.... Learn the issues, write to Congress, attend School Board and Town Hall meetings, write to the Editor, talk politics as often as you can. Carefully select issues for their maximal potential effect, set achievable goals, remain credible by sticking to the facts, never exaggerate or assume. Put yourself in the other persons shoes, be kind yet be ready for a fight, present realistic alternatives, be optimistic, vote, avoid bureaucracy, and stay in touch with reality.


The majority and winner take all system is broken. We need to do away with ballot access hurdles, we need public financing of campaigns at all levels......we need all inclusive debates, fusion balloting, instant run-off voting, proportional representation.... restore the fairness doctrine and give media access to all candidates, and eliminate the electoral college.


The power of example: David R. Brower, environmentalist extraordinaire. A Director of the Sierra Club. His efforts blocked the construction of many dams.

The ecological crisis is a political crisis. Regular car engines are only about 30% efficient, the remaining energy is wasted. Newer technologies that have much higher motor-engine efficiencies exist, yet these devices seem to be barred from general use, by the fossil fuel cartels, which own many of the worlds governments. Its every citizen's duty to try to break the stranglehold these cartels have upon our civilization .

Baiji

The Chinese river dolphin is extinct. White and nearly blind, considered by the Chinese to be a 'Goddess,' this elegant creature survived for 20 million years. Habitat destruction-the building of dams-and pollution from boats...ended this dolphins reign of bliss . Its been 50 years since a large marine mammal has become extinct (the Caribbean Monk Seal) but many more are now on the brink.....

In Memoriam

This year we lost some great ones :

1. Stanislaw Lem(1921-2006) Polish Science fiction writer extraordinaire. Author of 'Solaris'(1961), made into a great film by the Soviet Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972. A recurring theme was the inability and problems of human-alien communication .Work often employed sardonic wit, absurdist situations.


2. James Van Allen- discoverer of the 'Van Allen' radiation belts


3. Syd Barrett-(1946-2006) a founder of the Pink Floyd.


4. Steve Irwin- conservationist and showman.


5. Ali Farka Toure-(1939-2006) Malian pioneer of African folk and 'blues' music

There are about 25 children alive today who are the product of three or four parents- genetic material from several people have contributed to their DNA-genetic makeup.

"There are beautiful and wild forces within us."

- Saint Francis of Assisi

"Be like Water."

- Bruce Lee

"It's judgement that defeats us."

- from the movie 'Apocalypse Now'

Most stock & bond market transactions should be taxed.

(exclude middle class and lower investors)

"You can observe alot by watchin'"

-Baseball great, Yogi Berra (1925- )

Certitude, in the realm of the unprovable, is dangerous. One's cognition stops, and then the bloodbaths often begin.

What is usually thought of as constituting 'sin' is merely a side affect of having to live in the material, physical, world.

The Seven Deadly sins are really the seven natural human inclinations.

Corruption: excessive attachment to private interest.

In Russian Orthodox Church tradition, even Satan is redeemed in the end.

" Action and becoming are one"

-Meister Eckhart (AD 1260-1328), German mystic

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"- Rush.



"Never confuse motion with action"

- Ernest Hemingway.

All life once was united into unicellular organisms, reproducing asexually.This arrangement endured for over a billion years- Then disaster struck- creatures cleaved in half, each then needed the 'other' for reproduction.

This may expain the basic sense of loneliness that individuals experience throughout their lives- they yearn for their other, missing, half. The dating game is an attempt to restore the primordial balance creatures once possessed. Man and woman mating are attempts to restore the physical and metaphysical unity all creatures once experienced long ago.

Evil is parasitic. Bad people feed off of, or use, the good majority.

Throughout the day, one doesn't really notice when people basically do what they are suppose to do- its only when some buffoon acts contrary to expected norms that you notice.

In this way, it seems as though 'evil' is in the minority, most people are basically decent.

America is Kitsch.

All of the really interesting people end up in Hell.

Proof ?

Lawyer Victor Zammit has spend years accumulating objective evidences of literal and personal survival of the individual after their 'death.'

Zammit has documented thousands of case studies ....

Evidence suggestive of survival: 1. Electronic voice phenomenoun , or EVP. Researchers leave a tape recorder on, and when played back, one can hear the voice of a departed loved one or stranger. The voice(s) specifically addresses living persons and their actual conditions.....

