Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington releases “Most Corrupt and Dishonorable Mention” List!
C.R.E.W. releases it most corrupt and dishonorable mentions of 2008. The 110th Congress has some good politicians and then theres the scumbags we all come to know about Washington, D.C. Its about the people, right? No, its about perks, trips, affairs, corruption, and your votes.
Question: Why do we still vote for them?
Those who were mentioned in the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s list of top corrupt Congressmen and women.
Most corrupted
•Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) – Won.
•Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) – Won.
•Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA) – Retired. Investigation continues. Democrat pick up.
•Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) – Defeated in close race. Democrat pick up.
•Rep. Vito J. Fossella (R-NY) – Retired. Seat gain for Democrats.
•Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-LA) – Defeated in run off. Faces trial in December 2008.
•Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) – Won handily. Face probe into contributions and kickbacks.
•Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) – Won handily. Under investigation.
•Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) – Won.
•Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) – Won barely. Minority Leader continues to hold power.
•Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-CA) – Won
•Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV) – Won
•Rep. Timothy F. Murphy (R-PA) – Won
•Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA) – Won. Cause controversy after calling some voters in his district “racist” for views on Barack Obama.
•Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) – Retired. Democrat pickup.
•Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) – Won.
•Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) – Retired. Democrat pickup.
•Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY) – Won
•Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) – Race to close to call. If Stevens pulls off a victory. Republicans could censure him and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can expel the indicted senator from 111th Congress.
•Rep. Don Young (R-AK) – Race to close to call. Under investigation for corruption.
Dishonorable mentions
•Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) – Won.
•Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) – Race too close to call. Under investigation.
•Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA) – Won.
•Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH) – Won.
http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/
Thanks for viewing. Thank all the supporters of my videos. To all critics and those who blindly trust the media! Turn that television, radio and internet smear machine off. Let real media analysis do the work for you. I am not a fact-checker, journalist or media analysis. I am expressing an honest opinion about whats going on in my community, government and the corrupt mainstream media. And as always, if present any errors in the making of this video, please dont hesitate to send a message and I will correct the record on the next video. For all the critics watching worldwide! Do me a favor by: Proving Me Wrong!
Duration : 0:4:50
How can I go about talking about fear to corruption in our government?
I’m presenting a poster with a group for my US Gov class tomorrow and one person is going to talk about fear (war) and then he wants me to make like a transition to corruption.
What could I say? How could I connect fear to corruption?
Look at our government, the corruption is from the small town government to Washington DC. In this country, money talks and the bull Sh– walks. The war cost 10 billion dollars a month. That money is not vanishing into thin air, who is getting all that money, it’s not the solders on the ground getting all that money. And if they are willing to spend 10 billion dollars a month, how much money is being made on the war, what is their return.
A Request to be Kidnapped From Jerusalem
On the November 26, 2006 WAWA Blog, this reporter raised the question if Mordechai Vanunu’s Christian conversion could be the reason the Israeli government continues to hold him captive in Jerusalem, 2 1/2 years after he was released from 18 years in jail for telling the world the truth, that Israel had gone nuclear.
Reporter and full time CPT/Christian Peacemaker Teams volunteer, Jerry Levin, reported Vanunu’s answer in a December 3, 2006 email:
Jerry: “Do you see an element of persecution in all this governmental pressure?”
Unhesitatingly, Mordechai answered. “There is. It is my Christianity that they cannot accept. That is the source of my problems with my case.”
The rest of Jerry’s report follows, but first let me tell you a little about Jerry.
Jerry Levin, a secular Jew and CNN’s former Mid East Bureau Chief in the 1980′s was kidnapped by the Hizbuloh in Lebanon and held for nearly a year. Meanwhile, his wife Sis, a Christian had been praying and persistently working for his release. On Christmas Eve, Jerry had a mystical experience of Christ and shortly thereafter escaped unharmed.
Ever since, the couple have dedicated their ‘retirement’ years working for peace and pursuing justice in the Holy Land. Jerry’s book “My First Noel” about that event and his hard hitting expose “West Bank Diary” can be purchased through Hope Publishing House.
I met Jerry for the first time on the third Tuesday in June 2005, when he ‘shepherded’ me through Hebron. Hebron is where 450 Israeli settlers are protected by 3,000 Israeli Defense/Occupying Forces. I was nauSEOus the entire day for the oppression is visceral and the visuals reminded me of every photo and movie I had ever seen of the ghettos the Jews were forced into during the Holocaust. The settlers [who are are illegal colonists according to International law] spray painted “GAS THE ARABS” and Stars of David upon what had once been peaceful Palestinian homes.
A main street in Hebron where the colonists/settlers live on one side and Palestinians on the other is connected by a thick yet deeply sagging netting above ones head. Huge rocks, shovels, electronic equipment, furniture and all manner of debris have been flung onto it by the settlers with the hope that it will give way and hit a Palestinian on the head.
