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"Every ambitious would-be empire clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie, and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it! ...
If America ever does seek Empire, and most nations do, then planned reforms in our domestic life will be abandoned, States Rights will be abolished -- in order to impose a centralized government upon us for the purpose of internal repudiation of freedom, and adventures abroad.
The American Dream will then die -- on battlefields all over the world -- and a nation conceived in liberty will destroy liberty for Americans and impose tyranny on subject nations." -
George S. Boutwell - (1818-1905) American statesman, Secretary of the Treasury under President Ulysses S. Grant, Governor of Massachusetts, Senator and Representative from Massachusetts
"When you invite people to think, you are inviting revolution" - Ivana Gabara
"When the people liberate their own minds and take a hard clear look at what the 1% is doing and what the 99% should be doing, then serious stuff begins to happen." - Michael Parenti
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Op-Ed
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Hard News
20 Daesh Terrorists Killed in SDF Operations in Syrian Main Battlefields
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201710021057886118-syria-daesh-terrorist-killed-sdf-raqqa/
Syria: Terrorist bomb attacks kill 15 people in Damascus
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/10/02/537217/Syria-explosion-terrorits-Damascus-alMidan
U.S. kills 12 civilians in Syria Dayr al-Zawr
https://www.kashmirmonitor.in/Details/133413/at-least-12-civilians-killed-in-us-airstrikes-in-syria-dayr-al-zawr
Unidentified drone strike kills eight Hezbollah fighters in Syria
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2017/10/02/Drone-strike-kills-8-Hezbollah-fighters-in-Syria.html
US-led Coalition Strikes Hezbollah Fighters Combating ISIS In Syrian Desert - Reports
http://tinyurl.com/yd78xvwk
US denies strike killing Hezbollah fighters in Syria
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2017/Oct-02/421184-us-drone-strikes-hezbollah-base-in-syria.ashx
President al-Assad: Syrian Army's victories paved the way to restarting economic activity and beginning reconstruction
http://sana.sy/en/?p=114978
Russian delegation meets ministers on reconstruction
http://sana.sy/en/?p=114902
Iraq: 100 alleged, IS militants killed in 'strongest' U.S.-coalition airstrike in Anbar
https://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/100-militants-strongest-u-s-coalition-airstrike-anbar/
Seven paramilitary personnel killed in bomb blast west of Mosul
https://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/seven-paramilitary-personnel-killed-10-wounded-bomb-blast-west-mosul/
Five persons killed, injured in southern Baghdad bomb blasthttps://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/five-persons-killed-injured-southern-baghdad-bomb-blast/
Roadside bomb explosion kills US soldier, injures another in Iraq
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/10/02/537251/American-soldier-USled-coalition-roadside-bomb-attack
Iraqi forces seize air base from Islamic state near Hawija
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/iraqi-forces-seize-air-base-from-islamic-state-near-hawija-20171002-01031
Iran sends tanks to border with Iraq's Kurdish region, Kurdish official says
http://tinyurl.com/yan2jllf
Saudi kills at least 5 people in southwestern Yemen
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/10/02/537239/Yemen-Saudi-Arabia-airstrike-Taizz-Houthis-Hadi
Yemen Houthi Fighters Shoot Down US Surveillance Drone
http://tinyurl.com/y7rz47sk
Bipartisan Group To Force Vote on U.S. Involvement in Yemen War:
The United States has been providing support for a Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen that has cost the lives of over 10,000 civilians
http://tinyurl.com/yadbgwm7
11-year-old Palestinian shot in the head by Israeli occupation forces.
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=779251
Israel-Palestine Timeline - The Human Cost of the Conflict:
This timeline lists all Palestinians and Israelis killed by a person from the other side from September 29, 2000 to the present.
http://israelpalestinetimeline.org/about/
Palestinian prime minister in 'historic visit' to Gaza
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/pa-prime-minister-rami-hamdallah-arrive-gaza-171002073029755.html
17 dead in protests in Cameroon English-speaking areas
http://tinyurl.com/ybe6mvfc
5 civilians among dozens of casualties from clashes in Libyan smuggling hub
http://tinyurl.com/ya3x9czr
Trial begins for suspected mastermind of 2012 Benghazi attacks
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/10/02/trial-begins-for-suspected-mastermind-of-2012-benghazi-attacks.html
Four South Sudanese soldiers killed in fighting with rebels
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1171081/world
Afghan airstrike kills 12 Afghan security personnel in southern Helmand province
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-10/02/c_136654444.htm
Two children killed as India, Pakistan trade fire in Kashmir
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/two-children-killed-as-india-pakistan-trade-fire-in-kashmir
Trump again undercuts his secretary of State, dashing potential progress on North Korea
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-fg-trump-tillerson-20171001-story.html
Russia Provides New Internet Connection to North Korea:.
