paul108

http://people.aol.com/people/special/0,11859,174592-3,00.html September 12, 2001 New York City Louie Cacchioli, 51, is a firefighter assigned to Engine 47 in Harlem. We were the first ones in the second tower after the plane struck. I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor to get in position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there was bombs set in the building. I had just asked another firefighter to stay with me, which was a good thing because we were trapped inside the elevator and he had the tools to get out. There were probably 500 people trapped in the stairwell. It was mass chaos. The power went out. It was dark. Everybody was screaming. We had oxygen masks and we were giving people oxygen. Some of us made it out and some of us didn't. I know of at least 30 firefighters who are still missing. This is my 20th year. I am seriously considering retiring. This might have done it.

Since we now have a "president" who is almost like Kamsa, bringing puny living entities such as myself so much grief, I would really appreciate if someone could request Krishna to help us. Also, since Krishna is also in control of spiritual matters, we shouldn't have to worry about spiritual matters like prasada distribution since Krishna is making sure that everyone is fed. If Krishna wanted every household to be stocked with Srila Prabhupada's books, he would've arranged that already. Hey, maybe I can just forget about trying to convince people to stop supporting animal slaughter, since Krishna already is taking care of that, so cows have no worries. Perhaps it just shows my lack of devotion, but I just can't watch the world go to hell without doing what I can. It would be great if I had enough appreciation for chanting Hare Krishna that I could just do that, but I've been associating with matter for a long time. Maybe someone can put me in touch with Krishna so that I don't have to waste my time with the material energy, but I don't think it will be easy. I'm a bit of a rascal as you've probably noticed.

THE MEDIA COVER-UP OF THE GORE VICTORY PART ONE: RELIABLE SOURCE REVEALS THE COVER-UP http://makethemaccountable.com/coverup/index.htm By David Podvin According to a source whose previous information has proven to be accurate, the Consortium of news organizations that recounted the presidential votes in the 2000 Florida election was shocked to find that former Vice President Al Gore decisively won the state, and it is now concealing the news of Gore's victory from the American people. The source is a former media executive who previously revealed information that the Bush administration was lying about Clinton staffers having vandalized the White House. That information led me to accuse Karl Rove of manufacturing the 'crime'. My accusation appeared in an article that was posted by Buzzflash.com on January 28, 2001, and it was confirmed by a General Accounting Office investigative report several months later. Having previously established credibility as a well-informed and accurate conduit of information, the executive now claims the Consortium is deliberately hiding the results of its recount because Gore was the indisputable winner. Originally, the Consortium believed that there were three potential outcomes of the recount, any of which would have been acceptable to the participating news conglomerates. The first was a Bush win, which would have resolved the issue. The second was a dead heat/inconclusive result, which would have maintained the status quo. The third was a narrow Gore victory, which would have given die hard Democrats a debate point, but would have simply been another photo finish recount that most Americans would have disregarded as being currently irrelevant. The Consortium was stunned to discover that the recount revealed Gore won a clear victory. Even after casting aside the controversial butterfly ballots and discarding ballots that were "iffy", Gore decisively won the recount. While the precise numbers are still unavailable, a New York Times journalist who was involved in the project told one of his former companions that Gore won by a sufficient margin to create "major trouble for the Bush presidency if this ever gets out". Gore?s victory was large enough that it became apparent he would win prior to the Consortium recount being fully completed. And contrary to a recent claim by the New York Times, the terrorism of September 11 was not the crucial factor that determined whether to release the results to the American people. Prior to that time, the de facto majority shareholders in the publicly traded New York Times Company reportedly intervened on the side of quashing the recount results and convinced the other participants to shelve the story. The executive claims that the most important decisions at the Times are made by the influential money center banks that exercise actual voting control of a majority of stock. These banks are extremely pro-Bush. In addition to their control of the Times, they have substantial financial clout with the Washington Post Company, Dow Jones and Company, and the Tribune Company. As a result, the banks exert tremendous influence on a majority of the Consortium. The story of Gore's victory has been spiked at the highest levels of the media conglomerates that are involved, rather than at the cosmetic steering committee level of the recount project. The Consortium reportedly has received intense pressure from members of the Bush inner circle both in and out of government, but has not been lobbied by representatives of Gore. The huge disparity between the original recount and the Consortium recount stems from the G.O.P. tactics in Florida. Their strategy was to aggressively contest every pro-Gore ballot, even the obviously valid ones. The Republicans then accused the vote counters of being biased because most of the challenges were resolved in favor of Gore. By using this approach, the Bush partisans successfully intimidated the counters into bending over backwards to show "fairness", resulting in thousands of legitimate Gore votes being disqualified or relegated to a pile of disputed ballots. "It was the old baseball manager's trick of crying about every call in order to pressure the umpire to give you more than your fair share," said the executive. "And it worked in Florida. However, in the relative calm of the Consortium recount - absent the pressure tactics - the Bush total remained basically consistent with the original count, while the Gore total shot way up." As for what will happen next, the executive said, "Once the dominant pro-Gore trend became apparent, the Consortium was never going to release the results; the pressure from the big money boys was too great. Terrorism just provided a better excuse for withholding the information than the "technical difficulties" stalling tactic that was otherwise going to be used. The Consortium is determined to make sure that the original results of their recount will never see the light of day."

