Mr. Velile Mafani Will Throw Three Stones Through the Window of the High Court in Grahamstown Tomorrow

Unemployed People’s Movement Press Statement

Our movement has been approached by Mr. Velile Ben Mafani. He informed us that tomorrow he will throw three stones, one white, one black, and one red, through the window of the High Court in Grahamstown. He will tie a letter stating his demands around the stones.

Mr Mafani was born in a shack settlement in Coega, just outside Port Elizabeth two days after Christmas in 1953. His parents worked on nearby farms, bought and sold produce from the farms and his mother worked in kitchens. The apartheid system did not want black people living in their own places in the cities and in the 1970s they were threatened with forced removal to the Ciskei Bantustan which was a human dumping ground. Mr Mafani formed an organisation called ‘Operation Go Nowhere’ and they organised against the forced removal. But Piet

Koornhof pressured them and their struggle was defeated. On the 15^th of April 1979 the police and the bulldozers came. Mr Mafani was the first to be put inside a police van. The door was closed. He couldn’t see anything but he heard the screams as the shacks were destroyed and were people loaded up on to trucks like animals to be dumped in the Ciskei. People were told that there was a Court Order from the Hight Court in Grahamstown ordering their eviction. They were shown the paper but they were not allowed to read it.

Three thousand people from Coega were dumped in Glenmore, near Peddie. Today it is more than two hours by car from Coega. They lost their work, their cattle and their homes. They lost everything. Soon after their arrival in Glenmore 140 people, mainly children and old people, died. There were no funeral parlours and they couldn’t afford coffins so the dead were just wrapped in blankets and buried on the banks of the Fish River.

Since then Mr Mafani has never stopped challenging and struggling for justice.

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 New twist in Mafani court saga

 Consultation with his ancestors prevented outspoken Glenmore activist Ben Mafani from attending a court hearing in Grahamstown Wednesday, the second time he has failed to appear in recent months.

[ ... ]

He said he went to the cemetery on the day he was due to appear in court. "I took some time to go to the graves of the activists who had fought with me during the forced removals, to have a conversation with them, Mafani said. It's a spiritual conversation now," he explained.

Wiki entry:  Ben Mafani

Former Supreme Court Justice Souter on The Danger of America's 'Pervasive Civic Ignorance'

Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter sat down with Margaret Warner and answered an audience question concerning the appropriate role of schools to produce civicly engaged students.

#S17 Occupy Arrests at West Street

See also: 

180+ arrests on Occupy Wall St. anniversary — in pictures

Pakistan: Center of the Grand Chessboard

WeAreChange presents a film by Saad Ali. Read the article that accompanies this short film at their website: http://wearechange.org/pakistan-center-of-the-grand-chessboard/

HACKED STRATFOR EMAILS: DEA Told To Back Off From The Brother Of Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Newly released internal emails from the U.S. private security firm Stratfor state that in 2007 the Bush Administration and CIA ordered the Drug Enforcement Agency to back off a major drug trafficking investigation of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half brother.

Pagans challenge occult-related crime training

A leaked internal police memo entitled “Investigation of Harmful Occult-Related Crimes: Investigation Support Capacity” is being circulated on the Internet.

The police document mentions that two detectives per province must be experts in dealing with occult crimes. The memo says these include muti murders, curses intended to cause harm, vampirism, spiritual intimidation including “astral coercion”,  rape by “tokoloshe spirits”, poltergeist phenomena, voodoo,  black magic and traditional healers involved in criminal activities.

“This newly envisioned scope of investigation must be viewed with suspicion and be of concern to anyone engaged in the practice of witchcraft, traditional African religion, and other occult spiritualities, including satanism,”  the  SA Pagan Rights Alliance (Sapra) said.

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Dead Guantanamo Prisoner On Why He Gave Up on Life

From The Archers of Okcular:

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout; Adapted: art makes me smile, jjay69, nitrodog, jfrancis)Adnan Latif was found dead in his cell on September 10th, 2012, just a day before the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. He was 32. Latif, a Yemeni citizen, had been detained at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade, despite a 2010 court ruling that ordered the Obama administration to "take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif's release forthwith," due to lack of evidence that he had committed any crime. He suffered at the hands of the US government in ways that most people can't begin to comprehend, and his death should be a reminder that the national shame that is Guantanamo Bay lives on and now enjoys bipartisan support.

Reexamining a letter he wrote to his lawyer David Remes in December of 2010 shows the depths of his despair near the end of his life. His letter begins simply. The first paragraph is just one devastating sentence: "Do whatever you wish to do, the issue is over." He then goes on to describe Guantanamo as, "a prison that does not know humanity, and does not know [sic] except the language of power, oppression, and humiliation for whoever enters it."

"Anybody who is able to die," Latif writes, "will be able to achieve happiness for himself, he has no hope except that."

He continues:

"The requirement...is to leave this life which is no longer anymore [sic] called a life, instead it itself has become death and renewable torture. Ending it is a mercy and happiness for this soul. I will not allow any more of this and I will end it."

