Great article Sally, this step-up of the 11 August 1999 eclipse that we are now passing through has been of particular fascination. i am glad to read your analysis and the context in which you merge the patterns and history. thanks

Thanks teska, I've been fascinated with tracking eclipses for years and this particular eclipse has been something to watch as every major event throughout the world since Aug. 1999 has been tied to this eclipse. In a two term presidency I do look and watch the second inaugural chart, but it's the first one that I think is the most important because usually the agenda is set at that inauguration and they spend 4 or 8 years trying to achieve that first agenda. In GWB's first inaugural on Jan. 20, 2001, Mars was at 16 Scorpio, in an exact square to Mercury at 16 Aquarius, and certainly it's been an angry and violent 8 years plus a constant barrage of bad news. I am completely amazed as I watch the worst of the 1999 eclipse play itself out.

Venus is on The Furious Storm in a Canyon degree (Cancer 27) and this on the news wire... btw, this wasn't reported on our tv stations news at all...

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=280321&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/

'Airlines terror plot' disrupted

All airports have been put under the restrictions

Reid statement
A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said.
It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.

Police were searching premises with 21 people in custody after arrests in the London area and West Midlands.

High security is causing delays at all UK airports. The threat level to the UK has been raised by MI5 to critical.

According to MI5's website, critical threat level - the highest - means "an attack is expected imminently and indicates an extremely high level of threat to the UK".

Heathrow Airport has been closed to all incoming flights that are not already in the air, while several outbound services have been cancelled.

The airport is crammed with thousands of passengers, while at Stansted more than 2,000 people are queuing to pass through customs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4778575.stm

U.S. Raises Airline Threat Level
E-MailPrint Save

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 10, 2006
Filed at 6:28 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government raised its threat warning to the highest level for commercial flights from Britain to the United States early Thursday in response to a terror plot disrupted in London. Terrorists had targeted United, American and Continental airlines, two U.S. counterterrorism officials said.

In addition to the highest alert for flights from Britain, the alert for all flights coming or going from the United States was also raised slightly. The government banned beverages, hair gels and lotions from flights, explaining only that liquids emerged as a risk from the investigation in Britain.

Multiple flights to multiple American cities were put on alert. Specifically, these airlines included United Airlines, American Airlines and Continental Airlines Inc., the two counterterrorism officials said. American and United flights were turned into terrorist weapons on Sept. 11, 2001, when they were hijacked and crashed.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Terror-Plot.html?pagewanted=all

Oh, well, trust me! I booked a flight from Phoenix to London today - flying later in the month, but if I'd waited until tomorrow I may have changed my mind completely about going to the UK... perhaps even changed my mind about going to the US.

BTW, my 2l year old son was at King's Cross Station in London when the bombs went off last year... don't know if I've mentioned it on this Forum. He was right there, right in the train station when the bombs went off. Meanwhile, this year, he's back in the UK and flying back to Australia soon. The reports of the chaos at Heathrow are NOT encouraging!

I leave tomorrow to fly from Australia to the US... I should have looked more closely at the Sun - Neptune opposition, not to mention the Sun being on the 1999 eclipse degree (which eclipse I witnessed, as I was speaking at the English conference in Plymouth at ground zero)...

Further, the Sun tomorrow being opposite Neptune has the Sabian Symbol of A Houseboat Party... yeah, waiting in the queue and wondering when one will ever get to their destination!

To me, a lot of this security stuff is scaremongering.. they have sophisticated xray machines and the check you within an inch of your life... I think it's a beat up, although I don't really doubt there was a terrorist plot.. but if they've caught the guys, why the huge debacle?

Thanks ever so much for this keen and clear focus on the 1999 eclipse and grand square, Cap'n Sally. I don't intend to be silly by raising this, but have our lives--our world--become so intense that we no longer have the time for such phenomena as sopontaneous combustion, people disappearing in thin air, Nessie, UFO abductions, even Bigfoot and Yeti , etc.?

Succinct description of the latest terr-terr-terr stuff:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2770596

Oh Sally I do so hope we are finally waking up! Found the following article on
Online Journal. He's somewhat of a pessimist,to say the least, but makes good points:

Until and unless the machines, and the corporations that operate them, are removed from all elections, there is no vote, and no democracy, anywhere in this world. Until and unless the “war on terrorism” is exposed for what it is, and stopped, there will be no change, and no hope. There is only fascism, and a gruesome reality that becomes more evident with the passage of time, and we, the long disenfranchised.
The New World Order does not break rank when it comes to your extinction.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1090.shtml

Thank for for posting this article, Sally! Very, very helpful. I just wrote late last night in the previous thread that I'm dying for information about the current relationship to the 1999 eclipse.

This airline plot -- how eerily perfect the Saturn/Neptune symbolism is -- a ban on liquids! Like Lynda, this time I believe it's real. It's not early November, and I don't think they would have dreamed this up as a way to take air of the wings of the Lamont win. Although you never know with the dark forces in power. If y'all haven't seen the Frontline special on PBS called "The Dark Side", you must. It is quite brilliant, and scary, of course.

Lynda, Stefanie, I don't believe anything this "administration" says about "terra" alerts anymore. This latest scare tactic gets Israel off the front page and also attempts to send a message to those of us who don't care for LIEberman the DINO/neo-convict.

I mean, really---how many "terra-ist" plots has the Apple Dubya Gang claimed to have foiled since 9/11? And how many have been immediately discredited afterwards?

Unfortunately, I think KKKarl Rover has realized that "foiled" terra plots don't have quite the impact of the ones they let happen....

Oh, Garry, I agree with you, although this one may have some truth.... but who knows? I figure anything's possible... I don't trust any of it verbatim. There's always an agenda.

I've just been trying to convince a client, by email, she's in the States, I'm in Australia, that the terrorists don't want to 'get' her. She's convinced they want to kill her... I mean really, she's not known to them, doesn't have an agenda... the fear this lot is producing is criminal in itself...

This event should have been everyone's first clue.

http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/08/10/halakha/

Is Joe Lieberman a bad Jew?

Now that I'm observant, too, I question the senator's public shaming of Bill Clinton.

China's Worst Storm in Decades Arrives
Aug 10 9:12 AM US/Eastern
Email this story

By GILLIAN WONG
Associated Press Writer

BEIJING

The most powerful typhoon to hit China in five decades slammed into its southeastern coast Thursday, destroying hundreds of homes and battering the region with rain and wind after more than 1.3 million people were evacuated, state media reported. At least two people were killed.

Typhoon Saomai was the eighth major storm to strike China in this summer's unusually violent typhoon season. Torrential rains were forecast in the next three days as it churned inland across crowded areas where Tropical Storm Bilis killed more than 600 people last month.

Saomai, with winds up to 135 mph, made landfall at the town of Mazhan in coastal Zhejiang province at 5:25 p.m. and was moving northwest at 12 mph, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing weather officials.

Xinhua said two people were killed in the city of Fuding, while 80 people were injured and more than 1,000 houses toppled in and around Mazhan

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/10/D8JDJ1H02.html

More interesting astrological reading, no claim made for veracity....

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=131&contentid=3789

The main reason I feel that this is real is because of the powerful resonance with the Saturn/Neptune opposition. The ban on liquids is just way too specific to assume that they're making this one up. Unless they're studying astrology and have created this to convince us wackos here. :>) I put nothing past them, but a Saturnian ban on Neptunian liquids and gels?

What a visual you painted with this, Sally. I could vividly see the Earth being navigated through space (a virutal star-trekish image) and experiencing a variety of warp energies. The celestial weather is a little rough right now.

It does appear that anti-animate, black-hole energy is attempting to devour that which it does not possess: light. It is for this reason that we must Be beacons of light energy, refrain from fear (or being drawn into an ongoing perpetuation of fear). Yes, Lynda, I too wondered first thing what this terra-alert is being contrived for. (By the way your website it inspiring!)

And Shy, oh Shy. . .if we were ever to meet, we might not stop laughing. I'll bring the beer, or is it wine you prefer? :) Oh wait. . .I'll be right back. The Cumberland Mountain Yeti just ran through the backyard and into the woods. The dogs are wild, but she just put up her hairy finger and twirled it around a time or two. The dogs are sitting, obedient. They appear to be talking to her. Well, I'll be. A ship just landed. A sleek, silver disk with a protruberance on one side. It's just big enough for the yeti. Wait! She's coming out the woods, walking toward the ship. Turning, waving to the dogs. They're laying down, heads on paws. She says one more thing, and then enters the ship. Just like that she's gone. Incredible. :)

It doesn't matter if they found a "terrorist's cell" or not, the impact on the people is the same. If someone comes up behind you and goes 'boo' you will jump even if there is not a violent intent in the "boo" person. It isn't what is 'true' that matters, it's what we the people believe that creates the impact of the event.

Saturn/Neptune oppositions, squares and sometimes the conjunction can also manifest as unfounded fears, things that will never happen. Now we have effectively shut down our airports while they look for liquid hairspray. Wow. Why not get the National Guard to our borders today and check to see if anyone coming over those borders has anything liquid? It doesn't seem they are checking the borders. They don't need events to scare the public or panic us, all they need is a "boo," and we will jump, we are jumping today.

In this instance there is a good astrological case to be made for the truth of it and a case to be made against it. The Eclipse coming Sept. 22 falls across Britian's Moon, her progressed Moon has a Saturn conjunct and yesterday the Full Moon fell across her progressed Moon, so it could be true, but I still say it doesn't matter. What is true is Israel is bombing Lebanon into tiny bits, and the US has made such a mess in Iraq and thanks to the US, they are in tiny bits and have destabilized the entire world.

So from an astrological perspective, it doesn't matter if this latest information is true or not, the effect is the same and our response is the same as if it were true.

I'll be wearing my red and orange Code Alert go-go boots and silk shawls just to celebrate. My BS radar is beeping big time. Told the news to 'STFU' before turning off the tv. That's how I know, just vibrates lies.
The B52's are playing tonight in Coney Island. That's the kind of B52s I want in my life.
Neocons forget that one of the 10 Commandments says 'thou shall not kill". What religious phonies. They can lick my red and orange yogini boots. Not going to spoil my joy in life with endless fear.

Well, Bush/Rove did offer to help Lieberman in any way he could.

All States should go back to old fashioned voting machines, or forget the will of the people. They still had them in Connecticut.

you go Bhakti, good for you (would love to see those boots and shawls) I heard a guy on the radio this morning that said "see this is why we need Bush and Blair, they are doing everything they can to keep us safe" I wanted to send him some saran wrap and duck tape.

Oh, Karen, we only need your wonderful imagination and sense of humor. Though beer would be a nice extra touch. Hahahahaha.

hair gel is the new duct tape -- saturn/pluto vs. saturn/neptune...

Comment
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It is Lebanon, not Israel, that faces a threat to its existence in this war
The Franco-US resolution is an absurdity: it would give Israel immunity while denying Lebanon the right to defend itself

Ahmad Samih Khalidi
Thursday August 10, 2006

Guardian

As Lebanon is brought to its knees, and Israeli leaders promise yet more of the same, there is something truly extraordinary about the manner in which the war on Lebanon is being portrayed as a war for Israel's survival, as if it were the existence of the Jewish state that were at risk.
Whatever else it may be, this is a war between palpable unequals: a giant nuclear-armed power with the most advanced western military hardware and a potential ground force of up to 650,000 trained men, against a tiny third-world guerrilla force of around 5,000 fighters, armed largely with second-hand former eastern bloc hardware (the first Katyusha rockets were developed in the early 1940s) and castoffs from Iran and Syria.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329549245-103677,00.html

I think all those right wing disc jockeys should be sent pictures of New Orleans once a week.

Israel says BBC not reporting war fairly

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gil Hoffman, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 10, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Foreign Ministry is under pressure from Israeli citizens to resume its boycott of the BBC and to withdraw credentials from its reporters due to "one-sided" reports on the war in Lebanon, Israeli diplomatic officials said Wednesday.

For seven months during a wave of Palestinian violence in 2003, Israeli officials boycotted BBC news programs, declining interviews and excluding BBC reporters from briefings. The boycott was ended after the BBC appointed a panel to oversee its Middle East coverage and to ensure it would be unbiased.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525841951&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

From my observations they have interviewed every
Iraeli official except the janitor of the Knesset.
What's the tsimmis???

Back From The Dead: Privatization

Social Security private accounts will be back in 2007 unless candidates who support them are exposed in 2006.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/08/10/back_from_the_dead_privatization.php

Good one Pat C, yes do send them NO pics, but on a daily basis and lots of them

Hey all, a brief subject change here, but a significant one---Presbyterian author David Ray Griffin's new book(pub'd by Westminster John Knox Press)says Duhbya did 9/11:

http://story.malaysiasun.com/p.x/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/7cca827f00576d2a/

Look for the author on MSNBC soon.....
it's kind of refreshingly odd to find some fundies that are not in lockstep with the neoconvix, esp. to the point of calling them out on their BS...

