The Falcon and the Moon

Lunar Calendar 2010

2010-01-01T01:29:00.001+02:00

http://lunar.grellwerk.com/

CPI: CHIPA PRICE INDEX

2009-09-12T18:46:00.006+03:00

by Leo Redmond

September 12, 2009

Putting a finger on the peculiarities of the Paraguayan pulse is always a tricky affair. The pervasiveness of Paraguayan indirectness can stymie the simplest of questions. Are you going to the party tomorrow can be met with a myriad of responses.

One could make the case that cultural indirectness is indeed so profound that it is imbedded in the grammatical structure of the language. In Guarani all questions are asked in the negative form. Ndeho moa’i la fiestahape? You are not going to the party? How is one to answer this inquiry directly?

Against this cultural backdrop and the reality of widespread poverty in Paraguay, figuring out the financial and economic climate of rural Paraguayans is a daunting and delicate task indeed.

There is a way however to go about it without getting too personal, too professional and distracted by facts and figures. Beyond the traditional consumer price indexed basket of goods, such as flour, salt, oil and the like, to serve as a bench mark for measuring year on year inflation Paraguay offers a single consumer product that can get at the heart, or really the stomach, of the economic matter: chipa.

For the uninitiated, chipa, can be thought of as a corn meal Paraguayan bagel. The freshly ground corn is mixed with copious amounts of milk and lard, sprinkled with a healthy dash of anis seed, brick oven baked and served piping hot along the major paved thorough fares of Paraguay (now numbering twelve in a country the size of California) by industrious women touting massive baskets perched atop their perfectly erect heads.

For Paraguayans buying chipa is not really an option, but more a requirement born out of tradition, habit and hunger for a delicious snack. Without exception long distance buses traveling to and from the capital, stop and pick up a prearranged chipa woman, specifically at km 74 on Route Two, to sell their corn meal morsels to hungry passengers. Different bus lines work with different chipa companies, where the bus driver undoubtedly gets a free sample.

Back in 2002, a single chipa, the size of a good New York City bagel (Sara Lee supermarket bought, five to a sleeve “bagel” look a likes need not apply), sold for 1000 guaranies, the Paraguayan currency which floats freely against the dollar and is presently valued at 1 USD = 4900 guaranies. Thus, a chipa cost roughly twenty cents. To complete the comparison, a typical Paraguayan day laborer makes 25,000 guaranies or five dollars a day.

Over the last half dozen years however, while the price of chipa has remained stable at 1000 guaranies, the size has steadily decreased to that of a Thomas English Muffin. Unscientifically, this reflects two trends: the rise in the cost of raw materials (i.e. corn, lard) and the idea that 1000 guaranies is the Paraguayan psychological price akin to 99 cents.

Returning to Paraguay after a two year absence, I was eager (and hunger) to continue my chipa price index study on the rural economic situation of Paraguayans.

Traveling out to the eastern department of Caazapa, I made my requisite stop along Route Two to purchase my tasty, Paraguayan roadside snack. Driving in a private vehicle, I rolled down the window and opened my wallet, not knowing what to expect.

The woman, basket atop her head, leaned in and handed me a chipa. The size was back close to its original (2002 baseline) but the price was now double: 2000 guaranies. Being caught short, I had to reach deep into my pocket to make up the difference.

The sweetness of the snack was the same as I had remembered, but I got the feeling that over the intervening years this slice of rural Paraguayan life had become a bit more sour and hard to swallow. Chipa in hand, Paraguayans can attest to the following as they scratch out a subsistence living in an acute economic environment: the problem with “normal” is that over time everything gets worse.

LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE

The animosity between Paraguayans and Argentines is good natured but visceral. From boasts and brags of cultural superiority to a devastating 19^th century war, the Triple Alliance War 1861- 1865, that literally decimated the Paraguayan population (Argentina was helped out by Brazil and Uruguay but in their defense, Paraguay did start it, declaring war on all three), this rivalry finds its outlet in all forms of life.

Being South America, a soccer match played between the two national teams serves as unparalleled battle ground for this never ending war. Wednesday night in downtown Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital, in the form of a 2010 World Cup Qualifying Match, the latest Paraguay – Argentina skirmish was fought.

In an unprecedented turn of events, Argentina, a perennial soccer powerhouse and historically a shoe in for a World Cup berth, came to town needing a win to keep their flagging campaign alive. Paraguay, on the other hand, was in the position where a win would seal their invitation to the big dance in South Africa in June of next year. (After two years of home and away tournament play, only four out of the ten South American teams will earn berths to the World Cup). Although unknown on the world stage for anything else, in soccer circles, the small, six million strong land lock nation of Paraguay is a force to be reckoned with.

Qualifying for the World Cup at home and at the expense of their arch rivals, Argentina, were another loss would virtually eliminate them from World Cup contention was almost too much for Paraguayans to handle.

At kick off, the energy in the stadium was electrifying and the silence throughout the country was absolute. The nation had stopped, all motion suspended, everyone glued to their televisions and collectively holding their breath. Across the border in Argentina, there was no less concentration and devotion.

In this corner of the world, on that night, there was only one thing and one thing only that mattered: the best eleven men of each country playing ninety minutes of soccer to decisively determine the power, glory and right to go to the World Cup.

Despite the best of intentions and a commensurate amount of hard work, Paraguay, in terms of soccer, history and politics, is benighted and hapless. The national team, for as talented as they are, always finds away to let victory slip through their fingers, like a late opponent’s goal sneaking past the goalie’s outstretched hands.

The Paraguayan populace knows this all to well and, during the run up to the game, they were on their knees praying for a different outcome to the same old story.

On a night that will be talked about and lionized for generations, the national side did not disappoint. Playing as a team, aggressive and hungry for a win, Paraguay beat the Argentines 1-0. Paraguay hit the post twice before they found the back of the net. Tensions and jockeying for the ball were unrelenting throughout, ending in a red card for an Argentine player. Despite being a man and a goal down, the ultimate opportunity for vindication if not outright victory was Argentina’s. But the striker missed tapping in the superbly placed cross in front of an open net by centimeters in the final minute of the match.

As the ball spun out of bounds and into oblivion, the nation of Paraguay leapt up in euphoria as the national team stepped into history.

In a single, 1-0 victory over Argentina, the plight of Paraguayans was forgotten. No one left the stadium or turned off their televisions. This was not just soccer. It was life, renewed, reborn and rejuvenated.

As the players danced, the fans cheered and flags waved, the President of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, stepped onto the pitch. With six million people enthralled to a Paraguayan victory, he did the only logical thing: he declared Thursday, the following day, a National Holiday.

Schools were closed. Government offices shut down and stores remained unopened.

The mundane transactions of life could wait another day. An Argentine loss, a Paraguayan World Cup berth. This was big. Down right momentous and needed to be put into proper perspective.

John the Atheist

2009-08-17T07:45:00.004+03:00

Pilates Booty Blaster

2009-07-06T01:38:00.006+03:00

One Way to Handle Grief: Just Get Over It. Some People Resume Their Lives Without Obsessing About a Loss They've Suffered. It Seems to Work.

2008-12-03T14:00:00.010+02:00

By Charles Zanor

Special to The Washington Post

Tuesday, July 29, 2008; HE04

The day after Eleanor Clift's husband died of kidney cancer in March 2005, "The McLaughlin Group" host John McLaughlin phoned. Would Clift, a Newsweek contributing editor, be in the television studio the next day, he wanted to know, for the customary Friday taping of the show?

After consulting with her son, Clift agreed.

A mildly startling decision, perhaps, but a reflection of a kind of resilience that is often overlooked.

Clift's recently published book, "Two Weeks of Life," chronicling her final days with her husband, Tom Brazaitis, demonstrates they had a solid marriage and a healthy dependence on each other. Her decision to occupy her usual seat that Friday and bat around the political issues of the day did not reflect a lack of caring but a way of coping.

When I asked her if she had drawn any positive lessons from her experience, Clift named only one:

"It's really a gift to help usher someone out of life. It's a moving experience, and I kept trying to be mindful of the fact that this is part of life. . . . And if I could just somehow get through it and honor his memory and keep on living life as best I can and as normal as I can, that's what I would do."

That response is one Christopher Davis, an associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, has come to recognize. Davis has spent more than a decade studying how people respond to the death of a loved one. Eight years after a mine disaster in Nova Scotia took the lives of 26 coal miners, he and his colleagues interviewed 52 surviving family members, including 11 widows. Three groups emerged from his analysis of the responses: mullers (who extract positive lessons from the experience), chronic grievers and copers (like Clift).

The Nova Scotia interviews lasted two to three hours or longer, giving the family members plenty of room to speak their minds -- almost unheard of in these days of multiple-choice questionnaires and checklists. The people the researchers spoke with "wanted to tell their story," Davis told me.

The interviewers asked about the personal impact of the loss, whether anything positive had come of it, how it affected their philosophy of life and whether they ever tried to find a purpose for the death: the big "Why did this happen to me [or my husband or son or father]?"

The mullers were exactly the collection of successful grievers that Davis had expected to find. As he wrote in the 2008 "Handbook of Bereavement Research and Clinical Practice," published by the American Psychological Association, "People in this cluster tended to report losing a part of themselves, searching for and finding some meaning . . . and describing positive [personal] changes."

As Davis notes, this is consistent with 20 years of psychological literature reporting that many people eventually feel that a wrenching loss also had some benefits. I have a mnemonic device for this reaction: CPR. The "C" is for character (these people have been tested and strengthened); "P" is for perspective (they now see the world in a new way); "R" is for relationships (important people in their lives have taken on increased emotional significance).

The second group fared less well. They were the chronic grievers, stuck in many ways where they had been eight years earlier.

Almost all asked "Why did this happen?" Almost none found answers. The overwhelming majority felt nothing good had come from the experience, that it had shattered their beliefs about justice and the benevolent intentions of others.

The third group, the copers, were a surprise for Davis. Had he not designed the study to let participants speak for themselves, he might have missed them.

"They had an orientation to life, a way of looking at life, that said, 'You know what? [Bad stuff] happens. When it comes along, well, here it is.'

"I was blown away by one comment that one of the participants made . . . : 'If it hadn't been the explosion, it would have been a car accident, or it might have been cancer. It might have been something else.' You know, his days were numbered. It happened this way, and get used to it."

In contrast to the chronic grievers and the mullers, virtually none of the copers asked the "why" question. They did not feel the death had given them inner strength, and almost two-thirds said that as far as they could tell, nothing good had come of it.

The quiet coping response has not received a lot of attention in the loss literature. Yet if you look around, quiet copers seem to be everywhere.

When I asked a friend about the death of his mother several years ago, he told me this story:

"My father never complained during my mother's [neurodegenerative] illness. He just took care of her by himself until we finally had to put her in a nursing facility. . . . She was there for about a month before she died. . . . Right after that he went into planning mode, asking each of the [adult] kids how they felt about this and that funeral arrangement. . . . If you asked him how he felt, he'd tell you: I feel torn apart, I feel relieved, I miss her. But unless you asked him how he felt, he didn't really talk about his feelings."

About three days after the funeral, my friend noticed that his father didn't have his wedding ring on. (The removal, by the way, was no easy task; he had to have it done at the local fire station.) My friend asked him why he wasn't wearing it. Even though I can see his answer coming from a mile away, it still slays me: "Because I'm not married anymore."

He never had a period of nonfunctioning after his wife's death, and he soon found volunteer activities (a food-share program, a community garden) to devote time to. He made connections at the senior center as well.

He embodies the best qualities of the quiet copers, the people who roll up their sleeves and get to work, who deal with things by dealing with things.

It would be a big mistake to think, however, that the sleeve-rollers just move along without looking back.

Eleanor Clift told me that she continues to think about her husband every day: When she has a decision to make, she'll try to figure out what advice he would give her.

