was in his right pocket.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040314g.htm * Three days ago a masonic building was bombed in Istanbul.  Now the Masons have a death during initiation just like some college fraternities.  This is not good for an organization that tries to stay under the radar.  An organization that does a lot of good through its Shriner Hospitals but is considered a negative manipulator in Western political events by many.

IRAQ - FOUR MORE DEAD SOLDIERS - Bomb attacks in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers, the Army said on Sunday, bringing to nine the number of troops killed in Iraq in the last four days by explosives planted by guerrillas to target American patrols.  A military spokesman said a roadside bomb blast in southern Baghdad around 10:45 p.m. (1945 GMT) on Saturday killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded one.  Another bomb attack at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday wounded an American soldier who later died in hospital, the spokesman said.  On Saturday, a bomb was detonated as a U.S. patrol passed in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. Guerrillas then opened fire. Two soldiers were killed and several wounded.  Two bomb attacks on Wednesday and Thursday in the restive "Sunni triangle" around Baghdad killed three soldiers.  Since the start of the war to oust Saddam, 389 U.S. troops have been killed in action in Iraq -- 274 of them since Washington declared major combat over on May 1 last year.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040314f.htm  * Every American soldier dies is another nail in the Presidential coffin of reelection.  There is no doubt in my mind that the most dangerous place for an American soldiers to be this October and November will be Iraq.  What will be body count be on November 2, 2004?

ISRAEL - THE BALFOUR DECLARATION - A HISTORY LESSON -  THE BALFOUR DECLARATION - A HISTORY LESSON - 


Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour

PoliticalCommentary2004/e040314e.htm * And so began the Middle East cancer who most recent legacy is 911.

IRAQ - CONSTITUTION PROTESTS - Thousands of Iraqis protested in the centre of Baghdad against a new interim constitution on Friday, while their religious leaders refrained from calling for a mass rebellion.  "No, no to the basic law," the crowd chanted, waving banners that read: "We do not want an American constitution".  "Yes for the unity of Iraq," they shouted at the peaceful rally in Ferus Square.  Shiite clerics at weekly prayers also denounced the constitution, which Iraq's US-picked Governing Council signed at the start of the week.  Young firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr lived up to his reputation for being blunt when he likened the text to a British declaration inviting Jews to settle in Palestine in 1917.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040314d.htm * It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that a U S Constitution, which was founded by men who agreed to reject their homeland, cannot immediately work in a land where religion is deeply embedded in politics and two very different nations exists within the same border.  The Kurds would have to forego their dream of their own homeland and the Shiites would have to tolerate the minority Kurds in government.  All one has to do is consider the gerrymandering that takes places every ten years in America to understand that even the American constitution requires an equal distribution of Democrats and Republicans.

IRAQ - TWO MORE AMERICAN DEAD - Two US soldiers were killed and five badly wounded in a bomb blast in northern Iraq Saturday, as officials warned of more suicide attacks as the date for handing back sovereignty approaches.  Added to an official Pentagon tally, the deaths raise to 270 the number of US soldiers killed in action since US President George W. Bush declared major hostilities over on May 1.  Meanwhile, an investigation is continuing into the mob-style killing of two US government staffers and their Iraqi interpreter after a US official admitted that four men arrested were in fact police and not imposters.  Meanwhile, the Pentagon awarded contracts worth up to one billion dollars to two US companies Friday for building projects related to electric power services, in the latest installment in a series of long-awaited reconstruction deals to total up to five billion dollars.  They came a day after the Pentagon awarded two other Iraq reconstruction contracts worth up to 1.1 billion dollars to US and British firms.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040314c.htm  * There is a question as to whether the official death count is correct. Since George will not allow photos of returning coffins, there is a question as to whether soldiers are being reclassified as civilians and not reported as soldiers deaths.  There is another question about whether or not soldiers who died in hospitals after being wounded are listed as deaths or does the Pentagon only classify those who died instantly as officially killed in Iraq and not those who died outside Iraq due to their wounds.  Also, isn't it interesting how America indirectly passes money to its corporations.  Congress allocates money to rebuild Iraq and that money goes to American companies.  Without the war in Iraq, there would be no government funding directly to big corporations.

TERRORISM - SPAIN - ALQAEDA - Meanwhile, an investigation is continuing into the mob-style killing of two US government staffers and their Iraqi interpreter after a US official admitted that four men arrested were in fact police and not imposters.  Meanwhile, the Pentagon awarded contracts worth up to one billion dollars to two US companies Friday for building projects related to electric power services, in the latest installment in a series of long-awaited reconstruction deals to total up to five billion dollars.  They came a day after the Pentagon awarded two other Iraq reconstruction contracts worth up to 1.1 billion dollars to US and British firms. According to a government translation of the tape, recorded in Arabic, the speaker claimed to be the spokesman for Al Qaeda in Europe and said, "We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid exactly 2 years after the attacks on New York and Washington. It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals'' -- U.S. President George W. "Bush and his allies.''  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040314b.htm  * There is not much question but that AlQaeda is responsible for the attack even though those in power want to say it was the Basques.  The reality is that Spain's president who endorsed the invasion of Iraq when 90% of his country was against it, has caused these 2,000 casualties.  There would have been more casualties had another backpack full of explosives gone off.  I guess we can say that Bush's war on terrorism is increasing the level of terrorism in the world.  Terrorism will continue as long as the policy is to kill terrorist as opposed to determining what is causing the terrorism.  Like Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

IRAN - NUKES - The United Nations' nuclear watchdog voted Saturday to criticize Iran for concealing information and activities related to its nuclear program, prompting Tehran to bar U.N. inspectors from the country until further notice.  Iranian officials accused the United States of imposing the resolution on the International Atomic Energy Agency board in Vienna, Austria, and linked its decision to keep inspectors out to the board's resolution.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040314a.htm * I think it would be very foolish for George to invade Iran; or promote any similar acts. If the Shiites in Iran join with the Shiites in Iraq, there is going to be hell on earth as the Middle East erupts into a Sunni Shiite Israeli war.  All that is necessary for this scenario is for the Americans to re-elect Mr. George Dubya Bushit.

March 13, 2004

AMERICAN TORTURE - GUANTANAMO BAY - Truly we live in dark times. A sure sign that the nights are getting longer, even as springtime approaches, comes from the intensity of anxieties about torture. All the time there are reports of new atrocities - in Sudan, among British victims in Saudi Arabia, and of course in the war on terror. Later this month in Geneva, the World Organisation Against Torture will tell the UN Commission on Human Rights that "since the attacks of September 11, numerous states have adopted or announced measures that are incompatible with their obligations under international law". At the same time that we face new atrocities in Madrid, we hear the voices of the first Britons released from Guant?namo Bay where, according to former detainee Jamal al-Harith, they endured a regime of unremitting cruelty.  He describes systematic humiliation, clearly aimed at corroding the humanity of the victims, and which included exposing devout Muslims to insult by prostitutes.  Guant?namo Bay, outside normal legal constraints, holds over 600 detainees who are beyond the reach of judicial processes anywhere in the world.  A rgument continues about whether the US base in the British territory of Diego Garcia is also used for such interrogations. The British government denies this, but the allegations continue, echoed by numerous civil liberties groups.  In late 2002, the Washington Post revealed: "Deep in side the forbidden zone at the US-occupied Bagram airbase in Afghanistan ... sits a cluster of shipping containers protected by a triple-layer of concertina wire. The containers hold the most valuable prizes in the war on terrorism - captured al-Qaida operatives and Taliban commanders."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040313i.htm * America is as America does.  Basic constitutional rights inside America do not apply outside of America.  So America operates several dens of torture outside of the U S borders and everything is just fine and legal.  Timothy McVeigh got a far trial and his Constitutional rights.  Only because he was an American who committed his terrorism inside the U S border.

IRAQ - KURDS - All this has left Mr. Shari bitter. He fought for 14 years with the Kurdish peshmerga militia, for which he was jailed and lashed by Mr. Hussein's authorities; he said he was even dragged by an ankle behind a tank when he refused to sign a card changing his nationality to Arab from Kurd. In 1993, his two wives and three of his eight sons were killed in Iraqi shelling of the collective town.  He pointed to the hill on the horizon where once Qalodeh stood. "It's levelled to the ground now, but it has good springs, good water." Come summer, he hopes that he and two of his sons will start the work of rebuilding.  "If there is justice, we will get our land back. And if there is no justice, then this is just the same as Saddam's era."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040313h.htm  * The Kurds supported daddy George in 1991 and were betrayed by the old fox.  Then Saddam retaliated and Kurds were removed from their homes.  Now little George is in power and the displaced are probably not going to get their land back.  As the man said, what is the difference between little George and Saddam?

SPACE - HUBBLE TELESCOPE - Incredible Ultra Deep Field photos capturing a chaotic scramble of galaxies colliding and reforming have intensified a crusade to save the Hubble telescope.  In a few years, batteries and gyroscopes aboard the 14-year-old telescope are expected to fail. Before it tumbles out of orbit in about a decade, a robotic rocket is supposed to tug the Hubble to a blazing crash in the Pacific.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040313g.htm * I think that we have found that the amount of space exploration that comes from unmanned missions is well worth the money.  There has been nothing that has advanced our understanding of the universe more than the Hubble Telescope.  We need to save it.  

IRAQ - BODY BAGS - PRESIDENTAL POLITICS - Four Iraqis suspected of killing a pair of American officials and their translator appear to be police officers, raising concerns of guerrilla infiltration in Iraqi security forces, a top U.S. military official said Friday. Meanwhile, two American soldiers were killed in Tikrit by a roadside bomb.  The soldiers were the first casualties suffered by the Army's 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, which is taking over security in the Tikrit area as part of the military's massive troops rotation in Iraq.  Roadside bombs have become the main threat to U.S. soldiers on patrol in the Sunni Triangle, a region has seen some of the fiercest guerrilla fighting. Three U.S. soldiers were killed and three wounded Thursday by bombs near the towns of Habbaniyah and Baqouba.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040313f.htm * And the casualties continue to mount up.  The question is what will the body count be in November when the presidential elections take place?  John Kerry needs to violate Bush's ban on showing returning coffins in his television commercials.  Al Qaeda needs to stay away from acts of terrorism in the U S.  Another 911 could guarantee the sociopath another four years.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - ADS - Suddenly swamped by attacking Republicans, Democrat John F. Kerry [related, bio] launched a high-cost defense yesterday in ads that blame President Bush [related, bio] for a ``misleading, negative'' start to their campaign.  Kerry, who based his primary campaign around a feverish anti-Bush message, cried foul that the president's advertising brands the Bay State senator a tax-raiser who is weak on national defense.  ``Once again, George Bush is misleading America,'' say the Kerry ads, launched in 16 battleground states. ``Doesn't America deserve more from its president than misleading negative ads?''  Bush on Thursday unveiled his first formal ads since Kerry emerged from the primaries, spots that claim Kerry will raise taxes by more than $900 billion and would ``weaken'' laws needed to ``protect America.''  The Kerry ads say he has never called for $900 billion in tax hikes and that he wants to cut taxes for the middle class.  The Bush campaign admits the estimate, which in the ad suggests Kerry would boost spending by $900 billion in his first 100 days in office, is actually a 10-year estimate. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040313e.htm * The vast majority of the American public is ignorant.  This is why Bush gets away with his lies and the negative spinning of the truth.  The problem is that Bush has a lot more money to spend on the ignorant than does Kerry.  The hope is that money will not matter.  Maybe George will suffer the same fate as his ex-corrupt contributor - Tony Sanchez who ran for governor of Texas a few years ago.  Tony spent $64 million and only got 40% of the vote.  Let's hope that the $200 million George is going to spend does not do the trick.  And let us hope that political spending caps will be further reduced after George tries again to buy off the American ignorant.

THE PASSION OF CHRIST - The Passion Of The Christ is a pointless and sick film. It has been mired in controversy ever since devout Catholic Mel Gibson first announced that he was making a movie about Jesus Christ?s Crucifixion. At first the project seemed praiseworthy: unknown actors were to be cast (instead of buff starlets with impossibly perfect teeth), the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were to be consulted and the dialogue was to be rendered in Aramaic and Latin.  So far, so good.  But something went wrong. And instead of making a film that explains why Jesus was persecuted, or reinvigorates Christian faith, or even clarifies some aspects of Christianity to non-Christians, Gibson has made a snuff movie ? with the Son of God as the victim.  Much has been made of the flogging. And it is the most memorable image from the film. It goes on and on and on and on...  In fact, by the time we get to the really important and symbolic wounds that Jesus suffered ? the embedding of a crown of thorns in his skull, the hammering of nails through his hands and feet and the plunging of a sword into his side ? you?ve already seen so much blood and guts that they have no impact whatsoever.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040313d.htm  * I think that the Passion is going to make the average person wonder what it is that he or she does believe about Christ.  I think that people are going to see that much of the story of Jesus is myth.  I think people are going to become more aware that the gospels borrowed heavily from the myth of Sol Invictus and Mithras who also were born of a virgin, died on a cross, rose after three days.  Easter is the old pagan holiday of the Spring Equinox where the days continued to get longer until the Summer soltice in June.  The birth of these saviors takes place at the time of the pagan holiday associated with the Winter soltice when the days begin to get longer.  What do we really know about Jesus?  Not much outside the gospels.  We do know that his story is reflected all the way back to ancient Babylon and Egypt.  The Horus of Egypt story sure looks a lot like that of Jesus.  The Passion shows how myths are made.  No one who took that kind of beating was going to carry a cross anywhere.

IRAQ - THE WMD LIE REVISITED - With political and military setbacks steadily sinking public perception of the Bush administration's Iraq efforts, a marked increase in both slanted and outright erroneous official pronouncements has occurred. Taking advantage of media briefings, congressional testimony, and even the creation of both an Arabic television channel (al-Hurra) and a Pentagon news service (DVIDS), the administration of US President George W Bush has vastly escalated its long-employed efforts to "spin" its way to success. As Iraq civil administrator L Paul Bremer highlighted last week, the message is "triumph over the evildoers".  According to the US Senate's January 28 Congressional Record, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida charged that prior to the vote authorizing the Iraq war, "I, along with nearly every senator in this chamber, in that secure room of this Capitol complex, was not only told there were weapons of mass destruction - specifically chemical and biological - but I was looked straight in the face and told that Saddam Hussein had the means of delivering those biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction by unmanned drones called UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. I was looked at straight in the face and told that UAVs could be launched from ships off the Atlantic coast to attack eastern seaboard cities of the United States." Nelson added, "I am upset that the degree of specificity I was given a year and a half ago, prior to my vote, was not only inaccurate, it was patently false. I want some further explanations."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040313c.htm  * There is no question but that Bush is a liar.  He doesn't know what the truth is.  And his lying added to his war mongering makes him a very dangerous man.  As the most powerful man in the world, it makes him an enemy of peace and WorldPeace.

IRAQ - RELIGIOUS CIVIL WAR - Fears of a religious war between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities were palpable Friday as hundreds of worshippers, some of them armed, gathered at a Baghdad mosque to pay tribute to a slain cleric.  Dozens of guards, their faces wrapped in headscarves, and a US military team stood tense watch, as worshippers were searched at the entrance to the Findi al-Kubaiysi mosque, its wall scarred with bullet and shrapnel marks.  US officials say Imam Ali Hussein Hassan al-Obedi was gunned down on a nearby street Monday by four men in a brown BMW vehicle. No clear leads have emerged from the investigation so far.  But people who came Friday to the Sunni mosque to pay their respects in this predominantly Shiite quarter of Shorta al-Hamsi spoke of a campaign by foreigners to covertly ignite a civil war between the two communities.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040313b.htm  * It would seem that civil war between the Sunni and the Shiites is just waiting for the vacuum that will be created when Dubya leaves Iraq in a bid to win re-election.  Once the civil war starts, it will move into Iran and beyond.  And that means to Israel.  When the whole region ignites, Israel will not be spared.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - RUSSERT PULLS HIS PUNCHES - A number of critiques have been written about US President George W Bush's responses to Tim Russert's questions in the February 8 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, primarily regarding his shifting rationale for the invasion of Iraq. More problematic, however, was the fact that Bush made a number of assertions that were patently false or - at the very least - misleading. Russert's failure to challenge these statements and the ongoing repetition of such rationales by the administration and its supporters make it all the more imperative that such assertions not be allowed to go unquestioned. The implications of Bush's statements are quite disturbing, since they involve such fundamental issues as international terrorism, the United Nations, weapons of mass destruction, and the policy of preemption.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040313a.htm  * Tim, Tim, Tim.  You little sell out you.  The world is in trouble and you are pulling the Bushit wagon.

March 12, 2004

TERRORISM - SPAIN - Spain said Friday the death toll rose to 198 from a series of bombings on packed commuter trains Thursday, And that 1,430 people were wounded.  The previous death toll was given as 192 people with 1,421 hurt in the country's worst such attack.  The Spanish government said it believed armed Basque separatist group ETA was most likely to blame for the simultaneous bombings of four trains at Madrid stations.  However officials are also looking into possible Muslim militant involvement, after a claim purporting to come from a group aligned with al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks. * The attack came on 311 just thirty months after 911.  There is no doubt that Spain's backing the Bush invasion of Iraq caused this.  But what is more, it would seem that there is a warning that something like this is coming to the United States.  The problem is that a 911 attack on America before the November presidential elections are going to boost Warmonger Bush's votes.  The worst case for the world would be an attack on America before the elections that allowed Dubya to be president for four more years.

HEALTH - WAR ON FAT - FOR THE PHOTO-OP on Tuesday, the United States became a fat farm. "We're just too darned fat, ladies and gentlemen, and we're going to do something about it," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said.  As we know, photo-ops are shows laden with the political equivalent of hydrogenated fats, meant to disguise the fact that there is no meat on the bones. Even as Thompson spoke, the pharaohs were on Capitol Hill, sitting in glee as the House voted, 276-139, to ban lawsuits against trash-food companies. The bill's sponsor, Republican Ric Keller of Florida, said, "The food industry is under attack and in the cross hairs of the same trial lawyers who went after big tobacco."   Unsaid was that Keller and his fellow Republicans were in the cross hairs of the food industry. Among Keller's current top five political contributors are the corporation that runs the Olive Garden and Red Lobster chains, Outback Steakhouse , and Disney (and we all know how healthy the food is at Disney World).  From 1995 to 2002, according to Common Cause, food and grocery companies and restaurants gave more than $19.3 million in soft money to Republican causes compared with $5.5 million for Democrats.  Thompson is right. The nation is too darned fat. Thompson's political allies are also too fat in the wallet from the companies making us fat. Until that changes, his decrees is just a hydrogenated photo op. All fat. No meat. And definitely no fruit or vegetables.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040312a.htm * Americans are getting fatter and fatter and fatter.  The health problems associated with obesity are increasing even as 40 million Americans have no health insurance, thank you George Bush.  And just like tobacco, fast foods are killing us in the name of corporate profits for the fast food industry.  As they say, follow the money.

ISRAEL - ZIONISM - The Sharon government is widely regarded, even by Israel's friends, as a negative force in the current politics of the Middle East. Its brutal repression of the Palestinians, its intransigence over engaging in the peace process and its defiance of world opinion on such matters as settlement expansion and the separation wall has alarmed everyone concerned with this issue. Seldom before has Israel provoked such criticism from friend and foe alike, and there is a feeling that a different Israeli leadership, drawn perhaps from the Labour party and the Zionist left, would restore the previous status quo. Such a new leadership could be expected to re-start the peace process and offer the Palestinians something more satisfactory and all this would lead to peace and stability. This widely held view ignores the real problem.  As a Zionist, Ariel Sharon is as faithful and committed a servant as the Jewish state could ever have hoped for. He has merely followed the tenets of Zionism to their logical conclusion. It is not he who should be castigated but the ideology he and the state of Israel espouses. For those who have forgotten or never understood what Zionism was all about, a spate of recently published pieces will make salutary reading.  At this point, Benny Morris's revelations are like a slap in the face. He reminds us that Israel was set up by expulsion, rape and massacre. His recent researches, cited in the new edition of his book, The Birth of the Palestine refugee problem revisited, provide the authentic evidence. The Jewish state could not have come into being without ethnic cleansing and, he asserts, more may be necessary in the future to ensure its survival. Force was always essential to the imposition and maintenance of Israel, he explains; native hostility to the project was inevitable from the start and it had to be countered by overwhelming strength. The Palestinians will always pose a threat and they must therefore be controlled and "caged in."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040312b.htm  * The true terrorist in the Middle East are Zionists.  They committed every possible atrocity in the name of Zionism and continue to this day to discount the lives of Palestinians.  Now that the U S controls Iraq, they do not need to subordinate themselves to the Zionist.  Yet money talks and there is no group of lobbyist more powerful than the Zionists in Washington.  To say the Jews have power far greater than their numbers is an understatement.  But that power is based in the single minded purpose of preserving Israel and spinning their Palestinian holocaust as little more than exterminating cockroaches.  The Arabs are vilified as Arabs and as Muslims.  Israel is the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East and the number one cause of world wide terrorism.  Until there is justice in the Middle East for the Palestinians, there will be no peace or WorldPeace. 

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS - THE LIES OF GEORGE BUSH - Besides the question of taste, one particularly important issue regarding the Bush campaign's use of imagery from the 9-11 tragedy is the Bush administration's pattern of breaking promises.  For example, the Bush campaign promised they would not use the tragedy of 9-11 for political gain after catching sharp criticisms for raising funds by selling copies of a photograph of President Bush taken just hours after the infamous terrorists' attacks. They unrepentantly reneged, but that is only one small sample of Bush's pattern.  During his 2000 campaign, candidate Bush repeatedly expressed revulsion against racial profiling.  During his administration, Bush has practiced gross racial and religious profiling to the tune of thousands of individuals detained for the crime of being Muslim or Arab. Bush said, "I don't want to federalize the local police forces."  Now we have the department of Homeland Security.  Bush voiced strong opposition to U.S. involvement in nation-building.  Then there is Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti.  Bush promised reforms to the American healthcare system, but his rule in Washington has produced over 40 million uninsured Americans.  Bush's tax cuts are not helping the economy, and the breadcrumbs he threw to millions of taxpayers have created economic indigestion in the forms of higher energy bills, higher tuition and increasing healthcare costs.  Bush boasts about passing the No Child Left Behind Act and promised this legislation would bring forth fruits of educational progress. In reality, funding for this initiative has been left behind by his administration and the promised fruits have yet to show any signs of ripening.  Candidate Bush promised to reduce the national debt. As president, Bush has brought the national debt to its highest point in history.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040312c.htm  * Bush promises many things and fails to deliver in most cases. In fact, with the exception of big business, anyone to whom Bush promises anything will eventually receive the opposite and feel burned by this hideous process.  Soon, it will be time to thank Bush for his consistent pattern of performance.

