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http://www.clubconnected.co.uk/news/worldindex.html http://www.clubconnected.co.uk/news/diamondstour0107.html
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/Intro.html (1 of 4) [12/2/2007 8:27:53 PM]
ArtLex has ideas especially for you:
artist l
student l
educator l
collector l
dealer l
Searching for information in ArtLex, and
making citations
Pronunciation
The author, Michael Delahunt, and the
development of ArtLex
How to contribute information to ArtLex
Thanks to all who have contributed
Bibliography
Links to other resources
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/Intro.html
Ways Artists Might Use ArtLex
As an online visual art reference, ArtLex explains the language of art. It offers you access to a
vast array of information about the media, techniques, styles, genres, contemporary issues,
and cultural contexts of the art that you and other artists have produced in various periods and
regions of the world.
Users can explore this online dictionary for art-related terms and find definitions, supporting
images, and related links for further information.
ArtLex will help you to understand the language in which art is discussed by other artists,
critics, dealers, collectors, and historians.
The site is extremely easy to use. A user needs only the most basic web site operation skills. A
basic understanding of art terminology is helpful, as users must use it as starting points from
which to find information. Instructions and navigational links for using ArtLex are all found on
its home page. The alphabetical index and shortcuts are always visible in a separate frame on
the left while viewing any article within the site. There is a search engine on the home page, but
articles can also be found through the use of the navigational links, and there are numerous
cross-referencing links imbedded in the text -- links to other definitions and examples. Going off
on tangents to discover related issues is especially satisfying because they increase
understanding. The many visual examples that support definitions are strong content in
themselves.
ArtLex serves as a portal to related sites. Numerous links are provided for investigation beyond
ArtLex's boundaries. Clicking a link to an external site makes the visitor's browser display the
destination on a new page. That is particularly helpful when an image or text on the new page
would be best seen alongside the info in ArtLex. You can make good and creative use of them
in your research.
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/FAQ/ideas.artists.html (1 of 5) [12/2/2007 8:27:55 PM]
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/c/conceptualart.html
conceptual art or Conceptual Art - Art that is intended to convey an idea or a concept
to the perceiver, rejecting the creation or appreciation of a traditional art object
such as a painting or a sculpture as a precious commodity.
Conceptual Art emerged as an art movement in the 1960s. The expression "concept art"
was used in 1961 by Henry Flynt in a Fluxus publication, but it was to take on a
different meaning when it was used by Joseph Kosuth (American, 1945-) and the Art &
Language group (Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin, Harold Hurrell,
Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden, Philip Pilkington, and David Rushton) in England. For the Art
& Language group, concept art resulted in an art object being replaced by an analysis
of it. Exponents of Conceptual Art said that artistic production should serve artistic
knowledge and that the art object is not an end in itself. The first exhibition
specifically devoted to Conceptual Art took place in 1970 at the New York Cultural
Center under the title "Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects."
Because Conceptual Art is so dependent upon the text (or discourse) surrounding it,
it is strongly related to numerous other movements of the last century.
Examples of Conceptual Art
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/c/conceptualart.html
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=621
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=621
COINTELPRO Redux: Global Order Targets the 9/11 Truth and Patriot Movements
Kurt Nimmo
TruthNews
November 2, 2007
In 1970, as an antiwar activist, I was deemed dangerous enough—even though I was eighteen years old—to warrant a dossier compiled by the Michigan State Police “Red Squad,” a throwback to the so-called Red Scare of the early 1920s. The Red Squad was organized to go after dissidents of all stripes but in particular, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to go after antiwar and “New Left” activists. As I discovered years later, the Red Squads worked in concert with the FBI, under its notorious COINTELPRO, and even the CIA, supposedly prevented by its charter from snooping and subverting domestic activists.
The depth and criminal severity of the CIA’s subversion of American activists partaking in entirely legal and constitutionally guaranteed dissent was recently revealed in documents released to the the National Security Archive at George Washington University, known as the “family jewels” by agency insiders. Of course, much of the information revealed in the documents is nothing new, as researchers have known about numerous CIA projects for decades, including Operation Chaos and the Merrimac and Resistance programs, all specifically designed to infiltrate and compromise dissident groups. It is important to note that these CIA operations worked hand-in-glove with the FBI and local police, as noted by the Select Committee to Study Government Operations, otherwise known as the Church Committee.
