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Israel
Suffers Day of Carnage
Excerpts
from article describing horrific acts of mass murder perpetrated
upon Israelis:
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A
series of attacks ... have killed at least 26 Israelis,
causing carnage on the streets of Jerusalem and the northern
town of Haifa.
Fifteen
people were killed and 40 wounded by an explosion on a
bus in Haifa at lunchtime.
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...
Witnesses said the force of the blast threw the bus into the
air.
...
Teenagers killed
The
violence began on Saturday night at a shopping centre in the
Ben Yehuda precinct of Jerusalem. Ten people were killed and
170 injured, most of them teenage revellers. Israeli Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres described the attack as "one of the
worst... ever seen".
As rescue
workers were treating survivors,
there was a third explosion nearby
... A caller purporting to be from the Palestinian militant
group Islamic Jihad told the BBC Jerusalem bureau that the group
had carried out the suicide bombings and promised new attacks
imminently. ...
(click for video describing the
bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa)
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Source:
Secret
US Plan for Iraq War
Excerpts
from articles describing US plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein
and the risks involved in such an effort:
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Bush
orders backing for rebels to topple Saddam. America intends
to depose Saddam Hussein by giving armed support to Iraqi opposition
forces across the country, The Observer has learnt. President
George W. Bush has ordered the CIA and his senior military commanders
to draw up detailed plans for a military operation that could
begin within months.
...
It envisages a combined operation with US bombers targeting
key military installations while US forces assist opposition
groups in the North and South of the country in a stage-managed
uprising. One version of the plan would have US forces fighting
on the ground.
...
Bush is said to have issued instructions about the proposals,
which are now at a detailed stage, to his Defence Secretary,
Donald Rumsfeld, three weeks ago. But Pentagon sources say that
a plan for attacking Iraq was developed by the time Bush's order
was sent to the Pentagon, drawn up by Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz,
chairman of the joint chiefs General Richard Myers, and Franks.
The
plan is to work with a combination of three political forces:
Kurdish rebels in the north of Iraq, radical Sunni Muslim groups
in and around Baghdad, and, most controversially, the Shia opposition
in the south.
The
most adventurous ingredient in the anti-Iraqi proposal is the
use of US ground troops, Pentagon sources say. 'Significant
numbers' of ground troops could also be called on in the early
stages of any rebellion to guard oil fields around the Shia
port of Basra in southern Iraq.
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Source:
Indonesian
Christians Under Attack by Muslim Paramilitaries
Excerpts
from article describing recent attacks by muslims upon christians
in Indonesia:
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Thousands
of Christian villagers on Indonesia's Sulawesi island are fleeing
attacks by Muslim paramilitaries armed with machine guns and
rocket launchers, clerics and media reports said Saturday.
...
The Jakarta Post daily reported that hundreds of homes in settlements
around Poso, a coastal town in Central Sulawesi province, had
been destroyed by uniformed members of the Laskar Jihad militia
group.
Fighting
between Muslim and Christian villagers in the province, located
about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) northeast of Jakarta, has
claimed at least 1,000 lives since it first broke out two years
ago.
...
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. Nearly
85 percent of its 203 million people are officially registered
as Muslims. The remainder are Christians, Hindus or Buddhists.
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Source:
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Nature
of Being
There's
what we know, what we can observe, what we can investigate,
explore, study, reason about, and then there's the area at the
edge of and beyond our ability to comprehend.
Why?
Because
we're natural beings with limited capabilities, based on processing
speeds and limits of individual brains, and all that we perceive
is a result of short-term limited comprehension of our physical
world, passed on generation-to-generation.
Don't
make the mistake of treating the unknown as a substantive reality
or an answer for that which is beyond our comprehension. Anyone
can imagine or conjecture anything that they wish beyond the
edge of the world of objective reality, but all of that is an
adventure of fantasy, a world apart from existential knowledge.
If
a lady were to approach you and claim she had met the creators
of all that is, and she felt whole and complete because of that
meeting, and by the way, you must believe that the creators
exist and the meeting she mentioned took place, with the reward
for your belief being a like-minded wholeness and completeness
-and- immortality with the creators, but, if you don't believe
her, 'tis a bad deal as she claims you will suffer inordinate
and eternal pain, at worst, or death, at best ...
...
would you believe?
You
see, that's all there is to religion. Promises and threats regarding
areas outside
of the known. Believe or else. Anyone can do
it. It takes the mind of a child to offer forth such things,
because all of the claims are always surrounded by promises
/ threats beyond the edge of reality, in the area of unknowns
/ fears, an area which, due to our natural evolved origins,
we are especially vulnerable and susceptible to replacing with
"make believe" (as implanted in most of us from a
very young age as "The Truth") rather than accepting
that we just don't know.
Just
as our ancient pre-civilized ancestors feared the unknown, and
stories regarding the bogeyman and all sorts of scary things
in the dark, we, too, have inherited that fear as part of our
survival extinct. It's a frustration of the state of mortality
and our inability, as of yet, to explain all that is in a manner
by which we can comprehend it. Such is a reflection of our limitations,
the revelation of our evolved natural state of being and our
short life spans.
We are genetically programmed for both survival and death, and
it's the death part that most cannot accept as "the end"
because it's antithetical to the survival aspect of our being.
It's the ultimate paradox of genetic destiny, with each of us
programmed to survive and to die.
This
lack of comprehension about all that is?
Many submit to calling the areas of the unknown "heaven
/ hell / god" and other such things, because they've been
taught to do so, because they fear the unknown, because they
fear death, and because of the "answers" many would
like to be true.
"Answers"
many would like to be true?
We
will never cease to be (upside promise ... however, on the downside
of that is the hell / death threat if one doesn't "believe"
in the "right" religion), we're the most important
creations in the universe, the next life will be better than
this (so much better that we imagine it as a paradise beyond
description), the universe is all about us, we'll meet our friends
and family in the next life, etc. etc. etc.
These
"answers" turn out to be the most self-centered and
self-promoting assignation to the unknown that someone could
possibly imagine, with the only catch being that you must believe
or it all goes away, back into its point of origin which is
the human ability to "make believe" regarding the
ultimate nature of being beyond the known, treating said efforts
as "believe or else" facts rather than fantasies.
Source:
A
New Breed of Soldier
Excerpts
from an article describing the current state of the U.S. military
and its impact on the war in Afghanistan:
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More
than 1,000 U.S. Marines arrived in
southern Afghanistan last week, taking
up positions at an airbase near the last
Taliban stronghold of Kandahar
The
Taliban don’t know what hit them, and for good reason.
They’re victims of a revolution in military affairs that
could be as important as the introduction of gunpowder, and
is changing the way that we, and everyone else think about war.
...
Some believe this revolution, which results largely from astounding
leaps in information technology, will eventually be as important
as the introduction of gunpowder. It could profoundly alter
the way the outside world views the United States—as an
even scarier hegemony or a more powerful force for stability.
And
it could also have an immediate impact on military strategy:
if the new “war on terror” is ever taken to Iraq,
for instance (as some in the Bush administration insist, but
others argue would be hugely impractical), the battle this time
will be far different from the massive air and ground campaign
fought by 500,000 American troops just a decade ago.
...
The
ultimate aim of the military revolution is to dispel the notorious
“fog of war”.
...
Afghanistan has become a testing ground for new technologies.
... “People talk as if the revolution [in military affairs]
is in the future... It’s now.” No one knows that better
than the Taliban—at least those who are still alive.
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Source:
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