March 11, 2004

ECONOMICS - WORLD - U S TRADE DEFICIT - PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS - The U.S. trade deficit widened to a record $43.1 billion in January, indicating that the trade gap will remain high during the presidential campaign.  The report provided political fodder for Democrats looking for opportunities to criticize the administration's trade policies and job record. Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), noting that the trade gap in 2003 was a record $489.4 billion, said in a written statement: "We're starting this year right where we ended last year, with a growing trade deficit that adds to American workers' anxiety."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040311d.htm * The economic policies of George Bush are the politics of incredible stupidity: cut taxes, spend money on war, reduce social security, increase the foreign exchange deficit.  Like Daddy, like sonny.  It is going to take a decade to pull out of the financial bind that little George has created.

ECONOMICS - SOCIAL SECURITY - PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS - If you look at a new document on the Treasury Department Web site called the "2003 Financial Report of the U.S. Government," you'll see that this country's indebtedness grew by $3.7 trillion over just the past year.  Nearly $2 trillion of that amount of new indebtedness is because of money we will owe in the future when today's taxpayers start collecting Social Security and Medicare. In all, the country is $34.8 trillion in debt.  But stay with me and you'll understand why Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan - seemingly out of the blue - suddenly started talking about cutting government Social Security benefits.  Washington has already admitted to a troubling deficit of $374.8 billion in its fiscal year that ended last September.  But the government says that if it kept its books like a company does - called the accrual method of accounting - the 2003 deficit would have been a staggering $665 billion (Page 6 of report) PoliticalCommentary2004/e040311c.htm * The economic policies of George Bush are significantly harming the average citizen.  But unfortunately, the average citizen can hardly spell economics and has no concept of the economic pain that is coming to each of those Americans who foolishly voted for the tax cuts offered by Bush.  And the problem continues with Bush's lack of emphasis on education. Why would he want to create discerning citizens?  

MUSIC - WORLDPEACE - George Michael has revealed plans for his future, saying he plans to leave the traditional confines of the music industry and release new material for free online instead.  The singer says his new album 'Patience' will be the last release to be made commercially available in record shops, because he simply does not feel the need to continue making a living from new recordings - and wants freedom from the pressure of promoting new releases:  "I've been very well remunerated for my talents over the years so I really don't need the public's money."  Speaking live on BBC Radio 1, the 40-year-old said: "I'm sure it's unprecedented, it's definitely unprecedented for someone who still sells records.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040311a.htm * Well this is going to be an interesting experiment.  Consider a master musician giving away his music.  This must strike fear in every knowledgeable capitalist.  If the real masters in music and entertainment and the other arts begin to distribute their work for free, the economy is going to suffer and what is more, people are going to see that there is life without materialism.  George Michael is a very dangerous man.  And if you consider that what money is made from his internet endeavors will go to charity, you have a recipe for peace and WorldPeace and spirituality eclipsing religion.

March 10, 2004

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS - BUSH MUST GO - Shortly before Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schr?der, flew to Washington for talks with George Bush last month, a journalist asked if he was going to say goodbye to the president ahead of the US elections in November. Mr Schr?der's adviser grinned broadly before composing his face into a frown. "I won't speculate on that," he said.  Although Mr Schr?der deliberately avoided the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, during his two-day trip to the US, there is little doubt that a Kerry victory would provoke rejoicing inside Germany's government, as it would in many other parts of Europe, as well as Asia, Africa and Latin America.  This week Mr Kerry claimed that foreign leaders had told him they could not publicly offer him their support but added: "You've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy."  Hostility towards a second Bush term is generally assumed to be widespread throughout the world because of the Iraq war, the concept of pre-emptive strikes and bullying of small countries. On issues from the Kyoto agreement and the international criminal court to antipathy towards the UN, President Bush has alienated countries Washington would normally classify as allies.  Distress over Mr Bush's foreign policy is not confined to the world beyond the US. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll yesterday, 57% of Americans want their next president to steer the country away from the course set by the current leader.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040310f.htm * You can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time.  The world is waking up to the fact that George Bush is a sociopath.  And more importantly they are speaking out.  He is a man who is selling out the world to his corporate friends.  He has no vision.  He does not understand economics.  And he has contempt for every non-white, non Christian in the world, bar none.  Not to mention the poor and those with AIDS.  And then there is his vice president: DICK Cheney.

HAITI - BUSH'S ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY - With violence still simmering and U.S. Marines reporting their second kill, the man picked on Tuesday to be Haiti's new prime minister urged a broader role for American forces in bringing peace to his nation.  Latortue, once a Haitian foreign minister and a former UN official was chosen prime minister by a U.S.-backed advisory council of seven "wise men."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040310e.htm * Well so much for establishing democracy in the world. I guess we know what will happen in Iraq if the government does not elect the president that Bush wants.  All I can say is that Bush now has his n----- running Haiti and we now have a real good view of what Bush democracy looks like.

FREEMASONS UNDER ATTACK - An attack on Istanbul freemasons has stirred memories of November bombings attributed to al-Qaeda, but analysts say it bares the hallmarks of a small "domestic" group rather than any foreign-backed network.  Suicide bombers struck at a Masonic building in the Asian part of Turkey's biggest city late on Tuesday. One killed himself and a restaurant waiter, the other failed to set off his explosives and was taken to hospital with five other wounded.  Freemasonry has long claimed followers in Muslim but secular Turkey among businessmen, academics and politicians, especially in Istanbul, a cosmopolitan city of more than 10 million people. In some other Islamic countries they have been targets of hostility because of Christian links.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040310d.htm * America was founded by Freemans.  Almost all the founding fathers were masons.  You have to wonder what is going on with masonry in the rest of the world that has made them a target.  In the United States the Shriner Hospitals reach out to sick children whose parents have no money and give them health care they could not otherwise afford.  Every Shriner is a mason.  So what are these men (no women allowed) doing to cause some group to bomb them?

ZIONISTS - WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR? - That the Israeli army has been indicted by every major human rights group as guilty of war crimes is apparently not relevant; as one US commander said, ?those who have to deal with like problems tend to share information as best they can.?  None of this is surprising considering the prevalence of pro-Israeli hawks in the highest echelons of the US foreign policy elite. The neoconservatives, some of whom were quoted earlier, are all in broad sympathy with Israel?s far-right and operate at the highest levels of American power. Once Bush came into office prominent neoconservatives were appointed to powerful positions: to name a few, Paul Wolfowitz as Defense Secretary, Douglas Feith as Department of Defense Undersecretary, and Richard Perle as chair of the Defense Policy Board. Feith and Perle both advised Israeli rightist PM Benjamin Netanyahu to destroy the Oslo accords, and serve on the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, a pro-Israel think tank in Washington. All are strongly linked to the AEI and advocated the war against Iraq.  One thing can now be agreed upon: Israel does indeed represent Western civilization ? in its ugliest, most ruthless and brutal form, a fact which is now beginning to haunt Israel itself. It is faced with two problems built into its foundations: a serious demographic threat (Palestinian population growth is booming both inside and outside of Israel, threatening the ?purity? of the Jewish state), which is why some top officials are calling for unilateral withdrawal from the territories; and retaliation by weaponized desperation ? ?when [Palestinians] come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism? because ?their own lives are torture,? to borrow Avraham Burg?s words again.  As Israel sways between moral and material disintegration, we must ask ourselves: will we let our own country continue to hang itself from this pendulum of colonial brutality? Has our capacity for hate, our thirst for revenge, grown so large that we, too, are willing to follow the same path on an even more destructive scale - ?for the prestige of the matter,? no less? How far will we go to preserve the ego and arrogance of Western self-adoration, to maintain and reassert the great lie of benevolence that has been building to the point of implosion for five hundred years? Will we continue waging an anti-civilizational war, debasing and endangering ourselves in a crusade to destroy the weak and impoverished so as to hide our own sins, of which their very condition is evidence?  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040310c.htm * Yes Israel is America's outpost in the Muslim Middle East.  And if you make even the most cursory comparison, Ariel Sharon sure looks like Adolph Hitler when you look at Hitler's abuse of the Jews and the Jews abuse of the Palestinians whose land they stole.  I don't want to hear another word about the Jewish holocaust.  The Jews learned nothing from Hitler's cruelty except how to apply it to the Palestinians.

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS -  CIA AND IRAQ - Tenet also rejected Cheney's statements that the administration had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program.  Tenet's comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee were expected to fuel friction between the White House and intelligence agencies over the failure to find any of the banned weapons stockpiles that President Bush, in justifying his case for war, charged Saddam Hussein with concealing.  Tenet at first appeared to defend the administration, saying that he did not think the White House misrepresented intelligence provided by the CIA. The administration's statements, he said, reflected a prewar intelligence consensus that Hussein had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear bombs.  But under sharp questioning by Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, Tenet reversed himself, saying there had been instances when he had warned administration officials that they were misstating the threat posed by Iraq.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040310b.htm * DICK Cheney is a dangerous man.  You can look at the man and know he is full of deceit.  Slowly but surely the lies of DICK and George are coming out into the open.  Let us just hope that Bush's $150 million campaign chest is not big enough to sell his Bushit to the average American citizen.  

ISRAEL - GAZA - Just a few months ago Zakia Abu Alouf's flat, built with her life's savings from teaching in Saudi Arabia, stood in the middle of her street. The end of the row was marked by the towering metal wall the Israeli army built where the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza runs up against the Egyptian border. Between the Israeli gunposts and Mrs Abu Alouf's finely decorated home stood about a dozen houses and low-rise apartment blocks with tobacco stores and workshops.  But that was until the Israeli army turned its attention to the area of Rafah known as Block J.  Nearly 2,000 people were driven from their homes, according to the UN. Many were forced into tents just as their parents and grandparents had been when they first fled to Rafah during the brutal upheaval of Israel's birth 56 years ago.  There was a murmur of criticism from the west at the scale of the destruction, but it evaporated amid Israeli insistence that it was part of the "war on terrorism" and because Rafah, isolated on the southern tip of the Gaza strip, was far beyond the world's gaze. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040310a.htm * The question is how many good Palestinians are becoming terrorists because of the acts of the Zionists?  The policies of Dubya Bush and Adolph Sharon are directed toward killing the alleged terrorist and not toward the root cause of terrorism.  To the Jews, the Palestinians are pigs; a role that Jews occupied in Hitler's Europe.     

March 9, 2004

WHALES - David Attenborough says there is no humane way to kill a whale at sea and questions whether whaling should "still be tolerated by a civilized society" in a report today by scientists and major conservation organizations.  The report shows that instantaneous death cannot be guaranteed and although the average time from being hit by an explosive harpoon to death is two minutes, many whales live much longer. Some are wounded and face an unknown fate.  In his foreword Sir David says: "Whales are highly evolved animals with all the sensitivities that that statement implies. They have a complex social life. They call to one another across the vast expanses of oceans.  "They are the largest animals that have ever existed, far larger than any dinosaur. There is nothing in the body of a whale, which is of use to us, for which we cannot find equivalents elsewhere." He says the report contains "hard scientific dispassionate evidence that there is no humane way to kill a whale at sea."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040309d.htm   *  It is really interesting that we continue to kill these animals.  The only value they have is food value.  It would be as hard for me to eat a whale as it would be for me to eat a monkey or an ape.  No one can justify killing these animals much less in an inhumane way.

WOMEN - Muslim countries are beginning to awaken the creative force of their woman power, said Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan.  Benazir said this at a ceremony yesterday at Dubai Women's College (DWC) in conjunction with the United Nations International Women's Day. She said: "This is becoming possible with the emphasis on education, health facilities for women and work opportunities."  
She stressed the important role education plays in a woman's life. "Education is the first step to success, independence and to a satisfying life where the full creative and intellectual powers of a person are used."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040309c.htm *  Until the world acknowledges that women are equally valuable to a world society as men, there will never be WorldPeace.  Women are second class citizens all over the world.  Hopefully through the exchange of ideas that the Internet provides, the movement of the world society to first class citizenship for women will accelerate.

IRAQ - WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION - If there was one man who could have stopped the war in Iraq last year, it probably was not Hans Blix.  He faced a mission almost impossible. He was looking for something which did not exist.  When he duly found nothing, the Americans and British would not accept that absence of evidence meant evidence of absence.  And he was dealing with an Iraqi leader who did not understand that the only thing which could save him was total co-operation.  He says of Mr Bush and Blair that it was "probable that the governments were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had."  And he reckons that among the costs were "the damaged credibility of the governments pursuing it and... the diminished authority of the United Nations".  A meeting he and Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN's nuclear agency the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had with US Vice President Dick Cheney in October 2002 is particularly illuminating.  "He stated the position that inspections - if they do not give results - cannot go on forever and said that the US was 'ready to discredit inspections in favour of disarmament'".   PoliticalCommentary2004/e040309b.htm  *  There is no question but that Bush and Blair were determined to go to war and I will always believe it was for the oil.  But what is more interesting is how Saddam could fool the whole world into thinking he had all these weapons of mass destruction.  With all the technology for spying from space, how is it really possible that anyone had any real proof that Saddam had anything resembling weapons of mass destruction.  Hopefully, some good will come of Bush's insanity.  Maybe the drive to invade another sovereign nation without provocation will be significantly slowed in the future. 

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS - John Kerry dropped an early bombshell into the US election campaign yesterday by claiming some foreign leaders have already told him they want him to beat President George Bush in November.  True, a much-noted global survey by the Pew Research Center last summer found countries in Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Islamic world dislike Mr Bush - and it was their main reason for unfavourable views of the US.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040309a.htm * George Bush, because he is the most powerful head of state in the world and because he has Tony Blair in his pocket, is the greatest threat not only to WorldPeace but also to the world economic security.  Another four years of Bush will see Israel continuing to carve away at the West Bank, destroy the Dome of the Rock to make room for Solomon's Temple, debt that the U S will not be able to pay off for two generations, depression, a weakened United Nations and further hatred toward America from the rest of the world not to mention a continuing degradation of the environment and deforestation of all the national forests.

March 8, 2004

IRAQ - DEMOCRACY - Iraq's leaders signed an interim constitution on Monday and agreed to embark on a common path toward democratic rule, but the celebratory mood was dampened by calls from the country's most powerful Shiite leaders to amend the new charter before it goes into force.  The signing ceremony for the interim constitution, delayed once because of terrorist attacks and again because of a political deadlock, unfolded without a hitch inside the fortified confines of the American compound. Each of the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council signed it or had a representative do so.  The document, with its bill of rights and guarantees for women, was hailed by Iraqi and American leaders as a milestone in the project to implant a democracy here less than a year after Saddam Hussein was swept away.  But immediately after the ceremony ended, Shiite leaders, representing the country's largest group, brought forth sharp reservations that called into question the viability of the accord.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040308f.htm  *  Maybe democracy will emerge in Iraq.  Maybe the Iraqis will feel that democracy is better than what they suffered under Saddam.  It all amounts to laying down the weapons of war.  It means subordinating selfish needs to democracy and justice.  It means WorldPeace through world law.  It means that the time has come for the killing and murdering and maiming in the name of God or for almost any cause be a last as opposed to a first resort.  

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - Presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry leads President Bush in the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, although the race appears to be fluid and remains close.  The poll, released Monday, found that among likely voters, Kerry was the choice of 52 percent and Bush 44 percent in a two-way matchup, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.  In a three-way race with Independent candidate Ralph Nader, Kerry had 50 percent, Bush 44 percent and Nader 2 percent.  Among registered voters, Kerry's lead over Bush narrowed from 8 percentage points to 5 points in a two-way race and from 6 points to 2 points in a three-way race.  That is because Democratic voters are indicating they are more likely to vote than the overall electorate -- something that has rarely happened in past elections and may be fueled by the interest in the recent Democratic primaries.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040308e.htm  * We all know that Bush came in second in the popular vote in the last election.  We have to hope that with the largest deficit since Herbert Hoover and the first four year reduction in the job market since Hoover and the lies about weapons of mass destruction, the people are more than ready to throw the bum out.  

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - HAITI - BUSH'S ANTI-DEMOCRATIC COUP - As a candidate in 2000, George W. Bush flatly stated his top priority for Latin America: "The first goal in our hemisphere is democracy."  But the questions of what constitutes a democracy and how far the United States will go to defend it have become murkier since a U.S. plane flew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti and into exile.  Aristide's Haiti was no poster child for democracy. There was little respect for free speech or tolerance of political opponents. The country's 2000 legislative elections were flawed. Aristide's own victory in a presidential election that year was tainted by an opposition boycott, low turnout and charges of intimidation.  Yet, the world recognized Aristide as Haiti's legitimate leader. And the days were supposed to be long-gone when democratically elected Latin American leaders were forced from office under the threat of violence.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040308d.htm  *  Bush could care less about democracy or justice or the environment or anything that does not smell of corporate money and power.  Bush will say anything and do anything to feed his egomania and hide from the fact that he is a dangerous sociopath.  For Bush, a corrupt leader elected democratically is no different from a dictator like Saddam.  Bush has no understanding of precedents.  He has no understanding of the need to give more than lip service to democracy.  Bush is a rogue who is the greatest threat to WorldPeace the world has ever known.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - BLIX SPEAKS - George W Bush and Tony Blair probably knew they were exaggerating the threat from Iraq when they were making the case for war, according to former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix.  The US president and the British prime minister ignored the few caveats in reports from intelligence services on Iraq's nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programmes, he writes in his account of the months leading up to the US-led invasion.  Blix says it was "probable that the governments were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had".  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040308c.htm  * The truth is that Bush wanted to play cowboy and to show that he was the strongest bully in the world. He used 911 to invade Iraq; no weapons of mass destruction and no Osama Saddam connection.  It was all a lie foisted on the world society by a dangerous sociopath sitting in the most powerful position in the world.  There was no satellite evidence of weapons of mass destruction.  Blix found none on the ground.  But Bush invaded anyway.  And if you add this to the fact that Bush pushed Aristide out of Haiti you have a man who is undeniably anti democratic and a threat to WorldPeace.

GENETICS - STEM CELLS - RELIGION BENJAMIN FRANKLIN and Thomas Jefferson both dabbled in science as well as politics. Nowadays, American scientists and American politicians more often find themselves separated by a gulf of mutual ignorance and distrust. A rare institution that has tried to overcome that gulf is the President's Council on Bioethics. The council is unusual both because its membership includes "right-to-lifers" as well as some of the country's best-known scientists, and because its nuanced, painstaking public reports have tried to accommodate the views of all, albeit not always to everyone's satisfaction.  Last week, some of that collegiality seemed to break down. Elizabeth Blackburn, a council member who was abruptly dismissed, accused the Bush administration of trying to reshape the council to suit its views, and thus "hold science hostage to ideology."   As if to underline that point, one of those lines, drawn earlier in the course of this administration, began to look fainter last week. On Wednesday, some Harvard scientists announced that they had created 17 new colonies of human embryonic stem cells, more than doubling the world's supply. The colonies, they said, were created without federal research funding, which -- after President Bush declared a moratorium on federal support for stem cell creation in August 2001 -- was restricted to the 78 cell lines then in existence. The president's decision was taken on the grounds that the creation of stem cell lines requires the destruction of five-day-old human embryos. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040308b.htm  Whatever science can discover takes away from the realm of religious taboos.  Religious bureaucracies fear science which sweeps away much of the superstition that exists in the world and which is used by religious bureaucrats to control society in the name of God.  We have to remember that the Christian bureaucrats are responsible for the Dark Ages in Europe.  The human body is a genetic machine and anything tangible produced by it should be open to scientific investigation.  I do not advocate the reckless killing of viable embryos but abortion goes on all around the world and it is stupid to deny American scientist access to these aborted embryos.  Stem cell research promises to rapidly and vastly improve the overall physical health of the human society.  Have no doubt that each living thing is possessed of an infinite immortal soul which is connected with God.  Science is nowhere near the ability to manipulate this spiritual essence.  Therefore, without fear and with caution we should continue stem cell research and reject the brain dead policies of a sociopathic president and as well as the mind enslaving dictates of religious bureaucrats.  We need to go forward with stem cell research and deal with the abuses as they materialize if they ever do.

AIDS - Except for the days immediately after infection, people fighting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) don't suffer the roller coaster of fevers or aches typical of many infections. The debilitating symptoms of AIDS occur mostly at the end, years after the virus has taken up residence in billions of cells.  AIDS virologists know, however, that appearances deceive. The body's fight against HIV is steady and fierce. Rough estimates are that hundreds of millions of cells called lymphocytes -- the immune system's foot soldiers -- die in the struggle and are replaced each day.  The body mounts two broad forms of attack. Antibodies produced by the immune system kill individual virus particles, called virions, before they can infect cells. At the same time, killer lymphocytes hunt down and destroy their unfortunate brethren already infected with HIV in order to prevent the virus from making more virions inside them.   Both of those modes of attack take place outside cells in the vast battlefields of bloodstream and lymph nodes. But it turns out they're not the only places where the fight is underway.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040308a.htm  * Thanks to medical science, AIDS research is moving ahead.  The problem is the vast numbers of human beings being infected everyday because of patents on life saving medicines which make the costs prohibitive to most of the world poor.

March 7, 2004

WOMEN - POST-CONFLICT POLITICS - As the world prepares to mark International Women's Day, the United Nations is warning that women continue to play little or no role in post-conflict peace building - be that in Afghanistan , Iraq, Northern Ireland, Liberia or Sierra Leone.  Their absence - and the exclusion from discussions of their concerns and needs - can spell the long-term failure of peace agreements, according to the world body and other experts.  "A review of peace agreements indicates that issues related to gender equality and positions of women within the post-conflict society are typically excluded from peace agreements," says UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.  In a 20-page study to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Annan says that while attention to gender equality is the responsibility of all sides involved, the absence of women from peace tables results in insufficient attention to and reflection of their concerns in eventual agreements. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040307f.htm  * Without women's equality, without an equal status for women in the world society, with a continued subordination of women in the world society and without first class citizenship for women there will be no WorldPeace.

