The Management Consulting Group

The colossus of Israel’s Center-Right is no more. Sharon’s cerebral hemorrhage, induced coma, and declared departure from Israel’s political life have created a grave and vacuous ability for Israel to carry on viable negotiations with either the Palestinians or other belligerents. This assessment is more an international impression and less an Israeli one; however, it is the international community’s perception that overwhelms.

Successors are no where to be found compared with the stature and personality of the “Bulldozer.” PM stand-in, Ehud Olmert, the quintessential bureaucrat, along with recently-rejected Labor leader, Shimon Peresmay try, but their finest hour will not survive the Humpty-Dumpty fall that Kadima (”forward“) sustained. Likewise, who knows, heard and seen Labor’s new choice: Amir Peretz? All we know is that he’s a flaming socialist!

That leaves Benjamin Netanyahu and the party which Sharon forsook, Likud. Kicking off the New Year some 400 Likud delegates championed the actions of a former leader of Likud, Menachem Begin: Preemptively destroy Iran’s all-too-clear nuclear programdesigned to “Wipe Israel off the Map!”

Likud member, Ra’anana Deputy Mayor Uzi Cohen, expressed the overwhelming majority of Likud members: “Bomb Iran’s nuclear reactor before it is too late.” The echo from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad mirrored his holocaust remarksSharon should die.

Converging upon the Middle East landscape are the Israeli March, 2006 elections, and Iran’s nuclear bomb. Indifference is not an optioneither on the part of Israel or the U.S.

Netanyahu’s break with Sharon was decisivewe will not back out of the territories; we will not close one more settlement! For Netanyahu to “move to the center” and become more Sharon-like, might be a wise political decision, but a bitter pill to swallowhe is no heir apparent to Sharon; he abides his rival.

In sum: Israel’s infrastructure, systems, military, ad nausea, ad infinitum, are irrefutable, but her political leadership is paralyzed by the current chaos created by Sharon’s diminishing.

This leads to the title of this brevityit is time for the President of the United States of America to enter the playing field. If the Israelis cannot “get their act together” to follow Bush’s Roadmap for Peace (i.e., land for peace), there will be consequences that neither Israel nor the US wish to faceespecially, at this time.

Today’s (January 5, 2006) super bowl input meeting organized by the Presidentbringing scores of former Secretaries of State and Defense together to discuss Middle East issuesdid not circumvent Israel’s political crisis. Rest assured that prickly pear was discussed: What to do after Sharon?

Sharon’s void must be filled. Time does not permit that luxury. This is precisely why if Netanyahu by default ascends to the occasion, he will be getting a call from Washington posthaste. That exchange, you can be certain, will express the will of the Presidency of the United States. The Roadmap for Peace will be the express topic and staying its course will be the measurement of Presidential support behind Israel’s future leader.

Just as in each crisis the U.S. exacts something from Israel (e.g., Israel stayed out of the Gulf Wars); Israel then extracts something from the U.S. (more military cooperation, hardware, etc.).

This provides a unique opportunityor should we imply temptationfor Israel. Is it time to go on the line and have the U.S., once and for all, guaranteeunderwrite Israel’s peace? For Israel to comply with Bush’s Roadmapshe will have her quid pro quo; she always does.

The U.S. and Israel are being driven together by events and forces beyond their immediate control. Iran’s reprehensible threats, Islamic radicalism on her borders (Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad), as well as throughout the region, and now political chaos in Israelevents have simply overtaken us.

It’s time for the President of the United States to make his move. Israel may have no choice but to swallow a bitter pill . . . in order to secure her survival by the world’s only super power. Indeed, it may appear bold, rude and even insensitive to the Israelisbut who else can get us back on the Road again?

“He will cause to bear upon the many a covenant . . .” (Daniel 9:27).

Please see the four-part series on the U.S.-Israel Strategic Alliance @ http://www.the-tribulation-network.com.

Doug is a member of the “Last Days Network” . . . a group of evangelical pundits providing news and analysis on Religion in Politics. “Applied Biblical prophecy,” apostasy and deception, the impact of the American New World Order System, and the influence of the Religious Right and Left upon American culture–are topics discussed by the group. Doug’s articles are anchored @ The Tribulation Network.

Originally published in 1958, “The Ugly American” (Lederer & Burdick) documented American blunders abroad and our failure to identify that what we termed communism in undeveloped countries was merely the screams of hunger and hopelessness becoming manifest. 15 years later, we extricated ourselves from Vietnam and licked our wounds for 30 years, finally coming to some sort of accommodation with free fire zones, Agent Orange, and My Lai. Never again, we swore. We would protect our nation’s security but only move into war zones when gross injustice or humanitarian concerns demanded a response — Somalia, Bosnia, the first Gulf War.

We felt relief: a line in the sand had been drawn that we would not cross. The new American protocol called for self-protection but also restraint, a hint of nobility, and the belief that, above all, we were the primary bastion of freedom, diversity, and the rule of law.

September 11 shook that hard-fought-for ideal. No longer must we simply protect our borders but now we had to look around us wherever we were - at the stranger waiting for a train, the sweating, swarthy fellow traveler at the airport, the foreigners in the upstairs apartment.

We felt betrayed. The quid pro quo of “You leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone” went awry. Those who hate us were intruding into our private space. We felt violated. In a predictable reaction, we struck out, seeking the enemy in the hills and caves of Afghanistan where our agony had been meticulously planned with premeditation and cold indifference to our pain.

For two years, we slowly revised our goals, our ideals, our national commitments. Our outraged sense of self, revulsion, and anger gradually overcame our democratic belief in the rights of all to national self-determination. To fight the enemy, we became him. We adopted his mindset of the ends justifies the means. Angry and frustrated at his ability to strike at our very heart and make our world fearful and dangerous, we morphed into him, using offense as a means of defense against the terrifying vulnerability we feared to face.

