Thought-provoking 5 minutes on the state of the world from the late, great Alan Watts, a man far ahead of his time.
Also by Alan Watts: What If Money Was No Object?
Dr. Gabor Maté talks about the root causes of addiction and how to deal with them.
Whilst Hell has frozen over in Michigan (USA), Hell in Norway is still, well… hot as Hell.
Hell is a quaint little village in Norway that’s the resting place of 1,600 souls. There are red-roofed houses, a post office, a grocery store, even a church. It literally freezes over during the winter, which is yet another example of why its pun-friendly name draws tourists throughout the year. Weirdly enough, hell means “luck” in Norwegian, but the locals play up their association with the netherworld. When you pull into the train station, there’s a sign that reads HELL GODS — EXPEDITION, and the town’s most famous native, Mona Grudt, who won the 1990 Miss Universe beauty pageant, proudly called herself “the beauty queen from Hell.”
Then there’s the annual Blues in Hell Festival, which was founded by Kjell Inge Brovoll, better known as “Hell Boss.” This year, the festival brought a host of legendary American blues singers to the peaceful village, including Sugar Pie DeSanto, who is best described as a more unhinged and modern version of her late duet partner and childhood friend, Etta James.
Sugar Pie was my ticket to Hell. I first saw the 78-year-old, 4’11” spitfire on New Year’s Eve 2012—she hopped on the stage, kicked off her stiletto heels, and gyrated with the intensity of a woman 55 years her junior.
When I asked if I could take some photos of Sugar Pie, her manager asked me to accompany them to Detroit, where she played Aretha Franklin’s Christmas party. A year later, I got offered the chance to go to Hell with Sugar Pie. How could I have said anything other than “Hell, yes”?
A Fabulous and Impractical Guide to Today’s Polar Vortex (Photo: Matthias Clamer)
In fact, despite the trolling of climate change deniers, global warming is probably contributing to the record cold, as counter-intuitive as that may seem. The key factor is a feedback mechanism of climate change known as Arctic amplification. Here’s how to explain the nuts and bolts of it to your under-informed family and friends:
Snow and ice are disappearing from the Arctic region at unprecedented rates, leaving behind relatively warmer open water, which is much less reflective to incoming sunlight than ice. That, among other factors, is causing the northern polar region of our planet to warm at a faster rate than the rest of the northern hemisphere. (And, just to state the obvious, global warming describes a global trend toward warmer temperatures, which doesn’t preclude occasional cold-weather extremes.)
Since the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes helps drive the jet stream (which, in turn, drives most US weather patterns), if that temperature difference decreases, it stands to reason that the jet stream’s winds will slow down. Why does this matter?
Well, atmospheric theory predicts that a slower jet stream will produce wavier and more sluggish weather patterns, in turn leading to more frequent extreme weather. And, turns out, that’s exactly what we’ve been seeing in recent years. Superstorm Sandy’s uncharacteristic left hook into the New Jersey coast in 2012 was one such example of an extremely anomalous jet stream blocking pattern.
When these exceptionally wavy jet stream patterns occur mid-winter, it’s a recipe for cold air to get sucked southwards. This week, that’s happening in spectacular fashion.
Source: Quartz
Also another expert claims: Record cold doesn’t disprove global warming
Robert Parry, Consortium News joins Thom Hartmann. Al Qaeda is back – with a vengeance. Islamic militants linked to the terrorist group have taken over two Iraqi cities – almost 10 years after the American military took those same cities from insurgents during the bloody early days of the Iraq War. Has Bush’s Invasion of Iraq doomed the people of the Middle East to decades of sectarian violence?
Related: Maliki Warns Fallujans: Kick Out al-Qaeda or Else | US quietly sends Hellfire missiles, drones to Iraq | Finian Cunningham: Al-Qaeda’s Real Origins Exposed
St. Joseph lighthouse at Lake Michigan. (Photo: Tom Gill)
African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela visiting Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli, 1990.