HUMAN RIGHTS - Economic, social and cultural rights are the pariahs of international human rights legislation and will continue to be relegated to the second order, mostly due to US obstructionism, say activists.  The Washington delegation on Friday blocked a proposed agreement to grant economic, social and cultural rights the same status as civil and political rights.  A working group created by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights ended two weeks of sessions without achieving consensus on drafting an optional protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040307g.htm  * The reason that the United States objects to human rights is because its endorsement on a world wide scale would severely limit the legal ability of the United States to exploit the poor all over the world; exploit their natural resources for the most part.  Israel and the United States are both intransigent in their refusal to promote human rights worldwide.  This is somewhat of a paradox because nowhere in the world are large populations more aware internally of human rights than in the United States.  If the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution were required to be applied to American Foreign policy, then the United States would be severely limited in its stomping around the world like a six foot bully in a school yard.  If the Bill of Rights were applied worldwide, terrorism would be almost non existent.  If I am a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.

SPACE - WATER - But where did the water come from? And why does Mars have no liquid water now, while Earth apparently has been covered with the stuff for 4 billion years?  Initially, there were more planets in our solar system than the nine we recognize today, perhaps twice as many. Earth suffered an especially brutal encounter with one of them 4.52 billion years ago, when a wayward body the size of Mars smashed into it. Our planet was almost split in two. Molten rock was splashed out into space and later condensed in orbit to form the moon.  The impact blasted the Earth's atmosphere into space, boiled off any water and turned our planet's surface into a sea of molten rock. Venus, Mercury and Mars, the other approximately Earth-sized planets, likely suffered similar collisions around the same time, though no large moons remain orbiting those worlds. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040307e.htm * All this sounds very familiar.  Earth being struck by another body is discussed in detail in the books by Zechariah Sitchin; the Twelfth Planet and Genesis Revisited.  His books allegedly were a translation of ancient Sumerian texts.  These texts talk about the interplanetary collisions and say that there is a twelfth planet it the solar system whose orbit is more like a comet than a planet.  Those books also says that civilization started in Africa.  Science now says that humanity evolved out of Africa.  The books came out before science traced human origins to Eve in Africa.

March 6, 2004

SPACE - MARS ROVERS - RELIGION - While the RAT has proven invaluable to scientists, it may be part of a baffling turn of events on Mars.  Smack dab in one Microscopic Imager picture relayed from the now known to be water-soaked Opportunity site is an odd, Rotini pasta-shaped object. When first seen by rover scientists, it caused a bit of a stir given its mini-fossil-like looks.  It still remains unidentified. But there may be a non-extraterrestrial explanation as to the nature of this eye-catching feature.  "Our first assessment was that we did not recall any previous RAT test that revealed a similar structure," said Gorevan. "But we are far from concluding that the RAT could not have been responsible for this feature. As it is impossible to prove a negative we will always come up short on certainty."  In this case, further analysis of the RAT telemetry and the Microscopic Imager revealed that the RAT had indeed produced the horizontal structure in that spherule, Gorevan concluded.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040306c.htm *  Well I think that we can all take it for certain that if there was a fossil found, it would be discounted.  To find fossils on Mars would be to rewrite religious myths and the whole of society would shift toward a new religious paradigm of the universe and God.  You mean we are not the only planet in the universe where God seeded life?

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS 2004 - 911 ABUSE - President Bush, facing criticism for using stark footage from the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in his campaign commercials, will visit a memorial to the victims next week, the White House announced Friday.  Bush plans to travel Thursday to East Meadow, N.Y., for the groundbreaking ceremony of the Nassau County 9/11 Memorial. Afterward he is to speak at a campaign fundraiser in the same town.  Firefighters unions and some relatives of the attacks' victims have complained at news conferences and in television interviews that they felt it was exploitative for the Bush-Cheney campaign to air commercials that show fleeting shots of a destroyed World Trade Center tower and firefighters carrying a flag-draped coffin through the rubble.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040306d.htm  * Hey folks the Bushman has no shame.  We lost over three thousand Americans on 911 but the reality is that we have killed about 100,000 in revenge and the body count keeps on going up.  The real joke is that Bush has increased the incidents of terrorism.  Especially will all the new money that is going to the terrorist from the poppy crops in Afghanistan.  Thanks George.

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS 2004 - BUSH THE NEW HOOVER - Another month of unexpectedly dismal job creation across the United States has sent shockwaves rippling out from Main Street to Wall Street and the White House.  U.S. employers added just 21,000 jobs to a work force of nearly 140 million in February -- well below the most pessimistic forecasts. The jobless rate was unchanged at 5.6 per cent, as more Americans abandoned their quest for work.  The economy's persistent failure to generate jobs is also becoming a big headache for U.S. President George W. Bush, who is struggling to convince Americans they should re-elect him in November, even though 2.3 million jobs have vanished on his watch. Barring a stunning jobs comeback, he will become the first U.S. President since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression to preside over a net loss of jobs during a four-year term.  "Beneath the headlines, the picture is even bleaker," economist Kathy Bostjancik of Merrill Lynch in New York told clients in a report.  Manufacturers shed 3,000 jobs, extending to 43 consecutive months that the sector has lost jobs. Construction employment fell by 24,000. Without modest gains in temporary and government jobs, the economy would have actually shed jobs in February.  "You go through all the major job categories and there just isn't any job growth anywhere," lamented Joseph LaVorgna, chief fixed-income economist at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040306e.htm  * And then there is the fact that we are going to have the biggest budget deficit since Hoover.  But not to worry the public has a low mentality and the Bushman has lots of cash to present himself as an intelligent caring Christian man.  Four more years of Bush and the world will be in a depression.  You can't cut taxes and increase spending, open the doors to illegal Mexican immigration and send manufacturing jobs overseas and then cut Social Security like Greenspan is advocating and keep the economy healthy.  Is anyone listening?

IRAQ - BUSH/BLAIR AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER - Tony Blair confronted his critics over the war on Iraq yesterday with a warning that he was prepared to launch similar pre-emptive strikes against rogue states and terrorists that threatened Britain and the world.  Revealing a new British doctrine that echoes the "total war" of President George Bush, the Prime Minister said he would never put the country at risk by not acting, even if that meant operating outside the UN.  Mr Blair called for reform of international law to allow states to intervene against brutal dictatorships and vowed to "wage war relentlessly" against those who sought to exploit religious hatreds to attack the West.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040306f.htm * Hey if anyone is listening, the team of Blair and Bush are imperialist fascists of the first order.  Furher Bush is on his way to conquering the world along with his little Mussolini played by Tony "Macaroni" Blair.  The world would be a safer and more peaceful place if Daddy Bush had signed up for a vasectomy.

ISRAEL - CORRUPTION: SHARON STYLE - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's popularity is fading fast, eroded by a series of scandals, a survey says.  For the first time since he took power in February 2001, a majority of Israelis believe the Prime Minister should resign, a survey by the newspaper Yediot Aharonot found.  To the question "considering the affairs in which the prime minister and his family are involved, should he resign?", 53 per cent replied "yes," 43 per cent "no" and the remainder did not express an opinion.  The daily Maariv claimed that Mr Sharon had a close business relationship with the father-in-law of a kidnapped reservist colonel, Elhanan Tannenbaum, who was freed in January as part of the Hezbollah swap deal.  The press reports raised a furore because Mr Sharon had not revealed his relations with the Tannenbaum family during a cabinet meeting last year in which the ministers agreed to the exchange by a single-vote majority. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040306h.htm * It is hard to look at Sharon and not see a glutton.  Money is his God.  Corruption is his character; Hitler, his big brother.  Hey, if Dubya Bush can lie about weapons of mass destruction, why not Sharon and Blair.  Can you believe that Bush is the premier world leader?  Can you really accept what Dubya stands for?  God help us.

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS - VERMONT - If Vermont is any indicator of national trends, however, (and the surprisingly influential campaign of Howard Dean would suggest that it is), then the recent voting may suggest a fatal flaw in this strategy, for while all eyes were focused on the Democratic result, a distinct pattern emerged on the Republican side that may loom large in the coming general election. Vermont Republicans, the numbers suggest, are not as solidly behind the president as some might have thought.  Out of a total 1,885 Republican votes cast in Brattleboro and outlying towns (representing less than a third of the total Democratic vote) a statistically significant 30 votes were write-ins for candidates other than Bush. The bulk of these were cast for John Kerry, with others for Howard Dean, John Edwards, and one each for Ralph Nader and Martha Stewart.  During the past four years the Bush tax cuts have been more than offset by a general shutdown of government funding for state and social programs, while at the same time the size of the government bureaucracy has been expanded at a record-setting rate.  Add to this the fact that a $500 billion surplus has been turned into an equally prodigious deficit, with financial and foreign-policy obligations surrounding the Iraq war stretching as far as the eye can see, and there is very little for traditional conservatives to warm up to here.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040306a.htm * Well lets hope that the Bushites keep up the bad work to such an extent that Americans will see that Dubya is really Alfred E. Newman in the White House.  Except that no one is laughing.  Hey, I am not as afraid Osama as I am afraid of Bush.

RELIGION - PEDIPHILE CATHOLIC BISHOPS - During the past four years the Bush tax cuts have been more than offset by a general shutdown of government funding for state and social programs, while at the same time the size of the government bureaucracy has been expanded at a record-setting rate.  Add to this the fact that a $500 billion surplus has been turned into an equally prodigious deficit, with financial and foreign-policy obligations surrounding the Iraq war stretching as far as the eye can see, and there is very little for traditional conservatives to warm up to here.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040306b.htm * Religious bureaucrats keep bringing down the faith of the people in these men of God?  Martha Stewart is about to be put in a little cage and she needs a Catholic Bishop to keep her company.  When you rise to thier level of authority and respect in society, you need to live a different life than crooks and criminals who come out every night and terrorize the good people of the world.  The truth is that you would have to build a whole new prison system if you locked up all the pedophile priests in the Catholic church.  Then we could add a special wing for all those rogues who sell religion on their billion dollar Jesus shows every day.  Let them live the poverty of Jesus, the man who is making them very very rich while the poor still starve all over the world.

March 5, 2004

IRAQ - LEGALITY OF THE INVASION - At first, we were told by ministers that US and British troops would soon find evidence of "weapons of mass destruction", a smoking gun. When the soldiers didn't, we were told to wait for David Kay's Iraq Survey Group of CIA-approved inspectors. We are still waiting. Meanwhile, a new smoking gun has come to haunt Tony Blair. It is the advice secretly offered to ministers by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, in the weeks leading up to war.  Goldsmith, it appears, sent at least three separate pieces of advice to Blair between January and March last year and is believed to have had serious doubts about the legality of war without a second UN resolution. Indeed, his advice was sufficiently ambiguous in the run-up to the war for Lord Boyce, the then chief of defense staff, to demand "unequivocal" legal support for an invasion of Iraq. Or is the prospect of questioning the legality of the invasion, and continuing occupation, of Iraq by British troops, too awful to contemplate? It could, after all, make British troops liable in both British law and before the international criminal court not only for the deaths of Iraqis in their occupying zone but for injuries and the destruction of property. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040305d.htm  *  The reality is that the invasion of Iraq was illegal under international law.  There can never be WorldPeace without world law.  The question is whether or not there are some astute agresssive Iraqi attorneys who are willing to take on an international case against the United States and Britain.  I think someone will rise to the occasion.  

SPACE/RELIGION - WATER ON MARS - Now that NASA's Opportunity rover has established a locale on Mars where rocks were once drenched in water, it is in a race against time and battery life to learn how widespread and deep the water was.  Was there a giant sea, or did less conspicuous groundwater percolate locally through the subsurface of Meridiani Planum?  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040305c.htm * Science has a habit of coming to conclusions very slowly.  But it does not take a rocket scientist to understand that where there is water there is life.  What is going to be real interesting is finding out how far life evolved on Mars before the planet turned cold.  There is no doubt a fossil record.  The global question for me is how is this going to effect religion.  The idea that we are the only intelligent life form in the universe is not really discussed anymore.  But the time is soon coming when we will rewrite our concept of God and spirituality and when we do the new version is going to be a lot more expansive than the finite earth that organized religion continues to use to murder the human race in the name of God.

TERRORISM - Relatives of victims killed in the 11 September 2001 attacks have criticised George W Bush for using images from the tragedy in his campaign advertisements.  Some of the families have complained that the images exploit those killed in the attacks and are in poor taste.  "It's totally disgusting," said Dawn Peterson, whose brother died in the attack on the World Trade Center.  A White House spokesman defended the election ads, saying they emphasized Mr. Bush's leadership at a time of terror.  "September 11th was a defining moment for our nation," spokesman Scott McClellan said.  "It was an experience that all Americans shared. It is the reason we are still at war on terrorism."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040305b.htm * The truth is that Bush will do anything to remain president.  The reality is that the world is a more unstable place since George took office and the reality is that the incidents of terrorism have increased since George invaded Iraq.

TERRORISM - A majority of people living in the two countries bordering the United States and in five major European countries say they think the war in Iraq increased the threat of terrorism in the world, Associated Press polls found.  In the United States, people were evenly divided on whether the war has increased or decreased the terror threat. The polls found that people living in all the countries except the United States have an unfavorable view of the role that President Bush plays in world affairs. Only in the United States did a majority, 57 percent, have a positive view of the role played by the U.S. president.  Just over half in Mexico and Italy had a negative view of Bush's role. In Britain, the closest U.S. ally in the war in Iraq, and in Canada, two-thirds have a negative view.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040305a.htm * When the world generally thinks that the war in Iraq has increased the incidents of terrorism and that the majority of the world thinks Bush is a negative influence on the world, then Americans have a problem.  For Americans to support an imperialist like Bush in spite of world opinion indicates that America is going to have some trouble increasing the peace in the world.  It is amazing to me that anyone could support a war monger like Bush whose only other claim to fame is that he has increased the budget deficit to a level greater than Herbert Hoover.  Bush is undermining the economy and creating negative feelings about America world wide.  It is time for a change.

HUMAN EVOLUTION - The discovery in Ethiopia's Middle Awash region of a handful of nearly six-million-year-old teeth is adding fuel to a longstanding debate among scholars of human evolution. At issue is whether the base of our family tree is as streamlined as a saguaro, or as shaggy as a shrub.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040305e.htm  *  With time we will find out the true lineage of human beings.  There seems to be little doubt that there were different species of human beings on the planet.  The Neanderthals only died out 40,000 years ago.  The reality of their extinction has not been openly stated; "they were wiped out by the current race of human beings."  Americans just over a hundred years ago quit trying to exterminate the native Americans.  Why would things have been any different when the world was a much more primal place?  That being said, the truth about human evolution is not going to come from paleoanthropologists but from genetics.   The genetic record comparing apes and humans as well as other species is going to tell the tale and the paleoanthropologists will bring in the tangible support.  All in all it is just another inroad to the murderous grip that religion has on human evolution and the truth about God and humanity.

March 4, 2004

THE PASSION OF CHRIST - Mel Gibson stands to personally make more than $300 million for pursuing his Passion. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040305a.htm  * The question is what is he going to do with the money.

STEM CELL RESEARCH/RELIGION - The White House's policy on research with human embryonic stem cells has been put under new pressure by the dismissal of a leading biologist from the President's Council on Bioethics last week and by the development, announced today, of new stem cell lines by a Harvard researcher.  At present, researchers who receive government financing can only work with human embryonic stem lines that were derived from embryos before 9 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2001. This was a political compromise that allowed stem cell research to begin but that also assured opponents of abortion that no more very early embryos would be destroyed.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040305b.htm *  The truth is that we are still in the Dark Ages due to religious bureaucrats who still pound the drum of  God's will.  God's will is in reality the will of entrenched religious bureaucrats whose contribution to society has been to create wars and promote ignorance in society.  We need stem cell research to improve the health of suffering human beings in specific and to increase the quality of life in general.  Bush has no religion other than power.  Bush could care less about God.  If the religious right offers up enough votes, George will walk around Washington with a cross strapped to his back.  The sooner we subordinate religious bureaucracies and move toward a more democratic secular society the sooner we will all gain the peace that comes from putting aside religion in favor of individual spirituality and one on one communication with God.

WORLD ECONOMICS - Japan and China, which between them have amassed foreign reserves of more than one trillion dollars as they seek to manage their currencies, on Wednesday dismissed warnings from US Fed chairman Alan Greenspan that they must change course or risk serious economic consequences.  Up to now, the basic US charge against Japan, China and the Asian region generally is that these countries have intervened continually in the forex markets to keep their currencies weak and so boost exports unfairly.  The result has been a series of massive and growing trade surpluses with the United States combined with a mountain of reserves ? 741 billion dollars for Japan, 416 billion dollars for China, according to the latest figures. Add to this some 200 billion dollars in Taiwan, another 112 billion dollars in Hong Kong and you get a figure near an astonishing 2.0 trillion dollars for the region as a whole at the end of January, up some 100 billion dollars in just a month, according to investment house UBS.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040305d.htm *  Economics is where Bush needs to put his efforts and not in warring in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Haiti.  The only economic development that Bush has accomplished is the increase in the heroin traffic due to the cultivation of poppies in Afghanistan.  America is getting beat up in the world economy and all Bush can do is cut taxes and increase spending and create the mother of all deficits in the U S budget.  WorldPeace is founded first on world law and then on world economics.  Daddy Bush did not understand economics and neither does little George.  The political platform of little George is corporate greed, war mongering and Jesusing in the name of re-election.  God help us.

March 3, 2004

ISRAEL - MORE SETTLEMENTS - Jewish settlement building on occupied Palestinian land has risen 35% last year despite a US-led peace plan that calls on Israel to freeze all construction.  Israeli government figures showed on Tuesday work began on about 1850 new settler homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2003.  Figures also revealed settler home-building in 2003 far outstripped Israel's overall rate, which fell 8%.   There are nearly half a million Jewish settlers living on illegally occupied land in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.  Israel captured the lands in the 1967 Middle East war.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040303b.htm  *  There is no way that 500,000 Jews are going to pack their belongings and move out of the occupied territories.  The problems between Israel and Palestine are growing.  The Jews are intent on annexing all of the west bank of the Jordan because per their religion God gave them that land 3,500 years ago when he sent Joshua into the land of Canaan with a mandate to kill everyone there.  But a more contemporary example would be Hitler taking the property of the Jews in Europe and sending them to death camps.  It seems like the real Jewish Messiah was Hitler because he was the reason they were returned to the promised land by the U N after World War II and he showed them the way to expand their territory through terrorism and war.

DRUGS AND WAR - The United Nations says the food shortage in many African countries has been made worse by a shift from growing food crops to cultivating cannabis, popularly known as marijuana.  In its annual report released Wednesday, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said profits from cannabis and other drugs are also fueling Africa's civil wars.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040303a.htm * There seems to be a link between bad economies, growing drugs producing crops and terrorism and civil war.  But what is more note worthy is that those who use drugs are the real source of terrorism and war.

March 2, 2004

RELIGION - INTOLERANCE - PAKISTAN - Pakistan - Attackers sprayed gunfire and lobbed grenades into a solemn religious procession of Shiite Muslims on Tuesday, then blew themselves up as survivors scattered. Authorities said at least 42 people died, and more than 160 were wounded.  Outraged Shiite Muslims rioted after the massacre, prompting authorities to call out troops and paramilitary police to quell gun battles and arson in this southwestern city of 1.2 million. Shiite mobs set fire to a Sunni Muslim mosque, shops and a TV station.  The attack in Quetta came hours after coordinated blasts at Shiite shrines killed over 140 people in Iraq.  Tuesday's attack was one of the deadliest in years of repeated acts of sectarian violence in Quetta. Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is the capital, holds a substantial Shiite minority that is often at odds with radical Sunni groups.  As worshippers marched through a congested neighborhood, three gunmen opened fire and hurled grenades at the crowd, said Mayor Abdul Rahim Kakar, who was nearby at the time.  Walking among the survivors with more explosives lashed to their bodies, the men blew themselves up as police moved in, Kakar said. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302i.htm * It is interesting that there seems to be a global uprising between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.  The Sunnis are not only killing Shiites in Iraq but also in Pakistan.  The question is whether this is just a phase or if it is the precursor of something bigger to come.  The common denominator is the U S involvement in Iraq and its support for Pakistan.

RELIGION - INTOLERANCE - IRAQ - A series of bombs and explosions ripped through Shiite Muslim religious ceremonies in Baghdad and the city of Karbala today, killing at least 100 people who were among hundreds of thousands on pilgrimages to ancient shrines.  In Khadamiya, among the body parts taken to the morgue were two severed heads, which in the past have been the emblem of a suicide bomber. After the attack at the Khadamiya shrine, an angry crowd estimated in the thousands marched to a nearby American base where they started pelting soldiers and tanks with stones. A witness, Ali Heider, said the soldiers opened fire and he saw at least two Iraqis in the crowd shot. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302h.htm * It is probable that the Sunni Muslims did this.  It is just another example of how intolerant religious bureaucracies are of each other.  In the name of God, more blood has been spilled than for any other cause.  We have to admit that religion is not the vehicle that will bring peace to the earth.

RELIGION - THE PASSION OF CHRIST - The otherwise popular Gibson, the director and producer of a controversial new film, was indeed in the Academy Awards audience, but the controlled cameras panned away: The actor himself had chosen to avoid the limelight as a star awards presenter on stage, according to reports. As a healthy percentage of Hollywood big shots comprise U.S. Jews, Gibson assumed a safer boo-immune profile in the wake of charges by critics and Jewish leaders that his ?The Passion of the Christ? takes the low road of anti-Semitism.  In general, Hollywood is extremely tolerant of all points of view and usually intolerant of intolerance. But the anti-Semitic ?Passion? may prove a historic testing case for the entertainment industry, for it is also extremely tolerant of profits. Since it opened, ?Passion? has been rivaling ?Rings? in box-office clout. Will ?Passion? garner Oscars next year if its profits turn out to rival ?Rings??  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302g.htm  * The personal fallout for Gibson in the Jewish section of the movie industry is yet to be seen.  The Zionist are intolerant of any portrayal of themselves as anything but victims of Hitler's Europe even as they continue to settle and confiscate the land they occupied after the 1967 war with their Muslim neighbors and maliciously shoot those who touch their new wall.  It is questionable why the cameras did not show Mr. Gibson.