In 2003, the decision was made to openly attack a sovereign nation state which, although famous for verbal saber rattling, posed no direct threat to us nor had it committed an illegal invasion or recent attack on anyone else since the last Gulf War.

With guns blazing, we marched into the OK Corral. Despite the absolute predictability of enemy combatants fading into the general population rather than standing their ground and being annihilated, we were “surprised” at the ease of entering Baghdad. We had forgotten the lessons of our own Revolutionary War when it became clear that standing face-to-face with well-supplied redcoat squares was a recipe for total destruction.

“Mission Accomplished” trumpeted the President, the Administration, the temporarily impotent and sleeping media. The worst was over. There were now simply “mopping up” operations left in a country which should be overwhelmingly grateful for what we had achieved. Instead, of course, more U.S. troops would die after our mission was “accomplished” than in the hot war itself.

Why the surprise? Once again, as in the days of Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, the bombing of Cambodia, once again the face of the Ugly American was exposed to the world.

Why are we hated? We are the superpower, the bully in the school yard.

Difficult as it is to forge an uneasy truce with us when we act with restraint and decorum, it becomes impossible when we throw our weight around and beat our collective chest with pride, hubris, and the will to move alone without trying to rally allies or international support. The Ugly American is loose in the streets of the Middle East, a target for all, a friend of none: arrogant, defiant, outcast, and alone.

Never again, we said. Oops - the isolation and the hate is back. We can now have the satisfaction of knowing we generated it all by ourselves. Who needs an enemy when we have us?

Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of an interactive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker’s Edge, she can be reached at http://www.virginiabola.com

You, the reader, should be aware of my affluence of love for literature in all its forms, for instance: the novel, the novella, the short story, the poem, and the comic strip - which, in its own right, is a literary and creative milestone tantamount in importance to Shakespeare.

However, without doubt, one of my favorite genres of literature is: the memo. From the shady corporate memo to the internal government top-secret, not-released-to-the-public-until-years-after-it-matters memo, memos interest me for a number of reasons. Most prominent of these is the all-too-human emotions memos - in the most sterile, inhuman way possible - convey: fears, misgivings, wants, rabid lusts, and damnable dishonesties… Oh, sorry, that’s not an emotion.

Also not unfamiliar to the reader should be my love of literary devices: litotes, puns, metaphors, similes, analogies, syllogisms, and ironies - specifically those that are dramatic in nature. Truly, these are the weapons of the greatest warriors - and of the lowliest demagogues.

That’s why I immediately fell in love with a newly released memo I found. It is a British memo, dubbed the “Downing Street Memo,” written by a man named Matthew Rycroft, in which he reports on a meeting with prime minister Blair. Contained in the memorandum is info ascertained by the head of the British MI-6 (Sir Richard Dearlove, referred in the memo only by the alias “C”) during a meeting in Washington. While Britons should find the info on their PM to be good reading (Blair’s involvement in the conspiracy to wage war on Iraq sans just cause), the general plot of the memo is twofold:

1. Bush, by this memo’s composition in mid-2002, had already decided to invade Iraq.

2. To this end, he had manipulated intelligence findings to fit his policy.

For motives unknown to the public (but that many suspect revolve around a certain three-letter word that rhymes with “boil” - as in, “Iraq’s second-largest-reserves-on-earth make me boil with mirth” and “royal” - as in, “ExxonMobil will be living like royalty if we get our hands on Iraq’s copious quantity”), Bush had decided roughly 8 months before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein must relinquish his iron grasp on the Iraqi people and their sweet, seductive crude. George made clear that Saddam must give up his weapons of mass destruction, or he would use military force to bring down his regime and free the Iraqi people from not only the relentless drudgery of living under Hussein, but also the relentless drudgery of living period.

This poignant memo seems to be the final brick that the anti-Bush legions have been seeking to build an airtight case against the emperor; a “smoking gun” that came not in the form of Condi’s mushroom cloud, but rather in the form of a great mushrooming of evidence that Bush misconducted the war and, now, that he didn’t even have a good reason for it.

I must say that our Prospero has done an excellent job in his efforts to masque our Red Death: gone are the days of TV journalists reporting from bloody battlefields while gunfire and explosions ring from every angle (reports which were in no small part responsible for the mass protests of Vietnam). Journalists today are a much more timid, placid breed than the Woodwards and Cronkites of yore. This is partially due to the administration’s aggressive means of dealing with the press, which includes, as the Washington Times reports in the article, “Hundreds of Photos of Caskets Released,” repressed images of deceased soldiers that had to be coaxed from the Pentagon with a lawsuit.

Now our situation becomes clear: Bush sits back and watches while those participating in the war that he, according to this memo, orchestrated for dubious reasons, are sent by the thousands into
the abattoir.

Dictionary.com defines “dramatic irony” as, “irony that occurs when the meaning of the situation is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play.”

My website:
http://www.graymaxim.blogspot.com/

If you wanna rock, go to the quarry. If you wanna email me, click here.

IV. THE “CARVILLE FACTOR”

If The Dems nominate Hillary, expect James Carville to have a prominent role in the campaign. Otherwise, the Democrats will continue to act out the chorus to “Send In The Clowns.” In 2004 John Kerry amassed the second highest number of votes in U.S. history and still lost. Carville, the mastermind behind Bill Clinton’s ascension to the White House needs to take charge of a party in shambles. Carville predicted that Kerry would defeat Bush 52 to 47 percent and said if Bush was re-elected it would be “the signature political achievement of my life.”

