What If Money Was No Object?

Narrated by Alan Watts (1915-1973)

 
What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like?

Let’s suppose, I do this often in vocational guidance of students, they come to me and say, well, we’re getting out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do. So I always ask the question, what would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?

Well, it’s so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way. Or another person says well, I’d like to live an
out-of-doors life and ride horses. I said you want to teach in a riding school? Let’s go through with it. What do you want to do?

When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.

And after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is, you can eventually turn it – you could eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. And then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So don’t worry too much. That’s everybody is – somebody is interested in everything, anything you can be interested in, you will find others will. But it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like, in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach our children to follow in the same track.

See what we are doing, is we’re bringing up children and educating to live the same sort of lives we are living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing, so it’s all retch, and no vomit it never gets there. And so, therefore, it’s so important to consider this question,

What do I desire?

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What U.S. Civilization in Guantánamo Looks Like


Testimony from five detainees, this animated film reveals the daily brutality of life inside Guantánamo prison, where prisoners are kept indefinitely without charge or trial by the country that claims to be the beacon of civilization for the rest of the world.


Force Feeding: Standard Guantánamo Bay Procedure


As Ramadan begins, more than 100 hunger-strikers in Guantánamo Bay continue their protest. More than 40 of them are being force-fed. A leaked document sets out the military instructions, or standard operating procedure, for force-feeding detainees. In this four-minute film made by Human Rights organisation Reprieve and Bafta award-winning director Asif Kapadia, US actor and rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), experiences the procedure.

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Gil Scott-Heron: Work for Peace


“If everyone believed in Peace the way they say they do,
we’d have Peace.
The only thing wrong with Peace,
is that you can’t make no money from it.”

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Whistleblowers on RT after Secretly Meeting Edward Snowden


Edward Snowden’s revelations about the activities of NSA forced him to go on the run and seek sanctuary from US intelligence agencies. But it also won him a lot of support and praise. Just yesterday he received the Sam Adams Award for ‘Integrity in Intelligence’. RT welcomes whistleblowers and activists Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Andrews Drake, Ray McGovern and Coleen Rowley in the studio. They saw the whistleblower in Moscow and presented him with the award.

Edward Snowden (3rd R) receives the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Award (SAAII) alongside UK WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison (3rd L) who took Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow and obtained his asylum and the United States government whistleblowers who presented the award (L-R) Coleen Rowley (FBI), Thomas Drake (NSA), Jesselyn Raddack (DoJ) and Ray McGovern (CIA) on October 9, 2013 in Moscow, Russia. (Photo by Sunshinepress/Getty Images)

Source: RT News

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The Unknown Genius of Nikola Tesla


Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-born American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before emigrating to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison. He soon struck out on his own with financial backers, setting up laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical devices. His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla as a consultant to help develop a power system using alternating current. Tesla is also known for his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs which included patented devices and theoretical work used in the invention of radio communication, for his X-ray experiments, and for his ill-fated attempt at intercontinental wireless transmission in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.

Tesla’s achievements and his abilities as a showman demonstrating his seemingly miraculous inventions made him world-famous. Although he made a great deal of money from his patents, he spent a lot on numerous experiments. He lived for most of his life in a series of New York hotels although the end of his patent income and eventual bankruptcy led him to live in diminished circumstances. Tesla still continued to invite the press to parties he held on his birthday to announce new inventions he was working and make (sometimes unusual) statements. Because of his pronouncements and the nature of his work over the years, Tesla gained a reputation in popular culture as the archetypal “mad scientist”. He died in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel on 7 January 1943.

Tesla’s work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but since the 1990s, his reputation has experienced a comeback in popular culture. His work and reputed inventions are also at the center of many conspiracy theories and have also been used to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories and New Age occultism. In 1960, in honor of Tesla, the General Conference on Weights and Measures for the International System of Units dedicated the term “tesla” to the SI unit measure for magnetic field strength.

Source: Wikipedia

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The US Military Cancer


A video about the Military Cancer attacking not only the USA, but the entire World.

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Seymour Hersh: Death of Osama bin Laden ‘One Big Lie’

Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn’t take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as “the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist”.

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an “independent” Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. “The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,” he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

Full article at: The Guardian

By Seymour Hersh: The My Lai Massacre (1969) | Torture at Abu Ghraib (2004) | The Redirection (2007)


Osama bin Laden had Funeral

As reported by several Arab news sources, Osama bin Laden was suffering from serious lung and kidney complications and succumbed to those diseases in mid-December, 2001, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The sources stated that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.

Whoever president Obama’s death squad killed in the raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May, 2011, none of them were Osama bin Laden. You can’t kill a dead man. Further more, when members of the Navy SEAL started to question the fake operation among themselves and their families, Obama saw no other way than to silence them before they went public. Navy SEAL’s dad: Obama sent my son to his death.

Also see: Osama bin Laden Denies Involvement in the 9/11 Attacks

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A Short History of the War on Syria (2006-2014)

More than one million Syrians rallied in Damascus in support of President Bashar al-Assad and his reform program on October 12, 2011. Photo taken from a helicopter by the Syrian Arab News Agency. (Click image to enlarge)

In 2006 the U.S. was at war in Iraq. Some of the enemy forces it very much struggled to fight against were coming in through Syria. The same year Israel lost a war against Hizbullah. Its armored forces were ambushed whenever they tried to push deeper into Lebanon while Hizbullah managed to continuously fire rockets against Israeli army position and cities. Hizbullah receives supply for its missile force from Syria and from Iran through Syria. Its long-term plans to attack Iran and to thereby keep supremacy in the Middle East depend on severing Hizbullah’s supply routes. The sectarian Sunni Gulf countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, saw their Sunni brethren defeat in Iraq and a Shia government, supported by Iran, taking over the country. All these countries had reason to fight Syria. There were also economic reasons to subvert an independent Syria. A gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey was competing with one from Iran to Syria. Large finds of natural gas in the coastal waters of Israel and Lebanon make such finds in Syrian waters quite plausible.