The “CIA received and maintained considerable information about the domestic activities and relationships of American individuals and organizations. Much of that material was collected in the first instance by the FBI, police or other confidential sources, who turned it over to the CIA,” the final report issued by the Church Committee notes.
“From 1959 to at least 1974, the CIA used its domestic organizations to spy on thousands of US citizens whose only crime was disagreeing with their government’s policies,” writes Mark Zepezauer (The CIAs Greatest Hits). “This picked up speed when J. Edgar Hoover told President Johnson that nobody would be protesting his Vietnam war policies unless they were being directed to do so by some foreign power. Johnson ordered the CIA to investigate.”
In response, the CIA vastly expanded its campus surveillance program and stepped up its liaisons with local police departments. It trained special intelligence units in major cities to carry out “black bag” jobs (break-ins, wiretaps, etc.) against US “radicals.” …
In 1968, the CIA’s various domestic programs were consolidated and expanded under the name Operation CHAOS. When Richard Nixon became president the following year, his administration drafted the Huston Plan, which called for even greater operations against “subversives,” including wiretapping, break-ins, mail-opening, no-knock searches and “selective assassinations.” Bureaucratic infighting tabled the plan, but much of it was implemented in other forms, not only by the CIA but also by the FBI and the Secret Service.
With the revelation of CIA and White House complicity in the Watergate break-in, light began to shine on Operation CHAOS. After a period of “reform,” much of CHAOS’s work was privatized, and right-wing groups and “former” CIA agents now provide the bulk of the CIA’s domestic intelligence.
The FBI’s concurrent program went by the name COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program. COINTELPRO, the Church Committee explained, employed “techniques … adopted wholesale from wartime counterintelligence, and ranged from the trivial (mailing reprints of Reader’s Digest articles to college administrators) to the degrading (sending anonymous poison-pen letters intended to break up marriages) and the dangerous (encouraging gang warfare and falsely labeling members of a violent group as police informers)…. Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that.”
In order to understand the game of hardball the government played with activists—the vast majority of them nonviolent and many pacifist—consider the remarks of William C. Sullivan, former Assistant to the director of the FBI: “This is a rough, tough, dirty business, and dangerous. It was dangerous at times. No holds were barred…. We have used [these techniques] against Soviet agents. They have used [them] against us. . . . [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business.”
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=621
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0649,hentoff,75194,2.htmlNat Hentoff
Spying on Big Brother
Now you can find out if you're being surveilled by the FBI or the NYPD.
by Nat Hentoff
December 2nd, 2006 9:08 PM
American Civil Liberties Union documents show . . . the Pentagon . . .
keeping tabs on nonviolent protestors . . .
including Quakers and student groups . . .
by collecting information and storing it in a military antiterrorism database.
—ACLU, October 12, 2006
As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy,
an enemy that is dangerous, powerful and relentless. I refer, of course,
to the federal government. —Serious humorist Dave Barry, Knight Ridder
syndicate, New York—Daily News, December 12, 2004
The New York Civil Liberties Union . . . is starting a campaign to teach
"radical" activist groups how to obtain their own government surveillance
files from the FBI, Pentagon, and New York
City Police Department. —The New York Sun, November 14, 2006
During the 1950s and 1960s, I often reported in the Voice about the FBI's
omnipresent, omnivorous surveillance of, and infiltration into, entirely
lawful groups during J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence
Program)—its searching for "subversives" of many creeds and colors.
(Also involved, as was eventually disclosed,
were the CIA and the secret, warrantless National Security Agency.)
When later I got my own FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act, there were many pages—including Voice columns, protest petitions I'd signed, and even the names of the ghettos in the Russian cities from which my late parents emigrated to the United States. There was also a report that I'd attended a meeting of "radicals" in North Africa. (I've never been in any part of Africa.)