As a psychologist, I am a muller and a rehasher. I have to be. If I brought in casseroles for my patients instead of reviewing life events, I wouldn't be doing my job. Besides, I couldn't stop rehashing things if you paid me.

But can there be too much talking, reflecting, uncovering and exploring one's feelings? Sometimes it has to be better to just shut up and have a sandwich.

We mullers have managed to infuse popular culture with the idea that the unfailing exploration of your feelings will put you on the main road to personal happiness. Well, tell that to the copers. They seem to be doing just fine.

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Charles Zanor is a practicing psychologist in Massachusetts. Comments:health@washpost.com.

VAHİM AMA CİDDİ DEĞİL

2008-11-28T05:31:00.002+02:00

HALUK ŞAHİN
26.11.08

Basın özgürlüğü konularında uluslararası gözcülük yapan, geçmişte Türk basınının özgürlük mücadelesinde önemli roller üstlenmiş olan International Press Institute’ün (IPI) direktörü David Dadge İstanbul’da idi. Türkiye’deki Uluslararası Basın Enstitüsü Derneği’nin yöneticisi arkadaşlar Dadge’in basın mensuplarımızla yapacağı toplantının moderatörlüğünü benim yapmama rica istediler.

Toplantı öncesinde bu konuda dünyada son zamanlarda cereyan etmekte olan tartışmalara şöyle bir göz atmak için İnternet’te Google girdim. İngilizce “basın özgürlüğü” gibi bir şeyler yazdım ve çıkan listede ilginç bulduğum ilke siteye ulaşmak için tuşa bastım. Karşıma ne çıktı dersiniz? O meşum yazı:

“Bu siteye giriş yasaklanmıştır.”

Altında da açıklaması:“Ankara 9. Sulh Ceza Mahkemesi 04.02.2008 tarih ve 2008/140 nolu kararı gereği bu siteye erişim Telekomünikasyon İletişim Başkanlığı’nca engellenmiştir.”

Buyrunuz, 2008 yılının sonlarında, Avrupa Birliği ile tam üyelik müzakereleri yapan Türkiye’de basın özgürlüğü konulu bir siteye giremiyorsunuz!

Bu yeterince absürd! Ama bitmedi. Geri dönüp, “Önbellek’e basınca yasaklı yazı şıp diye karşıma çıktı.

Ey Aziz Nesin, nerelerdesin!

Yasaklı yazıya baktım, meğer iki Yunanlı fikir adamının Noam Chomsky ile yaptığı görüşmenin metni imiş. Sonuna kadar okudum. İçinde Türkiye ya da Atatürk ile ilgili tek kelime olmadığı gibi, başka bir şey de yok: Chomsky’nin ülkemizde onlarca kez yayınlanmış görüşlerinin bir özetinden ibaret!

Ülkemizde ifade ve basın özgürlüğünün durumu aynen böyle: Vahim ama ciddi değil!

Nasıl ciddi olur: Ülkemizin Başbakanı Hindistan yolunda gazetecilere aylardır yasaklı olan YouTube’e girdiğini söylüyor ve onlara da tavsiye ediyor:

“Ben giriyorum, siz de girin!”

Evet, YouTube’ün aylardır katmerli yasaklı olması Türkiye’yi ele güne rezil ediyor, ifade özgürlüğü ile ilgili listelerde Kuzey Kore, Çin, İran, Suudi Arabistan gibi ülkelerle aynı öbeğe konmasına neden oluyor.

Gelin görün ki, bu YouTube Türkiye’de en çok ziyaret edilen siteler listesinde ilk onda! Kapıdan giremezseniz, pencereden, bacadan, duvardaki çatlaktan, damdaki delikten girebiliyorsunuz. Bunun nasıl yapılacağını da internetten öğrenebiliorsunuz.

Internet böyle bir ortam. Site yasaklamak basılıp dağıtılan gazete yasaklamaya benzemiyor.

Ama kime anlatacaksınız?

Bu Internet yasasını yapanların ve onun bir an önce değişmesi için harekete geçmeyenlerin hangi çağda yaşadıklarının farkında olmadıkları anlaşılıyor.

Vahim bir durum. Ama ciddi değil!

Real life Batman faces super test

2008-11-16T17:59:00.006+02:00

ISTANBUL - The mayor of Batman, a city recently under scrutiny due to unsolved murders and increasing rates of female suicides, will sue the director of the "Batman" movie. (Click on title above for full article.)

Falcon Moon: I have just three words to say about this: "Oh. My. God."

Being There: Letter from A Friend

2008-11-15T22:12:00.010+02:00

November 13, 2008

Selam,

Bu siralar firsattan istifade (issizlik + NY’da yasamak) degisik seyler yapmaya calisiyorum. Nerede ise hergun daha once yapmadigim sey yapiyorum. Boyle bir firsat belki bir daha ele gecmez.

Sali aksami bir evsizler evinde gonullu olarak calistim. Bina aslinda bir sinagog, gunduzleri ikinci katini cocuk yuvasi olarak kullaniyorlar. Aksamlari da 10 tane evsizin ayni odada kaldigi bir yurt gibi birsey oluyor. Benim saatlerim aksam 8:30’dan sabah 6:00’a kadardi.

Evsizlerin 2 tanesi beyaz, bir tanesi Latino, geri kalani zenciydi. Once onlarla oturdum, yapilacak/yapilmasi gerek seyleri konustuk biraz. Bazilari orada birkac aydir kaldigi icin ne zaman ne yapilmasini biliyor. Beraber yemek yedik (cereal ve sut), onlar da mikrodalgada isitilan hazir yemeklerden yediler. Hersey onlara bedava. Yatak, yemek, dus vs Sinagog karsiliyor.

Bir tanesinin laptop’u vardi, cep telefonu ve ipod zaten normal gibi. Bu sadece Amerika’da olur!

Saat 10 gibi isiklari sondurmem lazimdi, uyusunlar diye. Ama bir tanesi film getirmis, “Iron Man” diye. Abuk sabuk bir film. Oturup onu izledik yatak odasinda (zaten yatak odasi, mutfak, TV odasi hepsi ayni yer). Bazilari uyuyordu, horluyordu, bazilari bulmaca cozuyordu, bazilari muhabbet ediyordu, bazilari da film izledi. Baktim kimsenin sikayet ettigi yok, saat 11’e kadar filmi izledik ve bitirdik fimi. Sonra onlar yattilar.

Kendi aralarinda hic tartismadilar, bana karsi da cok iyilerdi. Ben de zaten “onu yapma, bunu yapma” demedim. Bazi seylere karismam lazimdi, ama “Offff, adamlar zaten zor hayat yasiyorlar, illa ki her kurala uymalarina gerek yok” diye dusundum. Oyle olunca da beni sevdiler.

Bir tanesi, digerleri yattiktan sonra, bir koseye cekildi, bulmaca cozuyordu. Onun yanina gittim. Bana suclu suclu bakarak ‘Hemen yatacagim, kusura bakma” dedi. Ben de “Onemli degil, benim icin sorun degil” dedim. Sonra gece saat 12:30’a kadar muhabbet ettik. Hayatini anlatti.

Buradaki adamlarin hepsi “Tek Kisilik Oda” plani ile devletin odemelere yardim ettigi odalari kiralamak icin sirada bekliyorlar. Bu bekleme 2-5 yil alabiliyor. O surede sokaklarda, ya da bu sinagog gibi yerlerde gecici kaliyorlar. O tek kisilik odalara ayda $250 veriyorlar. Geri kalan $2000 ini belediye oduyor. Boylece evsizlerin Manhattan’da kendilerine ait apartmanlari olmus oluyor. Guzel plan. Tabi biz Manhattan’a “pahali” oldugu icin gidemiyoruz. Ama onlar gidiyor. Olsun varsin.

Bulmaca-adam yillarca evsiz yasamis, NY’da. Central Park’da yattigi gunleri anlatti. Uzerine yattigi beton yerleri kiyasladi, nerenin betonunun daha iyi oldugunu anlatti. Betondan betona fark varmis. Bir keresinde yagmurlu bir gece saat 3 gibi uyanmis, etrafini su basmis, hem sagindan, hem solundan su irmak gibi akiyormus. Battaniyeleri islanmis. Sehirdeki diger baska evsizleri biliyor, onlari anlatti; “Bu adam 20 yildir sokakda, su kadin ilk baslarda cok guzeldi, ama su an yuzu cok yaslandi vs.”

Sinagog’dan cok memnun, ozellike sokakda yatmayla kiyaslayinca. Sinagog yasaminda degistirmek istedigin ne var diye sordum. Dusundu, dusundu, herseyden cok memnunum dedi en sonunda. Erken kalkmak zor olmuyor mu dedim. Sorun degil dedi. Tek istedigi sey camasir yikayacak bir yeri olmasi. Bir de bazilari cok horluyor, onun cozumu de kulaklarina pecete dolduruyor.

Bir sonraki sabah 5:30’da bir kisi haric hepsi kalkmisdi. Yataklarini vs. hepsi kendisi topladi, sessiz, sakin, itisme kakisma yoktu. Cok medeni adamlar, ciddi ciddi surpriz oldum biraz.

Sonra hala uyuyan adami kaldirdim. Hic acelesi yoktu. Bana verilen gorevlerden biris bu adamlarin hepsini sinagog’dan 6’da disariya cikarmakti. Hepsi gitti, ama o yavas adam acele etmedi. Ben de zaten acele ettirmedim, muhabbet ettik o yatagini yaparken, pantalonunu giyinirken. Ne yapacaksin bugun dedim. Dedigi “Ilk once Starbuck’s gidecegim, saat 9’a kadar oradayim. Sonra 9’da kiliseye gidecegim. Orada pinpon, bilardo, TV ile oglen 3’e kadar zaman gecirecegim. Belki biraz sandalye uzerinde uyurum. Oglen yemegini orada yiyecegim. Sonra da yarin aksam tekrar buraya gelecegim” dedi.

Bana sen nerelisin dedi? Ben de Turk’um dedim. Istanbul’mu diye sordu. Yok Ankara dedim. Bana “Yav, siz niye Istanbul’u falan Yunan’lilarin elinden aldiniz? Haksizlik degil mi bu? Niye Yunanlilari kovdunuz?” dedi. Ben de “Ohh, onlar eski olaylar, koprunun altindan cok sular gecti” dedim. Ayrica Yunanlilar istedikleri zaman Istanbul’a bizi ziyaret edebilirler dedim, sakasina. Ama adam bana kil kil bakti.

Sonra soyledi bana: Gunduzleri gittigi kilise Yunan kilisesi imis. Zavalli evsizin beynini yikamis Yunanlilar.

Optum,
Volkan

Rule of Law

2008-11-09T12:59:00.007+02:00

The rule of law, in its most basic form, is the principle that no one is above the law. Thomas Paine stated in his pamphlet Common Sense (1776): "For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."

In England, the issuing of the Magna Carta was a prime example of the "rule of law." The Great Charter forced King John to submit to the law and succeeded in putting limits on feudal fees and duties. Another earlier example was Islamic law and jurisprudence, which recognized the equal subjection of all classes, including caliphs and sultans, to the ordinary law of the land.[1]

Perhaps the most important application of the rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedural steps that are referred to as due process. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance, whether by a totalitarian leader or by mob rule. Thus, the rule of law is hostile both to dictatorship and to anarchy. Samuel Rutherford was one of the first modern authors to give the principle theoretical foundations, in Lex, Rex (1644), and later Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (1748).

In continental Europe and legal thinking, the rule of law has frequently, but not always, been associated with a Rechtsstaat. According to modern Anglo-American thinking, hallmarks of adherence to the rule of law commonly include a clear separation of powers, legal certainty, the principle of legitimate expectation and equality of all before the law.

