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Gould
& Fitzgerald GrailWerk Quests
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News Connections
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Voice: News items connected to themes from The Voice novel. (biomedical, metaphysical, scientific). |
Afghanistan,
the End of Illusion: News items connected to themes from Afghanistan End of Illusion Geopolitical, Reconstruction, Historical, Spiritual, Etc. |
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| Boston Globe What most people don't know is that the Department of Defense is
already funding a research program with far creepier implications.
The $24 million enterprise called Brain Machine Interfaces is developing
technology that promises to directly read thoughts from a living
brain-and even instill thoughts as well. New York Times One of the most ancient and thriving products of Irish industry
isn't mentioned in the tourist brochures, or the guidebooks, or
the economic histories. I don't mean linen, tweed or Jameson's.
What I have in mind is shame. The Guardian The government is hell bent on creating a national DNA database
by stealth. It claims that only criminals will be listed, yet is
passing legislation through parliament so that DNA samples will
be retained indefinitely for anyone who is ever arrested, whether
guilty or innocent. Boston Globe Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, made a rather spectacular
fool of himself last week during a hearing on electronic data piracy.
Too bad for Hatch, but good clean fun for any technology writer
who enjoys asking the question: Can they do that? Boston Globe Critics say the Islamic world needs its own Enlightenment. But
just how enlightened was our own? Stratfor U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, in a Vanity Fair
interview, said the public justification for the invasion of Iraq
was not primarily based on the fear of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). Wolfowitz was quoted as saying, "For bureaucratic reasons,
we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it
was the one reason everyone could agree on." The Primordial Leap and the Present: Before anything else, we need to come terms with the word itself,
not in any final sense, but as a first approach to the matter. What
is consciousness? Is it our emotions, our intelligence? Is is equivalent
to the term 'mind' or 'spirit' or 'gnosis'? New York Times Of special interest is the powerful society in Afghanistan in ancient
times called the Roshaniya--illuminated ones. There are actually
references to this mystical cult going back through history to the
House of Wisdom at Cairo. The Boston Globe A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing
to former colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence
that the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support
its case for war with Iraq. New York Times Aboard the U.S.S. Caine, it was the business with the strawberries
that finally convinced the doubters that something was amiss with
the captain. Is foreign policy George W. Bush's quart of strawberries?
New York Times As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by
international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles
of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack
on Iraq does not meet these standards. New York Times In the Pentagon research effort to detect terrorism by electronically
monitoring the civilian population, the most remarkable detail may
be this: Most of the pieces of the system are already in place. New York Times Minuscule mobile telephones, tiny electronic organizers and portable
DVD players are nice. But they'd be so much less cumbersome if they
were surgically implanted under your skin. The Boston Globe Soul. Courage. Voice for the voiceless. That surely describes Wellstone...
That does not describe his fellow Democrats. The Boston Globe Someday in the future, people may walk into an emergency room after
a rape, or a car wreck, or a shooting, and be given a pill to protect
them from the haunting memories that may follow. Los Angeles Times Larry Lessig is a 41-year-old Stanford University law professor
who still looks like a graduate student, someone who has spent years
in library stacks researching arcane subjects, miles from the real
world. The Boston Globe History is not the same old same old, nor is it just one darn thing
after another. History - cosmic and human - has a direction, and
the direction can be quantitatively defined. New York Times We humans have been trying to accelerate our own evolution for
millennia, and while in some ways we appear to be getting away with
it, biological computing could well test the forbearance of Mother
Nature. The Economist "Nine hundred years after the first of them was proclaimed,
the crusades still resonate - and not just in the Middle East. Jonathan
Riley-Smith, professor of ecclesiastical history at Cambridge University
and the author of several books on the crusades," reflects
on their changing interpretation. |
Associated Press ``The big mistake is from the Americans. They want to bring peace
to Afghanistan with thieves and killers. The Americans after two
years have learned nothing,'' said Abdul Raouf, a car dealer in
the eastern city of Jalalabad. ``Every day the situation is worse.'' Los Angeles Times Two months after a gun attack, the bullet holes in the Datsun sedan
have been patched and it runs beautifully. But water engineer Asil
Kahn walks with a limp and he still has two bullets in his body,
one of them half an inch from his spine. New York Times The assassination, witnesses said, was trademark Taliban: two men
on a motorbike, the passenger opening fire with a Kalashnikov rifle,
the driver making a quick getaway. Washington Post At the front gate of the Abdurrad Akhunzada mosque, a turbaned
watchman paces warily in the dusty twilight, hiding his Kalashnikov
beneath an outsized scarf so he doesn't frighten men arriving for
evening prayers. Boston Globe Warlords are creating ''a climate of fear'' in Afghanistan that
is threatening efforts to draft a new constitution and could derail
national elections expected next year, a human rights group said.
