Elaine Meinel Supkis

March 29, 2006

The religious and colonial wars which was launched when Europeans invaded the Ottoman Empire, is a multi-level war that has triggered vast wars in Europe, WWI and WWII, and they continue to rage and will produce WWIII. Unlike mere wars over sovereignty, these wars have a stubborn element of religious frevor and are actually a continuation of wars launched a thousand years ago, the Crusades. Worse, 2,000 years ago when Rome subjegated the place by removing or killing much of the native population, worse, 3,000, 8,000 years ago when early sheep herding tribes attacked the very first farmers at Jericho.

Assoiated Press:

Militants attacked a coalition forces base in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, sparking a battle that killed two soldiers — an American and a Canadian — and at least 12 rebels, officials said.

 

The battle in Helmand province’s Sangin district also wounded three Canadian soldiers, Canadian Brig. Gen. David Fraser told reporters at a base in southern Kandahar city. A U.S. military statement said an American soldier was also hurt.

Helmand is a hotbed of insurgency and center of the booming trade in illegal drugs and has been the scene of some of the deadliest fighting in recent months.

 

Hemland is dead center in Afghanistan. Like the Crusaders 1,000 years ago or the French Foreign Legion or the British outposts of their huge former empire, we hunker down in our various castles and hope no one attacks us and like back then and all the way up to modern times, mobile Muslim warriors roam the countryside, periodically appearing out of nowhere to attack and then melting away into the night again.

They have a very long memory. All desert people do. This is because they sit at night and look at the hard, distant glint of the stars and talk about the past, singing stories of past heroism, past victories, past invasions. This is part of their very being, it isn’t like watching flickering TV images, one has to commit to memory all the tribal information going back and back into time. Distant ancestors are as clearly seen as living family members.

Unlike the atomized West where families barely tolerate and even openly dislike each other and cleave to various temporary ideologies, unable to pass down even the barest of simple family stories, tribal people work hard and forging group identity that includes all members. This is true of the Jewish pastoral tribes which is why they try to convince the entire world that lands they occupied at various points in time are theirs forever.

Of course, this endless and eternal attempts at land grabbing is disputed by other tribes that have done the exact same thing over thousands and thousands of years. Indeed, genetically speaking, little separates these various tribes, the thing that disjoints them is which tribal icons are considered to be “gods”.

About 600 years ago, the prophet, Mohammed, rode into Mecca and destroyed the large collection of tribal “gods” that had shrines there, all except for one big, black, square rock which is the manifestation of the Great Square made by the Spring Stars in the Heavens (aka, Pegasus). Mohammed even dreamed of flying the Great Horse to see all of history and heaven.

So one of the oldest Gods in the desert, the one that is laced in lightning, remained. The invisible God of the Great Square has a very long and interesting history.

Many centuries earlier, the Jewish tribes, after living in Egypt, land of many gods, had rejected all this and made their god invisible so the entity could travel with them in the desert. They carried the manifestations of this god in a thing they called “the Ark” which they lost in one of their endless battles in the Holy Land. Mohammed continued this tradition by not only making the eldest gods into a collective Al’lah, a name the reflects this odd mixture, he copied the Judaean practice of making the god not only invisible but unnamable and thus, more magical. Out of this new unification of all the tribal gods, he created a whirlwind and the core tribes in the Arab deserts sprang upon their horses to proselytize this new unity, via the usual method of fighting and conquering.

The dying remains of the Roman Empire was wracked with religious disputes which were fragmenting the social structure as everyone declared they had the final word of truth and reality. When Islam swept across the deserts of Africa and into Asia Minor, the chief benefit of this new religion was twofold: it solved all the disputes by basically saying, God is Great, making it invisible so no one could dispute its appearance and forbidding making it visible so it would not become a local entity. Secondly, it allowed all other religions to co-exist but not rule. A rather harsh but realistic compromise that made a sturdy empire for a long time, one that flourished even as the Euorpean, Christian parts of the Roman Empire fell into darkness and despondency.

This is why fighting Muslims is so fatal over the long run. When the Christians pushed back, starting in Spain and then extending to the Holy Land itself, it was a bloody mess since even conversions by Muslims such as the Moors in Spain, for example, were not trusted and many were still killed in the vicious and prolonged Spanish Inquisition which also persecuted the Jews who had lived a sheltered life in the heart of Hispanic Islam which had recognized them as a fellow desert tribe which wanted to cling to their tribal god who was the inspiration to the invisible god that Mohammed saw. The Christians, unlike the previous Islamic rulers, were intolerant of all other religions and worked hard to either stamp them out or annihilate anyone who didn’t embrace their peculiar vision of the supernatural. To this day, the Sephardic branch of the Jewish tribes remember the loss of their homes in Spain.

Most religions take over via the sword, going back to the very beginnings. Most tribes like to think they have the only real gods and are the only real people and strangers are all “not-human” and therefore, killable without conscience. The Jewish tribal beliefs started, they claim, with Abraham who came from the first major city, Ur, and he moved to the Holy Land and used some rocks and caves to stake out his tribal claims. Bloody wars over these claims raged ever since because these same lands have many other tribes with similar beliefs of singularity, too.

Various empires over the eons struggled to take over and control the Holy Lands because it is a crossing point between the Eurasian landmass and Africa. Each invasion tried to lay a blanket over the various tribal religious differences, sometimes importing or exporting tribes to prevent them from warring with each other. The Bible teems with such stories and the Judaean tribes were subjected to various remedies over and over again.