The concept is not without controversy, and it has been said that "the phrase 'the Rule of Law' has become meaningless thanks to ideological abuse and general over-use".[2]

For footnotes [1] and [2] above and more info on the concept of rule of law, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law

A Woman Doesn't Have to Have Children

2008-10-29T16:51:00.013+02:00

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The author, Samata, moved to Taraloka in 1991 to start fundraising for the new Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) women’s retreat centre which will cater especially for women who are preparing for Ordination. She now lives in a Community near to Taraloka together with three of the Dharmacharinis who form the ‘Ordination Team’.

***************************************

Last summer I met a friend whose first child was then just one year old. He told me that his partner considers that becoming a mother has brought her fulfillment as a woman. He inquired whether I thought this would be the case for all women, and whether I wanted this experience myself. During this conversation I re-contacted the feeling of just how much pressure there is in our social conditioning — even now as we approach the twenty-first century — trying to convince us that as women we can only find meaning in our lives as mothers! It also struck me afresh just how radical my decision is to remain childless. I am a forty-one year old woman and have been a member of the Western Buddhist Order for nearly seven years. Since becoming a practising Buddhist fifteen years ago, I have helped to establish three Right Livelihood businesses within the FWBO; taught yoga; and trained as a Psychosynthesis counselor. I have never been married nor born a child, although I have had many sexual relationships, the longest lasting for twelve years. When I was eighteen the idea of freedom (which at that time I identified with traveling and social justice) was uppermost in my mind, so I hitch-hiked around Europe and later, when I was nineteen, I spent a year in India working with the VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) organization, returning home overland.

By the time I was twenty-five my centre of attention had shifted from changing the world to finding ways of changing myself. I recognised that my inner life was in a bit of a mess but I did not know how to tackle my difficulties. Having a child was not an option since I felt inadequate even to the task of taking responsibility for myself. I thought it was not possible to justify bringing another human being into the world whose welfare would depend on me. At the age of twenty-six I began to meditate and the long, slow process of self-transformation began.

Since then there have been periods of time and sometimes just brief moments when it has been very tempting to go with the urge to procreate. This urge seems to be an undertow which tugs and seduces, sometimes gently, sometimes fiercely. So why have I resisted its pulls? Seven years ago I was present at the birth of the daughter of a friend. I saw for myself how giving birth is both a deeply personal experience and a universal drama, for we are all born from a womb. Witnessing this for myself released me from the ‘mystique’ of childbirth. This, coupled with the experience of living with children some years previously, convinced me that I did not wish to seek fulfillment through motherhood. Perhaps children just don’t interest me enough. My final answer to the question of why I have not had a child would be simply that the urge not to have a child is stronger than the urge towards procreation and in the end has always won the battle.

What does prompt women to have children, to say ‘yes’ to that urge? Reasons seem to vary. Some women say that they never considered not having children. Often these same women go on to say that had they come across the Dharma earlier they might never have become mothers. For other women motherhood is seen as a proper and fulfilling path for a woman to follow. As for this, I have found myself wondering sometimes whether women are afraid of facing up to the consequences — by no means negative — of not going along this well-worn path. Social pressure can also be a subtle yet strong influence on women in their choice to go ahead and have a child. If you are married, for example, there is often unspoken expectation on the part of family and friends that sooner or later you will have children. Not to do so is often regarded as selfish. It is interesting to note in this regard that there is no adequate word in the English language to describe a woman who positively chooses not to have a child. The words we use are ‘childless’, ‘single’, ‘spinster’ — all of which imply some kind of lack.

Many women find themselves pregnant as the result of an accident — for most forms of contraception are not 100% foolproof. Such women may or may not make the adjustment from an unwanted pregnancy to a wanted child. For other women having a child seems to he something to fall back on when they can’t think what else to do with their lives. Perhaps this is due to an underlying sense of a lack of fulfillment and lack of meaning in life — or even the inability to imagine what one could do if one did not have a child and the courage to go ahead and do it. Another reason women have children is to experience a sense of identity — and belonging which is part of society’s myth of motherhood. For some women, of course, motherhood is the result of a conscious decision arrived at after consideration and discussion of the implications of having a child. For others the urge to have a baby is so strong that they feel impelled to follow its imperative.

For a woman who has chosen to follow a spiritual path, the question that arises is not so much, Is motherhood fulfilling? as, Is it compatible with the spiritual life?

Buddhism, as a path of individual spiritual development that addresses itself to all individuals whatsoever, does not exclude women with children. In fact, taking up a spiritual practice such as meditation which involves the intensive development of skilful mental states can only enhance a woman’s effectiveness as a parent. To go further along that path to the point where she develops Insight into ‘the way things really are’ will chip away at any over-identification with the role of mother and motherhood as an end in itself. Such Insight will also erode the emotionally held view that a child is a part of our ‘self’, belonging to us.

However, while being a mother and living a spiritual life are by no means mutually exclusive, combining them is not always easy. Initially when one becomes a mother a great deal of time and energy is taken up with child care, and anything that requires concentration and periods of withdrawal such as meditation, study or going on a retreat will be difficult. This obviously changes as the child grows up, but nevertheless for many years a parent needs to put the needs of her child, when necessary, before all other commitments. This is especially true for single parents, but is also the case in more conventional family situations. This demand of time, energy and commitment obviously has implications for any woman wanting to make a wholehearted commitment to the Three Jewels.

Another factor worth considering is that motherhood can sometimes render a woman completely dependent on others for material support while she is predominantly engaged in childcare. I would question how helpful such a situation is.

Reprinted from Dakini no 9.

RICHARD: YOU MUST ADD JELLYFISH TO YOUR OBSESSION WITH PAINTING HORSESHOE CRABS

2008-09-21T23:32:00.019+03:00

by Vincent Czyz

Dear Richard,
Thanks for the postcard of your painting

“Girl with Horseshoe Crabs.”
Sorry the health-food store in Montclair went under,
they made vegetarian chili like nobody’s business.
The quantum physicist you mentioned, who says consciousness
is mostly empty space with a few thoughts whizzing through,
a grand inner dimension that can float a galaxy of ideas
but hardly feel a dimple in its overall capacity,
I got a feeling he’s right.
What’s life like in Istanbul?
Forget about the minarets and Byzantine cathedrals for a minute,
think of the Bosporus

dividing the city into Asian and European sides,

think of the jellyfish I see,
lots of them, hundreds sometimes.
The most primitive, I’ve read, are 95% H2O,
which has got to be how life got started,
as tiny envelopes of seawater. So there they are,
our ultra-great-great grandparents,
adrift in water sloshing against the cement shoreline,
a wall along the road that follows the strait.
Circular echoes of ocean,
the ones around here are divided into four equal parts,
sea-animal mandalas spangling the water,
silver dollar to Frisbee size, milky and translucent.
I like to watch them sort of sway in the current
just beneath the surface—
they’re a good way to meditate.
This must be the lure of the lava lamp,
magma that predates even your trilobite look-a-likes
in lethargic motion,
I’m surprised you aren’t onto jellyfish in your paintings.
I guess because they don’t have shells,
no husks to leave behind,
I s’pose they just dissolve when they die.
I wish I could get them floating around my room,
they help my thoughts circulate is the thing,
they lullaby my soul side to side.
Mother-of-the-sea is how the Turkish name for them translates,
probably because they’re only 5% different from seawater,
but a five-percent difference might be all there is
between consciousness
and the vacuum.

Pearls Before Swine...

2008-09-03T06:33:00.003+03:00

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

Ithaca

2008-08-28T00:54:00.003+03:00

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty,
if a fine emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands

2008-08-26T03:34:00.003+03:00

The New York Times
August 13, 2008
By NINA BERNSTEIN

He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.

On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the detention system.

Mr. Ng’s death follows a succession of cases that have drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations and a lack of oversight in immigration detention, a rapidly growing network of publicly and privately run jails where the government held more than 300,000 people in the last year while deciding whether to deport them.

In federal court affidavits, Mr. Ng’s lawyers contend that when he complained of severe pain that did not respond to analgesics, and grew too weak to walk or even stand to call his family from a detention pay phone, officials accused him of faking his condition. They denied him a wheelchair and refused pleas for an independent medical evaluation.

Instead, the affidavits say, guards at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., dragged him from his bed on July 30, carried him in shackles to a car, bruising his arms and legs, and drove him two hours to a federal lockup in Hartford, where an immigration officer pressured him to withdraw all pending appeals of his case and accept deportation.

“For this desperately sick, vulnerable person, this was torture,” said Theodore N. Cox, one of Mr. Ng’s lawyers, adding that they want to see a videotape of the transport made by guards.

Immigration and detention officials would not discuss the case, saying the matter was under internal investigation. But in response to a relative of Mr. Ng’s who had begged that he be checked for a spinal injury or fractures, the Wyatt detention center’s director of nursing, Ben Candelaria, replied in a July 16 e-mail message that Mr. Ng was receiving appropriate care for “chronic back pain.” He added, “We treat each and every detainee in our custody with the same high level of quality, professional care possible.”

Officials have given no explanation why they took Mr. Ng to Hartford and back on the same day. But the lawyers say the grueling July 30 trip appeared to be an effort to prove that Mr. Ng was faking illness, and possibly to thwart the habeas corpus petition they had filed in Rhode Island the day before, seeking his release for medical treatment.

The federal judge who heard that petition on July 31 did not make a ruling, but in an unusual move insisted that Mr. Ng get the care he needed. On Aug. 1, Mr. Ng was taken to a hospital, where doctors found he had terminal cancer and a fractured spine. He died five days later.

The accounts of Mr. Ng’s treatment echo other cases that have prompted legislation, now before the House Judiciary Committee, to set mandatory standards for care in immigration detention.

In March, the federal government admitted medical negligence in the death of Francisco Castaneda, 36, a Salvadoran whose cancer went undiagnosed in a California detention center as he was repeatedly denied a biopsy on a painful penile lesion. In May, The New York Times chronicled the death of Boubacar Bah, 52, a Guinean tailor who suffered a skull fracture and brain hemorrhages in the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey; records show he was left in an isolation cell without treatment for more than 13 hours.

When Mr. Ng died last week, he had spent half his life in the United States, his sister, Wendy Zhao, said in a tearful interview.

Born in China, he entered the United States legally on a tourist visa. Mr. Ng stayed on after it expired and applied for political asylum. He was granted a work permit while his application was pending, and though asylum was eventually denied, immigration authorities did not seek his deportation for many years.

Meanwhile, his sister said, Mr. Ng (pronounced Eng), who was known as Jason, graduated from high school in Long Island City, Queens, worked his way through community technical college, passed Microsoft training courses and won a contract to provide computer services to a company with offices in the Empire State Building.

In 2001, a notice ordering him to appear in immigration court was mistakenly sent to a nonexistent address, records show. When Mr. Ng did not show up at the hearing, the judge ordered him deported. By then, however, he was getting married, and on a separate track, his wife petitioned Citizenship and Immigration Services for a green card for him — a process that took more than five years. Heeding bad legal advice, the couple showed up for his green card interview on July 19, 2007, only to find enforcement agents waiting to arrest Mr. Ng on the old deportation order.

Over the next year, while his family struggled to pay for new lawyers to wage a complicated and expensive legal battle, Mr. Ng was held in jails under contract to the federal immigration authorities: Wyatt; the House of Correction in Greenfield, Mass.; and the Franklin County Jail in St. Albans, Vt.

Mr. Ng seemed healthy until April, his sister said, when he began to complain of severe back pain and skin so itchy he could not sleep. He was then in the Vermont jail, a 20-bed detention center with no medical staff run by the county sheriff’s office. Seeking care, he asked to be transferred back to Wyatt, a 700-bed center with its own medical staff, owned and operated by a municipal corporation.

In a letter to his sister, Mr. Ng recounted arriving there on July 3, spending the first three days in pain in a dark isolation cell. Later he was assigned an upper bunk and required to climb up and down at least three times a day for head counts, causing terrible pain. His brother-in-law B. Zhao appealed for help in e-mail messages to the warden, Wayne Salisbury, on July 11 and 16.