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Stories For Boys (the Occupy edit)

As part of the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street (Sept 17), Minuit teamed up with New York photojournalist Nina Berman to produce this clip. These shots were taken during the time Occupy was in Manhattan Sept - Nov 2011, as well as at Occupy Chicago, May 2012. But it's not only about Occupy. Zuccotti Park was one face of protest at one place in time. There's a lot of causes and a lot of work and a lot of people who hustle tirelessly to fight for fairness. Whether it's silently amongst their own communities or loudly lobbying politics.Those noisy gnats on the toe of an increasingly uncomfortable corporate camper. ha! "What is the most important thing? It is people, it is people, it is people." I may never fully understand that or apply it 100%. But it comes from heads a lot wiser than mine. And it makes you think. So here's to the watchdogs, the whistleblowers, the non-violent resisters who hustle to keep the planet honest. And keep the issues in our faces so we can make the choices. Kia kaha

Photos: Nina Berman/NOOR 

Music: Minuit

Prominent Canadians Release Statement Supporting Iraq War Resister Kimberly Rivera

Call on Jason Kenney to Make Humanitarian Application Decision

With less than two days left before Kimberly Rivera and her family, including two Canadian children, must leave Canada or be deported, supporters of the US Iraq War resister are calling on Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to stop delaying and make a decision on the Rivera family's three-year-old application to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds (H&C).

As of Tuesday morning, nearly 19,000 people had signed a petition urging Minister Kenney to grant the Rivera family's H&C application (http://change.org/letkimstay).

During a news conference in Toronto on Tuesday afternoon, a group of prominent Canadians released a statement calling on Minister Kenney to "do the right thing and allow Kimberly Rivera and her family to stay in Canada":

We the undersigned support conscientious objector Kimberly Rivera and her family who are threatened with imminent deportation from Canada on September 20. Kim deployed to Iraq in 2006 and sought asylum in Canada in 2007. She faces a court martial and up to 5 years in military prison for refusing to participate any longer in the Iraq war-a war which had no legal sanction. Kim would be separated from her four young children, two of whom were born in Canada. A felony conviction would mean a lifetime of difficulty finding employment. We call on the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney to do the right thing and allow Kimberly Rivera and her family to stay in Canada.

	Andy Barrie, broadcaster and Vietnam War resister
	Dan Bar-El, award-winning children's author
	Maude Barlow, author and activist
	Maev Beaty, actor
	Shirley Douglas, O.C., actor
	Dennis Foon, award-winning writer
	Richard Greenblatt, playwright/actor
	Ron Hawkins, musician
	Naomi Klein, author
	Ron Kovic, author, Born on the Fourth of July
	Avi Lewis, filmmaker
	Peter Showler, Director, the Refugee Forum, University of Ottawa; former chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board
	Jack Todd, journalist and Vietnam War resister
	Alexandre Trudeau, filmmaker

"Canadians' support for conscientious objectors to the Iraq War, and for the Rivera family specifically, has been overwhelming," said Michelle Robidoux, spokesperson for the War Resisters Support Campaign. "If it was up to the Canadian people, there is no doubt that the Rivera family would be allowed to stay in this country. We are appealing today to Jason Kenney to stop a great injustice from being done, by approving Kimberly Rivera's application to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds."

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Mexican Special Forces Employed as Death Squads in Drug War, Email Records Released by WikiLeaks Reveal

Bill Conroy reports for the Narcosphere:

From MX1’s email correspondence with Stratfor:

So, as you have no doubt gathered by now, the National Security Council decided to really up the ante in Juarez. We expect 5,000 additional troops and up to 1,000 additional federal police. Among the new elements, there will be at least 10 specialized intelligence units, as well as special forces units from both the Army and the Air Force. One of the intelligence units will be from the Navy (not for publication).
… The military will surgically remove cells that had been previously identified, but for whatever reason were not taken down yet. Periods of adjustment will ensue, but the military will fill any void left in terms of territorial control, ultimately causing the competing DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] to wait/give up. [Emphasis added.]
… The first to fall will be those waging the "third war", as they are a bunch of retarded morons that have no chance against a force deployment of this size, and thrive only because of impunity.

The “third war” MX1 referred to in the email correspondence is described as follows in a 2009 article penned by Stratfor analysts Fred Burton and Scott Stewart:

This third war is the war being waged on the Mexican population by criminals who may or may not be involved with the cartels. Unlike the other battles, where cartel members or government forces are the primary targets and civilians are only killed as collateral damage, on this battlefront, civilians are squarely in the crosshairs.

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The Inside Story of a Controversial New Text About Jesus

According to a top religion scholar, this 1,600-year-old text fragment suggests that some early Christians believed Jesus was married—possibly to Mary Magdalene.

The Police Remembered Occupy Wall Street’s One Year Anniversary!!!

From Wonkette:

As you all know, working and lower-middle-class households are among the most likely to spend any additional income (like that TIME-AND-A-HALF OVERTIME, BABY!) immediately and locally on necessity goods. In New York, rookie cops make roughly $42k annually — with a chance to incrementally reach the maximum salary of $76,488 over five-and-a-half years — placing them squarely in this category (particularly, if they are the primary earner of a large household). Their spending then cascades through the local economy, enacting what Keynesian economists call a “money multiplier effect.”

With #S17, the Occupy movement is once again doing what President Obama and Congress can not or will not do: providing the extra economic stimulus Americans need to get our country running again!

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Petrodollars And The Road to World War 3

We are on a road that leads straight to the World War 3, but in order to see that and to fully understand what is at stake you have to look at the big picture and connect the dots. This video examines the history of the dollar, its relation to oil, and the real motives behind the wars of the past two decades.