Since 9-11, the ceaseless, accelerating extent of government surveillance of many millions of us exceeds anything the malign J. Edgar Hoover could have yearningly imagined. But George Orwell, in 1984, had a sense of what was coming:
"How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate, they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to."
As one example of current American advances in what the continually watched British call "dataveillance," David Sobel of the Electronic Freedom Foundation speaks of the "largest collection of personal data ever amassed by the federal government"–including "240 million airline passenger records."
If you would like to find out whether an organization to which you belong, or which you have supported, is being targeted, the New York Civil Liberties Union—much to its credit as an unintimidated bulwark of the First and Fourth Amendments—has begun a "Spy Files Campaign."
As NYCLU field director and legislative counsel Udi Ofer explains, this New York affiliate of the national ACLU is involved in educating activist groups on "their right to obtain information about their government surveillance files by filing federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and New York Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests."
Accordingly, it will be possible for many of us to spy on such agents of Big Brother—and their interconnected databases—as the FBI, the Pentagon, and the New York City Police Department (and its technologically updated version of its former notorious "Red Squad," whose eager activities I used to chronicle in the Voice, and vice versa).
As the NYCLU reported on March 16, the program has filed Freedom of Information requests on behalf of itself and 14 New York political and religious organizations that the NYCLU has reason to believe are "of interest" to government spies. These groups and individuals include:
September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows; the American Friends Service Committee, upper New York State Area Office (the FBI has long been deeply suspicious of Quakers); Brooklyn Parents for Peace; the Buffalo War Resisters League; antiwar activist Leslie Cagan; the Council on American-Islamic Relations, New York Chapter; the Council of Peoples Organization; Metro Justice (Rochester); the New York Immigration Coalition; Peace Action of Central New York; People for the American Way—NY; People for Animal Rights (Syracuse); Veterans for Peace, Chapter 128; and the Western New York Peace Center (Buffalo)—and the NYCLU itself.
In announcing its First Amendment offensive against what columnist Dave Barry has called "our dangerous common enemy" (I wonder how many government databases he's in now), the NYCLU added that it filed its requests "on the same day that the ACLU of Pennsylvania released a series of documents that affiliate received in response to its own similar FOIA requests. These documents show that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (connecting FBI, state and local police agencies) is spying on the pacifist Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh." Those pacifists practice "moral jujitsu."
During the past five years, the national ACLU's Freedom of Information requests resulted in thousands of pages of invaluable disclosures of government violations of the First and Fourth Amendments, our own War Crimes Act, international treaties, and much more—pages now evidence in lawsuits by the ACLU and other organizations.
As Ofer says, you can get a copy of the NYCLU's tool kit for individuals and organizations interested in filing Freedom of Information requests by contacting him at the New York Civil Liberties Union, 125 Broad Street, New York, NY 10004 (phone: 212-607-3300, ext. 342; web: nyclu.org). Also, for details and legal papers regarding the FOIA requests filed by ACLU affiliates around the country, including a list of clients, go to aclu.org/spyfiles.)
Reacting to the NYCLU's campaign, J. Michael Barrett, a Homeland Security fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The New York Sun: "Anything that has the potential to impede legitimate law enforcement activities has the potential to help terrorists."
The thousands of pages the national ACLU has obtained from Freedom of Information Act requests have unmistakably shown not only the illegitimacy of so much government surveillance but the government's unlimited contempt for our Bill of Rights. On September 12, 2001, President George W. Bush falsely assured us (emphasis added):
"We will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms."
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0649,hentoff,75194,2.html
village voice > news > Nat Hentoff: Learn What the FBI, NYPD Know ...
When later I got my own FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act, ...
"Red Squad," whose eager activities I used to chronicle in the Voice, ...
www.villagevoice.com/news/0649,hentoff,75194,2.html
More Nat Hentoff
It's Only Black Muslims
Has anyone heard Darfur mentioned in the presidential debates? Or in Congress?