After Kerry’s defeat he said, “I think that the Democrats should have won. (Kerry received the second highest number of votes in U.S. Presidential election history). We didn’t…I was disappointed Election Night. I’ll be honest with you.” Carville believes, “The Democratic Party really is at a precarious moment here…Now, we don’t control any branch of government. I mean, we’ve won three out of the last 10 presidential elections…I think this is a message to the Democratic Party: We need to produce a narrative. We need to be more about solving problems as opposed to managing them.”

James was born October 25, 1944 in Carville, La., a town near the Mississippi River and named for his grandfather. Currently he is married to Republican stalwart Mary Matalin, who was the deputy campaign manager of George Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. He got his first job in professional politics in 1982, managing a Senate race, sixteen years after he flunked out of Louisiana State University in 1966. (He returned after a two-year hitch in the Marines, to complete his law degree). The following year he headed the Texas Gubernatorial campaign of Lloyd Doggett. Six years later he teamed up with Paul Begala to form the Carville & Begala political consulting firm.

In 1992 the two managed Bill Clinton’s campaign. Prior to that Carville headed the successful 1991 Pennsylvania U.S. Senate campaign of Harris Wofford, Zell Miller’s 1990 gubernatorial bid and the 1988 reelection of Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg in New Jersey. He also managed the 1987 Gubernatorial victory of Wallace Wilkinson in Kentucky and the 1986 gubernatorial victory of Robert Casey in Pennsylvania. In 2000 he looked on and as Al Gore lost a controversial Presidential election to current President George W. Bush.

Several months later Carville noted wryly, “A Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we’d lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Gore, he did win, and I’ll be damned if all those things didn’t come true!”

“America is getting ready to learn a lesson,” says Carville. “And that is that very minor shifts in voting can produce policy earthquakes…unbelievably rapid loosening of environmental regulations and fundamental restructuring or attempted restructuring of both the tax code and the Social Security system, and you’re going to see a PAC right-wing federal judiciary, and you’re going to see an administration and a Congress that is 100 percent representative of corporate interest. You’re going to see a diminution of any protection for workers or anything like that. You’re certainly going to see a huge legislation passed and signed to limit products’ liability, defects products and medical malpractice…All of that is coming.”

This must be the Democratic message in 2008, assuming these things don’t come to fruition beforehand.

The Dems will probably need an issue to latch onto as a “pet cause.” That issue might be homelessness, a growing problem across the country. It seems to me that you can’t convince a woman sleeping under a bridge, or in an inoperative automobile that Bush’s energy policy, high gas prices or whether or not prayer should be allowed in schools is relevant. Homeless children wonder where their next meal will come from and could care less about terrorism, WMDs or other political optical illusions.

Annual homelessness figures exceed 1% percent of the total U.S. population and may represent as much as 10 percent of all poor people in this country. A large number of those with adequate and affordable housing are hanging by a thread and if that sounds oxymoronic, examine these facts:

More than three million people face homelessness each year, including single and two-parent families, single adults (the largest group) and a rapidly-increasing number of the elderly. With escalating housing prices, working people are being priced out of the housing market. With large numbers of these people clamoring for the few available apartments, those price rises as well. In some areas of California (such as Solano County), bidding wars are driving up the price of this type of housing.

Certain factors are precursors to homelessness. Families with incomes half or less than the federal poverty level, drug and alcohol abuse, abusive environments (sexual or physical), and “graduation” from foster carethat is, foster children who turn 18 and literally have nowhere to go. Even with assistance from shelters and transitional housing, the average length of homeless exceeds 30 months. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, housing is considered affordable if it costs no more than 30 percent of a family’s income. When housing costs exceed that level families face major decisions, often having to choose between paying rent in full and eating. For the record, between twenty and thirty percent of homeless families surveyed in 1996 said they had gone without food for part of the previous month (Burt, Aron, and Lee, National Alliance to End Homelessness).

In short, the lack of housing is the number one issue affecting Americans. The Dems could paint the picture that Republican policies stagnate wages to the point where they do not keep up with the rate of inflation. Consumer power has thereby been weakened, especially when contrasted with skyrocketing housing costs. Working families must spend a greater percentage of their income for housing, oftentimes in excess of 50%. The Urban Institute supports this idea, stating that market trends indicate that, “The situation is getting worse rather than better. Current levels of housing costs, coupled with low-wage jobs and economic contraction, could push even the working poor out of their homes.”

The Dems must push the fact that there is a lack of affordable housing. In 1970, there were 300,000 more affordable housing units available than there were low-income households in need. In 2001, there were 4.7 more low-income households than available affordable housing units. (B. Alexander, “The State of the Nation’s Housing,” June 2000). More telling, millions of families are faced with the prospect of living in substandard or uninhabitable conditions.

So what can be done? The National Housing Alliance states that “Housing vouchers have been shown to end family homelessness. Additionally, inadequate housing is a major contributing factor to the placement and retention of children in foster care. Nationally, the average cost of placing the children of a homeless family in foster care is $47,608, while the average annual cost for a permanent housing subsidy and supportive services for a family of equal size is about $9,000.” (R.A. White, C.M. Seth, “No Place Like Home,” Children’s Voice. Child Welfare League of America, March/April, 2003). The Republicans are against such entitlement programs, which could help the Dems, if they can prove such programs are essential.

The problem is not just confined to the inner cities. In Nebraska the problem is exacerbated in rural areas by “A shortage of builders, contractors and laborers, compounded by a lack of workers trained and being trained in construction trades, especially in rural areas…A shortage of buildable lots, lots with infrastructure in place and/or vacant land that can be developed for housing, is being experienced by many Nebraska communities.” Dr. Dennis Shockley, executive director of the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency stated that “…in many rural areas there is no research proving that a market exists for new housing developments, and that the price of new construction is significantly higher than the cost of an existing home. He said builders and lenders are justifiably concerned that buyers will not pay the price difference.”

