1. 어젯밤은 다음 날이 토요일이라는 구실로 읽고 싶었던 책 꺼내서 새벽녘까지 읽다가 쓰러져 잠이 들어 오늘 오후 1시에야 일어났다.

2. 한국 된장을 끓일까 왜된장을 끓일까 심각하게 고민하다가 오늘은 후자를 택했다. 나는 왜된장은 한국 된장처럼 푹푹 끓이지 않고 재료가 다 익으면 넣고 맛을 맞추면서 마무리한다. 잘게 썬 부드러운 두부는 마지막에 넣고 불을 끄고 뚜껑은 덮어둔다. 청양 고추를 아주 약간 넣어 보았는데 약간 달콤한 왜된장과 의외로 잘 어울렸다. 그래서 미역, 다시마, 호박, 파, 청양고추, 두부, 그리고 극소량의 소고기가 재료였다.

3. 내 배를 채웠으니 이제 나의 둘 뿐인 화초에게도 물을 선사하기로 했다. 보름에 한 번씩 물을 양껏 주면 되는 종류들이라 이 두 분을 오늘 욕실로 초청하여 마음껏 인공 소나기를 뿌려주었다.

4. 지난 달에 우연히 구입한 립톤 옐로우 라벨 티백 홍차를 한 달 가량 마셨는데 그런대로 괜찮았다. 하지만 잎홍차처럼 맛이 깊거나 향이 진하지 않고 무엇보다도 텁텁한 뒷맛이 단점이었다. 그보다 더한 것은 내가 좋아하는 얼그레이는 티백이라도 가격이 만만찮았다는 사실이다. 겨울에는 역시 얼그레이 밀크티라는 지극히 개인적인 취향을 갖고 있기에 아무래도 며칠 안에 베르가못 향의 잎홍차를 구입하게 될 것 같다.

In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death. ~Sam Llewelyn

Not only do the plants in my local park like to grow themselves into knots, they apparently also like to grow into a noose. Makes you wonder if wood nymphs have capital punishment…

About the photo: Another close-up. I used the mode that forces flash off and used my hand-behind-the-plant trick to make sure the camera focussed on the plant rather than the background.

One of the most charming of American tall tales is the story of Johnny Appleseed. Many versions exist, but one of the nicest is Steven Kellogg’s picturebook. [Johnny Appleseed: A tall tale retold and illustrated by Steven Kellogg. Morrow Junior Books, 1988] Kellogg’s colourful illustrations bring the story of John Chapman to life. There really was a Johnny Appleseed. He was born in Massachusetts on September 26, 1774. He left home as a young man and finally found his way west to Ohio, still a wilderness frontier. There, he began his life’s work, planting apple orchards.

Johnny cleverly realized that as settlers arrived on the frontier and began to build homesteads, there would be a market for apple trees. Indeed, a law required settlers to plant fruit trees on their property as part of their commitment to the new land. Once Ohio began to become “crowded”, Johnny moved on to the wilds of Indiana, where he continued to clear land and plant orchards. Johnny never settled down himself, but led a rough, outdoors life. Gradually, stories and legends about his adventures and deeds also took root. When Johnny Appleseed died, in 1845, he left a significant estate, some 22 parcels of land, planted with orchards.

As his name suggests, Johnny Appleseed planted, not grafted apple trees as nurserymen do now, but apple seeds. Apple trees don’t grow true to seed. That is an apple tree grown from seed can be quite unlike its parent. As Michael Pollan points out in his book The Botany of Desire, by spreading apple seeds across the frontier, John Chapman gave the apple the gift of diversity. He made it possible for all sorts of apples to grow, and those trees best suited to the climate of America were then propagated by farmers. Most of the trees that John grew wouldn’t have had the plump, juicy fruit we munch on now. Rather, many would have been small, bitter apples, not good eating, but fine for making cider. As Pollan notes, what John Chapman really brought to pioneer settlers was the gift of alcohol.