The new link supplements one from China at a time the US government is reportedly attacking its Internet infrastructure and pressuring China to end all business with North Korea.
http://www.38north.org/2017/10/mwilliams100117/
UN finds 'unimaginable' suffering on visit to Myanmar's Rakhine
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/10/02/537247/UN-Rohingya-suffering-Myanmar
Saudi Arabia's King Salman to visit Russia on Thursday
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/gulf/2017/10/02/Saudi-Arabia-s-King-Salman-to-visit-Russia-on-Thursday.html
HP Enterprise let Russia scrutinize cyberdefense system used by Pentagon;
Hewlett Packard Enterprise allowed a Russian defense agency to review the inner workings of cyber defense software used by the Pentagon to guard its computer networks
http://tinyurl.com/y85x7vk8
The Centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution: a Legacy to Celebrate
https://off-guardian.org/2017/10/02/the-centenary-of-the-bolshevik-revolution-a-legacy-to-celebrate/
France: IS group claims fatal knife attack on two women in Marseille
http://tinyurl.com/y9xxwqln
Marseille suspect had 7 identities, was released by police day before attack
https://www.rt.com/news/405390-marseille-attack-identities-police/
Catalonian referendum violence plunges EU into crisis as '90pc of voters back independence'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/01/eu-crisis-catalonian-referendum-descends-violence/
Watch: 'I had my fingers broken': Catalan woman speaks out on Spanish police violence
https://www.rt.com/news/405427-spanish-police-violence-account/
Watch: "We never thought the police would be so violent'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t88Jl3hyuKI
If this was happening in Venezuela or Cuba the media would be spinning a very different story
http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.mx/2017/10/if-this-was-happening-in-venezuela-or.html
Maduro to Spanish PM Rajoy: Who's the Dictator Now?
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Maduro-to-Spanish-PM-Rajoy-Whos-the-Dictator-Now-20171001-0015.html
IMF Head Foresees the End of Banking and the Triumph of Cryptocurrency;
Bitcoin ""puts a question mark on the fractional banking model we know today."
https://fee.org/articles/imf-head-predicts-the-end-of-banking-and-the-triumph-of-cryptocurrency/
Puerto Rico faces health catastrophe as Trump tweets "We have done a great job"
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/02/rico-o02.html
It Is Truly Hard to Imagine That Our President Is Such a Disgusting Person
http://tinyurl.com/yby5uvcl
Toll in mass shooting has climbed to 58 killed and more than 500 injured,
http://nypost.com/2017/10/02/las-vegas-shooter-killed-himself-after-massacre/
Alberta woman killed in Las Vegas mass shooting
http://tinyurl.com/y9wszdoj
Islamic State claims Las Vegas mass shooting:
The Islamic State said the gunman in the mass shooting in Las Vegas was "a soldier" from its ranks who had converted to Islam months ago.
https://apnews.com/a3554c3250644262af3f5b94d57b1def?
FBI says Las Vegas shooter had no connection to international terrorist group
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/FBI-says-Las-Vegas-shooter-had-no-connection-to-12246467.php
Las Vegas Shooter: Stephen Paddock: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
http://tinyurl.com/ybajdw8z
Who is Stephen Paddock?
Las Vegas shooter, 64, was a licensed pilot and hunting enthusiast with no criminal record who owned a $400,000 home in a Nevada retirement community
http://tinyurl.com/ybuoznz
Trump decried after Las Vegas shooting:
Twitter users accuse US president of double standard
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/donald-trump-decried-las-vegas-shooting-171002115500667.html
Nevada Senator voted against limits on magazine size, assault weapons, background checks
http://tinyurl.com/yb2x5jfr
When Will Politicians Start Offering More Than Their 'Thoughts and Prayers'?:
There have been 11,572 gun deaths on U.S. soil in 9 months.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12763521/las-vegas-shooting-thoughts-and-prayers/
Let us be Peace and Joy
Tom Feeley
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Cost Of War
Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq "1,455,590"
Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America's War On Iraq: 4,801
Number Of International Occupation Force Troops Slaughtered In Afghanistan : 3,430
Cost of War in Iraq & Afghanistan
Total Cost of Wars Since 2001
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Top News: Google Censors Search Results, Saudi Arabia's 9/11 Dry Run, The Man Who Saved the World, More
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The Mission of WantToKnow.info:
To provide our readers with reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups,
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This message is also available online at this link.
Dear friends,
Explore below key excerpts of revealing news articles on Google's censorship of news search results, evidence presented in a US court that Saudi Arabia's government sponsored a 'dry run' of 9/11 plane hijackings, the massive bribery scheme uncovered by the FBI in college basketball, and more.
Read also wonderfully inspiring articles on a man named Stanislav Petrov who 'saved the world' by preventing nuclear war in 1983, Denmark's teaching of empathy alongside standard academic subjects, how love bridged a political divide between members of Black Lives Matter and passionate Trump supporters, and more. You can also skip to this section now.
Special note: Yet another study has been published linking vaccines to autism, this time implicating aluminum which is added to many of the vaccines. More here. Read this article to learn about a former hedge fund manager who now is an expert at exposing deep corporate corruption.
Quote of the week: "All the darkness in the world cannot put out the light of a single candle." ~~ For the inspiring origin of this quote, click here.
Financial note: At the start of every month, the amount we are in the red for the year jumps several thousand dollars. This is because that's when we add our expenses for the month (about $6,000) to the amount we are in the red. The red ink amount then gradually decreases over the course of the month as caring supporters like you make donations. Read more on this. Please help us to decrease our deficit by donating here.