V. SUMMATION

In short, the Dems need a charismatic Presidential nominee and would be wise to choose a Latino for the Vice-Presidential slot. In this case, Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson. James Carville will be needed to navigate the choppy waters, major fund raising must take place and the party must move to the center, finding a pet cause to promote along the way. If the Dems can present clear cut differences between their platform and that of the Republicans, they have a chance to garner the majority of Latino votes. This would give them the push they need to recapture the White House in 2008 and perhaps again in 2012.

Sources:

Stewart M. Powell, “Hispanic Political Importance Growing,” Hearst Washington Bureau, October 1998

Biography of Cruz Bustamante, Wikipedia

Biography of Brian Schweitzer, Wikipedia

Biography of Bill Richardson, Wikipedia

Terry M. Neal, “Bush’s Message Reflects Hispanic Demographics,” The Washington Post, p. A3, September 15, 1999

Leo Brown, “Western Democrat: Interview with Bill Richardson,” Democracy Now! Interview published by Kari Chisholm at Mandate Media

“Richardson: N.Korea talks ‘positive, frank and candid’,” CNN/com, Jan. 10, 2003

“Extensive UC Berkeley report documents Latino demographics and voting behavior in California,” University of California policy seminar, October 22, 1998

Micael Grunwald, “Bob Graham,” The Washington Post, p. W08, March 4, 2003

Bob Graham Interview on “Face The Nation,” CBS Television, no date available

Biography of Bob Graham, Wikipedia

Ken Herman, “Politicians trying to mobilize Hispanic vote,” Deseret News, February 1, 2004

Jim Burns, “Republicans Rising in Black Voters’ Estimation,” CBSNews.com, July 30, 2002

“U.S. presidential campaign spending triples,” CBS News, 2004

Joan Walsh, “Interview With James Carville,” Salon, March 11, 2002

“Meet The Press,” transcript of November 14, 2004, MSNBC.com

By Jennifer, “What Went Wrong,” Newsweek: Elections 2002, Nov. 6, 2002

Danny Duncan Collum, “Beginning of the Middle of the Muddle,” Sojourners Magazine, March-April 1997

“The ‘Ragin’ Cajun’ James Carville, Talks Tough,” BuzzFlash.com, January 21, 2004

National Alliance to End Homelessness

Martha Burt, Y. Laudan and Edgar Aron, Helping America’s Homeless:Emergency Shelter or Affordable Housing?

Kevin Fagan, “Shame of the City Sacred Sheep,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 27, 2005

Dale Turner, “Task Force Identifies Lack of Affordable Housing As Obstacle to Rural Development,” 2003.

John Patterson, Craig Helmstetter, Lila Moberg, Susan Von Mosch, and Jo Vos, “Affordable Housing (01-03)”, Pp. 8-9, January 30, 2001 Affordable Housing?

Further Reading:

Heidi Sommer, “Homelessness in Urban America: A Review of the Literature,” Prepared for Urban Homelessness and Public Policy Solutions: A One-Day Conference, January 22, 2001, UC Berkeley Alumni House

Timothy N. Stelly is the author of the novels, “Tempest In The Stone” and “The malice Of cain.” He is a contributor to several e-zines and resides in Pittsburg, California.

So, you got a big surprise last night, didn’t you? You went
to search for your Website and it wasn’t there anymore!
Where did it go? Did you have to use double quotes just to
find it? Not a pleasant feeling, I bet!

Let’s face it: having your website de-listed or sent all the
way back to the start of the line isn’t a joking matter! All
those months of hard work just gone down the drain! Poof !!

Is there a way out of this seemingly mortal blow to your
website; can you repair your Search Engine Listing? Yes
there is!
If your mistake was one of the dumb mistakes we all make on
account of lack of experience, there is a solution.

Don’t think the Search Engines are stone monoliths; you can
talk to them! However, the first thing you have to do is be
calm and deliberate your next moves as you repair the damage
to your Search Engine listing.

Here are some pointers to look for the source of your Search
Engine troubles:

(a) Go back to the nearest specific date your website was
doing well with the Search Engines.

(b) Think of any changes you’ve done to your Website since
then and make a list.

(c) Have you created any other websites/blogs/message boards
with a very close or identical name?

(d) Have you done any tweaking to your Meta tags or website
content?

(e) Have you used any artificial web page or content
enhancement technology?

Once you revise your list and eliminate any obvious reasons
for trouble, keep on going looking for any others sources of
problems. By all means, do a thorough inspection and don’t
leave a stone unturned. Repair and revise is the thing!

Go back to the basics and do your homework; don’t put too
much stake on much of the (mis)information you find floating
around the Web. You also have to consider that Search Engine
technology is an evolving thing and what worked two years
ago, won’t necessarily work today. Make sure your sources of
information are fresh and relevant.

Here are published guidelines on what some of the big Search
Engines take into consideration for a good listing:

Yahoo:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-05.html

With their resent Natural language initiative, it’s clear
Yahoo wants web pages that are very readable. Be careful not
to let “keyword loading” affect the easy readability of your
website.

MSN:
http://beta.search.msn.co.in/docs/siteowner.aspx

Google:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Once you’ve done all that you can think of to clean-up your
Website, contact the Search Engines and offer them an
explanation while asking for a review of your Website.

Keep it short and businesslike and ask any pertinent
questions. Consider the SE staff is composed of people just
like you. We all make mistakes! Believe me, they have many
years of experience dealing with Newbies; they can also spot
a slick operator.

