In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is quoted as saying "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

And also Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you." This should sound vaguely familiar: “For if you find not what you seek within you, you shall never find it without.”

The Gospel of Thomas was one of those books that didn’t make the cut, and for obvious reasons. No church established on the principals of needing priests and money to intercede for the common person would want Jesus himself saying that they were an unnecessary bureaucracy. Wiccans know that we don’t need the bureaucracy—we are each our own priest or priestess. We have our own direct line to the Divine.

For the full article, click here.

As sung by George W. Bush

Are there any Muslims in the theater tonight?
Get them up against the wall!
There's one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me,
Get him up against the wall!
That one looks Arab!
And that one's a Kurd!
Who let all of this riff-raff into my herd?
There's one eating cous cous,
They're upsetting my calm!
If I had my way,
I'd have all of you bombed!

The Neocons' lies don't work on Ron Paul

Ron Paul has by polls taken on the Internet won both recent presidential debates hands-down. But, all the major medias have black-balled him. They are denying him any exposure time unless it’s to tar him as a “kook” or someone too ridiculous for Americans to listen to in earnest.

Now, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, Saul Anuzis, has decided Americans need to be shielded from Paul’s logic, insights and truthfulness. Paul ventured in the last debate that constant U.S. interference in the Middle East provided a major provocation for terrorists ... the very same conclusion the establishment’s own 9/ll Commission arrived at. And yet, Rudolph Giuliani toed the establishment line when he poo-pooed Paul’s thinking as an “absurd explanation.” And now, the chairman of the Michigan GOP says he will try to bar Paul from future GOP debates!

Even the so-called “objective” talking heads on TV and radio are being sicked on Ron Paul like pit bulls. It’s the same tried-and-true tactic used by those who pulls the strings of this nation every time someone appears who has some decently thought out ideas. They call them names, defame them and make the general public see him or her as dangerous.

Ron Paul is dangerous. He’s dangerous to the arrogant pigs in Washington who have grown fat off the American people. If the GOP bar Paul from the debates, I won’t vote — especially GOP — ever again.

LINK

On May 8 on the prestigious Harmonia Mundi label, the RPO released a recording to high reviews of George Gershwin favorites under Principal Pops Conductor Jeff Tyzik that features Van Cliburn award-winning pianist Jon Nakamatsu.

"I've seen six national reviews that, if we had done this project on our own, we wouldn't have serviced those reviewers or have that kind of publicity," says Tyzik.

The Gershwin recording was possible only with a $90,000 underwrite from RPO board member Al Davis, who has a history of supporting the orchestra, including the highly successful 2001 Harmonia Mundi release with Nakamatsu performing Rachmaninoff.

The benefits of Harmonia Mundi's promotional efforts have paid off already. David Hurwitz's of classicstoday.com has named this recording "unquestionably the best Gershwin disc to come along in years." Other critics have praised the clarity of sound, especially the high-resolution format that allows for a concert-like, surround sound experience. Because of Harmonia Mundi's international distribution, Tyzik believes this disc has Grammy potential.

For the full article, click here.

Flabbergasted Guiliani can't believe Ron Paul would dare to tell the truth.

The most heated moment in the debate, which aired live on the conservative Fox News network, came when the former New York mayor and current GOP front-runner angrily refused to entertain a serious discussion about the role that actions taken by the United States prior to the September 11, 2OO1, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may have played in inspiring or encouraging those attacks.

Giuliani led the crowd of contenders on attacking Texas Congressman Ron Paul after the anti-war Republican restated facts that are outlined in the report of the The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

Asked about his opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Paul repeated his oft-expressed concern that instead of making the U.S. safer, U.S. interventions in the Middle East over the years have stirred up anti-American sentiment. As he did in the previous Republican debate, the Texan suggested that former President Ronald Reagan's decisions to withdraw U.S. troops from the region in the 198Os were wiser than the moves by successive Republican and Democratic presidents to increase U.S. military involvement there.

For the full article, click here.

People who know me well know that I love politics. So being the dork that I am, I naturally watched the Republican and Democratic primary debates during the past few weeks.

But something about the Republican debate really got me steamed. And I thought I’d share it with you because it’s a perfect example of how the media can distort what’s really going on.

During the Republican debate, most people who tuned in wanted to see how well McCain, Giuliani, and Romney would do. These viewers are the political diehards. They know most of the candidates and just wanted to see them in action.

But there was a shocking standout. And viewers showed their love for him by calling him the winner in subsequent ABC and MSNBC online polls.

