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GAIA AND HOMOSAPIENS

***** The Richard Dimbleby Lecture by HRH Prince Charles, titled “Facing the Future”
St James’s Palace State Apartments, London, 7th July 2009 - An Exceptional In-Depth Holistic Call to Wake Up and Act Before It Is Too Late
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Note:The symbol ^ denotes that that article continues at the link.

Imaging Life - Jesus and the Politician

Jesus: the Muslim prophet
Christianity is rooted in the belief that Jesus is the Son of God - So, is Islam’s version of Christ a source of tension, or a way of building bridges between the world’s two largest faiths?
New Statesman - By Mehdi Hasan - December 10, 2009
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Christians, perhaps because they call themselves Christians and believe in Christianity, like to claim ownership of Christ. But the veneration of Jesus by Muslims began during the lifetime of the Prophet of Islam. Perhaps most telling is the story in the classical biographies of Muhammad, who, entering the city of Mecca in triumph in 630AD, proceeded at once to the Kaaba to cleanse the holy shrine of its idols. As he walked around, ordering the destruction of the pictures and statues of the 360 or so pagan deities, he came across a fresco on the wall depicting the Virgin and Child. He is said to have covered it reverently with his cloak and decreed that all other paintings be washed away except that one."

Editor - Rather obviously, there is a grammatical error in the last sentence. It should read, perhaps, " . . . and decreed that all paintings be washed away except that one.

Jesus, or Isa, as he is known in Arabic, is deemed by Islam to be a Muslim prophet rather than the Son of God, or God incarnate. He is referred to by name in as many as 25 different verses of the Quran and six times with the title of "Messiah" (or "Christ", depending on which Quranic translation is being used). He is also referred to as the "Messenger" and the "Prophet" but, perhaps above all else, as the "Word" and the "Spirit" of God. No other prophet in the Quran, not even Muhammad, is given this particular honour. In fact, among the 124,000 prophets said to be recognised by Islam - a figure that includes all of the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament - Jesus is considered second only to Muhammad, and is believed to be the precursor to the Prophet of Islam.

In his fascinating book The Muslim Jesus, the former Cambridge professor of Arabic and Islamic studies Tarif Khalidi brings together, from a vast range of sources, 303 stories, sayings and traditions of Jesus that can be found in Muslim literature, from the earliest centuries of Islamic history. These paint a picture of Christ not dissimilar to the Christ of the Gospels. The Muslim Jesus is the patron saint of asceticism, the lord of nature, a miracle worker, a healer, a moral, spiritual and social role model.

“Jesus used to eat the leaves of the trees," reads one saying, "dress in hairshirts, and sleep wherever night found him. He had no child who might die, no house which might fall into ruin; nor did he save his lunch for his dinner or his dinner for his lunch. He used to say, 'Each day brings with it its own sustenance.'"

Obama | The Confused Politician and His Betrayal
New York Review of Books - By Garry Wills - December 2, 2009
- LINK ^

I did not think he would lose me so soon—sooner than Bill Clinton did. Like many people, I was deeply invested in the success of our first African-American president. I had written op-ed pieces and articles to support him in The New York Times and The New York Review of Books. My wife and I had maxed out in donations for him. Our children had been ardent for his cause.

Others I respect have given up on him before now. I can see why. His backtracking on the treatment of torture (and photographs of torture), his hesitations to give up on rendition, on detentions, on military commissions, and on signing statements, are disheartening continuations of George W. Bush’s heritage. But I kept hoping that he was using these concessions to buy leeway for his most important position, for the ground on which his presidential bid was predicated.

There was only one thing that brought him to the attention of the nation as a future president. It was opposition to the Iraq war. None of his serious rivals for the Democratic nomination had that credential—not Hillary Clinton, not Joseph Biden, not John Edwards. It set him apart. He put in clarion terms the truth about that war—that it was a dumb war, that it went after an enemy where he was not hiding, that it had no indigenous base of support, that it had no sensible goal and no foreseeable cutoff point.

He said that he would not oppose war in general, but dumb wars. On that basis, we went for him. And now he betrays us. Although he talked of a larger commitment to Afghanistan during his campaign, he has now officially adopted his very own war, one with all the disqualifications that he attacked in the Iraq engagement. This war too is a dumb one. It has even less indigenous props than Iraq did.

. . .