You might have to wait some time depending on their schedule for
crawling your neck of the Web. Look at your server logs to
see an average time between SE crawling.

A note of caution:

I don’t see why in the world a Newbie would deal with
technology that artificially enhances web pages. There are
plenty in the market extolling their virtues. I’ve done
research on many of them and consider them only useful in
the hands of an experienced Webmaster.

If you MUST use any of them, build a dummy website to test
all your ideas before you build your dream website. I’ve
heard of folks with much more experience getting their site
banned for using some of the artificial enhancement
technologies.

If you follow the above guides, you will repair your Search
Engine listing. Your Website will return to its former
Search Engine friendly ranking. Keep your eyes open for the
next time and do your best not to make any more mistakes.
Take a deep breath and move on, that much wiser for the
experience.

by Francisco Aloy

(C)2005 Francisco Aloy
=============================================
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Francisco Aloy is the creator of The
Newbie Business Guide. Discover the
marketing punch of original content.
For more of Mr. Aloy’s articles, visit:
http://www.newbie-business-guide.com

As you read this book you will have to suspend the disbelief you feel when confronted with my assertions that for at least 5000 years man has been in close contact all over the world. If you have read my other books you will know I have made the case better than any and that there are lots of good scholars who agree with me.

Puma Puncu and Lake Titicaca may provide the proof as a recent research team finally checks out the spires of ancient buildings that fishermen have tied their boats to for millennia. Here high in the Andes we know there were astronomers who also were in Central America where the Earth Energy Grid allowed something fantastic to dovetail with other places including Giza. The Cosmic energy and earth energy in concert with their soulful energy was able to build psycho-spiritual attunements that have only recently been sublimated by most nations or our leaders. Yet these leaders are members of cults or Christian Mystery Schools like the Rosicrucians who use this occult knowledge against us.

I think there is a great chance that it was well understood 15,000 years ago by Andean astronomers who were Kelts and later became Chachapoyas and leaders of the Incas in a time when much of the real knowledge had diminished. High above the clouds they could see the Milky Way formation that looks like a serpent without the glass lenses that they got from the slow moving lava flows and that have been found at La Venta in Mexico and in modern day Ecuador by archaeologists. Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan, Viracocha, Xolotl and others are the ‘travelers’ who I think I have proven are Druids through many sources in other books. Here is a little of the Theosophist viewpoint on the serpent or Dragon wisdom that led Central America and included people boarding their kid’s heads to look like serpents.

“We read in The Secret Doctrine that fohat, divine messenger, intelligent cosmic electricity, who at the Divine Word proceeds forth to create worlds and the beings thereon, moves in a serpentine course, generates spirals; and this spiral plan of evolution is imitated throughout nature, from the nebulae to the spiral growth of plants. The serpent means divine wisdom, creative intelligence; and Masters of Wisdom are called serpents — which gives a new meaning to the injunction “Be ye wise as Serpents.” Hermes or Mercury carries the caduceus, a wand with two serpents entwined on a staff; the Chinese made the serpent the emblem of their emperors; the Druids called themselves snakes; serpent-emblems called Dracontia once covered the globe and are still found; Quetzalcohuatl was the snake-deity of the ancient Mexicans; dragons are found throughout ancient symbology with the same sense. But we also hear of evil serpents. The Gnostics spoke of an Agathodaimon and a Kakodaimon, or a good and an evil divinity, represented as serpents; Hercules slays Python; Apollo at birth overcomes a serpent, but does it by means of another serpent — the higher wisdom in man overcoming the lower. The two nodes of the moon, Rahu and Ketu, are called the Dragon’s head and tail. So the serpent can represent the duality of human nature — which is but a copy of the duality in cosmos. A dual geometry may be based on the right and left helical curves. There is the serpent of spirit and the serpent of matter, the heavenly wisdom from above and the earthly wisdom from below, of which Paul speaks so often.” (1)

There are many books that Adrian Gilbert, Robert Bauval, Robert Schoch and others have done which show the correspondences between Egyptian and Mayan prophecy. I regard a lot of this as mere rationalization of Armageddon type fear-mongering and ‘miss’-story. Inevitably they draw alien influences into the game and often they see it going from Egypt to the Sarmoung Brotherhood rather than having an earth-based prior culture in places such as archaeology does now prove. I have documented these things in books starting with Diverse Druids. The chances of my work getting a real publisher are minimal as a result. Archaeologists do not integrate all the discoveries throughout the world and the media in the US refuses to report on finds such as Yonaguni or tell us why Kennewick Man’s site was destroyed. I know 60 Minutes asked that pointed question but I have yet to find an answer as to who did this or allowed it to happen the day before Congressional Bills were set to take effect.

The correspondences of the Mayan calendar with Egypt are real in some ways and I do not throw away the information provided. I do however look for the science to explain these things rather than take the easy answer which fits a paradigm that has fed excrement to us about Elohim or other alien influences for the last five thousand years.

About the Author

World-Mysteries.com guest expert
Regular columnist for The ES Press Magazine
Author of Diverse Druids

I understand that there is an enormous inertia in the present
tax system. The incremental complication of the tax code over
the last 80 years has given birth to an entire industry that is
fully capable of defending their turf. These are challenging
times. The American people are equally unhappy with this
administration and the Democratic opposition over the handling
of the war in Iraq. There has been a lack of planning, and open
discussion that has led to a breakdown in communication. While
we wrestle with the war, we grow even more cynical about the
power of special interests and the remoteness of Washington. I
believe the President should support HR 25 and help enact the
Fair Tax initiative for the good of the nation. It would be a
golden opportunity to act decisively to fix an antique that is a
drag on the whole economy. It would be benefit most of the
people - a rare opportunity to do good. In true wishy-washy
style, the President’s Tax Advisory Panel ignored considerable
research and grossly misstated the potential effects of the Fair
Tax. Committees frequently fail to provide clear and decisive
recommendations. They prefer to pander to the lobby and avoid
risks rather than seek the best available solution and advise
the President on managing risks associated with change.