HAITI - THE BUSH COUP - Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said last night from exile in the Central African Republic that the United States forced him out of power against his will. The State Department, the White House and the Pentagon all dismissed Aristide's charge as baseless and "nonsense."  Earlier yesterday Reps. Maxine Waters of California and Charles Rangel of New York held press conferences to tell of the phone calls they had received from Aristide yesterday morning in which he told them that he had been forced out of office against his will in what amounted to a coup by the United States.  "He told me, 'The world must know it was a coup. I was kidnapped. I was forced out. That's what happened. I did not resign,' " Waters said yesterday in a statement.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302f.htm  Haiti's geographic position, weak institutions and subsistence economy have made it a key conduit for drug traffickers transporting cocaine from South America to the United States. "The Haitian National Police lack discipline and is riddled with corruption," it said.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302b.htm  * The real problem here is that Bush cannot afford Haiti to become another embarrassment to his presidency.  So the best way to deal with things was to simply for Aristide to leave the country.  Clinton sent 20,000 Marines to keep Aristide in power and Bush has sent the Marines to usher him out of the country.  What is going on?  Well you can bet that some of it, if not all of it, is related to the fact that Haiti play as major role in the trafficing of drugs.  Funny how both Afghanistan and Haiti are heavily involved in the illegal drug business do to their almost non existent economies.  In Iraq it is oil.  

HAITI - BUSH'S NATION BUILDING - The very words "nation building" were akin to an expletive when George W. Bush ran for the White House four years ago. But now, as he seeks a second term, United States intervention in Haiti is but the latest example of how nation-building has become a defining feature of his administration's foreign policy.  In Afghanistan, in Iraq, and now in Haiti, the Bush administration has found itself enmeshed in the daily workings of failed states and has taken on responsibilities as far-ranging as protecting government leaders, repairing infrastructure, and serving as a sort of police force amid a hostile citizenry. The tasks have resulted in the loss of hundreds of American lives, cost billions of dollars, and directly contradicted how candidate Bush said he would govern as president.  During a debate with then-Vice President Al Gore on Oct. 11, 2000, in Winston-Salem, N.C., Bush said: "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building. . . . I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're going to have a kind of nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302e.htm * Just more lies from the Bush man.  

HAITI - BUSH'S THIRD INVASION - United States Marines flew into the chaotic Haitian capital yesterday after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled into exile, driven out by a bloody revolt and foreign pressure.  Minutes after the United Nations Security Council authorised the deployment of a multinational force, the first of several hundred Marines ordered in by US President George W. Bush arrived to prevent armed insurgents from seizing power.  "This is the beginning of a new chapter in the country's history," Bush said.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302d.htm  * And where is the money coming to pay for all these invasions?

ISRAEL - SHARON'S WALL - Israeli citizens have for the first time joined Palestinians in a court appeal against the route of the controversial security barrier Israel is building on the West Bank.  About 30 residents of the Israeli suburb of Mevasseret Zion outside Jerusalem added their names to a Palestinian petition to the High Court of Justice against the fence section being built between their community and neighbouring Arab villages. The Jewish residents maintained that fencing in the Palestinian villagers would lead to terror, not prevent it.  Lawyers for the Palestinian petitioners told the court that the fence would cut off eight villages in the Jerusalem area from 2000 acres of agricultural land.  "Our goal is to prevent the Palestinians from being swallowed up inside the fence," said lawyer Mohammed Dahla.  "You can't strangle 30,000 residents and turn their villages into a prison."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302c.htm * It is good to see that some of the Israelis do not support the wall which arbitrarily encloses even more of the Palestinians land than was stolen by the U N and given to Israel in 1948.  Hopefully the Zionist will suffer the same fate as the Nazis and any other nations that invades its neighbors and tries to annex the occupied land.

AFGHANISTAN - Opium poppy cultivation levels in Afghanistan approached the highest levels ever recorded last year despite the counterdrug efforts of the U.S.-backed government, the State Department said Monday.  The department's annual report on illicit drug activities worldwide said criminal financiers and narcotics traffickers in and out of Afghanistan have taken advantage of ongoing conflict and the fragile security situation.  They have "exploited poor farmers in a rural economy decimated by war and drought," the report said. It said drug-related corruption at the provincial and district levels is believed to be pervasive. It added that at the national level, corruption of officials is believed to be much less of a problem.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302b.htm  * The result of the invasion of Afghanistan by the U S has increased the drug trade and increased the funding to terrorist.  The truth is often paradoxical.  Bush can't afford to vigorously attack the farmers because Bush does not want to ask Congress for money to support the Afghanis when they have no drug money.  Estimates are that 50% of the income of Afghanistan is now from the drug trade.  Stupid is as stupid does.

AIDS - Managing Director of Abuja-based Medicrest Specialist hospital Dr. Jeremiah Abalaka, has said that the world has not been able to discover a cure for the HIV/AIDS scourge because all HIV preventive vaccines so far developed are designed to elicit anti-HIV antibody production.  Speaking to newsmen in Abuja at the weekend, Abalaka said the only way to outsmart the virus is to design and apply a vaccine that would not be anchored on stimulating anti-HIV antibody production.  "In my study into the research efforts of others, I observed by and large the one track-minded approach adopted by past and present research efforts. In other words, researches into HIV vaccine development have all been consistently anchored on a vaccine that will trigger the production of anti-HIV antibodies.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040302a.htm * It is typical of researchers to cling to the official mindset. To do otherwise means the lack of funding.  This is interesting because the solution to the vast majority of problems is found by encouraging creativity.  Yet when it comes to acquiring funding, researchers have to swear allegiance to the politically correct approach of the herd.  In the meantime AIDS continues to run rampant in Africa.

March 1, 2004

CIVIL UNIONS - Remember when conservatives used to be against tampering with the Constitution?  Remember when they used to go on and on about how we shouldn't resolve political battles by amending the Constitution, and how the Founding Fathers made it difficult to do on purpose.  That was when the issue was the Equal Rights Amendment. They defeated that.  Remember when conservatives used to be in favor of federalism?  Remember when they used to argue that states should be allowed to serve as the "laboratories" of experimentation and change that Justice Brandeis described?  Remember when they were so certain that insisting on a single federal standard was wrong, a violation of states rights?  Remember Ronald Reagan's "new federalism"? It was the theme of his first term.  That was then. This is now. Bush held out as long as he could, but ultimately, he caved, embracing an amendment he had tried to steer clear of, giving the conservatives what they wanted, and showing his stripes to everyone else in the process.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040301d.htm * Bush will do anything to stay in office.  Start a war based on lies, chop down all the national forests, bow to any corporation with enough money to contribute to his campaign, even amend the Constitution of the United States to prevent equality and justice for all.

THE BLOOD ON SHARON'S HANDS - Palestinians have carried out thousands of attacks against Israelis during 41 months of violence, killing 930 people, while 2,688 have been killed on the Palestinian side, almost all in Israeli military strikes.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040301c.htm  *  This all began when Sharon made his inciting visit to the wailing wall on September 28, 2000 for the specific purpose of ending the tense peace that his predecessor Mr. Barak had achieved.  All the deaths can be tracked back to Sharon malicious visit.

HAITI - The sudden departure of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first freely elected president in its 200 years of independence, was almost predictable in a nation that has seen more than 30 coups.  Life for Haiti's very poor never got better under Aristide despite perhaps unreasonably high expectations. Instead, Aristide empowered lawless elements who owed their dubious status to his indulgences. Many defended him, insisting to the last, as did Aristide, that the diminutive leader would hang on for two more years and finish his five-year term.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040301b.htm * So here we go again.  Bush is sending in the Marines.  All because we supported another corrupt little dictator who was an enemy of justice and democracy.  It would seem that while Bush is in the nation building mood, that he should go on down to Haiti and make things better for them.  Sort of like the way he has made Afghanistan's economy tied to poppies and opium.  A bigger drug problem which funds more terrorism.  And he did not even get bin Laden.  Stupid is as stupid does and Dubya is a dangerous man.

INTERNET - CENSORSHIP - A Paris-based media rights group has slammed new Chinese regulations aimed at policing the internet.  "Reporters Without Borders condemned the latest Chinese effort to gag the Internet by means of directives to portals that have discussion groups," the group said in a statement on Sunday.  "Discussion forums are used by millions of Chinese and, although closely monitored, they at least offered an outlet for popular discontent and criticism, but we fear these latest measures will just make Internet users censor themselves even more."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040301a.htm * It will not matter how much the Chinese try to censor the internet, there are going to be ways around it.  The only way to stop the internet is to outlaw it and even that will not be possible.  China is going to move faster down the road to democracy than anyone will believe.  The Chinese seem to be an industrious people will a long history of high civilization.  Plus there are over a billion of them.

February 29, 2004

WOMEN - RELIGION - IRAQ - Iraqi women have won a historic victory in a Muslim country after they convinced lawmakers to reject a bid to turn the clock back on their rights by scrapping an established family law.  The women also want at least a 40% stake in the country's evolving political power, which will be enshrined in the transitional law under discussion, said Jamil al-Jawahiri, speaking for Iraqi al-Amal Association, one of the groups leading the campaign for greater women's rights in Iraq.  Successful lobbying by the heads of 17 Iraqi women's groups at a meeting on Thursday prompted 15 council members to repeal a proposal to scrap Iraq's 1959 family affairs code - considered among the most progressive in the Middle East - and place it under Muslim religious jurisdiction, Jawahiri told reporters. A good day  "It is a good day for everyone, not just for women," he said. "Women have shown they can get what they want by being organised and good lobbiers and not through using violence."  The proposal contained "articles that suppress social development and the progress of women", said female Shi'ite council member Raja al-Khouzai.  But SCIRI's Obaidi disagreed, arguing that it was important to be ruled under the same Islamic principles rather than by a secular civil code.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040229a.htm  * This is a very interesting situation developing because there is a question as to why under the new secular constitution in Iraq why half of the elected positions should not be held by women.  Beyond weapons of mass destruction and all the lies told by Bush and Blair to support their imperialism in Iraq, if the end result is that women gain a firm secular foothold in their global march for equal rights, then the war will have been the greatest boon to the world society ever seen.  It is interesting that the masculine authoritarianism that dominates bureaucratic religionist beliefs are detrimental to secular equality that democratic societies try to manifest.

February 28, 2004

IRAQ - RESTRICTED NEWS COVERAGE - While Cronkite praised the work the embedded reporters in Iraq, he doesn't think that viewers were given the whole story. But he admits that the coverage was better than what viewers saw during the Gulf War.  "That was far better than anything we had during the elder Bush's first war down there, where they blacked us out completely. They actually violated our constitution practically for the free press and the freedom of information, in a situation where here our boys and girls are committed to battle, and we're not permitted to know how they are doing."  Cronkite understands the need for some military censorship.  "I believe in military censorship. You can't have people reporting on the disposition of the forces, the size of your forces, the loss you're taking and let the enemy know about that," he said.  But he also says the Bush administration is going too far by not allowing news organizations to take pictures of the caskets returning from Iraq.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040228d.htm  Bush invaded Iraq based on his lies about weapons of mass destruction.  And the lies continue as the Bush administration refuses to allow the press to show the truth about the cost of the war.  John Kerry needs to add a few pictures of returning coffins to his campaign ads.  It would be worth a whole lot of votes.  What is strange is that none of the news media have challenged this dictate from the enemies of Freedom of Speech: Dubya Bush.

IRAQ - DEMOCRACY - The ease, or perhaps na?vet?, with which the Bush administration pitches democracy in the Middle East revolves once again on the imperious premise that only Washington knows what is best for the world. Has the administration any idea that for democracy to take root, certain conditions have to be met?  To take such high-sounding abstract concepts about democracy to one-time desert Arabs is somewhat akin to getting an ape to appreciate a diamond. In any case, if the ape does not swallow that diamond -- though in many cases it would -- getting peoples without democratic traditions is like asking people to organize their lives all over again to suit the image of someone else.  Mind you that's how inscrutable things may actually out to be when something as enigmatic as democracy is pushed down the throats of peoples'.  About the American push for global democracy, the recently imploded Soviet Union and Japan come as examples of nations accepting an alien ideology -- albeit perhaps unwillingly.  Despite the 13 years since its collapse in 1990, Russia (ex-Soviet Union) today is nowhere near the supposed glory it envisaged it would reach, when it began experimenting with glasnost and perestroika.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040228c.htm  *  But what is more interesting is the brand of democracy that is installed in Iraq will be manipulated by the U S.  Pure democracy does not even exist in America.  If it did, women would not be second class citizens there.

UNITED NATION - UK SPYING - "The row over the Iraq war will not let go of Tony Blair. On Thursday the former international development minister, Clare Short, said the British secret service spied on the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, in the run-up to the US-British invasion of Iraq.  "From experience it is unlikely that the case is over for Mr Blair - or President George Bush. If the British government does not eliminate the spying accusation, London will lose even more credibility. Mr Blair is also under pressure because in the 10 months since the end of the Iraq war no weapons of mass destruction have been found."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040228b.htm * It is interesting that spying and wire taps would never be allowed in America.  But when it comes to non-Americans, then the U S Constitution does not apply.  It is interesting that the high ideas of the U S Constitution mean nothing when America deals with the rest of the world.

RELIGION - CATHOLICS ABOVE THE LAW - Just after the release yesterday of two long-awaited studies on the sexual abuse of children by more than 4,000 priests, the president of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops declared with emphatic finality in a news conference that the bishops had faced the problem, come clean and swept the church of abusers.  "I assure you that known offenders are not in ministry," said Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, punching out his words. "The terrible history recorded here today is history."  One of the reports pronounced that "there must be consequences" for the church leaders who failed to stop the abuse and that the bishops should hold one another accountable in the future. But it did not satisfy critics who said that the church was continuing to sidestep the most sensitive, intractable issues raised by the scandal.  In reacting to the reports yesterday, advocacy groups and reporters peppered the bishops with a host of questions: Shouldn't bad bishops be removed? Should the celibacy requirement for priests be abandoned? Should seminaries bar gay men?  And why have most bishops never divulged the names of their offending priests, many of whom are now living unsupervised and anonymous in the civilian world as a result of the church's new "zero tolerance" policy? PoliticalCommentary2004/e040228a.htm * Well as per usual, the religionists in the name of God do what they will and amazingly secular democracy puts up with it.  Any child sexual abuser convicted in the United States is now put on a list and they must register where ever they live.  The penalties for sexual abuse last a life time.  And yet now there are 4,000 Catholic priest free in society continuing their crimes.  

February 27, 2004

MONEY - THE MOST RICH - Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are among many new additions to the list, which has a record 587 names this year compared with 476 in 2003.  Forbes said the recovery in share prices over the past year had helped to swell the number of billionaires.  Microsoft chairman Bill Gates topped the list for the 10th year in a row, with investor Warren Buffett in second.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040227d.htm * Isn't if fascinating how much we are interested in who has the most money.  Yet other than the one person who wins the Nobel Prize each year for peace, there is no list of who did the most to uplift the sick, the poor and the hungry and society as a whole.   

UNITED NATIONS - US UK BUGGERS - The former UN chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Richard Butler, says his phone calls at the United Nations were bugged during his tenure from 1997 to 1999.  He told Australian radio at least four UN Security Council members monitored his calls, and he would leave the UN building if taking a confidential call.  ABC Radio cited Australian intelligence sources as saying Hans Blix, the last weapons inspector, was also bugged.  Ex-UK minister Clare Short says the UK bugged UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.  "Of course I was (bugged)," Richard Butler told ABC radio.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040227c.htm * Well this is what happens when there is no international law.  Americans and Brits could care less about invading Iraq based on the lies of Bush and Blair and could care less about the fact that laws within their borders are meaningless even ethically outside their borders.

RELIGION - TOLERANCEPoliticalCommentary2004/e040227b.htm  *  Jesus said, " I have not come to bring peace but a sword."  Jesus was not tolerant.  Virtually all the verses regarding the reigning religious bureaucrats are negative and meant to incite a reaction.  Who killed Christ?  The religious bureaucrats.  The same Hindu personalities that tried to kill Buddha.  The same pagan religionists who tried to kill Mohammed.  The same Christian religionists who killed Joseph Smith.  Religion is intolerant of any other religious belief.  And religious bureaucrats are vicious in their persecution of heretics who thwart the future of the religious bureaucracy.  Remember, Jesus went into the Temple court yard and made a whip and drove out all the vendors.  This was about money.  This was about shutting off the money to the religious bureaucrats.  Jesus was a dangerous man.  He intended to call attention to the gross hypocrisy of priests and rabbis and so on.  Who killed Jesus?  The Jewish religious bureaucrats.  Not because they were Jews but because they were bureaucrats whose primary mandate is to preserve the bureaucracy first and spread the message second.  A few weeks ago an Episcopal bishop said, "heresy is better than schism."  The masses are ignorant.  Secular politicians are interested in order.  The religious bureaucrats allegedly acting in the name of God are the real enemies of peace in society regardless of their religious stripe.  They manipulate the ignorant in the name of their true gods (money and power).  We need to get rid of religion and embrace spirituality and God.  Then we will have a chance at WorldPeace.  But unfortunately the ignorant need the rites and rituals that the religious bureaucrats provide.

RELIGION - THE PASSION OF CHRISTMel Gibson has reneged on a promise to remove the infamous scriptural blood libel, in which the Jews allegedly accepted responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus, from his film The Passion of the Christ, according to one of the world's foremost scholars, who saw a preview showing yesterday.  Jewish groups pleaded with the director to remove the line from Matthew 27 in which the Jews were said to have cried: "His blood be on us and on our children" - words used across the ages to justify anti-semitic persecution by Christians.  But it became clear at the film's first British screening for journalists, theologians and clergy that although Gibson has removed the English subtitle for the line, the words remain in the film, exclaimed in Aramaic. Although few in the audience will understand it, the decision to retain the line makes clear Gibson's reluctance to be swayed by the fears of complainants.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040227a.htm * Gibson simply filmed a literal translation of the four gospels.  Literalist either believe all that is in those gospels or the do not.  To allow an editing would seem to destroy the entire Bible and undermine all Christian dogma and doctrine.  The Jews are just mad that after all that money they paid Gibson to act in their films he now stabs them in the back by showing his fundamental Christian philosophy.  It really is all a horrible joke anyway when you consider what the Jews are doing right now to the Palestinians whose land they stole.

February 26, 2004

UNITED NATIONS - BUGGING KOFI - British spies were bugging UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's office in the run up to the Iraq war, former UK cabinet minister Clare Short has claimed.  The ex-international development secretary said she had read some of the transcripts of his conversations.  Ms Short said she recalled thinking, as she talked to Mr Annan: "Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying."  Downing Street has refused to comment on the claims, made in a BBC interview.PoliticalCommentary2004/e040226e.htm *  I am sure that every citizen is subject to being bugged in this day and time.  That is just the way it is in the Third Millennium.  The problem is what are the options for the buggor if the buggee is on a path that the buggor does not like.  Are the Zionists capable of assassinating the Secretary General of the U N if he tries to drum up world support for the plight of the Palestinians.  I have no doubt that the Zionists are every bit as ruthless as Al Qaeda.

AIDS - PLAYING GOD - For years, AIDS researchers have struggled with the lack of a good animal model of HIV infection. The ideal candidates, Old World monkeys such as rhesus macaques, are not susceptible to HIV, although they are vulnerable to the monkey version of the virus, known as simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). Scientists have suspected for some time that monkeys respond to HIV by producing a factor that stops the virus in its tracks. Now they have pinpointed this natural HIV blocker.PoliticalCommentary2004/e040226d.htm * Each day the marvels of genetic manipulation continue to expand.  The human being and all other life forms on this planet are controlled by strings of DNA.  With today's computers those DNA strands are being decoded.  Crops are already manipulated.  Animals are being cloned.  We can only hope that in playing God we do not make some small manipulating that wipes out a large segment of the human population: a hundred years from now.  Stepping into God's shoes is great. The problem is that God is alleged to be all knowing and human beings are undeniably not.  And then there is the ever present greed of a few that is dangerous to the many.

U S ECONOMY - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Congress yesterday that the federal government has promised more retirement benefits than it can pay for and must consider scaling back those commitments soon to avoid damaging the economy in the future.  "I am just basically saying that we are overcommitted at this stage," Greenspan told members of the House Budget Committee as they discussed the future costs of the Social Security and Medicare systems.  Greenspan, who supported President Bush's 2001 tax cuts, again endorsed Bush's proposal to make the cuts permanent. However, he said in response to questions that raising taxes would inevitably be part of any successful effort to reduce the growing federal budget deficit. He stressed that he prefers cutting government spending as much as possible before increasing taxes.  "You don't have the resources to do it all," Greenspan said. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040226c.htm *  In a short three years Dubya has taken the United States from surpluses and a balanced budget to the greatest deficits since Herbert Hoover.  Now the solution is simple, cut spending.  And Social Security is a big fat expenditure.  So all those Bushites out there who decided that tax cuts were great and Imperialistic wars were acceptable, all it cost you was your retirement.  Its your retirement stupid.  Stupid is as stupid does.

TERRORISM - Even if Al Qaeda is crushed, terrorist threats will remain because of a global surge in anti-Americanism, the emergence of dozens of groups representing terrorism's "next wave" and the worldwide spread of Al Qaeda's philosophy and "destructive expertise," the nation's top intelligence officials said Tuesday.  Still, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Osama bin Laden's network itself remains the greatest immediate threat to Americans. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040226b.htm  *  I keep waiting to hear what are the causes of terrorism.  We keep talking about the acts of terrorism and not the motivation of terrorism.  What makes a terrorist?   Well the answer is pretty simple; imperialism and disrespect for all those non-Americans and the environment and the general welfare of the vast majority of human beings on the planet.  American arrogant belief that money and power equals ethical behavior.  The belief that non-Americans are just targets for America's insatiable materialism.  And then there is America's support for all the little Hitlers around the world like Ariel Sharon and his never ending campaign against Muslim in general and Palestinians in specific.