At one time, cider was a very popular drink in America. Even children drank cider, as it was sometimes safer than the water, which might be polluted. Cider could be cheaply produced by anyone with enough space to grow a few apple trees. Prohibition and the temperance movement changed all that. While beer and spirits rebounded after the end of prohibition, cider never regained its earlier popularity in America.

The first time I drank cider was in England, where it remains popular and is readily available. Indeed, my old grannie introduced me to cider as it was her preferred drink. Cider is probably the easiest alcoholic beverage for a new drinker to enjoy. It has a pleasant, mild flavour and an alcohol content similar to or a bit higher than beer. Today, cider is fairly easy to come by in Ontario, but in spite of the fact that there are lots of apples grown here, the cider is usually an import from England. Strongbow is quite common, although there are a couple of other brands available.

The only Canadian brand regularly available is Growers, which is produced in British Columbia. It is made with Granny Smith apples, which is a bit ironic as Granny Smith is an Australian apple. Growers is a very sweet, sparkling cider and is quite like drinking pop, apart from the 7% alcohol content.

There is a bit of a cider renaissance underway, and perhaps more varieties of cider will be available in the future. One that is produced not too far from here is Waupoos Premium Cider. It is more like the British ciders than Growers is. Waupoos is produced in Prince Edward County, near Picton, Ontario. For more on cider, visit The Palate Jack.

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-9434439-new-life.phprefnum=delihayat

hand holding a fresh young plant, symbol of new life and environmental conservation

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-9434439-new-life.phprefnum=delihayat

hands, concepts, human, care, hand, planting, unrecognizable person, growth, keeping, carrying, outdoors, conceptual symbol, new life, rural scene, humus soil, symbol, environmental conservation, giving, plant, dirt, palm, small, holding, leaf, green, finger, beginnings, gardening, protection, fragility, environment, agriculture, conservation, organic, environmental, hands, concepts, human, care, hand, planting, unrecognizable person, growth, keeping, carrying, outdoors, conceptual symbol, new life, rural scene, humus soil, symbol, environmental conservation, giving, plant, dirt, palm, small, holding, leaf, green, finger, beginnings, gardening, protection, fragility, environment, agriculture, conservation, organic, environmental

Tomorrow night I’ll be using this animation at Collins Street Baptist Church, for the first Sunday of Advent.



It is based on the lectionary reading from Jeremiah 33:14-16. Just before this section, Jeremiah has been talking about how God has allowed the Babylonians to destroy Israel, because of their evil. But he says they will have another chance:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’(Jeremiah 33:14-16)

Jeremiah says that although God is disappointed in Israel, God is going to cause a new branch – a righteous branch – to grow out of the deceased King David. (I see King David as a reminder that the things and people that we put our hope in often disappoint us.) I was thinking, what are the things have been disappointing about the year that has just passed? I was also thinking, what it it we’re hoping and waiting for this Advent? The congregation will be invited to write or draw their disappointments on post-it notes, and stick them onto King David. They’ll also be able to write or draw their hope on a post-it  to stick on the young plant.

I learnt to use the partial color effect on my photos from this tutorial.

See the rest of my DevianArt gallery here.

Water droplets in my garden

A bumblebee in my garden

Now is the last chance to plant out winter bedding: you could try wallflowers, Viola and other spring bedding plants.

Do you want to plant deciduous hedges? Plant beech, hawthorn and hornbeam any time from leaf fall.

There’s a new life coming

Full of hope and full of dreams

And although this new life

has as yet no idea what that means

It’ still there.

Because it’s growing

has started as a tiny seed

Simply loving itself enough to knowing

What people who love beauty might need.

]]> http://sonalimangal.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/strange-thorny-plant/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:37:55 +0000 Sonali http://sonalimangal.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/strange-thorny-plant/

Don’t know what the name of this plant is but it looked interesting!

