Ex-DEA Head Admits CIA Imported Cocaine

Blair to lecture on faith and globalisation at Yale

Looks like it will be a while before crooks and their just rewards meet up. This in from the Guardian:

Tony Blair is to join Yale later this year, teaching on a course on faith and globalisation, the US Ivy League university announced today.

As the Howland Distinguished Fellow for the next academic year, the former prime minister will lead a seminar and participate in a number of events around the campus.

His efforts at Yale relate to the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which he will launch later this year.

The architect of three election victories and the UK's participation in the invasion of Iraq - and currently an envoy for peace in the Middle East - Blair will follow in the footsteps of the journalist Sir Alistair Cooke and the former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi as fellows.

Historians Against the War Statement on the U.S. Occupation of Iraq

As historians, teachers, and scholars, we oppose the expansion of United States empire and the doctrine of pre-emptive war that have led to the occupation of Iraq. We deplore the secrecy, deception, and distortion of history involved in the administration's conduct of a war that violates international law, intensifies attacks on civil liberties, and reaches toward domination of the Middle East and its resources. Believing that both the Iraqi people and the American people have the right to determine their own political and economic futures (with appropriate outside assistance), we call for the restoration of cherished freedoms in the United States and for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

(September 21, 2003)

As of December 15, 2007, 2433 people had signed this statement and become members of HAW. The signatures are available on this website. This statement supercedes the founding statement.

~ Historians Against the War ~

Sweet dreams are made of this

In his time, Artemidorus Daldianus was a highly regarded man. He was a dream doctor, and in the second century A.D. his fellow Greeks considered dreams to be encoded messages from the gods. Deciphering them required an expert, with Artemidorus chief among them.

Artemidorus declared that all dreams were not created equal, however. If the nocturnal visions could be explained from past events in the sleeper's life, the good doctor wrote them off as meaningless constructions of the individual's experiences and mental orientation; these dreams were not secrets of the gods. Artemidorus himself would never have imagined that, with this idea, he had anticipated a core debate that would arise some 1,700 years later.

The physician who sparked that debate was none other than Sigmund Freud. According to his monumental 1899 work, The Interpretation of Dreams, our nighttime hallucinations are activated by subconscious wishes that can burst forth from behind the protective veil

of sleep. Freud's contention was just that, however--a hypothesis, one that neurologists of the day could never prove despite a flurry of scientific investigation. Freud lacked the answer to the ancient question, "What does the brain do when we enter the dreamworld?" And it frustrated him. He openly wished for neurological evidence, worked at it himself and even said that such information would likely supersede his psychological theories about dreams. But he lacked the science and tools needed to find it.

~ read on... ~

Al Jazeera Apologizes . . . to Islamic Radicals

This week, Al Jazeera triggered a major controversy when it broadcast the comments of Wafa Sultan, a psychologist living in the United States who is an ardent critic of Islamic extremism. Here is what Sultan said:

All the religions and faiths have been subject throughout history to criticism and insults, and this helped to develop and amend them over time. The only faith which beheads those who oppose it – is destined to turn into terror and tyranny.

This is the situation of Islam from its beginning to this day. It has sentenced its critics to prison terms, and those who escaped custody were killed. The Danish cartoons have managed to drop the first brick in the wall and open a window, through which the sun rays will be able to enter after a long period of darkness . . .

If Islam was not what it is, these cartoons would not appear. They did not come from an empty space, and the cartoonist did not make them up from his sick mind. They were an expression of what he is familiar with. . . . The Muslims' barbaric reaction added to the value of these cartoons. It simply proved their rightness: The Muslim is an irrational creature, and the things he learned overpower his mind and inflame his feelings. That is why these remarks have turned him into an inferior creature, who cannot control himself and respond to events in a rational way.

Heavy stuff, especially when said in Arabic. And there is more where that came from. A Jordanian newspaper accused the channel of leading a “normalization campaign with the Zionist enemy and is the only one which hosts the official spokespersons of the enemy's army and government.” (Funny: all this time I thought Jordan was at peace with Israel.)

Not to worry, though. Apparently this degree of free expression is too much even for Al Jazeera, which has issued an apology, cancelled all reruns of the program, and warned the show's host never to have Sultan on again.

~ source: Commentary Magazine ~