ISRAEL - JEWS, MONEY AND BANK ROBBERY - Israeli forces raided three Palestinian banks in the West Bank city of Ramallah, seizing cash and financial records of customers with suspected links to terrorism, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.  Forces from the police, army and Shin-Bet security service stormed the headquarters of Cairo-Amman Bank and two branches of Arab Bank Plc, confiscating computer files, paper records and money, said Amin Haddad, chairman of the Palestinian Monetary Authority.  ``This act is a violation of all agreements with Israel and the U.S. concerning the Palestinian banking system,'' he said in a statement issued in Ramallah. ``It will spread chaos and deepen the Palestinian economic crisis.''  The banks are suspected of channeling money to terrorists in the West Bank from foreign sources connected to such groups as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, which are committed to Israel's destruction, the Israeli government said in an e-mail.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040226a.htmWell how can anyone ignore the stereotype of Jews and money when they openly rob Palestinian banks.  There is nothing the Zionists will not do.  There is nothing the Zionist are doing to the Palestinians that Hitler did not do to the Jews.  The holocaust story is becoming one of the most hypocritical mantras in the history of the modern world.  The Jews learned nothing positive about ethics in the last century.  The Zealots tried to fight the Romans and were driven from their precious Holy Land in 70 AD.  I think the time is coming when they will be driven out again.  I think it is just a matter of time before they blow up the Dome of the Rock.  

Well how can anyone ignore the stereotype of Jews and money when they openly rob Palestinian banks.  There is nothing the Zionists will not do.  There is nothing the Zionist are doing to the Palestinians that Hitler did not do to the Jews.  The holocaust story is becoming one of the most hypocritical mantras in the history of the modern world.  The Jews learned nothing positive about ethics in the last century.  The Zealots tried to fight the Romans and were driven from their precious Holy Land in 70 AD.  I think the time is coming when they will be driven out again.  I think it is just a matter of time before they blow up the Dome of the Rock.  

February 25, 2004

ASTEROIDS - THE REAL ARMAGEDDON - HUBBLE - Astronomers have revealed how they came within minutes of alerting the world to a potential asteroid strike last month.  Some scientists believed on 13 January that a 30m object, later designated 2004 AS1, had a one-in-four chance of hitting the planet within 36 hours.  It could have caused local devastation and the researchers contemplated a call to President Bush before new data finally showed there was no danger. The procedures for raising the alarm in such circumstances are now being revised.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040225a.htm * Hey the reality is that it is just a matter of time before one of these big asteroids slams into the earth.  And NASA wants to let the Hubble Telescope die.  All the money we spend to invade Iraq and no money to keep the planet safe from destruction from space.  It wasn't too many years ago we saw a string of asteroids slam into Jupiter.  Had that been the earth, you would not be reading this right now and I would not be writing it.  The earth's brand of the human race could be wiped out in an instant.  Or maybe we could all just starve to death as the food gets eaten up.  Imagine killing for a can of corn to stay alive one more day.  Something new to America but not to Africa right now.   

GLOBALIZATION - TERRORISM - A new report has called for radical changes in the direction of world economic policy to overcome the negative effects of globalization.  Major changes in trade and immigration policy are needed if the world's poor are to share in the benefits of globalization, according to the UN-sponsored report of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization. "There a deep-seated and persistent imbalances in the current workings of the world economy, which are ethically unacceptable and politically unsustainable," the report said. The report says that only a dozen developing countries have benefited from the increasing integration of the world economy,. Those who have lost out include "the poor, the asset-less, illiterate and unskilled workers, and indigenous peoples." Income per person in the world's 20 poorest countries has barely changed in the last 40 years, from $212 in 1960-62 to $267 in 2000-02, while income in the richest 20 nations has tripled, from $11,417 to $32,339.  The report said globalization's "potential for good is immense", but "the advantages are too distant for too many, while the risks are all too real". PoliticalCommentary2004/e040225b.htm * Yes, folks we are talking here about Imperialism.  We are talking about the rich and powerful ignoring the poor and illiterate world wide.  We are talking about rich makes right.  We are talking about big guns supporting second class citizenship in the global society.  The moral of the story is don't chose to be born in a poor country to ignorant parents.  Christianity.  What does Christianity have to do with it?  Now do you understand what causes terrorism?  Do you think it is jealousy like Dubya says or is it a lack of justice applied globally?

SECULAR PARTNERSHIPS - DUBYA SPEAKS - IF WE ARE GOING TO STOP QUEERS FROM GETTING MARRIED, WHAT ABOUT ATHEISTS? - U.S. President George W. Bush said he'd support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.  ``Some activist judges and local officials have made an aggressive attempt to redefine marriage,'' Bush said at the White House today. ``A few judges and local authorities are presuming to change one of the most fundamental institutions of civilization.''  Bush cited a ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court allowing gay marriages and a decision by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to allow such marriages there. Bush doesn't oppose civil unions between gays, spokesman Scott McClellan said.  Kerry also opposes gay marriage and supports the concept of legal unions between homosexuals.  Religious conservatives had been criticizing Bush for failing to stop same-sex marriages in San Francisco, the Washington Times reported last week.  In his remarks, Bush cited an ``overwhelming consensus in our country for protecting the institution of marriage.''  Bush and his aides ``consulted a number of constitutional scholars and religious leaders'' before the president's decision to support a ban on gay marriage, McClellan told reporters.  ``Unless action is taken, we can expect more arbitrary court cases, more litigation, more defiance of the law by local officials, all of which adds to uncertainty,'' Bush said.  ``Their actions have created confusion on an issue that requires clarity,'' he said. ``On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard. Decisive and Democratic action is needed.'' (As opposed to Repubican action that is.)  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040225c.htm * Unless I am wrong, all this tension is centered around the use of the word marriage instead of civil unions or secular partnerships.  Queers and Atheists can't get married. Or can Atheist get married?  How can we allow Atheists to get married?  These Atheists are undermining democracy because they have gotten married when they do not believe in God or his religions.  Don't tell Dubya about this because his brain will explode trying to figure it out?

TERRORISM - CIA Director George Tenet said Tuesday that the world is at least as "fraught with dangers for American interests" as it was a year ago, despite the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and successes in dismantling the leadership of al-Qaida.  Most worrisome, Tenet said, is that the radical anti-American sentiments and destructive expertise employed by al-Qaida have spread to other Sunni Muslim extremists who are behind a "next wave" of terrorism that will endure "for the foreseeable future with or without al-Qaida in the picture."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040225d.htm  *  Well we first have to ask, based on the weapons of mass destruction lies, if the CIA knows anything.  But after we get past that little contemporary question, we have to ask what is motivating these terrorist and their hatred of America.  What is the root cause of terrorism?  Could it be the raping and pillaging of American Imperialism on a global scale?  Or is it like Dubya says, they are just jealous.  So jealous of Americans that they strap bombs to themselves and go looking for a crowded place in which to set them off.  What is going to happen when nuclear bombs are small enough to put into a back pack?  

RELIGION - SECULAR PARTNERSHIPS - Californians are evenly divided over whether to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage, but most support allowing same-sex couples either to marry or form civil unions, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll.  As in the country as a whole, the idea of amending the Constitution to ban gay marriages splits Californians largely along party lines.  Overall, 47% of those polled said they favored an amendment that would legally limit marriage to unions between a man and a woman; 46% opposed it.  Regardless of their views on gay marriage itself, 57% of Californians polled believed that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had done "the wrong thing" when he recently directed officials to begin granting marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples in open defiance of state law. Every region of the state opposed the mayor's move, except the Bay Area, which was almost evenly split.  "Why not? They are just normal people," he said, referring to gay couples who wish to marry. Laws that prevent such marriages are "like black people not being able to marry white people way back. It's just wrong. They're people. Give them the same rights as everyone else."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040225e.htm *  Civil unions are coming because civil unions are nothing but secular legal contracts between two people.  It is a secular partnership that simply gives same sex couples access to family and probate law.  It seems that the word marriage, which is claimed by the religionists, is the problem.  Marriage is sanctioned by God.  But we are talking about secular partnerships.  We need to keep religion out of civil rights.  God knows there is nothing more dictatorial and malicious than a bunch of religious fundamentalists of any stripe.  In the name of equality and justice and civil rights, let there be secular unions.  If people want to get married in the church with the blessings of the religious bureaucrats, then their love must be restricted to the opposite sex.

RELIGION - THE PASSION OF CHRIST - "If ever I loved thee, my Jesus 'tis now."  As I walked out of the theatre where I experienced The Passion of the Christ, I found myself somberly singing that line from a song I first heard two decades ago and whose origin I do not know.  It was the first time, however, that the words I sang were fully true. Sure, I have loved Jesus deeply for 20 years, but never more than now.  Mel Gibson's moving and controversial film forced me to fully contemplate -- drink in, if you will -- the enormity behind the brutal sacrifice of Christ dying on the cross for me. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040225f.htm  *  Certainly there will be a temporary revival of Christianity. Surely this movie will become a classic.  Then someone is going to look at the reality of what Christianity has foisted on non Christians for the last 2,000 years.  A religion that began in violence and murder, was mercilessly  persecuted for three hundred years and then gained power in the secular world with Constantine's endorsement of Christianity, and then the dark ages of extreme religious conservatism and the Crusades and the Inquisition and all that killing in the world in the name of Christ.  And the beat goes on as Bush fights a never ending battle against truth, justice and Muslims all over the world under the guise of terrorism?

U S COURTS - The Supreme Court, acting on a case that has become a cause c?lbre among capital punishment opponents, has overturned the death sentence of a long-serving Texas inmate who claimed prosecutors played dirty and withheld evidence at his trial.  The court's action, announced Tuesday, came in the case of a man who came within minutes of execution before the court stepped in last year to stop it.  Banks was able to document how prosecutors kept quiet as key witnesses against him lied on the stand and how the state hid those witnesses' links to police through round after round of appeals, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the high court majority.  ''When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight,'' Ginsburg wrote.  The murder took place in 1980. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040225g.htm *  This is the way things work in America.  The prosecutors use whatever lies they need to get a conviction.  In this case, the Defendant probably needed to be locked up for life but that does not excuse lying to get a conviction.  When prosecutors lie, it is because they have an arrogant feeling that they are God.  It also means they are afraid that the truth or evidence is not going to generate a conviction.  The prosecutors lied and this man waited twenty-four years to before anyone actually listened.

AIDS - FUNDING - NOT - US President George W. Bush unveiled a detailed five-year, US$15 billion emergency plan aimed at turning the tide in the global fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  The plan, which Bush first announced during last year's State of the Union address, describes itself as "the boldest international health initiative ever undertaken by a single country."  But critics said they were disappointed and described the plan's funding process as marked by continuous delays.  Worldwide, more than 40 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS and each day 14,000 are added to their ranks. An estimated 8,000 people a day die from the disease.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040225h.htm  *  This is just more lies from Bush.  This plan will never get funding even if it is passed by Congress.  No one could care less about AIDS than George Bush and his lackey Colin Powell.  AIDS is running rampant in Africa.  Powell is Black.  Funding is virtually non existent.  

RELIGION - An official US body has recommended that 11 countries, including India and Pakistan, be designated as "countries of particular concern" for committing serious violations of religious freedom.  The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which is funded by the US government, has sent the recommendation to Secretary of State Colin Powell for further action.  The commission's report, issued earlier this week, accuses these countries of committing "systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom that the governments are responsible for or have tolerated".  The 11 countries the commission wants in the designated category are: Myanmar, North Korea, Eritrea, India, Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040225i.htm * This list is really a joke when there are enclaves of religious intolerance all over Africa and Bosnia.  Where are they on the list?  Looks like there are no Christian? nations on the list either.  Remember the Christians who were the first to come to the Americas.  Yes those Jesuits who killed for Christ and sent all that pagan gold back to Spain?  And how many non-Christians were there who committed genocide against native Americans in what is now the United States.  Oh and how many of those first citizens of the United States of America who owned Blacks professed a faith in Christ?

February 24, 2004

EMAIL TO WORLDPEACE - PoliticalCommentary2004/e040224c.htm

ISRAEL - THE FENCE - The international court, Israel maintains, has no jurisdiction over the issue.  "[The Palestinians'] real aim has been to try to get Israel in the dock of the International Court of Justice, to stand there and point at Israel and say you are an outlaw state," said Alan Baker, legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry. "And this is something that no Israeli government was prepared to suffer."  The United States and members of the European Union also declined to attend the hearings, on the grounds that the court did not have the authority to rule on an issue that they believe should be settled by negotiations between the two sides.  Any advisory opinion by the court "risks undermining the peace process and politicizing the court," said the American written submission.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040224a.htm *  The reality is that nothing has worked in settling the Israel/Palestinian problem.  What we all know is that when people refuse to talk, things remain in a state of chaos.  The refusal of Israel to attend the world court as well as Europe and the United States means that they are prepared to endure terrorism that comes from ignoring the reality of hte injustice that the Zionists are forcing on the Palestinians.  The land that is Israel was stolen from the Palestinians by the U N and the Israeli terrorists.  This is the truth and nothing the Zionists or anyone else says can change this truth.  The Israeli land grab in Palestine is nothing more than a small version of Hitler's grab of Europe.

ENVIRONMENT - RALPH NADER - To the Bush campaign, newly announced independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is a slow, dark horse in the race for the White House.  But to environmentalists, who generally back Democrats for president, Nader is unsafe at any speed.  Regarded by Democrats as a spoiler in the 2000 race, Nader's candidacy is considered more troubling this time around because environmentalists consider President Bush a greater threat to the nation's air, land and water than they imagined possible four years ago.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040224b.htm * The painful lesson of the 2000 election is that every vote counts and there is no doubt but that in hindsight Nader's candidacy gave George Bush the Presidency in 2000.  This year the election will be just as close and if George wins he will rape the environment on an unprecedented scale.  Nader has become irrelevant in the mercenary world of materialism that infects all of American society.  Liberal ideas of justice, freedom and equality are all suffering.  The environment has little meaning to people because as long as people can still breathe the foul air and see one tree in their front yard environmental issues are irrelevant.  Not only that it is the future generations who will suffer and when people get right down to their core beliefs, they do not care about any generation but their own.  It is a sad state of affairs but we must all face reality.  Save a tree, cut a Bush.

February 22, 2004

NUCLEAR WEAPONS - Here is an overview of countries with suspected or known nuclear weapons programs or actual nuclear weapons. Some of these nations have accepted U.N. rules for inspections; others have not.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040222f.htm  * The reality is that the spread of nuclear technology and production cannot be stopped.  India, Pakistan and Israel have not joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  And who is going to make them?  So the bottom line, at least for Israel, is that if they are invaded, they will render the majority of the Middle East a nuclear waste land.  And so ends the story of the Holy Land.

WOMEN - One of the bleakest, saddest and best movies I've seen lately is Osama, the tale of a girl in Taliban-run Afghanistan who risks her life by pretending to be a boy so she can leave her house and earn money for her widowed mother.  "I wish God hadn't created women," the girl's mother moans ? and then the girl is arrested, and the movie really gets depressing.  Americans should be proud that we ousted the Taliban.  President George W. Bush declared in his 2002 State of the Union address: "The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes .... Today, women are free."  But they aren't. More than two years later, many Afghan women are still captives in their homes. Life is better in Kabul than under the Taliban, but our triumphalism is proving hollow in many areas. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040222d.htm  *  It seems that America, which has not yet achieved women's equality, is having to deal with the reality that it has not done much to elevate the status of women in the two countries it invaded since Dubya came to power.  Afghanistan and Iraq are Muslim countries where Mohammed strongly repeated the words of God in the Jewish book of Genesis, "For Eve's sin, all women are forever subordinated to men."  And thus we have the core reason why Christian, Muslim and Jewish religionists continue to ignore the fact that women are second class citizens worldwide.  It is going to be interesting to see how Dubya promotes women's rights in countries where some women are killed by their brothers for the religious sin of being raped.

 

February 21, 2004

SPACE - RELIGION - EXPANDING UNIVERSE - A dark unseen energy is steadily pushing the universe apart, just as Einstein predicted, suggesting the universe may have a more peaceful end than recent theories envision, according to striking new measurements of distant exploding stars by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.  The energy, whose source remains unknown, was named the cosmological constant by Einstein. In a prediction in 1917 that he later called "my greatest blunder," Einstein posited a kind of antigravity force that was pushing galaxies apart with a strength that did not change over billions of years of cosmic history. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040221a.htm and  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040222a.htm  * The universe is a very big place and the more we learn the more we realize that our limited religious concepts about the size of things and the infinite nature of God simply does not fit with the scientific knowledge of the Third Millennium.  More and more the earth looks like less than a speck of dust within the universe.  We know how to manipulate DNA and soon we will be designing custom human beings.  We know the vastness of space is beyond our conception.  We also begin to see how religion continues to choke off the reality of it all.  The goal of religious bureaucrats is ignorance of the people.  The goal of politicians is ignorance of the people.  Both politicians and religious bureaucrats know that ignorance means easier manipulation of the people.  And you wondered why education is only given lip service by those in power.

RELIGION - IRAN - ANTI-DEMOCRACY - Partial results from Iran's disputed parliamentary election showed Islamic conservatives hostile to President Mohammad Khatami's liberal reforms cruising to an expected victory on Saturday on a sharply lower turnout.  Interior Ministry figures showed conservatives had won 43 of the first 83 constituencies declared, out of 289 seats contested on Friday, an analyst at the Parliamentary Research Center said.  Reformists had won 21, and the rest went to independents of unknown sympathies. In 17 constituencies where no candidate polled more than 25 percent, there will be a run-off later.  Reformists branded the election rigged and many boycotted it after the unelected hard-line Guardian Council banned 2,500 mainly reformist candidates, including 80 sitting lawmakers, prompting Washington to say the vote was neither free nor fair.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040221b.htm  * There is nothing more detrimental to freedom and democracy than religious bureaucrats in charge of the government.  There is no greater evil in society than religious bureaucrats who in the name of God ignore scientific reality, censor education, protect child molesters, subordinate women and make war on the other religions of the one God they all claim as their own.

February 20, 2004

SAME SEX UNIONS - Superior Judge Ronald Quidachay was the second judge in a week to rule that the marriages could continue, for the meantime at least, saying that conservative groups had failed to prove irreparable harm was being done.  "You have not made a showing of irreparable harm," he told the Campaign for California Families (CCF) that sought an injunction to block the wedding blitz.  "You are strong in argument but not in evidence to support the prong of irreparable harm," he told a packed courtroom across the road from San Francisco City Hall where scores of gay couples were wed on Friday.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040220a.htm *  Secular heterosexual marriage has never been more than a contract between two people.  There are extensive bodies of probate and family law that regulate traditional marriages between men and women.  All that law can easily apply to men and men or women and women.  For the homosexuals it is also a major leap in recognition that many people are not heterosexual in their sexual relationships.  The holy rollers want to impose their god's will upon all of California and the rest of the world for that matter.  Well the god of those religionist is not very democratic if he? is against equal rights for homosexuals.  

February 19, 2004

ISRAEL - LEAVING GAZA - After decades of resisting peace initiatives, right-wing Israeli politicians floated a flurry of alternative plans this week to try to block Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from pulling out of much of the Gaza Strip.  Over three consecutive days, hawkish lawmakers unveiled their visions of a solution to the conflict - from setting up a Palestinian state in neighboring Jordan or Egypt's Sinai desert to confining the Palestinians to isolated West Bank enclaves.  The plan apparently rules out an independent Palestinian state, and Palestinians who decide to remain under Israeli control would not have the right to vote.  Wallerstein said all the plans have a similar theme: "The common denominator is that there will be no other state west of the Jordan River" besides Israel, he said.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040219d.htm  *  There are few religionists more intolerant than the Jews.  They will not be happy until they wipe out every Palestinian and Muslim from the Holy Land and then set up their Kingdom of God.  They believe that all the land cross the Jordon river is theirs per their mandate from God to Joshua to kill all the inhabitants in the land of Canaan after the Exodus.  That mindset is still very much a part of the Jewish agenda.  All this makes one wonder about the future of a nation who refuses to live in peace with its neighbors.  The Jews were given land by the United Nations in 1948 and in 1967 they occupied and took more land because they had to fight a war to keep the land the United Nations stole from the Palestinians and gave to Israel.  Few people can deny the biggest problem in the Middle East is religion and fools who claim a right to murder and maim in the name of God.

GAY RIGHTS - Laura Bush said gay marriage is "a very, very shocking issue" for some people, a subject that should be debated by Americans rather than settled by a Massachusetts court or the mayor of San Francisco.  At the White House on Wednesday, President Bush said: "I'm troubled by what I've seen" in Boston and San Francisco. But he declined to say if he would support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages, as conservative supporters expect him to do.  While declining to express her own opinions about gay marriages, Laura Bush said: "It's an issue that people want to talk about and not want the Massachusetts Supreme Court, or the mayor of San Francisco to make their choice for them. I know that's what the president thinks."  This is funny considering that Dubya was elected by the Supreme Court.  "I'm actually very disciplined," she said. "I don't really have to watch everything I say because I'm pretty well-behaved."  And that is sad because of the power she has she could actually do some good in the world.  But as many fundamentalist Christians believe, a woman's place is in the home barefoot and pregnant.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040219c.htm  * These are the same types of people supported slavery, supported the genocide against the Native Americans, refused to allow women the right to vote and now have focused on gays and lesbians.  These people are an impediment to freedom and justice in America and the world.  And like the Taliban and the Jews in Israel the fundamentalist Christians are prepared to create all types of second class citizens all over the world and all in the name of God who they must admit created Blacks, Native Americans and homosexuals.

JEWS - REMEMBER HITLER IGNORE SHARON - Jewish leaders appealed to the European Union today to take a lead in combating a perceived revival of anti-Semitism, warning that official indifference was leading to a return of the Continent's historic "monster."  "Jewish communities in Europe live in fear," said Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace prize winning author and Holocaust survivor.  "How is it that the reverberations of the 20th century still spread into the 21st century? Haven't we learned anything?"  Mr Wiesel was addressing government, religious and community leaders attending an unprecedented seminar organised by the EU in response to concerns about a return of anti-Semitism. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040219b.htm *  The Zionist Jews still beat the holocaust drums even as they continue their own brand of holocaust against the Palestinians whose land they stole.  What is worse is that the Europeans understand that the Israeli's treatment of the Palestinians is the reason they believe that Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East and the Jews can't even understand this.  There is nothing more detrimental to human society than nations who try to claim that God dictates all their bad acts and crimes against humanity.  So goes Iran and Afghanistan, so goes Israel.  Is there any difference between the Taliban and the Zionists? 

