When most read the above, what comes to mind?

Likely, a definition of physical violence. Violence can come in a number of forms, the most obvious to us is usually physical. And so it is with the world. We interpret reality usually at the most basic level, being matter.

In our discovery of new things in the universe we might think of the discovery of new planets, solar systems, galexies, etc. But what if the new discoveries lie not in only what's 'out there' but right here and perhaps at a 'higher' reality. Such an investigation would require a different perspective and a new working hypothosis. One that includes but is not limited to the scope of our physical universe.

If there are higher realities what influence might they play on us? Human beings could be considered as existing in a higher reality than that of animals and look at our influence on them. We farm them, drug them, and eat them.

If we are not at the top of the food chain or there are higher worlds than ours might it be among the highest of importance to investigate this will real science and objective efforts?

"Death is our eternal companion," don Juan said with a most serious air. "It is always to our left, at an arm's length. It was watching you when you were watching the white falcon; it whispered in your ear and you felt its chill, as you felt it today. It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you."

~ Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan: the lessons of Don Juan

Don Juan told Casteneda later in the story that you cannot be self important while facing your own death. How could you wear these false and vain layers if you're to face something so real? And so I think one cannot face death while wrapped in illusions of the self and the world around us.

Last night I felt like I might die if I stay here in the United States much longer. It was the most vivid taste of death I've experienced of myself and has strongly stuck with me throughout today. I've been in a car accident where I likely 'should be dead.' I've had someone very close to me die unexpectedly. Both of these events brought me close to looking at my own death, but last night was the closest and most chilling I've known.

What brought this on has been a continual look at our economic situation and the 'straw' was listening to the Economic Apocalypse podcast put out by Signs of the Times. In it is a very likely description of what the world will be facing very shortly. Starvation, complete lockdown, death, and complete control. The window for escape out of the US is closing fast. The Bird Flu epidemic is not far off, and when this occurs it will likely be the event that stops worldwide movement. What is there to do? Work like hell (and I mean a personal work, not meaning work for 'the man').

There is no more time left.

Here's a review of last week's monumental events.

Thanks to Signs of the Times daily of news collection where most of these articels come from. A percentage of articles were also found at Mparent 7777.


ISRAELIS were 9-11 short sale stock buyers, betting on WTC terror strikes, story killed...

Israel opposes transferring control of West Bank towns to Palestinians

Israeli Arabs treated like the enemy in their own country

Israel citing 'security' to limit Palestinian rights: UN

Israel Admits Planting Undercover Soldiers in Bel'in Demonstration to Instigate Violence

Israeli army kill three Palestinians on Gaza border

Ex- Mossad Official Admits Occupation is the Reason Behind "Terror Attacks" against Civilians

Iraq issues warrants in $1 bln corruption probe

Voters said to hunt for polling sites in west Iraq

3,663 Iraqis Killed in Past 6 Months

More eyewitnesses to U.S. torture of detainees pierce the Bush administration's cover-up

Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra?

Iraqis apprehend two Americans disguised as Arabs trying to detonate car bomb

How the Zarqawi myth was made in America

Zawahiri Letter to Zarqawi: A Shiite Forgery?

Al-Qaida says letter from its No.2 leader to al-Zarqawi is a U.S. fake

Bush told Blair of 'going beyond Iraq'

G.I.'s and Syrians in Tense Clashes on Iraqi Border

Syrian general in UN inquiry found dead

Syria warns 'gates of hell will open' if U.S. attacks

Afghan election staffers fired for fraud

US wants to push ocean boundaries to limit terror threat

Government publishes anti-terror bill

Republican Congressman Slams Bush On Militarized Police State Preparation

New York subway threat was a hoax: report

Wal-Mart Turns in Student’s Anti-Bush Photo, Secret Service Investigates Him

U.S. job losses jump to 438,000

Explosives Found Near Tech Dorms

Explosive found at Midvale

New Orleans Police Beating Caught on Tape

FBI Claims 84 Videos Show NO Flight 77 Impact

Pentagon seeks power to gather secret intelligence in US

Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged

Groups unhappy with Bush performance: poll

Poll: Americans Want Bush Impeached

64% in US Now Disapprove of Bush's Iraq Policies

Power Outage Hits Parts of Downtown L.A.

Study Reveals Vast Scope of Priest Abuse

Bird flu in Turkey is deadly strain

Bird flu reported in eastern Romania

EU to focus on infection-control on farms to combat bird flu

Britain responds to bird flu threat

Greece proposes to host meeting on bird flu threat

Venezuela to partly close border with Colombia to avoid bird flu

Quake Leaves 2.5 Million Homeless

South Asia earthquake death toll now up to 54,000


Amazon rainforest suffers worst drought in decades

Tropical Storm Vince forms in unusual location

Second tornado strikes Birmingham

Snowstorm Drops 20 Inches in Colorado

Strong earthquake jolts Indonesia's Aceh

Small Quakes Hit Central California

Three Alaska volcanoes showing signs of unrest

'I saw a fireball!'

A new universe is being created right now. The individual work of each and every form of energy is building this structure we find ourselves in as I write and as you read. We contribute to it. It makes sense that our actions and inactions have an impact on what 'world' we live in. We are an integral part of the machine that runs the world. We are 'of' it and responsible for its functional or disfunctional operation. In other words we are a microcosm of the system in which we live.

What if we changed 'our' system of operation? Wouldn't that place us in a different Macrocosm?
In a non-linear system even the smallest of actions can have a tremendous impact.

