Together we can make this next voyage happen, not only for the people in Gaza, not only for Palestine, but for the principle that the power of the people can defeat even the most powerful militaries in the world.

Huwaida Arraf, Chair, Free Gaza Movement

Dear Supporters

On November 7 and 8, The Free Gaza interim board of directors met in London to plan our strategy for 2010 as well as to schedule the next mission to Gaza.

The situation in Gaza is as bad today as it was the day the bombs stopped falling in January. The Gaza Strip is still sealed; homes, businesses, hospitals, schools and mosques still lie in rubble; and fundamental supplies are in severe shortage, as Israel continues to restrict the entry of basic goods such as fuel, medical equipment, oxygen, baby formula, paper, books, and construction material.

We are determined not to let Israel’s violence halt our efforts to break the siege on Gaza, and even more determined to open a sea route so the people of Gaza can import the supplies they need to rebuild their lives.

However, Israel’s use of force to stop our last 3 voyages has made it imperative to revise our strategy. Instead of sending one vessel to Gaza, we are working on a flotilla, or mini fleet with more boats, including at least one cargo ship, more people, more supplies, and more media on the high seas. And around the world, tens of thousands of people engaged in the mission. Our intention is to build a truly international fleet that will reach Gaza, or, if stopped, be politically costly for Israel.

Over the past six months, we have been to various countries meeting with political figures, unions, Palestine solidarity activists, and other groups and NGOs. To make this next mission to Gaza successful we need to continue to:

We have tentative commitments from over a dozen members of parliament from around the world. From MPs who are not able to come with us, we have written and vocal support. We now have Free Gaza branches / coordinators in over 20 countries and are still growing. We have made initial visits to Latin America, India and South Africa and have enthusiastic support in all of these countries.

In addition, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamed established a Free Gaza fund and secured the money for us to obtain a cargo ship. On this cargo ship, we will take construction supplies to Gaza. We had wanted to travel in October / November so that at least some people in Gaza could start rebuilding their homes before the cold weather hit. Unfortunately we could not meet this deadline.

We have the funds for one cargo ship, and one passenger vessel. However, we need at least one more passenger vessel plus the operating expenses before we can go. In financial terms, we need about €300,000, or someone to donate a passenger vessel and €100,000 in operating expenses (fuel, port fees, crew wages, etc.)

We thought we could go, if not in October / November, then in early January, to coincide with the planned Viva Palestina convoy and the Gaza Freedom March* both initiatives the Free Gaza Movement supports.

However, it is now end-November, and we are still €300,000 short of the funds, it is not realistic that we can be ready to sail by early January.

The efforts of the Free Gaza Movement are vitally important; we need to end the blockade, not just deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. While many potential funders recognize the significance of our work, for various reasons they have not come through with funding. Most prefer their financial contributions go toward to humanitarian aid for Palestine. But Palestine is not a charity case! There are hundreds of millions being pumped into Palestine by aid agencies that are unable or unwilling to address the political issues, or by donor countries that shirk their political, legal, and moral obligations, by throwing money at Palestine.

This aid is paying for Israel’s occupation by alleviating Israel of the responsibility to care for the people it occupies. We firmly believe that activists and people who care about Palestine should not be raising money for humanitarian aid but should focus on direct action to confront the Israeli policies that leave Palestinians in need of this aid.

If you believe as we do that our efforts are important, please help us raise the remaining funds we need to launch an international flotilla to Gaza by early February 2010. Please:

(1) Make a personal contribution by going to www.freegaza.org and donating through our website at http://www.freegaza.org/en/donate

(2) Contact people you know who might be able to help us and either ask directly for a donation or make an introduction for us to speak

(3) Organize a private fundraiser for Free Gaza and ask for one of our speakers at http://www.freegaza.org/join-in/speaker-bureau

(4) Speak at potential fundraisers that we organize

If you have any other suggestions, please email us at friends@freegaza.org

•Note: we will have a Free Gaza delegation at the Gaza Freedom March. If you are considering joining the Gaza Freedom March, please contact Dina at dkennedy@freegaza.org so we can connect you to other FG Movement representatives.