 

When the Ottoman Empire, evolving out of the vast Mongol Empire, took charge of the Middle East 600 years ago, things settled down and all these various sects and religions had to co-exist or else and they did. A long period of peace but declining prosperity, settled down for hundreds of years, neighbors of various religious sects and beliefs, sharing their joint holy sites peacefully, including the various Christian groups who were allowed to run their holiest sites, despite the long war of the crusading Christians vs the Muslims of previous years.

Today, thanks to renewed attempts at conquering the Holy Land which started in the 19th century, we are in yet another vast religious war and we are unable to understand the end result of it: the Apocalypse. This is because of our own history, attempts are being made to foist this stupid religious war on the unsuspecting American population which is the world’s biggest conglamoration of disjointed, non-tribal people, egging us into running smack dab into the complex world of ancient tribes carrying old grudges, for we are the chief weapon and tool of all involved, they want us to fight a bloody intertribal war, one that has been burning off and on since the first humans came stomping out of Africa, seeking more animals to kill.

In this latest incarnation of the Medieval Crusades, we are engaged in fighting all levels of the Islamic world. We are calling this “the War on Terror” because we dare not call it “The Final Crusade.” We then become very angry when fighting the Muslims all over the place because no matter how many we kill and how many lands we erect our fortresses and our attempts at bribing them or kidnapping and torturing them, they keep on fighting. Instead of surrendering to us, these tribes consider the latest attempts at crushing them as merely a challenge brought to them by their invisible (collection of gods) entity, a test for them. This is why understanding what we are doing and why we are doing it is so vital. In return, we claim we are bringing freedom and peace, but this is clearly a rank lie since we have strewn neither, it appears we are instead, enslaving people and waging war on only Muslims.

CBS News:

(AP) The United States is faring poorly in its effort to counter ideological support for terrorism, in part because the government does not communicate effectively, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.

 

Rumsfeld made the remark in response to a question from a member of his audience at the Army War College, where he delivered a speech on the challenges facing the country in fighting a global war on terrorism.

“If I were grading I would say we probably deserve a ‘D’ or a ‘D-plus’ as a country as to how well we’re doing in the battle of ideas that’s taking place in the world today,” he told his questioner. “I’m not going to suggest that it’s easy, but we have not found the formula as a country” for countering the extremists’ message.

 

What is the “extremist’s message”? A clue to Rummy: “Al’lah is great.” This is a very simple message which the bearers fervently believe and are anxious for us to understand. Since we retaliate with, “The Holy Land belongs only to the Jewish tribal units and their Christian co-sponsors, who aren’t part of the inclusiveness of Islam, for they, alone, are beloved by God,” is not reconcilable.

 

Here in America, our military academies are being relentlessly and viciously taken over by far right wing Apocolypic fundamentalists who are girding America for a gigantic confrontation with a billion believers in Islam. We will then declare, as we plant our Crusader flags all over Islamic lands, that they declared war on US because of course, to us, the residents living for thousands of years in the Holy Lands are newcomers compared to the Jews who lived there hardly any more years than anyone else, they all being the same tribe way back about 6,000+ years ago, namely, the early sheep herders who hated the earliest farmers and who lusted for the newly minted farmlands. And these farmlands were taken from the even earlier Neandertals who had settled there as hunter/gatherers.

Whew.

Today, in America, debate rages over undue influence of various religious sects including the vast machinery set up to protect the more radicalized parts of the Jewish tribalists. Our founding fathers thoughtfully set things up to prevent religious wars of domination because they saw the horrors of the raging religous wars that had alienated neighbor from neighbor during the Reformation revolution.

 

Alas, today, various religions are now hijacking or manipulating our government so they can impose a religious dictatorship at various places of their choosing and this is beginning to destroy America because these various groups are writing laws or changing laws to justify religious domination and discrimination.

 

Rense.com:

The House of Representatives is about to begin markup on House Resolution 4681, the so-called Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006. This bill would prohibit the United States from providing direct assistance to the Palestine Authority unless the President certifies that the Authority has met the subjective and ambiguous conditions outlined below. Markup is the usual step that precedes sending a bill to the floor for a vote. One can ask why this bill is bound for the House floor, when it has no known organized support from the American public, addresses no issue of impact on the welfare of Americans, and flies in the face of the considered views of many American allies.

This bill is moving because it has almost 200 sponsoring members of Congress who have been cozened, promised campaign contributions or intimidated into supporting it by the American Israel Political Affairs Committee and other Israel support groups. AIPAC’s immediate weapon is all members of the House are up for reelection in November. For any Member of Congress, the assurance of votes or of campaign funds will be critical in the next few months. An about equal incentive, however, is the fact that AIPAC has funded the defeat of several members of Congress who in the past refused to cooperate by supporting Israeli interests.

 

Harvard University is under fire this week for allowing a professor of theirs and one in Chicago to publish a detailed report of the AIPAC conspiracy to warp American foreign policy until its main Middle Eastern division was incorporated into the effort by the Zionists to take over the as much of the Holy Lands as possible. Our legislators have been basically hijacked and hitched to Israel’s own needs. This is why war between the Jewish colonizers from Europe and America and their Muslim neighbors has come to our shores. We can’t think this open land grab by recent invaders in the Middle East, based on religious justifications, won’t affect us here? We basically have joined the Zionists in turning the non-Jewish people who were born and live in the lands desired by Zionists, into subhumans who have no rights to life, liberty or property because they are Muslims!

 

This is why, after allowing the 9/11 attack to succeed, the Americans working with or for AIPAC, ordered us to not think about what caused the attacks or how do to fix things so we aren’t at perpetual war with Islam but to blindly attack Muslims in many countries. This is why Sharon kicked off a major fight with the Palestinians when Bush went to the UN and said Palestinians have a right to a state, too. This is why they had an election and why the Israelis won’t recognize a properly elected government there. This would mean recognizing the Palestinian people as a state as well as someone who has a right to live there.