The possibilities are endless of what we can create as well as what we are capable of. If we look around, we can see humanity severely limiting the capacity of what can be done for others and for ourselves. There does not have to be such unnecessary suffering. We waste food, horde information and ignore the world while feeding our addictions. This is fine for one world, even necessary I think. But perhaps there are other worlds, other possibilities.

P.D. Ouspensky wrote in A New Model of the Universe:

"The world is a world of infinite possibilities.

"Our mind follows follows the development of possibilities always in one direction only. But in fact every moment contains a very large number of possibilities. And all of them are actualized, only we do not see it and do not know it. We always see only one of the actualizations, and in this lies the poverty and limitation of the human mind. But if we try to imagine the actualization of all the possibilities of the present moment, then of the next moment, and so on, we shall feel the world growing infinitely, incessantly multiplying by itself and becoming immeasurably rich and utterly unlike the flat and limited world we have pictured to ourselves up to this moment. Having imagined this infinite variety we shall feel a "taste" of infinity for a moment and shall understand how inadequate and impossible it is to approach the problem of time with earthly measures. And we shall understand what an infinite richness of time is going in all directions is necessary for the actualization of all the possibilities that arise at each moment. And we shall understand that the very idea of arising and disappearing possibilities is created by the human mind, because otherwise it would burst and parish from a single contact with infinite actualization.
Simultaneously with this we shall feel the unreality of all our pessimistic deductions as compared with the vastness of the unfolding horizons. We shall feel that the world is so boundlessly large that a thought of the existence of any limits in it, a thought of there being anything whatever which is not contained within it, will appear to us ridiculous"

"At the present time the beings of this present group (Americans) almost never consume for their first being-food any edible product which still retains all those active elements put into every being by Great Nature Herself as an indispensable requisite for taking in power for normal existence; but they preserve,' 'freeze,' and 'essensify' before hand all those products of theirs and use them only when most of these active elements required for normal existence are already volatilized out of them." ~ George Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson

Gurdjieff's observations were certainly ahead of his time. He wrote the above sometime around 1925. He called Americans 'digestive organs spoiled' and said that the destruction of America will come in part from the stomach (the other part was sex). We can look around today and quite easily verify the truth in this. Although there are a number of factors that are likely lead to fall of this country, the food we eat certainly seems to be playing a part.

The 'quality' of food is practically non-existent. Everything we eat is dead of nutritional value. Our food is dressed up to look pretty while having nothing of real value inside, just like most everything else in America - the media, the monetary system, corporations, entertainment, education, and the creators of all those things in their image - the United States government (although it's hardly even being dressed up anymore - it certainly is having trouble masking its brutality and ugliness) . But all this can serve a purpose, a useful even if difficult and sometimes painful lesson in entropy - by studying this we might learn how we can escape such a strong force - that is if it is in us to do.

But back to food. Our source of nutrition is what maintains and strengthens our health, be it physically, emotionally, or mentally. A blow to our nutrition is clearly a blow to our health. With weakened immune systems we are more likely to fall prey to this seasons flu or the propaganda du jour a la Bush Administration. Critical thinking is not the average American's strong suit.

Just as the impressions we are fed are synthetic so it is the same with our physical foods. Our supermarkets are filled with genetically modified foods. Most everything we eat has some GM food in it. If it has soybean oil or corn syrup it most likely is genetically modified. There is the argument that it is unknown that there is any harm in GM foods. I'd say that argument is as artificial as the gm foods are. Jeffrey Smith authored a book, Seeds of Deception:Exposing Industry And Government Lies About The Safety Of The Genetically Engineered Food You're Eating. From a recent article (also below):

Smith said that the genetically modified maize grown in South Africa is likely to have been inserted with a gene that would make it produce Bt-toxin, which is a pesticide.

"When this pesticide was fed to mice, the mice developed an immune response equal to that of cholera toxin. They developed allergies, abnormal and excessive cell growth in their small intestines, and a greater susceptibility to allergies," he said.

Smith said the GM Bt-toxin in maize was hundreds and even thousands of times more concentrated than the spray form.

"Farm workers exposed to even the low dose Bt spray showed evidence of allergic sensitivity.

"Preliminary evidence found that 39 Filipinos living next to a Bt maize field developed skin, intestinal and respiratory reactions while the maize was pollinating," he said.

Smith said that farmers who fed their cattle 100 percent GM maize had difficulties. "Twelve cows died on a German farm, and about 25 farmers in North America said their pigs became sterile, had false pregnancies or gave birth to bags of water."

How many people do you know are allergic or intolerant to peanuts, dairy, wheat or some other food. How many do you know who are hypersensitive to perfumes, deodorants, or some other chemical we use to mask our stink? If you're in the US the number is likely high unless your head is in the sand. Might the reason so many people are sensitive to these things because our body's defense system has been broken down by these obviously harmful chemicals through repetitive ingestion, absorption, etc.? The current situation is clearly not from GM foods, but likely from all the insecticides, pesticides, preservatives, and all the like. GM foods are for the new generations. I have full faith in its ability to destroy as good as, likely better than, its predecessors.

All who not fans of factory farms might enjoy the Meatrix flash.

SA food is not safe, anti-GM expert warns

September 30 2005 at 11:24AM
By Irene Kuppan

The majority of South Africans are unaware that 30 percent of the country's yellow maize and soy bean crops are genetically modified.

This is just one of the concerns raised by international author Jeffrey Smith, who is in the country to deliver a series of talks on genetically modified food.

Smith was addressing a group of people on the topic at the Diakonia Centre in Durban on Thursday.