Round and Round we go where the Murder stops who the fuck knows. So what’s up with Obama and Afghan-Paki-Stan? Decisions, Decisions…
20K 30K 40K, how many troops and when will he do it breaking his word once again. This is termed, “His War”. Considering it is NOT a War it’s a Sectarian/Civil Conflict with Karzais Bro raking in the $$$$ from “The Poppy”, all the while we die and die at an increasingly alarming rate for Heroin.
The never ending Stop-Loss of our troops to insure that PTSD will afflict each and every Brother and Sister of mine. Guarenteeing that they will never have life long care, a necessity to keep this emotional disorder[sweet little moniker for losing your mind]from the ever increasing suicide rates if Vets and Active Duty troops. Then again when they’re told,”Okey Dokey therapy and meds are all done, you’re alllllll Better now, K?”, then what do we do? We self medicate, become addicted, lose all of our money, our families, our homes, ergo we live on the streets[ Yes Billo we live under frigging bridges, too ]we do anything for a few dollars to self medicate more and more then perhaps suicide. This is how we treat our Vets, you GOP F$$KS that vote Nay on Veterans Bennies, yeah you Issa, King, Kantor, Bachmann, Boehner[whom spent close to 80 grand on golf outings last year]Addison Graves[Joe,"YOU LIE]Wilson. Sr. As you lie about your real name, and all of you morons that stick your yellow “We Support Our Troops” magnets on your SUV’s and Mini Vans, does a GD lot of good, yeah? I despise each of you with every breath I breathe because you are fakes, phonies, liars, ersatz Patriots. What have you literally done to help and aid these men and women you declare at the top of your lungs, you’ve nary a clue about the art of civil discussion, defend this America that was decimated by George the second whom I refer to as the Sociopath in Chief. What, tell me WHAT??? Your magnets are an affront your lack of personal involvement is despicable, so please help or knock your ridiculous affront to us off.
Namaste
Rhoda VFP, IVAW

Autonomy is a kind of independence through self-governance. Kant was the most famous advocate of autonomy, thinking that it held the key to morality, though scores of other philosophers have thought it to be vitally important. It's one of those essentially contested concepts, though. People mean many different things by it — and this diversity seems not merely to be a product of linguistic dispute, but arguments over what sort of life is most worth living.

My conception of autonomy takes it to consist in being responsive to rationally authoritative norms. In short, we exercise an important sort of independence insofar as we manage to act upon reasons rather than any other contingent motivations we happen to be struck by. Here, what reasons we have are understood widely, and are not limited to the results of reflective inquiry: any rational actions could count, insofar as we've grasped what, if anything, we ought to do.

Constructivism about norms thinks that normative authority comes from correctly following procedures of practical reason. What we should do, ultimately, results from the structure of reason itself. Constructivists, taking their cue from a reading of Kant, also think that autonomy is important. Indeed, they think that autonomy somehow grounds normativity, providing internal criteria which broadly determine what we ought to do. This too involves the claim that freedom involves a kind of responsiveness to norms — those prescribed by the very structure of agents' practical reasoning and thus ones which are not externally imposed on the agent, and thus fit for expressing the agent's own autonomy. This is a sophisticated and ambitious kind of 'bootstrapping' strategy, as it is often called.

On the surface, it can seem that the shared commitment of myself and various constructivists to the idea that freedom is a form of normative responsiveness means that our views are substantively similar. However, my position with respect to normativity is a modest form of realism, whereby there is a kind of irreducibly normative authority of which people can become aware. In contrast, constructivism is a proceduralism which models normativity on the structures of a conception of democratic public reason. This is not what I want.

Instead, my variety of freedom as a kind of normative responsiveness is not one wherein we follow structural rules in order to achieve a legitimate outcome, but rather one in which we have a normative vision. (Ocular imagery is now deeply unfashionable in philosophy, but I think it ought to be reclaimed.) The point of the visual metaphor here is to emphasise that there is something there to be discovered, and its revelation to ourselves provides the backdrop against which we can act freely. So understood, being free requires us to see the world aright — understanding the significance of some situation which we are in, the requirements which it imposes upon us, whether or not we recognise them as ours. Acting upon this basis and within these bounds, with our eyes open and the particulars of the situation clear, including the nature of currents of motivation and the virtue and vices of different responses, provides us with a kind of autonomy. This is an ability to avoid being pushed around by brute forces and act with some purchase over ourselves. We thereby avoid being merely determined — the alternative is being influenced by factors whose significance is unclear, such that we have little basis for orienting ourselves and knowing what to pursue.

We may be unable, or just plainly fail, to resist unfavourable motivations or influences upon us. Even when fully aware of them and their true significance, this may still be so — the lure of the seedy desire, the satisfactions of high-handed moralism, may be too great — but this points to another sort of freedom: autocracy. This is the strength, favourable make-up, acuity or psychological agility to manage one’s psychology so as to execute a sense of what ought to be done. Autonomy and autocracy form a distinction but not a dualism: often knowing what to do is best conceived as a hands-on practical activity, where we are not guided by a clear intention nor criteria reflectively arrived at.

Autonomous agency, especially when put forward as an ideal, has often seemed retrograde though. It seems to hark back to the patriarchal ideals of the eighteenth century bourgeois: the rugged individual, independent and beholden to no-one who he does not choose to contract with in his own self-interest. Obviously, this is an ideological fiction: as a description of the conditions of any recognisably human life, which are ineliminably social, and always contain some moments of radical dependence, such as in childhood, sickness and infirmity; and as an ideal, with its autistic disregard for genuine communication, non-self-interested openness to the needs of others, and so on.