If you look at the risks associated with doing nothing, they are
staggering. President Bush formed the Tax Advisory Panel because
he was seeking breakthrough thinking and a plan to promote
simplicity, fairness, and transparency. The Panel failed, but
the President need not. The Fair Tax replaces all federal income
and payroll taxes with a revenue neutral, 23% national sales
tax. It is inherently fair because it taxes consumption. The
more you spend the more you are taxed - that simple. I urge you
and the Treasury Department to offer offer creative alternatives
to the President including the Fair Tax, since the Fair Tax will
energize the American economy and engage the American people. It
will also enhance the President’s legacy, since it will take a
man of vision to unite the country and deliver true tax reform.

Last weekend, Brazilians living in the greater Sao Paulo metropolitan area witnessed one of the country’s largest prison riots in the past five years, organized and orchestrated by Sao Paulo’s largest criminal faction, the First Capital Command (PCC in Portuguese).

When Sao Paulo state authorities transferred some 756 PCC leaders, the PCC criminal enterprise, led by Willians Herbas Camacho (a.k.a. Marcola), implemented its plan to start riots in dozens of prisons in Sao Paulo and around the country. They took advantage of the unusually lax security environment over the weekend when some 10,000 prisoners were given a day pass to visit families on the outside for Mother’s Day, and thousands more civilians entered prisons to visit inmates on the inside.

As one prison after another fell under the control of rioting inmates, the hostage count rocketed into the hundreds. Meanwhile, organized attacks on police stations around Sao Paulo kept security forces busy defending themselves. At the same time, masked gunmen commandeered city buses, ordering them evacuated before burning them to the ground.

The weekend’s total included over 250 separate attacks on police stations, stores, and other establishments. There were 115 people killed, including 32 policemen and prison guards and 71 gang members. Another 49 people were injured. Some 215 hostages were taken in 73 prison riots that occurred in prisons across Sao Paulo, Parana, Matto Grosso do Sul, Brasilia, and Bahia, according to Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo. Over 80 public transport buses were burned and one metro station was attacked, leaving over five million people without public transport. On 15 May, as millions of people fled home in the early afternoon, Sao Paulo became a city of gridlock spanning 203 kilometers of roadways.

Over the weekend, as the violence raged on, Brazilian Justice Minister Marcio Thomas Bastos offered the service of 4,000 soldiers, part of a National Force trained to help contain the security problems in Brazilian states. But Sao Paulo Governor Claudio Lembo, filling in for presidential candidate Geraldo Alckmin, refused to accept federal help. Bastos made the trip from Brasilia to Sao Paulo to again offer federal assistance during a close-door meeting on Monday, 15 May. But again it was refused.

By 16 May, as quickly as the violence had started, it ended, and most prisons were back in the control of state authorities, and policemen were no longer the target of random attacks. The Sao Paulo daily newspaper, O Estado de Sao Paulo, reported on 16 May that the state government had reached an agreement with the PCC. Government officials continue to deny that claim, but it is possible such negotiations were a last-resort option for state officials clearly caught off guard by a highly organized criminal network, one many believed had been dismantled years ago. Brazilian organized crime The PCC began to take shape in 1993, when prisoners incarcerated in Taubate state prison in Sao Paulo organized themselves to fight against deplorable living conditions and more rights within the prison system. Over the past 13 years, this organization has grown into one of the country’s most powerful prison criminal networks, controlling activity within dozens of prisons in Sao Paulo and around the country, as well as important sales points and transport routes for drugs and guns flowing into Brazil from source countries such as Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, and Suriname.

The PCC became more active outside prisons in 1999, when Rio’s top criminal organization - the Red Command (CV in Portuguese) - formed an alliance with PCC members who lived in Heliopolis, a shantytown located in the southeastern zone of Sao Paulo, according to a Rio de Janeiro Federal Police officer who asked to remain anonymous. Through this alliance, the CV sought to shift some of its drug trafficking activities from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo. In Rio, CV leaders had been constantly harassed by police who exacted an extortion tax for allowing favelas (shantytowns) to be used as drug sales centers and contraband transshipment points. Additionally, the PCC in 1999 was a large criminal organization with more manpower than economic activity. Its alliance with the CV increased earnings for the PCC in Sao Paulo, while opening a new pool of man power for the CV to defend its turf from rival gangs in Rio de Janeiro.

Together, the two gangs control the drug trade in Brazil’s two largest cities. They operate gun smuggling routes out of Paraguay and purchase weapons from corrupt policemen and military soldiers in Sao Paulo and Rio. High-level members of these gangs, especially the CV, continue to conduct a weapons-for-cocaine barter with members of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) based in the Colombian Amazon.

As recently as 30 April, three Colombians opened fire on a Brazilian patrol on the Rio Negro, a branch of the Amazon river that begins in an area of the Colombian Amazon reportedly controlled by the FARC. Brazilian authorities claim that the rifles were stamped with the Brazilian military coat of arms. The men were followed to the Colombian city of San Felipe, where their arms were confiscated. Brazilian Federal Police investigators told ISN Security Watch that they believe the arms were part of a cache of weapons to be traded for cocaine that traffickers would transport to Sao Paulo and Rio.