He has been researching the issue of genetic engineering for the past 10 years and has travelled to more than 20 countries speaking on the subject.

He is also author of the book, Seeds Of Deception: Exposing Industry And Government Lies About The Safety Of The Genetically Engineered Food You're Eating.

Smith said that genetic engineering involved taking a gene from one species and inserting it into another.

Smith said that most South Africans had no idea that the food they were eating had been genetically modified.

"South Africa is the only country in the world allowing its staple food to be genetically modified and as a result, is putting a large portion of the population at risk," said Smith.

He said that 30 percent of the country's yellow maize and soy bean crops were genetically modified, along with 10 percent of white maize crops.

Smith said that the genetically modified maize grown in South Africa is likely to have been inserted with a gene that would make it produce Bt-toxin, which is a pesticide.

"When this pesticide was fed to mice, the mice developed an immune response equal to that of cholera toxin.

They developed allergies, abnormal and excessive cell growth in their small intestines, and a greater susceptibility to allergies," he said.

Smith said the GM Bt-toxin in maize was hundreds and even thousands of times more concentrated than the spray form.

"Farm workers exposed to even the low dose Bt spray showed evidence of allergic sensitivity.

"Preliminary evidence found that 39 Filipinos living next to a Bt maize field developed skin, intestinal and respiratory reactions while the maize was pollinating," he said.

Smith said that farmers who fed their cattle 100 percent GM maize had difficulties.

"Twelve cows died on a German farm, and about 25 farmers in North America said their pigs became sterile, had false pregnancies or gave birth to bags of water."

Smith said that South Africans needed to take a stand and demand to know what goes into the food they are eating.

"We need the leadership of this country, the faith-based leadership, the labour leaders and those who protect the lives of those with HIV/Aids to put a stop to these genetically modified foods.

"Leaders have to go to the government and manufacturers, and tell them that we (the public) are going to get our congregations and organizations to stop eating GM foods, and ask for a list for those which are GM and those which are not," he said.

Smith said that only when the word was out and everyone knew what was genetically modified and what was not, would a revolution begin within the industry.

Published: October 10, 2005 4:17 PM ET

INDIANAPOLIS Bloggers would "probably not" be considered journalists under the proposed federal shield law, the bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), told the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Monday afternoon.

Lugar emphasized, however, that debate is not yet closed on how to define a journalist under the proposed law. "

As to who is a reporter, this will be a subject of debate as this bill goes farther along," he said in response to a question from Washington Post Deputy Managing Editor Milton Coleman. "Are bloggers journalists or some of the commercial businesses that you here would probably not consider real journalists? Probably not, but how do you determine who will be included in this bill?"

According to the first draft of the Free Flow of Information Act of 2005, the "covered person" protected by the bill's terms includes "any entity that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means and that publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical in print or electronic form; operates a radio or television station (or network of such stations), cable system, or satellite carrier, or channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier; or operates a news agency or wire service." The legislation also covers employees, contractors or other persons who "gathers, edits, photographs, records, prepares, or disseminates news or information for any such entity."

A key reason some journalists oppose the popular federal shield proposal is fear that giving Congress the power to define who is and isn't a journalist could lead effectively to the licensing of journalists.

In other remarks about the legislation at IAPA's 61st General Assembly, Lugar acknowledged that the legislation could amount to a "privilege" for reporters over other Americans."

I think, very frankly, you can make a case that this is a special boon for reporters, and certainly for their role in freedom of the press," he said. "At the end of the day what we will come out with says there is something privileged about being a reporter, and being able to report on something without being thrown into jail."

Lugar said he was inspired to write the legislation by the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller. "I've known Judy Miller for many years," he said, adding that they became close when she was reporting on his efforts to dismantle the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal.

The bill is necessary to help the United States regain its status as an "exemplar" of press freedom, Lugar told the IAPA. "Even as we are advocating for free press (abroad)... we'd better clean up our own act," Lugar said.

Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com)
is E&P's editor-at-large.

Yahoo puts news, blogs side by side

By Eric Auchard Tue Oct 11, 1:24 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) said on Monday it will begin featuring the work of self-published Web bloggers side by side with the work of professional journalists, leveling distinctions between the two.

Yahoo News, the world's most popular Internet media destination, is set to begin testing on Tuesday an expanded news search system that includes not only news stories and blogs but also user-contributed photos and related Web links.
The move will further stoke the debate between media traditionalists who want to maintain strict walls between news and commentary and those who argue such boundaries are elitist and undervalue the work of "citizen journalists."

Blogs, short for Web logs, are easy-to-publish Web sites where millions of individuals post commentary from political analysis to personal musings, creating a grassroots publishing medium that challenges the authority of established media.
Yahoo said its move to combine professionally edited news alongside the work of grassroots commentators promises to enrich the sources of information on breaking news events.

"Traditional media doesn't have the time and resources to cover all the stories," Joff Redfern, product director for Yahoo Search said. "It really does add substantially to what you are looking at when you are looking for news."

Yahoo has, in effect, created a three-tier system for finding news that starts with the links to top ten stories and related photographs produced by mainstream news organizations on the main Yahoo News site.

Readers searching for further details will be taken to a second-level news site, which splits the page between news from 6,500 professional sources and links to the hundreds of thousands of blogs available from its syndication service.
Thus the expanded search stops short of blurring all lines between edited news and self-publishing.

"We do try to demarcate what is mainstream media and what is user-generated content so that there is no confusion there," Redfern said.