Mossad’s September Surprise

Dean Henderson writes:

The film Innocence of Muslims, which sparked anti-American protests throughout the Islamic world last week, bears all the trademarks of an Illuminati Mossad false flag operation designed to both ignite WW III and to sink President Obama’s re-election.

Never mind that the attack on the US Embassy in Bengazi, Libya which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other embassy employees was carried out by the same al Qaeda nuts Stevens had championed, as they murdered their way to power during the CIA-backed coup against Mohamar Qaddafi.

Never mind that the attacks on the US Embassy in Eqypt were tacitly endorsed by that country’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood – long a clandestine tool of the Illuminati bankers. Or that the attacks on our embassy in Khartoum were launched by al Qaeda thugs bent on replacing Rothschild central banking cartel nemesis Omar al-Bashir.

Forget the statements made by the ignoramus Mitt Romney, who like his Israeli-worshipping Republican kin, remains in denial as to the consequences of invading and occupying Muslim countries at will.

What matters is the timing of these events.

Early last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Obama Administration of dragging its feet on giving Israel a green light to bomb Iran. A perturbed White House issued a statement that “having this kind of conversation in public is extremely unhelpful”. Most significantly, last Tuesday Obama refused to meet with Netanyahu concurrent with a UN meeting in New York.

Later that day of September 11^th, our embassies were under attack. The attacks continued throughout the week.

Innocence of Muslims was produced by Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, who first claimed to be a Jew kicked out of Israel, and now claims to be allied with Coptic Christians in Egypt. The three-named Nakoula pled guilty to bank fraud in California in 2010. His sidekick in producing the film was Steven Klein, a former US Marine who is active in right-wing religious protests at abortion clinics.

The film was handled by Pastor Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who threatened to burn a copy of the Koran nearly two years ago to the day. According to the Daily Bell, Jones has ties to both the Italian P2 Freemasons and the Israeli Mossad. [1] For more background, see my article “Pastor Jones & Mohammed Atta” http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/pastor-jones-mohamed-atta/.

A few weeks back an Israeli document was leaked which indicated that Israel planned to attack Iran before the US Presidential election. The release of Innocence of Muslims seems designed to drag the US back into the Middle East quagmire at a time when the Israeli Rothschild entity has become increasingly isolated.

All of this is reminiscent of October Surprise, an intelligence operation launched by Ronald Reagan’s election team to sink the incumbent President Jimmy Carter. Heading Reagan’s election effort was soon-to-be CIA Director Bill Casey.

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 Autumn surprise can transform a presidential race

Septembers shock, Octobers surprise, early Novembers can knock a campaign sideways. In a presidential race's waning weeks, almost anything can happen – bedlam in the Middle East, financial panic at home, a scandal in the headlines. And candidates have little time to absorb the blow.

Sometimes the kind of jolt known as an "October surprise" matters in the end. Other times it doesn't. But every campaign knows enough to worry about what might come.

"A fall general election is a very wild ride," said Steve Schmidt, who managed Sen. John McCain's campaign and served on George W. Bush's re-election team. "It's a volatile ride. You're always on guard."

Often the unforeseen sweeps in from overseas. Anti-American protests spreading through Muslim countries this week and the armed attacks that killed the ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, grabbed a presidential race focused on the domestic economy and spun it around to foreign policy.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney seized on the unrest in Libya, Egypt and then Yemen to criticize President Barack Obama as a weak world leader willing to appease Islamic extremists. Obama portrayed Romney as untested in foreign policy and rushing to politicize a tragedy before fully understanding the facts.

How much of that is remembered by voters on Nov. 6 will depend on what happens in the meantime. Does the anti-American violence in Muslim nations flare or fade? Other surprises, such as skyrocketing gasoline prices or escalating trouble between Israel and Iran, might emerge and be fresher on voters' minds. ...

Occupy - Get Involved (#S17 1 Year Anniversary)

"Last September 17th, as part of a wave of global protest, people from across the country raced to the heart of New York's financial district to occupy Wall Street. In the face of big banks foreclosing on our homes, killing our jobs, buying up our democracy, and turning our environment into just another toxic asset, you showed up, and we became the 99%."

And we continue on: http://s17nyc.org

The Conspiracy Extends to the Musical Scale

From the Humans Are Free blog:

 

"...Imagine an incredibly powerful, wealthy person who secretly prospers from conflict, disease and war learns that certain sound frequencies (those easily divisible by two, signifying opposition) create conflict, discord and disharmony while those divisible by three  (signifying balance, polity, reconciliation, harmony) produce symmetry, and visually harmonic, pleasing structures.

Now imagine that he has the power to establish the tuning standard of all musical instruments throughout the Western World.

Imagine that he bases the entire scale of musical artistic creation upon a frequency which would skew vibrations towards discord.

It sounds like science fiction.  Yet this is exactly what transpired in September 1939 when Rockefeller (Illuminati) financial interests dictated that the standard tuning for the note of “A” above middle C would henceforth be said to vibrate at precisely 440 cycles per second.

This unnatural standard tuning frequency, removed from the symmetry of sacred vibrations and overtones, has declared war on the subconscious mind of Western Man.

The standard tuning fork, which is set to vibrate the note “A” above middle C at 440 cycles per second, is based upon a frequency only divisible by two rather than three, which means that all of the musical notes both above and below it are affected.