That person is Ron Paul.

For those who haven’t heard of Ron Paul, he’s considered a libertarian. He advocates a smaller government, lower taxes, abolishment of the IRS and the income tax (which he says is illegal since there is no law saying you have to pay them), he’s against unbacked currency (are you listening, Rusty McDougal?), and most importantly, opposed the Iraq war from the beginning.

He’s the type of person advocates of a free market love, while representing everything politicians hate. Let me explain.

American politicians do well by listening to lobbyists. So if I was a politician and Google asked me to support a bill on net neutrality (which supports a network free from hardware and communication restrictions, thereby treating every bit of traffic that goes through the network the same), I would figure out whether I was for or against it. If I was for it, I’d introduce a net neutrality bill and Google would help me get re-elected.

Now, if you’re a politician who’s against government spending, lobbyists won’t cozy up to you. And this is where Ron Paul finds himself.

For the full article, click here.

by Paul Joseph Watson
Dated: May 9, 2007
SOURCE: Prison Planet

Ron Paul emerged from last week's GOP debate as completely victorious according to every available benchmark and yet there is still a deliberate ploy to push the Texas Congressman to the sidelines on behalf of a terrified corporate media.

Every single major online poll shows conclusively that Ron Paul won the debate by a mammoth margin, trouncing the bought and paid-for shill Neo-Con candidates that the establishment press are sworn to uphold.

For the full article, click here.

During the recent MSNBC Republican presidential debate, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made three profound points on U.S. foreign policy that the American people would be wise to heed. Needless to say, Paul’s three points, being libertarian in nature, aren’t likely to be favorably received within the Washington, D.C., establishment, especially among lobbyists for the military-industrial complex. Perhaps that is why, despite Paul's first-place finish in post-debate polls conducted by MSNBC, ABCNews.com, and C-SPAN – or maybe because of those results – the Washington Post used its lead editorial on Tuesday to specifically question Paul’s participation in the rest of the Republican presidential debates.

The first point was that the Iraq War violated the traditional American policy of foreign nonintervention that characterized our nation through most of the first 125 years of its existence. What Paul was referring to was summed up in the speech that John Quincy Adams delivered to Congress on the 50th anniversary of the Fourth of July: that America does not “go abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” and that, if America were ever to embrace such a policy, the “fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force” and she would become “the dictatress of the world.”

For the full article, click here.

Last week, the House of Representatives acted with disdain for the Constitution and individual liberty by passing HR 1592, a bill creating new federal programs to combat so-called “hate crimes.” The legislation defines a hate crime as an act of violence committed against an individual because of the victim’s race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Federal hate crime laws violate the Tenth Amendment’s limitations on federal power. Hate crime laws may also violate the First Amendment guaranteed freedom of speech and religion by criminalizing speech federal bureaucrats define as “hateful.”

There is no evidence that local governments are failing to apprehend and prosecute criminals motivated by prejudice, in comparison to the apprehension and conviction rates of other crimes. Therefore, new hate crime laws will not significantly reduce crime. Instead of increasing the effectiveness of law enforcement, hate crime laws undermine equal justice under the law by requiring law enforcement and judicial system officers to give priority to investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. Of course, all decent people should condemn criminal acts motivated by prejudice. But why should an assault victim be treated by the legal system as a second-class citizen because his assailant was motivated by greed instead of hate?

For the full article, click here.

The GOP leader(less)ship is back at its favorite game: Herding conservative voters into the arms of “non-con” (neeocon) candidates for US President in 2008. As so often before, conservatives are being told what to think and what to fear - and this time, of course, it’s Hillary.

In an interview printed as an editorial of the Wall Street Journal, Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s representative in Washington DC was quoted by Naomi Schaefer Riley as saying that “with Hillary Clinton looming on the horizon, electability is a very important issue," continuing on by noting that "even among the unelectable" (like Brownback and Hunter) evangelicals can't make up their mind.



The editorial is basically a rundown of Land’s views on who in the republican party would make a good choice for US president according to evangelicals, who wouldn’t, and why. Schaefer Riley then editorializes in the last paragraph of her report about the interview:

“As he throws his weight around in the Republican primaries, trying to ensure a socially conservative candidate comes out on top, Mr. Land also knows the bottom line. Mrs. Clinton has announced that if she becomes president, the troops will be pulled out of Iraq within 90 days. To avoid that outcome, evangelical voters in this country might be willing to tolerate just about anything.”