“I was really heartbroken when I first saw him,” Mr. Zhao wrote Mr. Salisbury after a visit. “After almost two weeks of suffering with unbearable back pain and unable to get any sleep, he was so weak and looked horrible.”

The nursing director replied that Mr. Ng had been granted a bottom bunk and was receiving painkillers and muscle relaxants prescribed by a detention center doctor.

But his condition continued to deteriorate. Once a robust man who stood nearly six feet and weighed 200 pounds, his relatives said, Mr. Ng looked like a shrunken and jaundiced 80-year-old.

“He said, ‘I told the nursing department, I’m in pain, but they don’t believe me,’ ” his sister recalled. “ ‘They tell me, stop faking.’ ”

Soon, according to court papers, he had to rely on other detainees to help him reach the toilet, bring him food and call his family; he no longer received painkillers, because he could not stand in line to collect them. On July 26, Andy Wong, a lawyer associated with Mr. Cox, came to see the detainee, but had to leave without talking to him, he said, because Mr. Ng was too weak to walk to the visiting area, and a wheelchair was denied.

On July 30, according to an affidavit by Mr. Wong, he was contacted by Larry Smith, a deportation officer in Hartford, who told him on a speakerphone, with Mr. Ng present, that he wanted to resolve the case, either by deporting Mr. Ng, or “releasing him to the streets.” Officer Smith said that no exam by an outside doctor would be allowed, and that Mr. Ng would not be given a wheelchair.

Mr. Ng told his lawyer he was ready to give up, the affidavit said, “because he could no longer withstand the suffering inside the facility,” but Officer Smith insisted that Mr. Ng would first have to withdraw all his appeals.

The account of his treatment clearly disturbed the federal judge, William E. Smith of United States District Court in Providence, who instructed the government’s lawyer the next day to have the warden get Mr. Ng to the hospital for an M.R.I.

The results were grim: cancer in his liver, lungs and bones, and a fractured spine. “ ‘I don’t have much time to live,’ ” his sister said he told her in a call from Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.

She said the doctor warned that if the family came to visit, immigration authorities might transfer her brother. Three days passed before the warden approved a family visit, she said, after demanding their Social Security numbers. Late in the afternoon of Aug. 5, as Mr. Ng lay on a gurney, hours away from death and still under guard, she and his wife held up his sons, 3 and 1.

“Brother, don’t worry, don’t be afraid,” Ms. Zhao said, repeating her last words to him. “They are not going to send you back to the facility again. Brother, you are free now.”

READING AN ARAB NEWSPAPER

2008-08-23T15:47:00.008+03:00

A Jewish man was sitting in Starbucks reading an Arab newspaper. A friend of his, who happened to be in the same store, noticed this strange phenomenon.

Very upset, he approached him and said: "Moshe, have you lost your mind? Why are you reading an Arab newspaper?"

Moshe replied, "I used to read the Jewish newspapers, but what did I find? Jews being persecuted, Israel being attacked, Jews disappearing through assimilation and intermarriage, Jews living in poverty. So I switched to the Arab newspaper. Now what do I find? Jews own all the banks, Jews control the media, Jews are all rich and powerful, Jews rule the world. The news is so much better!"

Are you in good hands?

2008-08-17T01:40:00.001+03:00

WATER

2008-08-17T01:22:00.006+03:00

Water is without doubt THE most important nutrient available to us....and one of the most frequently deficient!

Water bathes all your cells, it gives them the rigidity to form structures; enables the transport of other nutrients; dissolves both nutrients and waste; provides mechanisms for controlling heating and cooling.

Yet, many people are so dehydrated (lack of water) that they are ill as a consequence. In his important book, Your "Body's Many Cries for Water", Dr F Bathmanghelidj reports how many "diseases" can be attributed to chronic dehydration and how treatment with drinking water, our most important nutrient, can resolve them completely.

When we don't drink enough, our tissues and cells start to sag and become limp - think of how a balloon appears after losing some of its air and you'll have the right idea. This not only means that they lose their structural strength, it may also mean that they can't function properly and may even stop functioning altogether.

It is in this way that most cases of back pain can be successfully treated using drinking water - the pillow-like "discs" between the backbones become dehydrated and shrivel, allowing the bones to rub against each other and the tissues in-between, causing pain, swelling and discomfort. Just "re-inflating" the discs with ample water can be enough to totally reverse the process.

So it is with many other diseases of water loss. Electrolytes can't be transported properly, nutrients and waste don't go where they are supposed to or are left to build-up, heat-loss becomes difficult and cell function reduces. Left unchecked, this situation would quickly lead to coma and death.

Fortunately, we have defense mechanisms to protect against this scenario. The thirst reflex is intended to let us know when we need to drink. In babies, it is in excellent form and they regularly let us know when they are thirsty.

However, as we go through life nowadays, we start replacing our water intake with sodas, coffee, tea, alcohol, squash and fruit juices. The fact is that these contain other substances that reduce our water absorption, retention and increase excretion. In the case of alcohol and caffeinated drinks (many sodas, tea and coffee), these actively stimulate the kidneys to produce more urine, causing further water-loss.

In fact, in many people nowadays, the body has become so chronically dehydrated that it has given up, and the thirst reflex just doesn't work any more. It never gets a response and so "switches off" until the body reaches a critical state of severe dehydration and water loss, only kicking in as a last gasp effort to maintain life - that is what most of us call "thirst".

In contrast, when people who have chronically low water intake feel they are "hungry", they are probably only thirsty! The thirst reflex is now so poorly effective that it tries to stimulate water intake in any way it can. Water taken in as solid food (any foods are over 50% water) is better than none at all! If only we would drink water instead of eating, we would not only consume less (and therefore have less weight problems), we would also be a lot healthier.

So what can we do about this problem?

In most cases, it is simple. Drink clean, unadulterated (and free from chemical additives like chlorine and flurine) water. In most cases (and here, we speak from personal experience) after a day or two of consuming two to two and a half liters of water a day, the thirst reflex will suddenly switch itself back on and you will feel thirsty continually until you have supplied the water your body needs - on average around 3-4 liters a day for a woman and 4-5 liters for a man. (in hotter climates, more may be necessary)

That is not to say you can do this overnight - most people need to start adding about a glass a day to their water intake until they achieve an appropriate amount or their body responds by stopping to feel thirsty.

The health benefits of drinking more water are immense:

You will have more energy
You will "feel" better
Many chronic health problems will just "go away"
You will flush out more toxins, contributing to long-term health
Your immune system will benefit, enabling you to "fight off"more bugs and illnesses
"Hangovers" will become a thing of the past! (most people get hangovers because they START drinking whilst already dehydrated!)

Doesn't this sound like a significant change in your life? You bet!

What's that? You're worried about peeing all the time? So what! Urine takes lots of toxins with it and is a major cleansing system for the body. In fact, if your urine is anything except almost clear and VERY pale yellow, you ARE already dehydrated and need to drink more water. This is a small price to pay for the health benefits you WILL receive.

SOURCE: http://www.natural-health-information-centre.com/water.html

Taking Our Turn To Give

2008-08-01T07:02:00.005+03:00

People in Need
July 28, 2008

When we see a person in need, we may want to give them something as a way of helping them, but if we give without taking the time to see who they really are, honoring that most of all, our gift is nowhere near as powerful as it could be. We may want to give a homeless person a sandwich, for example, but if we give it without also taking a moment to look the person in the eye, making authentic contact, we rob them of the experience of being human.

Being in a position of need leaves a lot of people feeling vulnerable and full of self-doubt. The greatest gift we can give is to meet people in need without judgment and with the awareness that we are not superior to them simply because we are not currently in their position. If we take the long view, we can see that we all began life in need of a lot of care and attention, and many of us end life in the same way. Giving and receiving are companion energies that take turns throughout our lives, and we all get a chance to be on both sides of the exchange from time to time.

It’s important to be aware of our own tendency to give from a desire to feel good about ourselves, rather than from an acknowledgement of our connection to all people. Letting go of our self-importance allows us to see that, regardless of appearances, we are all givers and receivers. When we are in the position of the giver, we honor those we are helping when we remember the many people who have helped us. Then we can look the person we are helping in the eye, aware that we are making contact with a human being who is our equal.

This article is from DailyOm
http://www.dailyom.com/articles/2008/14784.html

Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul

2008-07-29T06:13:00.017+03:00

Washington, DC
National Gallery of Art
East Wing Upper Level
May 25-September 7, 2008

Some 228 extraordinary artifacts unearthed in modern Afghanistan—most on view for the first time in the United States—attest to the region's importance as a vital and ancient crossroads of trade routes known as the Silk Road, which stretched from Asia to the Mediterranean. Many of the objects were long thought to have been stolen or destroyed during some 25 years of conflict until they were dramatically recovered from a vault under the Presidential Palace in 2004. Dating back 2,000 years and more, the works belong to the National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul, whose motto is "A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive." The exhibition, which begins its U.S. tour at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, explores the cultural significance of the treasures and illustrates the story of their discovery, excavation, and heroic rescue.

Ranging in date from 2200 BC to AD 200, the objects present a rich mosaic of Afghanistan's cultural heritage and are drawn from four archaeological sites. The works include gold bowls with artistic links to Mesopotamia from Tepe Fullol in northern Afghanistan; bronze and stone sculptures from the site of the former Greek city of Aï Khanum; bronzes, ivories, and painted glassware imported from Roman and Indian markets discovered in Begram; and more than 100 gold ornaments from among the 20,000 pieces known as the "Bactrian Hoard," found in 1978 in Tillya Tepe, the site of six nomad graves.

Maps will illustrate the locations of some 1500 archaeological sites, ancient cities, the routes known as the Silk Road, and regions that relate to the artifacts. A documentary film narrated by celebrated Afghan-American author, Khaled Hosseini, explores ancient Afghan culture, the history of these collections and their dramatic rediscovery. Short films throughout the show will include recreations of Aï Khanum and one of the intricately carved chairs—thought to be thrones—found there.

A NOTE FROM FALCON MOON:

If you are in the area and have some extra time, I would highly recommend you see this exhibit!

Those who speak Turkish may find it as interesting as I did that "Ai Khanum" means "Lady Moon"...

Hitabi tanidiniz mi?

"Ay Hanim" yani... :)

Pedestrian Catatonia - A Social Disease & Its Possible Cure

2008-07-24T08:44:00.007+03:00

I sympathize with the writer, except for the part where he opines that the disease doesn't exist in less-developed nations... (to go to the article, click on photo or title above)
-- Falcon Moon

Erkegin Ruyasi...

2008-07-18T16:37:00.012+03:00

Türkiye'de Tatil

Harika bir plaj, masmavi su, gözalabildiğine serpe serpe denize giren güzel kadınlar...

Bir erkek daha fazla ne isteyebilir?

US Mainstream Media Promotes Medical Myths by 'Dispelling' Them

2008-07-17T17:27:00.005+03:00

NaturalNews
Sunday, July 13, 2008
by Neil McLaughlin

The MSNBC TODAY Show recently teamed up with drug companies to help "dispel" several "medical myths" that were "passed down by your grandparents" and which may have led you to believe you were actually healthy.

In the conveniently anonymous article "7 Medical Myths That Can Kill You (5/21/08)", which offered no means for reader feedback, TODAY reminds us that if we don't treat diseases early and often, we will die. The ghostwriter of the article does not even hint at the idea that a healthy diet can be a factor in disease prevention. After all, the Chief Medical Editor of The TODAY Show (who ranks right up there with the Chief Medical Editor of the National Enquirer) Dr. Nancy Snyderman wants you to remember that only advances in patentable technology can prevent disease (oh and please buy her book).