Despite the apparent “sweet music” a symphony orchestra can produce, when all instruments are tuned based on the A=440Hz key frequency, they are covert weapons no matter what “music” they may be playing.

These destructive frequencies entrain the thoughts towards disruption, disharmony, disunity.  Additionally, they also stimulate the controlling organ of the body — the brain — into disharmonious resonance, which ultimately creates disease and war..."

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Most Afghanis have not heard of 9/11

In the West we take it for granted that everybody knows about the events of September 11th. But is this really the case, especially in some of the places that have been most affected by its consequences?

Amazingly, in Afghanistan, where for ten years a war has been fought with 9/11 as its root cause and justification, not only do many locals claim to be oblivious to 9/11 but it appears that so are the police and even some of the translators working with the US military. "We're farmers, we're just working in our fields. We don't know anything else about the world," they shrug. With high rates of illiteracy, poverty and lack of infrastructure, many Afghans live in what is close to a media vacuum. With American troops set to start withdrawing this year, it appears that they will leave with a huge number of Afghans never having really understood why they came in the first place. For the majority of US soldiers however, it's a different story. "Some of us still have a personal vendetta with the beings that roam here. I still find it very personal."
Adam Pletts

Almost Cut My Hair (cover)

Secret Prophet explains: This song has never lost it's meaning and is particularly pertainent today. Written by David Crosby.

Frisky & Mannish - The Ballad of Eileen Johnson

Frisky & Mannish's fully realised vision of the true story of "Come on, Eileen".

Eileen Johnson, housewife, 49, despairs over her son's choice to live as a woman. Bert Johnson, 52, hasn't noticed. Billy E Johnson, or "Belinda van Jön", now works at the Sparkle Glitter Club in Stockport, formerly Poco a Poco. Eileen is determined to come to terms with her son's choices.

This song depicts her struggle.

President of Italy’s Supreme Court to Refer 9/11 Crimes To International Criminal Court

From Washington's Blog:

Ferdinando Imposimato is the honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy, and former Senior Investigative Judge, Italy.

Imposimato presided over several terrorism-related cases, including the kidnapping and ultimate assassination of President Aldo Moro, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, other political assassinations and kidnapping cases and several cases against the Mafia. He is a former Senator who served on the Anti-Mafia Commission in three administrations.

Imposimato is also a former legal consultant to the United Nations regarding institution of laws to control drug trafficking.

This week, Judge Imposimato stated publicly in writing that 9/11 was just like the “strategy of tension” carried out in Italy.

Specifically, the former Italian Prime Minister, Italian judges, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.

As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred).

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Ursula K. Le Guin: Still Battling the Powers That Be

From Wired:

 

Wired: It’s been reported that some of the protesters at Occupy Oakland have been carrying shields in the image of books, including your novel The Dispossessed. How do you feel about that?

Ursula K. Le Guin: Terrific. I am proud and happy that a book — and actually a book printed quite a long time ago now — is still making some waves and being of some use to people thinking about this stuff.

Wired: Did you write any of those books intending to inspire action, or was it purely artistic?

Le Guin: I do try to separate my personal activism — showing up at a demonstration or something — from what I write. I don’t write tracts, I write novels. I’m not a preacher, I’m a fiction writer. I get a lot of moral guidance from reading novels, so I guess I expect my novels to offer some moral guidance, but they’re not blueprints for action, ever.

Wired: In 2008, you wrote an article in Harper’s called “Staying Awake: Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading” in which you lamented corporate control of publishing. Have things changed at all — for better or worse — since you wrote that article?

Le Guin: I think they’ve gone downhill. I mean, I think corporate control has just increased as publishing goes into terminal panic about how to handle e-publishing. Maybe this is the dark part of the tunnel and we are going to figure out how to do it, and how to pay writers some kind of decent return for their writing, but at the moment — I don’t teach writing classes anymore, and I’m really glad I don’t, because I would feel very strange about telling people, “Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.” I mean, ha. The writers and the editors are very, very low on the totem pole in the world of corporate publishing, and I don’t think it’s very good for books, and I know it isn’t very good for what writers have to buy their peanut butter. 

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Ursula K. Le Guin writes a fable of Occupy Wall Street

Postmodern Anarchism in the Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin

Discussion - War Machines: Military Technologies between Civility and Authority

The liberatory possibilities of our networked systems of digital culture get continually emphasised with the rhetorics of improvisation, openness and new possibilities for social life. Yet, in many cases, these very technologies find their genesis in the most repressive systems of command and control – birthed in the closed world of military institutions and strategies. This panel focuses on the supposedly incompatible links between global neo-liberalism and war machines. Using the strange confluence of military technological development and private tech start ups in Israel as a case study, experts excavate the ways in which the improvisational nature of combat and the split second creative decision making taking place in the “fog of war” get embedded into the very tools we claim liberate us from the societies of control.

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The American Military Industrial Killing Machine

STATISTICS OF AMERICAN GENOCIDE AND MASS MURDER FROM 1991-2008:

The United States committed its greatest democide during the Second World War. This was in the indiscriminate area bombing of German and Japanese cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not all American strategic bombing was of this type. Early in the war the American Air Force concentrated on precision bombing of both Germany and Japan. But as the war progressed British pressure and American bomber losses in such bombing persuaded the Americans to join the British in broadly targeting the center of urban areas. Regarding Japan, the apparent lack of success of precision bombing led to the assumption of command over the bombing by General Curtis Lemay, who was disposed to massive area bombing of Japanese cities.