Red Command leader Fernandinho Beira-Mar is considered to have been one of the first Brazilian criminals to trade weapons for cocaine with the FARC. He was arrested by Colombian authorities in April 2001 and immediately extradited to Brazil. Yet the recent incident on the Brazilian-Colombian border in the Amazon indicates that five years later, this criminal exchange program still continues to supply the CV and the PCC with pure, Colombian cocaine.

Brazilian organized crime is just as powerful within the prison system as it is on the outside. And as the battle continues to dismantle these criminal networks, the occasional mega-rebellion reminds Brazilian authorities and civilians that the security sector here has a long way to go before it has any significant control over organized crime. These rebellions also highlight the superior communication networks operated by Brazilian organized crime. Communication is fundamental When Fernandinho Beira-Mar was transferred from his prison cell in Rio de Janeiro after he orchestrated a prison riot there in September 2002 to mask the assassination of rival gang leaders, authorities found a number of luxury items including silk pajamas. But what surprised them more was the number of abandoned cell phones. Reports from Rio de Janeiro daily, O Globo, claim that Beira-Mar used up to a dozen cell phones to communicate with lieutenants and other subordinates in his black market network of guns and drugs shipments and sales.

In a similar fashion, leaders of the PCC use cell phones to communicate with one another between prisons and between prisoners and gang members on the outside. Both the Civil Police and the Federal Police operate listening posts, which enable security officials to piece together actionable intelligence on plans for rebellions and other gang operations. However, the use of two-way radios has made that task much more difficult.

In both Rio and Sao Paulo, two-way radios are used by criminals to relay messages to other incarcerated gang members and members on the outside. In some cases, one prisoner calls via cell a subordinate on the outside who uses a two-way radio to transmit the message to a third individual who then uses another cell phone to pass along the message to its recipient in another prison, reports O Globo. Each node on the communications chain may use any number of cell phones or two-way radios, making tracking the signals very difficult.

Attempts to block cell phone signals in Rio and Sao Paulo have been ineffective.

In the middle of the Mother’s Day weekend riots, requests to shut down cell phone towers used by criminals to relay signals were presented to Brazil’s telecommunications regulatory body when Marco Antonio Desgualdo, the head of the Sao Paulo state Civil Police, met with this body, called Anatel, on 15 May. The Folha de Sao Paulo reported that after the meeting Desgualdo announced that authorities would not be able to shut down cell towers without the acquiescence of telecommunications companies.

These same companies - Vivo, Tim, Telefonica, Embratel, and Nextel - complain that shutting down the towers would mean an unacceptable disruption of service for their law-abiding clients. Nothing short of a court order would shut down the towers, a legal instrument that takes too long to obtain.

In some prison systems, cell phone signal blockers are used, but they are quickly rendered obsolete by the rapid pace of technological advancement in cell phone systems.

The battle between Sao Paulo authorities and the cell phone companies to shut down towers in the event of security needs began in February 2001, when PCC members used cell phones to orchestrate simultaneous riots in 29 prisons across Sao Paulo. Security officials failed to win the battle then, too, but no one knew that such decisions five years ago would eventually facilitate the most violent uprising of Brazilian organized crime in years. Corruption and politics Even as blocking cell signals and other methods to impede communication between criminals evolves into what may become a viable solution, many believe that such time is wasted on treating a problem that is not central to the real reason why the PCC was able to orchestrate such a widespread reign of disorder and rebellion. Corruption and politics, two of the usual suspects behind systemic dysfunction in democracies, are at the center of Brazil’s security problems.

Bribes paid to security officials at all levels keep leaders of the PCC and the CV well informed of official planning. When authorities planned to move over 700 of the PCC leaders to a more secure prison environment to avoid what they learned was a planned Mother’s Day rebellion, the PCC reacted by launching its rebellion two days early, disrupting the prisoner transport and a host of other activities planned to prevent the rebellion.

Low salaries exacerbate corruption because policemen and some lower-ranking members of the military are more likely to sell weapons from poorly organized stock piles to make ends meet. Over 70 per cent of the weapons used by Brazilian organized crime were made in Brazil. Many of them are sold to Paraguay where they enter the black market before returning to Brazil. Yet a significant amount are sold to criminals directly from stockpiles of seized weapons.

When budgets must be prepared, politics dictate who gets what slice of the pie. From 2004 to 2005, the Brazilian federal government reduced resources for the country’s Penitentiary Fund by 37 per cent. This fund oversees the overall improvement and maintenance of Brazil’s prison system. Meanwhile, the government of Sao Paulo state diverted from public security spending some US$81.3 million in the last five years. It was a decision in the reduction of security spending at the Sao Paulo state level that was likely made after the 2001 prison riots in that state.

Commenting on the event, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva said it was a demonstration of the power of organized crime in Brazil. His comments underline the fact that Brazilian organized crime is a force that has grown to threaten Brazilian cities as well as the nation. With links to organized crime in Paraguay and Suriname, and a thriving barter system with Colombia’s FARC soldiers, the PCC and CV may soon become internationally known as a criminal network that has grown too big for Brazil’s security system to handle.

Sam Logan (http://www.samuellogan.com) is an investigative journalist who has reported on security, energy, politics, economics, organized crime, terrorism, and black markets in Latin America since 1999. He is currently completing his work on Nice Guys Die First, a forthcoming non-fiction narrative about organized crime in Brazil.

When you look at the news, immigrants are dying trying to get to America. Some are in America legally and illegally. I really don’t have a problem with the immigrants unless they do it the wrong way. My problem comes into play when they come to America and they don’t know English. Working with Hispanics I have come to understand them much better. Alot of them have been taught that working is critical. Education isn’t important. Well, in American Education and working are 2 very critical components.