Griffin is not a "fundie" he is a mainstream minister and has been working on this for 6 years. I saw him on c-span giving a lecture on this over a year ago, but I guess he just got out the book. He is very articulate and very mainstream religious, not at all a fundie. He's brilliant and thoughful in his research. I am so glad he's written a book. Don't know how far it will go, but I do think he is absolutely correct. If the MSM would have him on their programs he couldn't fail to impress them with his work.

Lieberbush lost....Red Alert! Red Alert!

Never had one before.

Last Orange alert just before 2004 election.

Rove must be delerious with joy.

Well, at least Israel and Iraq are off the front
page. Along with Gaza and high gas prices.

Oil is down $2 per barrel. People won't be
travelling.

Let's see how long it take prices to drop at the
pump

Gateway to the Heavens....moon on the Golden
Gate Bridge...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2006/08/10/BAGLVKEND01.DTL&o=0&type=printable

Oops, my bad--I apologize for the "fundie" remark about Griffin earlier Cap'n Sally! I'm just glad this is coming out from the xtian side.

Once a day Sally, hand delivered.

............

From the Christian Science Monitor

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0810/dailyUpdate.html?s=mesdu

Good human interest story....

Arab-Jew relations are fine art for him
Israeli director focuses on human aspects

- Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, August 6, 2006

Amos Gitai let out a sigh as he sat in his San Francisco hotel room, pondering the latest deaths in Lebanon and his native Israel. He has witnessed similar bloodshed. In 1973, in the middle of the Yom Kippur War, Gitai was a soldier in a military helicopter flying over Syrian airspace when it was hit by a missile that decapitated the pilot. The co-pilot steered the aircraft back to Israeli territory, where it crash-landed, injuring Gitai slightly.

From the ruins of that copter, Gitai decided to become a filmmaker. Over a 30-year-career, he has made movies that show the complicated tangles of Israeli and Arab lives.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/08/06/INGVUK9TIV1.DTL&type=printable

Progress Report

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053

Neil does it again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24wHh38vld4

Sally, What an amazing article, makes a 3D picture in my mind.
Path of the Aug 11, 1999 eclipse is interesting.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/eclipse/aug99se.html
Sally, if you make the eclipse a person instead of an event you can get an astrocartography map from Astrodienst on it. There is Chiron MC and ASC going through the ME from that eclipse. [At least there are healing influences "shining on" it.]
There is also Pluto MC and ASC lines on Saudi Arabia; maybe they'll finally get their just rewards.

Foreign Relations and War:

The Saturn/Neptune opposition between now and June of 2007 is hitting the grand cross solar eclipse of August 11, 1999. I have frequently referred to this event as being behind the explosive destabilization of the Middle East, religious fundamentalism played out as tribal warfare, and the end of the age of oil.

The policies of our present government have succeeded in alienating just about every nation on earth. Things will be so serious this month that there will be genuine attempts to forge ceasefires and peace agreements. There may be some more effective efforts made in October when Venus, Mars and the Sun are in peacemaking Libra. The war in Iraq will continue to worsen. Recently, their prime minister requested that we add troops. Public sentiment will be to do the opposite and Americans will simply want to exit this war altogether.

The positions of transiting Saturn, Neptune and Pluto in the chart of Israel are among the most difficult this nation has ever endured. Between October and November, there may be major conflicts not only with its enemies on the outside, but within the nation itself. A crisis in leadership looms ahead. (The chart used is May 14, 1948, 4:32 PM EET).

http://www.soothesayer.com/

"mass murder on an unimaginable scale" Isn't that what's happening in Lebanon & Iraq???????

Pat C, When ever you post a link to Salon, the article isn't available? There don't seem to be any day sponsors any more? It tells yhou to click on the logo, but there is never one there?

I wouln't jump if you said boo behind me today! The whole alert is so bogus! I havn't encountere anyone tofday who does believe it! Chertov hogged EVERY TV channel this AM, but he was talking & talking & NOT saying anything at all! They are actually trying to pin this on al Quida, after they terminated the search for bin Laden. They're saying the dirty deed wass done by London raised Pakistanis. Did they forget Pakistan is an ALLY? Are they now going to plan to invade that country too?
The sad part is if & when a real alert happens, no-one wil be listening!
Thanks for the refresher on the 1999 eclipse, I had forgotten the details.
QOP

Still mystified as to why the People of the Book are such warmongering haters?

What exactly is the Biblical template for world domination?

Check out The Bible for People Who Hate the Bible, by Canadian Tony Malone.

More immediately, Malone's August 5, 2006 RIR Special Focus interview conducted by Swedish radio host Henrik Palmgren at the Red Ice website: www.red-ice.net is a devastating eye-opener.

OK, so what's going on with Lebanon? I just went to MSNBC and there is nothing--nothing!--there about Lebanon. Whazzup?

The lead-in paragraph of the Stephen Hirsch article on Joe Lieb. on Salon had incorrect info - at least as far as I know. Tisha B'av (the 9th of Av) marks the destruction of the Jewish temple two separate times in history (apparently on that very day) when Jews went into exile after 2 wars, the 2nd with Rome (the first may have been with Assyrians). It also denotes other sad events. It is not a minor holiday that celebrates love where people give each other flowers. If it is a minor holiday, it is because it is set in a minor key. People fast 24 hours (as I did this year in light of the terrible tragedy going on right now) and sit on the floor reading Job and Ecclesiastes. I am not ethnocentric - many Jews are not. We mourn for what is happening to Lebanon - it is a nightmare. I don't know what is driving Israel right now. I know a certain amount of defense is called for as Hezbollah rockets have been landing in N. Israel for a long time, and, with Iran & Syria's backing, and the constant release of statements from some of the leaders, before this happened, that Israel's destruction is their goal, it is understandable that Israel was paranoid and incensed. However, as far as I can tell, Israel fell into a trap, like a beast that was provoked over & over. Either way, this truly is a tragic time.

Garry I am so thrilled that you put that link to Griffin's website and that his information is getting out there. I just saw him a couple of time at least 18 months ago and hadn't heard a word about his research since then. I was so excited that you had found that. I just hope everyone access that link and buys his book, this guy is incredible.

The last thing in the world I want to do is instigate any bad feelings or antipathy here, but Dawn, I must tell you that I listened to the interview you posted, and the "scholar" was nothing bad an imbecile -- the worst kind of ignorant charlatan, unable to get a real book published and using the web as a way to spread venomous lies. He's clearly missing many marbles -- I suggest you listen again -- he talks about martians at the begining of the interview. Regardless, it is very, very dangerous to spread this kind of false information to people in search of the truth. Let us criticise Israel and the ugliness the IDF is currently perpetuating, but please, please do not say that "the people of the book" are warmongering haters, because this is not even thiny velied anti-Jewish sentiment, it's quite overt. Please realize, also, that thousands and thousands of Israelis and Jews are against this war, have marched against it in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, and that there are organized factions of progressive Jews attempting to be heard in the din of pro-war voices here and abroad. All Jews are not "warmongering haters" and it is extremely dangerous to promote this kind of language -- this does not create peace.

* David Ray Griffin Reveals Major 9/11 Cover-up on C-SPAN

Prof David Ray Griffin appeared on C-SPAN 2 (Book TV)... In his 80-min lecture to a standing room audience of 400 at the U of Wisconsin, Prof Griffin, one of the most respected theologians in the US, discusses his extensive research into the 9/11 cover-up. (View now) This nationally televised lecture aired last weekend & will be repeated Sat for those who missed it. David Ray Griffin is professor emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, where he taught for over 30 years. He has authored or edited over two dozen scholarly books. ... http://www.wanttoknow.info/050504davidraygriffin

I really like Prof Griffin, too. Isn't it interesting that the "xian Reconstructist" movement also came out of the [Scotish] Presbyterian Church. http://www.religioustolerance.org/reconstr.htm

Comment
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Sense and sanctimony

Joe Lieberman's career was based on his image as a man of faith - now he's running on bad faith

Sidney Blumenthal
Friday August 11, 2006

Guardian

Joe Lieberman's fall from grace appears straightforward. In Connecticut, where George Bush and his war are intensely disliked, Lieberman stationed himself as the president's defender. But Lieberman's precipitous descent from nomination as vice president to rejection by his home state partisans is also something of a mystery.
Lieberman was once the most attractive and promising Democrat in his state, his grasp of political realities subtle and sinuous. But he became scornful of disagreement, parading himself as a moral paragon to whom voters should be privileged to pay deference. The elevation of his sanctimony was accompanied by the loss of his political sense.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329550579-103677,00.html

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

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Last update - 02:44 11/08/2006

Analysis: Olmert must swallow his pride, adopt UN resolution

By Uzi Benziman, Haaretz Correspondent

It is to be hoped that the United Nations Security Council will quickly pass the resolution ending the war in Lebanon in the spirit of the agreement revealed on Thursday. Ehud Olmert must be encouraged to lead the cabinet firmly to adopt it.

This war broke out in no small way because of the Israeli leadership's lack of diplomatic-military experience and failure to predict the future. Olmert will have to be magnanimous in accepting the compromise taking shape internationally, because it will be an admission of Israel's inability to achieve its declared goals.

There is reason to believe he has this quality. He is not a cynic who, for reasons of prestige or other extraneous considerations, would take tens of thousands of soldiers into battle to risk their lives.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749257.html

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

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Last update - 02:37 11/08/2006

Olmert must go

By Ari Shavit

Ehud Olmert may decide to accept the French proposal for a cease-fire and unconditional surrender to Hezbollah. That is his privilege. Olmert is a prime minister whom journalists invented, journalists protected, and whose rule journalists preserved. Now the journalists are saying run away. That's legitimate. Unwise, but legitimate.

However, one thing should be clear: If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day. Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say - oops, I made a mistake. That was not the intention. Pass me a cigar, please.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749283.html

Keith Olberman is the only primetime journalist with any integrity. He had Eric Alterman from Newsweek on the show during the second half and they had a lucid, intelligent discussion of the politics of the thwarted attack, the only one that I've seen or heard today. Rather than focus on rabid fearmongering, they rationally discussed the timing of the takedown. It was a an elucidating medium between conspiracy theories and liberal analysis. If you missed him at 8, you can see it again at midnight (at least on the East coast.) I have a huge crush on him (Keith, not Eric.)

"The people of the book" also refers to Christians and Muslims-indeed that is what Muslims use to refer to their fellow monotheists. The reason for all of the anger is that monotheism-of this kind-demands that all other religions be wrong, because they are other religions. This gives an automatic combativeness as opposed to polytheism, where gods are multiple, and an encounter with a new religion is simply seen as a variation of the Great Divine Force Over All. A polytheist can simply add another statue on the altar, or just conveniently pray to the god of his neighbors when meeting them.

Furthermore, all of these religions hava an apocalypse where the New World is ushered in by violence where those who disagree are punished for their dissent. Time is linear, and there will be an ending. Compare that to the more cyclical religions where the end is a new beginning, and therefore life and nature will not come to an end, and there will be no great mass punishment of those who disagree. Those who do not get it this lifetime will surely get in their next, or the one following that.

Last update - 03:22 11/08/2006


Breakthrough in talks over cease-fire resolution; Security Council expected to convene Friday

Revised draft calls for 'progressive' IDF withdrawal from south Lebanon

By Shlomo Shamir, Aluf Benn and Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondents, and Agencies

The parties involved in diplomatic negotiations for a UN-brokered cease-fire resolution aimed at ending the fighting in Lebanon made a breakthrough Thursday, raising hopes that a truce deal would pave the way for the stationing of international troops in Lebanon as part of a package that would end the month-long confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah.

The UN Security Council will convene Friday to discuss the new proposal, which has been agreed to by the United States as well as France.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said late Thursday, however, there was still no agreement on a resolution calling for an end to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah but that he hoped for one on Friday. "I have not at all given up on the prospect that we might yet vote tomorrow," Bolton told reporters after a day of talks. "We have not yet reached agreement but will continue to work on it and will continue to work on it this evening and meet again early tomorrow morning."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749019.html

Generally "people of the book" can refer to any of the monotheistic religions, but in this context, it was referring specifically to Jews, and the accompanying link indicates that for certain.

How many people, I wonder, will stop flying just because of the sheer inconvenience, and not the fear of attack. Dumping hundreds of dollars of moisturizers? Come on.

Oh and why is Bush crowing about this? From what I understand it was the Brits who foiled the supposed plot.

Here's what I've been wondering for some time: Does anyone know how the '99 fixed grand cross might affect individual's chart over the years, if he has, say, a fixed T square in his chart: Sun, moon, Neptune, Jupiter hovering around those same degrees in Taurus, Leo and Scorpio? Like, me, for example.