By Linda Housman
“Question. Why was Mandela’s life celebrated by the world while Gaddafi after everything he did for Africa was gunned down like a dog?”, a Twitter user wondered days after Nelson Mandela’s passing.
This question becomes even more valid in light of what the mainstream media, in the wake of the former South African president’s death, have been anxiously hiding from the public: the actual close and crucial alliance between Mandela and Gaddafi. Back in the 70s and 80s, when the West refused to allow sanctions against Apartheid in South Africa and used to call Mandela a terrorist, it was none other than Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi who kept supporting him. Gaddafi funded Mandela’s fight against Apartheid by training ANC fighters and by paying for their education abroad, and their bond only became stronger after Mandela’s release from prison on February 11, 1990.
Nevertheless, one of them ended up being “gunned down like a dog” and his death was celebrated by the entire elite of the imperialist world, which celebrations were significantly summarized by Hillary “Warzone” Clinton in a now infamous interview in which she exults: “We came, we saw, he died!”
As for the other one, the same entire elite of the imperialist world crowded into the FNB stadium in Soweto, South Africa, to attend the funeral of their hero, and to verbosely praise Mandela and his achievements with all possible superlatives.
So how did the branded Saint Mandela really feel about the branded Mad Dog Gaddafi? Let’s hear straight from the horse’s mouth what the mainstream media have left out of their laudatory picture of the former ANC leader.
Right upon his release from prison, after more than 27 years behind bars, Mandela broke the UN embargo and paid a visit to the Libyan capital of Tripoli, where he declared: “My delegation and I are overjoyed with the invitation from the Brother Guide [Muammar Gaddafi], to visit the Great Popular and Socialist Arab Libyan Jamahiriya. I have been waiting impatiently ever since we received the invitation. I would like to remind you that the first time I came here, in 1962, the country was in a very different state of affairs. One could not but be struck by the sights of poverty from the moment of arrival, with all of its usual corollaries: hunger, illness, lack of housing and of health-care facilities, etc. Anger and revolt could be read in those days on the faces of everyone.
Since then, things have changed considerably. During our stay in prison, we read and heard a great deal about the changes which have come about in this country and about blossoming of the economy which has been experienced here. There is prosperity and progress everywhere here today which we were able to see even before the airplane touched ground. It is thus with great pleasure that we have come on a visit in the Jamahiriya, impatient to meet our brother, the Guide Gaddafi.”
When Mandela was taken to the ruins of Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli, which was bombed by the Reagan administration in 1986 in an attempt to murder the entire Gaddafi family, he said:
“No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do. Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi. They are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past.”
In response, Gaddafi thanked Mandela for his friendship, saying: “Who would ever have said that one day the opportunity for us to meet would become reality. We would like you to know that we are constantly celebrating your fight and that of the South African people, and that we salute your courage during all of those long years you spent in detention in the prison of Apartheid. Not a single day has passed without us having thought of you and your sufferings.”
Eight years later, when then U.S. president Bill Clinton visited Mandela in March 1998, Clinton criticized the South African president’s meeting with Muammar Gaddafi. In reaction to that criticism, Mandela straightforwardly replied:
“I have also invited Brother Leader Gaddafi to this country. And I do that because our moral authority dictates that we should not abandon those who helped us in the darkest hour in the history of this country. Not only did the Libyans support us in return, they gave us the resources for us to conduct our struggle, and to win. And those South Africans who have berated me for being loyal to our friends, can literally go and jump into a pool.”
Subsequently, let’s hear the ANC leader’s real thoughts on the West that has put him on a posthumous pedestal, and on topics that, to say the least, are not exactly popular among Western leaders.
On the U.S. preparing its war against Iraq in 2002: “If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the USA. They don’t care for human beings.”
In a 1999 speech: “Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank.”