If we had wanted Bush’s wars, and contractors, and corruption, we could have voted for John McCain. At least we would have seen our foe facing us, not felt him at our back, as now we do. The Republicans are given a great boon by this new war. They can use its cost to say that domestic needs are too expensive to be met—health care, education, infrastructure. They can say that military recruitments from the poor make job creation unnecessary. They can call it Obama’s war when it is really theirs. They can attack it and support it at the same time, with equal advantage.

I cannot vote for any Republican. But Obama will not get another penny from me, or another word of praise, after this betrayal. And in all this I know that my disappointment does not matter. What really matters are the lives of the young men and women he is sending off to senseless deaths.

Editor - Tne only honorable thing for Obama to do now is to admit his mistakes and reverse course.

***** Breaking News Alert

Leaked document throws Copenhagen summit off course
Draft agreement shows plans to abandon Kyoto protocol and sideline UN in climate talks
New Statesman Magazine - December 8, 2009
- LINK ^

The UN Copenhagen summit on climate change has been thrown off course after leaked documents revealed plans to hand more power to rich nations and sideline the role of the UN in future climate change negotiations. The so-called the Danish text is a secret draft agreement. It sets out unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050. Under the proposals, people in rich countries would be able to emit nearly twice as much. The document, leaked to the Guardian, was worked on by "the circle of commitment", a group of individuals understood to include representatives of the UK, the US, and Denmark.

Health | Tamiflu effectiveness questioned by new study
British Medical Jouranl review finds no evidence the antiviral can prevent severe illness
New Statesman - December 9, 2009
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The Afghanistani and Iraqi Quagmire

Commentary | Afghanistan is now Obama's war
The Guardian - y Olivia Hampton - December 2, 2009
- LINK ^

Why are we in Afghanistan?
What was the reason again? To fight al-Qaeda?
New Statesman - Posted by Mehdi Hasan - December 3, 2009
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There are only 100 al-Qaeda fighters left in Afghanistan, so why do our leaders continue to pretend this is a counter-terrorism struggle, in need of hundreds of thousands of foreign forces?

From ABC News:

A senior US intelligence official told ABCNews.com the approximate estimate of 100 al-Qaeda members left in Afghanistan reflects the conclusion of American intelligence agencies and the Defense Department. The relatively small number was part of the intelligence passed on to the White House as President Obama conducted his deliberations.

But here's the key bit:

At a Senate hearing, the former CIA Pakistan station chief, Bob Grenier, testified al-Qaeda had already been defeated in Afghanistan.

"So in terms of 'in Afghanistan," asked Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., "they have been disrupted and dismantled and defeated. They're not in Afghanistan, correct?"

"That's true," replied Grenier.

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Carrumpah-Lobo - The Homosapiens.ki Blog
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Univers-al

Opinion | Copenhagen Won't Be Enough -- Only a 'Human Movement' Can Save Civilization from the Climate Crisis
A strange cloud envelops human civilization as its leaders fail to take the measures to protect it in Copenhagen that they themselves endorsed just five months ago.
Alternet / Sacramento News & Review - By Fred Branfman, . December 9, 2009.
- LINK ^

International

Video | Brief History Of Australia
An animated history of australia, from european descovery to modern day australia. funny, slap-stick humour, with a little satire thrown in.
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UK | John Prescott expresses doubt over British support for Iraq invasion
We all know George Bush is crap, former deputy prime minister tells New Statesman.
The Guardian - By Michael White - Wednesday, December 9, 2009
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John Prescott has become the latest senior Labour politician to voice open doubts about his own support for Tony Blair's decision in 2003 to place British military forces behind the American-led invasion of Iraq. In a wide-ranging interview with the >New Statesman magazine the former deputy prime minister asks himself: " I do wonder, looking back now, having the privilege of discussing with Tony about all this, how did I go along [with it?" Listening to some of Blair's video-conferences with George Bush was, he admits, a hair-raising experience. "Bush is crap, you know it, I know it, the party knows it," he tells the magazine. At the time there was little dissent in cabinet from the drift towards war, which the Chilcot inquiry is investigating as part of the long-promised overview on what became Britain's most unpopular military engagement since the Suez affair in 1956.
Read the New Statesman article here >
> - LINK ^

United States Government

Barack Obama, the anti-war candidate, has proven to be a perfect decoy for the military industrial complex.
Considering all the opposition and bad press Bush received when he announced the surge in Iraq. Then try to swallow t his this: . . .
- LINK ^
Editor - You'll be surprised by the surprises.