Lebanon’s Descent into Hell

By Mike Whitney

"I know I will die fighting them, then I will go to my God. But I will go to my God fighting like a lion. I will not be slaughtered like a lamb." Ahmed (last name withheld) "Destruction, Death and Drastic Measures" Dahr Jamail

08/10/06 "Information Clearing House" - --- The assassination of Lebanese businessman Rifik Hariri now looks like the hoax that many suspected from the very beginning. Israeli newspapers’ have already admitted that the current invasion had been planned for over a year, so how can anyone still believe that Syrian agents killed Hariri?

Syria had nothing to gain by killing Hariri and everything to lose. Israel, on the other hand, could use the murder as an excuse to push Syrian troops out of Lebanon, invoke UN resolution 1559 to attack Hezbollah, and bomb the country into submission annexing the south according to a Zionist scheme that dates back more than 60 years.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14471.htm

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2006/Aug/20060810News026.asp

Officials begin recount in Mexico
Authorities re-tally 9 percent of votes.
Published Thursday, August 10, 2006

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Electoral officials fanned out across the country yesterday to begin a partial recount in Mexicoâs tight presidential election, while leftists alleging vote fraud blocked bank headquarters in the capital and vowed to take their disruptive protests nationwide.

Guarded by soldiers and monitored by electoral judges and representatives of all of Mexicoâs five political parties, authorities started sifting through ballots cast at 11,839 polling booths, about 9 percent of the 130,000 booths used during the July 2 election. The count must finish by Sunday. The Federal Electoral Tribunal will review the results and can then declare a president-elect by Sept. 6, annul the election or order a greater recount.

The initial results gave Felipe Calderon, the pro-business candidate of conservative President Vicente Foxâs National Action Party, a lead of 240,000 votes, or less than 1 percent, over leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, former mayor of Mexico City.

The partial count could change those results, but it was considered unlikely to tip the balance in favor of Lopez Obrador, whose supporters have been disrupting life in the capital for more than a week to press their charge he was robbed of an election victory by fraud.

Calderon welcomed the partial recount, saying it would cement his advantage. But Lopez Obrador dismissed the action as a farce and said his loyalists would continue demonstrations unless authorities ordered a recount of all 41 million ballots. Across Mexico, electoral officials sliced open seals placed over doorways and pulled tape off doorknobs to reopen storage rooms holding the paper ballots cast July 2.

Officials then began opening sealed polling packages to sift through ballots and read the tallies from polling stations. They were looking for mathematical errors, evidence of fraud, ballots that should have been thrown out, or ballots that were mistakenly annulled.

At the 12th Federal Electoral District in Mexico City, Judge Julio Humberto Hernandez, party representatives and six soldiers watched as officials spent nearly 90 minutes counting ballots from the first of 28 packages they were ordered to review. The end result: One less vote for Calderon and one more for Lopez Obrador, a total of 11 votes more all together than what workers reported immediately after the election, and five null votes instead of the initially reported seven.

More...

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2006/Aug/20060810News007.asp

Digital voting a hit, with one ominous glitch
"Paper trail" lost for some ballots.

BE SURE TO CATCH TONIGHT'S OLBERMAN!

Liquid Moon by Eric Francis

Dear Friends, Near and Far:

MI5, the British intelligence agency, said Thur that it had foiled a major terrorist plot to blow up airplanes mid-flight from the UK to the US using explosives contained in fizzy drinks. Home Sec John Reid confirmed that there had been a plot "to bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions causing a considerable loss of life," BBC reported Thur morning.

When the UKs airports reopen, carry-on baggage will be banned for the first time, and only bare essentials such as passports will be allowed in the cabin, contained in a transparent bag.

Twenty-one arrests were made. The chart, which I will go over in a moment, suggests that when those details are available, we will see a domestic plot of some kind, much like with the Underground bombings of the summer of 2005. [Note, just after I typed this, news came out that all those arrested were indeed British subjects, of Pakistani descent.]

Though the bust has already been made, the alert level has been raised to "critical," or imminent attack expected -- it's being reported that two plotters are still at large. It has been reported that part of this plot involved the potential use of "liquid explosives," in the form of hair gel. In what will be devastating news to many, styling goo has been banned from flights. Indeed, BBC News was reporting Thur that all liquids, including insulin and contact lens solution, are banned. In a slightly conflicting report, it was also reported that mothers were being required to taste baby milk in front of security agents.

Nobody is missing that this event occurred on the Aquarius Full Moon, conjunct the planet Neptune, right? That is a LOT of liquid. Neptune is also the great astrological question mark in the sky, often representing foggy situations where the truth is never known. ... http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/eric.html

Nope, no one is missing that Full Moon factor with Neptune, and you are right, the truth will not rise completely to the surface, but there will be tons of questions.

In the 50's and 60's the government took control of the railroads and then put them under "picked" private contracts and ran them into the ground. They are doing the same thing with the roadways and now trying to capture the airlines. Travel (transiting Neptune in the US 3rd House for quite some time) will become more and more difficult in the US.

I'm starting to put the word government in quotation marks. I seems like the only approriate thing to do.

That's a great idea, Pat C... think I'll do that, too.

The Crazies running THEIR "govt" in Wash DC... er, & elsewhere.

Less than a month ago Beirut was touted as the Paris of the Middle East. It was beautiful, a tolerant people, prosperous and in less than a month Beirut is in shambles. People starving because Israel will not allow humanitarian aid go through, hundreds of innocent people dead and all in less than a month, while the world sits back and lets Israel do whatever they want. If it could happen to one country, it could happen to our country.

It would be great if putting the word government in quotation marks became common. What a message that would be Joanna.

Sally, it can happen anywhere, along with exploging buses, etc. It's dark and ugly, filled with hate and disregard for life. It must stop everywhere. It must stop.

Cultural Creatives! http://www.culturalcreatives.org/samples.html

Take some heart, Fellow Travelers. Things aren't as they appear, remember? All that neptune energy. I tend to forget that neptune is an energy of DISillusionment... that's a very good thing... having ILLUSIONS disappear... uncomfortable & wretched as it may be during the process. And the USians have had PLENTY of illlusions to dissipate (including all that cowboy-crap).

Good grief Joanna, where did you find that link? I had almost forgotten about that book, I have it around here someplace. I really thought 2004 was going to be the time for the Cultural Creatives, well maybe 2008. Thanks for bringing this back to the fore.

Cultural Creatives! http://www.culturalcreatives.org/samples.html

Take some heart, Fellow Travelers. Things aren't as they appear, remember? All that neptune energy. I tend to forget that neptune is an energy of DISillusionment... that's a very good thing... having ILLUSIONS disappear... uncomfortable & wretched as it may be during the process. And the USians have had PLENTY of illlusions to dissipate (including all that cowboy-crap).

It's a hopeful/helpful sign, Miss Sally. It's shown up recently on some local mags & newsprint. Even some new articles, tho they don't appear yet online.

And why not?!? What passes for nooz is disgraceful & calculated to drive whole populations insane & into emotional illness. We don't have to do that. Not any fun for one thing. Everybody's sick of the Crazies!

I see that Stefanie is at it again, accusing anyone telling the truth about the genocide being committed by the govt. of Israel as being hysterical, crazy and of course anti-semitic.

There is no excuse for Israel's actions in Lebanon. They are indiscriminitely murdering innocent civilians including many, many children. It is thoroughly disgusting. It should tell you something that their best friends in the U.S. are Cheney, Pat Robertson, Bush, Rumsfeld, Perle, Ledeen, Falwell, etc.

The current Isrraeli govt. leaders are war criminals and in the final analysis need to be brought to the Hague to be held accountable for their destruction of an innocent population
just as the Nazis were tried at Nuremberg.

I'm so pissed off and disgusted right now with the Israeli govt. that I can't even think straight, so I forgot to add my name to the above post.

Stefanie has a right to express her opinion without being personally attacked, no one needs to be personally attacked.

I share your anger with the Israeli government and the anger at this government. It doesn't mean I am anti-American or anti-semitic. Or anti-British for that matter. I am however beyond disgusted with all those governments and the people who are in power.

Joe Lieberman is just despicable ~ I can’t stomach anymore from this little insignificant Bush Loving War Monger

Lieberman: Lamont Iraq Plan Would "Strengthen" Terrorists

Raw Story ~ Published: Thursday August 10, 2006

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT) today told voters that the Iraq position held by challenger Ned Lamont could lead to more terror attacks like those foiled in the UK today, according to the New York Times.

An excerpt from the registration-restricted Times article follows:

“If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England,” Mr. Lieberman said at a campaign event at lunchtime in Waterbury, Conn. “It will strengthen them and they will strike again.”

Lieberman's logic is greatly flawed. Obviously the US being in Iraq did not prevent this plot from hatching. Good police work in UK is what prevented it from happening. If we were using $$ we are wasting in Iraq to shore up our borders, protect our nuclear power plants and chemical plants, etc. we would be a lot safer. But we dont really seem to be doing anything proactive. In fact the list of banned items that you can take on a plane was recently reduced The threat of using liquids and other bomb making components on aircaft has been known for many years. Chertoff even referred to it in his press conf thurs: "Chertoff said the plan was reminiscent of a plot by September 11 coordinator Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who in 1995 had envisioned detonating bombs on 11 airlines possibly traveling over the Pacific Ocean." That plot involved mixing liquids and components to create a bomb. Why wasnt the ban on liquids put in effect on 9/11?

http://salon.com/opinion/conason/2006/08/11/pundits/

Sore losers

Connecticut voters did what they felt was best for the country -- and should ignore the right-wing scolds who support Bush's failed policies.

By Joe Conason

Aug. 11, 2006 | The overthrow of Joe Lieberman has intensified the anxieties of the Republican establishment and their friends in Washington's professional chattering class. This week they were full of furious insults, dire predictions and brazen lies about the political uprising of those well-heeled peasants in Connecticut who dared to ignore the conventional wisdom and did what they felt was best for country and party.

Not surprisingly, the most vicious and partisan attacks emanate from those same statesmen and intellectuals whose propensity for fear-mongering and falsifying first led us into the Iraq quagmire. They hate being held to account for the catastrophe they authored, which is why they again stoop to questioning the patriotism of their critics -- in this instance, the ordinary voters who went to the polls to register their dissent from George W. Bush's war.

So Vice President Dick Cheney claims that those Connecticut voters -- many of whom lost neighbors and friends on 9/11 -- encouraged "the al-Qaida types" by supposedly endorsing the "notion that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home." Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman accuses "national Democrat leaders" of "defeatism, isolationism, and blaming America first." And Weekly Standard editor William Kristol charges that those voters didn't really dump Lieberman because of his position on the war, but because "he's unashamedly pro-American." (Either those leafy suburbs are crawling with subversives, or Kristol is a nasty little McCarthyite.)

More....

Pat let me know if you can't get the rest of it.

This is a magnificent rant....just magnificent.

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2006/08/wretched-mole-rat.html

Grizzly -- I'm equally pissed off as you at the Israeil gov't -- I don't know if you actually read my whole post. I said that what they're doing is horrifying and that I stand with thousands of other Jews (and Israelis) against this war. I've stood against most other Israeli wars, and I have a lot of Jewish company. I took exception at the statement that "people of the book" are warmongering haters. It's an extremely dangerous statement to make about an entire ethnic group, when the target of our ire should be the people in charge, not the people at large. I listened to the "scholar" beause I wanted to see if he had anything valid to say. He did not -- he was the typical Protocols of the Elders of Zion apologist, a total wannabe with extreme and obvious emotional problems, trying to convince other Internet crazies with nothing to do that Jews want to take over the world. It's hogwash that anyone with a brain and a library card could easily refute in five minutes. And it doesn't solve the real crisis -- global oligarchy.

Let's break down ALL the illusions during this Neptunian era -- even the long-held, ugly stereotypes. We're desperate for a scapegoat during these dark, dark times, but that's no excuse to fall for the easiest, oldest myth there is. There are plenty of other ugly stereotypes for us to dispense with -- so let's get to work, comrades...

Thank you for defending my honor, Sally!

Stefanie

Sally was right, I should not have been so quick to respond to your comments in the negative way I did. Sorry for that! You are also right about unpleasant and ultimately dangerous stereotyping.
We all need to be careful.

I mean, just like within every race, ethnic group, religious affiliation, etc. there are really great people and absolutely horrible ones.

Re my fellow Jews I'd say that George Soros, Paul Krugman, Eric Alterman, Josh Marshall, Rob Reiner
are good examples of members of the first group, while Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Scooter Libby, Joe Lieberman, Richard Perle, etc. are surely members of the second.

August 11, 2006
Weapons

Israel Asks U.S. to Ship Rockets With Wide Blast
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — Israel has asked the Bush administration to speed delivery of short-range antipersonnel rockets armed with cluster munitions, which it could use to strike Hezbollah missile sites in Lebanon, two American officials said Thursday.