Jerry told me, “It gets cleaned out about every year or so. Come back in a few months and there will be more. The settlers just throw what ever they want onto the netting, they do what ever they want and get away with it. The CPT’s run interference by non-violent resistance, we get the children and woman to where they need to be going and back again. Sometimes the settlers curse and stone us all; it keeps it interesting.”
Now, for Jerry’s report:
(Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine December 3, 2006) A friend responding to my latest report on the trials of Mordechai Vanunu (See From The Inside Looking Out report-73, December 2, 2006: Mordechai Vanunu and the Perils of Speaking English) described his travails as a “pathetic little Kaka tale.” Down home in Alabama we have another way of describing those ordeals, You can’t win for losing.”
Take for instance his civil suit against the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharanot. It was launched while he was still in prison for revealing Israel’s secret atomic and hydrogen bomb making program through an article in the London Times.
“The newspaper published stories about me saying I was sending information out how to build bombs to the Hamas,” said a still incredulous Mordechai. “When I came out of prison the trial started.”
“We bring to testify the head of the Shabak [Ed: aka Shin Bet, the Secret Service, equivalent to the FBI in the United States]. He said that he received the information from his people and that he didn’t check it. And we proved that I don’t know any information about how to make bombs. But a year ago they win in the court.”
“How? Why?”
“The judge decided that the newspaper has the right to publish the story because it received it from the Shabak. Shabak is like the voice of god.”
“So you lost.”
“Big.”
“What do you mean, “big?”
“Well, if newspapers publish lies about me, you would think I have the right to receive compensation from the newspapers and they would be denied to publish more lies. But the judge decided, no, I should pay Yediot Aharanot $10,000.00. How can a newspaper be damaged by publishing such stories about me? So we are appealing this decision.
The hearing could be soon.”
Turning to the criminal charges against him for speaking to foreign journalists, I asked if his defense intends to call any more witnesses beyond the army general who signed the orders restricting his freedom of movement and speech.
“Yes, Peter Hounam, the reporter who in 1986 wrote the story I give the London Times about Israel’s nuclear bomb program. They have charged me that when I was released from prison in 2005, he was involved in a big interview which I gave to the BBC. But the allegation is not true because the interview was done by an Israeli journalist. But they deported him anyway. So we are negotiating about this,”
“About what?”
“Well, he has accepted to come, but the government wants to complicate the case by insisting to decide that they can refuse to let him come back. So they are saying he must have the same restrictions on him that they put on me. But he says that if they confine him to a hotel he will not come.”
“So what is being negotiated?”
“We accept not to bring him, if the government cancels this charge about the BBC interview. If they don’t take it out, we will bring him.”
“Do you see an element of persecution in all this governmental pressure?”
Unhesitatingly, Mordechai answered. “There is. It is my Christianity that they cannot accept. That is the source of my problems with my case.”
“All?”
“Yes, because even if they understand they need to make justice with me and let me go and let me speak, they have a problem with their people. What to do about a Christian man who was born a Jewish man who became a Christian and who received respect from all over the world. They don’t want this man to be receiving a good image especially with the young Israeli generation. So that is the first point.
“The second point is, because Israel is a Jewish State, the government believes they have the right to have the bomb. But I am coming and saying they don’t need to have the bomb. They need to make peace. And that is another source of the problem for them. But even with that I don’t understand why they are persecuting me. What are they afraid from?”
“But they say they know what they are afraid from. They say you have more secrets.”
“But they know that this is blah, blah, blah, because my secrets are twenty years old. All this nuclear weapons has continued to develop and all what I had was published twenty years ago. There is nothing new from me. And now North Korea has built the bomb. Iran is going to build the bomb. So what information can I contribute when it is twenty years old? Israel should let me go. They have had their revenge. Even killers murders in Israel are released after fifteen years, seventeen years. They let them go. Run away do what ever they want.”
“Are you hopeful?”
“I have my scenario that includes the hope that Israelis are also human beings and that one day they will wake up because they must wake up and become normal society. Because there still is danger that what they saw in the past one hundred fifty years, all those extreme nationalists, dictators, right wings that brought tyranny to Italy, Spain, Germany, South Africa, Russia all of them collapsed because they were not normal society. Their people woke up because they wanted normal society. But here we don’t have normal society. Here is Jewish religion society and even liberals here are speaking like they are dictators.
“Israel is not like the United States. People came from Europe to build new society in the name of freedom, liberty for all the human beings. But they didn’t respect the Indians in the beginning and the blacks. But then one day they woke up and start giving them rights. That is what normal society does. But here it is not normal society. It is about religion. So my scenario is when the Israel people who want normal society wake up it will be a total disaster for the Jewish state.”