The TODAY Show ultimately sends the message that your getting treatment is extremely important for the health of the Medical Industrial Complex.

Here are the 7 individual messages that their article sends (see if you notice a pattern):

1) You need an annual checkup (You need annual treatment). Within a year, most every drug commercial has become obsolete, and many of those drugs will have been exposed as highly dangerous. In order to get the latest, untested treatments it is important that you go to a doctor at least once a year, even if you don't feel sick.

2) Vaccines are not just for children (You need adult treatment). Why just poison your kids with mercury when you can poison yourself, your spouse, or other family members? Dr. Snyderman says "Vaccines are the most important medical breakthrough of the past century... and they are not just for children (so) it is important for people over 30 to get booster shots". In case you have recently become informed about the dangers of vaccines that contain mercury, viruses and untested chemical combinations, along with possibly causing Autism (which of course they fail to mention), TODAY is recommending you get vaccinated for many things. They recommend the HPV vaccine despite the fact that there exists no proof that cervical cancer is even caused by HPV, and men don't even have a cervix! TODAY also recommends expensive flu shots that essentially cause the flu, while preventing a few percent from getting last year's flu. They even promote an adult shot for chicken pox! As for understanding the combinations of multiple vaccines at once, just let them know (after taking your shots) if you feel sick.

3) Doctors play favorites (You need the latest treatment). If you are African American, Hispanic and/or elderly, you are likely to have been denied new treatments by your doctor (which may be the reason you are still alive). Unless of course you are actually in Africa where treatments are being forced on children "to save them".

4) We're winning the war on cancer (You need conventional treatment). The article goes on to discuss how we have "cured" some types of cancer, where "cure" is defined as someone who manages to survive 5 years of conventional treatment such as radiation, surgery and chemotherapy. In other words, if you are a good enough customer, they will say you are cured! Meanwhile cancer rates in China are skyrocketing.

5) You're never too young for pharmaceuticals (You need early treatment). – Even young people can die of strokes, so why wait until you are old before you start taking dangerous drugs like Lipitor?

6) Natural is not necessarily safe (You need unnatural treatment). – Be sure to ask your doctor before taking anything natural. Remember: natural substances may interfere with all of the toxic, unnatural products your doctor will prescribe. More importantly, natural substances may interfere with your doctors ability to make a profit.

7) You can never snap out of mental illness (You need psychiatric treatment). If you have ever experienced a bout of sadness or a fit of anger you are NOT normal, and you will NEVER be normal, EVER! But don't feel bad... treatment is available! Remember: if you feel sad, it's not because you haven't had a date in months, it's not because you are unemployed and homeless, and it's not because you are 29 and diabetic! You are sad because you have a chemical imbalance in your brain. Naturally, doctors say this imbalance can never be rebalanced by anything natural. This chemical imbalance in your brain can only be balanced by a handful of highly toxic chemicals that are strong enough to throw all of your other organs off balance. You must keep taking these drugs for the rest of your life in order to "feel like yourself again". Only somebody making $200,000 per year can really know for sure.
_________________________________________

MSNBC reminds us that "If we are to take care of ourselves, we need to know how to access the best health care". In other words, to take care of ourselves, we must rely on others (who just happen to be multinational, profit-seeking, pharmaceutical corporations). They add that one of "the greatest enemies in the battle against... disease (is your) personal belief (system)". I believe that is Socialism.

So there you have it! MSNBC and The TODAY Show say you need treatment, any kind of treatment, maybe even all kinds of treatment (and to be fair, if you believe them, you do). After starting treatment(s), you can be proud to know that you will be distributing these new medicines every time you urinate, and that will help treat and balance all of the fish, frogs and turtles in your local water supply.

References: For more on the dangers of vaccines and to help stop forced vaccinations, check out: http://www.standupbecounted.org/index.htm.

About the author: Neil McLaughlin is a computer scientist and inventor specializing in 3d graphics and simulation. He can be reached at naturalnews461@yahoo.com.

Changing The Way We Relate

2008-07-17T14:05:00.007+03:00

Making Over Our Partners*
DailyOM.com
July 16, 2008

A relationship, in the truest sense of the word, means relating to another. Usually when we say that we relate to someone, it is because we’ve found common ground. But part of relating is finding ways to make ideas that seem different come together. So often when we choose relationships, we try to fit another person into our predetermined ideal. When they don’t fit perfectly, we may try to make them over, creating our own vision from the raw material they’ve brought. But unless someone asks for guidance and direction, entering into a relationship with someone we want to change is dishonest. Then our relationship becomes with someone we’ve imagined, and anytime our partner steps outside of that imaginary projection, we will be disappointed. An honest relationship is one in which we accept each other as whole individuals, and find a way to share our life experiences together. Then, whenever we want, we can choose as a couple to give the relationship a makeover by renewing the way we interact.

By wanting to give another person a makeover, we are basically saying we don’t accept them for who they are. If we take a moment to imagine the roles reversed, we can get a sense of how it would feel if our beloved only committed to us because they thought we were, or would become, someone else entirely. In such an environment, we are not relating to each other from a real place, and we are keeping ourselves from being able to learn and grow from the different viewpoints that our partners offer.

If we feel that a change is needed in our relationship, the only makeover that we truly have the power to make is on ourselves. By accepting our partners for exactly who they are—the ideal and the not-so-ideal—we will create an energetic shift in our relationships, and we may find ourselves really appreciating our partners for the first time. Working from within, we determine how we relate to the people and the world around us, and when we can accept it and embrace it all, without conditions, we make every act of relating a positive one.

* or our various family members! (added by Falcon Moon)

Lobbyists for Your Insanity

2008-07-04T01:58:00.011+03:00

The Pharma-Industrial-Government Complex
Natural News
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
by Tony Isaacs

Thanks to a recent question sent in to this forum*, I discovered that it appears to be common to prescribe the dangerous drug Prozac for PMS -- at least in the United States, that is. Not only that, but it is evidently often prescribed not by the Psychiatrists who successfully lobbied the FDA for approval over the objections of the WHO (World Health Organization), but by ordinary ob/gyn doctors who are making diagnosis of a specially created condition the psychiatrists came up with to justify prescribing it: Pre Menstrual Distress Disorder, or PMDD.

The initial question asked in the forum was :

"Went to the ob/gyn yesterday. I am well into premenopause and he diagnosed me with PMDD. No doubt my PMS is getting worse as I get older. He wants me to start on Prozac for several days a month before I get my period to help with my symptoms. I don't want to go on Prozac or hormone therapy. What can I use naturally to help my symptoms? I think I need to revamp my diet as well. How can I ease into a diet change slowly so as not to overwhelm myself all at once? Also, any supplements I should add? I know there are lots of questions, but I NEED HELP! Thanks."

My initial reaction was one of shock and outrage. Prozac for PMS? What the heck was an ob/gyn doing prescribing that scary drug? And what was PMDD anyway? A quick check of Wikipedia made it all too clear:"Originally called late luteal phase dysphoric disorder (LLPDD), the disorder was renamed PMDD by the American Psychiatric Association in its May 1993 revision of the DSM-IV. PMDD was moved from a position in the appendix of the manual to a "disorder requiring further study."[2][3] Some groups of psychiatrists and women's groups object to the labeling of a severe form of PMS as a psychiatric disorder.

PMDD is accepted as illness by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) but has not been listed as a separate disorder in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases. In 2003, the manufacturer of Prozac (fluoxetine) was required by the Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products to remove PMDD from the list of indications for fluoxetine sold in Europe.[4] The committee found that

...PMDD is not a well-established disease entity across Europe... There was considerable concern that women with less severe pre-menstrual symptoms might erroneously receive a diagnosis of PMDD resulting in widespread inappropriate short and long-term use of fluoxetine.[5]

PMDD is not listed on the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. [6]

Some commentators suggest that PMDD (along with social anxiety disorder, restless leg syndrome, and female sexual dysfunction) has been marketed by pharmaceutical companies in order to increase the demand for treatments.(PMID 16597181)."

For full article, go to: http://www.naturalnews.com/023555.html

*the Ask Tony Isaacs Curezone forum

About the author
Tony Isaacs, is a natural health advocate and researcher and the author of books and articles about natural health including "Cancer's Natural Enemy" and "Collected Remedies"as well as song lyrics and humorous anecdotal stories. Mr. Isaacs also has The Best Years in Life website for baby boomers and others wishing to avoid prescription drugs and mainstream managed illness and live longer, healthier and happier lives naturally. He is currently residing in the scenic Texas hill country near Utopia, Texas where he serves as a consultant to the Utopia Silver colloidal silver and supplement company and where he is working on a major book project due for publication later this year. Mr. Isaacs also hosts the CureZone "Ask Tony Isaacs" forum as well as the Yahoo Health Group "Oleander Soup"

Morning Calories

2008-07-02T23:54:00.002+03:00

It’s a well-known weight-loss truism: Eating a lot at night can promote weight gain, primarily because the body doesn’t burn as many calories while you sleep. Happily, the reverse is true: The calories you consume at breakfast are the most likely to be burned (especially if your morning is active) and the least likely to put on extra pounds. Eating breakfast also helps to jump-start your metabolism after a night’s sleep. If you’re trying to lose weight, do not skimp on breakfast. Eat a well-balanced meal that includes protein and complex carbohydrates.

Source: Bally Fitness Subscription

How plants fight back

2008-07-02T02:23:00.005+03:00

Posted to ScienceCodex.com
on: May 10, 2007 - 5:34am

Rooted in place, plants can't run from herbivores—but they can fight back. Sensing attack, plants frequently generate toxins, emit volatile chemicals to attract the pest's natural enemies, or launch other defensive tactics.

Researchers have identified a specific class of small peptide elicitors, or plant defense signals, that help plants react to insect attack.

In this colorful self-defense strategy, proteins already present in the plant are ingested by insect attackers. Digesting the proteins, the insects unwittingly convert this food into a peptide elicitor, which gets secreted back onto plants during later feedings. Recognizing the secreted elicitor as a kind of "SOS," plants launch defensive chemistry. This defense discovery opens the door for the development and genetic manipulation of plants with improved protection against pests.

*******

Although researchers have long known that some plants distinguish different insect attackers, this defensive behavior has proven difficult to describe at the molecular level. Exceedingly few model systems have been utilized to characterize the potential interactions between what researchers estimate to be at least four million insects and 230,000 flowering plant species. Moreover, highly active plant defense signals can occur at trace levels, too small to easily detect or isolate.

Still, scientists have determined that insect herbivory, mechanical damage, and pathogens such as bacteria and fungi can all set off a variety of peptide warning signals in plants, which respond by increasing phytohormones, particularly ethylene, jasmonic acid, or salicylic acid, that regulate defensive responses. But which peptide signals act as alarms—and how"

To address those questions, Dr. Eric Schmelz at the United States Department of Agriculture's Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in Gainesville, Florida, led a research team that spent three years systematically analyzing the biochemical response of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), a legume, to herbivory and oral secretions of fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), a general crop pest. During the extensive project, the researchers conducted over 10,000 leaf bioassays, testing for plant phytohormone production after exposure to successively fractionated insect oral secretions, among other experiments. Painstakingly collected just a few microliters at a time, the team tested approximately one full liter of caterpillar secretions.

As previously reported, the scientists identified and isolated an 11 amino acid peptide, inceptin, that plays a pivotal warning role in cowpea plants being attacked by the fall armyworm. Inceptin is part of a larger, essential enzyme, chloroplastic ATP synthase, in plants. When the fall armyworm feeds on cowpea, the insect ingests ATP synthase and breaks it down, releasing inceptin, which then becomes part of the armyworm's oral secretions. When the worm next feeds on cowpea, trace amounts of inceptin recontact the wounded leaf and alerts plants to generate a burst of defensive phytohormones.