The request for M-26 artillery rockets, which are fired in barrages and carry hundreds of grenade-like bomblets that scatter and explode over a broad area, is likely to be approved shortly, along with other arms, a senior official said.

But some State Department officials have sought to delay the approval because of concerns over the likelihood of civilian casualties, and the diplomatic repercussions. The rockets, while they would be very effective against hidden missile launchers, officials say, are fired by the dozen and could be expected to cause civilian casualties if used against targets in populated areas.

Israel is asking for the rockets now because it has been unable to suppress Hezbollah’s Katyusha rocket attacks in the month-old conflict by using bombs dropped from aircraft and other types of artillery, the officials said. The Katyusha rockets have killed dozens of civilians in Israel.

The United States had approved the sale of M-26’s to Israel some time ago, but the weapons had not yet been delivered when the crisis in Lebanon erupted. If the shipment is approved, Israel may be told that it must be especially careful about firing the rockets into populated areas, the senior official said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/world/middleeast/11military.html?ei=5065&en=b0bc266ddd9937cc&ex=1155960000&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

Thanks, Grizzly! Right on with your list -- I'd add Jon Stewart, but that's just because I have a huge crush on him. :>) Seriously, thank you so much for your apology; we're all on the same page here and have the same ideals and goals, for the most part.

I agree with Joanna -- I think we can make this Neptune era fun, by focusing on what's to come after all the illusions are melted away. And the process might be kinda trippy, which I'm sure we'll all enjoy. Like I'm getting a big kick out of how they're trying to convince us that hair gel and toothpaste are the great evils of the new normal.

Marc Ash: Fascists of All Varieties

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081106Z.shtml

Marc Ash writes: "Since, Mr. Bush, you have chosen to put the issue of fascism before the public, it begs a broader dialog on fascism's role in our lives today. I accept the challenge to enter that dialog. Frankly Mr. Bush, many Americans refer to you as a fascist."

From Drudge

PITBULL JOURNALIST GOES SOFT ON IRANIAN MADMAN:

88-year-old CBS journalist Mike Wallace says Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a 'reasonable' man on Sean Hannity's ABC radio program... Points out Ahmadinejad not anti-Jewish... just anti-Zionist state. Says many Jews in Iranian Parliament, in great positions in Iranian life... Believes Ahmadinejad sincere in his hope for peaceful coexistence between Iran and West... Troubled by comparisons of leader to Hitler... Marvels at Ahmadinejad's civil engineering degree, 'intellect', 'savvy'... Asks viewers not to bring 'prejudices' to Sunday night '60 MINUTES' broadcast... Proclaims 'discussion' was sincere and not for propaganda purposes... Developing...

Russia loses patience over Lebanon resolution

By Donald Macintyre in Metulla, Israel and David Usborne in New York

Published: 11 August 2006

Russia sowed unexpected confusion at the United Nations last night, announcing it had lost patience with still-stalled efforts by the US and France to agree a ceasefire text for Lebanon and was tabling a resolution of its own to the Security Council, demanding a 72-hour halt in the fighting.

"We can't sit there and keep discussing and wait for something to happen," said the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin. " There is a humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Lebanon. We have to stop the killing."

The Israeli Defence Forces had held off from launching a major ground invasion ­ despite having cabinet approval ­ apparently out of deference to the diplomatic process in New York. France and the US did appear at one moment to have settled on a text, which, in part, would have given the UN the authority to use force to create peace. But, last night, the Lebanese government objected.

Diplomats insisted that the two countries would work through the night to try to find a solution. Failing a breakthrough, it seemed clear that Moscow would press for a vote on its alternative text that would aim to stop the fighting, at least temporarily.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1218442.ece

Robert Fisk: Hizbollah's iron discipline is match for military machine

Published: 11 August 2006

Much bellowing and roaring comes from Israel about a mass military attack all the way to the Litani river. But today, much less bellowing and roaring about "rooting out" the "weed" of the Shia Muslim Hizbollah "terrorists" who are supposedly - in Israel's fantasies, at least - an ally of America's enemies in the War on Terror (a conflict which, of course, we all religiously support).

A column of Israeli armour, which crept into the Lebanese Christian town of Marjayoun - largely populated by the Lebanese collaborators of Israel's occupation from 1978 to 2000 - turned north yesterday towards Khiam, a village already largely depopulated, to find that the Hizbollah guerrillas there refused to surrender.

Israel's frustration - and its sense of loss since 15 of its soldiers were killed in just the fraction of the south Lebanese border area which it "controls" over the past 24 hours - was evident in a potentially criminal document which it dropped over Beirut yesterday. Signed "the State of Israel" - which at least makes its origins clear - the tracts announced that "the Israeli Defence Forces intend to expand their operations in Beirut".

Ouch, we all said when we read this, anticipating more civilian deaths. And we were not without proof. The Israeli decision, announced in this Israeli document - a square of paper that fluttered on to shoppers and office workers, and myself, in Riad Solh Square - had been taken because Hizbollah rockets had continued to fall on Israel and because of "their leader's statements" last night. On Tuesday evening, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah chairman, had boasted of the 350 missiles he claimed his members had fired on Israel over the previous 48 hours, and urged Israeli Arabs to leave Haifa.

And it should be said that the Israeli army are not winning their war in southern Lebanon. Within two kilometres of their own border, they lost their 15 soldiers on Wednesday. Many others were wounded. The furthest the Israelis could reach in an armoured column yesterday was the edge of Khiam, the site of their own notorious torture prison from 1978 to 2000. It is still only two miles from the border and they are fighting a far more determined and disciplined enemy than in 1982, when their "incursion" took them as far as Beirut.

The Israelis have crossed the same border to find that their enemies, Hizbollah, are prepared to die in battle - indeed, seek to die in battle - unlike the secular PLO over whom they proclaimed an easy victory in 1982. Hizbollah is a different enemy, one which turns the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert's, claims that he is pursuing the same "war on terror" as George Bush into dust. The Hizbollah is officered by men who spent 18 years fighting Israeli occupiers, and who learned the hard way that improved weaponry and iron discipline are more important than nationalist rhetoric. Since the Israeli retreat in 2000, they have had six years to bury their arms caches underground amid extraordinary secrecy.

Amazingly, the Hizbollah television station, al-Manar, is still on air. Israel's anger at this amazing bit of technological initiative may have led to its preposterous attack on the old French mandate semaphore and radio station transmitter in west Beirut. The structure, built by the French in the 1930s, had been a repeater station for Radio France during and after the Vichy French regime but had lain derelict since 1946. Yet at 11.20am yesterday, the Israelis wasted two missiles on the tower, thus proving the "war on terror" - in which they insist they are "our" allies - goes back to an era before Israel existed.

Yesterday's air-dropped Israeli document ordered Shia MuslimsinBeirut's Hay al-Selloum, Bourj al-Barajneh and Shiyah districts to abandon their homes "immediately". In other words, the Israeli army wishes to "cleanse" every civilian out of the 12 square miles between Beirut airport and the old Christian civil war frontline at Galerie Semaan. This malicious document ends with a sinister threat - which breaks all the relevant rules of the Geneva Conventions - that "each expansion of Hizbollah terrorist operations will lead to a harsh and powerful response and its painful response will not be confined to Hassan's gang of criminals".

So what does "not be confined to" mean? That it is the civilians who will pay the price - this time in Beirut - as they have in the Israeli air force massacres of southern Lebanon over the past three weeks?

Well, stand by for more Hizbollah atrocities and more Israeli atrocities.

Much bellowing and roaring comes from Israel about a mass military attack all the way to the Litani river. But today, much less bellowing and roaring about "rooting out" the "weed" of the Shia Muslim Hizbollah "terrorists" who are supposedly - in Israel's fantasies, at least - an ally of America's enemies in the War on Terror (a conflict which, of course, we all religiously support).

A column of Israeli armour, which crept into the Lebanese Christian town of Marjayoun - largely populated by the Lebanese collaborators of Israel's occupation from 1978 to 2000 - turned north yesterday towards Khiam, a village already largely depopulated, to find that the Hizbollah guerrillas there refused to surrender.

Israel's frustration - and its sense of loss since 15 of its soldiers were killed in just the fraction of the south Lebanese border area which it "controls" over the past 24 hours - was evident in a potentially criminal document which it dropped over Beirut yesterday. Signed "the State of Israel" - which at least makes its origins clear - the tracts announced that "the Israeli Defence Forces intend to expand their operations in Beirut".

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1218405.ece

Ghayth Armanazi: Israel has already lost this war

From now on it will be difficult - and lonely - to be a moderate voice in the Middle East

Published: 11 August 2006

Israel's war in Lebanon may yet last for a while. But, for all intents and purposes, Israel has lost what the Arabic satellite station has coined the "Sixth War", in reference to the list of major conflicts involving Israel that have erupted since the First war of 1948.

Every war is won or lost not by measure of the cold statistics of hardware or lives - or even territory - lost or consumed by the protagonists at the end of hostilities. Rather, it must be seen against the overall strategic picture that emerges through the dust of battle. The Sixth War is going to leave an indelible mark on that strategic picture - and it will not make pretty viewing for the Israelis or their US backers.

Those Arabs of this or previous generations, whose lives have been overshadowed by the cumulative effects of years of being told that nothing can stand in the way of the might of Israel, are awakening to a new reality. If a few thousand, at most, of lightly armed, but steel-willed, irregulars can withstand the monster they so feared, what can stop them, with all the potential they possess, from at last slaying the dragon of their nightmares. This is an idea which will inevitably grow in strength, not only with each day the war drags on, but with the memories, legends and broken myths which this war is sowing and Israel is doomed to reap.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1218400.ece

Douglas Hurd: What is the point of the UN if it is unable to find a solution to this crisis?
The first result of war is to stiffen determination on all sides and make compromise a bad word

Published: 11 August 2006

After the Security Council had passed its resolution, the Foreign Secretary reminded his officials that more was needed - a degree of local consent, which was absent, and substantially more troops with a proper agreement on command and control.

That was Bosnia in June 1993. We achieved neither the local consent nor the troops, which could alone have made a reality of the so-called safe-areas resolution passed that month. The gap between the aims agreed in New York and the facts on the ground remained murderous for two more years. Will the same happen in Lebanon?

The success of a Security Council resolution depends on its foundations. Under the pressure of tragic events it may be possible to reach verbal agreement in New York on Lebanon, which will for a few days give the impression of an international community effectively at work. The impression will not last long unless it is based on a clear understanding of what is possible.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1218407.ece

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/10/AR2006081001508.html?referrer=email

President Remains Eager to Cut Entitlement Spending

The Bush administration has begun sounding out lawmakers and other key figures about mounting a new bipartisan effort to rein in the costs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security after the midterm elections, according to officials in the administration and on Capitol Hill.

No specific plan has been advanced, and administration officials are proceeding gingerly given the political debacle that beset the White House last year when President Bush promoted a plan to create private accounts in the Social Security program. But they have been sending strong signals in recent weeks that they want to try something again after the elections in November.

The new Treasury secretary, former Goldman Sachs chief Henry M. Paulson Jr., has made it clear that a major reason he took the job is to tackle the rising cost of government health and Social Security spending, which he described last week as "the biggest economic issue facing our country."

In his first major policy address since being sworn in July 10, Paulson noted that he has been told by many in Washington that "reform of entitlement programs is just too difficult to achieve" and that politicians will "demagogue" the issue. He said he believes that "when there is a big problem that needs fixing, you should run toward it."

Bush, for his part, appears fixated on the issue, even as he is focused on securing new immigration legislation and preoccupied by several world crises. Despite being forced to shelve his Social Security plan -- which included establishing private investment accounts and reducing guaranteed benefits down the road -- Bush regularly mentions his desire to tackle the issue again.

More....

Chris Durang

Hey Bush – What's All This Firing of Gay Arabic Linguist Specialists?

Hey, Bush. How are you this morning?

You know, I think we're all very grateful the British Foreign Intelligence discovered that terrorist plot BEFORE it happened. That's really terrific.

I wonder if our intelligence is in as good shape? Can't tell yet.

And it makes me think of all those stories over the years about the Army firing soldiers who are Arabic linguists just because someone accused them of being gay.

Linguist, by the way, means they read and perhaps speak Arabic.

Boy, those language skills sound pretty helpful for the war on terror, huh?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/hey-bush-whats-all-t_b_27017.html

Poll: Bush may be hurting Republicans

By DONNA CASSATA, Associated Press Writer

Republicans determined to win in November are up against a troublesome trend — growing opposition to President Bush.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted this week found the president's approval rating has dropped to 33 percent, matching his low in May. His handling of nearly every issue, from the Iraq war to foreign policy, contributed to the president's decline around the nation, even in the Republican-friendly South.