When David North, the editorial chairman of the World Socialist Web Site, noticed a drop in the site’s traffic in April, he initially chalked it up to news fatigue. But when he dug into the numbers, Mr. North said, he found a clearer explanation: Google had stopped redirecting search queries to the site. He discovered that the top search terms that once brought people to the World Socialist Web Site were now coming up empty. Accusations that Google has tampered with search results are not uncommon. But they are taking on new life amid concerns that technology behemoths are directly - or indirectly - censoring controversial subjects in their response to concerns over so-called fake news. In April, Google announced an initiative called Project Owl to provide “algorithmic updates to surface more authoritative content” and stamp out fake news stories from its search results. To some, that was an uncomfortable step toward Google becoming an arbiter of what is and is not a trustworthy news source. “They’re really skating on thin ice,” said Michael Bertini, a search strategist at iQuanti, a digital marketing agency. “They’re controlling what users see." In an open letter to Google last month, Mr. North traced his site’s traffic decline to Project Owl. Mr. North said he believed that Google was blacklisting the site, using concerns over fake news as a cover to suppress opinions from socialist, antiwar or left-wing websites and block news that Google doesn’t want covered.
Note: Visits to WantToKnow.info have dropped to less than half of what they were just eight months ago, largely due to a drop in visits from Google's search engine. Many alternative news websites have lost a lot of visits as Google prioritizes "mainstream" sources over alternative viewpoints. Check out the intriguing, well researched article "How the CIA Made Google." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
The Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington DC may have funded a “dry run” of the 9/11 attacks, according to evidence submitted to an ongoing lawsuit against the Saudi government. As reported by the New York Post, the embassy might have used two of its employees for the so-called dry run before a dozen hijackers flew two planes into the Twin Towers. The complaint, filed on behalf of 1,400 family members of the victims, stated that the Saudi Government paid two nationals, posing as students in the US, to take a flight from Phoenix to Washington and test out flight deck security before 9/11. FBI documents, submitted as evidence, claimed that the two Saudi nationals ... Mohammed al-Qudhaeein and Hamdan al-Shalawi, were in fact members of “the Kingdom's network of agents” in the country. The documents claimed the men trained in Afghanistan with a number of other al-Qaeda operatives that participated in the attacks. Qudhaeein was allegedly employed at the Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and Shalawi was a “longtime employee of the Saudi government” in Washington DC. In November 1999 they boarded an America West flight to Washington, and tried to access the cockpit several times. Their plane tickets were reportedly paid for by the Saudi Embassy. The allegations in the class action lawsuit were based on almost 5,000 pages of evidence. A total of 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. Hundreds of thousands of US documents regarding Saudi Arabia remain secret.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.
Saudi Arabia is easing restrictions on women driving, finally allowing almost half its population to get behind the wheel. A royal decree has been issued that will allow women in the country to drive, the Saudi Foreign ministry said Tuesday. The government will have until June 24, 2018, to implement the new decree. Manal al-Sharif, one of the women behind the Women2Drive campaign, celebrated the victory by posting a photo on Twitter of herself behind the wheel of a car. Sharif, who now lives in Australia, was jailed in Saudi Arabia 2011 after posting a video on YouTube of herself, wearing a black headscarf and sunglasses, driving a car. The act provoked death threats and spurred her to start the campaign. Liesl Gerntholtz, executive director of the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, told CNN while it was a "very important step" there was still a long way to go for Saudi women. "This prohibition on driving is just one in a vast series of laws and policies which prevent women from doing many things," she said. "The guardianship rule stops women from making every decision in her life without the assistance of a male relative, even if that relative is her 7-year-old son. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia follows a strict form of Wahhabi Islam that bans the mixing of sexes at public events and places numerous curbs on women. These restrictions are enforced by religious police.
Note: The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the strongest allies of the US, yet it is also about the most backward country in the world on women's rights. And it is a dictatorship by monarchy. Why isn't there more reporting on this? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news articles from reliable major media sources.
A federal investigation into the "dark underbelly" of college basketball exposed bribery schemes in which coaches at top programs took cash to steer star athletes to certain managers and helped funnel payoffs to players' families to ensure they signed with particular schools, prosecutors said Tuesday. Some of the biggest names in college sports - from Adidas to the University of Louisville - were caught up in the probe, which began in 2015 with the help of a fallen financial adviser. Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said the FBI and prosecutors ... found a pay-to-play culture flourishing in some corners of the NCAA. "The picture of college basketball painted by the charges is not a pretty one - coaches at some of the nation’s top programs taking cash bribes, managers and advisers circling blue-chip prospects like coyotes, and employees of a global sportswear company funneling cash to families of high school recruits," he said. On Tuesday, federal agents executed search warrants at the offices of ASM Sports, which represents 30 current NBA players but which was not charged in the three criminal complaints filed in Manhattan. Those documents detail a web of corruption. "If we take care of everybody and everything is done, we control everything," Christian Dawkins, a former recruiter for ASM who was reportedly fired for using a player’s credit card, told an undercover agent, according to one complaint. ”You can make millions off one kid."
A puzzling study of U.S. pregnancies found that women who had miscarriages between 2010 and 2012 were more likely to have had back-to-back annual flu shots that included protection against swine flu. Past studies have found flu vaccines are safe during pregnancy, though there’s been little research on impact of flu vaccinations given in the first three months of pregnancy. This study focused only on miscarriages, which occur in the first 19 weeks of pregnancy and are common. The study’s authors, two of whom are CDC researchers, saw a big difference when they looked at women who had miscarried within 28 days of getting a shot that included protection against swine flu, but it was only when the women also had had a flu shot the previous season. They found 17 of 485 miscarriages they studied involved women whose vaccinations followed that pattern. Just four of a comparable 485 healthy pregnancies involved women who were vaccinated that way. Some of the same researchers are working on a larger study looking at more recent data to see if a possible link between swine flu vaccine and miscarriage holds up.