“Supposing five years from now when I’m eighty and you are fifty-five, we are still here talking about your situation; we are talking about how every year the government renews the restrictions and the courts agree; and we are talking about your scenario that has stayed just a dream?”
“I hope when you are eighty I will meet you in Washington DC. But for that to be we need to do some extraordinary acts to get out from here.
“What kind of extraordinary acts?”
“I can tell you this way. Israel kidnapped me from Rome in 1986 and put me in prison. So I’m calling to the CIA and to all the world to kidnap me from Israel.”
“Kidnap you?”
“Yes, if some one or any organization will help me to try to get out from here. I will do it. And the Israelis know it very well. I am ready to leave the country in any way.”
“Even being spirited out?”
“Yes, because I am not allowed to go to foreign embassies where I can ask for asylum. That’s why they watch me, because they don’t want me to get out from here.”
“You want the CIA, special forces, whatever to do a reverse Entebbe?”
“Yes,” he said with a big grin, “the Marines. But I don’t think your military your defense establishment like me. Otherwise they would have helped me long ago. But the real government of the United States is the Pentagon. That is the power behind Israel. They give Israel two billion dollars and military power in support. And so those military maybe don’t like me because I am speaking against nuclear weapons and I am speaking for peace. So they are worried.”
“What you want to do is dangerous.”
“Yes. But you have done it. So I will be happy for anyone to take me out from this prison.”
When Israel became a state in 1948, it was contingent upon the upholding of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief…Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state…Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own…Article 13, 1-2
Eileen Fleming
http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/a-request-to-be-kidnapped-from-jerusalem-79518.html
Where do you get your News to inform your opinion and how many hours a week do you spend informing yourself?
I listen to right and left wing radio talk shows and NPR. I read AP news online; alternative right and left news sites; translated news from other countries; BBC; Al Jazeera; United Nations website; Yahoo, Google, Washington gossip blogs, and ANYTHING I can read myself and do the research on MYSELF.
I spend at least 30 hours a week digging for TRUTH.
The TV "News" barely scratches the surface – it’s not enough to keep us informed.
It seems most people on YA are really uninformed, i.e. informed by only tv news. It’s very alarming – the name calling and lowbrow remarks that substitute for true dialogue and argument.
Read a newspaper.
Large Vehicle Fleets Powered by Alternative Fuel
US President George W. Bush outlined in his State of the Union Address his administration’s aim to reduce the country’s dependency on foreign oil. The “Twenty in Ten”, essentially reducing gasoline consumption by twenty percent in ten years time, has received the support of the Big Three as the heads of General Motors, the Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corp. attended a meeting with the President recently.
Good news for the administration is the use of alternative fuels by large vehicle fleets. The President inspected the alternative fuel vehicles used by large fleets in the United States.
Among the largest fleet in the country using fuel efficient vehicles are the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, UPS, and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. These large fleets are contributing to the country’s energy independence by using different types of alternative fuel vehicles on their fleet. These fleets use a variety of alternative fuel vehicles which includes hybrid electric vehicles, biodiesel engines, compressed natural gas or CNG, liquefied natural gas, propane, and hydrogen fuel cell units.
All these technologies are known to be good substitute to gasoline since they all come from renewable sources and have limited greenhouse gas emissions as when compared to petroleum gasoline or diesel fuel.
Among the large fleets in America, the U.S. Postal Service has the largest number of alternative fuel vehicles being used. The 13 percent of the 289,000 vehicles in the fleet represents the biggest fleet of alternative fuel vehicles in the world. Hybrids, biodiesel, compressed natural gas, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles composed thirteen percent of the U.S. Postal Service’s fleet.
UPS, meanwhile, has the biggest alternative fuel fleet in its class with over 1,500 alternative fuel vehicles. Its alternative fuel vehicle fleet is composed of compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas, propane, hydrogen fuel cell, and hybrid electric vehicles.
FedEx operates about a hundred hybrid electric diesel vehicles in its alternative fuel vehicle fleet. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority or METRO, like FedEx, also takes advantage of the hybrid electric diesel technology. It has already 50 units of alternative fuel vehicles on the road and being used as part of their service.
These large fleets clearly support the Clean Cities Program which promotes the use of alternative fuel vehicles to reduce gasoline consumption. The program is in connection with President Bush’s “Twenty in Ten” goal. The vehicles used by these fleets are as reliable and safe as Volvo S60 parts and at the same time provides the fleet operators good fuel economy.
The production of greenhouse gases is also reduced thereby lessening the negative impact of their fleets on the environment. With the plug-in hybrid still in development, these fleets have the potential to even expand their alternative fuel vehicle fleet.