In implicitly endorsing autonomy then, it must be recalled that this is balanced through its entwinement with a conception of normative vision. So, we are not faced with egoism, and certainly not as an ideal. All sorts of things, people and situations make demands upon us and otherwise bend normative space in ways that we ought to respond to beyond our self-interest. On my conception of autonomy, failure to see this is a paradigmatic abrogation of freedom: fully free acts are those taken in as much awareness of their significance as possible.

Still, isn’t autonomy taken as an ideal in a problematic way? Egoism may fall by the wayside, but don’t other types of independence enter here as putatively valuable without justification? For example, it can seem that the influence of institutions, traditions and our peers are hastily too disdained, whereby it is ourselves who must pronounce upon right and wrong, whereby they are treated as mere interference. However, this charge would neglect two further features of my view.

Firstly, there is a role for second nature, as the training and conditioning which we all acquire in our development. In other words, we need to understand normativity in the context of the educative formation of people. This will involve acquiring and then being able to refine the skills of language use, empirical perception, coalescing of an emotional character and cognitive inquiry which are vital to being able to make the kinds of discriminations necessary to see the world in its full normative significance. Fully formed human agents are not possible without the nurtured and guided development which social forms such as institutions and traditions enable.

Secondly, often it will be difficult or impossible to exercise such skills without the concrete help or input of others. There may be more or less empirical cases of this. For example, there are inquiries so big as to be impractical if undertaken alone, as with many scientific projects. Or else, loneliness may retard our emotional health, leaving us unable to calibrate and hone our reactions. There are also cases where dialogical interaction seems integral. For example: intervening in an academic debate, in the humanities, say, where it is important that you are responding to ways of looking at the world which conflict with your own conception, going beyond your own horizons and ‘prejudices’. So, there may be various kinds of prompting from others which the social world affords us, and which enable us to get a better grip on the world, including its normative significance. This helps realise and sustain the skills which socially-mediated Bildung endows.

So, I think it is possible to advocate autonomy without falling into the ideological traps which have doubtless motivated many of its champions. We can accomodate varieties of dependence within the normative landscape which autonomy, as I conceive it, must be parasitic on. In this way, dependence becomes a condition of independence. The lesson here is that any attempt to think of autonomy as an ‘inner citadel’, an existentialist leap of willing, or an egoistic rugged individualism, ought to be challenged by the advocate of autonomy themselves.

I got a nasty comment on one of my posts the other day by a Kevin P Ward, who is apparently the director of something called the Aspen Science Center. You can read the post for yourself as it is distasteful. So like most people, I wanted to know why he said what he said and looked him up on the internet.

The goals of the center seem noble; educating both children and adults on the sciences. Having been a technologist  for 30 years I believe this is one of the most important responsibilities in our nation today. The Science Center have had some pretty good speakers who appear to be experts on their subjects. I also found that Mr. Ward gained some notoriety during the 2008 election when he called for a science debate between the presidential candidates. He was quoted in the Aspen Times as saying President Bush “has legitimized scientific ignorance in the public arena” in emphasizing the importance of his own vision of science.

Accusing the president of dismissing global warming as “just another theory”, Ward said ” So’s gravity. I invite him to walk off the roof of a 3 story building”.  Last I looked, it was called Newton’s Law of Gravity. Whatever the eventual truth, AGW is still only a theory. Mr Ward was both wrong and condescending. And there, you see lies the rub. Too many people in the earth sciences either have either forgotten the the importance of  accuracy and fact or simply don’t care. They are also often very rude to those who differ with their theory.

Forty years ago, my father, a rocket scientist, served as acting director of ARPA (now DARPA). Even then, he was deeply concerned with the new field known as earth sciences. He pointed out that even in the mid to late 1960’s, some of the instrumentation available was so sensitive that in many cases the presence of certain elements and compounds was statistically meaningless. X parts per million or even parts per billion can have very little meaning in most cases. He would liken detection levels of some equipment to finding a grain of sand in a dumptruck.

The determinant, he said was the application. The same principles and technology that can, as an example, sniff plastic explosives and nuclear materials and the carbon in a core sample can be misapplied and the data manipulated either inaccurately or improperly. The tool must be used properly and the facts verified. And as Disraeli once raged  “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. The misuse and misapplication of the data has been a common issue at the Environmental Protection Agency and here in California for many years. When making decisions on science, the data must be sacrosanct. The problem seems to be far too common when it comes to earth sciences. The cost/benefit discussion, as well as a number of more fundamental issues, have in many cases been lost in the statistics.

And now we find perhaps the greatest scandal of all is based upon scientists playing fast and loose with the facts. I do not know the truth of anthropogenic global warming, but at the very least that the data has been corrupted, and one of the fundamental principles of scientific research has been violated. That they may have then manipulated and falsified that data is cause for the most serious of criminal charges.