More sobering for the GOP are the number of voters who backed Bush in 2004 who are ready to vote Democratic in the fall's congressional elections — 19 percent. These one-time Bush voters are more likely to be female, self-described moderates, low- to middle-income and from the Northeast and Midwest.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060811/ap_on_el_ge/republicans_ap_poll&printer=1

'New Middle East' Out Of Control

A growing number of foreign policy veterans fear the U.S. is courting disaster.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/08/11/new_middle_east_out_of_control.php

Ha! So now O'Rielly can be Bushco's "Worst Person in the World!!".

http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/08/11/bill-oreilly-proves-the-nsa-program-doesnt-need-to-bypass-the-fisa-courts/

Bill O’Reilly proves the NSA program doesn’t need to bypass the FISA courts

By Mark Lavine

C'mon Eric, Join the Movement

Before I begin, a quick thought that came to me as I was about to appear on Hannity and Colmes this evening. For those who think that encouraging Israel in its war against Lebanon and rushing weapons to help it continue is the best way to show their support, would you also agree that giving Mel Gibson a bottle of tequilla, a copy of Mein Kampf, and the keys to a sports car is the best way to be a "real friend"?

Dear Eric,

As someone who has long been a major fan of yours, and a fellow blogger on the Huff Post, I wanted to respond to your recent post, since it discusses an ad to the NY Times for which I wrote the first draft.

The ad in question appeared in the July 31 NY Times, and can be viewed on the Tikkun magazine website here. Titled "Stop the Slaughter in Israel, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories," it was, as you say, signed by a bunch of "pro-peace Jews"; however, it was also signed by over 2,500 other people, a large share (and perhaps the majority)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-levine/cmon-eric-join-the-move_b_26277.html

wv posted: "...88 y/o CBS journalist Mike Wallace says Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a 'reasonable' man... Points out Ahmadinejad not anti-Jewish..."

He is more than reasonable imo. I read a lengthly interview made with Ahmadinejad & was delighted to hear him speaking with the consciousness, words, & understanding of my old Sufi teacher, the late Dr Samuel Lewis... a jewish man by birth, & an Islamic Sufi master by life's work. Dr Sam's groups still grow with the Sufi teachings embedded in universal dancing for peace, who also revere the Old Religion of the Great Cosmic Mother. I still dance with them from time to time. It's my take that Ahmadinejad is probably a Sufi & as such, very much Life affirming & wise.

Besides that, the mega-narcissistic bushadruggie doesn't like him... that's more than enuf positive reference on Ahmadinejad for me. ;O)

I'm beginning to look forward to the Rovian Campaign of the Moment... each one puts them deeper into the deep freeze. He's not "getting it"... lil pink-piggy dominators never do.

My Pet Goat Part Deux: For 6 Days, Bush Did NOTHING To Protect US Planes

Submitted by Bob Fertik on August 11, 2006 - 9:59am.Al Qaeda
Bush learned of the threat to airplanes last Friday, but he did nothing about it until this Thursday. That's six days of failing to protect America. Larry Johnson nails it:
Let's at least give George W. Bush credit for being consistent. Prior to 9-11 he was warned on multiple occasions that Al Qaeda was ready to strike inside the United States. His response--do nothing. Now we are informed that Bush knew about the terrorist threat of liquid explosives since at least last Friday, 4 August 2006. According to Yahoo News:
Snow said Bush first learned in detail about the plot on Friday, and received two detailed briefings on it on Saturday and Sunday, as well as had two conversations about it with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
What did George do? NOTHING. No effort, whatsoever, to raise the terrorist threat level. No effort to boost aviation security procedures. I traveled on British Air from Tanzania to London on Tuesday, August 8th. I traveled from London to Brussels on British Air on Tuesday, August 8th. I carried bottles of liquid on both flights. Blair and Bush knew about this since last Friday and did nothing? That's right.
Bush, like a 12 year old boy on summer vacation, Nope, waited and rode his bike around his Texas ranch. No effort to task TSA to come up with tools to detect liquid explosives. No new inspection procedures. Just enjoy his vacation. That, boys and girls, is how the first 9-11 happened. And Gorgeous George wants credit for keeping us safe at home? Not this time. Never again!

Pat C. re the David Brooks rant you posted...I've always wondered why Brooks wasn't attacked more often for the obviously orchestrated stuff he does ..... but people don't seem to bother with him .... I have never liked him, get creepy feelings when I see him flinging his middle of the road crap on evening news....is it because he has cultivated a kind of middle ground to keep from being too attackable? who cares...good rant!

I'm sad that Fertik goes along the line of rez bush is supposed to "protect us" little chilluns because he's Big Daddy & Father Knows Best for the eternal PeterPans. The job of President of the US is to protect & uphold the Constitution. Period. But since it's not a real president... well, I guess we simply get Big Abusive Self-Centered Daddy. It's much better that any thotful USian of integrity admits that s/he is a grown-up with childish moments...

Some great videos by people who are not afraid to
ask intellegent questions. Should be required
viewing for US pundits and reporters...

http://brasscheck.com/videos/middleeast/me5.html

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/hartmann/008

TABOR and Direct Democracy: An Essay on the End of the Republic
by Bradley J. Young

THOM HARTMANN'S "INDEPENDENT THINKER" BOOK OF THE MONTH REVIEW

There is a group of people -- who often refer to themselves as "conservatives" -- who are not only committed to the destruction of our republic, but actively (and successfully) crippling governments all over this nation. Their main weapon is "direct democracy" -- the initiative system by which citizens can get measures on a ballot and bypass legislators -- and a series of seemingly commonsense citizen-promoted limitations on the growth of government.

More...

Hi there
I in LA airport, having flown from Sydney... awaiting a flight to Phoenix.

It was a debacle getting on the plane, but I made it.. interestingly, I was interviewed by ABC tv the minute I got into the terminal here. They asked me about travelling and about profiling muslims, etc, I said it was not right... all that. She said it would be on the news tonight... don't know, but I'll certainly check it out to see if I'm on there.

Lynda

Welcome to Amurika!

From Steve Judd

Thought For the Day


11 August

Seven years ago today there was a total eclipse of the Sun at the heart of a Grand Cross pattern which launched humanity into the twenty first century. Since that Grand Cross, political, economic and social situations across the world have become increasingly fragmented and disenfranchised, with individuals becoming steadily more disempowered. Humanity has been hijacked by a bunch of militaristic fundamentalists who seek to dominate by the subjugation of the feminine and ensuring individuals remain asleep. Our psychic birthright and the future of the planet are linked with each other, and the second Grand Cross yet to come, in August 2010, will determine the long term future for many of us. Learn the lessons of the last seven years, keep your peace now whilst the going is really tough, and know that within a month the worst is over. Trust yourself and your intuition more than anything else.

I thought it was 'Murka', wv.

From Tom Dispatch

Mark LeVine, who has explored Bush administration chaos theory before at this site, takes up the spreading chaos in the Middle East and gives it his own special twist. Tom

101 Uses of Chaos
By Mark LeVine

Perhaps the greatest illusion of any strategists, leaders, or generals is that they are in control -- and perhaps the most hubristic version of this illusion is the belief that they can use chaos itself to further their control, to strengthen their situation. Our world today reminds us constantly that you ride that tiger at your peril.

Object lesson one: Iraq. While the world's attention and the headlines now focus on the Israel-Hezbollah war, recalcitrant, fracturing Iraq continues to spin out of the Bush administration's control. On August 3, Thom Shanker of the New York Times reported on a blunt warning from John B. Abizaid, commander of American forces in the Middle East, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing: "[S]ectarian violence in Iraq, especially in the capital, Baghdad, ha[s] grown so severe that the nation could slide toward civil war."

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=110345

Shylurker

You are probably right, I was raised and educated in Canada.

Here's some columns that will make you stop and
think...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/739

Drug Users Say No to Hezbollah, Call for Wartime Hashish Boycott

Matthue Roth | Fri. August 11, 2006

JERUSALEM — Young Israeli activists are fighting back against Hezbollah — with a boycott on smoking hash.

Hashish, or oil resin from marijuana plants, is one of the primary recreational drugs available in Israel. It’s smoked in much the same way that marijuana is, and because the marijuana available in Israel is generally of a low quality, hashish is the preferred choice of most of the country’s pot smokers.

And it’s being smuggled in by Hezbollah.

http://www.forward.com/article/drug-users-say-no-to-hezbollah-call-for-wartime-h/#

MSNBC

Olmert accepts cease-fire deal....

BREAKING NEWS

Updated: 2 minutes ago
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has accepted an emerging Mideast cease-fire deal and informed the United States of his decision, Israeli officials said Friday.

Olmert will recommend that his government approve the deal in its upcoming meeting on Sunday, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief journalists on the internal discussions.

http://www.patriotdaily.com/bm/blog/bushs-proposal-for-retroa.shtml

Bush’s Proposal For Retroactive Immunity: Update

Last week, Patriot Daily posted a diary, "Bush Seeks Retroactive Immunity From US War Crimes Prosecution," which concluded that Bush was seeking to change the US War Crimes Act, which criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, to provide retroactive immunity to Bush team from criminal prosecution. At that time, very little was publicly disclosed about the substantive content of Bush's proposal to change the law. Two media reports now provide more facts that support our conclusion of retroactive immunity, and show it is much more dangerous than initial reports, not just for all Americans and the world, but for our troops.
Last week, it was publicly reported that Bush wanted to mandate that domestic standards to be drafted by his Justice Dept., not international law, govern interpretation of what constitutes war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. This change would essentially provide Bush team with retroactive immunity, as noted:
The Bush team proposal wants to mandate that US enforcement of Geneva Conventions be subject to domestic interpretation, not international standards. This change is needed by Bush because the US Supreme Court believes that foreign interpretations of international treaties, like the Geneva Conventions, should at least be considered by US courts.

This minor change could have a "huge practical impact" because the Justice Dept. could "define certain interrogation techniques as legal in U.S. courts, even if the rest of the world considers them violations of the conventions." This "minor" change could provide retroactive immunity to Bush team because the War Crimes law today applies to the Bush team. Today, prosecution under this law would likely include international law interpretation as case law precedent because the War Crimes law is based on violating Geneva Conventions, an international treaty. Today, foreign countries and courts have stated in media reports that they do not agree with Bush's view of what constitutes torture or compliance with the Geneva Conventions, particularly disagreeing with the rules governing the Guantánamo prison and treatment accorded prisoners. That is the general state of the law when Bush and administration officials drafted their memos and issued their orders. That is why the Bush team memos issued before implementing their policies expressed concern of their own liability under the War Crimes Act. To change the substantive law after the actions were taken is tantamount to retroactive immunity."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/11/151158/734

CT-Sen: Lieberman is seriously unhinged

.............

If terrorism doesn’t scare you, maybe Bush will

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/redeye/red-081106-greenfield,1,7827791.column?coll=chi-news-hed

Scared yet? Well, you may be soon.

What we almost certainly will see in aftermath of the alleged plot to blow up several planes en route to the U.S. is a thunderous response from President Bush and other Republican leaders.

With the midterm elections less than three months away, they will attempt to scare Americans into re-electing Republicans or risk facing instant annihilation at the hands of an evil and murderous enemy.

Choose us and live. Choose them and die. Your call.

...But like it or not, it’s the Bush administration that is most responsible for keeping us safe from terrorists right now. It’s also our job to keep an eye on the Bush administration.

Don’t ever forget that, no matter how scared you get.

If there are any real terrorists walking around in this country, they're all members of the Republican Party.

There may be terrorists Neo, but I'll have to say, George Bush has made it far more likely, at least IMHO. He and his crew have destroyed whatever good will existed in the world, and in this country for that matter.

http://donkeyod.blogspot.com/2006/08/nonsense-and-sensibility-by-paul.html

Nonsense and Sensibility By PAUL KRUGMAN

August 11, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

After Ned Lamont’s victory in Connecticut, I saw a number of commentaries describing Joe Lieberman not just as a “centrist” — a word that has come to mean “someone who makes excuses for the Bush administration” — but as “sensible.” But on what planet would Mr. Lieberman be considered sensible?

Take a look at Thomas Ricks’s “Fiasco,” the best account yet of how the U.S. occupation of Iraq was mismanaged. The prime villain in that book is Donald Rumsfeld, whose delusional thinking and penchant for power games undermined whatever chances for success the United States might have had. Then read Mr. Lieberman’s May 2004 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, “Let Us Have Faith,” in which he urged Mr. Rumsfeld not to resign over the Abu Ghraib scandal, because his removal “would delight foreign and domestic opponents of America’s presence in Iraq.”

More....

Worth the read.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/11/155948/764

Posted under the latest article on Nancy's blog:

(I don't know if Joel C. Rosenberg has all his oars but if any of what he has quoted the president of Iran as saying/believing here is true, he is not such a reasonable man after all)...