Glady Reign
http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/large-vehicle-fleets-powered-by-alternative-fuel-123735.html
9/11: THE ROAD TO TYRANNY – “Founding Fathers Were Terrorists”
“9/11: THE ROAD TO TYRANNY”
Footage of a FEMA Instructor teaching
police and firefighters that the
“Founding Fathers were terrorists,”
and demonizing Christians and
patriots.
http://www.infowars.com
http://www.jonesreport.com
http://www.prisonplanet.com
http://www.infowars.net
Duration : 0:3:55
We Can Begin the World Again
Jerusalem-On June 26, 2006 this reporter attended a world wide satellite linked Interfaith Peace Conference at Jerusalem’s Notre Dame Cathedral. Dan Rather moderated from Washington DC and the Holy Land interfaith panel were all moderates attempting to reclaim the battlefield of ideas from extremists on both sides.
Rev. Theodore Hessburgh, President Emeritus University of Notre Dame began the evening with a pledge and a summons: “The Peace of the world begins in Jerusalem.”
Dr. Tsvia Walden, Board of Director of the Peres Center and Geneva Initiative stated, “There is a need for a third party in the negotiations that could enable both sides to trust each other. There are more people in this region interested in making concessions, they all want peace so desperately.”
The Coordinator of World Bank emergency services to the Palastinian Authority, Rania Kharma commented, “We all need to be the bridges to our leaders that justice, equality, and human rights will bring peace. Give people justice and they will reward you with peace.”
Sheik Imad Falouiji warned, “Religions must go back to their origins. God commands us to love each other and live together. This Holy Land was given to all people. This land is on fire. There is an occupation that musty be removed. The language of peace cannot succeed without justice for all.”
President Bush in his second inaugural address promised, “In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without liberty…. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand or liberty we will stand with you.”
The Rt. Rev. Bishop Riah Abu Assal affirmed, “Peace is an act. Blessed are the peacemakers not the peace talkers. Peace is possible in the Holy Land. The root cause for the lack of peace since 1967 is the occupation. For peace to make progress in the Middle East we need to deal with the root cause…Religion was not meant to bring death. All those involved in searching for peace should commit themselves to work for justice and truth.”
On November 1, 2006, Jeff Halper, American Israeli, Founder and Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions/ICAHD and a 2006 Noble Peace Prize nominee informed this reporter:
“It has been said that the Israeli’s do not love this land, they just want to possess it. There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are a quater of a million Israeli’s and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into bantusan; trunkated mini states; prison states. It is apartheid and Bush and Hillary are both willing collaborators. In 1977, Sharon came in with a mandate, money and resources to make the Israeli presence in the West Bank irreversible. The second stage began in April 2004 when America approved the Apartheid/Convergence/Realignment Plan and eight settlement blocs. This is just like South Africa!
“The Bush Sharon letter exchange guaranteed that the USA considers the settlements non-negotiable. The Convergence Plan and The Wall create the borders and that is what defines bantusans. Congress ratified the Bush plan and only Senator Byrd of West Virginia voted no and nine House Representatives.”
With the turnover in Congress the words of Tom Paine come to mind, for in solidarity “we have it in our power to begin the world again.”
The gospel of Jesus Christ can become relevant in the 21st century if all who claim to be Christian’s follow his philosophy. Thomas Jefferson weeded out the miracle stories from the gospels and clarified the teachings of Christ in “The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth” which clarify what Christ was really all about:
To be just and justice comes from virtue which comes from the heart. To treat people the way we want to be treated. To always work for PEACEFUL resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with COMPASSION. To not judge others and bear no grudges, and those who think they know the most are the most ignorant.
“Soon after I had published the pamphlet “Common Sense” [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”-Tom Paine
Christ’s other name is “The Prince of Peace” and he walked and preached the good news that God is within all people. To truly follow Christ means one will rise up, [in Arabic the word is "intifada"] for the oppressed, the outcast, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the prisoner and refugees. Christ taught that we are to pursue justice, and justice is the only way to security and peace.
The Christian population of the Holy Land has decreased from 20% of the total population to less than 1.3% since 1948. 90% of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land never even meet any Palestinian Christians; thus they are known as The Forgotten Faithful.
Prior to 1948, 70% of West Jerusalem was Palestinian. From ’48 to ’67, Jerusalem was divided into Israeli West Jerusalem and Palestinian East under Jordan’s control. When Israel captured and occupied the West Bank in 1967, the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem were also redefined. Israel annexed the greater Jerusalem area but did not ‘adopt’ the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem as Israeli citizens.
Today, Palestinians living in Jerusalem are classified differently from those in the West Bank. They are called permanent residents, they can vote in local elections but not in Israeli national elections. Most do not bother to vote as a statement against the occupation.