Devotees cannot stop offering milk to Krishna, but they should do their best to acquire pure milk for His pleasure. Most milk purchased from the grocery store is not vegetarian, having vitamin D added in the form of fish oil. I know that Organic Valley milk and cheese are fortified with vitamin D from wool. Whenever we offer milk to Krishna, it would be very nice if we were to pray that somehow cow slaughter can be stopped. It would not benefit anyone to stop offering milk to Krishna. The cows must love it.

(unknown author) All of us who has ever seen a rerun of Columbo, read an Agatha Christie novel, or seen any TV crime drama has heard that question when trying to figure out the most likely suspect of a murder. Well it looks like five thousand people were just murdered. So ask the question. Well? For starters it's certainly not the hijackers. They lost their lives. What about the people that are supposedly behind them, like Osama bin Laden? It would seem not. Some terrorist acts may give the perpetrator some street cred: blowing up a mid-air flight like the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie Scotland which was linked back to Libya, blowing a hole in the USS Cole, blowing up a couple of US embassies in some backwater country like Tanzania. You can make a name for yourself in your little region of the world and know that the US will definitely try to catch you, but it's only going to try so hard. But anyone would have to realize that committing an act so horrifying in size and audacity is sure to commit the US to not rest until it has your head on a stick. It's like a gang member who will try to improve his gangsta rep by shooting a local cop, but knows better than to try to assassinate the president. Decide for yourself what it means or doesn't mean but the ones who benefit the most from this incident are those in the Bush administration. Fact: The economy was likely to enter recession. Rightly or wrongly the public tends to place blame for economic downturns on whichever president is in office at the time. Well now if the economy heads south, it's not their fault! It's this horrible tragedy of course that's shaken people's confidence! Fact: The Bush administration had "nothing to do". No cause. The President was reading to school children when the planes hit. (He couldn't have been too busy with affairs of state). Bush himself has said that this has now become "the focus of (his) administration" They have found their issue, their cause to rally around, and their issue to campaign for reelection on in 3 years. Fact: Declaring a "war on terrorism" is like declaring a war on vice. It is endless and can be used indefinitely as an excuse to push through whatever agendas they may have like the missile defense shield, increased defense spending, or whatever. Fact: The label "terrorist" is a very easy one to apply. Especially so the label "harboring" a terrorist. And we now are finding out the "enemy is among us" (here in the US). This sounds an awful lot like the Red Scare of the 50's where the excuse of routing out the invisible communists was used to abuse people's civil rights and intimidate anyone and everyone opposed to the administration or US policy. Today we look back and condemn that as "McCarthyism" but are we so clear sighted about what's right in front of us now? Fact: Congress just approved a FORTY BILLION "relief aid package" with little to no oversights on how Bush gets to spend it. That's Billion with a "B". And this is not just for disaster clean up and aid to the victims. It's also for the "ongoing" war Bush has told us to expect and "increasing our intelligence capability". Well what does that include exactly? Reading all emails? Eavesdropping on our phone calls? Who knows because they don't have to say. Congress has given the money in the heat of emotion with little or no conditions. Fact: Congress will have to go along with just about anything the President's administration wants that can be tied in to this disaster. Any representative or senator that dissents will look "unpatriotic" if they say no. This is very dangerous. The founders created three branches of government so that no one branch would have too much power. One of those is the judicial