Over 3 million innocent people lost their lives during the vietnam war... about 60,000 of those were american soldiers.

Civilian Victims of USA "Foreign Policy" for 17 years:

1991 - Iraq - 200,000
1992 - Somalia - 7,000
1974-1992 - Angola - 650,000 +
1986-1994 - Colombia - 20,000 +
1995-1998 - Turkey - 27,000 +
1997 - Rwanda - 6,000
1965-1997 - Indonesia - 1,000,000
1990-1997 - Iraq - 1,200,000 +
1998 - Afghanistan - 2,000 +
1986-1998 - Guatemala - 200,000
1999 - Yugoslavia - thousands
1999 - Iraq - hundreds
1991-1999 - Kuwait, Iraq - 1,620
2000-2002 - Palestinian Territories - hundreds
2001 - Afghanistan - 23,000 +
1995-2001 - Peru - unknown
2002 - Angola - unknown
2002 - Iraq - unknown
2003 - Afghanistan - 300 +
2003 - Algeria - hundreds
2003 - Iraq - 17,000 +
1976-2003 - Indonesia - 12,000 +
2003-2004 - Palestinian Territories - 1,400 +
2003-2007 - Iraq - 1,000,000 +
2006 - Palestine, Lebanon - 1,300 + (to August)
2006 - Haiti - 8,000 + (to September)
2007 - Somalia - 2,000 +
2008 - South Ossetia - 2,000 +

http://RevolutionNews.US

A Study on Ancient Indian Mathematics

It is without doubt that mathematics today owes a huge debt to the outstanding contributions made by Indian mathematicians over many hundreds of years. What is quite surprising is that there has been a reluctance to recognise this and one has to conclude that many famous historians of mathematics found what they expected to find, or perhaps even what they hoped to find, rather than to realise what was so clear in front of them.

We shall examine the contributions of Indian mathematics in this article, but before looking at this contribution in more detail we should say clearly that the “huge debt” is the beautiful number system invented by the Indians on which much of mathematical development has rested. Laplace put this with great clarity:-

The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated. Its simplicity lies in the way it facilitated calculation and placed arithmetic foremost amongst useful inventions. the importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyond the two greatest men of Antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius.

We shall look briefly at the Indian development of the place-value decimal system of numbers later in this article and in somewhat more detail in the separate article Indian numerals. First, however, we go back to the first evidence of mathematics developing in India.

Histories of Indian mathematics used to begin by describing the geometry contained in the Sulbasutras but research into the history of Indian mathematics has shown that the essentials of this geometry were older being contained in the altar constructions described in the Vedic mythology text the Shatapatha Brahmana and the Taittiriya Samhita. Also it has been shown that the study of mathematical astronomy in India goes back to at least the third millennium BC and mathematics and geometry must have existed to support this study in these ancient times.

The first mathematics which we shall describe in this article developed in the Indus valley. The earliest known urban Indian culture was first identified in 1921 at Harappa in the Punjab and then, one year later, at Mohenjo-daro, near the Indus River in the Sindh. Both these sites are now in Pakistan but this is still covered by our term “Indian mathematics” which, in this article, refers to mathematics developed in the Indian subcontinent. The Indus civilisation (or Harappan civilisation as it is sometimes known) was based in these two cities and also in over a hundred small towns and villages. It was a civilisation which began around 2500 BC and survived until 1700 BC or later. The people were literate and used a written script containing around 500 characters which some have claimed to have deciphered but, being far from clear that this is the case, much research remains to be done before a full appreciation of the mathematical achievements of this ancient civilisation can be fully assessed.

We often think of Egyptians and Babylonians as being the height of civilisation and of mathematical skills around the period of the Indus civilisation, yet V G Childe in New Light on the Most Ancient East (1952) wrote:-

India confronts Egypt and Babylonia by the 3rd millennium with a thoroughly individual and independent civilisation of her own, technically the peer of the rest. And plainly it is deeply rooted in Indian soil. The Indus civilisation represents a very perfect adjustment of human life to a specific environment. And it has endured; it is already specifically Indian and forms the basis of modern Indian culture.

We do know that the Harappans had adopted a uniform system of weights and measures. An analysis of the weights discovered suggests that they belong to two series both being decimal in nature with each decimal number multiplied and divided by two, giving for the main series ratios of 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500. Several scales for the measurement of length were also discovered during excavations. One was a decimal scale based on a unit of measurement of 1.32 inches (3.35 centimetres) which has been called the “Indus inch”. Of course ten units is then 13.2 inches which is quite believable as the measure of a “foot”. A similar measure based on the length of a foot is present in other parts of Asia and beyond. Another scale was discovered when a bronze rod was found which was marked in lengths of 0.367 inches. It is certainly surprising the accuracy with which these scales are marked. Now 100 units of this measure is 36.7 inches which is the measure of a stride. Measurements of the ruins of the buildings which have been excavated show that these units of length were accurately used by the Harappans in construction.