RUSSIA - NUCLEAR ARSENALRussian President Vladimir Putin has enjoyed extraordinary success in rebuilding his shattered country over the past four years, but the humiliating public fiasco of two failed missile launches in a single naval exercise this week shows he still has very far to go.  Pavel Felgenhauer, one of Russia's most respected and influential military analysts, predicted in a Moscow Times analysis published Tuesday that many of these problems might be revealed during the tests.  "The nuclear forces are armed with very old ICBMs," he wrote. "Some have been in service in underground silos for over 27 years. ... The number of ICBM replacements is inadequate. Each year the ICBM inventory is getting older and older. The life span of most Russian ICBMs, as guaranteed by their producers, has long since expired."  Indeed, one of the missiles that failed to fire was reported to be a RSM-53 -- NATO designation SS-N-23 -- that was first developed in 1979 and phased into service more than 20 years ago.  Felgenhauer had a very different take on the exercises than the image of a reviving, still potent Russia that Putin wanted to project. "The main point of the exercise is to test aging ICBMs and bombers and the war game scenario is also antiquated, involving the West (the United States) as the potential foe," he wrote.  "The military is caught in a time warp: Its hardware is old, its strategic ideas are outdated, it does not want to change nor does it seem able to -- irrespective of what happens politically in Russia or the world."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040219a.htm  *  Even though Russia does not have the high tech capability to fight a nuclear war on the same level as the United States, it still has enough functional nuclear capacity to destroy the world several times over.  So what is the point of developing weapons that can destroy cities thousands of miles away?  The world is a very different place in the Third Millennium.  The United States cannot even conquer Iraq so how would it ever conquer Russia?  The next question is why does George Bush want to develop the star wars defense technology?  Who is he afraid of now?  If Russia with all its might is not threat, and Iraq has no real weapons of mass destruction, who is George afraid of now.  The real wars, if you want to call them that are not going to be fought by the military but by economics.  World trade is the key to prosperity and WorldPeace.

 

February 18, 2004

RELIGION - IMMUNITY IN THE PREACHERS' UNIONS - Bishop Thomas O'Brien, the former head of Arizona's largest Roman Catholic diocese, was convicted yesterday of leaving the scene of an accident in which the car he was driving struck and killed a pedestrian.  Just two months before the accident last June, O'Brien had negotiated an agreement in which he admitted he had failed to report cases of sexual molestation by priests in his diocese and promised sweeping reforms of diocesan hiring and assignment practices. In return, prosecutors agreed not to prosecute him on charges of failing to report sexual crimes by priests under his management.  Bishop Thomas Olmsted, O'Brien's successor, said it is up to Pope John Paul II to decide if O'Brien's duties as a priest should be restricted.  But Bill Ryan, a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he didn't expect restrictions against O'Brien.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040218d.htm  * And this is typical of bureaucratic religion.  Here is a rogue bishop that could be labeled a sociopath and yet the Pope does nothing to him.  It is like he could do no wrong.  The Pope is supposedly infallible and I guess so are his bishops and priests.  There is nothing special about preachers and priests.  They are just men (and in non Catholic religions women) like everyone else who work for a giant corporation except because these individuals claim they work for God, they get special treatment and special privileges in society.  What if the bishop had been a poor Black or Hispanic?  We all know the answer to that.

RELIGION - IRAN - Tehran, Iran - In the most daring challenge to Iran's ruling clerics in years, dozens of reformist lawmakers yesterday accused the country's supreme leader of rigging upcoming elections to allow his conservative supporters to gain control of parliament.  The reformers blamed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for presiding over a system they said has "trampled" democratic rights and strayed from the ideals of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought clerics to power in Iran. The lawmakers outlined their charges in a letter to Khamenei, in an unprecedented public criticism of a man who wields ultimate political and spiritual authority.
PoliticalCommentary2004/e040218c.htm  *  Religion is not democratic and all the Iranians did was to substitute one political tyrant for a tyrannical religious bureaucrat.  Of the two, the religious bureaucrats are always the most dangerous because they claim to be working for God.  God is not democratic.  The religious bureaucracies that claim authority from God are not democratic.  Therefore, to achieve justice in human society one must conclude that religious bureaucrats must be kept out of the process.  And if the religious bureaucrats are a detriment to peace and justice in society, what are they really good for.  It is said, "As above, so below."  If this is the case, then heaven is not something to look forward to.

RELIGION - BUDDHISM - A group of Sri Lanka's influential Buddhist monks said on Tuesday they would field candidates in the April 2 parliamentary elections.  The National Bhikku Council said on Tuesday that they would be vying for places in the 225-member assembly through the Jathika Hela Urumaya (the National Heritage Party).  "It is important for the Sinhala Buddhists to safeguard their national and religious rights. Parliament must become a place where their aspirations could be realized. With that objective in mind we have decided to contest elections", Reverend Athuraliye Rathana, a spokesman for the Bhikku Council, said. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040218b.htm  *  For those who think that the Buddhist are not as dangerous as are the Jews, Christians and the Muslims to peace in the world, you are mistaken.  All religious bureaucracies must be part of the political processes in order to survive.  The Buddhist have a history of horrific wars just like all the other religious bureaucracies.  The Buddhist concept of God is not one of an anthropomorphic creator of the universe.  The Buddhist concept of God is more along the lines of an all inclusive non definable presence that permeates all things.  In Taoism, the God that can be defined is not the real God.  So generally speaking, Buddhists, Hindus and Taoist do not believe in a wise old man when they think of God.

IRAQ - NO WMD - Richard Perle, a chief proponent of last year's U.S. invasion of Iraq, yesterday called for the chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency to step down because of their faulty conclusions that Saddam Hussein possessed mass-killing weapons.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040218a.htm  *  The truth is that Hans Blix said there were no WMD in Iraq.  France and Germany wanted to see the evidence before they joined the U S in invading Iraq.  There was a man on the ground investigating and there was nothing to be found.  The reality is that Bush wanted to invade Iraq and he got enough backing due to the lie of WMD supported by the terrorist event of 911.  Bush lied.  Blair lied. And Richard Perle who had a financial conflict of interest in Iraq, also lied.  Many times the most obvious is the most hidden.  Blix said there were no WMD to be found.  And he was right.  He was on the ground looking around and he had found nothing up until the time he had to leave so that George could start the invasion.

February 15, 2004  

DUBYA BUSH - WAR MONGER - VIETNAM DODGER  In Texas, George Bush might have even had a uniform on. But he was not in Vietnam. And now, today, he is a guy who ducked the war, dodged the war, reneged on any chance to go to war, and yet without even a hint of personal shame sends young people to die in a war that his record shows that he would duck.  That Bush was not near any of this is his business. Of course he had joined the National Guard so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam. That he barely went to any National Guard drills is also his business.  What matters to all our senses is that he is a president who struts around as a war hero, who dodged Vietnam and most of the National Guard drills and who with less shame than anybody we have had maybe ever, sends your kids to a war that he ducked as if he was allowed to do it by birth. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040215e.htm  * I agree with Mr. Breslin but George was a Vietnam dodger, not a draft dodger.

MEDICINE - New, experimental technology allows doctors to kill cancers deep inside the body with high-intensity ultrasound instead of scalpels and other surgical instruments, researchers report.  The procedure promises to give patients too ill to face conventional surgery a chance to fight their disease, and further applications of the technology -- called high-intensity focused ultrasound -- someday could save the lives of accident trauma victims or soldiers on the battlefield.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040215d.htm  * The truth is that our medical technology is pretty crude. The future promises the use of focused sound and light to cure and heal the human body.

IRAQ - CIVIL WAR - In a shattering blow to the American occupation of Iraq, insurgents yesterday successfully stormed the Iraqi police headquarters in Fallujah, shooting their way in and killing at least 19 people. The guerrillas, armed with heavy machine-guns and rockets, also overpowered the local Iraqi army garrison.  US forces, unable to reach the scene in time, were powerless to intervene as their newly created Iraqi security forces were quickly overwhelmed. Some 75 prisoners managed to escape during the raid.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040215c.htm  * The truth is that the resistance in Iraq is growing from terrorism to a full blown assault with coordination and planning.  Also, someone is supplying the weapons and someone is leading the assaults.  It all seems to be coming to a civil war that George started even as he was unprovoked and as he ignored Hans Blix and lied to the world insisting that there were weapons of mass destruction.  Like many tyrants and dictators, they eventually fall to the sentence that they imposed on others.  So goes Saddam.  So goes Dubya. Bye Bye. George, you are the missing link.

WOMEN - CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico ? Jane Fonda, Eve Ensler, Christine Lahti and Sally Field added their celebrity voices Saturday to those of mothers and activists clamoring for justice in the slayings of hundreds of young women in this Mexican border town in the last decade.  "I am rich, I am famous, I am white, I have a daughter, I have a granddaughter, and I know if they were murdered or disappeared, the authorities would work very hard to find out who killed them," Fonda said at a news conference in Ciudad Juarez.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040215b.htm *  Well the truth is that in much of the world, women have so little value that they are worth less that a cow or a pig.  The truth is that while we fight all kinds of wars for freedom, we Americans still manage to keep our women in their roles of second class citizens.  Who runs Americas biggest corporations?  What percentage of women are there in elected offices?  Is it half?  And why is it that the majority of those in Texas who need the Attorney General to collect their child support are women?  When women are given an equal status in society, then we will see a giant leap toward the manifestation of WorldPeace worldwide.

BUSH - THE 911 INVESTIGATION - The White House said yesterday that President Bush plans to meet only with a limited number of representatives from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a statement issued Friday that suggested he would meet with the whole panel. The new details surprised some commission officials and members -- who believed they had secured a promise from Bush for a private meeting with all 10 members -- and could add to the tensions that have strained relations between the two sides.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040215a.htm  *  Hey.  He is a liar stupid?

February 14, 2004

THE PASSION OF CHRIST - But Gibson tells Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview ? airing Monday at 10 p.m. ET on ABCNEWS' Primetime ? that those who accuse him, or the film he directed, of sparking anti-Semitism avoid the central point he hoped to make.  "I don't want people to make it about the blame game," Gibson says. "It's about faith, hope, love and forgiveness. That's what this film is about. It's about Christ's sacrifice."  Gibson tells Sawyer that ultimately he was moved to depict Jesus' sacrifice on film after reaching "the height of spiritual bankruptcy" himself more than a decade ago. Things got so bad that he says he once contemplated hurling himself out a window.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040214h.htm  * Well the Jews as per usual label every negative word said about the Jews as anti-semitic.  They do this as they continue their own brand of the holocaust against the Palestinians.  That being said, we have to remember that Mel is an actor.  He is not a religious leader.  He is just an actor living in fantasy land and who simply made a film about a literal translation of the crucifixion.  Nothing more or less.  He is religiously incorrect in stirring up strife among the religious bureaucracies of Christianity and Judaism.  He is a great actor but a man with a simple view of Jesus and an ignorance of the global aspects of world religions and how they are all the same.  What mel is most ignorant of is that people do not know what they believe as far as Christ goes.  Now Mel has gone and made a movie and all good Christians have to answer the question, "Is this what you believe?"  And hey, it was the Jewish religious bureaucrats who murdered Jesus.  And the Christian religious bureaucrats who committed genocide against the native Americans when they came to America.  

OCEANS - New tagging technology is enabling scientists to follow for the first time the migration paths of the largest marine animals - fish, mammals and reptiles - for thousands of miles across the open oceans.  It turns out creatures such as tuna and turtles tend to follow "marine highways" where currents create the best feeding and swimming conditions.  Results of the tagging show it would be possible to protect endangered and over-exploited species by setting up a new type of open ocean reserve varying as sea conditions change, marine biologists told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science yesterday.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040214g.htm * We spend billions to go to Mars when we do not even know what goes on in 10% of the ocean.

HUMAN EVOLUTION - A dozen science teachers have proposed revising Georgia's biology curriculum to meet national standards while restoring the word "evolution."  Education officials hope the quick revision will end the well-publicized flap spurred when Superintendent Kathy Cox called for replacing "evolution" with "changes over time" in the curriculum. Cox reversed her position after a week of criticism from science teachers, college professors and politicians.  "We are confident that the document not only meets national standards, but will deliver the world-class curriculum that our board has requested and that our students and teachers deserve," Cox said in a statement.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040214f.htm  * It is amazing that the debate over whether or not humans evolved on this planet or were created by God still goes on.  In this day of cloning, there does seem to be a third alternative and that is that God did create man and woman but the god of Genesis was an alien and not the real God.  The books by Zechariah Sitchin seem to make a case for this possibility.  But of course like may things, he is outside the academic and religious bureaucracies and so his work is not given credibility.

IRAQ - ELECTIONSThe UN threw America's latest political plan for Iraq into disarray yesterday by making it clear that direct elections cannot be held before the June 30 transfer of power to an Iraqi authority.  This was a key demand of the Shias, whose leaders set their face against the US plan to give control of the country to panels of "the great and the good".  Last night the UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, said power should still be handed over to the Iraqis this summer as planned. But his aides said there would not be time to hold "credible elections" before then.  He distanced himself from the controversial US plan, hinting that it would have to be drastically rewritten or shelved.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040214e.htm  * It looks like trouble for Bush.  Civil War for Iraq.  American democracy was not formed in an atmosphere of centuries of strife between Kurds and Shiites and Sunnis, especially when they are essentially segregated in Iraq.  Dubya created a vacuum and now he is facing a potential civil war.  Hopefully, John Kerry will have what is needed to clean the Bush out of Iraq.

ECONONY - US TRADE DEFICIT - America's trade deficit ballooned to an all-time high in 2003, reflecting the hearty U.S. appetite for foreign-made cars, clothing and TVs.  The total deficit was $489.4 billion, 17.1 percent larger than the previous record, set in 2002, the Commerce Department reported Friday. The deficit with China alone was close to $124 billion, also a record.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040214b.htm  * Well George is the first president to surpass Herbert Hoover's budget deficit.  Now he is going for the record on the U S Trade Deficit.  All in all it means bad times on its way not to mention saddling our children with our excessive spending and deficit spending.

HUMAN ORGAN TRADE - Four Catholic nuns say they have received death threats after exposing an organ trafficking network allegedly operating in northern Mozambique.  The traffickers are said to target the sex organs of children, which are sold to make magic charms.  The nuns from the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate order say they have gathered evidence of the trade.  They say they have spoken to victims who managed to escape and photos of dead children with missing organs.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040214a.htm  *  It is a hard world out there and human life is cheap.  There are a lot of very evil people out there for whom the human body is nothing more than a potential income.  There are parts of the world where survival on the most primal level is a daily way of life.  Whatever atrocity that can be conceived, the human being is capable of committing.

BUSH - WORLD OPINION - Cuban leader Fidel Castro resorted to humor on Saturday to defend himself from U.S. hostility, ridiculing President Bush for his gaffes.  "Bush could not debate a Cuban ninth grader, who knows more than he does," Castro said in a speech closing an international conference of economists hosted by his communist government.  Communication Minister of Iran Ali Unesi rejected threats of the American President George Bush pertaining to the Islamic Republic.  "We do not doubt American President's stupidity. However, we do not think that the US will invade Iran," declared Unesi.  According to him, American threats are nothing but an expression of conservative and aggressive politics. "Obviously, Bush has already learned a lesson after attacking Afghanistan and Iraq. Americans failed miserably in both cases," said the Iraqi Minister.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040214c.htm  *  The truth is that without the American led embargo of trade with Cuba, Cuba would have long ago rejected Castro for capitalism.  It happened in Russia and it happened in Eastern Europe.  Mr. Unesi is correct.  An invasion of Iran is ridiculous but George as Mr. Unesi said is stupid.  If invading Iran meant George staying in office, they you can bet that George would send in the troops. (After checking to see if his daughters were safe in the local pubs of course.

IRAQ - THE POLITICAL MESS - In Vichy France and occupied Yugoslavia and later in Vietnam, Algeria, Guinea and Angola, collaborators were regularly targeted. Then, as in Iraq today, the resistance was denounced by politicians and the tame press as "terrorists". When the occupying armies withdrew and the violence ceased, many of the "terrorists" became "statesmen".  Some of us who were opposed to the war argued that while US military occupation of Iraq would be easy they would face a resistance on different levels. And, as becomes plainer every day, the achilles tendon of the occupation is its incapacity to control a hostile population. Hence the need for collaborators. Destroying states by overwhelming military power is one thing. State building is a more complex operation and requires, at the very least, a friendly if not a docile population.  Can US primacy be maintained indefinitely in the face of overwhelming hostility? Obviously not, but neither can the US, regardless of which party is in power, afford a setback in Iraq. That would be a major blow against the "empire" and weaken its ability to control other parts of the world. Add to this a small irony: under Saddam, al-Qaida was not present in Iraq. If a few of its members are there now it is because of the Anglo-American occupation.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040214d.htm

February 13, 2004

IRAQ - Attack on General Abizaid - One day after coming under attack in Iraq, the Army general who runs the war said Friday in an Associated Press interview that he believes it was a random assault. He discounted suggestions the insurgents may have been tipped off to his movements.  "I think it was random, sure," Gen. John Abizaid said, speaking in his office at Central Command's Persian Gulf headquarters, where he returned Thursday night after two days of visiting troops in Iraq.  As of Friday, 538 U.S. troops have died since the war began 11 months ago.  "I don't know that the American public is counting; I know that the media is counting," he said.  Had the attack yesterday killed the general, there would have been a lot of celebrating among the terrorists.  You can rest assured that the general will be a lot more careful about security in the future.  But to correct the general, who is obviously out of touch with the value of life, even the life of a soldier in war, Americans are counting; especially the friends and families of the dead heros.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040213e.htm

WMD - THE COMMISSION - George decided several weeks ago that if he could not avoid a commission to independently investigate his lies about weapons of mass destruction, that he should appoint that "independent" commission: and he would make the report due after his election.  (Well that will be a big mistake if John Kerry is president and not George.  If Kerry is president, then Bush is going to be vilified by that report.)  These commissions appointed by the president are totally stupid and a charade.  Does anyone remember the Warren Commission that investigated the Kennedy assassination?  What a joke.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040213d.htm

ISRAEL - The Paris Visit - If you are planning to visit Paris next week, maybe you should reconsider. Because of the "rising tide of anti-Semitism"? On the contrary. Because of the "I love Israel" parade.  Next Monday, President Moshe Katsav will be arriving in Paris for a state visit. His counterpart, Jacques Chirac, intends to greet him with a big bear hug and even halt all the traffic in the busy downtown area.  Katsav's visit will not spur France into changing its policies on Israel and the Middle East. In the long run, the future of French-Israel relations will be determined by the peace process. But the powerful message that the Chirac administration is trying to pass on to the people of Israel is one that is hard to ignore. While Muslim women in France are being ordered to remove their head scarves, flags emblazoned with the Star of David are being hoisted in the streets of Paris. And symbols, as we all know, have a tendency to penetrate deeply. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040213c.htm

ISRAEL - THE WALL - Israel decided yesterday that it will not participate in World Court hearings on the legality of the country's construction of a massive barrier separating Israeli and Palestinian population centers. The hearings, requested by the UN General Assembly, are scheduled to begin Feb. 23 at The Hague, in the Netherlands.  There is no greater threat to peace than religious zealots whether they be Muslim terrorist or Zionist terrorists.  Because of the support that the United States gives Israel, these bad boys of the Middle East can do as they please while Muslims are vilified.  The truth is that Sharon is just a Hitler clone just short of the death camps in his persecution of the Palestinians.  The message of the Holocaust that has been spread like rain in America since the end of World War II has left the Israeli Jews without any understanding of their own message.  The message of the Holocaust is only applicable to Jews.  It does not apply to the Muslim Holocaust in Palestine.  If the Jews are again removed from the Holy Land (First time by the Babylonians and second time by the Romans) it will be their own fault.  The arrogance of these Zionists is every bit as dangerous to WorldPeace as al-qaeda.  Unless I am wrong, Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of Christ" should retard the Jewish influence in Washington.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040213b.htm

NUCLEAR WEAPONS - The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog says the world could be headed for destruction if it does not stop the spread of atomic weapons technology, which has become widely accessible.  In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Mohamed ElBaradei wrote yesterday that nuclear technology, once virtually unobtainable, is now available through "a sophisticated worldwide network able to deliver systems for producing material useable in weapons".  The fact is that there is enough money from the new poppy fields in Afghanistan (thank you George Bush) to fund a nuclear explosion.  The reality is that a dirty bomb is to be feared more than one that immediately kills thousands.  A dirty bomb would kill millions over the long run and put large areas out of use for a million years.  A dirty bomb over New York city that did not kill a single person immediately could render the entire city a nuclear waste dump.  Oh, I just remembered.  You do not have to even set off an explosion to liter nuclear waste in an particular area.  There are no Geiger counters placed anywhere to detect the dumping of nuclear waste on the city streets.  And hey, there is no clean up of nuclear waste.  What is the answer? Real justice.  WorldPeace through World Law.  Until there is justice in Palestine, there will never be peace in the Middle East or peace in the world.  Until imperialism in the world is replaced by justice and consideration for those who live in lesser developed countries, there will never be WorldPeace.  Hopefully, George Bush will be the last American Imperialist.  If America spent all its efforts promoting justice in the world, WorldPeace would come quickly.  But to support justice means that the United States must curb its materialism and temper it with some real human compassion.  But alas, the world is still dominated by the masculine hunter warrior mentality.  Don't look for real peace until women take there rightful place as equal members of the world society.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040213a.htm

February 12, 2004  

WOMEN - When the US began bombing Afghanistan on October 7 2001, the oppression of Afghan women was used as a justification for overthrowing the Taliban regime. Five weeks later America's first lady, Laura Bush, stated triumphantly: "Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women."  However, Amnesty International paints a rather different picture: "Two years after the ending of the Taliban regime, the international community and the Afghan transitional administration, led by President Hamid Karzai, have proved unable to protect women. The risk of rape and sexual violence by members of armed factions and former combatants is still high. Forced marriage, particularly of girl children, and violence against women in the family are widespread in many areas of the country."  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040212a.htm  The violence against women is worldwide.  It is not always dramatic but it is always present.  Look at the ruling bodies of the world and ask yourself why women do not equal men in these religious and political bodies.  Part of the reason is that in the Jewish Book of Genesis, God blames Eve for the fall of man and dictates, according to the Jewish mantra "women must serve man".  Oh yes, the Muslims and Christians incorporated God's words into their holy scripts as well.  http://www.johnworldpeacegalleries.com/worldpeace-062.htm

BUSH - The Weekend Warrior - The White House was forced into an embarrassing defense of President George W. Bush's Vietnam record on Tuesday night amid growing signs of a conservative backlash against his administration and the conduct of the war in Iraq.  In an attempt to lay to rest growing controversy over the president's military service, the White House released 30-year-old personnel records which officials claim prove he had fulfilled his duties for his country.  Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction, the Saddam/Osama link, Saddam trying to buy nuclear materials out of Africa, that the oil in Iraq would pay for the war, that he would not let the poppy fields return to Afghanistan and the money used for terrorism.  So what about his lying about his Air National Guard duty? He lied then.  He lies now.  And most of the people bought his lies and now he is the President of Liars.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040212b.htm

ISRAEL - Murder and Duck policy - Police set up roadblocks at the entrances to Jerusalem, while public transportation security personnel were ordered to be extra watchful. Suicide bombers have frequently struck on public buses, causing high death tolls.  Also Thursday, the IDF announced that troops in the last month had uncovered and destroyed a Hamas laboratory for creating Qassam rockets, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. The six Hamas activists involved in running the lab were arrested, the military said. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040212c.htm  Well Israel does the math in that they enter the Palestinian camps, murder and maim and then prepare for the suicide attacks that will come.  Then they scream to the world to come and look at the murderous terrorists.  And on and on it goes.  The solution is real simple.  Someone has to quit shooting.  The Jews are not satisfied with the land that they were given after World War II.  Land from which Palestinians were removed the same way the Jews were removed from Europe.  The differences are of degree only: Nazi Swastika or Star of David.  At least Hitler was not trying to set up a dictatorial theocracy.