Note: Shortly after publication, this article was removed from the ABC News website. The complete article text is available here. The study in Vaccine can be found on this page. An important article on this study by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on this webpage further states "in women who received the H1N1 vaccine in the previous flu season, the odds of spontaneous abortion in the 28 days after receiving a flu vaccine was 7.7 times greater." Could it be that the major media don't want to lose the huge revenue gained by drug ads by pharmaceuticals?
At least 442 wrongful death suits have been filed over fatalities that followed the use of a Taser, almost all since the stun guns began gaining widespread popularity with police in the early 2000s, Reuters found in a nationwide review of legal filings. Police departments and the municipalities they represent have faced 435 of these suits. The manufacturer was a defendant in 128 of them. In all, wrongful death lawsuits were filed in at least 44 percent of the 1,000-plus incidents Reuters identified in which someone died after being stunned with a Taser by police. In more than 60 percent of the resolved cases against municipalities, government defendants paid settlements or judgments. Reuters documented at least $172 million in publicly funded payouts to resolve the litigation. Yet one party is increasingly absent from the courtroom: Taser International. From 2004 through 2009, the company was named as a defendant in more than 40 percent of the wrongful death suits filed against local governments. Typically, those suits alleged the company failed to warn adequately of the risks posed by its weapons. Late in 2009, as evidence of cardiac risks mounted, Taser made a crucial change: It warned police to avoid firing its stun gun’s electrified darts at a person’s chest. The manufacturer’s warnings have made it far more difficult to successfully sue the company. So now ... plaintiffs are suing governments, not the manufacturer. Behind these legal battles is a troubling truth: Many officers aren’t aware Tasers have the potential to kill.
The threat of white nationalist violence in the U.S. is at least as big a threat as that posed by the Islamic State (ISIS) and similar groups, the FBI revealed. Director Chris Wray told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that there are currently 1,000 open investigations into domestic terrorist groups and another 1,000 probes into groups with radical Islamist ideology. The number of attacks carried out by white supremacists were “almost triple” those of those carried out by people who identified with groups such as ISIS, said Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill. And government data obtained by The Hillsuggests the number of white supremacist attacks compared to those from radical Islamist groups was as many as two to one. “We have had zero hearings on the threat of domestic terrorists and the threat they pose and our response to it,” McCaskill said, explaining there had been a number of hearings about ISIS, but none about white supremacists. Wray ... explained domestic and international terrorism was investigated differently. “A lot of the [domestic terrorism] cases we bring, we’re able to charge under gun charges, explosive charges, all manner of other crimes,” Wray explained. His comments on the open investigations at the department come as the Department of Justice announced there were “systemic” problems within the FBI that included failure to properly tackle allegations of serious misconduct, and FBI employees failing polygraph tests.
We have had two consecutive presidents - Barack Obama and Donald Trump - who have in their own way recognized the limits of American military power in achieving political outcomes across the globe, yet we have been at war the whole time they've been in office. They were preceded by a president who promised a "humble foreign policy," no nation-building, and military involvement only where the exits were clearly marked. But George W. Bush's abandonment of those campaign planks set the United States on a foreign-policy course that has clearly not worked as planned. Still, at least he was operating in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, before all the unintended consequences of Iraq-style regime change were so blatantly known. Neither Obama nor Trump has that excuse. Obama largely owes his presidency to his 2002 speechopposing the invasion of Iraq and other "dumb wars." Trump won the 2016 South Carolina primary the day after denouncing the Iraq war in terms that got Ron Paul nearly tossed off the debate stage in the same state a decade ago. The foreign policy advice presidents receive is predominantly hawkish. So is the reinforcement they get from the Washington establishment. Things happen all over the world that seem to cry out for some kind of American response. But ... until some of this institutional bias in favor of intervention changes, we will keep voting for presidents who promise peace but deliver war.
Note: Read an excellent article showing how the power elite and their war machine corrupt world leaders. Powerful political and economic interests profit immensely from an endless war on terror. A top US general long ago exposed the corrupt roots of war in his penetrating book War is a Racket. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
President Trump has some advice for National Football League owners: Fire players who kneel during the national anthem. He's also encouraging fans to walk out in protest. And the president is bemoaning what he describes as a decline in violence in the sport. Several athletes, including a handful of NFL players, have refused to stand during "The Star-Spangled Banner" to protest of the treatment of blacks by police. Quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who started the trend last year when he played for the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't been signed by an NFL team for this season. The NFL Players Association reacted to Mr. Trump's comments Saturday morning in a statement: "This union ... will never back down when it comes to constitutional rights of our players as citizens as well as their safety as men in a game that exposes them to great risks." During his campaign, Mr. Trump often expressed nostalgia for the "old days" - claiming, for example, that protesters at his rallies would have been carried out on stretchers back then. He recently suggested police officers should be rougher with criminals and shouldn't protect their heads when pushing them into squad cars. It's also not the first time he's raised the kneeling issue. Earlier this year he took credit for the fact that Kaepernick hadn't been signed.