It is unclear exactly what caused the decline in the Harappan civilisation. Historians have suggested four possible causes: a change in climatic patterns and a consequent agricultural crisis; a climatic disaster such flooding or severe drought; disease spread by epidemic; or the invasion of Indo-Aryans peoples from the north. The favourite theory used to be the last of the four, but recent opinions favour one of the first three. What is certainly true is that eventually the Indo-Aryans peoples from the north did spread over the region. This brings us to the earliest literary record of Indian culture, the Vedas which were composed in Vedic Sanskrit, between 1500 BC and 800 BC. At first these texts, consisting of hymns, spells, and ritual observations, were transmitted orally. Later the texts became written works for use of those practicing the Vedic religion.

The next mathematics of importance on the Indian subcontinent was associated with these religious texts. It consisted of the Sulbasutras which were appendices to the Vedas giving rules for constructing altars. They contained quite an amount of geometrical knowledge, but the mathematics was being developed, not for its own
sake, but purely for practical religious purposes. The mathematics contained in the these texts is studied in some detail in the separate article on the Sulbasutras.

The main Sulbasutras were composed by Baudhayana (about 800 BC), Manava (about 750 BC), Apastamba (about 600 BC), and Katyayana (about 200 BC). These men were both priests and scholars but they were not mathematicians in the modern sense. Although we have no information on these men other than the texts they wrote,
we have included them in our biographies of mathematicians. There is another scholar, who again was not a mathematician in the usual sense, who lived around this period. That was Panini who achieved remarkable results in his studies of Sanskrit grammar. Now one might reasonably ask what Sanskrit grammar has to do with mathematics. It certainly has something to do with modern theoretical computer science, for a mathematician or computer scientist working with formal language theory will recognise just how modern some of Panini’s ideas are.

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The Indian Sulbasutras
All that is known of Vedic mathematics is contained in the Sulbasutras. This in itself gives us a problem, for we do not know if these people undertook mathematical investigations for their own sake, as for example the ancient Greeks did, or whether they only studied mathematics to solve problems necessary for their religious rites. Some historians have argued that mathematics, in particular geometry, must have also existed to support astronomical work being undertaken around the same period.

Joseph Choonara - Permanent Revolution

From Tunisia to Egypt, Libya to Bahrain mass revolts and revolutions are sweeping the Middle East. They are shattering the idea that ordinary people can't change the world and threatening the hold of imperialism. After decades of dictatorship mass mobilisations and strikes have brought down tyrants. Who says revolution is impossible in the 21st Century!

The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012

From The Atlantic, January 1993

Colonel Dunlap's Coup

A fictionalized essay that has been circulating within the Pentagon offers a blunt warning on several fronts.

by Thomas E. Ricks

It is the year 2012. The American military has carried out a successful coup d'etat. Jailed and awaiting execution for resistance to the coup, a retired military officer writes to an old comrade, explaining how the coup came about.

So begins a treatise entered last year in the National Defense University's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategy Essay Competition. Titled "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012," and written by an active-duty Air Force officer, the essay went on to be selected as one of two winners of the competition. The author, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dunlap, was honored by General Colin Powell at the awards ceremony.

Looking back from a vantage point supposedly twenty years in the future, Dunlap writes that after years of being handed the tough jobs the rest of the government seemed incapable of handling, the military simply decided to step in and run the show. Like all science fiction, Dunlap's essay is really about the present. His coup entices the reader to his real subject: the worrisome drift of the U.S. military into civilian affairs.

"Faced with intractable national problems on one hand, and an energetic and capable military on the other," Dunlap's condemned prisoner warns, "it can be all too seductive to start viewing the military as a cost-effective solution. We made a terrible mistake when we allowed the armed forces to be diverted from its original purpose." The prisoner sees a kind of inevitability to the coup. Amid rising crime, failing schools, a stagnant economy, and a gridlocked political system, the can-do U.S. military stood out in a no-solution society. Having remade themselves in the aftermath of Vietnam, the armed forces emerged from the Gulf War as "America's most--and perhaps only--trusted arm of government."

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See also:

American coup d'etat: Military thinkers discuss the unthinkable

Martial Law

Civil Unrest & Rioting

TrineDay Releases The Most Dangerous Book in the World
Investigative researcher-author S.K. Bain has not only gone outside the box, he has exposed a much bigger and stranger box than anyone has posited before, taking the reader inside the minds of the power-mad psychopaths responsible for the "New Pearl Harbor."

Humanity in War

(Edited Extracts) Ramsey Clark speaks to the March 20, 2010 anti-war protest in Washington, DC; how the imperial presidency of America is destroying any chance for peace in the world and what we can do to change that.

A Virus Called Fear- Student Documentary Short

Very few people understand the programming of fear, and why it distorts our perceptions. While fear is a program used for our survival, fear also creates irrational beliefs that cause larger systems of fear like politics, religion and the media. "A Virus Called Fear" is a short film about the conditioning of fear, and what irrational fears can lead to.

A Zaki Gordon Institute for Independent Filmmaking student documentary short. Written and directed by Ben Fama Jr.

Honey Bee Blues

Honeybee Blues tells the story of the worlds disappearing honeybees and the efforts of Australian scientist Dr Denis Anderson to save them from annihilation.

From the native bush and orchards of Australia to the industrial farmlands of the United States and the highlands of Papua New Guinea, Honeybee Blues is a scientific detective story that tells a 21st century cautionary tale.