So, there you have it. A new set up for installing another “lesser evil” at the helm of the nation Funny thing, that is, as evangelicals should by definition not vote for anything even remotely evil if they actually deserved their name, but, hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to stay in power or to throw your weight around, I suppose.

So, who is Land’s choice?

“Mitt Romney” (the double-talking, flip-flopping “avid hunter” who unlike Dick Cheney would luckily probably shoot his own foot before he managed to hit any external target) is “still a good possibility” he said.

Hmm.

Interesting that, from the GOP leadership’s view, the only conservative candidates who are worth electing (at least to conservatives who still believe the Republican party is “their” party) are decreed to be “unelectable.” It is always the windy ones, those who can be molded, those who change their rhetoric around whenever needed, who are declared to be “electable.”

Naturally, Republican cattle will feed werever their herders graze them, unless ...

Unless a real conservative like Ron Paul actually gets his message in front of enough people. Strangely, almost all who ever actually listen to Ron end up seriously considering the validity of his views, even though they may go against what people were trained to believe are the “hot button issues” in this election.

Just take the good folks with the “Health Care” T-Shirts who came to listen to Ron Paul at a New Hampshire stop. Watch how they listen while he talks in this YouTube clip. Not one of them actually asks a question about health care after listening to him.

It just isn’t that big a deal when you’re talking about whether this country will even exist any longer after neocon (or liberal) Bush-successors get done with their “NAU” (North American Union) program. Liberals’ only objections to this scheme are about labor or environmental issues. They don’t understand that, after the Constitution goes kaput, so will their rights to express liberal view - or any views for that matter.

The GOP leadership knows that if Ron Paul gets elected, they will utterly lose control of the white house, and they need control of the White House to push their NAU agenda.

That’s why Hillary beating Obama in the primaries is so important to them. They GOP would rather have Hillary win than a real conservative like the infamous "Congressman No."

For the full article, click here.

This week, Congress finalized the controversial $124 billion Iraq emergency supplemental spending bill, with the House and Senate both voting in favor of final passage. The majority of my Republican colleagues and I voted against this measure, and the president has vowed to veto the legislation.

In this final version, the House leadership retained billions of dollars in pork meant to attract skeptical votes, retained a watered-down version of the problematic “benchmarks” that seek to micromanage the war effort, and continued to play politics with the funding of critical veterans medical and other assistance. In other words, this final version was even worse than the original in almost all respects.

As I wrote when this measure first came before the House, we have to make a clear distinction between the Constitutional authority of Congress to make foreign policy, and the Constitutional authority of the president, as commander in chief, to direct the management of any military operation. We do no favor to the troops by micromanaging the war from Capitol Hill while continuing to fund it beyond the president’s request.

For the full article, click here.

Hey, I've got an idea. I'm going to open up a bank and force everyone to use my paper currency. If I can get everyone to borrow the paper from me, all I have to do is make sure I never run out of trees and I can sit back and collect the interest from now 'til eternity. But first, i'll have to invent a scheme to get everyone to stop using Real Money, Gold and Silver. I know, being that I'm the banker and everyone already trusts me with their Gold and Silver, i'll start off by printing Gold and Silver certificates that people can carry around instead of the metals, after all, metals are heavy and people can get robbed. Next, over a long period of time, say 20 years, i'll replace the certificates with federal reserve notes (completely WORTHLESS). I'll be rich and America will be BANKRUPT !! The only problem : Some elite English Freemason over at the Bank of England has already thought of it and called it the Federal Reserve System. Another case of "a day late and a dollar short." Well since they'll put us in jail if we were to do it today, we might as well EXPOSE the CRIMINALS for what they are: THIEVES : PARASITES with a PRINTING PRESS. Why does the U.S. Treasury borrow paper (bills of exchange-borrowed=Debt currency) from a foreign, private, for-profit Bank, which is in actuality owned and controlled by the Bank of England. I, by the way, am not the source of this particular charge. These are the findings of the American Congress in a report Titled "Steps Toward A British Union, A World State & International Strife." Ever since the Revolutionary War, England has despised America. Everything believed to the contrary is Propaganda.

England has wanted to establish a central bank in America, by which they could control our economy, for a very long time. Repeatedly, there have been attempts to do this and repeatedly, they failed. Mostly, because the American people knew about what Great Britain wanted to do. But, with the advent of airplanes and technology today, it seems to most Americans that this could no longer be the case. What most people do not realize is that this country would be a far different place if England hadn't gotten their way, back in 1913 with the passing of the Federal Reserve Act. It is a well known fact that English and European interests were heavily involved in this takeover. The Rothschilds, acting as agents for the Bank of England, sent their agents, the Warburgs and J.P. Morgan to set up the deals and "rig" it so that they could get the Act passed.