Key Articles From Years Past
The world's first lab-grown burger has been cooked and eaten at a news conference in London. Scientists took cells from a cow and, at an institute in the Netherlands, turned them into strips of muscle that they combined to make a patty. Prof Mark Post, of Maastricht University, the scientist behind the burger, remarked: "It's a very good start." The professor said the meat was made up of tens of billions of lab-grown cells. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has been revealed as the project's mystery backer. He funded the £215,000 ($330,000) research. Stem cells are the body's "master cells", the templates from which specialised tissue such as nerve or skin cells develop. Most institutes working in this area are trying to grow human tissue for transplantation to replace worn-out or diseased muscle, nerve cells or cartilage. Prof Post is using similar techniques to grow muscle and fat for food. He starts with stem cells extracted from cow muscle tissue. These are cultured with nutrients and growth-promoting chemicals to help them develop and multiply. Three weeks later, there are more than a million stem cells, which are put into smaller dishes where they coalesce into small strips of muscle. These strips are collected into small pellets, which are frozen. When there are enough, they are defrosted and compacted into a patty just before being cooked. At the moment, scientists can only make small pieces of meat; larger ones would require artificial circulatory systems to distribute nutrients and oxygen.
Inspiring Articles
One September morning in 1983, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, a 44-year-old commanding officer with the Soviet Union’s Air Defense Forces, saved the world from erupting into nuclear war. Petrov died on May 19 ... at his home in the Moscow suburb of Fryazino. According to the New York Times, he lived at his Fryazino home alone on a pension. How did Petrov “save the world?” On Sept. 26, 1983, Oko (the Soviet Union’s early-warning satellite system for nuclear attack) detected that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles, all headed toward the USSR. But as the alarms went off and screens flashing the word “LAUNCH” lit up, Petrov, who was just a few hours into his shift as duty officer at command center Serpukhov-15, remained calm. “For 15 seconds, we were in a state of shock,” he told The Washington Post in 1999. Petrov’s gut feeling ... led him to believe the launch reports were probably false. “When people start a war, they don't start it with only five missiles,” he remembered thinking. He said his decision to stand down ... was “at best, a ‘50-50’ guess.” And, as Wired Magazine put it in 2007, “he hoped to hell he was right.” That gut feeling and Petrov’s calm, common-sense analysis saved the world from potential catastrophe. The satellite that signaled the false alarm had picked up the sun’s reflection atop the clouds, mistaking it for a missile launch. After the classified incident became public ... Petrov went on to earn the German Media Prize in 2012 (other GMP winners include Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama and Kofi Anan).
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The importance of empathy as a character trait is garnering increased attention in an age of rapid technological change. In Denmark, empathy has long been a part of the zeitgeist of the nation, taught and valued everywhere, from preschools to corporate suites. By many measures, Denmark ... excels at instilling emotional well-being. Still, Denmark is facing challenges that would sound familiar to American educators. At the Hedegårdenes school ... one-third of the 400 students, from the first year of school through the ninth year, come from immigrant backgrounds, and another third from what administrators call troubled homes. As a result, says Thomas Brinch, vice principal, “the work with empathy is more important than ever. The kids need to treat each other with respect no matter where they are from, what their religion is.” Schools see empathy as a way to deal with another challenge as well: the saturation of social media. In the classroom of Ida Nielsen, a fifth-year teacher at the Hedegårdenes school ... the class has drawn up social media user guidelines together and is now discussing what they mean in practice. One of the first rules sounds simple enough: Don’t say anything mean. But it leads one boy to question if that just applies to people, or whether they may make negative statements about not liking longer school hours. Such discussions are crucial, says Ms. Nielsen, when asked about the pressures to devote time to academic learning during the day. “This is their lives,” she says.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
All you need is love. Love is all you need. I'm singing that old Beatles song in my head and trying to wrap my mind around a beautiful love-fueled relationship between members of Black Lives Matter and the most passionate Trump supporters. That word - love - came up in a conversation with Hawk Newsome, who represents Black Lives Matter of Greater New York. "At some point, we're going to have to talk to the other side," he told me. And realize, he added, sometimes the situation calls for "words, for love, for compassion, as opposed to words of anger." He realized that smack in the middle of hundreds of pro-Trumpers at the Mother of All Rallies event ... in Washington, DC. As Newsome and his fellow activists waded through the mostly white crowd, ready to do battle, something totally radical happened. A Trump supporter, speaking from a makeshift stage, invited him to speak. "We're going to give you two minutes of our platform to put your message out," the Trump supporter told Newsome. "Whether they disagree or agree with your message is irrelevant. It's the fact you have a right to have the message." "This was a first-time occurrence," [Newsome said]. " It was hostile before we were invited on that stage." But, when he took the stage and started shouting his beliefs and found that some in the crowd actually listened, that word popped into his head - love. It's a small thing, which shines the light on what we already know - love and compassion go a long way. We just have to listen to that song in our heads.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
In March I went to see Henrik Poulsen, the boss of Dong Energy, in Copenhagen. Dong stands for Danish oil and natural gas. It was, like Shell and BP, involved in fossil fuel exploration and production. But in less than a decade it has become an 85% offshore wind company, and is divesting its coal, oil and gas interests. By 2023, Dong Energy will be very close to zero carbon. That is a pretty staggering transformation in a very short space of time. Talking to Poulsen made me realise that we were on the cusp of a quiet revolution. From being the most expensive form of renewable energy, offshore wind was fast becoming the cheapest form of large-scale, low-carbon generation bar none. As Poulsen said: “When you go 10 years into the future and you look back, I think we will look at these years, 2016, 2017, 2018, as the inflection point. I think we’ll look back and say wow ... Something happened for wind and solar energy during those years that completely changed the dynamic.” But he also said that “without the UK government and what they have done for the past five or six years, we wouldn’t have been where we are today. I’m glad to see that it’s paying off.” There’s a pleasing symmetry in fighting climate change, a truly enormous problem that remains invisible to most people in the UK, with offshore wind, an equivalently huge and equally invisible solution.