Today, West Jerusalem in nearly 100% Jewish. The Palestinians in East Jerusalem pay the same taxes as those on the West side, but receive only 8% of the total municipal budget. Orthodox Jews pay no taxes. Palestinians make up 1/3 of the total Jerusalem population, but pay over 40% of the taxes. One is immediately aware when one walks from the East to the West that one is truly in two different worlds. On the West side of town there are many parks, the roads and streets are well maintained and sanitation pick up is predictable. Twenty-six of the thirty-one City Council members of Jerusalem are Orthodox Jews. The East side of Jerusalem resembles the lower east side of New York.
While the Israeli government considers Jerusalem the capitol of Israel no foreign country does. There are no international embassies in Jerusalem, except for a fundamentalist International Christian Zionist one.
The Wall that was begun after the Second Intifada/Rise Up, has expanded the municipal boundaries established in 1967 and the Israeli settlements/colonies are growing unabated.
According to International Law all the settlements are illegal and the world is silent. In the 1930′s Ben Gurion said that the settlements will define the boundaries of Israel.
In 1973, Ariel Sharon told Winston Churchill III, “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlement, in between the Palestinians, then another strip of Jewish settlement, right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years time, neither the United Nations, nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
But all things are possible and miracles do occur.
God has always spoken through Jewish prophets and Jeff Halper is one. On November 1, 2006 he informed this reporter, “Israel has set up a matrix of control; a thick web of settlements guaranteed to make the occupation permanent by establishing facts on the ground. Israel denies there is an occupation, so everything is reduced to terrorism. It is our job to insist upon the human rights issue, for occupied people have International Law on their side.”
While International Law guarantees the rights of the occupied to rise up with violence against their occupiers. But, prophetic organizations such as ICAHD, Anarchist’s Against the Wall, International Solidarity Movement and Sabeel all promote Creative Nonviolence.
Jeff stated, “When Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan, the East side was 6 sq. km. Since 1967, Israel has added 64 km. The West side was 38 sq. km until ’67 and is now 108 sq. km’s. Israel plans to develop 17 settlements. Israeli policy is to maintain a 72% Jewish and 28% Arab population. Palestinians cannot get building permits to build upon their legally owned land. The Arab land has been re-zoned as green space, and the green space will be re-zoned for the settlements.
“Every single Palestinian home in Jerusalem has a demolition order. The entire West Bank has been zoned as agricultural land by Israel, and that will also be re-zoned again for more settlements.
“It has been said that the Israeli’s do not love this land, they just want to possess it. There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are a quater of a million Israeli’s and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into bantusans; trunkated mini states; prison states. It is apartheid and Bush and Hillary are both willing collaborators. In 1977, Sharon came in with a mandate, money and resources to make the Israeli presence in the West Bank irreversible. The second stage began in April 2004 when America approved the Apartheid/Convergence/Realignment Plan and eight settlement blocs. This is just like South Africa! The Bush Sharon letter exchange guaranteed that the USA considers the settlements non-negotiable. The Convergence Plan and The Wall create the borders and that is what defines bantusans.Congress ratified the Bush plan and only Senator Byrd of West Virginia voted no and nine House Representatives.”
Orwellian doublespeak has also been employed in the USA to turn the illegal colonies into “neighborhoods”. A new highway has already begun to link all the settlements. The Eastern Ring Road will have bridges for Israelis but is just another wall against the Palestinians. The settlements-and all settlements are considered illegal under international law- will ring around the Old City of Jerusalem.
Jeff concluded with, “I don’t just have a political problem with this Judiaization of the Old City, it is ecologically and environmentally offensive.”
I add it also is spiritually impoverished. The raping and pillaging of what is claimed holy ground refutes and denies the biblical meaning of dominion. The ancients understood dominion meant to nurture, love and protect and the destruction of Palestinian homes, the stealing of their legal property, their water is an abomination.
On May 14, 1948 The Declaration of the establishment of Israel stated:
“One the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.”
“What does God require? He has already told you o’man! Be just, be merciful and humble.”-Micah 6:8
“The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.”-Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
The “fierce urgency of now”-Rev. MLK, Jr should compel we the people of the United States to rise up and demand Congress hold President Bush to the promise in his Second Inaugural Address:
“In the long run, there is no justice without FREEDOM. There can be no human rights without LIBERTY. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for liberty, we stand with you.”
The “war on terror” must be fought at the root and all roads lead to Jerusalem.
Eileen Fleming
http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/we-can-begin-the-world-again-76476.html
Arundhati Roy: Mumbai Was not India’s 9/11
Arundhati Roy: Mumbai was not India’s 9/11
http://www.guardian .co.uk/world/ 2008/dec/ 12/mumbai- arundhati- roy
The Mumbai attacks have been dubbed ‘India’s 9/11′, and there are calls for a 9/11-style response, including an attack on Pakistan. Instead, the country must fight terrorism with justice, or face civil war.