....

hand with grass, care of environment

grass,holding,lawn,hand,backgrounds,green,plant,tuft,nature,human,field,environmental,turf,horizontal,land,outdoors,environment,meadow,sun,food

Zeami was the original practitioner of Japanese Noh theatre and wrote a classic book on dramatic theory called Kadensho. He uses images of nature as a constant metaphor, for example hana, or the flower. Kenneth Yasuda, in his book Masterworks of The Noh Theatre claims that ‘This flower is both an aesthetic principle and the soul of the actor or the character or the play, and it is, beyond that, a spiritual quest. Every element of the play, every gesture, must be devoted to the flower.’ Thus we can clearly see the weight of importance given to this one symbol, but why is he so interested in using it as a metaphor, in the context of Noh Theatre?

The title of his book Kadensho can be roughly translated as “Floral Message: How Does the Wind Look?”. Zeami is using the metaphor of a flower to imply that one must possess sophisticated or ‘flowery’ skills to achieve anything in Noh Theatre. Zeami saw the flower as a sophisticated and complicated thing. This is true [see below]. Zeami felt that learning theatrical skills is sophisticated and complex; just like flowers.

Zeami also sees the flower as a metaphor for viewing a performance. The flower sheds its petals and goes through many different stages in what it looks like, starting from a bud, to disappearing completely, and this is a visible process. Similarly, in front of an audience we see a theatrical event before hand as if it didn’t exist, it then bursts into life on the stage before once more disappearing. The flower is important to Zeami as he feels that this allows us to truly understand what the performance is.

Then we come to the concept of Yugen which he defines as ‘a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… and the sad beauty of human suffering’. This can be simply related to the flower as a metaphor, the flower is so visually enticing when alive; yet Zeami believed that when a flower begins to die the process is all the more so. Zeami, perhaps somewhat controversially, saw human suffering in the same way. Noh Theatre portrayed human life as it is; so assuming that pain is a process all must undergo, some believe that human suffering in its own way, is beautiful.

Zeami has been known to compare the flower with the idea of omoskiroki or in English, ‘fascination’. Zeami sees the flower as something to be in awe of. In relation to its metaphor within Noh Theatre, we see his encouragement for the audience to be fascinated by the performance, thus he weighs importance on the concept in this case in order to amaze the spectator.

Another key word is mezurashiki which means ‘novelty’ implying that the flower can be something new and exciting. When this metaphor is replicated on stage through interaction actors have with each other and the audience, they see that there is now a certain thrill in experiencing this, just like the joy one finds in viewing a flower. So the metaphor is important in this context because it excites the audience, just like one might feel towards nature.

We can see that this points to another point Zeami makes about the similarity between the way one cultivates flowers and the way the performer seeks to harvest a relationship with his or her audience. Zeami wants to reinforce this link as actor/spectator relationships are central to understanding Theatre, especially Noh Theatre.

Finding beauty in nature is something unique to the human soul. No matter who the person is, there is a certainty that any person from any background will find the flower beautiful. In the same way Zeami seeks to reinforce this concept. If the Theatre is like the flower, it can be loved and appreciated by all.

Finally Zeami reminds the reader of ‘the beauty of the flower of youth, which passes with time.’ This is an important metaphor to him as it reminds his audience of the fragility and fleeting nature of life. Many would argue that this is the most accurate and profound part of Zeami’s thinking, though not all see it as a positive concept, as mankind is left without hope as to what happens after his decease. Christianity was not to reach Japan until 1549,  but Zeami’s sentiments are echoed in the following bible verse,

All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.

When creating theatre as well as in life; Zeami held this view in mind, perhaps a view that more modern practitioners should ponder, knowing that soon, our petals will fall and we will perish. However Zeami’s flower metaphor shouldn’t necessarily discourage us, all is not swallowed up into the earth, the roots remain and buds appear once more, so nevertheless, if looked at from the right angle; there is hope for theatre, there is hope humanity.

Excerpts from GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH

IS CARBON DI OXIDE THE VILLAIN?