Since so many religions consider the Holy Land (bizarre name for that bloody place) to be uniquely holy only for their subgroup, each in turn, thinking they are singular, the best solution to this should have been a declaration by the United Nations naming it a Heritage Site and then running it as a franchise, not a country! This way, no one entity can be in charge and all existing structures can be preserved as relics and life can go on.

Only no one wants this because all the invisible or not so invisible in Jesus’s case, gods want to be supreme even though all of them evolved out of the same ancient god of Ur: Zug, aka, Pegasus. The Lightning Winged Horse was known to Abraham himself because he lived where?

The city of Ur! And where was that city?

Mesopotamia, aka, about where Bagdad is today, not too far away. And one can see how mad humans are taking all this and brewing quite a nasty storm, no?

BBC News:

Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has declared victory in the election, vowing to push ahead with plans to define Israel’s final borders.
His Kadima party, founded barely four months ago by now coma-stricken Ariel Sharon, won but by less than predicted.

 

It looks set to take 28 of the 120 seats in parliament. Likud, winner of the last election, was beaten into fifth place with just 11 seats.

Palestinians urged Mr Olmert not to set Israel’s borders unilaterally.

 

This is illegal. Israel has no right to steal Palestinian lands so they can hog everything for themselves. The American bill that states the lands there are for ONLY JEWS is unamerican. Imagine if we said parts of America are for only Catholics? Or Methodists? Or Lutherans? “Jelloland”. (An inside joke)

This unilateral seizure of Muslim lands will trigger further fighting across Islam. Just as I predicted here, Condi’s invitation to missionaries to invade Afghanistan meant a declaration of religious war on the tribes there who have responded already, nearly instantly, by attacking and killing us.

So it is yet again—the news that the Jews are, just like they did 4,000 years ago, kicking people out of Jerusalem, killing people in the process, so they can impose a religious dictatorship there, is firing up the people who have previously accepted the unity of the tribal gods of the desert, aka, Islam, who live in the Holy Land today.

 

“In the coming period we will move to set the final borders of the state of Israel, a Jewish state with a Jewish majority,” Mr Olmert told Kadima members in what was effectively his victory speech.

 

“We will try to achieve this in an agreement with the Palestinians. This is our hope and prayer.”

He told the Palestinian leadership: “We are ready to compromise, to give up parts of the beloved Land of Israel… and evacuate, under great pain, Jews living there, in order to create the conditions that will enable you to fulfil your dream and live alongside us.”

 

The unilateral seizure isn’t a compromise. What the Jews are saying to the Muslims is, “we are taking this city, this part of the Holy Land and you can’t stop us. In return, we will allow you to control the parts we can’t steal outright, maybe. You can live with us so long as we have our own religious, bigotted, prejudiced state for ourselves. Anyone living on land we control has no rights, no religious validity, nothing, they are dirt under our feet.”

This exclusionary philosophy can only lead to more bloodshed. Jesus, when wandering around this same area 2,000 years ago, talked about the various people living there. He believed they were all valid, this is why he made up the story of the good Samaritan. Samaritans were not Jews, they were one of the many people who have lived in that land since humans came out of Africa. Jesus talked about how one saved a sick man on the road while his fellow, Jewish tribal members ignored him. The point of that tale being, goodness resides in all humans, it isn’t just a Jewish thing, and everyone is equal in the eyes of the invisible god (most likely incarnations of the lightning god, Zug of the Great Square of Pegasus).

Well, all this mess will result in vast wars because no one, absolutely no one wants to know the roots of all religions and why we fight over bizarre things that have become detached from their origins. Early religious paintings of bulls and horses and deer as well as lions and humans, all the calvacade of life, our earliest ancestors were curious about animals, us, the stars and fertility, namely, the amazing moment when life springs into action and babies are born and the fercundity of nature returns each spring, cast out of the eternal spring of the Eocene, in the harsh world of the Great Ice Ages, humans evolved and become what we are now, and we worship Spring Time and fear the Winter Solstice and worry about the Summer Solstice and today, the sun goes into eclipse, a time of fear and wonder for everyone!

And then there is lightning. Bearer of life-giving rain, creator of fire, Pegasus and Prometheus bound together, the stars, the sun and the earth, all one thing, the womb of life, our Mother Nature.

Why people have to disassociate from all this marvelousness and cling to simple but lethal ideas puzzles me. The fact that we are using these vague religious tools to forge the Sword of Annihilation terrifies me.

Elaine Meinel Supkis

March 29, 2006

As America flounders in a sea of blood, trying to make deals with some Middle Eastern Muslim countries while killing other Muslims, China shows how pure merchantile business can reap great rewards without killing anyone. Countries can do business without shooting people, you know. And we are not winning the industrial wars which, in the end, are much more important than the bombing wars.

Xinhua Net:

The Chinese government attaches great importance to the development of relations with Saudi Arabia and is ready to make joint efforts with Saudi Arabia to further strengthen exchanges at all levels and promote political mutual trust, said Li.

 

He said China will continue to develop economic and trade cooperation between the two countries, expand cultural exchanges and consolidate friendship between the two peoples, in a bid to raise bilateral relationship to a higher level.

Bandar said Saudi Arabia regards China as a good friend and good partner and is willing to work with China to continuously enhance the friendly cooperation in various fields.

Bandar arrived here on Tuesday for a visit to China at the invitation of Li.