TONY BLAIR - BUSH CLONE - The prime minister told the House of Commons that he was unaware at the time of the war debate that the 45-minute piece of intelligence referred only to battlefield rather than strategic weapons. Let me (Crispin Black) list just some of the procedures which must have been executed incorrectly to allow him to be kept in such a state of ignorance at such a crucial time on such a crucial matter when other members of his cabinet (Cook and Hoon) appear to have been in the know. One: neither Cook nor Hoon saw fit to tell the prime minister, for whatever reason.  Two: the intelligence was not considered important or accurate enough to explain to him in detail - even though it appears in the September 24 dossier at least three times and in the prime minister's own foreword. Three: Blair had to rely on verbal briefings from the JIC chairman and others, who told him about the 45 minutes bit of the intelligence but omitted to mention that it referred only to battlefield weapons, and neither the prime minister nor any of the brilliant young staff asked the obvious question.  Four: the original SIS report mentioned the 45-minute time, but made no attempt to distinguish between strategic and battlefield weapons - even though the service was aware that the report was about battlefield munitions. Five: the prime minister's daily written intelligence brief from the Cabinet Office included the 45 minutes point but not the crucial distinction between battlefield and strategic weapons. And not a single member of the Cabinet Office assessments staff (the most brilliant intelligence analysts in the UK) spotted this or thought it important. This is not the case of a few guardsmen out of step or a few trumpeters out of tune. This is like holding trooping the colour but forgetting to tell the Queen the correct date. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040212d.htm  So goes Bush.  So goes Tony.  So went Bill.  So went Tony.

SAME SEX MARRIAGES - Massachusetts lawmakers were expected to convene for a second day on Thursday to decide whether to amend the state constitution and ban same-sex marriages.  A secular union is given legality by the state; the sex of the union parties is irrelevant.  In the religious union of marriage, the partners must be of the opposite sex.  Marriage? is more about property in a secular union than a blessing by God almighty in a religious marriage.  In America, there is supposed to be a separation of church and state but this issue proves how hard it is for good Christians to refrain from inserting their vision of God's will on a democratic society.  The problem is that the church has never been democratic. http://www.presbyterians-r-us.com  The church is a facade of democracy but the reality is that all church bureaucracies are preacher's unions. Generally, the ministers are members of the union not members of the congregations.  And as one bishop said recently, "Heresy is better than Schism."  And that means that the preservation of the religious bureaucracy takes priority over the message of Jesus.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040212e.htm

CLONING - In producing the most advanced human embryo clones so far, scientists in South Korea have made stem cell therapy seem tantalizingly close to reality.  The potential benefits of stem cell technology are absolutely huge, as these cells can divide into any tissue type in the body.  Theoretically at least, they could be used to treat patients with a wide range of conditions including - to name but a few - Alzheimer?s disease, spinal injuries, diabetes and heart conditions.  When so many patients could be cured of chronic and even degenerative disease, it is easy to see why this controversial technology is being driven forward at such a rapid pace, despite the moral and ethical concerns of experimenting with human embryos.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040212f.htm  The Koreans just cloned twenty human embryos. Human cloning is a reality.  Man has become God.  It was God who created man, and if you believe in an alien seeding of the planet earth, God was a spaceman.  It says in Genesis that God took the clay and made man.  Well clay is what geneticists use.  And it says God made Eve from Adam's rib.  So does that mean that God took Adam's DNA and modified it to create a female?  Science is well on the way to taking over God's role as creator.  In the name of medicine and the curing of diseases and maybe even immortality, we are moving toward creating sub human and specialized humans to do moronic human tasks.  The time is coming when human beings are going to be modified and cloned for the sole purpose of space travel. (Hey what about cloning little men to ride horses at the track. I guess rules would have to be promulgated dictating length of arms, legs, size of brain and so on.)  In the meantime, the human society tries to come out of the religious dark ages and emerge into the Third Millennium where the distinct between God and science takes on new definitions.  The time is soon coming when the religious bureaucracies are going to have to release their control of the human population as it moves to a direct relationship with God and understands that spirituality lies within oneself and without the need of religious bureaucrats who have for millennia foisted ignorance and war on the human society.  A New Age has begun.  Without religious bureaucrats, it will not be a dark age.

February 11, 2004

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AND GEORGE BUSH -  Little George is going on the offensive today against nuclear weapons and the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency failed to do its job as evidenced by Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Iran.  George is a one trick pony with his weapons of mass destruction song and dance.  George lied to the American public and lied to the world and now hundreds of Americans are dead along with thousands of Iraqis.  It is funny that George is now reaching out to the UN, that world body he told to go to hell last year.  The U N and France and Germany and Russia refused to follow little George.  Hans Blix said there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found.  But little George with his side kick DICK Cheney were hell bent to go to war.  And to war they went.  For the first time ever, America invaded a sovereign nation without provocation.  Little George has brought down the credibility of America with his cowboy imperialism.  Well George, what goes round comes round and it sure looks like your boat is sinking; and fast.  You can fool some of the people some of the time and a lot of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people for a long time.  Bye Bye George.  So went the father.  So goes the son.  It was the lies, stupid.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040211f.htm

DEATH PENALTY - DNA -  In California the DA's office is still fearful of being caught at being wrong.  The prosecutors have fought DNA tests to help prove the guilt or innocence of Kevin Cooper.  The DA says they are sure the DNA tests will prove his guilt.  Well the proof is in the DNA not in what some DA believes.  The reality is that justice in America is flawed.  The reality is that for the most part the conservatism of the court is malignant. The court's claim to simply uphold the law as passed by the legislature and like Pilate wash their hands of any wrong doing.  So it is now.  So it was when the Constitution of the United States clearly claimed that all men were created equal and the courts refused to apply the law of the land to slavery; and to equality for women.  Check the DNA.  If it does not prove Kevin Cooper is innocent, then execute him.  The reality is that we are all handed a death sentence when we are born.  We are not taking anything away from Kevin that God did not program in, if in fact he is guilty.  All society does is shorten one's tenure on the planet.  There is no death of the spirit and life is a privilege reserved for those who refrain from the impulse to kill other human beings in one's society.  Murdering foreigners in a war doesn't count.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040211e.htm

LITTLE GEORGE BUSH - MILITARY RECORD  -  I find it interesting that people are questioning George's military record in the Air National Guard in Houston back in the early seventies.  This is something about which I have some personal knowledge.  I am almost 56 and I graduated from High School in 1966 in Houston. The Vietnam War was heating up and I knew that in four years I would graduate from the University of Houston and be drafted.  So I thought about joining the reserves.  Not the Army reserves or one of the other services, but the Air National Guard.  The deal was that you go to active duty for six months and then one weekend a month and two weeks each summer for six years.  The Air National Guard was right above the Coast Guard as far as military duty during that period.  Daddy George was my congressman when I was a kid so I was familiar with him and I knew that his son was in the Air National Guard.  It was something the recruiters talked about.  I went out to Ellington Air Force base and put in my application in late 1966 or early 1967 knowing that I had a good chance of getting in within the next four years.  The unit was lax.  Everyone knew it.  And there was a lot of talk about the Air National Guard because every young buck like myself was facing military duty in Vietnam.  Sometime in 1968, if I remember correctly, I got the call from the recruiter and he said they had a place for me.  I decided that I did not want to be associated with such a unit because too many of my friends were doing real military duty.  My father and uncles had all served in the U S Army as well as most of my neighbors who served in various services in World War II.  I also did not think I could deal with one weekend a month for six years.  It just seemed like too long a commitment.  So I told the Air National Guard no.  (In early 1970, I signed the papers for Marine Corps OCS but was rejected in the summer because OCS at that time was open only to those who had engineering degrees and I had a political science degree.  In October 1970, I was drafted into the Army.  Two weeks later the Marines called and said they had a place for me in the March 1971 OCS class and they said I could discharge from the Army if I signed up.  I said no.  I had already begun my military career and I would stay in the Army.  I was trained for a year to go to Vietnam as an infantry sergeant.  When it came time to ship out, thank God, I was shipped to the Southern European Task Force (NATO) in Vicenza, Italy mostly due to Nixon's commitment to end the Vietnam war.)  At any rate, regardless of what the records say, you can bet that George missed a lot of duty.  Especially in 1972 and 1973 when the Vietnam was coming to an end.  For most guys, not attending guard duty meant going into the military full time.  But in 1972 and 1973 the chances were slim that you would be sent off to full time military duty.  And more especially if you were the son of daddy George.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040211d.htm

IRAQ - SUICIDE BOMBERSA suicide bomber blew up a truckload of explosives Tuesday outside a police station south of Baghdad, killing up to 53 people and wounding scores, including would-be Iraqi recruits lined up to apply for jobs.  The attack was followed by less than a day later by an explosion at an army recruiting centre in Baghdad that killed between 20 and 25 Iraqis, a coalition spokesman said. That blast took place about 7:40 a.m. Wednesday in central Baghdad, less than two kilometres from the Green Zone, the high-security neighbourhood where the U.S.-led coalition has its headquarters, the spokesman said.  Well the worst case scenario regarding civil war in Iraq due to George's destabilizing invasion is coming to fruition. Everyday things are getting worse as the terrorist continue to organize and there seems to be no end to those who are willing to die in the glory of God's work.  Iraq is the undeniable tar baby of George and DICK.  Two arrogant fellows who determined that they were above international law.  The problem is not what is going to happen to George, the problem is what the international community is going to have to do to clean up his mess.  And the even bigger question is whether the American tax payer is going to have to pay for this war for the next two generations.  The Iraqi war was the mother of all arrogance.  The scariest thing is that George got so many Americans to support him.  Thank God, this is not Germany in the late 1920's.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040211c.htm

DICK Cheney - AND THE CIA - Well it looks more and more like old DICK Cheney is the one who gave the word to leak Valeria Plame's name as a CIA operative.  Can you imagine the arrogance that took?  And then there is the Halliburton fiasco regarding over pricing of gas in IRAQ.  A parallel grand jury is looking into the forgery of a document that surfaced in Italy before the war, purporting to show Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Niger. Despite doubts over its authenticity, the document underpinned US and British claims, since proved groundless, that Saddam was reconstituting his nuclear weapons programme.  A third grand jury in Washington is looking into allegations that a Halliburton subsidiary paid $180m in bribes to secure lucrative contracts to build a gas plant in Nigeria, at the time Mr Cheney was chief executive, from 1995 to 2000.  If you take the time to look, you will find that more than one of Dubya's major corporate supporters like Ken Lay of Enron and Tony Sanchez, who laundered Mexican Mafia money through his Texas S & L, are corrupt men of the first degree.  All those corporate dollars spent to get a green light from George to run up the deficit to record proportions, invade Iraq and Afghanistan who now has bumper crops of Opium that fund terrorism worldwide, and who is pushing to allow his timber buddies to cut down every remnant of our ancient forests.  But all this is beyond the eighth grade intellect of the majority of Americans who always vote for the best commercial.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040211b.htm

THE PASSION OF CHRIST - Well here is a movie that is going to have ripple effects for a long time into the future.  We have Mel Gibson making a movie that is close to a literal translation of the Bible.  A movie that portrays Jews as the murderers of Christ.  A movie that takes the Bible literally if not politically correct in this day and time.  The movie will have an anti-semitic backlash.  And Jews in America are going to take on a lower profile.  Europeans have already said that the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East are the Israelis.  That old anti-semitism of Hitler's Europe is still alive and well.  The movie is going to bring a lot of people to Christ.  Most of whom will lose their enthusiasm as soon as they are confronted with the religious bureaucracies and their corruption of the teachings of Jesus for their own preservation.  Jesus had nothing but contempt for the Jewish religious bureaucrats and there is little doubt but the same would apply to the Christian religious bureaucrats of today.  Some things never change.  Buddha fought the Hindu religious bureaucrats as well.  And all those bloody wars that these religious bureaucrats have foisted on the world society is horrorific.  All in the name of God, the corrupt men of the cloth have sought to control human destiny for their own purposes.  Not to mention the Christian Dark Ages in Europe which was not unlike what the Taliban tried in Afghanistan and the Muslims tried in Iran.  And yes the Jews are still trying to set up a theocracy in Jerusalem.  In the name of Yahweh, they feel compelled to follow Joshua's lead and murder all the tribes in the land of Canaan and blow up the Dome of the Rock so they can rebuild Solomon's Temple for the third time.  Yes, Passion is a good word because that is what will burn for the next year or so.  But in the end, the high that this movie will bring to new born Christians will culminate in depression several years from now when those new Christians are abused by the Christian bureaucrats who run the various denominations in the name of God but for their own personal aggrandizement.  http://www.presbyterians-r-us.com  Think of all the fresh money that is going to come to all the billion dollar Jesus shows on the TV.  Yes, now is the time to buy stock in Jesus, and by Christmas the crash will be near at hand.  The failure of the fundamentalist Christians to bring on the second coming of Jesus as we began the new millennium hurt their cause.  What we will see with "The Passion of Christ" will be the final flameout of Christianity.  In the Book of Revelation, it says that in the end times the church will be in chaos and from my perspective it looks like we are already there.  The Pope and the other heads of the Christian bureaucracies have made millions in the name of Jesus who had nothing.  I will never stop laughing at how many rank and file Christians do not ask the simple question as to how these men who run these billion dollar Jesus shows can accumulate so much personal wealth talking about a man who had nothing.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040211a.htm  The truth is often paradoxical.

February 10,  2004

IRAQ - DEMOCRACY In other countries that have recently made the transition to democracy - from South Africa to the Philippines and Argentina - this transition between regimes is precisely when the most devastating betrayals took place: backroom deals to transfer illegitimate debts, commitments made to maintain "macro-economic continuity". Again and again, newly liberated people arrive at the polls only to discover that there is precious little left to vote for.  But in Iraq, it's not too late to block this process. The key is to confine the mandate of any transitional government to matters directly related to elections: the census, security, protection for women and minorities.  And here's the really surprising thing: it could actually happen. Why? Because all Washington's reasons for going to war have evaporated; the only excuse left is President Bush's deep desire to bring democracy to the Iraqi people. Of course, this desire is as much a lie as the rest - but it is a lie that we can use. We can harness Bush's weakness on Iraq to demand that the democracy lie become a reality, that Iraq be truly sovereign: unshackled by debt, unencumbered by inherited contracts, unscarred by American military bases, and with full control over its resources, from oil to reparations.  Washington's hold on Iraq is growing weaker by the day, while the pro-democracy forces inside the country grow stronger. Genuine democracy could come to Iraq, not because Bush's war was right, but because it has been proven so desperately wrong.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040210c.htm

RELIGION Across Europe, governments are grappling with dramatic demographic changes that have the potential to transform their culture. More than 12 million Muslims live in Western Europe, and some cities are on track to be majority Muslim by 2020.  The challenge, sociologists and political experts agree, is to integrate Muslim residents into secular societies when their devout culture and tradition recognize no separation of religion and state.  That being said by the author of the following article, the truth is that there is really no such thing a secular society.  Even in France, there is restriction on religion's involvement in state affairs but the original concept was about problems between Protestants and Catholics and other Christian denominations.  The hope for humanity is a world democratic and secular society.  And through immigration, the countries of the rest of the world which are homogenized with regards to race and religion are now beginning to understand what America is all about.  America has been a melting pot of nations and religions and races from the beginning.  America for all the discredit that imperialists like George Bush has brought upon it is founded on a workable concept of WorldPeace through law.  If the high ideals of the U S Constitution can be seeded in the world society, there will be peace and WorldPeace.  There are no religious wars inside the United States and there is no reason that could not be the case in the world society.  For true democracy to prevail, there must be secular law applied equally to all human beings.  And globally there must be an understanding that there is nothing more divisive that religion: Religion is not God but which is a bureaucracy of men allegedly acting in the name of God.  The reality is that if one's religion makes one hates his or her neighbor, that person would be better off without any religion at all.  Understand, I do not advocate rejecting God or spirituality.  I advocate the end of religious bureaucracies and their constant wars on each other. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040210b.htm

RELIGION - HYPOCRISY  Heresy is better than schism, the Episcopal bishop of Virginia said yesterday in a speech that gently chided church conservatives for imperiling the unity of the country's largest diocese over the consecration of the denomination's first homosexual bishop last November.  "If you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy," said the Rt. Rev. Peter J. Lee to 500 Episcopalians meeting for the annual diocesan council at the Hyatt Regency in Reston.  "For as a heretic, you are only guilty of a wrong opinion," Bishop Lee said, quoting Presbyterian scholar James McCord. "As a schismatic, you have torn and divided the body of Christ. Choose heresy every time."  What is being said here is that the primary objective of any religious bureaucracy is to first preserve the bureaucracy and secondly to spread the message.  What the reverend is saying is when the goals of the religious bureaucracy conflict with the teachings of Jesus, you must chose the preservation of the bureaucracy.  At the heart of this philosophy is what is wrong with all religions.  In the name of the bureaucracy, not in the name of God, Christians make war on non-Christians (like the native Americans), Muslims make war on Hindus and vice versa and Buddhists have had their share of religious wars as well.  What surprises me here is that one of these religious bureaucrats would actually speak this truth.  Of course to the average religionists, he or she will not understand any of this.  I guess that is why the reverend spoke so publicly.  He knows the members of most religions think the leaders of their religion are actually men of God as opposed to devious liars and hypocrits of a particular religious stripe. PoliticalCommentary2004/e040210d.htm

SPACE EXPLORATION - MARS - It is good to read about something positive.  It is good to see that in space exploration, especially with regards to the International Space Station, there is an example of international cooperation as opposed to divisive religious wars and imperialistic wars and human rights violations and war and hunger and the abuse of women worldwide.  The space programs of the sixties were challenges that brought forth inspiration and hope.  There is nothing on the face of the planet that brings people together as a citizen of a world society.  But in space there is hope.  There is an example of cooperation that does not exist on the earth.  In the stars, there is hope, there is the potential of peace and WorldPeace.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040210a.htm Consider for a moment that the International Space Station should be named "The WorldPeace Star"   http://www.johnworldpeace.com/esswp.htm

February 9, 2004  

THE SUCCESS OF SANCTIONS One of the things that needs to be considered in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq is that the sanctions imposed on Saddam apparently worked. There were no weapons of mass destruction.  They also worked in Libya.  The best way to control any country in this Millennium is through economic sanctions.  Just cut the offending country off economically from the rest of the world and even though it is slower and less dramatic than military intervention, in the long run the goal of compliance is accomplished without any suffering outside the offending country.  It is real easy to simply send a message to comply and act civilized or suffer economic deprivation which pressurizes the leaders of any country from the grassroots within the country.  People everywhere want a share of the world's wealth and increased standard of living.  That is the carrot of compliance that needs to be applied worldwide.  And it is going to be best applied by a democratic and empowered United Nations.  The problem for America is that empowering the United Nations requires the giving up of unilateral imperialistic wars for the plundering of countries by American Corporations.  But in the long run, if the world prospers, the United States prospers.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040209e.htm 

THE CULT OF IRAQI INTELLIGENCE GATHERING The race is on to see who is going to take the fall for the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.  All the intelligence gathering agencies in America and England are now on the defense due to the intent of George and Tony to shift the blame to the the CIA and MI6.  The fallout from George's war is growing and will probably continue to grow.  When two of the most powerful world leaders tell such gigantic and fantastic lies to their citizens, it shows that power at the top can be devastatingly corrupt.  Fortunately, you can't fool all the people all the time.  Fortunately, there is enough of the democratic ideals alive in America and Britain to control little tin gods like Bush and Blair.  I have to laugh at all this finger pointing.  The truth is that we had Hans Blix on the ground in Iraq and he was making progress and he said there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction.  This is so obvious that it is hidden.  In the build up to war, there was no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction.  The reports of Hans Blix was against the needed lies of the CIA and MI6.  Tony was really just a tag along.  The war in Iraq was George's war.  George told the U N to go to hell.  Told Russia, Germany and France to go to hell. Lied to the American public and started his war because the longer that Hans Blix was on the ground the harder it was going to be for George to invade Iraq.  And for what?  For DICK Cheney's company Halliburton to make money, money, money. The bigger the lie, the bigger the fall.  The real intelligence that needs to be examined is that of the American and British public.  Every American and Brit that supported the war must now examine why they did so.   PoliticalCommentary2004/e040209d.htm