Such terms as carbon credit find a place in newspapers almost daily. I don’t know what is all this about. To me CO₂ sustains life on earth. Has the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere gone up? Has it been proved experimentally?

 Before Industrialization

The whole of America and most of the old world were inhabited by a comparatively small population, a majority of whom depended upon meat and fish. Farming depended entirely on rain water as big dams were unknown. The grasslands of America and Australia didn’t produce food grains. Coal and other fossil fuels were not commercially exploited. In those days we may presume that a proper balance existed between CO₂ and other ingredients of the air like N₂ and O₂ in spite of forest fires, the like of which we witnessed in California recently.

After Industrialization

Commercial exploitation of coal began first followed by oil and natural gas, resulting in increase in the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Simultaneously two other developments followed: increase in population (both human and animal) and corresponding growth in food grains production. Big dams were constructed and more and more areas of land were brought under cultivation. Mechanization and the use of artificial fertilizers made leaps and bounds in production of food grains, fruits and other commercial crops. The Prairies of North America became the granary of the world. Compared to grass, food grains and sugar fix a large quantity of CO₂. The major items responsible for such CO₂ fixation are:

1. food grains like wheat, corn, rice, oats, soybean etc
2. underground vegetables like potato, tapioca, beetroot etc
3. fruits like apple, grapes, banana, dates, cherry, pineapple etc
4. sugarcane etc

Experts can calculate the total quantity of CO₂ produced by industry and that absorbed by vegetation as mentioned above and the marine vegetation in order to find out whether the net balance is favoring CO₂ concentration in the air. An easier way would be to experimentally ascertain the percentage of CO₂ in the atmospheric air (being heavier than air CO₂ is available near the surface of the earth). If CO₂ level increases O₂ level should decrease. In my childhood (I am 70+) O₂ level was 20% as mentioned in my text book. Has it changed? An atom of carbon combines with two atoms of oxygen to form CO₂ which is absorbed by the leaves of the plant to form starch. In the process two atoms of oxygen are released into the atmosphere. We may say that each carbon atom burnt ultimately results in the release of two atoms of oxygen, thus resulting in increase in the level of O₂. Level of CO₂ dissolved in the ocean water should also be checked. If this level increases, fishes would die en mass. Has this happened? If the level of CO₂ dissolved in ocean waters decreases, plant life in the ocean cannot produce enough starch by photosynthesis. This will be a hazard for fishes and other marine life.

The volume of animal and hence plant life in the oceans is much more than that on the continents. This is because the area of the oceans is seven times the area of the continents. Also, the oceans are deep. Hence the volume of water is very much more and can contain a large population of marine life. The necessary starch has to come from plant life. So, the total bio mass in the oceans is considerably higher than that in the continent. The carbon di oxideàPlant starchàAnimalsàCarbon di oxide cycle is there in the watery medium, just as in our atmosphere. All the gases, including nitrogen, will be present in dissolved state in the oceans too. Here industrialization has not affected the ‘atmosphere’ of the ocean. This fact has to be recognized in any discussion on Global Warming.

[The percentage of various components of atmospheric air as obtained from the websites is given below:

Nitrogen 78.1

Oxygen 20.9

Argon 0.9

Neon 0.002

Helium 0.0005

Krypton 0.0001

Hydrogen 0.00005

Carbon di oxide 0.035!!!!!!!! (Poor, innocent CO2 has been maligned unnecessarily)

Methane 0.0002

Ozone 0.000004

This would suggest that the percentage of oxygen has slightly increased. If this is true it augers ill, as forest fires may become uncontrollable with increase in the level of oxygen in the coming years. Therefore, this line should be investigated separately by experts. My guess is that with unchecked use of nitrogenous fertilizers, the total bio mass in the earth could have increased. The requisite extra nitrogen must have been drawn from the atmosphere along with CO₂ releasing extra oxygen into the atmosphere as pointed out above.]

The importance of proper scientific study cannot be over emphasized. Mother Nature maintains her balance, whatever her children may do!