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0748,hentoff,78480,6.html
Congress and the Disappeared
Still waiting for our representatives—and presidential candidates—to address criminal U.S. kidnappings
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0747,hentoff,78426,2.html
How We Delight Our Enemies
A former light unto the world, We, the People, have been darkened by this administration
by Nat Hentoff
November 13th, 2007 5:37 PM
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0746,hentoff,78356,6.html
Bush's Man Mukasey
Will the Supreme Court also bow low to the president?
by Nat Hentoff
November 6th, 2007 5:34 PM
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0745,hentoff,78285,2.html
Nat Hentoff
When Judges Attack!
The war president is finding a less pliant judiciary
by Nat Hentoff
October 30th, 2007 6:15 PM
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0744,hentoff,78210,2.html
Since 9/11, the president and his advisers have aggressively capitalized on Americans' fear of additional terrorist attacks by insisting that our safety can only be secured if the executive branch is allowed to override Congress and the courts when necessary. For example, George W. Bush has attached "signing statements" to many of the bills he has signed into law, stipulating that he can ignore those laws if he decides they endanger national security.
Both Congress and the federal judiciary have largely deferred to such an unprecedented expansion of presidential power, but there's a growing rebellion among certain federal judges against this imperial rule by fear.
A crescendo was reached on June 10 when Judge Diana Gribbon Motz of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia—known for its obsequiousness to Bush—thundered: "We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our republic."
The case at hand was that of Ali al-Marri, imprisoned for four years at the Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina. He'd been arrested in Peoria, Illinois, while living with his family and studying computer science at Bradley University. Suspected of—but not charged with—being an Al Qaeda sleeper agent, al-Marri was pulled from the local criminal-justice system, where he was charged in a credit-card fraud case, and held by the military as an enemy combatant, by designation of the president.
Said Judge Motz accusingly: "To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution—and the country." Charge al-Marri, she ruled, or deport him, or hold him as a material witness—or release him. This still being America, she ordered the trial judge to issue a writ of habeas corpus.
The indefatigable attorney for al-Marri—Jonathan Hafetz of the NYU Law School's Brennan Center for Justice—saluted Judge Motz for "this landmark victory for the rule of law and a defeat for unchecked executive power." But none of the Democratic candidates for president has even mentioned Judge Motz's emphatic declaration of judicial independence.
Meanwhile, in the federal Southern District Court in New York, another judge, Victor Marrero, has twice ruled that the national-security letters authorized under the Patriot Act are unconstitutional for shredding both the First and Fourth amendments. These national-security letters give the FBI virtually unlimited power to demand—without first going to a judge or getting a grand-jury subpoena—personal records from banks, telecommunications companies, and other institutions.
In his first ruling on these FBI secret searches three years ago, Judge Marrero overturned a startlingly broad gag order that prevented these institutions from ever telling the people under investigation that their right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment had been summarily breached.
Responding to Marrero's sharp lesson on the Bill of Rights, Congress made a pass at amending the Patriot Act in 2005, adding a provision that supposedly allowed these institutions to challenge the FBI gag order before a federal judge.
But on September 6 of this year, Marrero—in a stinging 103-page decision—knocked down this flimsy congressional repair job, which he found still allowed the government to violate the First and Fourth amendments.
Since many Americans don't have the time to read that 103-page decision—or know where to find the handful of news sources that summarized it—few citizens are aware how deeply these national-security letters allow the government to burrow into our private lives. And fewer still know that the FBI has shared the results of these stealthy searches (including by databasing them) with other intelligence agencies.
In this second resounding challenge to the Bush administration's utter contempt for the Bill of Rights, Judge Marrero made it inescapably clear how un-American our rulers have become. By erasing the protections for individual liberties put in place by the framers, the president and his accomplices are turning us into a country that bears little resemblance to the one set forth in the Constitution.
"Through the use of NSLs," Judge Marrero wrote, "the government can unmask the identity of internet users engaged in anonymous speech in online discussions. It can obtain an itemized list of all the e-mails sent and received by the target of the NSL, and it can then seek information on individuals communicating with that person. It may even be able to discover the websites an individual has visited and queries submitted to search engines." (Emphasis added.) And it has been able to do this in total secrecy.