 

Notice that the Chinese don’t have to station troops all over kingdom come to achieve trade agreements and diplomatic alliances. The biggest mistake a country can make is to try to run everything using military bases and tremendous violence. This never works in the long run, even just a series of local disorders can quickly drain the treasury. Back 1700s when France and England were contesting each other on the Continent, they decided to extend the fighting to their colonies in the New World. A series of fights won England control of French Canada and which is, to this very day, still resented by the French speaking population. France retaliated by funding the American Revolution. Both England and France nearly went bankrupt thanks to this extended American adventure. So both got involved in a very massive war when Napoleon took over France and fought England, yet again! Whew!

Why did England become the world power?

The Industrial Revolution which really took off after the loss of the North American Anglo colonies.

We are in the middle of a new facet of this revolution. England has declined very steeply from the heights it owned when it was the industrial giant of the planet. Germany and then the USA took that crown and in the case of the USA, we won the British world empire sweepstakes when Germany and England exhausted each other, trying to rule the world via military might.

We thought we would be clever and do it via trade but thanks to the Soviet Union assisting the Chinese revolution, we went into full military mode and instead of developing a strong free trade nexus, we decided to be a violent military empire like so many before us. And like all of them, we are now going bankrupt.

Will the Chinese fall into this trap? Never in their history have they tried world conquest. They were conquered by the Mongols who drove them into world conquest but that lasted only a short while and the Chinese then happily settled down to being a self contained empire with definite borders and a contempt for lesser people.

Xinhua Net:

Visiting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez said here Wednesday that the United States draws “significant benefits” from its commerce with China.

 

Addressing a full house of business people, officials and reporters at China World Hotel, Gutierrez said that U.S. consumers gain “additional choices” and many American companies are operating profitably in China.

Citing the latest survey on business climate conducted by AmCham (American Chamber of Commerce), Gutierrez said that two thirds of the responding companies have expanded the range of products and services they offer in China.

“America also benefited from trade with China,” he said, “U.S. exports to China grew by 20 percent last year, which built on 22 percent growth from the year before.”

 

Indeed. Our rulers are happy with a mass of illegal immigration that is uncontrollable and thus keeps the middle and lower working classes unable to negotiate for a bigger slice of the corporate pie. They also want this “trade” with other nations that have equally helpless workers. This way, there is no inflation except for oil which is why China is courting all those oil countries and being very sweet about it all, too.

Instead of defending our borders from being flooded by cheaply produced goods, the ruling class is encouraging the flow. I warned fellow Americans in the past, if we let this happen, we have a brief historic time period of cheap goods and good pay and then down the drain it all goes and we end up in a long, gruelling depression with cheap goods and no money to purchase much of it.

Of course, due to energy costs, we have inflation which is why Bernanke is raising interest rates. And we need the Chinese to buy our debts which is why we are raising interest rates and we need to raise ever more funds to pay for this flood of stuff pouring into America which is why we are raising interest rates. Get it?

The fact that many American companies are making profits in China is particularily funny. This is good for them but bad for us! Why should we be happy that people using our country as a base of operations are bribing Congress and messing up with elections via a flood of money from them which goes towards cutting their taxes, make money by shipping our jobs to China? See? They benefit and they insure they can continue to do this using America as their tool, while sticking it to the American worker! They can buy and sell in China and we get to stand here and watch 150 years of industrialization vaporize. China is happy and so are they!

Well, this isn’t good for us so it isn’t good for us. Every time these businessmen downsize here, the problems here grow, not shrink. Instead of America becoming stronger, we become weaker. Imagine if we shipped out our entire industrial base to Germany and Japan in the thirties? Huh? Um, we are doing exactly that now, isn’t that one of history’s ironies!

But worse, we are doing it with nations that can contest us successfully and the Bush administration thinks this is good for America because a bunch of traitors are making a buck destroying the American dream.

Elaine Meinel Supkis

March 29, 2006
Cyclone Glenda is a wicked witch this time around, winds over 165 mph, she flew across Australia’s northern shores, went to sea for only a day and a half and became a catagory 5 storm, now down to “only” a catagory 4. Harbinger for our storm season.

BBC News:

Australia is bracing for its second major cyclone in two weeks as a storm with winds of around 280km/h (175mph) headed for its western coast.
Cyclone Glenda was expected to hit north-west Australia’s Pilbara coastline late on Thursday.

 

A major iron ore port on the Pilbara coast has sent its ships out to calmer waters, and the 10,000 residents of the coastline are preparing their houses.

 

Like the ones that hit here last summer, this is right across Australia’s offshore oil fields, too. I don’t know if or how much this will affect world oil prices but since we are in a world pumping like crazy, it wouldn’t surprise me to see prices hop up a bit.

Hurricane Wilma grew from a catagory one to a catagory five in less than a day, the main growth occuring in just 90 minutes, a record. This one in Australia was no slacker, going from 65 mph winds to over 185 mph in less than 36 hours. One of the main features of global warming is the tremendous intensity and the incredible speed at which storms can grow when they go over super-warm seas. These storms scour the land when they hit and are not life-form friendly.

SBS Aussie TV:

Major oil and mining operations shut down and residents were told to take immediate shelter as severe cyclone Glenda bore down on Australia’s west coast packing winds of up to 265 kilometers an hour.

 

State emergency services in Western Australia issued a “red alert” for people in coastal areas around the massive oil and ore ports of Karratha and Dampier, meaning residents should halt evacuations and take shelter.

“The cyclone is basically very close and there are extreme winds and a lot of danger. If people haven’t evacuated by now, it’s probably too late,” said spokesman Jim Cahill.

Glenda was a category four cyclone, just one level below the maximum five, and was forecast to make landfall late on Thursday in the Pilbara.

 

Here is the official website for tracking cyclones in Australia.