Those choosing to dig still deeper can click on "More Blog results..." to be taken to purely user-generated news from blogs, photos and links. This allow the user to search 10 million blogs listed on Yahoo's blo.gs blog tracking service.

The search includes links to many of the 42 million photos on the popular Flickr photo-sharing site, which Yahoo acquired this past spring, as well as to My Web, Yahoo's mechanism for allowing its users to learn from the Web searches of others.

FIGHTING TO DEFINE JOURNALISM

Robert Thompson, a media studies professor at Syracuse University, said it was important to preserve the distinctions between professional journalism and personal commentary.

He defined professional journalism as reporting which adheres to standards of accuracy and writing subjected to an editorial process, and all done with an eye to journalistic ethics, although he said journalism often falls short of these goals.

"There is a distinction between something that has gone through an editorial process as opposed to something put up by someone that has been through none of those processes," Thompson said.

But media critic Jeff Jarvis, author of the blog Buzzmachine (http://www.buzzmachine.com), said major Internet sites such as Yahoo and Google (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) continue to patronize bloggers by treating them as secondary sources of news.

Jarvis, who is a former TV critic for TV Guide and People magazines, mocked the notion that journalists live by a shared set of professional standards, that they are better trained or more trustworthy than the anyone-can-join blog movement.

"What made the voice of the people somehow less important than the paid professional journalist?" he asked. "You don't need to have a degree, you don't need to have a paycheck, you don't need to have a byline," Jarvis said.

"If you inform the public, you are committing an act of journalism," he declared.

Yesterday I wrote a little about the US military and their claims to God. There is no freedom of Religion in this country. If your Muslim your a 'terr'ist.'

It is also clearly becoming that any form of dissent is supporting 'terr'ism'.

The fundamental Evangelical Zionists are violent racists willing to do ANYTHING to further their agenda. The US government has no problem doing what it did to this man below. Think of what else it may be capable of.

An American in chains

James Yee entered Guantanamo as a patriotic US officer and Muslim chaplain.
He ended up in shackles, branded a spy. This is his disturbing story

My cell was 8ft by 6ft, the same size as the detainees' cages at Guantanamo.
Barely a week ago I had received a glowing evaluation for my work as the US
army's Muslim chaplain among the "Gitmo" prisoners. Now I was the one in
chains. It was my turn to be humiliated every time I was taken to have a
shower. Naked, I had to run my hands through my hair to show that I was not
concealing a weapon in it. Then mouth open, tongue up, down, nothing inside.
Right arm up, nothing in my armpit. Left arm up. Lift the right testicle,
nothing hidden. Lift the left. Turn around, bend over, spread your buttocks,
knowing a camera was displaying my naked image as male and female guards watched.

It didn't matter that I was an army captain, a graduate of West Point, the elite US
military academy. It didn't matter that my religious beliefs prohibited me from
being fully naked in front of strangers. It didn't matter that I hadn't been
charged with a crime. It didn't matter that my wife and daughter had no idea
where I was. And it certainly didn't matter that I was a loyal American citizen
and, above all, innocent.

I was accused of mutiny and sedition, aiding the enemy and espionage, all of which carried the death penalty. I was regarded as a traitor to the army and my country. This was all blatantly untrue - as would be proved when, after a long fight, all the charges against me were dropped and I won an honourable discharge from the army.

I knew why I had been arrested: it was because I am a Muslim. I was just the latest victim of the hostility born the moment when the planes flew into the twin towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

My real "crime" had been that I had tried to ensure that the suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters detained in the Gitmo cages were given every opportunity to practise their religion freely, one of the most fundamental of American ideals.

I had monitored the atrocious treatment meted out by the guards. And I had come to suspect that my appointment as the prisoners' chaplain was simply a piece of political theatre.

When reporters came to Guantanamo on the media tour, everyone had always wanted to talk to the Muslim chaplain. I had told them the things that the command expected me to say. We give the detainees a Koran. We announce the prayer five times a day. We serve halal food. Everything I said had been true. But it certainly wasn't the full story.

I HAVE NOT always been a Muslim. I am a third-generation American -
my grandparents left China in the 1920s - and as a child in New Jersey I
grudgingly attended Lutheran church services with my mother.

On holiday after graduating from West Point, however, I met a young woman who was intrigued by Islam. I began to read about it and eventually converted. Then, after the US army sent me to Saudi Arabia and allowed me to visit Mecca, I wondered why there were no Muslim chaplains in the US military.

My father had taught me as a boy that America promises all people an opportunity to lead an extraordinary life. By becoming a Muslim chaplain in the summer of 2000, after four years' study in Damascus, I saw myself fulfilling this opportunity. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.

Six months after the September 11 attacks I was asked if I would like to work at Camp X-Ray, the new detention centre at Guantanamo
Bay. I said that it would be difficult: Huda, my Syrian wife, was still
adjusting to life in America and Sarah, our daughter, was in the throes of the
"terrible twos". It turned out, however, that I had no choice.

By the time I got to Guantanamo, Camp X-Ray was too small for the number of prisoners coming in. When I saw its remains I couldn't believe that humans were once held here. It looked like a cattle yard. There were hundreds of cages in rows. The only protection from the blistering sun was a tin roof. Dozens of enormous rodents crawled throughout the camp. I was told that these were banana rats and would attack if provoked.

The new prison, Camp Delta, consisted of 19 blocks, each holding 48 detainees in individual open-air cells with steel mesh walls. Like other military personnel, I was briefed that the detainees were among the most dangerous terrorists in the world. We were told that many of the prisoners were responsible for the attacks of September 11 and would strike again if given the opportunity.