Jerry Watson Says:

August 11th, 2006 at 5:40 am
Apocalypse Now?
Is Iran Planning A Cataclysmic Strike for August 22?
By Joel C. Rosenberg
National Review
August 10, 2006

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWNmMWM5MjhhMzVjZTM0ZmI1ZmJlYzAxNzU3NDEyMWI

Muslim leaders say foreign policy makes UK target
· Open letter accusing PM dismays Downing Street
· Iraq and Middle East 'boost extremists cause'

Will Woodward and Stephen Bates
Saturday August 12, 2006

Guardian

Leading UK Muslims have united to tell Tony Blair that his foreign policy in Iraq and on Israel offers "ammunition to extremists" and puts British lives "at increased risk".
An open letter signed by three of the four Muslim MPs, three of the four peers, and 38 organisations including the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain, was greeted with dismay in Downing Street. It has courted the MCB and several of the signatories, such as key Labour MPs Sadiq Khan (Tooting) and Shahid Malik (Dewsbury), whom it believes can shape Muslim opinion.

The letter says: "As British Muslims we urge you to do more to fight against all those who target civilians with violence, whenever and wherever that happens. It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329551641-111274,00.html

Comment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Face to faith
Christian fundamentalists may offer unwavering support for Israel - but not in the name of religious tolerance, says David Self

David Self
Saturday August 12, 2006

Guardian

The bond between the Christian right and Judaism, manifest in the implicit alliance between the US and Israel, is not only frightening but ironic. Ironic because, for most of its history, Christianity has been actively and officially anti-semitic.
The first book of its New Testament may be ascribed to a Jew (Matthew, a disciple of Jesus) and written primarily for a Jewish audience, but it still attributes terrible words to the Jerusalem crowd baying for the crucifixion of Jesus: "His blood be upon us and upon our children." Those words have been used to justify not only discrimination, but massacres, pogroms and the Holocaust.

Christianity was, of course, born out of Judaism. Jesus and the first Christians were Jews, but the new faith rapidly aligned itself with Greek thought and culture. That society contained an endemic anti-semitism which Christianity absorbed and made explicit in the first quarter of the fifth century, when a Christian teacher and writer, Augustine of Hippo (in North Africa), formulated a code that would underpin Christian attitudes to the Jews until 1965.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329551532-103677,00.html

Comment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Fidel I think I know
He's a man of ironclad discipline, inexhaustible patience, colossal ideas and insatiable illusions

Gabriel García Márquez
Saturday August 12, 2006

Guardian

His devotion is to the word. His power is of seduction. He goes to seek out problems where they are. The impetus of inspiration is very much part of his style. Books reflect the breadth of his tastes very well. He stopped smoking to have the moral authority to combat tobacco addiction. He likes to prepare food recipes with a kind of scientific fervour. He keeps himself in excellent physical condition with various hours of gymnastics daily and frequent swimming. Invincible patience. Ironclad discipline. The force of his imagination stretches him to the unforeseen.
José Martí is his foremost author and he has had the talent to incorporate Martí's thinking into the sanguine torrent of a Marxist revolution. The essence of his own thinking could lie in the certainty that in undertaking mass work it is fundamental to be concerned about individuals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329551510-103677,00.html

Comment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Put an end to the aggression
Britain and Europe must take a lead in halting Israel's wanton destruction of my country

Fouad Siniora
Saturday August 12, 2006

Guardian

For a month now, as the international community has vacillated, Israel has besieged and ravaged Lebanon, creating a humanitarian and environmental disaster and shattering our infrastructure and economy. In the name of the Lebanese people, I again demand an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops. The international community has an obligation, under the UN charter, to defend Lebanon's sovereignty and protect our people under humanitarian law. Given the historic ties with our region, Lebanese look to Europe and Britain to take a lead through the UN in putting an end to this aggression.
Israel says this war is against Hizbullah, not Lebanon. But the Israeli terror is inflicted on all Lebanese. The indiscriminate murder of more than 1,100 Lebanese civilians (a third of them children), the massacres and "cleansing" of villages and the wanton destruction of our infrastructure are nothing short of criminal. One quarter of our population has been displaced. On behalf of all Lebanese, I demand an international inquiry into Israel's actions in Lebanon, and insist on reparations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329551512-103677,00.html

UN Security Council Votes Peacekeepers Into Lebanon

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081106Y.shtml

The United Nations' Security Council voted Friday to send a fifteen thousand strong contingent of peacekeepers and monitors into southern Lebanon in a bid to halt the ongoing violence. The US voted in favor of the measure, but will not send troops. Israel has indicated they will accept the resolution.

B/rove is now framing " islam fascists" ( counting on most 'Murikans" as thinking of fascism, as evildoers who gas people to death. ) I guess the term is hitting too close to home!
We need to define the term correctly, loudly & often!
__________________________________________

As usual he has a new slant on events. ( There's a link with Prnce Charle's wiretap too.)

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
Aug. 11, 2006 -- UPDATED. According to knowledgeable sources in the UK and other countries, the Tony Blair government, under siege by a Labor Party revolt, cleverly cooked up a new "terror" scare to avert the public's eyes away from Blair's increasing political woes. British law enforcement; neo-con and intelligence operatives in the United States, Israel, and Britain; and Rupert Murdoch's global media empire cooked up the terrorist plot, liberally borrowing from the failed 1995 "Oplan Bojinka" plot by Pakistan- and Philippines-based terrorist Ramzi Ahmad Yousef .........

Neptune brought a beautiful rainbow tonight! over my solstice tree! It was a double wide, with a second one above it 1/2 arc!
Speaking of weather.Betsy are you OK? You last posted about the moonlight, but then that typhoon blew thru.
Pat C I can't get a logo to click on for a day pass to Salon. I tried googling it, & I tried to get it in my old version of Internet Explorer. Nothing!
QOP

Here's a tip for avoiding double posts..............
When I got a second missing security code message., instead of typing in a different set of numbers, I opened a second window to check, & there was my post.

Mike Wallace has done an interview with Aminijbad ( ? ) Iran's leaer, to be aired on 60 minutes... Mon. night? chck yhour scheule. Also Christian Amenpour is oing a documentary on the root cause of islam terrorism as a special on CNN. Forgive me for not knowing the times. I am still time challenged
QOP

Pat try this one.

http://www.salon.com/

Friday, August 11, 2006 | Non-11 by Eric Francis

Well, it's been an intense two days & I'm plum tired. But I want to write this note to you before I call it a day.

I just had an IM conversation with a friend from England who is visiting another friend in the US. Both of them have been pinging me to get a sense of my feelings about the supposed terrorist plot that was supposedly just busted in England. She was concerned about flying back to her country, worried about a sub-plot in the US, & so on. What did I think?

I told her: It's all a load of horse shit. No bombs. Just chaos at the airports, [paunchy] guys in uniform with big rifles, politicians flapping their jaws, etc. But terrorist plot? No. Wait a few days till things calm down at Gatwick or Heathrow, & come home. ... http://planetwaves.net/

We are exporting insanity

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-2305849,00.html

Thanks for posting the links to those good articles in the Guardian, wv.

A double rainbow over your solistice tree, QOP, sounds wonderful. You have such childlike joy in you.

And,d dEric Francis is realy very witty & funny, Joanna. Here's an example, where he is referring to the Neptune-Saturn opposition manifested as the liquid explosives terrorist plot that didn't happen:

"With Neptune and Saturn now at maximum tension, particularly with Neptune in Aquarius (media, technology, the public), we have an example of something virulent but, in truth a conceptual event. What we have experienced this week was, in essence, Non-11. It will stay that way if we remain vigilant."

"Non-11!" And that's just one example of his wit.

* Vera's Diary Astrology

The Possible Destruction of Israel?

August 10, 2006

"Those who mindlessly support Israel, right or wrong, from [rez-a-rot] on thru the cheerleaders in Congress & the media, betray the security of the Jewish state. They are enablers who have encouraged Israel's dependency on the drug of militarism as a false escape from the difficult accommodations needed to bring peace to the Middle East." - Robert Scheer, "Israel's Dependency on the Drug of Militarism

I've been extremely worried in the last several weeks that the Israeli attack on Lebanon may well have pushed the Arab world over the edge, far enough over the edge to bring on the possible destruction of the state of Israel. The Israelis ill-conceived actions with the support of the stupid & dangerous [rez regime] & bush’s poodle govt in Great Britain have created a powerful Shite enemy with troops in Lebanon, Iraq, & Iran, willing to commit suicide to promote their religion & control the region, & destroy Israel.

Considering Israel is having its Saturn return, my fears are not only not assuaged but are amplified by a recent dialogue between Nathan Gardels, writing for the Huffington Post, & for security advisor in the Carter adm, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Brzezinski says: "Neocon prescriptions (might makes right in Iraq as well as in Lebanon) are fatal for America & ultimately for Israel. They will totally turn the overwhelming majority of the Mid East's population against the US. The lessons of Iraq speak for themselves. Eventually, if neocon policies continue to be pursued, the US will be expelled form the region & that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well."

Those Dems & other well-meaning Americans who support Israel's latest debacle are unable to 1. Tell the difference between the Jews & the Zionist govt. (They think that anyone that fails to support Israel is anti-Semitic), & 2. Understand that the govt & it's PM, Olmert, is presently just about as right wing as the [rez regime]. ... http://www.aquilaink.com/secretdiary141.html

Drives me crazy thousands of children sacrificed to the tiny flagging phalluses of these nasty old warcoots. Any more... um, "god" anyone?!?!?

* Fear Is A Dangerous Disease by Robert Wilkinson

From The Magic of Space, some words of assistance for overcoming this crippling, destructive emotional virus while learning to be more conscious of your power to turn your mind toward beneficial things. This will be a critical skill in the coming period. A sample: "You are given the power of intelligence to choose those things to which you wish to respond. Your development will depend a great deal upon how you are able to choose the unseen vibrations. No one is immune to vibrations, whether he is conscious of them or not."

From The Magic of Space, the beginning of Chapter IV, “Fear of Inner and Outer Space.”

There is one thing that every man and woman should and must learn – and that is not to have fear. Fear is a dangerous disease, and likely to spread. Of course, everyone is more or less subject to outside influences; it is only natural to be receptive. If you were not, you would be getting into all kinds of danger. You are constantly receiving warnings, and you would not be able to learn, see or feel anything if you were not receptive. The mind must receive before it can give out – and it must acquire before it can serve. ... http://www.aquariuspapers.com/astrology/2006/08/fear_is_a_dange.html#more

* Pluto and the Galactic Core – Part II

As I sat down to write this article, I pondered whether it was the best subject to be writing about right now.

There is so much else going on, both in the stars and on the ground. We’re approaching a Saturn-Neptune opposition at the end of August, which only happens every 30 years and is arguably the most significant aspect of 2006. And, with Jupiter in Scorpio, we’ve got a continuing fixed T-square in action, which becomes a fixed grand cross once a month when the Moon is in Taurus. But I’ve written about both of these topics already. ... http://pisces-chronicles.blogspot.com/

I love reading the posts and the predictions and the wanderings. I read the post about August 22 which is getting very close to the astrological end of August warnings with the Saturn/Neptune opposition. Everyone it seems sees or feels huge changes coming, I can't help but think of the "huge" changes that have already happened over the centuries, and are happening now in Iraq and Lebanon and Israel and Africa and New Orleans and Sumatra, and Afghanistan (their tragic earthquake last year)

Every shift, every event carries the same question "will this be the one, is this the shift that will change us all forever? Will this shift bring people to their senses? We, as a world, have been out of our "senses" for so long do we even know what balance is anymore, did we ever know? The earth keeps turning and the drama of the world keeps happening, it has always been so. The first 50 years of the 20th Century were dramatic to say the least, the 21st Century seems to be starting out the same way.

If there is "something" that happens on the 22 (and I expect there will be "something" somewhere) the day doesn't look "nuclear." I see people everywhere almost expecting or waiting for something massive to befall us, so we can start to build again. It's not the event we are waiting for, it's the awakening of humanity, to all of humanity that we await and have been waiting for since the beginning of recorded time. The "event" that causes that will have come and gone and we won't recognize it until years down the road.

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, the massive change planets, now in all the universal signs promises huge giant changes, everytime they've been there in the past, there have been huge giant changes, looking toward the future with excitement and expectation will carry us further than living in fear of what they might do. It's never the "event" that causes problems, it's our response to the "event."

I can't help but get a creepy feeling as I watch Bush, Cheney, Frist, the neo-cons literally shape shift into gray, bent, egor type figures. At first I thought it was my imagination, but it isn't, those people are on the verge of reaping the whirlwind out of the seeds they have sown, that is the main thing I feel and that's what I see coming. Saturn and Neptune will be the key, Saturn in Leo has always related to the toppling of "kings" Neptune will ensure that they won't see it coming.