branch and we saw what the Supreme Court did this most recent election. Many legal experts say it was unprecedented that they ruled to hand the election results to Bush rather than say they had no business deciding it and were unduly influenced by the fact that many of the justices were appointed by Bush Sr. So that's one branch that seems not to be performing its role of providing checks and balances. And now the other branch, Congress, is cow towed too. Fact: This sudden disaster sure seems to have taken many people's attention off the fact that this President won the election under very fishy circumstances in Florida (where his brother is governor). Boy that sure is a big help. Does this prospect seem horrendous? Too incredible to imagine? Well it's happened before. A great fire destroyed a huge part of Rome. The emperor Nero blamed it on the Christians and used it as an excuse to persecute them and this cause helped the unpopular emperor consolidate his political power and rally patriotic Rome around him. Historians generally feel that Nero himself probably had the fire set. In the 1930's the Reichstag (the German building where their representatives met...like our Capitol building) burned down. Hitler blamed it on the "communists among them" and used it to rally a patriotic Germany around him, consolidating his political power and to persecute his political enemies. People generally agree there is enough evidence to believe the Nazis themselves set fire to the building for just this purpose. It's very likely the Roman citizens could never imagine their own Emperor setting fire to their own city, and the same with the Germans. And that is exactly why it worked. After the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, people who suggested people in the government were behind it looked like conspiracy nuts. Even today there seems little motivation to that idea. Unless it was a test. A smaller scale test to see how the public would react. And to extrapolate how they might react to something much bigger in the future. Back to the suspects: Shortly after the attacks a rental car was found in the parking lot of Boston's Logan airport. Inside was the Koran and an instructional video tape on how to fly airliners. Even some of the news anchors reporting this live seemed to say what an obvious plant this seemed like! It's just not plausible that the perpetrators would be watching a video the day before the attack. It seems they'd have learned how to fly the plane well before then. If they didn't have it down by the day before something's wrong. And it also doesn't make sense to leave such obvious evidence behind. It might if the attackers/backers planned on taking credit for it. But they haven't. Just the opposite. Everyone is denying it. So if they didn't want to get blamed for it, wouldn't they be a little more careful about leaving behind such obvious evidence? On Saturday, just days after the attack, they announced that in the rubble of the trade center they found one of the terrorist's passports. We all saw that fireball! The fire was so hot it turned the steel of the building into hot liquid molten metal. But his passport survived? And it was found even though they had only gone through 20,000 tons of debris out of a total of 1.4 million tons? In other words they only scratched the surface of the ruins and there it was? It's like reaching out and taking a pinch from the haystack and lo and behold! There's the needle! Something about all of this just doesn't smell right. Does that seem unpatriotic? Un-American? Well this country has a long tradition of healthy Yankee skepticism and asking about what might really be going on, what we're not being told rather than falling lockstep behind whatever slogans and rhetoric government leaders are feeding the public like the masses do in totalitarian countries. So now might be the time to use our heads and try to look beyond the superficial. Real Americans are not afraid of debate, of different ideas, of free thought. So pass this email along and let people discuss it. If millions of people passed along the email hoax of that phony Nostradamus "prediction" then we owe it to ourselves to share with each other something that is actually relevant