Boston Globe The Bush administration's failure to help Afghans rehabilitate
their war-blasted land makes the United States appear either incompetent
at the work of nation-building abroad or deceitful about its interest
in the welfare of peoples Washington has claimed to liberate. New York Times But now, after seeing Kabul, I am left to wonder: is Afghanistan
dying again? New York Times The hedging of bets has taken many forms since the fall of the
Taliban a year and a half ago: a dizzying succession of officers
at the United State Embassy for the first six months... Boston Globe The Bush administration's conclusion that two truck trailers seized
in Iraq were probably used as mobile bioweapons labs is unlikely
to dispel doubts about prewar assertions that Iraq had a vast program
of weapons of mass destruction, according to defense analysts. New York Times The(recent) Qaeda hijackings underscored how the American-financed
war against the Soviets in Afghanistan helped create a political
vacuum filled by the Taliban and Islamic extremists, who turned
their deadly terrorism back against the United States. New York Times While United States forces have been busy in Iraq, there has been
an alarming spate of violence, much of it in southern Afghanistan. Washington Post Sixteen months after the ruling Taliban fell and Hamid Karzai
took over as president, Afghanistan is still struggling to establish
the basics of a working government. The Boston Globe Ten years from now, will we be looking back asking how the United
States could have thought that an unprovoked, preventive war on
Iraq could succeed when the signs of danger were so clear and ominous?
New York Times Nearly a year after the start of America's war on terrorism, that
war faces the real risk of being hijacked by foreign governments
with repressive agendas. Instead of leading a democratic coalition,
the United States faces the risk of dangerous isolation. ABC News American troops in Afghanistan are pretty much hunkered down at
their bases. Outside of the main cities, there is no law and order,
just competing warlords. And the current government controls little
outside of the capital of Kabul. Are we letting Afghanistan slide
towards anarchy? The Boston Globe As Afghans struggle to shape their country's future, US foot-dragging
on peacekeeping there threatens to preclude democracy and close
off opportunities for women. The Boston Globe America's successful campaign to drive the Taliban from power in
Afghanistan and deprive Osama bin Laden's terrorist network of its
secure bases there reflected a sound military strategy coordinating
US air power and the loosely knit Afghan guerrillas known as the
Northern Alliance. Unfortunately, the benefits of that initial victory
are being frittered away because US planes firing so-called smart
munitions have killed hundreds of Afghan civilians. The Boston Globe WHAT KIND of marks should we give the press, radio, and television
for explaining the changed world since Sept. 11? No one could fault
the nation's news gatherers on that fateful day itself. The Boston Globe KABUL, Afghanistan - Al Qaeda leaders have been meeting with rogue
Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, seeking to form an alliance
with the Islamic militant who recently threatened a holy war against
US and British forces operating in Afghanistan, American and Afghan
officials say. The Bulletin Years after driving him out of the country, the people of Kabul
still know him as "the Vampire". Even by the hellish standards
of other Afghan warlords, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's brutality stands
out. Voy Forums Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas has made a donation in the
name of the late Senator Alan Cranston to help rebuild the media
in post-war Afghanistan, according to an announcement by the non-profit
organization Internews on PR Newswire. Asia Times War against terrorism? Not really. Reminder: it's all about oil.
A quick look at the map is all it takes. It's no coincidence that
the map of terror in the Middle East and Central Asia is practically
interchangeable with the map of oil. The Times of India The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan
to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's ruling
Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here. |
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| Boston Globe The Council on Foreign Relations is the epicenter of the American
Establishment...The council is best known for its journal, Foreign
Affairs, ordinarily a fairly cautious and moderate publication.
So it was startling to pick up the September-October issue and read
article after article expressing well-documented alarm at the hijacking
of American foreign policy... The Guardian Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau
in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly
issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and
bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan
war in collaboration with Bin Laden. Boston Globe Saudi Wahabbism interprets the Koran literally, discriminates against
women, fulminates against Jews, and incites jihad against the wider
non-Muslim world. It has contributed to the repression of Saudi
citizens. ...radical Wahabbism, which, by any objective standard,
is the very antithesis of human rights...Women are still barred
from working, driving, and traveling independently. Minority Shi'ite
Muslims and non-Wahabbi Sunni Muslims are routinely discriminated
against, as are the country's five and a half million migrant workers.