Judge Victor Marrero is, I hope, an inspiration to other members of the federal judiciary. And since the case is still on appeal, perhaps Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (who is usually the "decider" in 5-4 decisions on these issues) will agree with him.
In his decision declaring the national-security letters unconstitutional, Judge Marrero sounded a warning on what will happen if other judges don't stand up to this—or any other—imperial president: "The pages of this nation's jurisprudence cry out with compelling instances illustrating that . . . when the judiciary lowers its guard on the Constitution, it opens the door to far-reaching invasions of liberty."
Citing the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, among other shameful episodes in our history, Marrero warned of "the tragic ill- effects" that have been felt "in the wake of the courts' yielding ground to other branches of government on the constitutional role the judiciary must play in protecting the fundamental freedoms of the American people."
He continued: "Viewed from the standpoint of the many citizens who lost essential human rights as a result of such expansive exercises" of unchecked governmental power, "the only thing left of the judiciary's function . . . was a symbolic act: to sing a requiem and lower the flag on the Bill of Rights."
This funeral for the Bill of Rights will continue here so long as the president and the Congress (Republican or Democratic) rule by fear, aided and abetted by a timid judiciary. Al Qaeda has regained its strength, and there are ever more terrorist operations linked to it—or inspired by it—around the world. As the war on terror continues, can our Constitution survive it?
More Nat Hentoff
The Gestapo Inheritance
'We do not torture': Groans from the CIA's black sites beg to differ
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0743,hentoff,78153,6.html
Lee Bollinger's Triumph
Will President Ahmadinejad invite President Bollinger to speak in Tehran?
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0741,hentoff,78028,2.html
Protecting Police Against Complaints
A new watchdog will have to confront a broken cop-complaint system
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0740,hentoff,77954,2.html
Rudy Redux
Will we get another law-and-order mayor who decides on his own what the law is?
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0739,hentoff,77901,2.html
The President's Last Stand
No lame duck, Bush has big plans to push through an imperial legacy before he leaves
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0738,hentoff,77839,6.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0746,hentoff,78356,6.html
--------------------------------------------------
walking Bot m2 real
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&um=1&hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=walking+Bot+m2+real
programming: Dexter Walks (first dynamically balancing biped robot)
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/leglab/mpeg_vcd/videos/m2real.mpg ...
site are not the one I remember, but I'm pretty sure that's the bot I'm thinking of. ...
programming.reddit.com/info/16rx3/comments/c16xb8 -
programming: Dexter Walks (first dynamically balancing biped robot)Obviously,
he's quite stable, as he was picking on the leggy bot without moving around ...
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/leglab/mpeg_vcd/videos/m2real.mpg ...
programming.reddit.com/info/16rx3/comments/
--------------------------------------------------
foia police red squad http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=+foia+police+red+squad+&btnG=Search
foia police red squad http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=+foia+police+red+squad+&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
foia police red squad http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=+foia+police+red+squad+&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
http://duckdaotsu.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_archive.html
impermanence
Snared by 'stop loss' program Reservist says, 'I won't fight for profit'
Carl Webb is very clear about what he is doing: "I'm refusing to go to war because I do not believe the U.S. is on the right track. I think this war is not about liberating people, it's about oppressing them. It's a war that's being fought for profit."
Webb is a 38-year-old African Amer ican antiwar activist from Austin, Texas. He is also a fugitive with a federal warrant out for his arrest—for refusing to participate in the war against the people of Iraq.
Webb, who is active with Austin Against War, has been involved in many anti-war and anti-racist activities over the past 10 years.
While it might seem unusual that someone with his activist background would end up in the military, Webb felt he had few other options. He said, "I didn't have a job, I was facing eviction from my home and I needed some extra cash. This was in August 2001 and I thought, 'We've invaded everyone we possibly can invade,' and it was relatively peaceful for the U.S."
His 3-year term of service was scheduled to end in August of 2004. Last July, he received a call from his sergeant. "She said she had bad news--I had been one of the soldiers selected to serve in Iraq. I was stunned and shocked."
Webb was a victim of the stop-loss program. This program, which made its first appearance in the Gulf War of the early 1990s, keeps soldiers scheduled for deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan from leaving when their term of service ends.