We’ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India’s 9/11". Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.
As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the "Bad Guys" he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.
But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.
It’s odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India’s richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara – one of Kashmir’s most ravaged districts.
The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously indicates that something’s going very badly wrong in this country.
If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre.
We’re told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That’s absolutely true. It’s an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said "Hungry, kya?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I’m sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn’t that war. That one’s still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.
That war isn’t on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.
There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.
Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime in itself.
The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."
And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."
But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): "We didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire … we hacked, burned, set on fire … we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it … I have just one last wish … let me be sentenced to death … I don’t care if I’m hanged … just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay … I will finish them off … let a few more of them die … at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die."
And where, in Side A’s scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening."
Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here … a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."
(Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)
All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the UN imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi’s former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India’s biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata.
Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said: "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition LK Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.
If that’s not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.
So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I’d pick Side B. We need context. Always.
In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain’s final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can’t seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi’s predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India’s bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.
By 1990 they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by LK Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998 the BJP was in power at the centre. The US war on terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.
This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn’t surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).
In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba backed by Pakistan’s ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the Indian Mujahideen. Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.
So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligenc e operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today’s world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It’s almost impossible.
In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. Neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let’s try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world’s most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)
Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America’s ally first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America’s jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to.
Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan’s borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more than it does on India.
If at this point India decides to go to war perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India’s shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It’s hard to understand why those who steer India’s ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan’s mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.
On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it’s the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.
While they did this they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S and Israeli armies don’t hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. ) But this was different. And it was on TV.
The boy-terrorists’ nonchalant willingness to kill – and be killed – mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that’s worth.
Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say "nothing can justify terrorism", what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it’s precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they’ve died, they’ve journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.
One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself Imran Babar. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don’t want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You’re surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don’t you surrender?"
"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It’s better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn’t seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.
If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn’t it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don’t figure in their calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of and often even the aim of terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden faultlines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a thousandfold by TV broadcasts.
Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected? ). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minster VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.
We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush’s famous "Why they hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn’t George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can’t seem to get away from.
Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police state. It isn’t surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We’re now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.
Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good Politicians are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.
Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It’s an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we’re still learning. (If Kashmir won’t willingly integrate into India, it’s beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegr ate into Kashmir.)
It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don’t really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked for.
More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India’s many "encounter specialists" known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists" . There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and LK Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national" . Of course there has been no inquiry.
Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi’s Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.
This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra’ s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) that was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man Swami Dayanand Pande and Lt Col Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organizations including a Hindu Supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". LK Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.
On the November 25 newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP Chief Pravin Togadia’s possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai Attacks. The chances are that the new chief whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.
While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today, amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.
So according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters" . This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they’ve escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.
How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands people including thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including India) and U.S interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?
Homeland Security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It’s not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If ten men can hold off the NSG commandos, and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?
Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they’re for people that governments don’t like. That’s why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They’re just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It’s what they want.
What we’re experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet’s squelching under our feet.
The only way to contain (it would be naïve to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We’re standing at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.
MUHAMMAD SHAKEER KS
http://www.articlesbase.com/news-and-society-articles/arundhati-roy-mumbai-was-not-indias-911-711720.html
New Age & World Government
The New Age or the Aquarian Age & World Government
It is generally believed that the Aquarian Age started in the year 2000, 2160 years roughly being the Age of a Sign. The Piscean age started at around 200 BCE ( Before Common Era ). Let us study the symbolisms of the Piscean and the Aquarian Ages. As the Earth’s precession is 72 degrees per degree, 2160 years is an Age Cycle. 25920 years ( 12*2160) is a Precessional Cycle or a Great Plato Year or an Aeon.
Pisces means Fishes and Jesus was the Redeemer of the Piscean Age. The Piscean Age emphasised Faith. The two fishes of Pisces indicate Dualism and during this time, the conflict between Religion & Science intensified as Science rose against blind Faith. The belief in an external God was rejected by Science. Aquarius is ruled by two planets in Astrology – Uranus & Saturn. Uranus represents Independence and Saturn Universal Humanism. Humanism postulates that no dogma or political doctrine can save you; only you can save yourself. If you save yourself, you save society, you save the nation and the Planet Earth ! In other words, Universal Humanism will be the hallmark of the Aquarian Age.
The astrologic scholar Jeff Jawer remarks that the Aquarian Age has not arrived in his article ” On The Cusp between Pisces and Aquarius. ” The first Venus Transit occurred in 2004 & the next one wlll be in 2012. These 8 years will be like the Dark Night of the Soul, a chaotic period of purgatorial suffering as the Planet Earth goes through a dark phase.