Homeland Security Embarks on Big Brother Programs to Read Our Minds and Emotions
Half-baked Homeland Security is spending millions to develop sensors capable of detecting a person's level of 'malintent' as a counterterrorism tool.
Alternet - By Liliana Segura - December 9, 2009.
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Congress | Video | Michael Moore- The Awful Truth - Serving God or Mammon?
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The Citizens / Civil Organizations / Activism

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"All suffering is caused by an obstacle in the path of a force. See that you are not your own obstacle." - Elbert Hubbard

Cracking Books and Mags in the Coffee House

Book | A Criminal Genius and the Believers: How America Fell for Bernard Madoff’s $65bn Investment Scam by Adam LeBor
New Statesman Magazine - Reviewed by Bryan Appleyard - December 3, 2009
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This book brilliantly answers the "How?" question about Bernie Madoff and his giant Ponzi, or pyramid-selling, scheme. Madoff used a mixture of charm, arrogance and breathtaking cruelty. Adam LeBor does not, however, answer the "Why?" question. But, in fairness, I don't think anybody can.

Book | "Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street" by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Everything glitters but nothing is gold in this colourful account of the collapse of Lehman Brothers
New Statesman - By Paul Mason - December 3, 2009
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Book | Creationists, now they’re coming for your children
Extract from Chapter One of The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
People who reject the theory of evolution should be placed on a level with Holocaust deniers, argues an author in his controversial new book.
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Imagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world — for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say ignorami) who, with strong political and especially financial support, scurry about tirelessly attempting to persuade your unfortunate pupils that the Romans never existed. There never was a Roman Empire. The entire world came into existence only just beyond living memory. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh: all these languages and their constituent dialects sprang spontaneously and separately into being, and owe nothing to any predecessor such as Latin.

© Richard Dawkins 2009
Extracted from The Greatest Show on Earth, published by Bantam Press

Topical Sections

The Arts and Culture

Leonard Cohen | "First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin" | Music Video
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Climate Change / Global Warming

Global warming could displace millions of Bangladeshis'
Presstv.ir - December 9, 2009
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Communities and Species

"Produce great people - the rest follows." - Epigram that graces the front door of the Roycroft Inn

Corporate "Crooks"

"The manner in which a man lies about a fact may be more interesting than the fact itself. - Elbert Hubbard

Video | Michael Moore- The Awful Truth- UPS
- LINK ^

Corporate Crime and Government - The Linkage

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
--- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-Nov-21, in a letter to Colonel E. Mandell House

Economy and Finance

Bloomberg Economic News
- LINK ^

Bloomberg Current Worldwide Financial News
- LINK ^

***** ALERT | US | Burning Money While the Planet Approaches Its Conflagration | Billions More in Easy Money for Wall Street -- Are We Too Ignorant About Finance to Stop It?
A permanent security blanket for big boys of finance will further inflame public opinion. Only the public isn't likely to know.
Alternet / The Nation - By William Greider - December 8, 2009.
- LINK ^

Legal and Constitutional Issues

Bloomberg Index of Current Legal News
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Life Style

"Do not dump your woes upon people - keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them. - By Elbert Hubbard

"Fear not that your life should come to an end, but rather fear that it may never have a beginning. - Elbert Hubbard

"Don't be a passenger - get busy helping this craft along! - Elbert Hubbard

GLOBAL | Preventing climate crisis
An admirable move by the Guardian and 55 other papers to encourage citizens to change their life style to avoid planetary meltdown
New Statesman - Posted by George Eato - December 7, 2009
- LINK ^

Full credit to newspapers across the world who have taken the innovative step today of publishing a front-page leader article calling for emergency action to tackle the looming climate crisis: The key insight of the Stern report, that the cost of not acting is greater than the cost of acting, is absorbed:

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance -- and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

It's one the government lamentably tore up when it approved a third runway for Heathrow based on crude short-term economic judgements.
Here's a key section on the personal implications of reform:

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Political Systems

US | Has the GOP Collapse Begun? Hypothetical "Tea Party" Outpolls Republicans
Something is afoot among the conservative base -- voting Republican doesn't seem to cut it anymore, and incumbents are getting nervous.
AlterNet - By Adele M. Stan - December 8, 2009.
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Religion and Philosophies

"Churches, like Department Stores, carry the wares that are asked for." - Elbert Hubbard

Cannibals apologise
It’s not just a matter of having your neighbour for lunch, apparently
New Statesman - Posted by Sholto Byrnes - December 7. 2009
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Of all the apologies to have to make, surely one of the most awkward must be over the small matter of having eaten someone's great-great-grandfather. This, however, is precisely what the inhabitants of Erromango, part of the South Pacific island state of Vanuatu, are doing.