 

Here is the PDF file map showing all the oil fields.

Just as I thought, it is the major oil fields of Australia. Quite a few offshore rigs right in the path of this major storm. Already, oil prices in Australia are moving upwards. This storm could ruin as many rigs as Katrina or Rita.

Pretty awesome and fearful.

Elaine Meinel Supkis

 

March 30, 2006
After causing huge riots in China and lots of ill will in both Koreas, Japan shrugged off a revisionist history text last year. Now they are extending it to all their history books. Both China and now, South Korea are very angry about this and protesting. Meanwhile, the USA, still thinking we won WWII, try to negotiate a troop rearrangement with Japan only this collapses into a mess, too.

Washington Post:

The South Korean government on Thursday sharply denounced Japan for “whitewashing, distorting and glorifying” its militarist past after Japanese officials ordered a series of controversial new changes to high school textbooks.

 

The unusually harsh protest centered on the disclosure this week that Japan’s Education Ministry requested new revisions to 55 textbooks in an effort to avoid student “misunderstandings.” The revised books clearly label disputed territories– including a small island chain under South Korean control but claimed by Japan — as Japanese territory. Also, references to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre were changed to indicate the number of people killed by the Japanese may have been less than the 300,000 victims claimed by China.

 

Ever since Bush and Condi gave the right wing Japanese the green light to do as they please because we need endless Japanese IOUs to run our own country, they have exploited this to the hilt. When the governing party leaders worshipped war criminals at their official war shrine, the Asian victims of the Japanese attempt at enslaving them rose up in fury. The USA?

We snoozed. We clearly indicated to the Japanese that we don’t care about symbols and we think it is OK for them to celebrate the guys we killed. After all, we LOST WWII.

Japan, the world’s second largest economy which has a giant trade deficit with America and which is driving our last major industries into the ground, still wants us to foot the bill for our troops over there.

The Army Times:

By Hans Greimel
Associated Press
TOKYO — The United States and Japan failed to reach agreement Friday on controversial U.S. troop realignment plans that have gotten bogged down over the cost of moving the forces and opposition from local communities in Japan.

 

With both sides racing to nail down final details by the end of the month, negotiators from both countries plan to meet again next week in Washington, U.S. Embassy spokesman Michael Boyle said.

“There is still work to be done,” Boyle said after the two-day talks ended. “I think they are getting close on many of the issues.”

But Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso said “quite a difference” remains between the two sides, according to Kyodo News agency, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe urged negotiators to “work hard to reach a decision by the end of March.”

 

To be frank, the Japanese don’t want to pay for these changes. They figure, they got us over an imperial barrel and they can make us pay for it via more IOUs. Why do we have any troops there in the first place? China?

Well, the fact that our troops are there and the Japanese are punching everyone in the eyes in Asia means they are using us as their shield so they don’t have to cooperate with anyone—-including us! This arrogant attitude is already stirring up great anger in Asia that is being redirected towards us. The Chinese, for example, would have been very happy to form alliances with us but that is fading very fast as we openly publish Pentagon papers deliniating China as our major enemy, we conduct war games with Japan next to Chinese and Korean shores, when the Japanese bonzai their war criminals, we let them.

Letting other nations run our foreign policy is a very bad idea. The game is to use as few troops as humanly possible while manipulating or making diplomatic and trade deals so one gets some gain and increases the security of one’s home state, in our case, it is called the “USA” and seems many working in our government have forgotten this which is why, when Bush said the IRAQIS get to decide when we withdraw our troops, I waited in vain for the chorus of rage and jeers greeting such a traitorous notion from our supposed leader.

So it is here! We gain nothing by being Japan’s cat’s paw. Instead of triangulating all the powers in Asia and having them all come to us for legitimacy and concerted actions, we are passive and at the same time, aggressive. We take sides based on what Japan desires, not what is good for us, in this case. This is causing the potential for war as Japan aggressively demands sovereignty without negotiation which reminds me of Israel which is doing exactl the same thing.

Reuters:

By Paul Eckert
WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) – The United States ordered its diplomats and contractors on Wednesday to cut off contacts with Palestinian ministries after a Hamas-led government was sworn in, the State Department said.
At the same time, U.S. President George W. Bush expressed support for the Palestinian people but repeated his position no U.S. funds should go to the Hamas leadership they elected.
“I think that aid should go to suffering Palestinians, but nor should it go to a government, however, which has expressed its desire to destroy its neighbor,” Bush said during a question-and-answer session after he delivered a speech on Iraq.

 

The Jewish lobby and Israel are demanding the USA take only one side here yet again. In this case, we not only have a trade deficit with Israel, we bankroll their government, to boot. Not satisfied with that, they got our government to do this bizarre action so they can unilaterally seize much of the West Bank illegally.

As the UN censors Iran, Israel gets away with murder yet again. Because we can’t triangulate with various parties, not only is there no peace there, there is no hope of peace and our suppression and oppression of the Palestinian native population is making us very unpopular in much of the world and it all serves absolutely no good purpose for the USA, indeed, it has increased our domestic dangers and this is only going to get worse and worse.

Using the miltitary to prop up our lopsided diplomatic initiatives means bankruptcy as this is the most destructive and dangerous way to resolve difficulties. Instead of balancing our needs, our future plans and our collective desire for stability, this method does the opposite. Every day, many people plot and plan for our downfall. Billions of people will cheer our destruction. This is plain pure stupidity, creating this sort of hostility and is doubly so when doing it to help foreign powers who don’t care if we all die or go into poverty forever.