Photographed by Jeremy Brooks

Day 328/365 of the 2009 Challenge. The theme is "Water Drop".

– License

The world’s first power project that generates energy by mixing fresh water with sea water opens in Norway…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: sea temp. The blog is also related to: mediterranean water.

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This is a simple and stylish and beautiful flowering plants and a butterfly pattern design material. Light red, light yellow, light green, green, blue with flowers and foliage, with deep orange butterfly pattern reflects the material of both simple and beautiful and stylish elements. Is used for a variety of design a good selection of beautiful fashion

This blog page is being developed ….  Please bookmark for future reference.

This Sunday will be the first Sunday of Advent, so I’ve been having a bit of a look at the lectionary readings. Jeremiah 33 talks about how Israel is pretty much doomed because of their evil. But then it goes on to talk about God causing ‘a righteous branch to spring up for David’. So I have been thinking about that a bit.

I’ve been thinking this afternoon how the scriptures often use images of plants struggling to live. Ezekiel writes about a vine trying to grow in Babylon. Jesus talks about a farmer planting seeds in difficult places. And Jeremiah talks about deceased dynasty growing a new shoot.
Just before I walked past one of the construction sites in our neighbourhood, where the developers have cut down a number of trees so that they can have space to build. I noticed that one of the tree stumps was growing shoots, which were sticking out from under the temporary barrier around the site.

Part 1 … Part 2 … Part 3

By Webster G. Tarpley
14 November 2009

Major Hasan reportedly has a security clearance which allows him to receive secret information. All US Army officers are required to have at minimum a secret-level security clearance, and Major Hasan’s clearance might even have been at the more stringent top secret level. All indications are that Major Hasan’s clearance was never reviewed, despite his ostentatious antics. Major Hasan’s aberrant behavior should at the very least have put him in line for a National Agency Check or NAC. Newsweek writes that ‘extended NACs, which the officials indicated are more likely for would-be military officers, would include checks of local and state police records in jurisdictions where the subject lived, as well as credit-bureau and financial-record checks. In the event that some kind of “derogatory” information turns up during these checks, one of the officials said, field investigators are likely to be sent out to conduct interviews, and the procedure could also include an interview with the security-clearance applicant.’[28] This puts Major Hasan in a very special category, subject to special rules and surveillance which are enforced by specific agencies, and not by military physicians of whatever rank. Perhaps the most direct evidence that Major Hasan was a protected patsy was the fact that he could make incendiary speeches and correspond with self-proclaimed “al Qaeda” firebrands without having his security clearance reviewed, to say nothing of lifted.

As a well informed Stratfor letter to the editor posting points out: “The contacting of a foreign Islamic militant who openly espouses killing of Americans is, in and of itself, is a violation of U.S. security regulations with respect to individuals with security clearances. Hasan’s foreign contact should have been reported through the chain-of- command to his commander. Lt. Gen. Cone, in consultation with his G-2, Counter-Intelligence Staff Officer,Personnel Security Officer and the CID, could have immediately suspended Maj. Hasan’s security clearance subject to a local AR 15-6 investigation. Lt. Gen. Cone is responsible for force protection of assets in his command, not a DoD criminal investigator. A minimally competent investigation would have uncovered other comments and actions that would probably have resulted in adverse command action on Maj. Hasan’s security clearance and possibly led to charges being brought for conduct unbecoming an officer.”[29] But the usual rules were suspended for Majopr Hasan, indicating that he belonged to a special class of persons – patsies who were being groomed for future actions and therefore had to be kept out of trouble.