2. Telephone communication. The deceased simply calls the living and speaks.

3. Near death experience (NDE).

4. Post-mortem materializations: a living relative 'sees' the recently deceased. Often, the recipient of the vision had no idea that their close relation had died, the death was unexpected.

5.Poltergheist/haunting activity:

6. Direct voice mediumship

7. Reincarnation cases, that after intense analysis, still defy explanation.



Of course, all this supposed evidence doesn't necessarily mean that we actually are souls inhabiting bodies, or that everybody survives and lives on in another dimension- maybe only some of us survive, or maybe a cosmic trickster is playing a joke on us ?....In science, you cannot 'prove' anything, but you can mount a damn good argument.
(www.victorzammit.com)


This area of research brings us to another topic- the contrast between what we normally refer to as 'Consensus reality,' versus what most occult/paranormal writers refer to as ' The Goblin Universe.'

"We either grow or we die- there is no third alternative."
- Oswald Spengler, early 20th century Historian and author of 'The Decline of the West.'

In the mid 1600's,the great German philosopher Leibnitz was thinking about how to create a perfect system of logicical language, universal and readily understandable to all.

He corresponded with the Jesuit Brouvard, who was in China. This is how he learned about the I Ching, or Book of Changes. Leibnitz reasoned that if life and conciousness could be explained and reduced to simple yes-no answers, then language and logic could be also.

Leibnitz developed an elementary symbolic binary system, but it did not catch on, until about 200 years later, when George Boole took up the issue. When combined with the electric circuit-gate, 'binary code,' a series of zeros and ones, representing all data, went on to become the current language of our computers.

The worlds oldest book- the I Ching- led to the devepment of our greatest modern tool- the computer.

Hide and Seek

The Ten Lost tribes of Israel- what happened?

In 722 BC, the Assyrians attacked and carried off into exile the ten tribes, and they were never heard from again . About 200 years later, Cyrus the Mede allowed the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, plus some levites, to return to Israel, ending the 'Babylonian captivity.' These returning exiles are the supposed ancestors of todays modern Jews.

Prologue: Abrahams grandson Jacob had 12 sons, and each received a territory in Israel. The kingdom was eventually united, but soon dissintegrated after King Solomons reign ended (about 960 BC). Some histories place the priestly tribe of Levi as being number 13,and they did not have land, but then the number was later put back to 12 under obscure (to me ) events...

So, what happened to the tribes? Christians during the Middle Ages imagined them to be almost everywhere, and ten tribe lore was intricately tied up with millenial expectations of the imminent return of Christ. In 1665, Oliver Cromwell allowed the Jews back into England due to Rabinical urgings, because most Europeans thought the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. Jews had been exiled from England for over 200 years- the 1215 Magna Carta document kicked them out.

But there is evidence that some of the tribes have survived to the present day. On the border of Burma and India exist about two million members of a tribe that believes they are descended from the House of Manasseh. They are the 'Bnei Menashe,' or Shinlung. Their oral tradition emphatically states that they are a branch of the lost Jews: they observe the Sabbath, they sacrifice animals using identical procedures that the ancient Hebrews used, they practice circumcision, employ Levirate marriage (the younger brother marries the older brother's widow to preserve the family line)... they call God Y'wa, which is very similar to the Hebrew 'Yahweh'......and once a year they observe Yom Kippur... They possess an ancient poem that tells the story of a crossing of a Red Sea, and they observe the Passover.

Their tradition says that they were first exiled by the Assyrians to eastern Persia, then they crossed into Afghanistan, and went into northwest China ... during this time they carried a copy of the Torah. About 500 years ago they were driven south to their present location. During their extensive wanderings , they assimulated with their surrounding neighbors, so today they physically resemble Chinese people.

The state of Israel officially recognizes the claims of the Shinlung. Rabbi Avichail, director of Amishav, a Jerusalem headquartered organization dedicated to finding , and returning, the ten lost tribes, has organized the resettlement of over 500 members of the Bnei Menashe back to their Israeli homeland since the year 2000.
The lost tribe of Manasseh is lost no more.

The ignorant defiant: many people are ignorant , and they are proud of the fact- they make no effort to rid themselves of their deprived condition, seeming to revel in a false glory of accumulated nonsense. The 'ignorant defiant' inwardly laugh at the hard won knowledge of the ages; the ignorant defiant are legion, they threaten all our lives, possibly dooming our tommorrows.

A 'Flat tax' will never work: The American economy is too complex.