Bienvenue / benvenuto / receptión / willkommen / welcome /

2. THE ORIGINAL INSIGHTS......

All things,  Thales held, come out of water and are resolved into water. (Aetius)

Thales declared water to be the beginning and the end of all things. As the water solidifies, things acquire firmness; as it melts, their individual existence is threatened. (Hippolytus, Refutatio)

It scatters and it gathers; it advances and it retires. (Heraclitus, Fragments 40)

The Unlimited is the first principle of things that are. It is that from which their coming to be takes place, and it is that into which they return when they perish. (Anaximander)       

Anaximenes declared that the essence of things is one and unlimited ... it has the specific nature of air, which differs in rarity and density according to the kinds of things into which it forms itself. (Simplicius, Commentaria)

Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. (Heraclitus, Fragments 20)

'When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of humankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, combine, and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.' Engels, Socialism, Utopian & Scientific

fire / air / water world_sebastiao_salgados

 AND THEN................ the 2000 year crystallization.....

The Philosopher and his Categories 

NEW LIGHT ON THE CATEGORIES IN 2007!! - HERE!!

search the WIKIPEDIA right here: 

and now for something (almost) completely different...

Each year in Ontario, transboundary (U.S.) air pollution causes more than 2,700 premature deaths, puts almost 12,000 people in hospital, and causes minor illness symptoms in about 2.7 million others. It is responsible for an estimated $5.2 billion in damage to Ontario’s people, economy and environment.

Transboundary flow of pollution from neighbouring U.S. states causes higher levels of smog in Ontario (including both ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter), airborne acidic pollutants and other hazardous air pollutants, such as mercury. The latest evidence shows a wide variation in the impact of transboundary pollution. In some areas,  transboundary air pollution can cause 90 per cent of the pollution.

5. UGLINESS AND SOME OF ITS ROOTS

MOTHER, oh my mother

An impartial examination of the conditions of international conduct today allows no other conclusion but that the standards of behavior which were held by nazism and fascism have become general and accepted. The world was expected to react with horror to the doctrine of extermination. War, so it was contended, had certain rules. Among these were the avoidance of torture, the concentration on military objectives, the respect of prisoners and their "rights." It was also believed that entire civilian populations were not to be slaughtered in a manner reminiscent of Genghiz Khan. War, therefore, was thought to have a conceivable political end and, although all such conflict amounted to atrocity, the scale was never extended to include entire masses of defenseless people. The bombings of Tokyo and of Hamburg, each of which killed more people than the atomic bombings, heralded something new. These cities contained civilian populations and were without particular military significance. The object of dropping napalm jelly-gasoline upon Tokyo was to so demoralize the population through extermination of great sections of it, as to effect the defeat of the enemy. As Lewis Mumford has pointed out, this was the theory of mass extermination; it was because of such behavior that the war against fascism was presumably being fought.  The moral corruption and cultural degeneration of our world have advanced to this degree ... because of the acceptance of the fascist belief in mass extermination as a viable political practice...  The governments of the United States and the Sovet Union behave with colossal arrogance and with total indifference to the consequences for humanity of their particular paranoias. I am convinced that until people fully comprehend the magnitude of what is being done in their name there is small hope for peace in the world. It is not sufficient to point out the evil of others, for that is often a reflection of one's own actions. Bertrand Russell, The doctrine of extermination (196?).

 GET PAID FOR TORTURE

In November 2004, Stefan Zaklin, a photographer then working for the European Pressphoto Agency, was embedded with a United States Army company. Mr. Zaklin photographed this soldier, who was shot and killed in Falluja, in a house used as a base by insurgents. The photograph ran in several European publications, and Mr. Zaklin was immediately banned from working with the unit.

 - FOLLOWING THE NAZIS

UK TORTURE PROGRAM 

WONDERFUL WATERBOARDING The Times of London

Global Peace Index (not a communist plot)

Martin Luther King: "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward [Selma, Ala. sheriff] Jim Clark!' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children!' There is something
wrong with that press! ...

"I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. ... When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are
considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness
and justice of many of our present policies. ... True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with
righteous indignation."
 

-- From Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermon "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967;

"Violence is as American as Cherry Pie" 

H. RAP  BROWN,  1967

Korean War survivors tell of civilian carnage inflicted by U.S. 

Israel's Shin Bet security service routinely tortures Palestinian prisoners during interrogations in defiance of a 1999 court ruling outlawing such practices, two Israeli human rights groups said yesterday.

There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth - F.H.BRADLEY

In an age of universal retreat, telling the truth is an act of treason” 

George Orwell 

Democracy UK INC

PATRIOTISM IS THE LAST REFUGE OF THE SCOUNDREL - SAMUELJOHNSON

The Wisdom of  Mark Twain 

 click to enlarge, then click again

 Bertrand Russell

 “There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq” - Seymour Hersh writes here 

occupiers in love with killing?