In the June issue of Plant Physiology, Schmelz and his USDA collaborators, including Sherry LeClere, Mark Carroll, Hans Alborn, and Peter Teal, take the analysis further. They confirm inceptin's role as the dominant (and most stable) peptide in the cowpea's defense to fall armyworm. In addition, the researchers identify two related but less abundant peptide fragments (Vu-GE+In and Vu-E+In) that provoke similar defense responses in cowpea and a third (Vu-In-A) with no apparent effect. They also show that inceptin-related peptides spark a consistent, sequential cascade of phytohormone increases in cowpea, beginning with jasmonic acid, followed by ethylene and, lastly, salicyclic acid. Finally, the researchers determine critical features of inceptin's structure: To work as a plant defense signal, the peptide must contain a penultimate C-terminal aspartic acid, though the structure is considerably more flexible at its N-terminal. Notably, a number of the general characteristics of inceptin are similar to another known plant defensive peptide signal, systemin.

The new work challenges researchers to reconsider plant-insect interactions. "Scientists searching for defense elicitors need to realize those elicitors may not be synthesized by—or even exist within—the insect pest species," Schmelz said. "Instead, the attacker's proteases may interact with the host proteins, generating an elicitor." Building on this work, Schmelz is now recruiting a post-doctoral scientist to help the team biochemically purify and identify the inceptin receptor from legumes.

The Turks: Masters of Espionage?

2008-06-29T23:09:00.021+03:00

Sibel Edmonds vindicated? FBI reveals investigation continues
25.10.2006

On October 10, 2006, FBI spokesman Bill Carter confirmed that matters raised by Sibel Edmonds and shielded form public view by the invocation of the US States Secret privilege were still under internal investigation by the Bureau.

“Due to the fact that the allegations of Sibel Edmonds reflect internal administrative and investigative matters it would not be appropriate to respond to your inquiry. I will point out that the DOJ Office of the Inspector General has reviewed this matter and released a public report. I would refer this report to you for your review. The Inspector General's report concluded that the FBI did not adequately investigate allegations Ms. Edmonds made regarding a co-worker. After the OIG's initial classified report, the FBI conducted further investigation into Ms. Edmonds' allegations. That investigation is continuing.”*

Back in March of 2002, Edmonds was released from the FBI over her discovery of an array of espionage activities. Looking back, and with the benefit of new information from the FBI and elsewhere, it appears that the government of Turkey was spectacularly successful in compromising FBI, CIA, DEA, DIA and DOS operations, and was also able to mount other espionage programs that allowed Turkish interests to obtain assorted military and WMD technology know-how, and garner US and Israeli military support for its bloody internal struggle against its significant and much maligned Kurdish population/opposition.

The Turks: Masters of Espionage

The Turks would not have been successful in staging what may be recorded as one of history’s finest intelligence coups had it not been for many sympathetic US military personnel, bureaucrats and politicians who, whatever their egotistical reasons, believed themselves to be acting in the USA's best interests. Certainly, no one can accuse them of not effectively representing their powerful Turkish clients whether in defeating US Congressional action recognizing the Armenian Genocide or ensuring that US corporations close lucrative deals in Turkey.

The sympathizers names are now overly familiar: Douglas Feith, Brent Scowcroft, William Cohen, Richard Perle, Michael Leeden, Bob Livingston, Marc Grossman, Paul Wolfowitz, Eric Edelman, Richard Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Dennis Hastert, et al. Rather than re-hash their affiliations and track records here, visit rightweb.irc-online.org to find out more about their linkages to each other and Turkey (Israel too).

The Turks knew it would take lots of cash to pull off such a scheme and sustain it. The illicit drug trade provided an endless source of funds to pay for WMD components, US defense technology, politicians, money laundering schemes, counterterrorist operations, safe interrogation houses, and dozens of front companies. Given Turkey's solid reputation as a key refining point/middleman for opium coming out of Afghanistan (it is ultimately transported into the Balkans and on to Europe and the USA), it is no surprise that the Turkish government always seems to have a steady supply of cash to spread around. Perhaps it is just coincidence, but under the watchful eyes of the Pentagon and US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, opium crop production in Afghanistan has increased over the last decade. The profits from refining and distribution of the product have flooded the black market - the playground for intelligence operatives and assorted criminal enterprises.

Joltin' Joe Ralston

Desmond Fernandes, has recently published an extraordinary piece titled Turkey’s US Backed War on Terror: A Cause for Concern?* The information provided in this publication shows the lengths to which the US and Turkey (and Israel) will go to keep some very nasty activities quiet. One of the more interesting bits of news in the report is that, at the invitation of the Turkish government, US and Israeli forces are assisting the Turkish government in military operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PPK) and the Kurdish people and their culture. The US is ostensibly engaged in counter-narcotics operations with the Turks.

Joseph Ralston, former USAF General and now Lockheed Martin employee and American Turkish Council principal, is the special envoy/coordinator for US-Turkey anti-Kurdish operations. In October 2006, the US Congress approved the sale of 30 of F-16 combat aircraft worth $2.9 billion to Turkey.

The world has seen the effects of similar alliances on persecuted people, most notably the tragic one between the US and Israel. That template will now be applied in Turkey to manage the Kurds. It’s their turn to be abused and pushed from their homelands by the same methods and equipment used against the Palestinians (and now the Iraqis). American leaders sanctioned the elimination of the Palestinian leaders and their people, even groups freely elected like Hamas. With eager US approval, Israeli military operations continue unabated in Gaza and the West Bank into late 2006. US support for Israel's destruction of the Shia population in Lebanon during the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict in 2006, along with decades of unswerving support in the United Nations and the US Congress is notoriously legendary. All this bodes ill for the Kurds.

*******

And so it begins. According to kurdmedia.com, “the PKK - the most prominent Kurdish freedom movement - declared a unilateral ceasefire that went into effect on Sunday 1 October. It still remains unilateral - the entire Turkish establishment, from top general Yasar Buyukanit to prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has rejected it, clearly stating their determination to continue the war… Joseph Ralston spoke for the US government when he indicated that “a ceasefire sort of implies an act that is taken between two states, two actors, to do that. And I don’t want to confer that kind of status on the PKK by saying a ceasefire…”

According to Fernandes, “General Joseph W. Ralston, the US government’s Special Envoy who is responsible for countering the terrorist PKK and coordinating actions and eliminationist strategies with the Turkish and Iraqi states…He…just so happens to be a member of the Board of Directors of Lockheed Martin, the same corporation whose deal for the sale of 30 F-16s to Turkey sits in the venerable halls of Congress at this very moment” in time. F-16s it must be remembered, were needed during Turkey’s genocidal War on Terror during the 1990s because of their usefulness in obliterating Kurdish settlements, killing civilians and terrifying Kurdish civilians.

It is widely known that the Turkish military used Lockheed Martin F-16s to assist with the destruction of Kurdish villages in North Kurdistan during the 1990’s Dirty War, with the facts well-documented by human rights groups. In 1995, Human Rights Watch documented arms sales to Turkey, along with related violations of the laws of war by that state…It included the many gross abuses that Turkey … perpetrated against the Kurdish people with the F-16 fighter jet figure[ing] prominently…In a report ordered by the US Congress, the State Department admitted that the abuses included the use of US Cobra helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and F-16 fighter bombers. In some instances, critics say, entire Kurdish villages were obliterated from the air.

This proposed new multi-billion dollar sale in 2006, the Pentagon has claimed, will enhance the Turkish Air Force’s ability to defend Turkey, no doubt against its internal Kurdish threat in the Kurdish colony in the southeast, and its external one in southern Kurdistan/Northern Iraq…The aircraft will be used to patrol the nation’s extensive coastline and borders against future threats and to contribute to the Global War on Terrorism and NATO operations… With this in mind, you should ask yourself what, exactly, General Ralston is coordinating. We all know the real deal, don’t we? We all know who have been the targets of those F-16s…”

LtCol Dickerson: Human Hot Potato… Plame & Wilson: Spies Like Us

On Monday, October 2, 2006, Captain Warren Comer (USAF, 374AW/PA, Yakota Japan) indicated that the USAF could provide no further information about Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Dickerson, a central figure in the Edmonds’ matter. “Looking at your request, the only information that I can confirm to you is what is written in the Fuji Flyer newspaper that you read. For any other questions on this subject, please refer to the FBI or the US State Department.”***

Taking Captain Comer’s advice, the US State Department was contacted. On Tuesday, October 3, 2006, Ms Nancy L. Beck (US DOS, PACE) indicated that “Responding to your inquiry, this is not a matter for the US Department of State. Recommend you direct your question to the FBI or Department of Justice.”

Dickerson was recently deployed to the Iraqi theater of operations where he heads up logistics matters for an element of the USAF. His handlers in the intelligence community apparently are happy about that and so must be the public affairs personnel who don’t want anything to do with him.

In 2002, Dickerson and his spouse Melek Can left the country for Belgium and a quiet post with NATO after Edmonds’ exposed them as Turkish operatives or, perhaps, US counterintelligence operatives. Dickerson and his wife’s activities remain a mystery. According to various reports, they were once stationed in Ankara, Turkey in the 1990s, and had contact with Douglas Feith and Marc Grossman. Another report indicated that: in 1995, while in Turkey, Dickerson was the subject of investigation for accepting money from foreign agents, whereupon he was abruptly transferred to Germany. In 1999, Major Douglas Dickerson returned to the United States. His wife, Melek Can Dickerson, started to work for American Turkish Council (atc.org) and related Turkish American business groups.

In 2001, Dickerson was apparently given a position in the weapons systems acquisition arena with the Pentagon and US Department of State. Dickerson’s areas of responsibility supposedly included Turkey, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. He also had dealings with Edelman formerly US Ambassador to Turkey, and now with the Pentagon’s Policy Organization. Dickerson was also active with ATC and Scowcroft. He and his wife associated with several Turkish and American individuals from the Turkish Embassy and the ATC. Many of these folks were targeted by FBI counterintelligence for criminal activity. But thanks to the Turkish government’s penetration of the highest echelons of the US political-military-intelligence-corporate apparatus, the Pentagon and US State Department forced the FBI to back off any criminal investigations that may expose criminal activity, and untidy and covert operations.

Finally, there’s the perplexing case of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson. According to dozens of media reports, Valerie Plame was introduced to Joe Wilson by Brent Scowcroft at an ATC function. Shortly thereafter, the pair was invited to a Turkish Embassy function. Quickly after that, Plame’s CIA WMD operation (Brewster Jennings) was exposed by then Under Secretary of State, Richard Armitage. Coincidently, Dickerson was in close proximity to Plame & Wilson in the 1999-2002 timeframe and the Pentagon and US State Department. It seems likely that only a Turkish operative located somewhere in the US government/intelligence community would have uncovered that information and disclosed it to the Turks and their US sympathizers. Was it Wilson? Dickerson? Armitage?

More fallout is to come from the Edmonds’ matter and the word in Washington, DC-Metro is that it will involve some individuals named in this piece.

John Stanton
John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security and political matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

* Email to FBI PA Bill Carter from John Stanton. Thanks to Mir Carter and the FBI, plus the reference to usdoj.gov/oig/special/0501/index.htm. The CIA, DOD-IG, DEA and Turkish Intelligence did respond.

** From the October 2006 electronic edition of Variant: Cross Currents in Culture, No. 27, Winter 2006 variant.randomstate.org and from Chapter 5 of the book by Desmond Fernandes and Iskender Ozden (2006) US, UK, German and NATO ‘Inspired’ Psychological Warfare Operations Against The Kurdish ‘Communist’ Threat in Turkey and Northern Iraq (Apec Press, Stockholm)

*** www.yokota.af.mil/BaseNews/ FujiFlyer /2006/Sept%2008.pdf

© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.