Elaine Meinel Supkis

March 30, 2006
Just this week, I mentioned that Israel can’t write a Constitution. Today, the NYT thoughtfully has a Jewish person explain why they just can’t seem to be able to do this simple thing, particularily since it means the possibility of civil rights rather than religious privilages, dooms any efforts to imitate America.

New York Times:

By STEVEN V. MAZIE
Published: March 30, 2006

 

NEARLY six decades after the state of Israel was founded, members of the newly elected Parliament will try to complete the job of drafting a constitution. Their greatest challenge will be to lend coherence to Israel’s dual identity as a state that is both Jewish and democratic.

 

Must I go on? Heh. Sixty years and the greatest legal minds, many of whom have lived in America and Europe and practiced law and understand the entire concept of Constitutions and how they operate and how to write one, can’t do this simple thing that took our Founding Fathers barely any time at all, once they threw out the Articles of Confederation?

 

The old saw goes that for every two Jews there are three opinions. A new 9,000-page constitutional draft ups that ante, offering as many as four alternatives, complete with commentary, for many of its provisions. According to one version of the draft’s first clause, “Israel is a Jewish and democratic state.” Alternatives go on to identify Israel as “the state of the Jewish people” or “the state wherein the Jewish people are realizing their right to self-determination.” Another option avoids the issue entirely, advising against making a statement about the state’s character at all.

 

Instead of stating outright that Israel is a theocracy/tribal state that has nothing but levels of privilages and benefits aimed only at increasing the power and reach of only one group of people nearly all of whom came in less than 50 years ago, Israel simply does things by custom. These various and many laws that are openly discriminatory and harmful to non-Jews can’t be challenged in court since there is no laws covering civil rights, none whatsoever. The prison population of the lands Israeli Jews have conquered in the last 30 years have no rights, no voice, absolutely nothing at all. They are non-humans in the codex of laws drawn up by the invading population.

 

If there is any hope for the constitutional process, lawmakers must break free of these old dogmas and zero-sum strategies, working instead to establish a functional balance of Jewish and democratic values.

 

This is impossible. Because the Jewish people have unilaterally and over the very strong objections of the residents already in these disputed lands, declared they will create a state that exclusively benefits them, there is no way of “fixing” this by putting some sort of fig leaf on what is a racist and religious bigotted mess. Italian Catholics can’t settle in New Jersey and then suddenly have a violent coup and declare the state “Italian homelands” and pass pro-Catholic laws that fund Catholic schools using tax money raised on non-Catholics, nor can they pass laws forbidding Lutherans from buying property in Passaic. In other places, religious bigots have set up shop, dispossessing original residents and despoiling them and favoring one religion over another such as English Protestants did to Ireland, for example, a bitter battle that raged off and on for hundreds of years, ever since Henry VIII and before him, simply an attack of one realm upon another. The Reformation revolution turned what was a standard territorial battle into a very vile religious war.

Only in the last ten years has a truce been called and it hinges upon finally granting equal rights to the Catholics. And the Protestants bitterly resent enfringement of their entitlements which gave them tremendous favors in the job markets, housing markets, shopping markets and education. Many Catholics had to flee to places like America where a Catholic has the same rights as a Protestant. And even here, it has taken 200 years to gain full civil rights for the offspring of former slaves, for Jews themselves, for women, for gays who are still fighting for simple justice!

All parties have turned to the Constitution, to amend it to protect themselves from losing their rights, for a guiding light to show the mercy and greatness of sharing civil rights with all humans no matter what they wear, their skin color, sex or what they do or do not worship. Equal before the law, in business, at home, in school.

This brilliant concept, this is what America’s greatness is all about: our Constitution. Yet, instead of treasuring it and holding it up as a model for how we should organize the world as well as our homes, Jewish people have turned their backs on it and instead, chosen the despotic models of the British Empire’s abuse of the Irish or Indian or anyone who wasn’t part of the Official Church run by the aristocrats of the Royal Family.

My family is here in America precisely because of that. We weren’t going to worship James I so he tried to kill us and we came here, out of reach, into the Hudson Valley which was run by the Dutch who didn’t care quite so much about our personal religion which is a rather odd, family matter (um, lightning, etc). All our long lives for hundreds of years, we dreaded religious interference as well as snooping. We fought in the American Revolution and the Civil War as well as my grandmother, the Sufferagette, and myself, in the Civil Rights Movement, fighting not just for the right of minorities to vote but for my own freedom, as a female!

Why would anyone reject this amazing and wonderful system we created, I mean not the Constitution but the Amendments? They truly are international and timeless as well as fulfilling and frankly, beautiful to read. Like the 10 Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount, easy to understand and necessary for a full and fruitful life!

So why can’t this happen in the Holy Land? Why, when that place seethes with many religions, why should one only take primacy and torment all the others? This is plain wrong on nearly every level.

My family and their contemporaries worked long and hard to draw up a series of rules and laws that opened America’s doors to the entire planet. Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus, whoever, animists, fire worshippers, witches (hehehehe), atheists, anyone and everyone could enter, there was no test, no questions asked. Unlike the slave state, Israel, you didn’t have to pass the Nazi “are you a Jew” test which the Nazis decided, one Jewish grandparent and you were murdered by them. So, with Israel, the same rule applies as to whether or not one may apply for citizenship, namely, at least one grandparent has to have been a certified Jew.

No Muslim may pass into citizenship from the outside thanks to this ridiculous prohibition. No Christians, either, if they don’t have magical blood in them.

Until the people who created this unfair and UNAMERICAN state change, I am baffled as to why my country gives this 100% support and adoration. It is unconstitutional and it is destroying our own Constitution as Americans of various tribal affiliations and religions start tearing it up, seeking privilages and favors for themselves at my expense.