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Sexuality and Spirituality: Healing the Sexual-Spiritual Split
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"As I continued walking the board, I asked all the participants to raise their hands as soon as I got to a place where they felt they got stuck. In one walk across, every hand in the room, including Sister Greta's, went up. Everyone looked around in surprise – no one more surprised than me. Every one of the forty participants experienced the same paralysis that I had thought was my unique struggle. Everyone in the room acknowledged that they had all thought it was their unique struggle. We were all suffering from a sexuality-spirituality split."
-- Michael Picucci in Healing the Sexual-Spiritual Split
Dear friends,
The tremendously moving article below reveals that almost all of us have wounds around our sexuality in relationship to spirituality. The creative author gives a powerful, inspiring example of how we can begin to heal the split between sexuality and spirituality that exists in each of us individually, and in our society as a whole. I most highly recommend reading the entire article so that you might experience a taste of this deep healing yourself.
Healing the Sexual-Spiritual Split
A Weekend to Remember
By Michael Picucci
This story of a powerful weekend retreat tells how the cultural concept of the sexual-spiritual split came to me. This awareness also fueled my years of research since on common challenges that can be healed more efficiently in a cultural rather than strictly personal context.
The discovery of a sexual-spiritual split came during a weekend spirituality retreat that I presented in 1984 at Veritas Villa in New York's Catskill Mountains. On Friday evening, I polled the group of forty women and men to determine what areas of recovery they would like to focus on.
A young man in the back of the room sheepishly yelled out, "Let's talk about sex!" Since this was scheduled to be a workshop on "spirituality in recovery" everyone found the suggestion amusing. A raucous conversation took place in the room, after which the group implored me to address sex.
Always up for a good challenge, I agreed to schedule a Saturday afternoon workshop to investigate sexuality in recovery. In 1984, this was more challenging than it is today. Since the weekend had been created to explore spirituality issues, I felt challenged to integrate the two. There was another aspect of challenge that tested me in the fifteen hours I would have to prepare for the Saturday afternoon workshop. My co-facilitator was a Catholic nun named Sister Greta!
A significantly painful aspect of my own internalized sexual-spiritual split was planted by a nun when I was about seven. I had never totally healed from that trauma – talk about synchronicity! Although I knew Sister Greta to be a highly compassionate addictions counselor, I could feel a critical mass building inside. The universe was going to heal me whether I liked it or not.
Friday evening, before I went to sleep, I felt deep within that this situation offered a serendipitous occasion for healing. At that point I still didn't know what to do to create interactive participation around this theme of sexuality within the framework of a spiritual retreat. With all the symbolic transference that Sister Greta elicited, the lingering awareness that she would be observing and participating, embarrassed and unsettled me. It triggered all my unconscious fears surrounding my own split. It was hell!
In the few spare moments I had between facilitating other aspects of the retreat, I observed my experience with sex as it relates to my concept of spirituality in addictions recovery. I decided that I would share my personal experiences with the group as a stimulus for discussion.
As the afternoon approached, I could feel both a fear and a mysterious power building inside of me. At lunch I told Sister Greta how nervous I was discussing sex with her in the room. Of course, I see in retrospect that this was highlighting my own sexual-spiritual split even before I had named it. She fortuitously replied, "Oh, go ahead, go for it Michael! You aren't going to say anything I haven't already heard; and if you do, I look forward to hearing it."
As the session started, I stood in front of the room nervously holding a piece of chalk. Sister Greta was sitting on a piano bench in the back corner. I looked back at her and we both began to laugh, and at that moment it came to me.
I would share with the group my most recent discovery – how I have been separating the concepts of intimacy, sensuality, and sex in my own mind, and how helpful that realization has been to my own sexuality breakthroughs. I darted to the blackboard and put those three words, intimacy, sensuality, and sex, in that order, from left to right at the top of the board, and started discussing the words.
Initially, the group was enlivened though chaotic. They tended to want to lump the words together. I could actually see participants' faces twisted in confusion as they attempted to define these words as independent concepts. When the confusion was well established, I suggested that group members call out words they associated with the word "intimacy." As they did so, I wrote the following words under the intimacy column on the board: "warmth," "communication," "honesty," "caring," "smile," "knowing," "trust," "openness," and so on.
Then we moved to the center column headed by the word "sensuality." As people got silly and awkward they began calling out these words: "touching," "candlelight," "smell," "lick," "biting," "tickling," "music," "whispering," "massage." The list went on and on.