The Goldsmiths were the first bankers in early England. Primarily because people left their gold with the goldsmiths for safekeeping. The first paper money were "Receipts" for the gold deposits. These represented the gold in storage. These were easier to carry around, and safer, thus making paper money more popular. The goldsmiths realized, after a while, that few people ever came back to trade in their "receipts" for the gold at any one time. It was at this time that Goldsmiths realized they could issue more paper than they had Gold to back it up, thus leading the way to a cheated system. Then they could loan out more money than they had, and collect interest on it, as well. This was the beginning of "Fractional Reserve Banking", or loaning out more money than there is in assetts on deposit. This way nobody ever noticed their wealth accumulation. Currently, in the United States, banks can loan out 10 times the amount they have on deposit. The Goldsmiths also learned what could happen when the "Row" the economy by Issueing more money, then withdrawing that surplus from the economy. When there is more money, people spend more, and borrow more. Then when that money is taken out of the economy, there is no money to pay back the debts with, and it costs more to borrow more money. So, there are more bankruptcies, and re-possessions and the bankers can buy up everything for pennies on the dollar. This is exactly what is happening today. But today, economists who seek to hide these truths from you, call it the "Business Cycle".

Early philosophers like Aristotle, believed that usury was bad for society because the purpose of money was to move goods in society from person to person. The interest on money slowed all of that down, and hence, slowed down the progression of society. It put an unnecessary burdon on money.

For the full article, click here.

"AIPAC!" was the forceful one-word answer of Congressman Michael Capuano when we asked him, "Why was the Iran clause forbidding war on Iran without Congressional approval taken out of the recent supplemental for the Iraq war funding?" I nearly fell out of my chair at his reply - not because this was news but because of who had just said it. Capuano is a close ally of Nancy Pelosi, her fixer and enforcer. That was last Friday morning when a small delegation from Cambridge and Somerville, MA, were visiting the Congressman, known for his bluntness, as part of the nationwide UFPJ (United For Peace and Justice) home lobbying effort during the Congressional recess.

Later that day, Dennis Kucinich made an appearance at Harvard, where he was asked the same question, the reason for removing the Iran provision. "AIPAC," I volunteered out loud. Kucinich looked my way and said, "Exactly." Again my chair almost failed to contain me.

A few weeks earlier we had gone to the offices of Senators Kennedy and then Kerry to discuss the war. (My intention was to call their attention to www.FilibusterForPeace.org to which the Kennedy aide was sympathetic and the Kerry aide predictably hostile.) I raised the question of AIPAC directly with Kerry's aide, inquiring about its hawkish influence on Kerry and other Senators. Suddenly the aide was quite engaged. Leaning forward, he said: "That will never be discussed publicly. That will never be discussed publicly." Clearly even Kerry's office is unhappy with the pressure that comes from AIPAC.

For the full article, click here.

All the reasons given to justify a preemptive strike against Iraq were wrong. Congress and the American people were misled.

Support for the war came from various special interests that had agitated for an invasion of Iraq since 1998. The Iraq Liberation Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton, stated that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was official U.S. policy. This policy was carried out in 2003.

Congress failed miserably in meeting its crucial obligations as the branch of government charged with deciding whether to declare war. It wrongly and unconstitutionally transferred this power to the president, and the president did not hesitate to use it.

Although it is clear there was no cause for war, we just marched in. Our leaders deceived themselves and the public with assurances that the war was righteous and would be over quickly. Their justifications were false, and they failed to grasp even basic facts about the chaotic political and religious history of the region.

Congress bears the greater blame for this fiasco. It reneged on its responsibility to declare or not declare war. It transferred this decision-making power to the executive branch, and gave open sanction to anything the president did. In fact the founders diligently tried to prevent the executive from possessing this power, granting it to Congress alone in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution.

For the full speech, click here.

One attitude that I find to be odd in some magical practitioners is the attitude that you don’t need to do a daily practice of magic. It seems that instead you just cast your spell and sigil whenever you really need it and the rest of the time magic is put to the wayside until needed again. This approach has always puzzled me, mainly because it treats magic as a tool, much like a shovel. I’ll grant that you don’t need to use a shovel everyday of your life (unless you work at a job where it’s an essential tool). Also a shovel is used for a specific set of jobs and won’t fit every circumstance in your life.

For the full article, click here.