Turkey's 'Deep-State' Mafia in Bed with US Govt

2008-06-29T22:47:00.012+03:00

The Secrets Behind ‘State Secrets’: How Turkey's Mafia-like 'Deep State' (and its Neocon Friends) Penetrated US Government

Submitted by David Swanson

to afterdowningstreet.org

on Tue, July 25, 2007

By Mike Mejia

*******

French filmmaker Mathieu Verboud is set to release a new documentary for European television this fall, which will reveal important new insights into the case of former FBI translator and president of the National Security Whistleblower’s Coalition Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds, a Turkish-American whose wrongful termination lawsuit was suppressed by the government’s invocation of the all-too-common “state secrets privilege”, reported to her superiors espionage and deliberate mistranslations on the part of fellow Turkish translator, Melek Can Dickerson. It seems Ms. Dickerson had relationships with targets of FBI investigation working at the Turkish Embassy and the American Turkish Council, a fact which meant that anything she translated was likely to be false. However, instead of receiving a promotion for bringing Ms. Dickerson’s’ espionage to the attention of her bosses, Edmonds was fired after she went in frustration to the U.S. Senate. The FBI refused to investigate Edmonds’ claims, at least in part, because the contract linguist had discovered quite a messy scandal: the content of the mistranslated documents revealed that some very powerful people in the U.S. government, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, were connected to foreign organized crime. Even worse, these foreign criminals connected to the high and mighty in the U.S. were also connected internationally, through the heroin trade and associated money laundering, to international terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.

*******

Okay, take a deep breath and take a step back: it’s not a pretty picture. According to what we know so far from Sibel Edmonds’ many interviews and from the groundbreaking story on her case from Vanity Fair, “An Inconvenient Patriot” , Edmonds found that within the U.S. a nest of Turkish spies, some working at the Turkish embassy, others affiliated with namely the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), the American Turkish Associations (ATA) and the American Turkish Council (ATC), were involved in espionage, bribery, illegal lobbying, drug trafficking and the infiltration of U.S nuclear research labs. Separately, from a former CIA Counterterrorism official, Phillip Giraldi, who himself was once based in Turkey, we know that some arms sales meant for Turkey and Israel were actually meant for resale to countries like China and India- and perhaps even to international terrorists- using fake end-user certificates. So we have Turkish nationals at the Embassy and NGOs stealing U.S. secrets for sale to the highest bidder, re-selling arms meant for Turkey, bringing in drugs from Europe, and pouring money into bribes and lobbying activities.

*******

To understand how these activities fit together- Americans must first understand what Europeans call the Turkish ‘deep state’. In 1996, a car crash in a town called Susurluk revealed “link between politics, organized crime and the bureaucracy” in Turkey. As it turns out, its crippled economy in the 1990s meant Turkey had become the European equivalent of Colombia- a state almost completely dependent on the Turkish mafia and by extension, the Southwest Asian Heroin trade. Which is where the Turkish ‘deep state’ comes in- it becomes very difficult to determine where the ‘government’ ends and the ‘mafia’ begins. What we do know from Sibel Edmonds and other sources is this: Turkey’s secular establishment, including the Turkish military and intelligence services (MIT), as well as political parties associated with former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, appear to have been more connected to the Turkish mafia than the Turkish Islamic Parties that Washington abhors. Furthermore, it appears from reading into some of Edmonds’ statements that the Turkish mafia was partnered with Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network in the drug trade- meaning Turkey’s secular establishment was more connected to al Qaeda- pre/9-11- than were the Islamists in Turkey. Which is quite ironic, to say the least.

*******

If you think this story sounds too convoluted to be true, and you feel the instinct to dismiss Edmonds’ claims, think again. Every investigation into the whistleblower’s charges- from the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General Report, has found that Edmonds’ story is corroborated within the FBI, which means her translations, not those of Melek Can Dickerson, were the correct ones. This also means that the aforementioned Turkish organizations, and certain Turkish diplomats, were indeed under FBI investigation. And all this put together means that people like Dennis Hastert probably were- and perhaps still are- on the payroll of Turkish ‘deep state’ interests.

*******

A recent article published in the U.K. Guardian about the well-connected Kurdish Baybasin clan also gives important backing to the former translator’s story. The article details how Europe’s “Pablo Escobar”, Huseyin Baybasin, has “alleged that he had received the assistance of Turkish embassies and consulates while moving huge consignments of drugs around Europe, and that Turkish army officers serving with NATO in Belgium were also involved." This information, of course, dovetails most precisely with what Sibel Edmonds has been hinting at for over 3 years now; that targets of FBI investigations linked with the Turkish embassy and Turkish organizations were involved in narcotics trafficking. It is clear the Baybasin gang and the secular factions in Turkey had a seemingly symbiotic relationship, with the government providing the traffickers diplomatic passports and thus free reign to travel around the world without fear of prosecution. Also involved in the scandalous Turkish drug running are the very notorious, Pope-killing Grey Wolves, a fascist organization connected to human rights abuses in Turkey.

*******

As for who else besides Hastert might have been on the payroll of Mr. Baybasin and friends- we turn next to the Executive Branch. In an interview with Chris Deliso of antiwar.com, Edmonds hinted at key roles played by some powerful unelected officials-important Neoconservatives like Marc Grossman of the State Department, and Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, formerly of the Defense Department. If we hit the rewind button and go back to a CBS 60 Minutes’ interview in October, 2002, we remember the ex-contract linguist stated that Turkish targets of FBI investigation had spies inside the U.S. State Department and at the Pentagon in order to “obtain the United States military and intelligence secrets.” It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that Grossman, Feith and Perle might have been the persons to whom she was referring in 2002. Furthermore, the language specialist has repeatedly stated in past interviews that investigations into pre-9/11 terrorist financing activities were blocked “per State Department request”, leaving open the question whether it was Mr. Grossman, then Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, who actively hindered investigations into the Turkey-Bin Laden link.

*******

Perle and Feith are an interesting case in this hidden scandal. Their consultancy, International Advisors (IA), has done extensive work for the Republic of Turkey, though it is questionable who is paying the invoices. Ms. Edmonds rhetorically asked the question of Phoenix radio personality Charles Goyette in January 2006, “For what [were they paid]? One could imagine, hypothetically, that passing state secrets might be one “service” provided to the Turkish mafia/government by IA. But would Perle and Feith have gone beyond that? Would they have introduced the Turkish mafia types to Denny Hastert, and counseled “deep state” interests in how to skirt U.S. campaign finance laws? After all, the Turks were reported to have made their initial payments from 1996-1998 through “unitemized (less than $200) contributions”, after which they allegedly delivered suitcases of cash to the Speaker’s front door. Someone had to teach them the intricacies of campaign finance law: was it IA? What we do know is that Perle was a key architect of the Israeli/Turkish alliance forged in the late 90s, and that Edmonds case also is connected to the AIPAC spy scandal- leaving lots of room for speculation on how the rest of the story pans out.

*******

As messy and ugly as this, for lack of a better phrase, “Turkish DeepState Gate” scandal appears, the consequences of continuing to do nothing about it- of allowing the government’s outrageous use of ‘state secrets’ to insure Dennis Hastert, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman and others are never investigated, could be horrific. Ms. Edmonds plans to take petitions to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months to finally force full and open hearings on her case. She will try to do the type of lobbying that does not involve foreign bribery or ill-gotten gains. This will be the simple type of petitioning guaranteed of every citizen in the Constitution under the First Amendment, a long forgotten portion of the Bill of Rights. Americans aware of the situation can only hope, and do everything in their power to insure, that Ms. Edmonds’ type of lobbying prevails.

Mike Mejia is a freelance writer with a Master’s in International Policy Studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he specialized in International Trade and Arms Proliferation. He currently resides in an undisclosed location in the American Heartland and can be contacted at lenlarga@yahoo.com .

Whistleblower accuses Turkish diplomats

2008-06-29T22:12:00.005+03:00

ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
Monday, January 7, 2008

A former Turkish language translator for the FBI has claimed that some United States government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to “steal nuclear weapons secrets.”

Sibel Edmonds, 37, said “Turkish agents in Washington” were also involved, adding that a “well-known senior official in the U.S. State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.”

Edmonds has been quoted as saying by The Sunday Times, that the official, whose name is withheld by the British paper, was “aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

Claiming that the FBI was gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials “who were aiding foreign agents” while she still worked as a translator, Edmonds said, “If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials.”

She added that Turks often acted as “a conduit for Pakistan's intelligence agency” and venues such as the American-Turkish Council in Washington were used to exchange cash. Edmonds also alleged Pakistanis in pursuit of nuclear secrets were “in constant contact with the Turkish embassy.”

Edmonds, who also speaks Farsi, was recruited by the FBI in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Her main job was to translate conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency, The Sunday Times wrote. She left the FBI in 2002, after six months, allegedly after becoming “disillusioned with the U.S. authorities' failure to act” against terrorism. Her allegations were heard in a closed session of the U.S. Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing.

© Dogan Daily News Inc.
www.turkishdailynews.com.tr

The So-Called Law of Attraction is Commercial BS

2008-06-27T18:44:00.006+03:00

Just Notice (& Do!) What Works - A Powerful Life Lesson

Many years ago I met a businessman who said he'd turned his $40,000 per year business into a $400,000 per year business in just 2 years. He asked if I wanted to know how he did it. I replied that of course I wanted to know. At the time I was struggling with my computer games business. I was able to pay my bills, but I wasn't getting ahead.

The lesson he taught me was quite simple. In fact, it's so simple that you're likely to dismiss it as obvious. I agree that it sounds like common sense, but it's not commonly applied. When you really put this idea into action, you can take your results to a whole new next level.
In a nutshell this was the lesson:

In life you will always have your ups and downs, your successes and failures. Sometimes things go well for you. Sometimes they go poorly.

When you succeed or fail, there's always a cause. You can backtrack your results to figure out what caused them. You might not be able to do this perfectly, but you'll usually have a pretty good idea of the contributing factors.

What caused your income, your health, and your relationships to improve over the past several years? What caused things to get worse? Can you identify the specific causes of your best and worst results?

Once you know the contributing factors to your hits and your misses, your goal is to deliberately do more of what causes the successes and deliberately do less of what caused the failures.

Of course some of the contributing factors may not be under your direct control, but some of those factors will be. Focus your efforts on what you can control, and don't worry about what's outside your control.

I must admit that it was hard for me to take this exercise seriously, but I decided to try it anyway. The businessman was certainly doing a lot better than I was, so maybe he knew something I didn't. I figured I had nothing to lose.

Let me give you a specific example of how I applied this to my games business.

When I first did this simple exercise, I noticed that my sales went up whenever I released a new computer game, and they tended to decline if I went too long without releasing something. That probably sounds obvious, but it was a powerful distinction for me at the time. You see... most of my time was actually spent developing games, which is definitely not the same thing as releasing games. I thought that as long as I was working on creating new games, I was doing intelligent, productive work that would eventually benefit my business financially. How wrong I was!

I got the idea that maybe I should turn my attention to releasing games instead of spending so much time and energy developing them. So instead of developing a whole new game from scratch, for my next project I created an expansion pack as an add-on product for my most successful game. The original game took six months to develop, but the expansion pack only took two weeks because it didn't require any special programming. It was just a pack of 20 extra levels for the same game.

This expansion pack earned about 35% as much money as the original game, which was an excellent return for so little effort. How would you like to permanently increase your income by 35% just by doing slightly different work for the next two weeks?

Next, I released a second expansion pack for the same game. This time I didn't even create the levels myself -- I had someone else do the work. Again there was a similar jump in sales. We're talking sustained increases, not a temporary surge followed by a drop.

Later I released a new version of the same game with five times as many levels as there were in the original release. Most of those levels were created by other people, so all I had to do was bundle everything together. I raised the price to reflect the added value, and that new version sold well for many years, earning many times what the original release earned. If I'd stopped at the original version, I'd have left most of the potential sales untapped.