AFGHANISTAN DRUG TRADE Events in the world as well as events in life are often paradoxical and they are paradoxical because we live in a very complex world society.  The nature of the entire universe is complexity and diversity.  George Bush played world cowboy and went into Afghanistan intending to kill Osama bin Laden.  Well as of yet bin Laden is still alive.  Bush got rid of the Taliban who were one of the worst examples of religious bureaucracy gone mad.  If the administration of God is through extreme religious fundamentalist, then we will return to the Dark Ages of Europe where everything stagnates.  With the Taliban gone, the growing of opium as a cash crop has exploded.  And the money from the drug trade out of Afghanistan is funding terrorism worldwide.  This is something that you are not going to read about too much.  It shows that in Afghanistan just like in Iraq, George Bush is a dangerous idiot with arrogance.  It is said that $300 million are needed to curb the drug trade in Afghanistan.  But what is that money to be used for: to pay Afghanis not to farm opium.  To refrain from breaking the law. And how is that going to integrate with NATO trading stability in the region in exchange for allowing the opium to be grown. The moral of the story is that one should not destroy something vital like a political system unless one intends to replace it with something better.  In this case, the revenge of 911 has spawned a renewed drug trade in Afghanistan which has in turn increased terrorism worldwide and not reduced it.  It is like stomping on a pregnant spider just to see hundreds of baby spiders scurry off.  The mother is dead but her progeny escape to continue the mischief of the mother.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040209c.htm

SUDAN - It is a sad truth, illustrated almost daily, that the global village tends to be strangely selective with its bouts of conscience. Some humanitarian catastrophes are beamed into millions of homes and reported on the front pages. Certain conflicts are bemoaned by political leaders and debated at the United Nations. Yet in other places, disasters of war, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal slaughters seem to elude the world's attention.  So it is in Sudan, where atrocities are being committed by the ruling National Islamic Front in the region of Darfur, near the border with Chad. During a visit to the region in December, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's Special Envoy for Humanitarian Needs in Sudan, Eric Vraalsen, said he was shocked by what he saw of conditions for internally displaced people and refugees in Chad. In the intervening two months, the situation has only become worse. Although Sudan's central government denies access to relief organizations, a tidal wave of human suffering looms ahead.  The dictatorship in Khartoum is responsible for driving more than 700,000 people from their homes. UN staff members working on this humanitarian calamity fear that 3 million more, defined as war-affected civilians, are at imminent risk. Estimates of the number already killed run as high as 30,000, and, with agricultural production brought to a halt, mass starvation may soon accompany genocidal massacres, death by exposure, and disease.  So we have to ask ourselves where is that great humanitarian George "the cowboy" Bush.  Oh, I forgot, no oil in the Sudan: just mud people and they aren't Christians either are they George.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040209b.htm

HANS BLIX ON WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Well maybe everyone had it wrong according to Mr. Kay but Hans Blix did not have the allegations of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq wrong.  Mr. Blix had it right.  There was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction because there were no weapons of mass destruction.  But George and Tony wanted a war because they licked their chops over the 12 billion barrels of oil reserves under the sands of Iraq.   Well the WMD are not there, Iraq is moving closer to civil war, and the oil is just not coming out of Iraq to pay for George's war. Oh, yes, there are those 500 plus dead Americans, 5,000 plus wounded, thousands of dead Iraqis (who are no longer officially counted) and tens of thousands of American families who have to adjust to their dead and wounded children. (But not George's children.)  The world is a dangerous place when the population votes for the best political commercial.  Ignorance in America, due to the deplorable educational system produced George Bush, President of the United States of America.  God help us.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040209a.htm

February 8, 2004  

WORLD ECONOMICS - Due to the increasing trade deficits and budget deficits, the U S dollar has begun to decline and the G7 are concerned about how to keep the decline from spinning out of control.  In a word, the whole world economy could be moving toward a world wide depression if the U S dollar continues to decline.  Of course all this is beyond Dubya who thinks that the U S can act unilaterally in the world without repercussion.  George is an idiot who does not realize that the world is daily becoming more and more economically integrated and that unilateral moves by the richest nation on the earth can bring the entire world economy into chaos; as in depression.  What is even worse is that all this is beyond the average Bush supporter to comprehend.  Due to George's educational policy of keeping the citizens ignorant for purposes of manipulation, the average citizen who operates on an eight grade education just can't see how tax cuts and imperialistic wars cause budget deficits which cause the U S dollar to slide which causes U S jobs to go overseas and causes unemployment in the U S.  George just appealed to the averages citizen's hearing that tax cuts were good even when deficits are the biggest in history and imperialistic wars make us all feel patriotic.  Hey George, it is the world economy you are fornicating with, Stupid.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040208a.htm

ISRAEL - Word is that Sharon wants to dismantle Israeli settlements because he has finally come to realize that they are causing never ending friction and they are hard to defend.  Here is the Palestinian problem in a nutshell. 1948, after years of Jewish terrorism the state of Israel is carved out by the UN.  Over million Palestinians flee fearing more Jewish terrorism.  These Palestinians now live in refugee camps in neighboring countries and live in extreme poverty in some cases.  In 1967, Israel's neighbors try to wipe out Israel in a war and get their rear ends kicked by a smarter and better equipped military.  The Jews decide to keep the territory they control at the end of the war, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza strip.  The Jews try to settle the occupied lands and are subject to constant terrorism.  Of course the U N does little or nothing mainly because of the huge Jewish lobby in Washington and the Jews allying themselves with Christian fundamentalist who believe that Jesus will return to a Jewish Jerusalem.  Great effort was being put forth to create a peace and most of the killing was stopped in September 2000.  But then Sharon made a visit to the wailing wall on September 28, 2000, and defiled some Muslim holy ground and terrorism returned in full force.  Sharon then becomes prime minister and for the last three years has traded blows with the Muslims with no end in sight.  

Now a couple of things have changed.  One, and this is important, Jesus did not return on January 1, 2000 or January 1, 2001, and so all the rabble rousing the fundamentalist did about the Second Coming of Jesus came to nothing.  Second, from a secular point of view, George is about to pay the price all liars pay and be removed from office.  There were no weapons of mass destruction.  There were no weapons of mass destruction.  Three, Sharon is about to go to jail for funneling money to his son in corrupt political deals.  Sort like Mr. Cheney and Halliburton where I am sure he will be returning next year.  Four, a more global problem, Jews in Israel are being out bred by the Muslims and in a couple of decades will be a minority in their own land.  How funny.  Sort of like George's new Mexican immigration policy that is going to allow the Mexican to reclaim the United States without firing a shot.

So what is the future of Israel.  Well if Americans are tired of the Israelis and Palestinians and their war.  They are even more sick of it since they have recently learned that those that died in Iraq, died based on a lie by the President.  And they have realized that they could be sucked into a war in Israel and the rest of the region.  Plus a majority of the Europeans have stated that Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040208b.htm

IRAQ - The Arab League has issued a draft of a report that shows the 22 nations of the League believe that U S policies in Iraq are going to destabilize the region by empowering the Kurds and the Shiites in Iraq which will have repercussions among those groups in neighboring countries.  This is more intelligence that George refused to consider before he launched his imperial war on Iraq without provocation.  The average Joe and Jane on the streets of America are finding out that the President, who the Republican Supreme Court elected, is about as smart as a rock.  All George has done in Iraq is to stir up an ant bed.  The problem is that he did not care about the repercussions: he could not see beyond the Iraqi black gold: which by the way is not paying for the war as Dubya promised.  It is only lining the pockets of Halliburton, DICK Cheney's company.  There is already a fuse burning in Israel, the Kurds could demand their own nations which would include parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey and the Iraqi Shiites could call out to their fellow religionists in Iran which already has a backward religion based government that promotes the idea that God is anti-democracy. Stay tuned to the George Bush world wide dog and pony show, now playing in the Middle East.   PoliticalCommentary2004/e040208c.htm

IRAN - The President of Iran buckled and has decided to hold elections even though the religionist who really run the country disqualified about 2,000 legitimate candidates due to their liberalism.  There is nothing more undemocratic that religious fundamentalist of any stripe.  There will never be peace or WorldPeace without world law and democracy.  The sooner that religion is purged from the political process the sooner the world will be at peace.  The religionists all talk about peace even as they are responsible for some of the bloodiest wars in the last 2,000 years.  They all promise a messiah of some kind in the future who will bring peace. In the meantime, they say that peace without the messiah is impossible and the best thing to do is let the religious bureaucrats run things.  There is nothing more corrupt than a self righteous religious bureaucrat who claims God inspires his abuse of power and anti-democratic dictates.  God is not religion.  Religion is just a bureaucracy of men who only give lip service to democracy.  PoliticalCommentary2004/e040208d.htm

February 7, 2004  

Well it seems that Bush's lies are coming back to haunt him.  As each day goes by it seems that all those who voted for Bush have seen the truth that he is just a liar.  A lot of Americans have died and a lot more have been crippled for life due to the imperialistic arrogance of  Dubya Bushit.  It seems the swift turn around and rise of John Kerry was based on a shift away from Bush when Mr. Kay said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  Nothing.  Hopefully America has learned a valuable lesson.  Hopefully Dubya will be sent back to his farm and maybe just maybe John Kerry will take a stand against the Jewish arrogance in the Middle East.  Maybe Sharon sees the writing on the wall, that Bush may well be a one term president.  Maybe good people will take a stand against the Nazi/Communist wall the Jews have built  between them and the Palestinians. I also find it interesting that things have been relatively quiet in Israel but today Sharon sent a helicopter to kill one of the Jihad leaders and got a 12 year old boy as a bonus.  I am sure we will see another suicide bomber next week.  So Sharon trades one life for probably twenty or thirty innocent Israelis.  And it seems that the wall only protects Jews from Muslims and not Muslims from helicopters.

In the meantime, we all have to marvel at the two rovers on Mars.  It seems so strange to go to the internet and get a front row seat at the Mars show of shows.  We truly have to marvel at our science.  To send two golf cart size rovers to explore Mars and send back pictures as if the rover was in our back yard is just incredible.  Somewhere out on that desolate planet I feel sure that the skeleton of some living creature is going to be found.  And when that happens, our world will shrink as we contemplate life all over the universe and religion goes into crisis as its exclusive philosophy of a prejudicial God is seen as the lie that it is. 

January 17, 2004  Bush's war in Iraq is more and more an undeniable fiasco.  The war was promoted on the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that there was a link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.  Further, we now find that the Iraqi oil industry is so outdated and subject to sabotage that there will be no significant oil revenues for reconstruction.  In addition, it looks like the Kurds in Northern Iraq are going to demand an independent state which is going to create problems in Turkey, Syria and __ who have significant Kurdish populations.  But most important of all, as of today, we have lost 500 American soldiers since the war began.  That is 500 families who will never see their father, sons, brothers again.  And then there are the 5000 (my estimation) more crippled and maimed Americans who were not killed but whose life will never be the same.  And no doubt these men and women will be soon forgotten by congress and left without needed services at the Veterans Administration.  Five hundred dead are enough to demand yet another war memorial in Washington.  The only good that is going to come out of Bush's imperialist invasion of Iraq is the hope that Americans will not be as easily deluded by a war mongering mentally deficient sociopathetic politician who is supported by the individuals who run corporate America and who hope that they too will be able to steal from the American public as has Halliburton (DICK Cheney's ex-employer) with regards to its criminal overcharging for gasoline in Iraq.  WorldPeace not World Peace.

On another subject, it makes me laugh that Bush is now legalizing illegal Mexicans, visiting the Martin Luther King grave uninvited, and promoting a Kennedy like plan for space exploration.  Bush is the most uncreative common stick in the mud that has been the President in a long time.  The only enthusiasm that he has is for playing commander and chief of the world's most powerful military.  It really all comes down to putting on a flight suit and boarding a jet fighter and landing on an aircraft carrier to announce the end of the war in Iraq.  Well we all know that the end of the war was a muddle headed pipe dream of the son of a former President who himself was uninspiring and uncreative.  I wonder how many good ole boys in American thought Bush was the son of Anheiser Bush?  WorldPeace not World Peace.

December 28, 2003  Nothing much has changed with the capture of Saddam Hussein.  What this seems to indicate is that there are probably a lot of  non Iraqi Muslims who are determined to inflict as much chaos as possible on the United States.  And what this means is that the war in Iraq could become another Vietnam.

There were no weapons of mass destruction and I have no doubt that George Bush knew it.  There is no way that our star wars technology could not detect weapons of mass destruction unless there were no weapons of mass destruction to be detected.  George Bush created the lie of weapons of mass destruction and for the first time in its history America invaded another country without provocation.

There is now a shift toward saying that regardless of the lack of weapons of mass destruction, we did the world a favor by ridding it of Saddam Hussein.  Well the truth is that there are a lot bigger rogues and villains in the world than Saddam Hussein.  But we are not going to go into Africa and stop the real genocide and religious wars that exists there.  So Bush's humanitarian leanings are very selective.

Saddam Hussein will never get a fair trial because that trial would involve a revelation of the fact that it was America and Donald Rumsfield who set Saddam up with all his weaponry because America was afraid of Iran.  No Saddam will never go to trial.  What will probably happen is that he will slip and fall on a bar of soap and break his neck in twenty places.  Think about Saddam on TV telling his truth like Jessica Lynch did.  The worst case scenario for the United States was to catch Saddam alive.  They should have blown him up in his little hidey hole and say that he committed suicide.  

All that being said, Saddam will stand side by side with Osama bin Laden as martyrs for the cause against Americans and Christianity.  The longer that Saddam is alive the more set will become his image as a martyr.  What Saddam is hoping for is a fair trial in the World Court.  He still deserves the death penalty for his crimes against humanity, but in the meantime he can indelibly write his name in the history of the Middle East.  He can become in death what he could have never become in life.

In addition, Ariel Sharon has lost his mind.  He is not only like Hitler in his treatment of the Palestinians whose land was stolen by the United Nations and given to the Zionist because the Europeans did not want the Jews to return to Europe but he is also like Stalin and his successors who built the Berlin wall.  And now the shooting of those who touch the new Israeli wall has begun.  The Jews in Israel have learned nothing from their history. Their belligerence based on their sacred myth of being God's chosen people caused them to be disbursed by the Babylonians and then by the Romans.  Now the Europeans have said in a recent poll that Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East.  

Not only that, the Palestinians in Israel are beginning to breed themselves into the majority.  So like the United States whose population of illegal Mexicans is threatening its racial make up, so the Israelis may in the next fifty years simply be out bred by the Palestinians and the land of Canaan will be forever absorbed into the Islamic world.

The neo conservatives in the Bush administration are pushing their unilateralist world view which is a threat to human beings all over the world and consequently a threat to peace and WorldPeace everywhere.  England long ago learned that empires cannot be long maintained.  

I think that it is laughable that George Bush has determined to cast himself as a humanitarian regarding his actions in Iraq.  I do not think any governor of any state has allowed as many executions as did Bush when he was governor of Texas.  The Europeans acknowledge the corruption in all judicial systems and do not trust it with terminating the life of anyone.

The times they are a changing.  But as things look right now, Bush has the money to fill the televisions with more lies and slick commercials to tell the eighth grade mentality of American citizens that black is white and white is black and that fascism is not such a bad thing.

The only hope that the Democrats of unseating Bush is that the Iraqi resistance will become more organized and inflict heavy causalities on our soldiers and continued chaos such that Bush has to turn over Iraq to the United Nations and get America out of Iraq.  Short of that, no current Democrat is going to unseat the Bushman.

But then again there is the curse of presidents elected in years ending with zero.  Other than Reagan who barely escaped with his life, there is a long line of presidents who were elected in a zero year and died in office.  Did Reagan break the curse?  He did not die in office yet the great man is now little more than a vegetable.  There are things that are worse than death.

December 19, 2003  The Zionist in Israel continue on the road of intransigence and the ridiculous belief that they are going to be able to wipe the Palestinians off the face of the earth the same way Joshua was instructed by God to go into the land of Canaan and kill everyone.  The biggest impediment to peace in the Middle East is Ariel Sharon.  The American press will not say it very often but it was Ariel Sharon who in September 2000, visited the wailing wall and successfully ended the tense peace that existed between Israelis and Palestinians.  Now he is about to build a communist type wall around Israel.  This is so stupid it defies beleif. It shows the exclusionary thinking of a self righteous people.  

Unfortunately for Americans and fortunately for the Zionist, they contribute heavily to U S politicians to insure they have the support of the American President regardless of who he is.  They also play up to the Christian fundamentalist even in their religious arrogance.  The Jews rejected Christ but they never make an issue of it.  That would be suicidal.  Without the Christian fundamentalist coupled with large contributions to political candidates, Israel would have to quit it terroristic Nazi tactics toward the Palestinians.

If you want to get the Christian fundamentalist and Zionist at each others throat, just ask the Christians if Jesus will return as a Jew or a Christian.  Or will he return as a Jew and convert to Christianity.  According to the fundamentalist Christians you have to be baptized in the name of Jesus to win your place in their heaven.  Well Jews don't believe that.  So I guess to the most conservative Christian fundamentalist believe the Jews are going to the Christian hell.

Well virtually this whole argument goes right over the heads of the vast majority of Christians.  They have no idea what I am talking about.  The Christians will never accept a Jewish messiah any more than they will accept one from any other religion.  The Christian religion survives and thrives on the premise that they have the true religion and the one true savior.  Until Christ returns, the Zionist and the Christians will tolerate each other.  But if a credible messiah appears in either religion, there will be the mother of all religious crisis and new holy wars.

Of course the Buddhist and the Muslims and Hindus who represent over half the religionist of the world will sit back smiling in the knowing that the real Matreya, Imam, Avatar is not going to appear as a Christian or a Jew.  

In the meantime, the Zionists continue to dominate the Middle East wondering why God would give them the only piece of real estate in the Middle East under which there is no oil.  God established them in the land of milk and honey, not the land of black gold.

December 17, 2003  Presently, I am fighting the two most powerful influences in human society; the courts and the church.  In both cases, we have not come close to creating systems that are above the corruption that is inherent in all human systems; that corruption being the human element.

The church is a bureaucracy which claims its authority by promoting one religious position or another.  It is an organization of men and women and not gods.  It's primary concern is the survival of the bureaucracy and only secondarily the spreading of the word of its particular patriarch.  I am locked in a battle with the Presbyterian Church and their corrupt leaders who are determined to impose their very secular anger on anyone who would challenge their ungodly manipulation of their members.  Christ had nothing positive to say about the Jewish religious bureaucrats of his day and he would have contempt for those who have become rich and powerful through the invoking of his name.

There is no doubt that were Jesus to return as a man, he would challenge the Christian religion and he would again be executed or assassinated for his heresy.  There are few things that are more dangerous to a free society than religious bureaucrats who draw their power over the people through their invocation of Christ, or Buddha or Mohammed.  These men and women of the cloth are for the most part more evil than any devil they allegedly confront.  Religious bureaucrats who have not taken a vow of poverty are a cancer on society.  Religious bureaucrats who advocate Jesus and live as corporate vp's are frauds.

I believe completely in God and experiences God's miracles daily, but I have no faith in religion to do anything but enslave the people in the name of a God whom these bureaucratic corruptors will never truly understand.

The judicial system is the secular equivalent to the sectarian bureaucracy of religionist.  The difference is that the courts are given real power over the citizenry.  The only tangible thing a religious bureaucrat can do is to take away your membership in their particular religion.  But the courts can put you in jail.

The judicial system in America is probably better than any system on the earth but it is still money driven.  Judges are just human and they are subject to the same corruptions as are their bureaucratic counterparts in every religion.

There is no justice.  There is only the perception of justice and that maintains the system.  The truth is that judges like preachers support each other no matter how great the wrong committed by one of their own.  Few are the judges who will confront a rogue within their ranks.

Jesus had contempt for the lawyers as well as the religious bureaucrats of his day.  Jesus was a revolutionary.  And because he began to awaken the masses, he was crucified.  Mohammed and Buddha also suffered at the hands of the ruling religious bureaucrats of their day.  Nothing much changes.  The religious and judicial bureaucracies are about control.  They are not about spirituality and justice.

December 16, 2003  It seems to me that capturing Saddam has overshadowed the fact that America invaded a country that did not pose a threat to Americans.  It seems to me that terrorism has increased world wide since America invaded Iraq.  It seems to me that we need to consider the precedent that America has laid in the invasion of Iraq.  The question is whether we will now begin to topple one corrupt regime after another to make the world more democratic?  Starting with those nations that have natural resources of course.

The Kyoto agreement regarding the environment is floundering.  The nations of the world want a global consciousness to manifest a material plan for the betterment of the environment.  But as per usual, money is the primary consideration.  The rich from all over the world will continue to push for the raping of the environment and the destruction of third world for the pursuit of profit seekers supported by big government.  People are too primal and ignorant to understand the larger picture regarding the deteriorating air, water and land due to industrial pollution.  

I have great concerns for the piling up of nuclear waste that will continue to contaminate large areas of the world for millions of years to come.  It is impossible to calculate the repercussions of nuclear waste to the world for the next million years.  There are alternative sources of power.

December 14, 2003  Saddam is caught this morning.   It is interesting that he did not commit suicide like Hitler.  The problem now is that Israel no longer has an excuse to have a nuclear arsenal with Saddam in custody.  ( I wonder if Saddam will use his trial to rally Arabs against America and seek out a martyrdom for himself?)  The looming question is whether Bush will move on to Iran or Syria in the near future.  Again what happens when Israel no longer has any enemies in the region?  The one thing that concerns me is that Sharon may now decide that it is time to take Arafat into custody.  Sharon is going to have to act soon to set the boundaries in Israel because soon there are not going to be any excuses for him to continue to murder Palestinians.

November 16, 2003

The dead begin to accumulate in small piles
here and there in the combative world
due to terrorism and imperialism
as the New Age now begins.

The last imperialistic war plays out in Iraq
and the Jews begin to know that the land they
stole through their own terrorism in 1948
is all they will ever possess.

The president returns to associating with
his corporate friends clueless as to how to
withdraw from Iraq where the weapons of mass destruction
are little more than homemade bombs and
rocket propelled grenades.

It is time to end the war in Iraq that was built on lies.
It is time to remember again that Goliath was killed with a sling shot.

All the yellow ribbons will not bring back the dead.
All the tears of fatherless children will never give them peace.
The families of the Vietnam dead did not stand up and shout
?Not again!?

?How many times must the canon balls fly
before they're forever banned?
How many times a can a man turn his head
and pretend that he just doesn't see?
How many ears must one man have
before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take 'til he knows
that too many people have died??

WorldPeace
November 16, 2003
8:23


 

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