I expected to come face-to-face with hundreds of Osama Bin Ladens, but most prisoners were friendly. There were approximately 660 from dozens of countries, including Britain.

An English-speaking Saudi detainee named Shaker was eating a military "Meal Ready to Eat" or MRE when I first met him. MREs often led to constipation. "Chaplain," Shaker called out. "You know what we call this lunch we eat every day? Meals that Refuse to Exit."

Shaker said that he had settled in London after marrying a British woman. They had
three children and his wife had given birth to his fourth child after he was captured. "My youngest son, we named him Faris, I've never seen," he told me. "My wife doesn't know anything about what happened to me and I'm so worried about her."

I got to know three men from Britain particularly well: Rhuhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul. Ahmed, the most talkative, told me that they had grown uptogether in Tipton, near Birmingham. Their families were close and the men were like cousins. All three told me they had never committed a crime and that their arrests had been a serious mistake. The man in overall charge was Major General Geoffrey Miller, a slight but self-confident Texan in his late fifties. He was later sent to Iraq to make recommendations on improving intelligence collection at Abu Ghraib prison in the months before it became infamous for the maltreatment of its inmates.

If there was trouble with the prisoners, guards were supposed to restore order calmly. But Miller said when visiting Camp Delta or whenever seeing troopers around the base: "The fight is on!" This was a subtle way of saying that rules were relaxed and infractions were easily overlooked.

Miller was a devout Christian. In one of the first private conversations that he and I had, he invited me for a stroll under the watchtowers and told me that several of his friends and colleagues had been killed in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.

He had felt a deep anger towards "those Muslims" who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - such anger, he explained, that he had sought counselling with a chaplain. I appreciated his candour but I sensed there was a subtle warning behind his words.

THE WORST punishment for prisoners was a "forced cell extraction" by
a group of six to eight guards called the Initial Response Force. The troopers
called it IRFing.

I witnessed my first IRFing after a military policeman had performed the "credit card swipe" - pressing his fingers inside a detainee's buttock crack to look for a weapon. This type of physical contact is not acceptable under Islamic law and the detainee had pushed the guard away. But prisoners were not allowed to touch an MP and immediately eight guards were summoned.

They put on riot protection gear - helmets, heavy gloves, shin guards and chest protectors - before forming a huddle and chanting in unison, getting themselves pumped up. Still chanting, they rushed the block, their heavy boots sounding like a stampede on the steel floor. Detainees throughout Camp Delta started to yell and shake their cage doors.

When the IRF team reached the offending detainee, the team leader drenched him with pepper spray and opened the door to his cell. The others charged in. He was no match for eight men in riot gear. The guards used their shields and bodies to force him to the floor. With his wrists and ankles tied, he was dragged down the corridor to solitary confinement.

When it was over the guards high-fived each other and slammed their chests together like professional basketball players - an odd victory celebration for eight men who took down one prisoner.

IRFing was used with extraordinary frequency. Seemingly harmless behaviour could bring it on: not responding when a guard spoke or having two plastic cups in a cage instead of the regulation one. Invasive body searches occurred daily and were a constant source of tension leading to IRFing. I came to believe that the searches were done solely to rile the detainees. The prisoners had been locked in cages for
several months in a remote area of Cuba. What could they possibly be hiding?

Violent episodes were increasing. In one incident a guard had hauled
off a handcuffed detainee whom he was beating on the head with a handheld radio.
By the time I arrived the detainee had been taken to the hospital, but his blood
was fresh on the ground and what appeared to be large pieces of flesh were
soaking in it.

Bad as this violence was, many soldiers discovered a weapon far more powerful than fists: Islam. Because religion was the most important issue for nearly all the prisoners in Camp Delta, it became the most important weapon used against them.

Guards mocked the call to prayer and rattled doors, threw stones against the cages and played loud rock'n'roll music as the prisoners prayed.

Knowing that physical contact between unrelated men and women is not allowed under Islamic law, female guards would be exceptionally inappropriate in how they patted down the prisoners or touched them on the way to the showers or recreation. Detainees often resisted and were IRFed.

The guards knew that Muslims believe that the Koran contains the actual words of God and is to be treated with the utmost respect. I never heard of an incident where
a detainee hid anything dangerous in the Koran; doing so would be considered an
insult. Yet the guards shook the prisoners' Korans violently, broke bindings,
ripped pages and dropped thebook on the floor, all on the pretext of searching
them.

Some of the worst complaints that I received were about what was happening inside the interrogation rooms. Some of the translators - Muslim military personnel like me - told stories about female interrogators who would take off their clothes during the sessions. One would pretend to masturbate in front of detainees. She was also known to touch them in a sexual way and make them rub her breasts and genitalia. A translator who had witnessed this woman's behaviour told me that her supervisor had told her to tone down the tactics but had not disciplined her.

Translators with the Joint Intelligence Group (JIG) also confirmed that some prisoners were forced to prostrate themselves in the centre of a satanic circle lit with candles. Interrogators shouted at them, "Satan is your God, not Allah! Repeat that after me!"

I came to believe that the hostile environment and animosity towards Islam were so ingrained in the operation that Miller and the other camp leaders had lost sight of the moral harm we were doing.

I began to keep a record of the atrocities that I was hearing about. But the more time I spent on the blocks the more aggressive many of the guards became towards me. I was authorised to have unescorted access and to speak with detainees in privacy.