Then I turned around and licensed that game to other companies, so I earned royalties from their sales as well. When another publisher released one of my games to their audience, my income went up again. It was the act of releasing games that made the difference. I didn't have to be the one to do it personally. I just had to set the cause in motion in order to enjoy the result.

Finally, I went on to publish other developer's games, paying a sales-based royalty to the original developer. By introducing other developers' games to my audience, I was able to release many more products than I could develop with my own team. This was a win for me, a win for the developers, and a win for my customers. In one month my business managed to release three new games whereas previously I was lucky to release one game per year. For my small business, that was quite an achievement.

I stopped publishing games years ago, but to this day I still receive monthly royalty checks. The checks are admittedly quite small now, but it's a nice reminder of the power of noticing what works.

By noticing that my results were improved by releasing games, not by developing them, I found a way to do more of the work that caused my sales to increase and less of the work that didn't. My business began to thrive, and it was profitable every year after I started applying this simple yet valuable lesson.

I used a similar strategy to build my personal development business, especially during the first year. When I somehow managed to get a small traffic increase, I figured out what caused it and tried to do more of it. When my traffic stagnated or went down, again I figured out the cause and tried to do less of it. Once I had a decent level of traffic, I did the same thing with respect to generating income.

When I was first launching StevePavlina.com, I didn't know how to build a successful business in this field, but by noticing what worked and what didn't, I was able to adjust course to increase the hits and reduce the misses. Some of those lessons seemed counter-intuitive at first, but the hard data doesn't lie.

You can apply this same idea to improve your results in any area of your life -- your income, your career, your relationships, your health -- even your spiritual development. Notice what creates a hit for you, and do more of it. Notice what causes a flop or a dry spell, and do less of it.

A corollary to the above is that if you haven't had a hit for a long time, you can basically throw out whatever you're currently doing in that area because it clearly isn't working. You'll have to experiment more to figure out what does work. If you already know that your current efforts aren't working, there's no point in continuing along the same path.

You aren't doomed to become a victim of your past, but your past surely contains clues that can help you enjoy an even better present and future.

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.

"Fight or Die" - Shot + Directed by E. Sahin

2008-06-27T00:13:00.011+03:00

A documentary to premier on the Discovery Channel in the U.S. on Thursday, June 26 (10pm Eastern and Pacific, 9pm Central - consult your local listings).

The pilot episode, "Valley of Death," was executive produced by Randall Wallace (writer of Braveheart, We Were Soldiers, Man in the Iron Mask and Pearl Harbor) and executive produced and written by Kelly McPherson.

The documentary focuses on the first major battle of Vietnam, as seen through the eyes of six men who fought there. This battle was also the basis of the best-selling book, "We Were Soldiers Once and Young" and the motion picture, "We Were Soldiers," starring Mel Gibson. Due to a scheduling conflict, Mel did not participate in Emre's recreations!

You can watch a preview of the hour (if you live in Turkey, where YouTube has been banned, see "How to Get Around the YouTube Ban" above to bypass the ban!) by clicking the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2KPa8phRiI

And if you enjoy Thursday's pilot episode, please send yourthoughts/feedback to: feedback@wheelhouseentertainment.com

"Fight or Die" - Calhoun Times Feature

2008-06-26T23:43:00.006+03:00

Calhoun Times
06/24/08

On Nov. 14, 1965 in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam, in a small clearing called Landing Zone X-Ray, 2,000 enemy soldiers surrounded 400 United States Army troopers.

The ensuing battle was one of the most savage in U.S. history.

A new documentary, produced by a Calhoun native, will tell the story of this battle from the perspective of the men in the line of fire. "Fight or Die" will air on the Discovery Channel and Discovery Channel HD on Thursday, June 26 at 10 p.m.

Jill Rytie Lutz, a 1993 graduate of Gordon Central High School, worked as the producer of Fight or Die which was completed earlier this year.

"Fight Or Die" is a new epic documentary special that captures the personal experience of war in groundbreaking fashion by delving inside the psyche of the soldier under fire, allowing viewers to walk the Thin Red Line that separates sanity from madness and the living from the dead.

This first episode, Valley of Death, tells the real-life story of a group of American soldiers whose lives were made famous in Randall Wallace’s motion picture We Were Soldiers starring Mel Gibson.

Rytie Lutz worked as Wallace’s on-set assistant during the production of that film in 2001, and remained with Wallace’s production company, Wheelhouse Entertainment for the next seven years, making her way up the ranks to producer. Wallace serves as executive producer of the show.

“It was an amazing experience to see Fight or Die from inception to completion,” says Rytie Lutz.
“Telling the real stories of the men in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley is one of the most important things I’ve been working on with Wheelhouse for the past few years. On top of that, it will be the first show I’ve worked on as a producer that will be broadcast nationwide.”

Her husband, Mike Lutz, an actor originally from Texas, plays the role of the young Bill Beck in some of Fight or Die’s cinematic battle recreations.

According to Rytie-Lutz, Discovery Channel will consider continuing Fight or Die as a full series, but its performance on June 26 will determine its fate.

She adds, “I’m really proud of this documentary, but there are many other stories of men in the trenches in battles throughout history whose personal experiences have never been told. I’m hoping that people will like the show and the positive response will help get the series picked up. If so, we will be able to make those stories of courage and heroism see the light of day.”

Rytie Lutz lives in Santa Monica, Calif., and works as a freelance television producer and production manager.

http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?pnpid=722&show=localnews&newsid=910941

"Dig!" Trailer

2008-06-20T23:34:00.007+03:00

Picnic at Hanging Rock Trailer

2008-06-20T23:14:00.013+03:00

AN EARLIER PICNIC FILM (below)
In 1969, Tony Ingram – a 14 year old student at Melbourne Grammar School, wrote and began to produce a B&W 16mm film of Picnic at Hanging Rock titled "The Day of Saint Valentine", only two years after the book's publication, and some six years prior to the production of Peter Weir's film. The surviving B & W remnant:

The Body's Own Facebook?

2008-06-20T00:48:00.019+03:00

TimeOut: Istanbul (in English)

The Sixth Degree
With Ezgi Karaca

July 2008
By Ayşe Şahin
**************************************************
If you get the way Facebook works, you could get the key to the causes of cancer. Don’t get it? Ayşe Şahin gets Ezgi Karaca to break it down for us.
**************************************************

AS: At 25, you’ve attracted the attention of top schools around the world with the cutting-edge research you’ve been doing for your Master’s Degree in chemical engineering, in a little-known yet vital area of science called computational biology…

EK: Experiments on a molecular basis aren’t always enough, or feasible, in the search for treatments for incurable diseases. When that’s the case, analyses done via computers can provide us with answers. Computational biology has been around for about 50 years, but it’s only recently become a hot area of medical research. It’s really starting to explode nowadays. Pharmaceutical firms and the US government have been pouring a ton of money into it.

AS: You yourself are currently doing your research thanks to a TÜBİTAK (The Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey) scholarship that supports the work of young scientists. Where are you conducting your research?

EK: At the Polymer Research Center at Bosphorus University, under the guidance of one of Turkey’s youngest and most successful professors, Prof. Dr. Türkan Haliloğlu.

AS: Can you give us a brief description of what it is specifically that you’ve been researching?

EK: There is a tumor-suppressing mechanism within the human body, made up of various proteins that communicate with each other through social networks...

AS: Hmm... Like Facebook?

EK: Yes, you could say that. My work has concentrated on a tumor-suppressing protein known as p73, which belongs to the p53 family of proteins. One of the primary aims of this study is to try to determine what kinds of circumstances might prevent it from working. It can be inconsistent in the way it functions, and increase or decrease depending on a number of positive and negative influences. In fact, it isn’t even consistently present in the body. It can be synthesized or distributed based on need, or even destroyed by several different proteins.

AS: So there’s a certain economy at work here, and even, a cellular rivalry to speak of...

EK: Yes, it’s a matter of balance. What’s also interesting is that the cell has various “check points” to maintain this balance. If that balance has been upset in some way, a protein’s function and the state of the cell can change dramatically.

AS: Given the many factors at play in this area of chemical engineering, combining it with the discipline of computer science to study them sounds logical and obvious enough. Less so may be the potential for contributions from still other disciplines...

EK: Absolutely. Microbiology is a field that could benefit from the perspectives of chemistry and physics too, for example, and even economics or philosophy... There could be significant advances to be made from experts in all of these fields getting together to discuss this subject.

AS: Molecular dynamics research figures in your work in computational biology, as well…

EK: It does... The thing is that, even though there are software programs used to study molecular dynamics, there is no computer that can precisely simulate the behavior of cell activity – computers just aren’t powerful enough. There really is still so much we have yet to learn in this field... Yet we tend to be egotistical and superficial, and believe we’re far more powerful and knowing than we actually are. I think we’re actually weak and pitiful, and that we try to cover up that weakness by trying to beat down other people and other species.

AS: You also happen to be an experienced deep-sea diver...

EK: I’m a licensed one-star instructor, which means that I’m certified to guide one other person in a deep-sea diving expedition. The highest level is the 3-star instructor, where you’re certified to open courses to train new divers. This has been a hobby that’s been helpful in terms of other areas of my life too, without a doubt. Though unfortunately I’ve had to put it aside for the time being, to concentrate on my studies and finish interviewing for doctoral programs.

AS: Where have you interviewed?

EK: I’ve had interviews with the University of Cambridge, the University of Leeds, King’s College of London, the University of Barcelona, and Utrecht University.

AS: Rumor has it that you’ve got some good news to share with us?

EK: I’m due to start a PhD under the Department of Chemistry at Utrecht University, one of the leading schools for Life Sciences. My supervisor will be Dr. Alexandre Bonvin, who’s working on computational structural biology, especially on protein-protein interactions.

AS: Where do you see yourself 5 years down the road?

EK: I’d like to find a post-Doc position in a highly qualified and prestigious environment. Afterwards, I’d like to come back to Turkey to teach what I’ve learned over the years.

AS: And in the meantime...

EK: I’d like to see the Turkish government develop an initiative that promotes the return of Turkish scientists who’ve lived and achieved success in their careers abroad. The Catalanian government in Spain recently did this by establishing research institutes of high standards for Spanish scientists to conduct their work. As a result, students have begun to go to Spain, so that they can study with these scientists instead of with scientists in other European countries or in the States. Why shouldn’t Turkey do the same?

*****

Ms. Karaca's research will be published in Nucleic Acids Research Magazine soon.

Everyone Has A Story

2008-06-19T23:18:00.007+03:00

Interesting People Everywhere
June 19, 2008

It’s easy to forget sometimes that everyone has a story to tell if we take the time to listen. We are so accustomed to hearing the stories of people in the news that we sometimes lose track of the fact that the random stranger on the bus also has a fascinating story about where they came from and how they got to be where they are. The sheer variety of paths taken in this world, from farmers to CEOs to homeless people to world travelers, is indicative of how much we can learn from each individual. Sometimes the shy, quiet person at work has the most amazing life story and the biggest dreams, it is up to us to take the time to find out.

Some people travel a path of wealth and privilege, while others struggle with only themselves to rely on, and both have great stories to tell. Each person learns lessons, makes choices, and develops a unique perspective, which only they can claim and share. Even two people who have had very similar lives will have slightly different experiences, leading them to a different point of view, so each person remains a treasure trove waiting to be explored. When we take the time to ask questions and listen, we find that every person has a fascinating story to tell and an utterly unique perspective from which to tell it.

Bearing this in mind, we have the opportunity to approach the world around us in a new way. There is never any reason to be bored at a party, or on the bus, or in a conversation with a stranger. When we retain the spark of curiosity and the warmth required to open someone up, we always have in front of us the makings of a great story. All we have to do is ask.

This article is from DailyOM
http://www.dailyom.com/articles/2008/14236.html

Cats Get A Workout :)))

2008-06-17T22:48:00.000+03:00