LIKE ATTA AND KSM, THE DEVOUT MAJOR HASAN LIKES STRIP CLUBS

Thanks to the investigative work of Daniel Hopsicker, it has been revealed that key 9/11 figure Mohammed Atta was no devout and puritanical Moslem, but a hedonist. The legendary Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), touted by the controlled media as the “9/11 mastermind,” was also devoted to alcohol, floozies, and nightlife. It is striking that Major Hasan, allegedly a rigid and doctrinaire Moslem, also conforms to this model. Patsies working for or manipulated by the de facto Islamic fundamentalist directorate of Anglo-American intelligence seem to share the same decadent western foibles. One of Major Hasan’s favorite relaxations was to attend the local strip club: ‘Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came into the Starz strip club not far from the base at least three times in the past month, the club’s general manager, Matthew Jones, told FoxNews.com. Army investigators building their case against Hasan plan to interview Jones soon. “The last time he was here, I remember checking his military ID at the door, and he paid his $15 cover and stayed for six or seven hours,” Jones, 37, said. Jennifer Jenner, who works at Starz using the stage name Paige, said Hasan bought a lap dance from her two nights in a row. She said he paid $50 for a dance lasting three songs in one of the club’s private rooms on Oct. 29 and Oct. 30. She recalled that he arrived at about 6:30 p.m. and stayed until 2 a.m. She said he brought in a six pack of light beer, took only a few sips from one can and gave the rest to the strippers. “He preferred the blondes,” said Jenner, whose hair was dyed blond at the time. “He said he was a medic and that he was being deployed soon, but mostly he wanted to ask us questions.”’[30] Needless to say, alcohol and strippers do not an Islamic fundamentalist make.

As for prominent 9/11 figure Atta, he was in fact not a practicing Moslem at all, but rather a devotee of alcohol, cocaine, call girls, and pork chops. Like Major Hasan, Atta preferred blondes, specifically pink strawberry ones. He cohabited with a 22-year old call girl who may also have been a sex operative for one of the intelligence agencies. Amanda Keller worked for a “lingerie model escort service” in Sarasota called Fantasies & Lace. Atta loved to attend topless bars, where he would order lap dances at the Pink Pony, or else stuff twenty dollar bills into the g-strings of the dancers at the Olympic Garden nightclub. He was also a regular at Harry’s Bar in Naples. Atta’s favorite nightspots were the Cheetah in Venice, and Margarita Maggie’s in Sarasota. FBI investigators showing around pictures of Atta after 9/11 found that he had been in a bar drinking Stolichnaya vodka for three hours quite recently; with him was accused suicide pilot Marwan al Shehhi, who preferred rum. Atta was also a frequent cocaine user. He would habitually snort rows of cocaine with a dollar bill. Are we therefore dealing here with two patsies from the same levy, two parallel patsy lives?

FROM ARMY-MCCARTHY TO ARMY-LIEBERMAN

The reactionaries of today yearn for the days of Senator Joe McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), who launched his campaign of red-baiting and witch-hunting some six decades ago. At the height of the Cold War, McCarthy launched the hysterical charge that the US Army had been massively infiltrated by agents of the international communist conspiracy. This led to the infamous and protracted Army-McCarthy hearings in the Senate, during which McCarthy’s influence reached its demagogic apex. Today, the neocons are still full of rancor and resentment over their wholesale ouster from the government through the end of the Bush-Cheney era, and the ascendancy of the Brzezinski-Nye-Soros faction of liberal imperialists who control Obama. Immediately after the shootings. Now, Senator Joe Lieberman has announced that he will use his homeland security subcommittee to investigate the failure of the intelligence agencies to connect the dots in the Fort Hood incident. Already, neocon web sites are contending that the US Army of the Obama era is thoroughly infiltrated by Islamic fundamentalists favorable to terrorism. Lieberman says he wants to know how the Army missed numerous warning signs about Hasan’s radical views. The Army-Lieberman hearings may soon launch an anti-Moslem witch hunt in the US military, fulfilling much neocon nostalgia. The best approach would be to empanel a genuinely independent board of inquiry to investigate the Fort Hood massacre. Care should be taken to avoid the begging of the question and the blatant conflicts of interest which made the recent Kean-Hamilton 9/11 commission such a mockery. Care should also be taken to keep the inevitable Lee Hamilton out of any board of inquiry, given his wretched track record of cover-up and misprision.