Did Al Gore win after all? US newspapers would rather not say By Charles Laurence in New York (Filed: 21/10/2001) THE most detailed analysis yet of the contested Florida votes from last year's presidential election - with the potential to question President Bush's legitimacy - is being withheld by the news organisations that commissioned it. Results of the inspection of more than 170,000 votes rejected as unreadable in the "hanging chad" chaos of last November's vote count were ready at the end of August. The study was commissioned early this year by a consortium including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times, the nation's most powerful newspapers, and the broadcaster CNN. It was regarded as a means of supplying final answers to the nagging questions over President Bush's razor-thin victory margin. The cost was more than £700,000. Now, however, spokesmen for the consortium say that they decided to "postpone" the story of the analysis by the National Opinion Research Centre (NORC) at the University of Chicago for lack of resources and lack of interest in the face of the enormous story of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent "war on terrorism". Newspapers were saying last week that the final phase of the analysis, the actual counting of the 170,000 votes, had been "postponed" but would become known at an appropriate time. America's liberal newspaper establishment originally set up the commission in the belief that it would discover that Al Gore was the winner of the Florida count. Their hope for a Gore victory appears to have been sacrificed on the altar of patriotism and a perception that America needs to be led into war by a strong president. "Our belief is that the priorities of the country have changed, and our priorities have changed," said Steven Goldstein, the vice-president of corporate communications at Dow Jones and Co, the owners of the Wall Street Journal. Catherine Mathis, a spokesman for the New York Times, said: "The consortium agreed that because of the war, because of our lack of resources, we were postponing the vote-count investigation. But this is not final. The intention is to go forward." However David Podvin, an investigative journalist who runs an independent web page, Make Them Accountable, said he had been tipped off that the consortium was covering up the results. He refused to disclose his source other than to describe him as a former media executive whom he knew "as an accurate conduit of information" and who claimed that the consortium "is deliberately hiding the results of its recount because Gore was the indisputable winner". He also claims that a New York Times journalist who was involved in the recount project had told "a former companion" that the Gore victory margin was big enough to create "major trouble for the Bush presidency if this ever gets out". He believes that the inspection, carried out over months by a team from NORC, proves that Mr Gore won Florida and, therefore, the election. That theory, however, is countered by the NORC staff who say that they designed the inspection programme so that no one has yet counted the votes and no outcome could be known. Dr John Mason, a professor of political science at William Paterson University, in New Jersey said: "The goosiness, the sensitivity, that the press which organised this analysis is showing to publishing the results and the persistence of questions about the Florida ballots raise questions. There is a sensitivity over the legitimacy of this president." Staff at NORC have been puzzled by the idea that the media would lack the resources because, according to them, they have computer programs already designed and fitted for the final count. Julie Antelman of NORC said: "They are all ready to go, and could have the count and the result within a working week." She added: "We very carefully kept our distance from the political implications of whatever the result may be. We do not know the outcome, and do not want to. "Our job was to prepare the raw data which goes into the counting programs: we are simply waiting for the order to deliver this data to the consortium, which we expected within the first two weeks of September." NORC analysts studied each of the 170,000 votes which were discarded because they were considered spoiled or simply unreadable. Each ballot paper has now been analysed and recorded to the ballot box and constituency where it was cast. French and Canadian newspapers suggest that the black-out can only raise suspicions, and the issue is being increasingly aired on the internet. Dr Mason said: "It would be responsible to complete this study and produce the result, whatever it may be."

Hey that's original. You forgot to add "so you can get shot." It's so American to tell people to leave their native land.

The short list.

Although I'm not normally attracted to spectator sports, I was thinking that Dubya -vs.- Osama in an arena would be a good match to watch. Would George W. Chicken fight for the former USA?

I don't know that I can call this country the U.S.A. anymore after the scandal that passed as the most recent presidential election. I wonder why the news agencies will not release the results of their in-depth investigation into the ballot counting.

Visit http://www.timesofindia.com for more tales of our hero, Dubyaman!

It seems like the 5th Siksastika verse contins a request to leave this "ocean of death." Anyway, whether I wanted to serve Krishna here or elsewhere, I would chant Hare Krishna.

Isn't there some rule of war against attacking at night?

My wife recently read a book about an indigenous culture that was annihilated a few decades ago by the U.S. (Our official history claims it was a civil war, but the book says it was a massacre.) Apparently the big threat to the U.S. was their economic rule that whoever would become the wealthiest in the community would give their wealth away to the other members. Then the next in line would do the same. The result was that everyone was about equal in terms of their economic status, and no one was attached to their posessions. It seemed like they were quite happy until we killed them all. Bill Gates could give about $10 to every person on earth. [This message has been edited by paul108 (edited 10-07-2001).]

jaya JayaRadhe! Your detractors are proving your point nicely. p.s. I have half a brain on each side!