“The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
On the day of Mandela’s funeral, December 15, 2013, a citizen from Accra, Ghana, expressed:
“All day long here in Ghana they have been broadcasting live the Memorial Service of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Courtesy, of course, of the BBC and Deutsche Welle? Why on earth doesn’t Africa have its own Broadcasting Network in this day and age? The news coverage on the BBC is always distorting according to their own interest, and that on Deutsche Welle a bit less, but still not African! And in all of Ghana – a nations with so many media resources – there is not a single foreign correspondent in the lot! Why must Africans always depend on others to tell their own stories to them?! Shame! Shame! Shame!”
In fact, there actually was someone working on an African broadcasting network. Someone who already connected the entire African continent by radio, television and telephone. In the early 90s, this person funded the establishment of the Regional African Satellite Communication Organization, which eventually provided Africa with its first own communications satellite on December 26, 2007. A second African satellite was launched in July 2010 and advanced plans for a continental broadcasting network were made. The person who funded at least 70% of this revolutionary project was the revolutionary leader of the Libyan Jamahiriya, Muammar Gaddafi.
Gaddafi thus angered the Western bankers, since Africa no longer would pay the annual $500 million fee to Europe for the use of its satellites, and of course no “self-respecting” banker was willing to fund a project that frees people from their claws. And this was not the only way in which Gaddafi angered the West to the point that he had to be eliminated from their agenda. The leader of the Libyan Al-Fateh Revolution worked hard and came close to embody the famous 1865 quote by American economist Adam Smith, saying: “The economy of any country which relies on the slavery of blacks is destined to descend into hell the day those countries awaken.”
On the eve of the NATO-led war against Libya, Gaddafi’s booming country largely co-funded three projects that would rid Africa from its financial dependence on the West once and for all: the African Investment Bank in the Libyan city of Sirte, the African Monetary Fund (AFM), to be based in the capital of Cameroon, Yaounde, in 2011, and the African Central Bank to be based in the capital of Nigeria, Abuja. Especially the latter angered France – not coincidentally also the main orchestrator of the war on Libya – because it would mean the end of the West African CFA franc and the Central African CFA franc, through which France kept a hold on as much as thirteen African countries. Only two months after Africa said no to Western attempts to join the AFM, Western organized “protests” against the AFM’s benefactor, Muammar Gaddafi, started to erupt in Libya… ultimately resulting in the freezing of $30 billion by the West, which money mostly was intended for the above mentioned financial projects.
But Gaddafi helped the African continent in more than just material ways. More than any other African leader, he supported Mandela’s ANC’s struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. Above that, many Black Africans, especially sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, found a new home in Gaddafi’s prosperous Libya.
Gaddafi understood that in order to develop a strong Africa that would be able to finally throw off the shackles of imperialism, unity was the first requirement. The 2009 Chairperson of the African Union also understood the African culture and recognized that African problems need African solutions. During a 2010 meeting in Tripoli, in which he addressed dozens of leaders from across Africa, he told: “African traditions are being replaced with Western culture and multiparty politics is destroying Africa.” Instead, Gaddafi promoted the establishment of a People’s Government (Jamahiriya) in which the power would not belong to (puppet) governments, but to the African people. And nothing scared the Western capitalists more than a united Africa – Muammar Gaddafi’s dream that was about to come true by the end of 2010.
Read full story at The Power Hous blog
Related: Gaddafi’s Libya Was Africa’s Most Prosperous Democracy | Why Gaddafi Must Die! | The Real Reason for NATO Attacking Libya
Water — just a liquid or much more? Many researchers are convinced that water is capable of “memory” by storing information and retrieving it. The possible applications are innumerable: limitless retention and storage capacity and the key to discovering the origins of life on our planet. Research into water is just beginning.
The Harem Dance by Giulio Rosati (1858-1917)
The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, there were two women, daughters of the same mother. They became prostitutes in Egypt, engaging in prostitution from their youth. In that land their breasts were fondled and their virgin bosoms caressed. The older was named Oholah, and her sister was Oholibah. They were mine and gave birth to sons and daughters. Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.”
“Oholah engaged in prostitution while she was still mine; and she lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians — warriors clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all of them handsome young men, and mounted horsemen. She gave herself as a prostitute to all the elite of the Assyrians and defiled herself with all the idols of everyone she lusted after. She did not give up the prostitution she began in Egypt, when during her youth men slept with her, caressed her virgin bosom and poured out their lust on her.”
“Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, the Assyrians, for whom she lusted. They stripped her naked, took away her sons and daughters and killed her with the sword. She became a byword among women, and punishment was inflicted on her.”
“Her sister Oholibah saw this, yet in her lust and prostitution she was more depraved than her sister. She too lusted after the Assyrians — governors and commanders, warriors in full dress, mounted horsemen, all handsome young men. I saw that she too defiled herself; both of them went the same way.”
“But she carried her prostitution still further. She saw men portrayed on a wall, figures of Chaldeans portrayed in red, with belts around their waists and flowing turbans on their heads; all of them looked like Babylonian chariot officers, natives of Chaldea. As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. After she had been defiled by them, she turned away from them in disgust. When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her naked body, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.”
Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “I will stir up your lovers against you, those you turned away from in disgust, and I will bring them against you from every side — the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them, handsome young men, all of them governors and commanders, chariot officers and men of high rank, all mounted on horses. They will come against you with weapons, chariots and wagons and with a throng of people; they will take up positions against you on every side with large and small shields and with helmets. I will turn you over to them for punishment, and they will punish you according to their standards. I will direct my jealous anger against you, and they will deal with you in fury. They will cut off your noses and your ears, and those of you who are left will fall by the sword. They will take away your sons and daughters, and those of you who are left will be consumed by fire. They will also strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry. So I will put a stop to the lewdness and prostitution you began in Egypt. You will not look on these things with longing or remember Egypt anymore.”
For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “I am about to deliver you into the hands of those you hate, to those you turned away from in disgust. They will deal with you in hatred and take away everything you have worked for. They will leave you stark naked, and the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your lewdness and promiscuity have brought this on you, because you lusted after the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. You have gone the way of your sister; so I will put her cup into your hand.”
This is what the Sovereign Lord says:
I have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord.
Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “Since you have forgotten me and turned your back on me, you must bear the consequences of your lewdness and prostitution.”
The Lord said to me: “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Then confront them with their detestable practices, for they have committed adultery and blood is on their hands. They committed adultery with their idols; they even sacrificed their children, whom they bore to me, as food for them. They have also done this to me: At that same time they defiled my sanctuary and desecrated my Sabbaths. On the very day they sacrificed their children to their idols, they entered my sanctuary and desecrated it. That is what they did in my house.”
“They even sent messengers for men who came from far away, and when they arrived you bathed yourself for them, applied eye makeup and put on your jewelry. You sat on an elegant couch, with a table spread before it on which you had placed the incense and olive oil that belonged to me.”
“The noise of a carefree crowd was around her; drunkards were brought from the desert along with men from the rabble, and they put bracelets on the wrists of the woman and her sister and beautiful crowns on their heads. Then I said about the one worn out by adultery, ‘Now let them use her as a prostitute, for that is all she is.’ And they slept with her. As men sleep with a prostitute, so they slept with those lewd women, Oholah and Oholibah. But righteous judges will sentence them to the punishment of women who commit adultery and shed blood, because they are adulterous and blood is on their hands.”
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “Bring a mob against them and give them over to terror and plunder. The mob will stone them and cut them down with their swords; they will kill their sons and daughters and burn down their houses.”
“So I will put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not imitate you. You will suffer the penalty for your lewdness and bear the consequences of your sins of idolatry. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign Lord.”
Source: Ezekiel 23
A column of Israeli tanks takes up position near the Gaza border (photo: PressTV)
If you hear it said about one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you to live in that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, […] then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt, and none of the condemned things are to be found in your hands. Then the Lord will turn from his fierce anger, will show you mercy, and will have compassion on you. He will increase your numbers, as he promised on oath to your ancestors — because you obey the Lord your God by keeping all his commands that I am giving you today and doing what is right in his eyes.
Source: Deuteronomy 13:12-18
Against the Grain 