Now, if you can remember President Fox mention that Hispanics do the jobs that Blacks won’t do. To a certain degree that’s true because there are many blacks who are educated and “No” some blacks don’t want to work at a Fast Food restaurant making $4.75. Heck, there are some Whites who won’t do that without an education. It’s a noted fact that without an education, the jobs that most will receive are fast food jobs. It’s nothing wrong with a fast food job but being educated myself that’s something that I don’t aspire to be.

Mr Fox needs to remember that some Hispanics are here illegally. Let’s be real, many and I mean many are here illegally. Yes, I must admit that if Hispanics would have been around during slavery times the blacks would have been left in Africa. Heck, Hispanics are harder workers than Whites and Asians. I don’t knock the Hispanics for what they do. I just wish they would do things the legal and right way. Until another controversial article….take care.

Arnetta Murray a wife and mother whose trying her hands at entreprenuership. She’s a college graduate with experience in Music and Mediation. Arnetta currently works part-time in Basic Adult Education. At the present moment she’s currently working on her debut book and trying to start her website business. Her firefigher husband and 5 kids keeps her busy nonstop. She is very active in church and PTO of her kids school.

“I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” (From the movie NETWORK)

The following questions are questions that need answering. Are there answers to
them? We must remain optimistic and vigilant if there are to be. These are just a few
topics. There are many more, some more important and some less, based on a
person’s beliefs and attitudes. I present them, as a reference and a starting point for
discussion

Guns? Why is it so difficult to do what is best for society, not for our liberties? If the
second amendment says we can possess guns, shouldn’t we be expected to abide
by that? Can’t we, better yet, understand the law and realize that people want to,
and have a constitutional right to, defend themselves and hunt for food? Wouldn’t it
make more sense if we allow anyone over 18 (since they can vote and defend us) to
own a pistol for their residences, and/or a rifle for hunting, as long as they have
never been guilty of a felony? Since semi-automatics are in most offensive cases
used for mass killing, shouldn’t there be a law that says it is illegal (as illegal as in
distributing drugs) to manufacture any type of machine gun or automatic or semi
automatic weaponry, or to own one, or have one in their possession, except for law
enforcement personnel? Can’t we all be logical and practical, law-abiding, and
compromising at the same time?

Why would a president, considered by many to be one of our most brilliant, be
impeached for lying to Congress (to save his marriage), when our present president
lied to the American people about weapons of mass destruction, and then lied that
we were there to take out Saddam Hussein, yet we are still there? Why isn’t this man,
who is driving the American people into a debt of half a trillion dollars in Iraq and
Afghanistan (which could be used to rebuild New Orleans, house the homeless, take
care of the infirmed, and feed the poor), being allowed to send thousands of our
children to their deaths while, at the same time, killing tens of thousands of
innocent Iraqi men, women, and children? Why aren’t his lies, deceit, and actions
impeachable? Is it because his party controls our Congress? And why does America
feel it has the right to force democracy upon other countries? How can we expect to
change other people’s way of living when their beliefs have been inbred and
practiced for thousands of years? Should we remove despots and dictators? Yes, but
aren’t we just taking over countries when we force them to copy our government
and live as we do because it’s what we think is best for them? What is America going
to do now that we have now alienated many of our western hemisphere neighbors?
With the middle east and many parts of the orient against United States policy, what
will our president do now that Bolivia has elected a leader who vows to be
‘America’s nightmare,’ and counts among his friends U.S. critics Cuba’s Fidel Castro
and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, along with leftists in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay?
How much longer before it’s us against them?

Can someone tell me why we are trying to rid the world of WMAs, but we’re fighting
in a country where there are none, and next to a country (Iran) that says they are
building one? A county whose president broadcast that the Holocaust was a myth
and that Israel should be bombed off the face of the Earth? Why is our president not
doing what he promised the world to do: rid the world of weapons of mass
destruction? Why are we in a war in Iraq when we should be in Iran and N. Korea,
and, as we were led to believe, in every country with weapons of mass destruction?

Why are we so worried about Communism and won’t speak with our neighbor
(Cuba) as friends of different governmental beliefs? Why should we punish the
innocent Cubans with our embargoes against them, as the majority of Cubans
seems to find it quite livable? Is genocide taking place there, civil atrocities?
Horrifically, why would our president turn down the thousands of doctors Cuba
offered to send to aid in Hurricane Katrina? How many more lives could have been
saved? Isn’t it true that we should not fight communism any longer, rather accept it,
since China has one billion more people than the United States? Doesn’t big fish eat
little fish? Shouldn’t America be in Africa helping crush the genocides and teaching
these countries to become self reliant and self sufficient so that this will never
happen again? Shouldn’t America and the world, together, take the responsibility of
creating new civilizations, with schools and hospitals and courts, and a government,
not destroy ones that have existed for thousands of years?

Why has it become so difficult to smile at people, to help people, to forgive people,
to offer a compliment, to say pardon me, please, and thank you, to be a kind
person? Isn’t it easier to be nice than mean? Doesn’t it make for a happier world
when people are polite, considerate, and thoughtful? Do people ever wonder why it
isn’t this way everywhere for all people, no matter their color, gender, age, religion,
beliefs, and practices? Will we ever learn? Can’t we all “do the right thing,” as Spike
Lee wrote in his movie?

To survive in the best of all possible worlds we must all work together as one family.
If we want to change and be a better people, a far better world, we must first be
willing to change and act upon it. If you have questions or topics that you feel
should be addressed, please email the author, Bruce Schwartz, at
www.parkavenuepress@hotmail.com. The publisher has the discretion whether to
print your comments

[Bruce Schwartz is the author of the #1 bestselling novel THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
(http://www.thetwentyfirstcentury.com), which deals with race relations in America and a
government conspiracy seven days before the presidential election. He is presently
working on the movie version of his novel.]