This topic is wonderful, and I would love if it could be elaborated. The idea that Krishna would regard His devotees' position as superior to His own is very intriguing, but as of yet incomprehensible to me. My introduction to Krishna consciousness came abruptly by way of Bhagavad-gita As It Is together with a painting of Krsna (or was it that I was the painting and He was looking at me?) and a lot of causeless mercy, very soon after I had purchased these spiritual gems. It dovetailed my "God" idea with Him, and introduced to me the concept "Supreme Personality of Godhead." (All glories to Srila Prabhupada!) However my exposure to Lord Caitanya is happening much more gradually, only so much as I hear of Him from His devotees. (Also from a few sneak-peaks in Sri Caitanya Caritamrita; I've only read up to the 4th Canto in Srimad Bhagavatam.) Because Srila Prabhupada introduced me to Sri Krishna, I accepted his declaration of Lord Caitanya's Divine and supremely merciful nature, but I still fail to comprehend Him at all. If anyone has any understanding about Lord Gauranga, please be merciful to me.

Association of devotees is not easy to get on account of the influence of maya in this world. It's Srila Prabhupada's pleasure that we assist each other in our devotional service. How can anyone think, "this devotee is my enemy," and expect to make any advancement in Krishna consciousness? I have no direct knowledge of the world on account of the material defects, but as if in contempt of my position as an ignorant person, I've boldly expressed unpopular opinions on the current events. There's no need to keep repeating them as if my opinion were important. Krishna is paramesvara, and I am thinking that whatever happens is according to His plan. We shall see what happens, and hopefully we will remember Krishna without interruption. hari bol [This message has been edited by paul108 (edited 09-26-2001).]

Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur ki jaya

You have a serious mental problem. This is at least the third threat you've made against me. Haven't you got better things to do? I hadn't even looked at this thread, and then I find more threats. Give it up.

Originally posted by valaya: There is a separate thread for glorification of Sri Krsna, if you are inclined to do so, as Leyh has done already. I thought one should endeavor to glorify Sri Krishna everywhere. The suggestion you would do well to listen to is that you avoid broadcasting anti-war or especially anything that could possibly be taken as pro-terrorist sentiments on the internet, or anywhere else that can identify you personally. I am not pro-terrorist. I believe the USA had incurred a big karmic debt and was delivered a karmic reaction. If we Americans do not even consider our faults, I believe there will be so much killing in the future. I hoped that by pointing out that America ought not to be so proud, I hoped to do some good. I don't think about the terrorists, only that some reaction would have to come somehow. Mostly I've been acting on the premise that the karmic reaction would primarily be environmental devestation resulting directly from animal slaughter. That was the conclusion I reached studying environmental science, soon before finding Srila Prabhupada. I think it is consistent with Vedic understanding that a little violence is dharma when used to prevent something far worse. The airplane hijackings were a little violence compared what Mother Bhumi will do if we do not wake up soon. I've only expressed my viewpoints on the internet in groups that I thought were supposed to be devotees. I'm surprised how you are advising me how to stay safe, just days after you expressed a desire to kill me. I cannot help but wonder how much false pride it would take for Americans to abolish the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by threatening persons who express minority viewpoints. If you cannot accept the seriousness of the present situation and the intense feelings involved as extremely volatile, you have only yourself to blame for whatever ensues. I'm not interested in becoming a martyr over such a mundane issue, but I am supposedly guaranteed certain freedoms by the First Amendment. How can Americans claim to be patriotic and deny free expression? I'm painfully aware of the barbaric nature of so many Americans, which is why I've only brought up my viewpoints in what I thought was devotee circles. Whether or not you are at physical risk, just provoking those who have been initiated devotees for several decades and performed devotional service over so many years, is really asking for trouble. I'm not disturbing anyone's devotional service to Krishna. What does glorifying the U.S. or any other nation have to do with devotional service? I do not know how to separate good and evil according to nationality, clan, or person, and so I cannot support my country's involvement in any war, unless it is a war against maya fought by the chanting of Hare Krishna. If we can't sort them out, we should not kill them. Krishna is perfectly capable of arranging for the death of whomever He wishes. The Battle of Kuruksetra was fought after Krishna personally informed both sides of His wishes. How do you know that America is acting riteously? If you think sucking up to Krsna by `glorifying` Him can make up for disturbing His devotees, you're in for a big surprise! I thought I would only be disturbing followers of acting president George W. Bush, not followers of Srila Prabhupada. You're being called an IDIOT because you continue to act like one, moreso than due to your opinions, ignorant as they may be. I don't think people calling names is very mature. Hari bol. [This message has been edited by paul108 (edited 09-25-2001).]