"This policy is practically an unofficial draft," he said. "It is conscription against a person's will."
Webb said he initially considered three options: complying, fleeing the country or applying for a conscientious objector discharge.
He realized that he could not comply--he had been opposed to U.S. militarism for many years and could not be part of the war against the people of Iraq.
Exile wasn't really an option for him, either. "I'm not considering exile. I've traveled, I lived in Mexico for like five months and I like it, and I've traveled to Europe and Asia. But all my family and friends are in the States, and I like this country."
Conscientious-objector status wasn't really an option either, Webb said, noting the Army's criteria that must be met--basically, opposition to all wars. "I'm not a pacifist. ... But I've always been politically opposed to U.S. militarism."
The only option left was for Webb to go AWOL, knowing that he would be facing possible jail time. "Prison is something that I never thought would be easy," Webb said, whose brother is in Angola prison in Louisiana for armed robbery. "It never sounded nice."
Still, he insisted that jail is "better than one and a half or two years in a combat zone and better than permanent exile."
Webb is now officially listed as a deserter. He said, "My case is different from some of the other soldiers who have deserted, either because they just don't want to go, or because they think these 'stop-loss' orders are illegal. I tell people that even if there was no stop-loss policy, even if the government wasn't illegally using the reserves and National Guard and retirees as they are, I would still be opposed to this war. I don't think it matters what category of service you're in--whether you're in the reserves, National Guard or the regular army--I think all military personnel should oppose fighting in this war of imperialism."
For more information about Carl Webb, see www.carlwebb.net.
By Dustin Langley Published Feb 13, 2005 4:20 PM
organization
365 Tao
daily meditations
Deng Ming-Dao (author)
ISBN 0-06-250223-9
Solid gold Buddhist pagoda
made to enshrine the Empress Dowager’s hair (1777)
Gold-silver alloy, coral, lapis lazuli, gilt bronze,
malachite, turquoise, wood, silk, glass, shell
Height: 53 cm.
Height: 97 ; Width: 31 ; Depth: 31 
Splendors of China’s Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong
Splendors of China’s Forbidden City is devoted to the long reign of Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795). The exhibition concentrates on Qianlong’s 18th-century period, the last grand era of the Chinese empire. During his long reign, Emperor Qianlong became the epitome of a great Chinese ruler, at once all-powerful and civilized. The Chinese empire reached its largest geographic spread under his rule, while life in China was both peaceful and prosperous. The exhibition investigates how Qianlong achieved this magnificent level. Politically adept, he recognized and supported all facets of Chinese civilization. Although he was a Manchu and remained proud of his nomad forebears, he cultivated the Han Chinese, who formed the majority of the Chinese people. Like his predecessors, the Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors, Qianlong carried out a balancing act between his Manchu heritage and the culture of Han China, which the Manchu Qing dynasty had conquered. (continued from the Curator’s essay: about the exhibit and the art we will continue to see here:)
While all these diverse religious traditions are represented here, the Tibetan Buddhism that Qianlong favored is the most prominent. There is a large cloisonné enamel stupa and a rare set of Tibetan Buddhist Buddha figures with Qianlong’s mark, exemplifying esoteric Buddhism. The prominence of this kind of Buddhism at court is indicated by the presence of several buildings devoted to Tantric Buddhism in the Forbidden City, as well as by the painting in the exhibition of Qianlong as the Bodhisattva Manjusri.
The exhibition, following the arc of Qianlong’s life and one of the longest reigns in Chinese history, ends with his memorial tablet and funeral throne for quiet contemplation. Never before displayed, the funeral objects invite meditation on how even one of China’s most powerful and creative rulers comes to death, as all men do.
http://duckdaotsu.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_archive.html
T A O t e C H I N G
f i f t e e n
The enlightened possess understanding
So profound they can not be understood.
Because they cannot be understood
I can only describe their appearance:
Cautious as one crossing thin ice,
Undecided as one surrounded by danger,
Modest as one who is a guest.
Unbounded as melting ice,
Genuine as unshaped wood,
Broad as a valley,
Seamless as muddy water.