Last, I called for words associated with sex, requesting that we not repeat words already used even though they may have sexual associations. People were obviously embarrassed, as I observed them slyly looking at each other. The presence of Sister Greta was ominous.
One woman in front of the room whispered "penis," and everyone in the room giggled as I put it on the board. Then Sister Greta shouted out "orgasm," and the room went into a roar. I listed it on the board, too. Then the words just started coming: "vagina," "cum" (everyone was curious as to where that spelling originated), "fuck," "suck," "fantasy," "cunnilingus," and a few others. Sister Greta laughed and laughed with a magical healing energy. Without needing to overtly acknowledge or define it, everyone knew that a very special healing was touching us all.
This laugher fueled another insight in me. I was reminded of my own recent thoughts on how difficult it had been to merge my sexuality with an on-going, loving relationship. My fear of self-disclosure relaxed, and I saw how I might bring the group to a second tier of discovery by sharing my own polarizations in these areas for the group to identify with.
For a few more minutes we lingered with our creation on the board. There were still some confused expressions in the room and some quasi-enlightened remarks. Sam, a 22-year-old former marijuana addict shared, "I have never thought of separating those ideas before. To me they are all the same thing. Looking at them separately sort of twists my brain. I don't know what to do with it, but it looks like an important discovery. What should I do with it?"
Allowing this question to provide a transition into the next level of the exercise, I asked Sam if he would join me in the front of the room to help demonstrate an answer to his question. He agreed. Sam and I stood facing the blackboard. I suggested that he was representing the entire group in this exercise.
I already knew that Sam was not married, he did not have a significant other, and he wasn't dating at the time. I asked him, "Sam, if you met someone that you were attracted to, what would you aim toward first, intimacy or sex?" While doing this I paced back and forth in front of the board pointing at the three headings, first in one direction, then the other.
As I "walked the board," I demonstrated the "journey" from each side, first starting with sex (a very common starting point when one has an addictions history), through sensuality and finally to intimacy. Reversing myself, I started at intimacy, moved through sensuality, and then to sex. I then asked Sam and the group to tune into their bodies and feelings and imagine that they were entering a dating situation from both sides, and note their feelings and sensations.
Sam blurted out, "I can't do it. I can't go either way. I can start OK, I can do that from either side, although the intimacy would be new to me. But I don't think I can have both. When I was using pot, it was easy to just have sex. Now that I'm clean, it doesn't work that way. My sponsor says I should date and get to know someone first, but I get terrified and just shut down."
As I continued walking the board, I asked all the participants to raise their hands as soon as I got to a place where they felt they got stuck or paralyzed. In one walk across, every hand in the room, including Sister Greta's, went up. Everyone looked around in surprise – no one more surprised than me. Every one of the forty participants experienced the same paralysis that I had thought was my unique struggle. Everyone in the room acknowledged that they had all thought it was their unique struggle. We were all suffering from a sexual-spiritual split.
I shared some of the other damaging sexual messages that I received early on: that God was synonymous with love, warmth, family, goodness and wholesomeness, and that sex was shameful, disgusting, sinful (mortally so), ungodly and spoken of only in whispers, dirty jokes and sneers. I also told the group that I had uncovered this internalized unconscious split in myself only recently, and that this discovery was finally allowing me to merge these two dynamic, energetic birthrights.
We all have our own version of this internalization. With such a deeply embedded, dualistic concept, how can one possibly bond in love and bring shame-based sex into relationship? The unconscious sends up powerful, though often deceptive, barriers that prevent a fulfilling merger.
A good example of this comes from my own childhood. When I was about seven, I attended catechism class, which was a requirement for all good Catholics. The class was taught by a nun in full habit: an imposing authority figure to a little boy!
The class had about thirty students; in fact, I can remember sitting in the middle of a row on the left. The nun was explaining the difference between venial and mortal sin (venial being the lesser one, while mortal seemed to mean that you would be doomed to eternal hell). With these definitions on the blackboard, she pointed at them and strongly proclaimed, "To touch your private parts, or someone else's, is a MORTAL sin! MORTAL, mind you, not venial."
I was in shock: I was already doomed. Not only had I touched my private parts, but I had explored the private parts of friends during our games of "doctor." It was devastating to me: not even eight years old, and I was going to hell.
I spent many years thereafter trying to repent to God, making deals to not do it again, only to fail in humiliation and sinfulness. I regretfully share that I was 31 years old before I was able to uproot this demon and quiet the internalized havoc that it brought to my intimate relationships.
Patrick Carnes touched on the subject of the sexual-spiritual split in his book on sex addiction, Don't Call It Love. He writes, "Much damage has been done to sexuality in the name of religion. The result inhibits progress on both planes. To heal, start by acknowledging that sexuality is about meaning and that spirituality is about meaning. Search for areas of commonness between the two. Be gentle with yourself about old tortuous conflicts. They are not about you. They never were."
Initially, most adults in recovery do not realize that they have incurred this psychic split, nor do they remember its origins, but they certainly experience the results. You might find the scenario familiar: once you begin to date, you may experience infatuation, even love and eros. Sex may be very pleasurable. Usually within three to six months, bonding begins as you share struggles and joys.