But guards eavesdropped on my conversations, standing very close and attempting to intimidate me. Most refused to move away. "I've been told to stay within one arm's length of you at all times," one guard told me.

When an administrative assistant in the navy chaplain's office showed me a slanderous and hatefilled diatribe against Muslims that was to be inserted into a weekly newsletter to hundreds of Christian military personnel on the base, I decided it was time for action.

It began, "Egyptian Muslim Mohammad Farouk hated Christians . . . in an attempt to obey the Koran and please Allah, Mohammad and his friends began to assault and harass Christians in their village . . ." It claimed that the Koran instructs Muslims
to espouse violence and hatred, the opposite of the truth.

Yet Vincent Salamoni, a Catholic priest who worked as the naval command chaplain, only grudgingly complied with the advice from the Christian chief chaplain on the
base not to distribute this material. Salamoni said that he felt it was necessary first to find out if the Koran did instruct Muslims to kill Christians.

In briefings to newcomers to the base, given with the express support of the operations staff, I tried to dispel the principal myth that all Muslims are terrorists. Little did I understand that by trying to educate my colleagues about the need for religious tolerance, I was encouraging them to suspect me.

Although I had been ordered to prepare the presentation by the command, the fact that I talked knowledgeably about Islam was enough to lead some of them to question my loyalty.

Captain Jason Orlich, an army reservist who had taught in a Catholic school before arriving in Guantanamo to take charge of intelligence and security for detention operations, sat in my briefing on his first day and asked: "Is he on our side or is he on the enemy's side?" As I was to discover muchlater from court documents, he made it his mission to keep an eye on me. Nor was I the only one under suspicion: Muslim colleagues - all loyal Americans - were spied on and bugged.

When I got together with other Muslim personnel on the base, our conversation routinely turned to what appeared to be open religious hostility.

Ahmad al-Halabi, a young airman who helped me with the detainees' library of religious books, told me that he had been given a copy of a CD widely circulated by the troopers. Among the images on it was a phoney Playboy cover showing Muslim women in provocative dress and poses, and another depicting Muslim men engaged in anal sex during prayer. He suspected that the disc had originated in the security section headed by Orlich, who appeared in several photographs on the disc.

All of us on the base knew that, like the detainees, we were likely to be under surveillance wherever we were. Watch what you're saying, soldiers would joke, because the "secret squirrels" are listening. We never knew exactly who they were, but the government agencies represented on the island included the FBI, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Army Counterintelligence and the CIA. Nothing was off limits. Our e-mails were read, our telephone calls were monitored and everything we said had the potential of being overheard.

I had a feeling that our Muslim Friday prayers, attended by about 40 in a small room at the chapel complex of the camp, were under surveillance. Men in khakis and polo shirts - the common uniform of the FBI and CIA - would stand just outside, watching to see who came and went. I sometimes asked if they wanted to join us but they always declined, offering no explanation of their presence. A translator confirmed that a man sitting outside was an FBI agent he had worked with in interrogations.

WHEN I was given a larger apartment to live in, I called some of the guys to come over and share evening prayers in my spare bedroom. Afterwards we hung around in my living room and had sodas and snacks. Before long, evening prayers at my house became a frequent occasion and word spread among the Muslim personnel that anyone who wanted to join us was welcome. People started turning up with tasty Middle Eastern food. I did not realise what the repercussions would be.

Many months later I learnt the facts from court documents. People initially became
suspicious of me because of the presentation that I gave during the newcomers'
briefing. Stories quietly began to circulate about me and my fellow Muslim personnel. We were too sympathetic to the plight of the detainees and too critical of how the MPs treated the prisoners. We prayed together on Friday afternoons. Orlich even noted that Ahmad was seen to be "shadow boxing" as he left the chapel.
"I found that to be odd," Orlich told a military investigator.

The accusations were retold and exaggerated in back yards and on the beaches during the hot Cuban evenings, fuelled by boredom and discount vodka. Some troopers adopted names for us: "the Muslim clique" and, far more disturbing, Hamas, after the Palestinian organisation.

Did these soldiers truly believe the things they were saying about us and were they truly threatened by the fact that we practised our religion? Or were they just caught
up in the pervasive anti-Muslim hostility that defined the mission? I believe that those who accused us of being "radical Islamists" were unable to see that someone can be a Muslim and not be a terrorist.

Most of the Christian soldiers at Guantanamo practised their religion regularly and attended weekly services. Miller was rarely missing from the front row of the chief chaplain's service, which gave it an unstated command emphasis.

Three Christian chaplains hosted weekly Bible studies where soldiers met to discuss their faith. I am sure that they believed this made them better people and better soldiers and helped to ease the tremendous strain of life at Guantanamo. Why couldn't they see that we were simply doingthe same?

For months Orlich watched me and the other Muslims who regularly attended my religious services. He was particularly concerned with Ahmad whose "case" was assigned to Lance Wega, a young civilian agent from the Air Force Office of Special
Investigations.

Investigators twice surreptitiously entered Ahmad's living quarters. They took photographs of the house, copied his telephone records and mirrored the hard drive on his computer.

Microsoft was instructed to store Ahmad's e-mails and records of his internet activity without his knowledge.

"You are requested to not disclose the existence of this request to the subscriber or any other person," the letter to Microsoft stated. "Any such disclosure could subject you to criminal liability for obstruction of
justice."

Many Muslim personnel came to me to share concerns that things just didn't feel right. Staff Sergeant Mohammad Tabassum, a no-nonsense type of guy in his mid-forties, told me that he had been cleaning out a cupboard in his house on the base and discovered a listening device hidden inside.