The European honeybee, or Apis mellifera, is used for commercial honey production and by a global pollination industry worth up to $100 billion. Without it we would lose a third of the worlds food supply.

But honeybees are under threat from all directions. Industrial agriculture and habitat destruction have taken a toll but the biggest threat is a deadly parasitic mite which Anderson discovered and called Varroa destructor. It has decimated bee populations everywhere except Australia which is now the only country that still has European honeybees living in the wild. While in Papua New Guinea, Anderson discovers another lethal mite, Varroa jacobsoni, that adds to the threat to the worlds honeybees.

Denis Anderson believes the solution to eradicating the Varroa mite lies in the genes of the honeybee. He is trying to switch off the honeybee gene that tells the Varroa mite to reproduce. If he succeeds, he could save the last of the worlds wild European honeybees from extinction.

The film features observational sequences and interviews with biosecurity officers, bee exporters, pollinators and honey producers.

Combining macro photography of the insect world, a lively blues soundtrack and animation sequences, Honeybee Blues tracks the incredible journey of the worlds oldest domesticated animal and its predators around the globe.

David Icke: Non-Human Entities Enslave Us, But We Have The Power To Be Free

David Icke on the Vinny Eastwood Show out of New Zealand. 05 Sep 2012

http://davidicke.com

http://thevinnyeastwoodshow।com

MK-ULTRA Violence - Or, how McGill pioneered psychological torture

From the McGill Daily:

Imagine being trapped in a small room. Your hands covered in gloves, your sight blocked by translucent glasses, and your head covered by a pillow. You cannot touch, taste, see, smell, or feel. You are totally deprived of your senses. This is the imagery of torture in foreign wars, of espionage blockbusters, of terrible nightmares. It seems hardly something that would occur in Montreal. But it did occur, right here at McGill.

Today, many journalists, doctors, and the general public see the Allan Memorial Institute in Royal Victoria Hospital as the cradle of modern torture, a cradle built and rocked by Scottish-born Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron. To the patients of Dr. Ewen Cameron, our university was the site of months of seemingly unending torture disguised as medical experimentation –– an experimentation that destroyed their lives and changed the course of psychological torture forever.

Cameron’s experiments, known as MK-ULTRA subproject 68, were partially funded by the CIA and the Canadian government, and are widely known for their use of LSD, barbiturates, and amphetamines on patients. In the media, they were known as the “mind control” studies done at McGill and were reported as a brainwashing conspiracy from the CIA and the Canadian government. For journalists, the story was a goldmine. LSD use in a CIA experiment was an angle no sensationalist media could reject, especially in the anti-drug frenzy of the 1960s. However, these studies were much more complex than a Timothy Leary scare in la belle ville.

At its worst, the prolonged periods of sensory deprivation and induced sleep used in the experiments left many patients in a child-like mental state, even years after the experiments were finalized. Even today, remnants of Cameron’s experiments at the Allan Memorial appear in torture methods at places like Guantanamo Bay.

A Tale of Two Doctors

This story begins on June 1, 1951 at a secret meeting in the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Sherbrooke. The purpose of the meeting was to launch a joint American-British-Canadian effort led by the CIA to fund studies on sensory deprivation. In attendance was Dr. Donald Hebb, then director of psychology at McGill University, who received a grant of $10,000 to study sensory deprivation. It would be fifteen years after this meeting at the Ritz that Cameron would disastrously pick up where Hebb left off.

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economics and #occupywallstreet

[http://www.facebook.com/TheOccupyHandbook]

In 2008, the United States economy experienced a nearly unprecedented crisis, due to a perfect storm involving banking deregulation, complex derivatives, financial mismanagement, and larger systemic causes, including an inadequate educational system. Three years later, people rose up in protest—an organic national movement called Occupy Wall Street, its members chanting "we are the 99%" and saying that our system was broken, gamed by the wealthy and powerful.

The movement brought an entire nation's frustration with a runaway banking and financial sector, student debt, and unequal educational opportunities to the forefront of public debate. And thoughtful institutions responded, investing time and money to look into the phenomenon. On April 17th and 18th of 2012, the Rockefeller Foundation funded two panel discussions to address these urgent questions. The panels were sponsored by the New School and were held at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, and the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Moderator John Cassidy of The New Yorker perhaps summed up the issues best when he noted that the 1960s and 1970s had discredited the idea of an all-efficient government, and the 90s and zeros had done a very good job of discrediting the idea of an all-efficient market. "What's to replace both of those ideologies?" Cassidy asked. "That remains to be seen--Occupy Wall Street is obviously a part of the discussion."

Panelists included, among others, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow; Pulitzer Prize-winning financial journalist David Cay Johnston; world-class international economists Jeffrey Sachs, Raghu Rajan, Carmen Reinhart, and Robin Wells; the Financial Times's Martin Wolf, and Bethany McLean of Vanity Fair.

Both panels grew out of The Occupy Handbook, a compendium of articles, edited by Janet Byrne, featuring leading economists and others on the causes and implications of the Occupy movement. This video features selections from the two panel discussions as well as public remarks by contributors to the Handbook.

In Vermin Supreme's PONYTOPIA, There Will Be No Political Parties

http://www.acronymTV.com

How Lovecraft saved role-playing games

Although some gamers may be familiar with Call of Cthulhu, many are unaware of the tremendous legacy the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired game bequeathed to the role-playing game industry.