At this point the unconscious polarity begins to haunt the relationship. Since you are not necessarily aware of your past damages or repressed traumas, you may begin to amplify your partner's imperfections in an unconscious attempt to sabotage the relationship. Or you might stay in the relationship and feel inadequate because sex is more work than fulfillment. You may even avoid sex altogether. Simply stated, once bonding occurs, either love or sex must be abandoned. Until we heal this sexual-spiritual split, they cannot seem to live in the same house.
People began to ask, "How can we do it?" In the uncanny, magical flow of that afternoon, I suggested that we move on to the final piece of the exercise and asked for another volunteer. A man in his mid-40s named Gary stood up. His wife Carol, who was sitting beside him, was aghast, laughing and turning red with embarrassment. Someone else roared out, "You can't do it, you're married."
Gary cut through the lighthearted bantering and replied, "Yes I can. I've been married 14 years and sober for 16, and this damn split has haunted every minute of every day of my marriage. I love Carol, but you would never know it by the way I act sexually and intimately. I'd really like to work on this." So we did.
During a break that preceded this part of the exercise, we had moved the chairs from the center and I procured some large 16" x 20" sheets of paper and some felt-tipped marker to make signs. I asked Gary to stand in the center of the room.
I thanked Gary for his honesty and courage to take part in this psychodrama, and then asked him to take a deep breath and relax, look around the room, and notice all the friendly faces. He did so, beginning to smile and relax. I asked him to go deep into his memory and share with us an early message that he received about sex, and to just look within and say whatever comes up without censoring himself. Gary related, "You'll go blind if you play with yourself." I thanked him and wrote that message with a felt-tip marker on a placard.
Then I asked Gary to pick another participant to represent whoever gave him that message, and he selected an older women named Martha. I asked Martha to hold up the placard six feet in front of Gary and face him.
Then I asked Gary for another message that he had received while growing up. He responded, "Women are sluts." I put it on a placard and Gary picked another workshop participant to represent the person who had given him this message. This time he picked a big, strapping man in his late thirties named Mike. I invited Mike to hold the placard in front of Gary next to Martha, and begin to form a circle.
This continued with messages like "Sex is sinful," "Vaginas are ugly," "You are a pervert," "Women should be virgins," and so on until we had eight people circling Gary and holding placards toward him.
The last message he shared was, "You will do it if you love me." As I wrote the placard, I asked him what it meant. He answered, almost crying, "That's what my uncle would say to me when he molested me."
As Gary took some deep breaths to regain his composure he said, "I've never told anyone, not even Carol, about this before. I can't believe I said it." The visual image was quite profound: Gary in the center of the room being encircled by these early messages.
As Gary tried to compose himself further, I encouraged him to stay present and avoid zipping up his defenses. To enhance the experiential component of the vignette, I asked the "message bearers" to turn the placards toward themselves and loudly read the messages to Gary one by one. I instructed them to keep going around and reading them louder and faster until I asked them to stop.
This continued for about two minutes, bringing everyone in the room (especially Gary) to a fevered pitch of discomfort. After stopping the action, I checked in with Gary and asked how he was doing. He replied, "I can't believe I carry all that with me all the time, especially to bed."
I then asked Carol if she would participate, to help us complete the exercise. She said yes, and I asked her to stand about six feet outside the circle facing Gary. I instructed the message bearers to go around reading the messages one more time. Then I asked Carol if all of this made her feel close or distant from Gary. I said, "Does it make you want to move closer or further away?" She replied, "I want to stay right here, I feel like there is a wall between us."
I then invited the group to share. Everyone was enlightened by the realization of how these deep inner messages make sexual intimacy impossible. They could see it and they could feel it; it was crystal clear.
I suggested that we move on to a symbolic exercise that would release these unwelcome, uninvited demons. I directed Gary to slowly, one by one, tell the message bearers, "Take back your lousy message. I don't want it. It isn't mine and it never was." I suggested that as he addressed each one, to tear up the placard and then either throw it on the floor or give it back to the bearer and dismiss them from their role.
After Gary "gave back" the first two messages, I checked in with Carol. I asked her if she was feeling any different. She reported that she felt a little closer to Gary, that he seemed more open and available as he discharged the symbolic carriers of these messages. I suggested that she move closer as she intuitively felt his availability. When all the messages were confronted, Gary just stood there facing Carol and began to gently weep.
As all the walls and barriers melted, Carol gracefully moved towards him. As she did, Gary fell to his knees sobbing, "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I didn't mean to push you away like that. I have been bringing all of these ghosts into bed with us all these years." Carol joined him in a kneeling position. They embraced in a manner that included all of us in their intimate connection.
The wall of shame was gone. The room glowed with a healing spirit. We all spontaneously became more open, affectionate, and tactile. I stood in warm embrace with Sister Greta. Other participants gently touched or leaned on each other as we all bathed in the intimate healing energy generated by Gary's courageous uncovery process. In those moments I experienced transcendence and simultaneously understood what the humanist therapist Carl Rogers meant when he said, "Whatever is most personal is most general."
As the afternoon session came to a close, participants were sharing their insights regarding their own repressed shaming messages, and wanted to know how they could continue this healing work on their own. I offered to share some techniques with them, and we designated time on Sundaymorning for this purpose.
I was awed and positively overwhelmed by the grace and power in these various exercises which have since been incorporated into our recovery workshops. I have come to realize that the resolution of the sexuality-spirituality split is a milestone in this vital work.
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