Who stills the water that the mud may settle,
Who seeks to stop that he may travel on,
Who desires less than what may transpire,
Decays, but will not renew.
receive a full HTML copy of the daily meditation sent directly to your inbox,
please send a note with the words “subscribe tao  in the subject line to duckdaotsu
http://duckdaotsu.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_archive.html
Uganda survivors face grisly aftermath
A burned hut smoulders in the refugee camp which was attacked, near the town of Lira.
Many victims were burned alive in their grass huts Barlonyo camp in northern Uganda, the scene of rebel attacks at the weekend, is now practically empty. The only people there are people who have come to bury their dead, or look for food.
George Okello, 23, has come with his brother, Tom, to bury his father. They are motorbike taxi drivers in Lira town and on Sunday they buried their mother in the trenches surrounding the camp. Now they say they will bury their father under the collapsed walls of the mud hut he lived in.
When asked how he feels about the attack, Okello says he cannot feel anything.
'Slaughtered'
The camp, which once housed 4,000 people, is now practically deserted. Only the walls remain of the grass thatched huts. At 1700 local time, rebels from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) surrounded the camp, lighting the roofs of the cramped huts and creating a fire which lasted all night.
Then they killed about 200 people.
Mary Josco Akoli ran from the camp as rebels came with machetes, rocket-propelled grenades and "big guns". Ms Akoli's son, a militiaman defending the camp, was "slaughtered", while three of her grandchildren were burnt to death. She ran to a nearby trading centre, returning only now to search for food.
Local militias
Smoke still rises in the camp, which is scattered with charred remains.
It was too fast - they [had] big guns... there were bullets everywhere
Local militiaman
Some of the dead have been buried in trenches, others lie hastily buried beneath the fallen walls of mud huts. The dry season has made the ground hard and it is hard to dig deep graves.
The remains of a woman lie under a lemon tree covered with grass, while one man's body lies covered by a papyrus mat, buzzing with flies. A lone dog searches the camp.
Joseph Kony's LRA has abducted children and adults to use as sex slaves, porters and soldiers in northern Uganda for some 17 years.
The attack has highlighted the government's use of hastily-trained and unpaid local militia groups instead of the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF). At Barlonyo there were 30 Amuka, a local militia named after the white rhino. They had an AK-47 each and six weeks of training. They arrived in the camp on 15 December to replace the local UPDF command.
Fleeing flames
Kajoka Boniface, 21, one of the militia, spoke to me. "It was too fast. They [had] big guns... there were bullets everywhere," he said.
In the children's ward of Lira hospital, Ogwang Vincent holds the hand of his five-year-old sister, Akello Dorcus. He found her at the camp on Sunday lying between the dead bodies of his mother and father, her head hacked by a machete. Nekodina Auma, lying on a mat in the floor of the hospital, tells me how she was in her hut when it caught fire. Fleeing the flames, she was shot in the base of her spine and is now paralysed from the waist down.
Five of her eight children were burnt to death and her husband lies in another hospital ward, recovering from a gunshot wound.
Little consolation
The official Ugandan response is to play down the attack, stressing instead the victories the army has achieved in recent weeks. On Tuesday, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told journalists that the attack was due to lack of co-ordination between the UPDF and militia.
The local army commander has since been recalled to headquarters in Kampala. He stresses that the army has killed 146 rebels in the past month, while nearly 50 more have defected. He disputes militia claims that the rebels arrived with big guns.
For the people who lost family and friends in the attack, this will offer little consolation.
Florence Akello in Lira hospital spoke of her life after the attack. "We have no clothing, no bedding, no food, no cooking utensils," she told me.
"As for my feelings [about the attack], I cannot express myself."
http://duckdaotsu.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_archive.html
NEXT: THE AFTERMATH IN PHOTOS ------------------>
By Orla Ryan BBC, northern Uganda
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posted by duckdaotsu at 4:10 ?? links to this post
child soldiers: Happy To Be Alive
Happy to be alive
“I hope the war ends soon,” John says - although he thinks his family will take years to recover as are they are displaced with no livestock.