Dr Jose Arguelles, the scholar who brought the concept of Harmonic Convergence, also thinks that the enlightening Age of Aquarius will dawn on 2012. The famous song on Aquarian Age states thus
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars!
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
All freethinkers are excited about the New Aquarian Age where Wisdom will blossom and importance will be on Self development, Self Transformation, Self Realisation & Self Actualisation. Gone are the days of dogma & Blind Faith. Personal transformation will result in Planetary Transformation !
Dante, Bernard Shaw & Alice Bailey had highlighted in their writings that a World Government is the only solution to achieve permanent World Peace. Mahesh Yogi inaugurated the World Government in 1975 in Seelisberg, Switzerland ( ” In response to the call of time, a global organisation has been structured, the non-political, the non- religious World Government which has the knowledge and expertise to create an ideal society” ). Foster Bailey, the husband of Alice Bailey, said that ” Free Masonry is the descendent of a United World Religion, a divinely imparted Religion. Then came separativeness and religions. Now we are striving for a United World Order” There is also a move to create a World Stock Market & to control all governments in the world. The foundations behind the United Nations are spiritual. The Global Oneness Movement is gaining momentum and a Council of Global Governance has been constituted with Maurice Strong as the President.
Dr Wilhmhurst saw the dawning of the Aquarian Age as the fulfillment of the Plan and said that Free Masonry may be the vehicle for that fulfillment. Wise people point out that the New Age Movement is the Universal Religion which H G Wells predicted would one day take over mankind.
The hand of the Mysteries controlled the establishment of the United States Government and the signature of the Mysteries may still be seen on the Great Seal of the United States of America. The Seal discloses a mass of Masonic symbols, chiefly amongst them the American Eagle, which is a conventionalized phoenix. The U S Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter said ” The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes “.
The Third Testament
The New Age has been referred to as the Third Testament. While the Old & the New Testaments emphasised that Truth is Freedom ( Veritas vos Liberabit ), New Age Philosophy averrs that Knowledge alone is Freedom. Self Knowledge or Knowledge of the Absolute Self alone can make you free ! Global Oneness alone can save the world. Globalists alone can bring a planetary transformation and not those who champion the cause of a Nation or a Civilisation.
Some prominent globalists are Jeremy Rifkin, Norman Cousins, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, John Denver, George Lucas, Norman Lear, Alice Bailey, Alvin Toffler, Dr. Barbara Ray, Benjamin Creme, Levi Dowling, George Trevelyan, Fritjof Capra, Abraham Maslow, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ruth Montgomery, Shirley MacLaine, J.Z. Knight, Marilyn Ferguson, David Spangler, Nelson Mandela & Gorbachev.
Marilyn Ferguson in her book ‘ The Aquarian Conspiracy’ remarks that the New Age Revolution is a Movement which is characterised by ‘ no political doctrines, no manifesto’. It is a Movement ‘more universal than reform’ and ‘more profound than a revolution ! ‘ The main chararacteristic of the New Aquarian Age will be Spiritual Democray. Global integration has been achieved via the Net, which implements the Global Village Concept. The Wonder – the World Wide Web – is the true World Encyclopaedia !
Always the teachings of the White Lodge ( the Philosophers ) were opposed by the Black Lodge ( Theology ), who maintain that Man and God are different. Giadarno Bruno, one of the greatest philosophers, had to give his life as a price for his mystical experiences. He was burnt as a heretic. Rising to this challenge, Isaac Bonewits formulated the Aquarian Manifesto, which gives the freedom and the liberty to worship the God of one’s choice. This Aquarian Manifesto protects psychics & mystics.
Piscean Symbolism – Dualism
Pisces is characterised by two Fishes – The Eastern Fish & the Western Fish. The Eastern Fish represents the Positive Aspect of Man & the Western Fish , the Negative Aspect. It indicates the fierce conflict between Science & Theology and conflicting ideologies – Marxism vs Mysticism, Existentialism vs Essentialism etc. The lower energies, such as greed, jealousy, ego & ignorance were expressed during the Piscean Age and higher energies like peace, love and truth will be exhibited in the Aquarian Age. The Internet and the World Wide Web are Aquarian concepts. The dot com drives for Profit were Piscean and did not work.The Dot Com disaster , the 9/11 WTC attack – all these are indicators that it is time for us, as a global community, to evolve to a higher level of Consciousness and usher in a New Age. The main reason for the 9/11 disaster was our lack of global unity and separativeness.
Global Integration
As it is a syncretic Movement ( Syncretism holds that all religions are
essentially One ), it will bring forth global integration & Spiritual Democracry. During the Taurean Age ( 4000 BCE ), worship of the Golden Calf was common in the Middle East. During the Arian Age ( circa 2000 BCE ), the Jews indulged in widespread ritual sacrifice of sheep and other animals in the Temple. During the Picean Age ( 160 BC – 2000 ACE ), many Jews walked away from animal sacrifice and embraced Christianity.