Ahmad then told me that his security clearance had been suspended. He was the last person I thought would come under suspicion; he was a loyal American and an exceptional soldier, the best translator in the camp.

When Ahmad's tour of duty came to an end, he left with great excitement, heading for Syria to be married. He and his fiancée had been forced to postpone the wedding when his deployment at Guantanamo was extended. His mother, who had recently recovered from cancer, was to meet Ahmad at the airport in London and then fly with him to Damascus.

A few days after Ahmad left, however, we heard that he had been arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, when he got off the plane from Guantanamo. Nobody knew
why or what had happened to him.

After a few weeks news arrived that Tariq Hashim, an air force captain who had been on the same plane, had also been arrested. The FBI had taken both of them. Then we had heard that another member of our prayer group, Petty Officer Samir Hejab, a navy cook, had been arrested as he left Guantanamo at the end of his deployment.

Suddenly it seemed as if every Muslim at Guantanamo was being detained on reaching American soil. Were we all going to be arrested and jailed without explanation?

In the midst of this confusion, I decided that it was time for me to take a break from Guantanamo. Every trooper was allowed a short vacation and by late August I was ready for mine. I felt overjoyed at the idea of seeing my family again. But I also was
growing more concerned by the day that something suspicious was happening behind the scenes.

"Have you heard anything about Muslim personnel being arrested recently?" I asked Orlich.

He looked me in the eye. "Nothing," he told me.

"The situation is strange," I said to him. "There's a lot of rumours and I'm wondering if I'm next."

Orlich smiled and put his hand on my shoulder, "Now why would anyone want to arrest you, chaplain?"

I persisted: "Because I am the Muslim chaplain and the one who leads these three missing Muslims in prayer."

Orlich just laughed off my concerns.

My wife said she had my gun in one hand and two rounds in the other

I still don't understand how the misguided suspicions of a few inexperienced soldiers led to the ordeal that changed my life, tore apart my family and destroyed my career.

While my plane headed home to the US on September 10, 2003, representatives of at least five government agencies awaited me at the Jacksonville air station: FBI, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, US Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, US Customs and Border Protection and Army Counterintelligence.

After my arrest I was sure that General Miller would order my release. He ran a tight ship and he was a tough leader, but he was a general and he would therefore be fair. But when I was at last arraigned at a pre-trial hearing, I was presented with a memorandum signed by Miller that stated: "Chaplain Yee is known to have associated with known terrorist sympathisers."

He added: "Yee is suspected of several extremely serious crimes, including espionage, which potentially carries the death penalty."

I was too cut off from the world to know that the news of my arrest had broken and that the government was slandering me in the press. There were reports that I had contact with Syrian government officials, that I was affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and that I had been found with maps of Guantanamo and names of the detainees and interrogators.

Sometimes I wondered if I would go crazy trying to deal with the situation and being locked in solitary confinement for what turned out to be 76 days. If it were not for my military training and my religion, perhaps I would have.

After a month I learnt that I was not going to be charged with spying, sedition or aiding the enemy after all but with the "slap on the wrist" charges of taking classified information to my housing quarters and of transporting classified material without the proper container. But my hopes quickly vanished when my lawyer told me that the army was saying that more serious charges might still be brought.

I discovered that I was in the same prison as Yasser Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who was allegedly captured fighting US forces in Afghanistan, and Jose Padilla, who was arrested in Chicago on suspicion of belonging to Al-Qaeda and participating in a plot to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States. Both were deemed enemy combatants. Did this mean I was, too?

At another pre-trial hearing, investigators claimed I was part of a spy ring. The press repeated false information from anonymous government sources that it was one of the most dangerous spy rings to be discovered in the US military since the cold war.

The army was doing far more harm to me privately. Martha Brewer, an agent with the Department of Defence Criminal Investigative Service, went to my apartment near Seattle and told Huda, my wife: "Your husband is not the person you think he is. He's having an affair with three women."

She produced photographs of me with female colleagues on social occasions at Guantanamo in what was clearly a desperate attempt to turn Huda against me. Although these photographs would have been acceptable to most people, Brewer clearly understood that given her traditions, Huda would be particularly upset to see me photographed with women. Huda later told me she was so distressed that some days she couldn't get out of bed and all she could do was cry.

On November 25, with no serious charges in sight, I was suddenly released from custody. But the same day news bulletins announced that I was being charged with adultery (a criminal offence in the military) and with downloading pornography on a government computer. By revealing the new charges on the day of my release from prison, the army had captured the story.

I called Huda and had one of the most difficult experiences of my entire ordeal. She told me that when she had learnt of the new accusations, she had searched out my Smith & Wesson .38 special handgun, which I kept on the top shelf in my cupboard, hidden from view.

"I'm holding it in one hand," she told me, "and two rounds in the other." "Put it down," I said firmly, fear rising inside of me.

"Tell me how to use it," she whispered. She said that she couldn't deal with this any longer and wanted to be free from everything - the media, the scrutiny, the idea that the United States government could be doing this to our family. It was not the first time that Huda had suggested a desire to die since my arrest, but it had never gone this far.

I didn't know what to do. She hung up and when I called back several times, she didn't answer. Finally I called the local police department. They sent officers to our
apartment, who took Huda to a nearby hospital against her will. She was released
after several hours, but the police kept the gun. I could not be with her. I was
forbidden to leave my military base.