Non-Muslims enjoy no religious freedom. Prisoners are routinely
tortured. There is no freedom of expression or assembly. The Public Eye Magazine Reconstructionism would eliminate not only democracy but many of
its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and
public schools. Women would be generally relegated to hearth and
home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship,
perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend
capital punishment beyond such crimes as kidnapping, rape, and murder
to include, among other things, blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and
homosexuality. Apologetics Index ...''the Christians'' are the ''new chosen people of God,'' ...Further,
Jews, once the ''chosen people,'' failed to live up to God's covenant
and therefore are no longer God's chosen. Christians, of the correct
sort, now are. New York Times A woman who escaped from a polygamist clan at age 16 after being
physically and sexually abused has sued the influential family,
seeking more than $110 million in damages. The lawsuit alleges the
clan, also said to be known as the "Order," is a "secretive
religious society and economic organization" that promotes
sexual abuse of girls through illegal and underage marriages, incest,
and polygamy. New York Times I come to you as one of America's rarest species: A progressive
optimist in the age of Bush II. Some would say that this makes me
either dumber than a dust bunny or someone who's simply not paying
attention. After all, the messianic Bushites have launched an executive
war, deleted entire paragraphs from the Bill of Rights, shoved trillions
from our public treasury into the pockets of their wealthiest backers,
and generally romped gaily over labor unions, the environment, the
courts, and everything else that progressives value. Worse, they're
doing it with impunity, for the Democrats in Congress have metamorphosed
into meek Wobblycrats, the media have mostly been cheerleaders,
and the polls have shown Bush to be likeable and popular. New York Times For a moment during the spring, neoconservatives associated with
the Bush administration thought they had died and gone to heaven.
The quicker than expected fall of Saddam Hussein seemed to justify
their vision of a new America that would reshape world politics.
The United States would use its overwhelming military power to crush
tyrannical regimes, they declared, and establish American-style
capitalist democracies in their place. Guardian Unlimited Classified pages in the Congress report on September 11 have stirred
curiosity about the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia,
says Julian Borger. CBS News For decades, priests in this country abused children in parish
after parish while their superiors covered it all up. Now it turns
out the orders for this cover up were written in Rome at the highest
levels of the Vatican. Guardian Unlimited Tony Blair knows it is one of the most delicate of subjects. When
asked about it he squirms and tries to change to a more comfortable
line of inquiry. But quietly the Prime Minister is putting religion
at the centre of the New Labour project, reflecting his own deeply
felt beliefs that answers to most questions can be found in the
Bible. Boston Globe I'm glad that the press is finally making an issue of President
Bush's knowing use of a faked intelligence report on Iraq's supposed
nuclear weapons program. But most of the press keeps missing the
behind or who actually benefits from the tax cuts or what kind of
drug coverage the administration's Medicare amendments will really
provide or how the Bush Clear Skies Act actually degrades clean-air
standards, the press has given the administration an astonishingly
free ride. Guardian Unlimited As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday
to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming
increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small,
well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence
that helped steer America into war. Boston Globe One needn't believe that George W. Bush ''lied'' about Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction. Following the tradition, he simply relied on
reports that gave him what he wanted - reports having filtered out
the warnings, contradictions, and ambiguities that did not square
with his oft-stated purpose. It was to such filtering that George
Tenet pled guilty. No duh. Boston Globe Ann Coulter's popularity on the right is a phenomenon that has
baffled me for a long time. As someone who shares many political
views identified as conservative, I have always cringed in embarrassment
whenever I saw Coulter on television purporting to speak (or rather,
rant) for ''my'' side. Boston Globe When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them
with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate
and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires
that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Boston Globe More than 25 years ago in Tehran, I was told a story by then American
Ambassador Richard Helms, the former CIA chief: The Russian ambassador
had asked the shah how he could accept an ambassador who had been
CIA? The shah replied that at least he could be sure the Americans
had sent their top spy. Reuters An American who spent two months working on a U.S.-led reconstruction
team in Iraq accused Washington Thursday of failing to prepare for
the post-conflict situation. Timothy Carney, a former U.S. ambassador
who until recently had been overseeing Iraq's Industry Ministry,
said most of the focus was placed on the military campaign and very
little on the security and political problems that could ensue.