The Piscean Age was represented by Clash and an us against them mentality and we saw many clashes, Church against State, Science against Religion, Spirituality against Materialism, Right vs. Wrong, Evil vs. Good, etc. Many forgot that they are spiritual beings having a human experience as the external world was focussed
A Paradigm Shift to Global Order ?
Dr Thomas Kuhn in his book ‘ Structure of Scientific Revolutions” defined a Paradigm ( pattern ) thus “Science is a series of peaceful interludes, punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions “.After such revolutions, one conceptual world view is replaced by another. The New World View is Monism ( All is One) , Holism ( Reality is organically One ) & Pantheism ( The Universe is divine & earth is sacred ). All regressive thinking & negative tendencies will fade away and Enlightenment will dawn. The Aquarian Age will usher in a major Shift in intellectual thinking, as it is the Shift of of the Ages ! Astrology will regain its pristine glory and guide humanity. Those Great Revolving Heavens which maketh Providence a virtuous Power, those mighty ones which advance us when we have learned or retard us when there is still work to done, will be respected as the messengers of Universal Will. We have to evolve to Divinity and become the Perfected Whole !
The World Plan has been in motion for centuries as a New World Order cannot happen overnight. To achieve this difficult task, guns have to removed from the hands of private owners, currency has to be removed and replaced it with credit, and intelligence databases all around the world should be coordinated. Many people are becoming aware that something serious is going on and a World Plan to unite global currencies, trade boundaries & Nation States are in the offing. The principle of Global Economic Interdependence will unite all the economies of the world. There exists a benign Secret Power behind the scenes whose aim is to control all the goverments of the world. The innovative World Order is made up many elements of control – Mind control, gun control, IMF, The World Bank, FEMA, UN, Secret Societies, weather control and so on and on and on. Nothing but absolute control over everything; trade, banking, stock markets, oil, energy, technology, cyber world, nuclear capability, etc, is the New World Order.
Let us conclude this article with the Great Invocation, the World Prayer,
which belongs to all humanity.
From point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men.
Let Light descend on Earth.
From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let Love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May the Coming One return to Earth.
From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.
Article by G Kumar, astrologer, writer and programmer of http://www.astrologiavedica.com/. Recently he was awarded a Certificate by the Planetary Gemologists Association http://www.p-g-a.org/ ) asa Planetary Gem Advisor. To subscribe to his Free ezine, the Z Files, click here. mailto:info@eastrovedica.com/subject=subscribeZF He is contactable at info@eastrovedica.com Address of his physical shop is Zodiac Computers, 3/528 Tkss Bldgs, East Nada, Guruvayur Kerala, India 680101. Office Phone +91 0487-2552851. Home Phone +91 0487-2422060 Mobile ( 0091) 93885 56053
G Kumar
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/new-age-world-government-61381.html
what is the starting salary of a maryland state police officer?
what is the starting salary of a maryland state police officer? and how much does it increase over the years? would you recommend this as a fun or rewarding job?
I’m a librarian with Anne Arundel County in Maryland, so I’m happy to answer your question.
If you’re interested in becoming a Maryland State Trooper (i.e. joining the state police), they have all kinds of information on the state website at http://recruiting.mdsp.org/
According to their site, the starting salary for a cadet (a trainee under age 21) is $22,871. No doubt that goes up significantly once you become a full-time member of the force. There is supposed to be a link to the salary scale for MD state police; unfortunately that link is not working. However, they have a link to contact them with any questions you have, so I’m sure they could give you that information in two seconds. They also have information on the site to help you decide if it’s the kind of job you want.
Now if you want to work for one of the local police forces, those are mostly hired at the county level, and the starting salary is going to vary depending on the county. Washington County, for instance, sets an entry level salary of $37,030, while Anne Arundel County’s entry level salary is $40,000. The counties will also vary in their job titles; in larger counties like Howard or Anne Arundel you might join the force as a "police officer." In smaller counties like Washington or Queen Anne’s you might join the force as a "deputy sherriff." And salaries can go up quite a bit. In Anne Arundel County, the max salary for a "police officer" is $71,352, though it’s very likely you’d be promoted to a higher rank before you ever got there, and a higher rank means an even higher salary ceiling. As a police captain in Anne Arundel County, for instance, the max salary is over $100,000.
I hope that helps you with your questions. Don’t forget that if you need an answer and don’t want to wait for the goodness of strangers, you can always contact your local library. We’re happy to help you, and even if we’re closed, many libraries now offer e-mail reference and 24/7 live reference chat over the internet, such as the Maryland AskUsNow service in our state.
Have a nice evening!