The
following is an update from Suzanne Taylor and TheConversation.org Making
Sense of These Times [http://www.theconversation.org] Website. Thank you for
your interest. If you wish to be removed from this list at any time, just let us
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July 29, 2002
CROP
CIRCLE DIARY ENTRIES:
July 17,
2002
Pray
for filmmaker William Gazecki to do as good a job on "CROP CIRCLES: Quest for
Truth," which is in the final stages of completion, as he did on
"WACO." The Internet Movie Database, IMDb, "the new subscription
website designed for people who work in the entertainment industry," that's
"visited by 12 million movie lovers each month," has a guide to documentary
movies. There are 24,901 titles listed, and look where "WACO" shows
up in popularity!
Top Documentary Movies
as picked by our users:
Rent it at your video store if you
missed this startling opinion-changer -- and go the the
Nuart Theater in Los Angeles for "CROP CIRCLES: Quest for Truth,"
which starts its first week run on August 23. I put the film together
and organized the main shoot in England last summer, which got me the title
Executive Producer, but William has had it under wraps since then, and I'm part of the public for the
big show. I can't wait.
July 22,
2002
The August issue of "WIRED"
has a crop circle piece that I think is the first in mainstream media coming
from someone who's properly intrigued, albeit still fuzzy about a crossover he
makes between circles and New Age woo woo. By and large, though, I was grateful
that the piece succinctly tells the right story and is in such a trend setting
magazine.
I contacted the author, Daniel Pinchbeck, after I saw the
article. Here's the piece (enlarge the pages to read it), and my correspondence
with Pinchbeck, which is so interesting that I've
made it a Featured Conversation on the site: http://www.mightycompanions.org/cropcircles/wired/wheatgraffiti.html.
July 26,
2002
...crop circles are part of the decades-long campaign by --
most obviously to me -- benevolent beings from other worlds and/or dimensions as
they gradually assert for us all to see their presence on this planet,
presumably to gently prepare us psychologically for global first contact and our
gradual catching up-to-speed with the rest of the universe. Of course, the
puppets of the "Opposition" still in power here on Earth do not want to lose
control over their perceived dominion over us all, which is why a strict news
media blackout has been enforced and a sustained disinformation campaign and
denial policy implemented in a futile attempt to keep the lid on this
nevertheless unstoppable emerging reality. Please understand that I'm not one
who believes the ET's are coming to relieve us from our responsibility to clean
the mess we have created for ourselves as part of our learning process and
evolutionary awakening. They will certainly be forthcoming in providing help,
but not until we are willing to ask for it and accept to set aside our
self-centeredness, open up to our true spiritual lineage and act
accordingly.
See this report he passed
along from Linda Moulton Howe: "Mysterious Lights Seen Above Field Where
Nautilus Formation Emerged" [http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=374&category=Environment] on a beautiful new nautilus-like formation. "On
July 17, a Danish girl visited the Silent Circle Cafe and said she had watched
strange lights moving around erratically in the sky over the hills for about ten
minutes the night before."
July 28,
2002
________________________________________
Suzanne's
comments: This conversation is the pay-off for doing the site --
the creative opening for something new to show up. Here's some essence of
the new posts, where you could chime
in:
The more I have a chance
to explore The Conversation web site the more I am impressed with what you are
doing. The scope, quantity and quality of material is awesome... have found the quotes section of The Conversation
particularly interesting in several respects. The intelligence and clarity of
thought reflected are refreshing. In is also reassuring to see that one's own
perceptions may not be as hopeless a minority as daily life and the mass media
view of the world would indicate. Most important is seeing that a disparate
group of people of widely differing backgrounds and circumstances with only
obvious intelligence and an open mind in common have arrived at surprisingly
similar points of view on so many issues. It would seem to indicate that reason
can indeed lead to inescapable conclusions and nonsense is still nonsense even
when it attracts majority belief.