Make no mistake about it. Trillions of dollars are at stake. The Cap & Trade bill in this country has already been damned by some of the leading climatologists as ineffectual. This is as much about money and power as it is about the environment.  In 2 weeks representatives of most every country on the planet will meet in Copenhagen on Global Warming, and the countrywith the most at stake is the United States. And now the data on which all of the decisions will be based has been irrevocably tainted.

A couple of years ago I read Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. I was amazed that virtually everything in it was anecdotal. The charts and graphs were subjective. In a book on an issue of science, it did not present a clear, logical case. This has been a running theme in the global warming debate. The science is rickety, fast and loose. The worms are squirming out of the can.

We rely on scientists to do their jobs scientifically. Unfortunately, it seems we are dealing with educated morons such as Mr. Ward. I believe Alex Trebek would agree this is the ultimate game of Jeopardy.

How did we get from an America of fierce individualism and personal responsibility to an America of handouts and government control?  Temptation.  That’s the argument Paul Rahe makes here.

Three experts that we've put our trust

      Today we live in a world of experts.  Or so you’d think.  It’s important to have letters in front and in back of your name. PhD, MD, CEO, and over 900 acronyms and abbreviations denoting certain expertise and standards for qualification have come to be important indicators of our place in society.  The complexity of society has been somewhat responsible for this as knowledge has become more focused and narrow.  No longer do I just work in the employment department at my company.  I may be an employment benefits administrator, or a FMLA/Leave specialist, or a Human Resources Analyst.  And these are just three jobs in the field of Human Resources.  A normal human being, after reading the job description of these positions can get a pretty good idea of what a person is supposed to do.  But take another field in the computer technology area. 

            ‘“Operations research” and “management science” are terms that are used interchangeably to describe the discipline of using advanced analytical techniques to make better decisions and to solve problems. In private enterprises, operations research is used in planning business ventures and analyzing options by using statistical analysis, data and computer modeling, linear programming, and other mathematical techniques.

Operations research analysts are often involved in top-level strategizing, planning, and forecasting. They help to allocate resources, measure performance, schedule, design production facilities and systems, manage the supply chain, set prices, coordinate transportation and distribution, or analyze large databases.’ (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Handbook, 2008-09 ed)

            I suppose that if you’re an Operations research analyst this is all very clear, but if I was a freshman student in college and was thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I might have difficulty grasping the scope of this job. 

            The point of this discussion is that as our society becomes more complex the more we have to specialize, which in turn creates more cultural isolation.  Not only do we not know what our neighbor does but we can’t talk with him because of our language and paradigm orientation.  Experts are supposed to know more about their subject than the rest of us.  They’re schooled and accredited, whereas we aren’t.  This sometimes gives us a sense that we are not as good as they are thereby putting more confidence in them than may be deemed necessary or advisable.  That is the reason, at least in the counseling field, that boundaries between the counselor and counselee are so important.  The counselor has power that if used improperly results in unethical behavior.  The same can be said as it applies to other professions.   Those with accreditation have more power with/over their clients and the clients need protection from improper or sloppy behavior. 

               Ethical imperatives are not always consistent with similar professions.  Two particular licensures that many counseling practitioners in Texas have are the Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapy license.  Both of these licenses are administered by the same state agency.  They each have their own board and they periodically modify the ethics criteria for their particular license.  The ethics criteria are basically the same with a few minor exceptions.  However, one difference that I’ve always wondered about has to do with sexual conduct between a counselor and a former client.  There’s a whole list of caveats for sexual conduct with a former patient but the one that jumps out at me is that if a person is a LPC they are permitted to have sexual relations with a former patient after five years, while an LMFT is allowed to have sexual relations with a former patient after two years.  I would never consider having sexual relations with a former patient under any circumstances but have wondered why one license board used five years and the other two.  I’m not familiar with other professions but I imagine that there are other inconsistencies and anomalies in professional ethics criteria. 

Not only are there a myriad of requirements for accreditation for hundreds of professional designations, the requirements for entry into many of these professions continues to stiffen.  In some cases this is understandable as the knowledge base of that profession expands requiring more knowledge on the part of the candidate.  However, there are probably many instances where this is not the case.  It appears that accreditation is more of a job security function.  Take for instance the requirements for Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas.  When I became an LPC twenty years ago one of the requirements for licensure was to have 1000 hours of face to face counseling internship experience under the supervision of an accredited LPC supervisor.  Today it is 3000 hours of supervised face to face.  Also, the criteria to become and maintain a supervisor’s are more intense, thus giving supervisors another source of income.  As far as I can tell there has not been that much addition to the body of knowledge in counseling for a person to be admitted to licensure in those twenty years.  The only conclusion I can make is that the move was to limit the number of new licenses issued. 