The writer if this latest garbage on “democracy in Israel” should be ashamed of himself. He is openly espousing the discredited “seperate but equal” Jim Crow crap that we had to painfully destroy here. It doesn’t work, it never works, it is not liberal, it is bad, very, very bad.

Thank you.

Elaine Meinel Supkis

March 31, 2006
Since I do farm-related stuff, I am hyper aware of the weather. The drought/flood cycle continues. We had floods last fall, early snowstorms then a long, dry winter. In the news, Antarctica air temperatures is warmer, coral reefs are stressed so badly by warm water, they are rapidly dying, the Atlantic hurricane season will be bad but not as wild as last summer (unless the sun gets more active), global warming is manifesting itself in many ways.

Associated Press:

A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters.

 

Researchers from around the globe are scrambling to figure out the extent of the loss. Early conservative estimates from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands find that about one-third of the coral in official monitoring sites has recently died.

“It’s an unprecedented die-off,” said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. “The mortality that we’re seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef … We’re talking colonies that were here when Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months.”

 

The marine ecosystems have been very stressed out this last decade. We also forget about other problems, in particular industrial and human waste pollution, not to mention over-fishing all the open seas.

The Australian:

Stephen Lunn
March 31, 2006
THE Great Barrier Reef is far more resilient to rising water temperatures than scientists feared, with less than 1 per cent of its coral affected by bleaching after the hot summer.

 

Scientists had predicted that as much as 60 per cent of the reef’s coral might suffer bleaching, which occurs when warm temperatures rob the living coral of nutrition.

But professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Marine Studies, said yesterday that samples he had collected from the various parts of the reef showed the fears were unfounded.

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg’s survey showed coral north of the Keppel Islands near Rockhampton had escaped bleaching, and less than 1 per cent of the outer reef had been affected.

 

Of course, this was after only one summer of very hot temperatures, namely, now, since it is summer there when it is winter here. But just as the surprisingly strong cyclones show this year down under, that if this situation continues for ten years and instead of being an “anomolie”, this becomes the new standard?

A spokesman for conservation organisation WWF, Richard Leck, still offered a warning if ocean temperatures rose.

 

“By 2050, unless we build the resistance of the reef, we will be faced with a pretty diminished resource,” Mr Leck said.

 

Associated Press:

The air over Antarctica is warming even faster than in other parts of the world, according to an analysis of 30 years of weather balloon data.

 

While surface warming has been reported in parts of Antarctica, this is the first report of broad-scale climate change across the whole continent, the British Antarctic Survey says in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

The weather balloon data show a warming of 0.9 degree to 1.3 degree Fahrenheit per decade over the last 30 years. By contrast, the average worldwide temperature has risen 0.2 degree per decade in that time, according to the paper.

 

We watched The March of the Penguins and I noticed, while examining the background landscape, even when the winter was descending, the ice formations were awfully thinned out. And the summer scenes it was obvious the ice was melting. The thinning of the ozone layer means the solar rays strike the ice, melting it even though the temperature is low. Even here on my mountain, we get this effect, when the sun is shining brightly, even when it is near zero, the snow on the roof of the house and the top layer of snow, melts. This is why we get icicles. It can get so wam, if the wind isn’t blowing, one can go outside into the sun without a coat on, even, but the minute you move into a shadow, brrr.

Last winter was the warmest ever recorded in our country. Here are the long range forecast maps. Not that they are predicting a warmer than usual winter yet again, next year, for the entire winter. The long drought in the Southwest and much of the Midwest is predicted to worsen. The forecast is also for normal or less than normal rain for the entire coming year except severe drought in the same places that had it last year and flooding during hurricane season across Florida and up the entire east coast, they believe the hurricanes won’t all run up the Mississippi valley this time around.

Alert Net:

The coming season, which starts officially on June 1, is not likely to be as bad, experts say. One noted forecaster, William Gray of Colorado State University, has predicted this year will produce 17 tropical storms and hurricanes.
Hurricanes draw their energy from warm water and the Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico were unusually warm last year.
“The Atlantic Ocean is warm right now but it is not as warm as it was last year,” U.S. National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said on the opening day of a regional convention of the World Meteorological Organization in San Juan.

 

Of course, last year, it wasn’t terrifically warm until after April! So we will wait and see what happens next. If the sun is particularily busy with solar flares, this changes the weather equation pretty quickly, relatively speaking.

Here is a map showing the unusual number of record rain/heat events that happened this last year.

Here is this year’s drought map. It looks pretty nasty in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and most of Nebraska. Right now, the Atlantic states are developing into a drought. This is most annoying since I live there.

To enlarge image, click on the picture.
This is another picture of my driveway at the top of the fields. This is supposed to be “mud season” but it is turning into dust devil season. We had no real winter, we had snow at the beginning, then a freakish, warm January, our springs flowed like crazy, the rivers ran high in spring floods and the trees wondered if it was time to put out buds.

Then it became very cold, below zero off and on for a month but precious little snow. A big blow of snow would be followed by instant melting and then back to below zero. So for much of the coldest part of winter which was late February to mid March, our fields sat high and dry, the grass exposed to the freezing temperatures without their comfortable snowy white blanket and they dried out so we are now in a fire alert, people lighting brush fires can have them rage out of control, for example. I own a section of forest and we worry about forest fires for there have been none such here for over 100 years and there is a very deep leaf litter in the woods.

The springs usually fill my ponds right about now but this year, there isn’t a drop of water going into them. The rivers are running so low, we can see the rocks, at this rate, they will dry up in summer, entirely! This isn’t good.