Meanwhile in the broader world every
issue is attended by great argument and disagreement. A never ending
proliferation of laws and regulation governing the minutiae of every activity is
the response to every problem. As a society it is clear we have a failure of
philosophy. Instead of a few clear basic principles we have multitudes of arcane
specific rules. Procedure has trumped result. Legality has replaced ethics.
No amount of additional patches can fix this. We must go back to basics
and reconsider our fundamental understanding of life, the world and our place in
it. We need to reconstruct a simple clear statement of our basic principles.
>From this all else emerges naturally. Without it we have only a hopeless
muddle of conflict and compromise. Much of what is needed is inherent in The
Conversation. What is required is a clear concise formulation of it.
At
this point we have a disparate group of researchers who have figured it out for
themselves. Now we need to sell it to management and the shareholders. For this
we need an executive summary and popular presentation.
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COLUMN FROM ARIANNA
HUFFINGTON: How Can This Be
Legal? -- July 25,
2002
Suzanne's comments:
To catch up on
where we are in our corporate culture-- i.e. still stuck where we've been --
this is a good synopsis. "It's hard to imagine, but even with the public
screaming for reform, behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, the high-level -- and
perfectly legal -- gaming of the system continues unabated."
Other quotes drawn from the
column:
Enron Lawyer of Last Resort Robert Bennett deftly summed up the
real reasons for the current economic crisis: "Most of the problems -- not all
of them -- are things that have been legal and acceptable"...the problem isn't
what is illegal but rather what is legal...
It is emblematic of the kind
of corporate culture we live in that a practice that the man on the street would
consider blatantly illegal is not only legal but touted as a breakthrough and a
coup. And it is a breakthrough, of a sort. After all, it's not easy to take
something so unequivocally wrong and make it legal.
...as part of
[Robert Rubin's] $40 million a year gig at
Citigroup, he phoned both Bush's Treasury Department and a top credit-rating
agency in an effort to delay the downgrading of Enron's credit rating -- and,
thus, allow the company to continue defrauding the public. What is stunning is
that even after all the suffering caused by Enron's deception, when questioned
about the ill-advised phone call to Treasury Rubin still maintains: "I would do
it again."
So, I suspect, would many, many others. This defiant
arrogance is still the order of the day in
Washington...
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COLUMN FROM GEOV PARRISH:
Put it in Crawford, Texas -- July 24,
2002
Suzanne's comments: As
Geov Parrish is in the running for the person with the most vitriol for George
Bush, which is abundantly clear here, this column also is a clarifier about the
nuclear waste problems we face. Scary stuff. "The majority of the United States'
nuclear waste is now slated to sit 65 miles upwind [of a major American city], a
decision that seems clinically insane."
Other quotes drawn from the
column:
Yucca Mountain itself sits atop an active earthquake fault...And
while the adjacent Nevada Test Site is already heavily contaminated from nearly
a half-century of above- and below-ground tests of America's nuclear arsenal,
there's one major presence downwind that wasn't there when the Test Site was
created: a major American city...
...moving any waste from its current home -- an assortment
of weapons plants, nuclear power facilities, and low-grade industrial settings
-- is something we're even less good at than storage. The possibility of a
nuclear leak, accident, theft, or terrorist attack while transporting hazardous
nuclear material is far greater than if it sits where it is, and the map of
where such materials would need to travel to get them all to Yucca Mountain
looks a lot like the nation's interstate highway map -- in other words, it
passes through or around almost every major population center we have...
The only way -- the only way -- to not have more of a problem tomorrow
than we have today is to simply stop making more nuclear waste, which means to
stop all nuclear production -- power plants, weapons production, industrial
applications, every bit of it. Shut it all down -- or we'll just create more
waste we have no way of safely disposing.