New York Times There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials
deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential
people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious. The Guardian The Bush administration has found its next target for pre-emptive
war, but it's not Iran, Syria or North Korea. Not yet anyway. Before
launching any new foreign adventures, the Bush gang has some homeland
housekeeping to take care of: it is going to sweep up those pesky
non-governmental organisations that are helping to turn world opinion
against US bombs and brands. Telegraph The American-led reconstruction effort in Iraq is "in chaos"
and suffering from "a complete absence of strategic direction",
a very senior British official in Baghdad has told The Telegraph. Boston Globe The drowsy commuters who trudge through South Station each morning
know what to expect when they spill into the station. ''Good morning,
everybody. Today is going to be a good day,'' says a soothing, raspy
voice over the intercom. Boston Globe In claiming detailed knowledge of Iraq's illegal weapons, US officials
may have jeopardized the credibility of American intelligence and
policy-making for years to come. The Guardian The present world situation is unprecedented. The great global
empires of the past - such as the Spanish and notably the British
- bear little comparison with what we see today in the United States
empire. The Guardian Israel declared total war on Hamas yesterday, with the Islamic
resistance movement responding by ordering all its fighters to immediately
mobilise and "blow up the Zionist entity". The Guardian Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading
White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those
opposed to the US-led war. The US deputy defence secretary, Paul
Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic"
excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive
was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil. New York Times The mystery of Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction has become
a lot less mysterious. Recent reports in major British newspapers
and three major American news magazines, based on leaks from angry
intelligence officials, back up the sources who told my colleague
Nicholas Kristof that the Bush administration "grossly manipulated
intelligence" about W.M.D.'s. Boston Globe Why the distance between what is and what ought to be? Where are
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction? If he was such a threat,
why did his army perform so poorly? Does it matter where he is?
If the war in Iraq was not about oil, why does the United States
insist on its indefinite control? If the war was, instead, about
democracy, why are the Iraqi people, including Saddam's proven enemies,
excluded from authority? Is Iraq to be like Afghanistan, where war
lords rule and heroin thrives? Are there more suicide-bombers now
than ever? Has the American war on terrorism advanced safety? ABC News While President Bush and numerous U.S. intelligence sources were
declaring al Qaeda splintered, on the run and incapable of carrying
out major terror attacks before the recent spate of bombings, European
intelligence services were saying a very different thing. Haaretz At the conclusion of its second week, the war to liberate Iraq
wasn't looking good. Not even in Washington. The assumption of a
swift collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime had itself collapsed.
The presupposition that the Iraqi dictatorship would crumble as
soon as mighty America entered the country proved unfounded. Boston Globe The looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was a devastating blow
to the world's cultural heritage for which one has to look back
to the fall of Constantinople, the ravages of the conquistadors,
the Mongol invasions, and the burning of the library of Alexandria
to find a parallel. New York Times Protests against the American forces here are rising by the day
as Iraqis exercise their new right to complain — something
that often landed them in prison or worse during President Saddam
Hussein's rule. The Village Voice Before the war started, the Pentagon told its embedded reporters
not to dig for dirt or conduct their own investigations—just
sit back and let the "truth" set them free. Even so, during
the week ending April 6, some correspondents stayed honest by covering
not only American victories and losses, but also the dark side of
war, excesses that are unlikely to win the loyalty of Iraqis. Never
mind what the Arab media are saying. Some of the most unflinching
stories have been written by reporters from the U.S. and U.K. The Guardian In a scathing attack on Britain and the US, Mr Blix accused them
of planning the war "well in advance" and of "fabricating"
evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign. Boston Globe CBS officials were said to be upset that Gernon appeared to equate
Bush with Hitler by drawing parallels between Germany in the 1930s
and contemporary America. Bush Foreign Policy: What is Dispensationalism? Dispensationalism is a form of premillennialism originating among
the Plymouth Brethren in the early 1830's. The father of dispensationalism,
John Nelson Darby, educated as a lawyer and ordained Anglican priest,
was one of the chief founders of the Plymouth Brethren movement,
which arose in reaction against the perceived empty formalism of
the Church of England. The Observer An obscure Jewish sect in New York has been gripped in awe by what
it believes to be a mystical visitation by a 20lb carp that was
heard shouting in Hebrew, in what many Jews worldwide are hailing
as a modern miracle. Boston Globe The Marshall Plan is now seen as a key to Western Europe's transformation
from devastation into a prosperous base on which a visionary union
could be built. Today another esteemed soldier-statesman, General
Colin Powell, has Marshall's old job, and the time for announcing
the Powell Plan is at hand. Senate Floor Speach To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human
experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the
brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating
the horrors of war. Guardian Unlimited When the Soviet threat vanished, the purpose of American foreign
policy seemed to go with it - until September 11 and Iraq's regime.
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