FORT HOOD MOSLEM CLERIC TO MAJOR HASAN: “THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU”

The London Daily Telegraph interviewed Osman Danquah, a local Moslem clergyman, who had contact with Major Hasan. Osman Danquah had come to the conclusion that Major Hasan had debilitating mental problems, and was not suitable for any leadership roles – even though he was an Army officer of the middle rank. Citing several sources, this paper writes: ‘What does seem clear is that the army missed an increasing number of red flags that Hasan was a troubled and brooding individual within its ranks. “I was shocked but not surprised by news of Thursday’s attack,” said Dr Val Finnell, a fellow student on a public health course in 2007-08 who heard Hasan equate the war on terrorism to a war on Islam. Another student had warned military officials that Hasan was a “ticking time bomb” after he reportedly gave a presentation defending suicide bombers…. Osman Danquah, the co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said Hasan never expressed anger toward the army or indicated any plans for violence. But he said that, at their second meeting, Hasan seemed almost incoherent. “I told him, ‘There’s something wrong with you’. I didn’t get the feeling he was talking for himself, but something just didn’t seem right.” He was sufficiently troubled that he recommended the centre reject Hasan’s request to become a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood .’[31]
The pathos Major Hasan’s existence is perhaps most clearly portrayed in his unsuccessful effort to find a wife of his own faith: ‘Relatives said that the death of Hasan’s parents, in 1998 and 2001, turned him more devout. “After he lost his parents he tried to replace their love by reading a lot of books, including the Koran,” his uncle Rafiq Hamad said. “He didn’t have a girlfriend, he didn’t dance, he didn’t go to bars.” His failed search for a wife seemed to haunt Hasan. At the Muslim Community Centre in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, he signed up for an Islamic matchmaking service, specifying that he wanted a bride who wore the hijab and prayed five times a day.” Major Hasan returned repeatedly and obsessively to the same theme, according to a another acquaintance: “Adnan Haider, a retired professor of statistics, recalled how at their first meeting last year, a casual introduction after Friday prayers, Hasan immediately asked the academic if he knew “a nice Muslim girl” he could marry. “It was a strange thing to ask someone you have met two seconds before. It was clear to me he was under pressure, you could just see it in his face,” said Prof Haider, 74, who used to work at Georgetown University in Washington . “You could see he was lonely and didn’t have friends.[32]

WAS MAJOR HASAN BRAINWASHED?

Given the accumulated evidence that Major Hasan was possibly psychotic, there remains the question of whether this psychosis might have been endogenous and due to natural and spontaneous causes, or whether it had been artificially produced in him through a program of brainwashing and heavy-duty “Clockwork Orange” psychological manipulation by others. We cannot exclude the possibility that Major Hasan went out on November 5 consciously determined to kill, and may also have discharged his weapons. We thus have two possible scenarios: on the one hand Major Hasan the duped patsy caught totally by surprise when the shooting started, and on the other, Major Hasan the psychotic and criminally insane killer who possessed the will, if not necessarily the ability, for serious shooting. There may be evidence for both scenarios.. We should also point out that seeing Major Hasan is a psychotic killer in his own right does not in any way rule out the presence of additional and more capable shooters. We are reminded here of the case of Sirhan Sirhan, who appears to have fired at Robert Kennedy, but who also appears to have received a powerful assist from some other as yet unidentified more expert shooter who may have actually fired the lethal bullet.