________________________________________
Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in
Iraq...twelve-year Marine Corps veteran..."I'm a card-carrying Republican in the
conservative-moderate range who voted for George W. Bush for President. I'm not
here with a political agenda. I'm not here to slam Republicans. I am one." Yet
this was a lie...Ritter was in the room that night to denounce, with roaring
voice and burning eyes, the coming American war in Iraq. According to Ritter,
this coming war is about nothing more or less than domestic American politics,
based upon speculation and rhetoric entirely divorced from fact. According to
Ritter, that war is just over the horizon...
"This is not about the
security of the United States," said this card- carrying Republican while
pounding the lectern. "This is about domestic American politics. The national
security of the United States of America has been hijacked by a handful of
neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own
ideologically-driven political ambitions. The day we go to war for that reason
is the day we have failed collectively as a nation."
...if an
unquestionable case could be made that such weapons and terrorist connections
existed, he would be all for a war in Iraq. It would be just, smart, and in the
interest of national defense. Therein lies the rub: According to Scott Ritter,
who spent seven years in Iraq with the UNSCOM weapons inspection teams
performing acidly detailed investigations into Iraq's weapons program, no such
capability exists. Iraq simply does not have weapons of mass destruction, and
does not have threatening ties to international terrorism...
Scott
Ritter appeared before NATO...After he was finished, 16 of the 19 NATO nations
present wrote letters of complaint to the American government about Rumsfeld's
comments, and about our basis for war. American UN representatives boycotted
this hearing, and denounced all who gave ear to Ritter...
"The clock is
ticking," he said, "and it's ticking towards war. And it's going to be a real
war. It's going to be a war that will result in the deaths of hundreds, if not
thousands, of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It's a war
that is going to devastate Iraq. It's a war that's going to destroy the
credibility of the United States of America. I just came back from London, and I
can tell you this - Tony Blair may talk a good show about war, but the British
people and the bulk of the British government do not support this war. The
Europeans do not support this war. NATO does not support this war. No one
supports this war."
The Coming October War in Iraq
William Rivers
Pitt
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/07.25A.wrp.iraq.htm
...people who care about these issues --
human rights and civil rights -- never stopped caring about these issues, but
now they are starting to organize again...it needs to accelerate, because it
appears that the United States is going to attack Iraq, with Tony Blair's
complicity, and all that can stop them is public opinion, mass movements, direct
action, and all those old methods of organizing...
There is no doubt
that the media in the United States has reinforced the position it has always
held as a protector of the establishment. Since people depend on the media as
their main source of information, this is a very bad situation. But the people
working to control our political minds can only control them for so long. They
know that. And, after a while, as happened in the 1960s and in the 1970s, people
have too much common sense, and they see through the lies.
A worrying
issue, though, is the new mechanisms of control that are being put in place,
such as the USA PATRIOT Act. In the United States we have seen the disappearance
of a thousand people, many simply because they have Muslim names, disappeared as
if they were in a Latin American dictatorship. At the same time, the Bush
administration has established this concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay in
Cuba...the treatment of the detainees is in contravention of just about every
article of international law about detention of prisoners of war that has ever
been written...
It seems to me that one of the byproducts of September
11 is that people have an opportunity to really see clearly the nature of the
enemy. That's why that letter [http://www.theconversation.org/wontdeny.html]
signed by [69] artists,
academics, and writers that came from the United States was so eloquent. They identified the enemy as
the unelected clique, the plutocracy that is running Washington. And the letter
called on all of us to resist. I found that a very moving document.
I
think people are now beginning to understand that it is not just a matter of
opposing a policy, it is a matter of resisting the enemy of the most fundamental
human rights...and the distance that resistance has to travel between
understanding this and being effective in making change is not all that far.
Although the United States has a formidable arsenal of weapons and
power, so does public opinion, and I think resistance can push it over. We have
seen that in countries all over the world where people have overthrown
oppressive regimes. With the assault on Iraq looming, I think the task of
building this resistance is especially urgent.
Q&A with John Pilger
Anthony Arnove
and John Pilger
ZNet Commentary [Zmag commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of
ZMag/ZNet. You must become a Sustainer to read this
article.]
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