To further emphasize the power of the expert, you only have to look in our court system where we have dueling experts who sell their services to advocate for a client.  On the other side is another expert who is equally adamant in their testimony for their client.  Can both be right?  Years ago I was involved in a lawsuit involving the value of a piece of commercial real estate.  Both sides had appraisals for the same property.  Both appraisers were competent and accredited.  But the differential in their appraisals was as much as 50%.  The definition of value is “what a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither of which is being forced to buy or sell, are willing to pay for a property.”  So, given the same facts, how could two appraisers be that far apart.  Could it be that the fact that the appraisers were being paid to advocate for their clients, that the values were skewed towards the clients position?   Is that ethical? And if so, which one is unethical?  Obviously, both can’t be right.  At one point years ago there was a saying that MAI which stood for Master Appraisers Institute, really meant Made According to Instruction.  Because of this tendency by some unethical appraisers, after the savings and loan scandals a number of appraisers were indicted for overstating values on properties that were later deemed to be considerably less valuable than appraised. 

Most professionals are highly ethical and it’s unfortunate that when a few bad apples are unethical that it blemishes the whole barrel and causes those professions to be ever stricter, thus punishing other honest professionals.  But the power still remains and is generally subject to self policing which itself sometimes is flawed.

Cultural isolation that accents our hierarchal differences and places further impediments in our way of communicating, even though well meaning in nature, create more possibilities of ethical transgressions.

The Jews and the Arabs, the Israelis and the Palestinians are often portrayed as two eternally opposite forces locked in battle on a more or less equal arena in one scenario. The other is the overwhelming Israelis as a bulldozer crushing the helpless Palestinians. Both are inaccurate, the latter is a false popular cliché

The main difference between the opposing parties is how their ethical backgrounds have affected their strategy,

This difference negates both above pictures; despite escalation of the difference.

Jewish ethics originated thousands of years ago in at least the period of the early Hebrew kingdoms. To anyone who reads the Bible/OT its obvious they were no-nonsense strict rules. Its pointed out by Jew haters how many times the Judean, Israelites lapses in their ethics. Even in pre-Hebrew legend Abraham’s near sacrifice of Issac can be seen as a potential relapse and symbolic of all subsequent relapses. These ethics entered a new phase with exposure to Greek reason after Alexanders conquest. This new paradigm eventually resulted in the writing down of the many books of the Talmud. The Roman defeat of the Jews occurring during this formulation of the Talmud. The end of nationhood brought ethics into focus as a glue to how a people together. Wile adherence was still strict it was now flexible due to the Talmud. Following these books made Jews into people of the book. In the diaspora strengthened ethics and the lack of power held violence in check. Rash aggressive qualities were held in check for so long in the face of violent persecution that Jews were seem as meek. Terrible massacres were seen as judgments from God. This meekness had to be changed of overcome once Jews in Palestine faced Arab rioters. By 1948 the Jewish warrior had arrived yet that character type still faced the now pervasive ethics setup. It created a new compromise we see not only in Israel but spreading into Diaspora. The meekness that characterized Jews exists more in the eyes of Jew haters than reality.

The Arab ethics makeup on the other hand is far different. The Quran has no commentary to guide it, It’s freely open to a wide range of interpretations. Today several fundamentalist interpretations dominate especially Wahhabism. That originated in the early 19th century and was the point of view of tribal people with tribal values predating Islam. This aggressive type of Islam contrasts to the intellectual and mystical variants like Sufism (which also predates Islam).

Arab Islam never faced reform in the face of modernity as Judaism and Christianity had.During the Islamic Empire of the 700’s-800’s Islam was an intellectual religion which readily absorbed Greek ideas of classical times. In in contrast to the Dak Ages in Europe. But a slow decline ensued partly to dynastic breakups of the Caliphate and conquering by Seljuk and later Ottoman Turks from central Asia.

Turkish rule let the Arab version of Islam relapse to pre-Islamic tribalism. There were flowering of Islamic culture like Abassid Baghdad. But Ottoman isolation did not challenge the religion. So it remained on a cocoon preserved in its medievalness,

And then came the rude awakening starting with the French landing in Algiers in 1830. The British took Egypt in 1878. The French took Tunisia.And later with the Spanish took Morocco. Italians took Libya. In World War 1 the British and French tok the rest of Turkish lands of the Arabs. But already Zionist settlers were

in Palestine, as the British called it, 37 years.

Arab culture reaction was first to to incorporate European values but see Islam crumble before them revived fundamentalism. Without a reform of an enhanced Qur’an Islam had no flexibleness to counterbalance the values of the WEST. And these values have been shown to erode and/or destroy native cultures all over the world. There were efforts to reform Islam but retrogression of tribal fundamentalism trumped all.