“I don’t have any big dreams for the future. I just want to finish studying and get a job.”
With one of his few smiles he adds: “I am very happy… I have come back alive.”
John recently returned home, and will be returning to his studies.
Words and photos: Anna Kari www.annakari.com
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posted by duckdaotsu at 3:57 ?? links to this post
child soldiers: Protection
Protection
“I think a lot about what happened to me, but the memories become less and less every day, and I still hope that one day I will forget about it.
“I am looking forward to going home and start school again, but I don’t think I will ever walk properly again.”
John says he feels safe at Gusco, which was started by local people and is supported by Save the Children.
“We are fed well and we are treated well. Every night soldiers come to protect us, in case the LRA come for us.”
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posted by duckdaotsu at 3:55 ?? links to this post
http://duckdaotsu.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_archive.html
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http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005_02.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/opinion/13friedman.html?_r=1&8hpib&oref=slogin
Financing both sides
Here is a thought-provoking article from the always interesting Thomas Friedman in the New York Times:
By adamantly refusing to do anything to improve energy conservation in America, or to phase in a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax on American drivers, or to demand increased mileage from Detroit's automakers, or to develop a crash program for renewable sources of energy, the Bush team is - as others have noted - financing both sides of the war on terrorism. We are financing the U.S. armed forces with our tax dollars, and, through our profligate use of energy, we are generating huge windfall profits for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan, where the cash is used to insulate the regimes from any pressure to open up their economies, liberate their women or modernize their schools, and where it ends up instead financing madrassas, mosques and militants fundamentally opposed to the progressive, pluralistic agenda America is trying to promote. Now how smart is that?
The neocon strategy may have been necessary to trigger reform in Iraq and the wider Arab world, but it will not be sufficient unless it is followed up by what I call a "geo-green" strategy.
More here http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/opinion/13friedman.html?_r=1&8hpib&oref=slogin
Posted by Harry at 02:08 PM
Comments (35) http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1412355,00.html
Thousands of neo-Nazis march in Dresden
"In the largest neo-Nazi demonstration in Germany's postwar history..." is a phrase that ought to send chills through any rational observer.
And the rhetoric of one leader of the neo-Nazi National Party of Germany (NPD) ought to send a chill or two through some on the anti-imperialist Left:
Addressing the rally, the NPD's leader in the Saxon parliament, Holger Apfel, launched an attack on what he called the "gangster politics of the British and Americans".
He said: "They have left a trail of blood from the past to the present, via Dresden, Korea, Vietnam, Baghdad and - tomorrow possibly - Tehran. Terror and war have a name. And that name is the United States of America."
I did find it reassuring that there were hundreds of anti-fascist counter-demonstrators and that several of them waved British, US and Israeli flags. That fact is sure to mystify and confuse all the right people.
Posted by Gene at 03:11 AM
Comments (77)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1412355,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1412355,00.html#article_continue
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Electronic Venus Flytrap Project
this is it
Be well CM3
Electronic Venus Flytrap pitcher plant Project
Electronic Venus Flytrap Project.doc Pheromones Longhorned Beetle
http://www.google.com/search?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=Pheromones%20Longhorned%20Beetle%20%20
&btnG=Search&sa=N&tab=iw
http://www.uvm.edu/albeetle/research/index.html
Healthy Rabies free Bats eat Hugh amounts of mosquitoes
headline . Answer: Tiny Aircraft that Just Eat and Go.
http://www.ch2bc.org/index3.htm
http://www.bonsai.dk/side.asp?s=2
I just found it .
Besides ours wants to be for personal use Autonomous.
Not part of this group.
http://www.freeenergynews.com/Directory/Vapaire.htm
http://www.aquamaker.com/index.html
Electronic Venus Flytrap Project????/
http://mati.eas.asu.edu:8421/ChicanArte/html_pages/unkn4.lrgest.html (1 of 2) [12/2/2007 11:16:36 PM]
walking roBot m2 real
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&um=1&hl=en&q=walking++roBot+++m2+real&btnG=Search+Images
http://mati.eas.asu.edu:8421/ChicanArte/html_pages/unkn4.lrgest.html
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