I completely agree with Joanna's profound statement, "Neptune is dissolving away illusions" and it is. What ever is coming (and something surely is coming) Saturn and Neptune will make sure those with a hidden agenda will slam down with a thud and all the world will see it and know it. "Let those with eyes see and those with ears hear" ( the bible has some pretty good advice mixed in with all the hell fire.

Hear hear, Sally. With the Uranian activity going on this weekend as well (Transiting Uranus square US Ascendant; transiting Mars opposite transiting Uranus 8/10 - 8/13), I've noticed the Dems appear to have grown backbones and refuse to be bullied into submission any longer by the Greedy Oil People. Senator Reid and Senator Schumer's remarks in response to Cheney's are very refreshing. I heard that Kerry had something to say as well, but this is what I found on DU:

--

Cheney accused of politicizing terrorism

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 37 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Senate Democratic leaders on Friday accused Vice President
Dick Cheney of playing politics with terrorism and contended that voters won't buy Republican arguments that the GOP is stronger on national security.

"They've run this play one too many times. The American people simply do not recognize any validity in what they're saying," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a conference call with reporters.

Democrats sought to put Republicans on the defensive on what historically has been a GOP strength — national security. The heated rhetoric came a day after the disclosure of a thwarted plot to blow up flights from Britain to the United States. Within hours of that news, each party accused the other of doing too little to deter the threat of attack.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., faulted Cheney and Senate Republicans for politicizing the issue.

"They shouldn't. We should all be uniting and be together at this point," said Schumer, the head of the Senate Democrats' campaign committee. "But if they're going to throw the political bombs on this issue, we are going to answer them loud and clear, and we believe we have the political high ground.".........

--

Oddly, Cheney and the Republicans do seem more stodgy and out of place than usual. Cheney's comments about Lieberman's defeat inviting more terrorism seems comical to me, not serious at all as I'm sure Cheney wants people to take him. As Reid says, Cheney has gone to the well too many times with his hate and fearmongering, and so like the boy who cried wolf, few people believe him anymore.

Hi, I am fine.Thank you for asking. The weather has been hot and humid but not as hot and humid as Houston or as hot as it was here last year. No rain or wind here. Blue skies for at least half a day every day. Towering white fluffy clouds. I am near Shanghai and not far from Zhejiang, one of the Southern provinces that was hit. I used to teach there.
I would like to ask Grizzly about ESL in Poland. There are several Poles here in Jiangyin, Jiangsu.

I remembered the place name Betsy, Glad you are safe!

I got a rainbow.......he racoons got the rest of my peaches! They were wormey, before I could figure out what to do for that/???? Orcharding is "HARD WORK"
Thr Aug. 11 1999 eclipse in the grand cross.brought us the death of JFK Jr. ( July 16 1999)
( revisiting time past thru old Time & Newsweek!
Yeh! W has aged badly! and distorted!)
QOP

Thanks,Pat, I was thinking about looking up 1999 myself. We used to have 2 peach trees on the farm in Tennessee. We canned peaches this time of year on the farm. Chinese peaches leave much to be desired. They are white and very hard, usually picked green. Pears and apples are also very hard.
People here believe in fresh food only and never did much preserving of kind.
Happy about your rainbow. I used to see many in Tennessee but I have never seen one in China.bjt

The Military Robert C. Koehler:
'Smiling Buddha: The nuclear game's newest player used to be known as 'collateral damage''
Matheson, for instance, is sponsor of HR 1194, a wide-ranging bill that would put nuclear testing under close public scrutiny -- that the unelected minions of the military-industrial complex were forced to pay attention.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=27258&mode=&order=0

Divine Strake: bomb test has been postponed twice due to the efforts of the local protests in Nevada.
Now they want to test in Indiana!
How dare they waste fuel oil so cavelierly!
(among other things!)

Betsy, Peaches: represent immortality, & happy marriage. ( Tho if you google it the first site is a porn site!)
I was married on Aug 10 1957, some family member thrust a bag of ripe Jersey peaches at us which we took with us to the hotel in NY City! So my first morning as a married woman, began sitting in bed eating peaches, juice dribbling down my chin. ( No we didn't! Too young to think of it, & MTV wasn't there to suggest it!

Thanks to (?)for the Creative site up post.I've signed up for e-mails, we need to give innocence back to the children!

Pat C That salon didn't work either. Guess I need to change my security protocals, & I'm not skillful enough to try that.
QOP

It has occurred to me that "Israel" is one of those neptunian illusion/disillusions as the final peaceful home for a group of people that have actually found home in many places. I don't even think the latest Israel was even put together for that purpose anymore. I think it was a base for the purpose of gaining control over the whole mid-East & its resources. As such, it's a military base for the greedy oligarch/plutocrat that have always run the area. Jewish people are incidental & APPEAR to be main goal for its latest... um, incorporation. Israel may be one of the ILLUSIONS we're being asked to give up, & understand that "home" is where we are within.

Israel as an incorporated entity has NEVER been peaceful. Time to look that one straight in the eyeball.

Canny Comment from my UK seesta regarding the latest airport terr'ist flap put forth by the UK/US "gov'ts"...

"On that story, Jo... the British govt didn't raise the 'threat level' until AFTER the alleged terror plotters had been arrested. Curious behaviour, eh?"

How synchronistic on neptunian energies! Will share this email from my favorite wiccan & peace activist (who's also jewish by heritage by the way)... see what y'all think.

-------

While the Bombs Fall By Starhawk

While the bombs fall in Lebanon, I’m teaching a two-week course in permaculture: regenerative, ecological design, with a schedule so demanding that I find it hard to check email every day, let alone watch the news. But it comes in, between lesser messages about leaks in the watering system in the garden and flight cancellations: pictures of dead children on the road. I feel horrified, angry, frustrated, powerless…all the things I’m used to feeling about the situation, but more so. I try to write something in the spare moments when my teaching partner Penny is covering rain catchment or graywater systems, but all I keep writing, over and over, is “Killing children is wrong.” That sees so self-evident and banal that I can’t quite bring myself to send it out. Or rather, it doesn’t seem to add much to a discussion in which the decision makers are so convinced that killing our children is very, very wrong, but killing their children is the Path of Righteousness.

While the Congress and Senate are voting their support for Israel’s actions, I am teaching systems theory and strategy, including an essay by Donella Meadows, “Nine Ways to Intervene in a System (in increasing order of effectiveness.) The least effective way, she says, is by changing amounts. Please, General, can we drop fewer bombs? Can we keep it proportional? Could we scale down to killing just maybe two of their children for every one of ours, instead of ten?

The situation itself is a perfect example of what she calls a positive feedback loop. I find the term confuses people, as there is often nothing positive about it. I call it a self-reinforcing cycle. Whichever, it means a situation in which the more you have of something the more you get, and the more you need. You kill some of my children so I kill more of yours, so you kill more of mine, so I kill even more of yours.

Self-reinforcing cycles are engines of change, for better or worse. They get more and more extreme, until either some new constraint enters to impose a new equilibrium, or they crash. Hurricanes suck up energy from the heat in the sea, and grow bigger, sucking more energy, which makes them bigger still, until they hit land and blow themselves out. Addicts keep taking more of what they’re addicted to, until they hit bottom, whether the addiction is to alcohol or heroin or military intervention.

This quality of systems does not bode well—either for the children of Beirut or those of Haifa. Europe and the UN might make some weak attempts to intervene, but as long as the U.S. is cheering the Israeli govt on, no serious constraints will be imposed. And why shouldn’t we cheer them on, when Israel’s addiction to force as a solution is the mirror of ours? We’re the big guy and the small guy, standing each other drinks at the pub and throwing the chairs at anyone who threatens us, until we smash the place.

It is this very self-reinforcing cycle that keeps power in the hands of the neo-cons, whose answer to every fear and insecurity is more force. Force which creates more fear, which generates more violence, which requires more force to keep down. It’s an inherent aspect of being caught in this sort of system that as it begins to spiral out of control, and starts to break apart, the only solution you can see is more of the same. An alcoholic gets fired for drinking on the job, and drinks more to forget. Iraq is not working out well for Bush and the neocons, so bring in more troops, or expand the war—Lebanon, Syria, Iran. ...

... You can’t change a self-reinforcing system by changing amounts. Recovering alcoholics know this, generals and politicians don’t. Try to limit yourself to one drink before dinner, and somehow you still end up behind the wheel of the car that careens into the bus full of schoolchildren on the road. Tell yourself that you are using a measured, limited response for well-thought out political aims, and you still end up with blackened torsos and the severed limbs of infants in smoking piles on the motorway.

Here’s some other things we know about these cycles—they are expensive. They consume resources. Drinking up the children’s milk money down at the local. Starving every social program to fund our military. And when they crash, they often fall hardest on the undeserving. The drunk behind the wheel rolls out of the crushed car, unharmed, while the family of five lies dead. The policy makers are not cringing in tenements as bombs fall, or crying over the bleeding body of their most beloved child. Nor are most of those who support the policies. Yet.

To change the system, you need to change the paradigm, the way you frame the situation and think about it, the deep assumptions that shape your viewpoint. That’s Donella Meadows’ most effective way to intervene—changing the world view and the constructs that support the system. It’s also, generally, a hard and painful process.

A new paradigm, a new construct of self and world, goes against everything we know and believe. If I’m telling myself that I’m a fun-loving, party kind of a gal—how painful to instead admit that I’m an alcoholic! If I’m justifying the deaths of children by telling myself that I’m bringing democracy to the region, or safeguarding my sister’s children in Hadera, or fulfilling God’s plan, how painful to look at the broken bodies on the pavement and say, “I did that. I have blood on my hands.”

I’m thinking about one of the many fruitless arguments I’ve had about the issue, this one with an ultra-Orthodox rabbi’s wife, shortly after I’d returned from doing solidarity work with the nonviolent Palestinian resistance in Gaza and the West Bank. I tried to describe to her what I’d seen in that bullet-riddled, shell-shocked land, the ongoing, everyday horrors and humiliations and frustrations, the houses bulldozed, the farmlands confiscated, the lives blunted and stunted and blasted into oblivion, and at the end she said to me:

“But we’re good. So if we’re doing it, it must be good.”

That’s one hard paradigm to shift, because there is nowhere to go from that pinnacle but down, no change we can make that doesn’t require us to face the possibility that maybe we are bad, or at the very least, that we are good people doing some bad things. From that vantage point, of course any critique, no matter how measured, seems anti-Semitic, an assault on that basic self-definition of Essential Goodness. ...

... While the killing escalates, I am teaching about soil. How to feed the life of the soil, how to encourage and nurture the worms and the beneficial bacteria and fungi and other soil organisms. How a healthy soil will grow healthy plants, that can resist pests.

Industrial agriculture, in contrast, is based in the same exact paradigm as our Iraq policy, one that was succinctly expressed in a bumper sticker my first husband applied to his van shortly before we broke up: “Force, It Works!”

So, if corn borers are attacking your crop, blast it with insecticides. Kill the bastards! Are there weeds among the fields? Zap them with roundup. Root feeding nematodes, perchance, below ground? Blanket the whole thing in plastic, and gas it with methyl bromide.

Force—it works, for a while, perhaps for short term goals. But force is costly. And, whether we’re employing force against bugs or bacteria or human beings, force breeds resistance.

And so insects that survive the onslaught of the pesticides breed young that are not affected. We up the doses, and breed more and more resistant pests, which require more insecticides to kill, in another self-reinforcing cycle. The helpful insects, the predators that might have kept the pests in balance, are wiped out. And the residues of poison remain, in the soil and in the crops themselves.

Human beings are not insects or bacteria. The human resistance that force breeds is not in the genes, but in hearts and minds. And so the bombing of Beirut breeds rockets falling on Haifa and airplane bombers in London, and all the assaults on South Lebanon, the bombs and blown-up bridges and armed teenage boys in uniform on the ground will breed more rockets yet, more suicide bombs of the future, more death in retaliation.

And the devotion to force is itself a toxin, poisoning the soil of Israeli society, starving its own social programs, warping the very soul and ethics of the religion it purports to defend.

How do we get out of this mess? What would a regenerative paradigm look like as a policy? If compost, worm castings and plants that feed beneficial bugs are the gardening alternative to chemical warfare, what would be the political parallel?

From a purely self-interested, Israeli point of view, a policy maker coming from a regenerative paradigm might say:

“We can never stamp our hatred, but let us not create habitat that favors its growth. Instead, let us nurture health wherever we find it, and create conditions that let flourish those who favor peace.”