In late 2006 the United States started to finance an external opposition to Syria’s ruling Baath party. Those exiles were largely members of the Muslim Brotherhood which had been evicted from Syria after their bloody uprising against the Syrian state between 1976 and 1982 had failed. In 2007 a plan for regime change in Syria was agreed upon between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The aim was to destroy the “resistance” alliance of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

By 2011 three years of drought, caused by global warming and Turkey’s upstream dams and irrigation projects, had weakened the Syrian economy. Large parts of the poor rural population lost their means of living and moved into the cities. They provided the fertile ground needed to launch an uprising against the Syrian state.

The U.S. part in the plan was to provide the media and “global opinion” cover for the insurgency. To that purpose it used the tool from its “color revolution” tool box. “Citizen journalists” were recruited, trained and provided with the video and communication equipment needed for media propagandizing. Others were trained in organizing “peaceful civil demonstrations”. The Saudis took care of the darker part of the plan. They financed and armed rebel groups, often related to the exiled Muslim Brotherhood, which had the task to instigate a wider insurgency by taking on government forces as well as the peaceful demonstrators.

Read the full story at: Moon of Alabama

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Malalai Joya: Imperialism and Fundamentalism Have Joined Hands in Afghanistan


Ahead of next week’s 12th anniversary of what has become the longest war in U.S. history, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says the United States is seeking to sign an accord to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan for the indefinite future. The United States plans to pull out the bulk of its 57,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but the Pentagon wants to retain a smaller force of around 10,000 forces after 2014.

We are joined by Afghan activist and former member of Parliament, Malalai Joya, author of the book, “A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice.” A survivor of numerous attempts on her life, Time magazine has named her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. “We need the support of justice-loving people of the U.S. to join their hands with us,” Joya says. “Unfortunately, we see that today imperialism and fundamentalism have joined hands.”

Source: Democracy Now!

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Hvorfor JEG er aktiv på nettet og hvorfor DU også bør være det

A Simple Effect by Keld Bach (click image to enlarge)

Vi befinder os midt i den digitale tidsalder som startede for ca. 25 år siden. Flere og flere af de ting vi er vant til at bruge i dagligdagen bliver, eller er allerede blevet, digitaliseret. Det gælder bl.a. billeder, film, musik, nyheder og ikke mindst kommunikation. Om kort tid kan vi kun komme i kontakt med de offentlige myndigheder via internettet (computer, tablet eller smartphone), så vi kan lige så godt vænne os til at bruge disse redskaber først som sidst. Der er nemlig ingen vej uden om, hvis vi vil undgå at blive hægtet af samfundsudviklingen.

Internettet (også kaldet cyberspace, webben eller informationsmotorvejen) er stedet hvor det meste foregår. Nettet er en dynamisk størrelse der hele tiden vokser og udvikler sig i takt med brugernes aktivitet. Nye tjenester og smarte features bliver løbende tilføjet og for de flestes vedkommende er det blevet en helt naturlig ting at betale sine regninger, læse nyheder, sammenligne priser eller handle på nettet. Desuden finder vi her en guldgruppe af nyttige informationer om stort set alt mellem himmel og jord – og det i et omfang som selv de bedste biblioteker ikke kan matche.

En anden vigtig grund til at jeg er aktiv på nettet er, at det giver mig mulighed for at vise eller fortælle andre hvad jeg oplever, interesserer mig for, eller mener om aktuelle begivenheder. I tilgift giver det mig også mulighed for at følge med i hvad andre laver, oplever, mener o.s.v. Altså en meget nyttig form for flervejskommuni-kation. Dette er også grunden til at sociale netværk som Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, o.m.a. er blevet så populære de senere år. Folk har opdaget hvor hurtigt og nemt det er at holde kontakt med familie, venner og bekendte. Og som bekendt er god kommunikation nøglen til bedre forståelse mellem mennesker – og det har aldrig været nemmere end i dag.

En blog som denne har den fordel at man har fuld kontrol over udseendet, kan bestemme hvem der må skrive og kommentere, og endda hvem der kan læse den. Derved forhindres myndigheder og arbejdsgivere effektivt i at snage i vores privatliv. Kommentarsystemet giver desuden mulighed for at en dialog kan finde sted mellem én eller flere personer. At skrive et indlæg foregår på samme måde som i et almindeligt tekstbehandlingsprogram (fx Word). Teksten kan formateres efter behov og man kan indsætte links, fotos og videos. Man kan endda poste et indlæg direkte via mobiltelefonen fra et hvilket som helst sted i verden, hvad enten man står på toppen af Mount Everest, er på safari i Africa, eller blot nyder en stille sejltur på Gudenåen.

Jeg vil derfor endnu engang opfordre jer alle til at deltage på denne blog. Det er en unik mulighed for at dele jeres oplevelser, glæder, frustrationer, meninger og interesser med resten af familien. Som jeg skrev til Marianne i en mail:

    Vi bliver nødt til at bryde det nedarvede kommunikationsmønster fra vore forældre hvis vi skal undgå flere koks og misforståelser i fremtiden. Det er ikke nok blot at give en besked videre til nogle få i familien og så regne med at de informerer resten. Det går næsten altid galt!

Hvis I absolut ikke har tid eller lyst til selv at skrive bare engang imellem, kan I alternativt klikke på knappen i højre side hvor der står “Follow”. Så modtager du automatisk en email når nogen har skrevet et nyt indlæg på bloggen.

Kommentér venligst herunder, så jeg kan høre hvad I mener 🙂

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