Just the other day, a woman burning brush in North Carolina was burned to death when her fire raged out of control. This winter’s huge toll in towns and people burned in the Plains States was quite significant. If this drought continues, it will be more common until all the grass is spent and then the dust will begin to blow. One of the bellweathers which sets the world’s thermometer is dust, the drier it is, the more dust blows and the particulate matter screens the sun and brings down temperatures so we might go into a cycle of much colder weather simply due to this factor, thanks to the increasing droughts in many places. Global warming puts more moisture into the air and water into the seas but thanks to increased dynamics, these come increasingly as great floods rather than a gentle rain. And where are our “April showers”?

It looks like we are due this week for violent thunderstorms. That is summer weather!

Elaine Meinel Supkis

March 31, 2006
Scientists remove gene for erasing memories in mice, the mice remember everything all the time. This is part of Alzheimer’s research but what is marvelous to me is how and why animals evolved a gene to forget things in the first place.

Associated Press:

The gene appears to inhibit learning, said Dr. Robert D’Alessandri, vice president of WVU health sciences and interim director, chief executive officer and president of the institute. It may also have more than one function.

 

“It may be a protective mechanism,” D’Alessandri said. “You don’t want to remember everything forever, right? The brain is all about balancing one thing with another — learning versus filling your head with stuff and not being able to do anything with it.”

 

Yesterday, we learned that bright children’s brains muture longer and slower than average or lower intelligence children’s brains. Now we learn there is a gene for forgetting things. This gene operates, evidently, in all mammals. I would strongly suggest that this gene is for mammals to not obsess over the death of their babies or young ones. The mother must forge onwards. She must be aware enough to nurse them and groom them and protect them, teach them to hunt, etc. But not to be so shattered when the vast majority of them die, that she cannot go on.

Indeed, this goes back to dinosaurs. And earliest mammalian reptiles. We know that crocodiles care for their eggs and when they hatch, their young. They shelter them and escort them about until they can fend for themselves. Birds are a famous example of mating and rearing young very carefully. Birds go through elaborate displays and courtship and many build time consuming nests and then they have to protect and feed the young and teach them how to fly, for example. Once the young depart the nest and learn to fend for themselves, the parents promptly forget about them and turn to driving them away.

Many mammalian mothers do this, too. Even herds of hoofed animals, the mothers and daughters stick together while some top male drives away the sons. In lion prides, when a new male drives off the old one, he turns around and kills all the cubs and gets the mothers and daughters pregnant. If the mothers remembered their slain young, this wouldn’t be possible but the gene of forgetting all this cuts out the memory that is painful from her point of view and life goes on.

In the great apes, sometimes they die of broken hearts, just like we humans. Evidently, they can remember painful things longer than a cat does, for example. Dogs, thanks to being co-evolvers with humans, have gained some ground in this, too, namely, learning to remember things which is why occasional pets might refuse to eat or leave a grave sometimes, when someone they were very close to dies.

 

The gene for not learning/forgetting is very powerful. Humans have evloved brains that strive to overcome these powerful gene which is why very smart people must literally grow longer, the cognitive parts of the brain, I would venture to guess. More than one parent has noticed that children who seem to soak up learning the first six years, suddenly stop and become cranky and difficult and the scholarly grind has to have many penalties and lures to get them to learn nearly anything. No longer do they rush forwards, seeking more information. I have noticed this, myself. I can literally feel my brain rebelling and telling me to stop trying to learn things. It is rather annoying, to say the least.

I resolved many years ago to not yield to that inner voice and to force myself to learn something new at frequent intervals. For example, today, I have to try new systems and learn more skills on the computer. This is why I tinker with this site and alter it frequently. It is part of a personal program to prevent the mind from not thinking.

Dreams are most disturbing. Most people use this gene to forget the ruminations of the mind which wanders all over the place when unleashed. I love dreams and think it would be a shame to lose 1/2 of my existence, unconcious of what is really going on, so I have striven all my life to remember dreams and am quite successful with this. Many dreams are scary which is why the forgetting gene goes to work and erases them.

One function of the forgetting gene is to remove the memory of our faux pas we commit on a daily basis. We are very social animals and in our interactions, we step on each other’s toes, we are often wrong about little and big things and this troubles our brains which strive for unity and self aggrandizement. Bush deals with this by forbidding any of his bad stuff to be examined and corrected. He simply ignores all of it and pretends it hasn’t happened.

In one ear and out the other is his motto, I would guess.

So it is with many humans. The difference between genius and not genius might be the lack of this gene or a weakness associated with it. I know I remember my zillions of mistakes and periodically, they pop into my mind, unbidden and very annoyingly and even thinking of them is embarrassing but also humbling. I can really screw up! As we all do.

 

But most people don’t remember that. Moving forwards in blessed ignorance, they can do and say things without regard to the past and this makes life easier, in an animal way. But if one wants to look at history, existence and the fate of the universe, doing this mindlessly is pointless as well as impossible.

This might be why so many geniuses are emotionally unstable. I have seen it within my own family. Myself, for that matter! It is a two edged sword. And frankly, I would rather be slashed to ribbons by the sword of memory than to spend my pitiful life ignorant of nearly everything including most of what I have done! This is a monumental waste. Why bother living in the first place?

Societies have institutional memories which replace reality. These are very heavily edited by whoever has the power to impose unilaterally, a narrative. This is why the net has humongously disrupted that forgetting process! We often tell news organizations to learn to use Google so they can refer to their own past stories! They won’t, if it interfers with the new directives they are issuing.

Computers and cameras now record at least one facet of reality and are a home base for us to reexamine what our brains are trying to erase or conceal. This is most disturbing to people who need to rewrite reality. Orwell’s 1984 is a seminal book on this very process.