In British Palestine violence broke out unlike when it was Turkish Syria. Arabs actually attacked Jews for being who they were. They were importers of Western values who might outnumber the Arab. Arab aggression increased in leaps and bounds is all Arab lands where European influence existed. First Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon achieved semi-independence promised by the colonial powers. After World War 2 the Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and the semi-independence in the East ended with full independence. All started as attempts at democracy but all lapsed into dictatorships. preserving power was more important than spreading it around. What was particular about the Arab outlook was its aggressiveness in destroying the Jews in Palestine. In succeeding years many alliances tried to destroy Israel. In that effort the Arab State created by the UN in 1947 was totally ignored and dismembered with parts handed to Egypt and Jordan.These Arabs didnt even have an identity for at least 16 years when Yasir Arafat created “the Palestinians”. Violence prone attitudes of Arabs made for an alliance of Arab Palestinians (later Palestinians) and the surrounding Arab states in the form of fedayeen raids from Jordan and Gaza. They were almost always attacks on civilians as the Israeli military was protected against attacks, This policy continues today as PLO attacks (Black September and many other groups) and later Hamas (and others like Al Aqsa, Islamic Jihad, etc) attacks were always against civilians. Civilians like the Olympic athletes in Much, airline passengers in Entebbe and many similar attacks. Arab violence went up a notch during the First Intifada. As reckless rock throwing children and adults were allowed to attack IDF troops. So when the Oslo agreement was reached the Arab effort to drive the “Jews into the Sea” fell unto Hamas. They upped the ante by introducing suicide bombing. People usually uninformed indoctrinated youth were made into living bombs and sent into Israel. During the second intifada other groups joined in this effort thinking they could get the Jews to leave.

Israelis reacted by building wall and ended their 2nd intifada. But the new Arab philosophy of self sacrifice manifested itself in Gaza and the West Bank, It became standard policy for the Palestinian militants (or terrorists) to try to get as many of their fellow Palestinians killed in battles with the IDF as possible. So today they fire from mosques, apartment buildings, schools shelters, crowds, markets, stores in an effort to get the Israelis to fire back on their positions.Ammo caches are kept purposely in civilian areas. Israel must manuever to pinpoint neutralize the opposition. Thats not easy. Colonel Kemp of the British forces in Afghanistan in studying the situation remarked the Gaza operation was the most humane military operation in HISTORY! But in war many civilians still died. Much less than Iraq or the Lebanese Civil War. But the world puts the Israeli arab in a different category quite unfairly.The Arabs feel the perception of themselves as victims rather than the true picture as aggressors is more important to the Palestinian (really Islamic ) cause than the lives of Gazans/Palestinians. This strategy was very similar in the Hezbullah Lebanon war. There Hezbullah had ammo caches in apartment buildings as well. It’s obviously a desperate strategy this disregard for human life. This aggressiveness has spread once again around the globe in the Al Qaeda movement where bombings, plots as well as indoctrinated lone mass shooters have rained violence from the Philipines to Denmark and the USA. The Qur’an itself has been interpreted to reveal an afterlife of 72 virgins in a luscious paradise to ever person to sacrifices his or her life for the jihad against the values of the WEST and the Jews.The Prime Minister of Israel remarked in 1969 on the Arab disregard for their own children in the struggle against Israel, This is chillingly prophetic with the suicide bombing strategy 26 years later.

I have had many conversations with friends, colleagues, peers of mine in regards to controversial topics like malnourishment, poverty and such. These conversations usually led to the conclusion that being so far away from it all doesn’t give you the perspective you need to do something about it. I believe that this, however, isn’t the case.

Across the years, centuries, millennia even, greed is part of the typical human’s nature, at some point in everyone’s life, they will be greedy. Whether it be in regards to money, taking that last muffin in the bakery when a young, saddened child wanted it so dearly. It might just be that at the end of the world, you’re going to steal someone’s car in hopes of aimlessly away from it all, much like in something such as 2012. We can’t help it, we’ve been raised in a society which thinks greed is okay, a society in which we think that greed is the norm. That is why hardly anyone ever does anything against greed.

But hey, aren’t you fed up of being in the somewhat 6.5-billion person, crowded bandwagon? Jump out already, do something to go against greed. Give something. That’s the beautiful thing about what the United Nations are doing, you can give something, without actually giving something. Except a few minutes of your time, or be it a few hours if you really want to make a difference. You see blood drives, food collection, charities knocking on your door? No, you wouldn’t see that here. Because all you need is a little grasp on something called basic knowledge, and an internet connection.