Courtesy Wikimedia.

Call of Cthulhu was one of the first role-playing games to have a literary legacy. Because Chaosium publishes both the role-playing game and collections of Lovecraftian fiction, the game is treated on equal footing with the books that inspired it. Daniel Harms' Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia includes entries that span the entirety of Chaosium's catalogue, including both games and fiction and mixing the two. As a result, Chaosium's gaming supplements have helped shape the interpretation of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos to subsequent generations of gamers.

Dungeons & Dragons owes much to Call of Cthulhu. This is most evident in its monsters: Ghouls, Kuo-toa (Deep Ones), Mind Flayers (Star Spawn of Cthulhu), and Black Pudding (Shoggoth) all are directly or indirectly inspired by their Lovecraftian counterparts. ^ Jacobs, James (October 2004). "The Shadow Over D&D: H. P. Lovecraft's Influence on Dungeons & Dragons". Dragon (#324).

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Conspiracy: Anonymous, Occupy Wall Street, and "Bob"

Rev. Magdalen writes:

Some people think there's a similarity between the Church of the SubGenius and the Anonymous Hive, but although both are obscure internet communities that sometimes have real-life member meet-ups, the philosophies behind them are very different. No two SubGenii are the same (if any two are too similar, one must go!) while members of Anonymous all wear the same mask, use the same logo, and strive to lose their individuality in a hivemind.

Anonymous follows "V" from the graphic novel/movie "V" for Vendetta. SubGenii follow the teachings of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, mythical salesman and UFO contactee. Anons strive to have no names, be faceless replaceable units. SubGenii take on extra names, and extravagant descriptive titles to distinguish themselves and brag.

Although some SubGenii vocally support Occupy Wall Street, it is the brainchild of Anonymous, who had been planning "Operation Empire State Rebellion" long before AdBusters thought up the catchier "Occupy!" brand name for the franchise encampments idea.

Many have asked what motivates Occupiers, since they don't have a clear set of goals they're fighting to achieve. What could possibly make so many people so passionate and determined to disrupt travel and commerce, regardless of the harm they cause other people, racking up lengthy arrest records without even knowing what victory would look like? Why Occupy?

The short answer is, conspiracy theories. Observing the tweet streams, videos, blogs, and fliers of OWS, it seems clear Occupiers don't offer their own solutions to the problems they complain about because they are under the impression the only thing lacking in our nation is political will. The US government (and whoever is believed by Occupiers to really control it) could somehow fix the economy, environment, and foreign policy, if it really wanted to, so all that's needed is to put a lot of pressure on the true culprits, to force their hands and make them do good instead of evil. Then, peace and prosperity for everyone will naturally follow. No logistical, monetary, or safety concerns figure into Anonymous/OWS plans; it's all about making the "ruling elites" choose to do good instead of evil, by any means necessary.

SubGenius philosophy talks about a vast Conspiracy too। It does seem sometimes like things couldn't possibly be this bad without someone having acted with deliberate malice. Global climate change, income inequality, smog, pollution, species dying out, seemingly endless wars, wild market speculation, unjustified prohibitions, these things can seem like a plot, and many internet conspiracy theorists weave colorful explanations that tie it all together in a neat package explaining who to blame for all the world's ills. They usually just pick whoever they personally hate most, or choose from historical "bad guys" favored by previous people who agreed the world must be run by secret evil cabals, or go with what the voices in their heads advise.

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Copyright Trolls' Bogus "Negligence" Theory Thrown Out Of Court Again

Judges on both coasts of the U.S. have now rejected one of the copyright trolls' favorite tactics - suing an Internet subscriber for "negligence" when someone else allegedly downloaded a movie illegally. Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the Northern California federal court threw out a negligence suit by a Caribbean holding company against a Californian, Joshua Hatfield. The company, AF Holdings, had alleged that Mr. Hatfield allowed unnamed third parties to use his Internet connection to download a pornographic movie using BitTorrent, infringing copyright. Judge Hamilton ruled that Hatfield was not responsible for the actions of strangers. She joins Judge Kaplan of the Southern District of New York, who reached the same conclusions in another case in July.

The "negligence" strategy had three fatal flaws, according to the court। First, an Internet subscriber like Mr. Hatfield has no legal duty to police his Internet connection to protect copyright owners like AF Holdings. Second, even if AF had a valid "negligence" claim against Mr. Hatfield under state personal injury law, federal copyright law would override it. This is called preemption. And finally, even if copyright law didn't trump a negligence claim, Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act probably would.

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10 Signs That You’re Fully Awake

Isn’t it obvious that there is a significant global awakening happening? Just as the Mayans predicted so many years ago, the apocalypse would become apparent in 2012. But many misinterpret the apocalypse to be the end of the world, when in fact it actually means an “un-covering, a revelation of something hidden.”

As many continue to argue the accuracy of the Mayan calendar, it can no longer be argued that a great many people are finally becoming aware of what has been hidden from them for so long. Of course this awakening is not an overnight process. It takes time to peel away the many layers of lies to get to the core of the ultimate truths.

It would be beyond pretentious for us to claim to know all of the secrets of the universe. We don’t. Everyday we are humbled by what we don’t yet know.

However, it is becoming clearer by the day what isn’t true. And by that measure alone, it is possible to determine if you’re one of the people beginning to wake up.

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