You've referred before to some person wanting to attempt violence against me. Do you have some reason to suspect someone might hurt me, or is this an idle threat? [This message has been edited by paul108 (edited 09-25-2001).]

I was just shown this, and thought it warranted a new thread. -------- The Real Terrorism by Dr. Will Tuttle We in the United States should not be quick to retaliate against those responsible for the September 11 airplane attacks, or to feel that we are merely the innocent victims of irrational hatred or unwarranted evil. In the scant three days between the attacks and George W. Bush's vow to "rid the world of evil," over 75,000 people died of starvation, and it was completely ignored by the media. Essentially, we kill 25,000 people every day because they could easily be fed by the abundance of grain we produce, but we simply do not care about them, and we kill them by withholding, stealing, and wasting the food they could eat. This is the evil terrorism we have committed and that underlies the retaliation we have experienced, and it is this terrorism that we ought to be devoted to ridding in our world. Recognizing this evil is crucial to understanding the dynamics of violence in the world today, and against the U.S. in particular. Because 5,500 of "our" people have been killed, we are in a delirium of outrage, and are motivated to do whatever it takes to stop the cause of this outrage. Why does the tragic and preventable killing of 25,000 people daily not outrage us? Why are they not "our" people also? We care about our people, but not about other people, and this narrow attitude is exactly why we have been attacked. It should be a call for us to examine our attitudes and actions in the world community, and try to see ourselves as others see us. It would be an enlightening, maturing, and humbling experience. Right now, we ought to remember these things: Eleven years ago, our Operation Desert Storm brutally bombed the people of Iraq, demolishing their public utilities, transportation, communications, health care, water distribution, and industrial systems. This devastating attack was motivated by our desire to assert control over the Middle Eastern oil supplies to which our wasteful lifestyle makes us desperately addicted. We killed hundreds of thousands of people, most of them civilians, crippled their life support systems, and thoroughly despoiled their delicate desert environment. Then, over the past eleven years, we have applied sanctions against Iraq that have not allowed critically needed medical and repair supplies into the country. On account of this blatant cruelty, it is estimated that over 200,000 people, mostly children, have died; many of them painful lingering deaths due to inadequate water, food, and basic sanitation. For this entire time, people in the U.S. have been indifferent to the suffering that we are directly causing, while we mindlessly pursue a course of escalating consumerism, militarism, and global domination. There is thus absolutely no one in the Moslem world who is more hated than the senior George Bush who instigated the Gulf War, and to the tradition-minded Arab world, the son who continues the work of the father, which may help explain why they are particularly desperate, and alarmed by George W. Bush and the world-dominating stance he has taken since his inauguration. The United States, with only 4.5% of the world's population, has a military budget equal to 50% of the world's military spending! This same 4.5% of the world's people consumes 35% of the world's petroleum and other resources, and produces 35% of the world's toxic pollution. Americans tend to be amazingly blind to the consequences that their wasteful and arrogantly consumptive lifestyle forces onto people in the rest of the world. Predictably, the U.S. response to the recent attack was to add even more money to the already absurdly bloated military budget, in an effort to destroy the evil we imagine is lurking somewhere out there. Perhaps the evil is within: our own insensitivity and lack of understanding and caring. In order to ensure a continual flood of cheap products pouring through retail outlets, through ever-larger U.S. homes, and into over-filled waste dumps, the enormous transnational corporations of the world increasingly enslave populations of less-industrialized countries, forcing them off their land and onto industrial assembly lines, devastating their communities, and exploiting the land for resources while fouling it with unrestrained pollution. It is well documented that U.S.