The UN has, for a while, since 2008 to be exact, evoked the help of the public, individual citizens like you and me, sometimes people who feel like they will never make a difference, and well.. They want you to do exactly that. Make a difference. I assume you’re asking, How? It’s easy. There are two websites on the vast world wide web, which require you to answer questions on basic trivia (with increasing difficulty if you like a challenge.) What happens if you answer correctly? The UN donates 10 grains of rice/a spoonful of flour, to malnourished and starving citizens throughout the world. Said sites would be found at www.freerice.com and www.freeflour.com. You really didn’t expect that, did you? For it to be that easy? Well it is. If you ever find yourself to be bored, and in the vicinity of a computer, you now have no reason to not provide someone with their dinner, which will cost you absolutely nothing. The world needs it. For the first time in history, the number of exceedingly hungry people this year will reach 1 billion, almost one seventh of our entire population. Also if you’d like to go one step further and donate an extra 5,000 grains of rice just from browsing the web, you can install the freerice toolbar. Who knows, you may even learn something.

I had spent the night at Tatemargu – the village cut-off from the mainstream – no roads go to Tatemargu. Their only window into the other world was through the radio, through month-old newspapers that are sometimes carried there.

Considering that I spent two nights with a few villagers, we often spoke about things that weren’t related to Naxalism or Salwa Judum, or the attack that took place on their village. We’d often speak about our families, ourselves – our pasts. A particular favourite story, was about how one of them would go to school before the Judum started. He apparently used to travel two days, just to get to school.

“Phir SDM saab ke saath mein mila tha ek din.”

And the district magistrate would listen to how he’d travel for two days to get to school and two days to get back home. This was the time when government did try to exist at Bastar and the Magistrate made arrangements for him to study closer to home.

Of course then one of them asked me about 26/11.

‘Aape gaon mein kya hua tha?’

And I described it to them.

In vivid detail. I told them how the gunmen got off and started to shoot at everyone and anyone. I told them about Victoria Terminas Train Station. I told them about the Taj.

And they were horrified. Genuinely horrified.  Why were they doing that? How can people do that?

I replied they ceased to be human beings.

‘Woh insaan nahi the.’ – that’s all i could say.

Interestingly, they didn’t know that there were many poor people among the dead. They knew little bits about it. They knew something happened but they didn’t know it like we did.

The story about VT affected them the most.  Throngs of travellers waiting to return home, being confronted with madmen who shot indiscriminately in every direction – at everything that moved.

One particular villager would softly gasp when I described the attacks.

Empathy.

Just ten days ago their village was attacked by the security forces and they lost their homes and four of their people, and yet they genuinely felt  sadness for what happened in Bombay.

I don’t grieve the human race.

I am building up to three things  here:

Fixing the Economy:

Fixing the Country:

Fixing Religion:

The Beginning

I love him and then I didn’t. I loved it and now I hate it. I loved it, then I lost it. The switch happens at times without notice. Normally, we move from one mode of thinking to another. Some call it growth, others call it fickle. No matter which side of the path you walk there are always borders trying to keep you steady. Sigmund Freud and his theories busily boxed in your emotions, tendencies, social parameters, and answered the whats and whos of normalcy. If he were alive today would any of us be normal? So why not create your own normal. Throw out the mirror stage with the paradigms. Release yourself for one day. Dive into his perception of madness, just for a second. Dare to see someone else in that mirror and see what happens. Now do not go out and commit some heinous crime for giggles. This is an internal deconstruction. Keep it neat. Go back and rewrite the messages you were fed from birth. In other words, re-become self. I chose to exaggerate this methodology because it must be a complete, no holds barred washing. Embrace the Afterdeath experience.

Going through a trial shakes loose everything we know and love about ourselves. Standing on line at a food pantry for the first time puts one in a place outside of the self we knew already. Picture a construction worker, Mike, who has made a good living for 15 years. In his mind, this life will go on forever – he is still young at 33. There are 3 cars in his driveway; one family car, a brand new pick up, and his toy. He may also have a boat. Not yacht size, but still a sign of prosperity as neighbors pass his neatly kept home. He has three children; 10, 7, and 3. His wife, Ellen, has never worked since their marriage. Before that, she was a waitress in a corner restaurant.

Ellen watches the home shopping channels between clipping coupons and catching sales at the malls. Their home is a collage of Southern Living, Better Homes & Garden, House & Home, and Chicago Home & Garden magazines. Lunch with the girls is always at her home. It always concludes with a replication of the latest infomercial, along with product demonstration and price. The girls fawn, and one by one excuse themselves for another appointment.

 Mike falls from a 15 ft. ladder at work and is rushed to the hospital. His leg is fractured in three places. No matter, he has also severed his spinal cord on a metal shard poking out of the ground. Mike has minimal health insurance, which includes a $500 co-pay. There is no savings nor retirement plan deep enough to cover his rehabilitation or mortgage costs.  After two years, the couple is financially, mentally, and socially dead.

The couple has sells their home to pay for hospital and aftercare costs. Their lives in the small apartment on the other side of town, affords them little after rent and utilities. Ellen is forced to seek out the food pantries in her area. This is the beginning of her life in the Afterdeath.