MAJOR HASAN’S VIRGINIA TECH CONNECTION

Where would Major Hasan have been brainwashed? An obvious place to look would be the precincts of Virginia Tech, the home of Cho Seung-Hui, the alleged mass killer of 32 students and professors along with himself in April 2007. This incident involves far too many unanswered questions to be addressed in detail here. In any case, the fact that Major Hasan graduated from the alma mater of Cho should be enough by itself to raise some red flags. We should also recall that several additional homicides have occurred in and around Virginia Tech during the last year. In January 2009, a Virginia Tech doctoral student beheaded a fellow student in a campus cafe. In this incident, a female graduate student who had just arrived from China was killed when another graduate student she knew attacked her with a knife and decapitated her.[33] Beheadings are rare on American college campuses even today, so this is an extraordinary event indeed. In August 2009, two Virginia Tech University students were found murdered at a Jefferson National Forest campground that is a popular hangout for students. The bodies of David Lee Metzler, 19, of Lynchburg and Heidi Lynn Childs, 18, of Forest were found by a passerby.[34]

So what in the world is going on in or near Blacksburg , Virginia ? The report on the Virginia Tech slayings prepared by a special commission set up by Virginia Governor Tim Kane covers up the failure of mental health professionals in and around Virginia Tech to take effective action in regard to Cho, whom they had nevertheless recognized to be a profoundly disturbed and potentially highly dangerous personality. This report commits the usual fallacy of petition principi, begging the question, and assumes from the start that Cho was the sole shooter.[35] Because of this failure to account for numerous salient features of the Cho incident, this entire case must continue to be classified as unsolved. We must therefore conclude this essay merely by citing one of the many clues which the Virginia investigation chose to ignore, but which might begin to account for the extraordinary number of homicides observed in the area of Blacksburg Virginia . As a somewhat obscure website alleges in an unconfirmed report, “Blacksburg, VA houses a US government ABOVE TOP SECRET underground laboratory (in the side of a local Blacksburg mountain) that develops in conjunction with DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency], weapons such as human robotic mind control programming.”[36] Does such a facility exist, and what does it do? At this point, any further comment would be pure speculation.

We cannot be optimistic that, should he survive, a future trial of Major Hasan will clear up these questions, any more than criminal trials established the real facts in the cases of Sirhan Sirhan, Hinckley, McVeigh, or John Allen Muhammad. What does appear confirmed as of now is the existence of a mutating model of terrorism alongside the large-scale 9/11 or WMD paradigms of false flag manipulation seen and propagandized during the last decade. In this sense, Major Hasan represents the evolution of the figures of Cho, and also of Steven P. Kazmierczak, the Northern Illinois University shooter of February 2008. As I wrote last year, “The new model is Virginia Tech gunman Cho, a mentally disturbed or brainwashed mass killer. Another case was that of Steven P. Kazmierczak, who in mid-February 2008 shot 21 people and killed five of them at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb. Kazmierczak was described as being intensely concerned with “corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice.”[37]

Will the American public ever learn to see through and reject false flag operations, as many Spaniards were able to do after the Madrid bombs? Will Americans ever swear off the dangerous habit of being duped? Will opinion leaders ever master the rather elementary methods of rogue network, false-flag terrorism? Until this occurs and the gullibility of the public is reduced, such operations are likely to continue on scales both small and large, with incalculable consequences for the future of humanity.

:::: notes ::::

[28] Mark Hosenball, “Fort Hood Shooter: How Recently Was His Security Clearance Updated?” in Newsweek at http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2009/11/06/ft-hood-shooter-how-recently-was-his-security-clearance-updated.aspx

[29] http://www.stratfor.com/content/hasan_case_1

[30] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,573052,00.html

[31] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6521758/Fort-Hood-shooting-Texas-army-killer-linked-to-September-11-terrorists.html

[32] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6521758/Fort-Hood-shooting-Texas-army-killer-linked-to-September-11-terrorists.html

[33] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/01/22/2009-01-22_virginia_tech_graduate_student_attacked_.html

[34] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/27/virginia-tech-students-fo_n_270892.html

[35] http://www.governor.virginia.gov/TempContent/techpanelreport.cfm

[36] http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6409

[37] Webster G. Tarpley, Obama The Postmodern Coup ( Joshua Tree CA : Progressive Press, 2008), p. 71.

There are hidden moments in our life

That fade away, and die from memory

But if they were treasured–

They would fill us up with light and laughter.