In February last year my lawyers reached a deal with the army that the criminal charges would be dismissed and I would resign my commission with a recommendation for an honourable discharge from Miller and other senior officers. Even so, the military continued to whisper that I was indeed a threat to the nation but it was somehow in the interest of security to drop the case against me. Miller found me guilty of adultery and possessing pornography and formally reprimanded me. Two months later - by which time my case had become a cause celebre - I won an appeal against his decision.

After the charges against me were dropped and it became obvious that the government had erred, many newspaper editorials were written to demand that the military issue an apology.

Of course I want an apology, but it will not restore my marriage which has suffered irreparable damage from the vindictive claims that the military made. Nor will it give me back my job as a Muslim chaplain in the army - a job that allowed me to fulfil
my dream of serving both God and country.

Adapted from For God And Country by James Yee with Aimee Molloy to be published by PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group, on November 3 at £14.99. Copies can be ordered for £12.09 with free delivery from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585

SotT Comment:
Imagine that: a third-generation American has his life destroyed for no other
reason than his religion - and this in the country that believes it is has the
most religious freedom of any nation in the world. When Yee did nothing illegal,
charges were fabricated and he was placed in solitary confinement for 76 days
while the US government worked on destroying his marriage. Men like James Yee
are the "terrorists" that everyone fears. What sort of a life can Yee possibly
have now?

The clearly racist, "patriotic", fundamentalist Christian fanatics
who are driving prosecutions under the blanket of the "War on Terror" certainly
will not have stopped checking up on Yee. He writes, "The military continued to
whisper that I was indeed a threat to the nation but it was somehow in the
interest of security to drop the case against me". In other words, the
harassment of Yee will no doubt continue. Where does he go? His life in the US
is in ruins. If he returns to the Middle East, he could be recaptured and more
false charges could be brought against him. Yet another US citizen's life has
been obliterated for nothing more than a bunch of lies told by the Bush
administration after 9/11.

After reading this account - and others before it
on past Signs pages - we must again ask the questions: Who are the real
terrorists? Who benefits from the senseless destruction of this innocent
American's life? And just how much longer are average Americans - and indeed the
citizens of many other nations - going to just sit back and pretend like
everything is okay in the Land of the Free?

"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own." ~ Aldous Huxley

I missed last week's review... sorry.

Here's a look at this past week. I don't doubt the newspapers may be having difficulty deciding what exactly is front page - well, that would be if all these things would be reported - some things you can't ignore.

These articles are from the Signs of the Times daily compilation of articles (with the exception of two or three).

Britain recruited terrorists, Meacher claims

Australia to urge new counterterrorism measures in Indonesia

Kiss of Death
Does Zarqawi have an infinite supply of lieutenants/deputies/aides/associates/second-in-commands/etc., or do we just arbitrarily declare that every 100th insurgent we capture or kill is "a top aide" to Zarqawi?

John Pilger blames Basra on the British

Bush will veto anti-torture law after Senate revolt

White House denies Bush God claims

Protest is criminalised and the huffers and puffers say nothing

University of Arizona Professor Reported to FBI for "Hating" America

Bush administration found involved in illegal 'covert propaganda'

New York subway terror threat remains uncorroborated, concerns ease

Peace march coincidences

Deadly bacteria detected during anti-war march

Bird flu jumps transmission barrier in humans

U.S. may use military quarantine to contain flu

Security fears as flu virus that killed 50 million is recreated

Asia Scrambles to Contain Dengue Virus

Mysterious illness claims four more lives in Toronto

South Asian quake toll nears 20,000

Guatemala mudslide: 1,400 feared dead

Earthquake shakes Israel

Quake shakes city

Strong quake rocks Aceh

Earthquake Rattles Three Argentine Provinces

Earthquake strikes the South Pacific island of Tonga – no injures or damage

Typhoon, quake leave Taiwan shaken, stirred

2 die, thousands flee as El Salvador volcano erupts

Aleutian volcano begins to quake

Huge Alaska landslide gets attention of seismologists

Early Blizzard Knocks Out Power in West

Green light in sky was likely a meteor

When I went to bed two nights ago the 7.6 Earth quake in South Asia had been reported to have taken hundreds of lives. Now it is between twenty and thirty thousand people that have been killed. It's hard for me to comprehend all this suffering and such huge loss of life.


Here's some photo's from a slideshow on Yahoo.

I found this video of the recent passage of the energy bill over at the crooks and liers blog.

Looks like democracy at work. Well W's type of democrazy anyway - you know the war is peace and freedom is slavery kind.

The only consistancy with my vanity, however hypocritical it may be, is it never ceases to shock me and it is always present when I'm certain it isn't. It doesn't matter the topic or the level of information I've processed or thought I have - vanity is always there. Where ever vanity is present, lies lurk not far behind. It is a manifestation of something false within. What is it in me that triggers this destructive self love? The most ignorant man alive certainly can be most vain (we can take a peek inside the White House to verify this he he) but so can the most intelligent of scientists - perhaps vanity demonstrates our level of developed (or undeveloped) level of empathy, how we communicate with our conscience.

I think its interesting that I react most vainly (or so I think) when I see a level of vanity in another. Pretty funny. Some say that which we despise in others is what we despise in ourselves. I think it makes sense that the outer programs we react most to are those which are the most ingrained in us - it is interesting the relationship that exists there. It would seem that vanity is also a part of a larger system - that which seeks to destroy another. Maybe it is a mask of our own fear and cowardness. It can be amazing how many masks we wear.

It's ironic, the momments we seem the most honest are when we see how much we lie.