Toronto Sun
The government needs to explain why it would agree to pay a private company nearly three times what it pays publicly owned Ontario Power Generation for hydro electricity, the official opposition demanded yesterday.

“Why would your government be willing to pay a private power producer up to 8 cents a kilowatt hour, causing ever-increasing power prices to our consumers, when our regulated power provider, Ontario Power Generation, only receives 3.2 cents per kilowatt hour for their regulated hydraulic resources? Why?” Progressive Conservative energy critic John Yakabuski said during question period.

The Toronto Sun reported yesterday the government has signed a 20-year deal with Brookfield Renewable Power that will pay the company up to 8 cents per kwh for the energy produced from 16 small hydro dams the company operates — all of them purchased from OPG under the previous Progressive Conservative government.

Yakabuski said consumers will ultimately pay Brookfield’s premium through rate increases and wondered what role former energy minister George Smitherman — who issued a May directive to the Ontario Power Authority instructing the agency to sign similar producers to long-term contracts — played in the deal.

“Is this another one of those backroom deals that … the former minister of energy signed before he went out the back door so he could campaign for the mayor of Toronto while still collecting an MPP’s salary?”

Current Energy Minister Gerry Phillips said the deal with Brookfield, which covers 873 megawatts of generation, is a good one because it locks up clean, renewable electricity at a price that is affordable for consumers and still allows the company to maintain and improve the facilities.

“There are several of these electricity-producing hydro dams that require a fair bit of refurbishing and whatnot,” Phillips said.

“Ontario Power Authority wanted to make sure that they would continue to operate for the future, so they did their role. They sat down and negotiated — in this case with a hydroelectric producer — arranged the best possible price for the ratepayers.”

There are another 125 small hydro facilities with up to 1,300 megawatts of production around the province and Smitherman’s May directive instructs the OPA to sign deals with them as well.

The price of electricity is going up no matter what, Premier Dalton McGuinty said — and that’s before the HST starts being collected next July, effectively slapping an 8% tax on energy.

“What we need to do is that as electricity goes up over time that we’re also giving Ontarians more and more opportunity to reduce their electricity usage, that we put in place conservation practice, so that they’re using less electricity on a per capita basis, so that we can continue to find ways to help them hold their bills steady,” McGuinty said.

“The price of milk is going to go up, rents are going up, the price of gas is going to go up, that’s just the way the world works.”

JONATHAN.JENKINS@SUNMEDIA.CA

ABRAHAM LINCOLN When brains, courage, strength of character, and love of country was more important than spin doctors, questionable ethics and love of the all mighty dollar. He would never be elected today.

(Abraham Lincoln)

He’d probably run as third part candidate anyway.

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Religious morality is fake; Do like the magic man says in his magic book and receive reward after death.. or torture.. that’s not morality.

Never have so few been regulated so much by so many, as a chilling new Local Government Association report makes clear. Over the past 11 years, government departments have grown to a monstrous size, administering more and more prescriptive policies.

At the end of 2008, for example, Communities and Local Government’s finance team had 120 staff. Ever tried to read the Department of Work and Pensions housing benefit guidance manual? Don’t. It is a document of 1,300 pages, with a further 277-page section on overpayments.

Then there are quangos. Since the 1980s, their budgets have hugely increased, so that £43bn in public expenditure is now administered by 790 of these non-democratic bodies.

These facts are from a Local Government Association report, Delivering more for less. Education and social services, it explains, take the lion’s share of council budgets. These services are the most micro-managed of all, with pernickety policies changing almost weekly.

The degree of control exercised from the centre and the emasculated state of UK local government are unprecedented. Each administration, since the 1970s, has promised to cut the power and size of the state. None has.

New Labour commissioned Barker, Elton and Lyons to recommend changes in planning, licensing and local authority funding, then ignored their findings. It has foisted more and more over-detailed policies on the town halls, where billions of pounds are tied up in applying for grants and filling in returns.

It is, of course, mad. The LGA report also cites the creation of the Local Better Regulation Office. The Lacors home authority scheme, it explains, has more than 10,000 members and costs £10,000 a year to run. After six months, the LBRO, which costs £900,000 a year to run, has signed up 11 businesses to primary authority.

James’s Empty Blog:

It is hard to miss the irony in people eagerly poring through illegally-obtained private email, looking for ethical breaches by the writers! I’m sure we can all imagine the outrage if one of the emails revealed that a scientist had hacked into one of the sceptics’ computers and was reading all their correspondence. So a bit of perspective is called for here.

James Is A Scientist (IANAS), and he has much good stuff to say (read some of the other posts about the hacked e-mails while you’re there) — but you gotta wonder about a blog that follows such a post with this:

Prawns not in their native habitat. Probably Tastimus deliciousus

Tip of the old scrub brush to Stoat.

This question was asked of a group of college students and their parents.  Does this give you pause for thought?What is ethics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIaHxC7BT0A