So, in the 90s, Israel could have said, “We have a small window here, when the Palestinians have settled for less than they could have demanded. Let us move quickly to establish a Palestinian state, with true areas of self determination for its people. If the Occupation is a running sore, inflaming rage and hatred throughout the Arab world and undermining our moral credibility, how do we swiftly end it and transform the region into a place of opportunity and hope? Where can we support people’s legitimate dreams and aspirations? How do we support the health of the region’s actual soil, the vitality of its crops, the abundance of its markets, the excellence of its Universities? How do we create such flourishing abundance that this region becomes a shining model for the whole Middle East?”

Instead, Israel built settlements, began a long term program of encroachment on the tiny territory allocated to the Palestinians, and maintained an Occupation backed by force. ...

... When Abbas was elected, Israel could have said, “How do we give him victories and real gains that will strengthen his own people’s allegiance? And if corruption runs rampant in the Palestinian Authority, then where are there leaders of integrity we can ally with? And if Hammas is winning over the people with its social programs, how do we feed a healthy economy so that they become unnecessary?”

Instead, Israel continued to build a wall which confiscates huge amounts of Palestinian land without compensation, destroys the very communities which historically have been most friendly to Israel, unilaterally ‘withdrew’ from Gaza while keeping it surrounded, an isolated, open-air prisons with its resources destroyed and its factions inflamed—creating a perfect breeding habitat for yet more violence.

There are a hundred other missed opportunities. And there will be more. But the longer the cycle goes on, the more damage is done, and the harder it is to stop.

Am I ‘blaming’ Israel unfairly? Couldn’t Hezbollah just stop shooting rockets, and the Palestinian factions stop bombing? Yes, certainly they could, and it would be good if they did. Children would live who otherwise would die.

When we’re caught in a self-reinforcing cycle, it’s a fairly useless exercise to ask, “Who started it?” Or to debate whether one side or the other has the ‘right to defend itself’ by continuing the cycle. Far better to ask, “Who is in position to stop this cycle?”

And it is Israel, the occupier of the territory, the fourth largest military power in the world, that sets the conditions of the region, that has the power to create a habitat where violence flourishes, or peace is favored.

And I admit that I want Israel to act as the moral agent it claims to be. I’m a Jew who was raised with the dream of Israel, as a safe place after the Holocaust, as a refuge in that visa-denying world which sent boatloads of my people back to their deaths, as a place where we could finally, after two thousand years, be ourselves, in our own home. Among the many casualties of this war is all that was good in that dream.

Because of the pennies I saved as a child to buy trees for the promised land, because of the songs I grew up singing, because of the deep well that was carved in my heart for that dream that now spews anguish and blood, I have the right ot an accounting from those who have replaced the God of Justice with the God of Force.

The place has a history of great prophets and lousy kings. There is nothing more Jewish than thundering at the policy makers, saying “Jahweh and Allah and all good-hearted people agree: killing children is wrong. Just plain wrong, and when you do it you have left the Path of Righteousness. The cost of force is too high—it includes your soul.”

Even as the bombs fall, there are people choosing to come from new assumptions. They are the Palestinians of the villages where the wall is confiscating their farmland, choosing nonviolent means of struggle, returning day after day to demonstrations in which they get beaten, tear-gassed, arrested. They are the Israelis and internationals who cross borders to stand with them, saying, “We are not ‘Palestinians’ and “Israelis’, we are people together struggling against injustice. They are the Women in Black, who stand in silent vigil for peace, year after year, fleeing Katusha rockets and returning back to their stand for peace. They are organizers of cross-cultural dialogues, soldiers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories or to kill civilians, youth who refuse to don the explosives belt.

That these people still exist, that they somehow grow out of the blasted, toxic soil of the Middle East, gives us some reason to hope. In spite of the million missed opportunities, the oceans of spilled blood, the escalation of stupid policies, the situation is not yet utterly without hope.

But what can we do, we who are not policy makers or generals or Queens of the Middle East, who are simply ordinary people of compassion, wringing our hands in front of the TV set. Every day, I hear people ask, “What can we do that will be effective?”

And for once, I can’t think of a damn thing. Never has political action felt so futile.

But I think about the advice the great war journalist Robert Fisk received, for surviving decades in Lebanon and other war zones. “Do something,” he was told. “Don’t do nothing.”

So do something. While we’re waiting for the effective thing, do something even if it seems small and futile. Write your representatives. Go to the demonstration, or organize one. Educate yourself more deeply, then talk to someone who has less information. Stand in vigil with the Women in Black. Some of the founders of the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine are organizing nonviolent civil resistance in Lebanon. Join them, or support them. Pray to those Gods who may secretly resent being cast as child killers.

Do something. We don’t know what the effective thing will be, may never know. But if we do nothing, we will surely have no impact.

And what do we say? How do you stop a vicious cycle? Just stop. Stop now. Don’t wait until the enemy is utterly defeated, because your every effort to defeat them strengthens the forces that created them. Just stop. Not tomorrow, when our position is stronger. Not the day after, when you have neutralized more territory. The longer the cycle continues, the worse the crash will be. Just stop. Stop now.

Come from a new paradigm. Feed the soil of the Holy Land with something other than blood. Cherish all children, ours and theirs.

Starhawk

www.starhawk.org

Greenland melt 'speeding up'

The meltdown of Greenland's ice sheet is speeding up, satellite measurements show.
Data from a US space agency (Nasa) satellite show that the melting rate has accelerated since 2004.

If the ice cap were to completely disappear, global sea levels would rise by 6.5m (21 feet).

Most of the ice is being lost from eastern Greenland, a US team writes in Science journal.

Jianli Chen of the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues studied monthly changes in the Earth's gravity between April 2002 and November 2005.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4783199.stm

Joanna -- that Starhawk piece was absolutely stunning. Thank you so much for posting it. I've totally lost contact with her work and she is still clearly as wise and compassionate as ever.

August 12, 2006
Guest Columnist

The Spoils of Victimhood

By THOMAS FRANK
“President Bush operates in Washington like the head of a small occupying army of insurgents,” the pundit Fred Barnes writes in his recent book, “Rebel-in-Chief.” “He’s an alien in the realm of the governing class, given a green card by voters.”

Let’s see: These insurgents today control all three branches of government; they are underwritten by the biggest of businesses; they are backed by a robust social movement with chapters across the radio dial. The insurgency spreads before its talented young recruits all the appurtenances of power — a view from the upper stories of the Heritage Foundation, a few years at a conquered government agency where expertise is not an issue, then a quick transition to K Street, to a chateau in Rehoboth and a suite at the Ritz. For the truly rebellious, princely tribute waits to be extracted from a long queue of defense contractors, sweatshop owners and Indian casinos eager to remain in the good graces of the party of values.

What a splendid little enterprise American conservatism has turned out to be.

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/opinion/12frank.html?pagewanted=print

Thank you JoannaO,
That was a splendid read!
Alarmingly..No Votenowar coverage on Cspan today!
This is the day of the BIG PROTEST. The biggest they've orgaNIZED YET. in DC.
Only evidence of it is my e-mail from them!
QOP

Absolutely marvelous posts.....Wow.
Re: The pisces-chronicles blog article about Pluto conjunct the Galactic Center:
Check out the predictions for 2006 on www.astropro.com. It's also a link on this site's home page. He presents quite the historical background on the upcoming T-square with the lunation influences , the eclipses and the super moon coming in Sept.
thanks , too, for the Starhawk article.

Fascisism is US!
WIth the pRez's naming of "muslim faschists" the other day he cast the lable away from himself.
And today there is no antiwar demo on Cspan. Instead we have the Presidents economic Council, catipulting the propaganda (I think) the sound is down in case they do DC, although it isn't on the schedule.
WE HAVE BRICKBATS OF LIQUIDS AND POSSIBLE MIXTURES & combinations flying out of CNN.
ANd I got an e-mail TELLING ME, *TELLING* to write my gratituede to the British Govt for "saving us all" all us hundreds of thousands!
I did write Congress, not in gratitude, but to point out that this is how CIVILIZED NATIONS behave!
QOP

The rest of Tom Frank's article posted above...

How does this work? How does the right keep its adherents in a lather against government bureaucrats and Washington know-it-alls when conservatives are the only bureaucrats and know-it-alls who matter anymore?

Part of the answer is that, after their crushing defeat in the 1930’s, conservatives rebuilt their movement by adopting a purely negative stance against liberalism. They were so completely excluded from power, they believed, that in 1955 William F. Buckley Jr. famously depicted them “Standing athwart history, yelling Stop.” Writing in the middle of the Reagan years, the journalist Sidney Blumenthal gaped at the persistence of this “adversarial” mind-set long after the liberals had been routed. “Even when conservatives are in power they refuse to adopt the psychology of an establishment,” he marveled.

Here we are, 20 years later, and to hear conservatives tell it, every election is still a referendum on the monster liberalism, which continues to loom like a colossus over the land. Even Tom DeLay — the erstwhile “hammer” — becomes a martyr when addressing the faithful. “The national media has taken my own re-election as their own personal jihad,” he moaned in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. “So we’re fighting the fight of ages.”

That conservatives continue, as Rick Perlstein writes, to “soak in [their] marginalization” four decades after the election of the last liberal president puts this victimology beyond implausible. It is more on the order of a foundational myth, like the divine right of kings, a fiction that everyone involved must accept as fact.

A century ago, it was conservative stalwarts, not liberal reformers, who were the natural party of government. And they were forthright about what they stood for as well as what they were against: They were for rule by a better class of people, for a Hamiltonian state in which business was unified with government. And conservatism is still for those things, tacitly at least. Just look at the résumés of the folks the president has appointed to the Departments of Labor, Agriculture and the Interior. Or scan one of the graphs that economists use to chart the distribution of wealth over the last hundred years. The more egalitarian society we grew up in is gone, snuffed out by the party of tradition in favor of an even rosier past that lies on the far side of the 1930’s.

These ought to be easy things to deplore. They ought to arouse precisely the kind of simmering fury that millions of Americans feel toward lewd halftime shows and checkout clerks who don’t say “Merry Christmas.” But we have difficulty holding conservatives accountable for them, so potent is their brand image as angry outsiders. What conservatives do, as everyone knows, is protest government, protest modernity; to hold them responsible for government or for modernity is to bring on cognitive dissonance.

Or, rather, it might bring on cognitive dissonance. We don’t know because puncturing conservatism’s marginalization fantasy hasn’t really been tried. If liberals are ever to recover, this will have to change. Against the tired myth of the “liberal elite” they must offer a competing and convincing theory of how Washington works, and for whom.

Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.’’ He will be a guest columnist during August.

The Brilliantly Profitable Timing of the Alaska Oil Pipeline Shutdown

by Greg Palast

For The Guardian (UK)
Tuesday, August 9, 2006

Is the Alaska Pipeline corroded? You bet it is. Has been for more than a decade. Did British Petroleum shut the pipe yesterday to turn a quick buck on its negligence, to profit off the disaster it created? Just ask the “smart pig.”

Years ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum’s management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan Natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.

Even then, courageous government inspectors and pipeline workers were screaming about corrosion all through the pipeline. I say “courageous” because BP, which owns 46% of the pipe and is supposed to manage the system, had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

In one case, BP’s CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of a whistleblower, Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe’s tanker facility. BP tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP’s acts were “reminiscent of Nazi Germany.”

http://www.gregpalast.com/british-petroleums-smart-pig

Issa Nakhleh: the Fascist Character of the Israeli State

Monday August 07th 2006, 7:41 pm

Ehud Olmert’s political party, Kadima, currently leading the murderous charge in Lebanon, was forged out of Likud, and Likud out of Herut, the political party of Zeev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionism, a movement at odds with socialist Zionism and taking its cues from Benito Mussolini and fascism.

In 1940, Avraham Stern, inspired by Jabotinsky, formed Irgun Zvai Leumi be-Yisrael, or simply Lehi, a terrorist group dedicated to killing not only officials and soldiers of British colonialism in Palestine, but anybody, regardless of race or religion (including Jews), who stood in the way of realizing a “homeland in the Land of Israel within the borders delineated in the Bible,” as Stern declared in his 18 Principles of Rebirth (see David Ohana’s Zarathustra in Jerusalem: Nietzsche and the “New Hebrews”). Stern and Lehi, also called the Stern Gang, attempted to team up with the Nazis during the Second World War, declaring a “common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO (Lehi).”

“Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can negate the use of terror as a means of battle,” an article published in a Lehi underground newspaper stated in 1943. .

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=510

WV, that informationclearinghouse article by Mike Whitney is a real eye-opener, and very believable!

As for Leiberman. I find the man despicable to say the least. I formed that opinion of him way back when he was quick to distance himself from Clinton at the height of the Monica scandal with his holier than thou speeches. Since then, he has been living up to my expectations. I was happy to see him get his just desserts when he was defeated in the primary. Looks like he will descend further into the abyss as time goes on, and he wages his dirty war against Lamont.