Postmortem photograph of Baha Mousa taken in September 2003 and prepared by the Special Investigation Branch Royal Military Police.Images showing the badly injured body of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi civilian who died in UK military custody in Iraq, were released for the first time today.A lawyer acting for the 26-year-old's family said the photographs showed evidence of torture 

A US survey of battlefield ethics among troops in Iraq has found widespread tolerance for torture in certain circumstances and problems with morale. The survey, by an army mental health advisory team, sampled more than 1,700 soldiers and marines between August and October 2006. It examined their views towards torture and the Iraqi civilian population. The Pentagon survey found that less than half the troops in Iraq thought Iraqi civilians should be treated with dignity and respect. More than a third believed that torture was acceptable if it helped save the life of a fellow soldier or if it helped get information about the insurgents. About 10% of those surveyed said they had actually mistreated Iraqi civilians by hitting or kicking them, or had damaged their property when it was not necessary to do so.

It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances.

'We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation' - CIA paramilitary - washington post editor's account

I saw a four-year-old boy sitting beside his mother's body, which had been decapitated by the explosion. He was talking to her, asking her what had happened

"Violence is as American as Cherry Pie" 

H. RAP  BROWN,  1967

Four Hired Guns in an Armored Truck, Bullets Flying, and a Pickup and a Taxi Brought to a Halt. Who Did the Shooting and Why? By Steve Fainaru

Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, April 15, 2007; Page A01

On the afternoon of July 8, 2006, four private security guards rolled out of Baghdad's Green Zone in an armored SUV. The team leader, Jacob C. Washbourne, rode in the front passenger seat. He seemed in a good mood. His vacation started the next day.

"I want to kill somebody today," Washbourne said, according to the three other men in the vehicle, who later recalled it as an offhand remark. Before the day was over, however, the guards had been involved in three shooting incidents.

 In one, Washbourne allegedly fired into the windshield of a taxi for amusement, according to interviews and statements from the three other guards. Washbourne, a 29-year-old former Marine, denied the allegations. "They're all unfounded, unbased, and they simply did not happen."

***** 

 America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by one enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.  JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (1821)

enough = ENOUGH!!!

 Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι 

AFGHANISTAN: NATO / CANADIAN  intervention - an Indian perspective

CONCERNING 1945 ON THE SIXTH OF AUGUST.......

  WAR CRIMES

Times of London

 'Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians... Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable'

Louis Arbour, UN High Commisioner for Human Rights 

home truths on Iran 

The  Brits... Sir Peter Tapsell, a veteran British Conservative  MP, accused Mr Blair of "collusion" with President Bush in giving Israel the "go-ahead to wage unlimited war" on villages, towns and cities in Lebanon. He said it was "a war crime gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw".

click once to enlarge; then click once again

Democracy Now 

Digging for Truth 

reflections
 

TORTURE,  MODERN STYLE  GO

......................... 

And what about the Americans?  (question  put by The Independent, March 22, 2007)

'..... Some of them still seem to be believers in the dead dreams of four years ago....

On the flight deck of the enormous US aircraft carrier the USS Eisenhower in the Gulf this week, warplanes were being shot out of the steam catapults on the flight deck with engines that roared and screamed so loudly you felt it in your sinuses, teeth and jawbone.

"Listen to it," one of the officers told me when the warplanes were launched and streaking up the Gulf to Iraq."It is the sound of freedom".

and on the other hand ... One third of our planet will be desert by the year 2100, say climate experts in the most dire warning yet of   the effects of global warming 

100% pure local content: 

 latin american reality

6. ON THE LIGHTER / BRIGHTER SIDE

 our city, kingston canada

part of our downtown

THE VERY BEST OF HOT european ACTION IN STOKE NEWINGTON UK

local content 

take me to your lieder - an absolutely fabulous website for lieder lovers, based in Ottawa

'O wie schon ist deine Welt'

 WOOF WOOF

The sweet (and misnamed) Mr. Rocky

 laycock family crest

The name Laycock has a history dating as far back as the Anglo-Saxon tribes of Britain. It is derived from when the Laycock family lived in the village of Laycock in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The surname was originally derived from the Old English words leah cocc, which refer to the meadow with the wild birds. Therefore the original bearers of the surname lived in a village that was known for the large number of wild birds. Spelling variations include: Lacock, Laycock, Leacock and others. First found in Yorkshire where they were seated from very ancient times, some say well before the Norman Conquest and the arrival of Duke William at Hastings in 1066 A.D.