A hundred and seventy years ago, the distinguished missionary career of the Rev John Williams came to a premature end when he and his companion James Harris stepped ashore on Erromango's Dillon Bay. Unfortunately, recent European visitors had killed some inhabitants, and consequently the newcomers' welcome was violent and brief. When a Royal Navy ship later arrived at the island, as Williams's great-great grandson Charles Milner-Williams explains in this BBC report: "The islanders then said that, yes, they had killed and eaten both Harris and Williams."

Milner-Williams and 16 other relatives have just taken part in a reconciliation ceremony during which the place where their ancestor landed was renamed Williams Bay. A local MP, Ralph Regenvanu, says that many of the (now overwhelmingly Christian) islanders thought that their home may have been placed under a curse because of the killing of Rev Williams and were keen to make reparation. But he also hastened to point out that:

Cannibalism, contrary to what a lot of people think, was traditionally a very ritualistic and sacred practice. It was not something like, you know, have your neighbour for lunch. It was practised in a very ritualistic way and was considered to be a very sacred activity. A lot of the time it was a way of vanquishing a threat, absorbing the power of an enemy. John Williams may have been eaten because he represented this threat, this incursion of European civilisation that was coming into Erromango at that time.

Rights and Freedom

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians."
--- Angelica Grimke - (1805-1879) Source: Anti-Slavery Examiner, September 1836

"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction."
--- Thomas Jefferson - (1743-1826), Source: in a letter to John Adams as quoted in John A. Stormer, None Dare Call it Treason (Florissant, MO: Liberty Bell Press, 1964)

Video | Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
Banned from Corporate America in Rockefeller Center
- LINK ^

Science & Technology

Bloomberg Index of Current Science News
- LINK ^

Social Issues

Michael Moore- Play Beat the Rich
- LINK ^

UK | Opinion - Get our youngsters back to work
New Statesman - By David Blanchflower - November 26, 2009
- LINK ^

Youth unemployment has become a national crisis; time is running out for the government to act

I have been trying for at least a year to get people to take note of the coming crisis of youth joblessness, but few have been listening. At long last the political parties are starting to pay attention. The newspapers are full of talk of a lost generation and, sadly, they may be right.

The reason the crisis has started to grab headlines is that the number of young unemployed is heading towards a million. Not something any government wants to see in the run-up to a general election. The catalyst in the past week, though, was the publication of the number of Neets - those not in employment, education or training - which has risen to 1.082 million, or 18 per cent of the youth population. These numbers will get worse before they get better. This is a totally unacceptable national tragedy.

It doesn't help that the number of young people entering the job market in the midst of this recession is bigger than it has been for at least
a decade and, as the chart (below) makes clear, is bigger than it will be in future years. There simply aren't enough jobs for them.More than 100,000 young unemployed people have degrees. And many of them have student loans to pay back. They come from every university across the land, and from every parliamentary constituency. Many have large collections of letters saying: "I regret to inform you your application has not been successful. Good luck in your future career." And they feel helpless and lost and don't know what to do. It's time to help.

Violence - Civil and Governmental

Video | Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
Michael Moore sheds light on the fact that some cops have a hard time distinguishing a wallet from a gun - with lethal consequences for law-abiding citizens.
- LINK ^

Video | The Awful Truth: U.S. has been at war with Iraq for 18 years
- LINK ^

Sound and Fury

Photography - US | Photos from the Book, Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America
- Slide Show / Audio

Hip Hop | Maestro Fresh Wes - Drop The Needle
- Video

Bouncing barefoot on the sidewalk
- Video

A Song for the Times - Bing Crosby (1932) “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime”
- Audio

The History of A Great Depression-Era Anthem For Our Time
- Audio/Text

Yip Harburg (1970)
- Audio

The Internet Press Room

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Music Video | Leonard Cohen | "Democracy Is Coming to the USA"
- LINK

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