-based corporations like General Electric, Coca-Cola, Amoco, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, and others pay repressive local governments to kill and torture people who try to organize labor unions or stop "development" to protect their lives, customs, and environment. These rich and powerful corporations! , whose only loyalty is to their own bottom line, are increasingly running the U.S. government at every level, as is common knowledge, and are directing policies that increase their profits and spread their influence. We are told this is "good for America," and it is obvious that "President" Bush is their puppet. The corporate-dominated media keeps the U.S. public uninformed and distracted by trivia so that Americans increasingly live in a world completely divorced from the cruel reality their self-centered lives are causing. Until such a surprise attack happens.... Then we wallow in patriotic jingoism, self-righteousness, and phony religious rhetoric invoking God to be on our side as we rid the world of the evil that has just dropped out of the sky onto our innocent heads for no apparent reason. We ought to know that chickens will eventually come home to roost. U.S. agribusiness is also an ugly reality behind much of the misery the U.S. inflicts on the rest of the world. If we continue to ignore this, we will just get louder wake-up calls, or perish by numbing ourselves to death. Of the fifty billion mammals and birds imprisoned worldwide in the appalling concentration camps for food animals called factory farms, and slaughtered every year to satisfy the human craving for animal flesh, ten billion are in the U.S. This agribusiness industry is the largest and most powerful U.S. industry and its negative effect on world health and welfare is impossible to overestimate. In the U.S. alone, the breadbasket of the world, over 80% of all the wheat, oats, barley, soybeans, and corn are fed to livestock and thus mostly squandered. Thus, while thousands of people die of starvation daily, we feed most of our grain, and over half the fish that is caught, to fatten animals for slaughter. These unfortunate animals are fed enormous quantities of antibiotics, hormones, and other drugs to keep them alive on the oppressive factory farms, which also use huge amounts of toxic chemicals to kill the pathogens that thrive in their overcrowded conditions. To satisfy the desire for cheap flesh, eggs, and dairy products, we thus waste most of the grain we grow, pollute the earth at an unsustainable level, and foster ever more highly resistant microorganisms in our war against them. This industrialization of food production has fostered our second largest industry, the medical-pharmaceutical industry, which feeds and fattens itself on the huge number of sick and fat Americans eating the sick and fat animals the factory farms produce. With our heads buried in our feeding troughs, we don't ever look up to see the interconnections to see the results of our actions. It doesn't stop at our borders. We import millions of pounds of animal flesh every year from impoverished nations, and the grain and land that fed these animals was taken by our superior wealth from the local people, who are, therefore, hungry, poor, and in despair. The big U.S. agribusiness and food corporations and their cohorts in the drug business, like ConAgra, Cargill, Monsanto, Smithfield, IBP, Tyson, McDonald's, and others, along with the World Bank, IMF, and the world financial powers, are aggressively pushing animal diets and U.S.-style factory farming throughout the world. The U.S. military, often working covertly with oppressive local regimes, enforces the corporations' agenda against displaced, impoverished, hungry people. The Pentagon and the World Trade Center have been symbolic and actual centers of oppression. As rich people continue to buy vast amounts of grain by purchasing hamburgers, pork, turkey, cheese, and chicken, those with less money are marginalized, and can afford no food, and face starvation. We rich Americans eat the fat of the land and pollute and despoil it for everyone else. We spread our system for our own profit so a rich minority of the world's population eats the wasteful luxury of animal fat while millions go hungry. Now we want to build an even bigger fence to keep others out of our feedlot, and a bigger stick to hit them with. The rainforests are destroyed to provide land for cattle, the oceans are fished to the brink of destruction, the lands and waters are farmed into toxic desolation to fatten the poor animals we slaughter, and those humans unfortunate enough to resist our greed, we condemn with words of self-righteousness, anger, and revenge. The true terrorism is our overt killing of people to get the oil and resources we crave, and our covert killing of people through enforcing an economic system that starves and exploits them. Unless we curb these appetites for killing, and the arrogance, hypocrisy, and violence that go with them, we will author our own destruction, and probably the destruction of many others as well. The ancient wisdom ever holds: Violence begets violence. As we sow, so shall we reap. Now is the time to sow seeds of understanding, patience, and inner reflection, and to truly live more simply, encourage a more plant-based diet, and change our foreign policy, with a view toward caring for all the humans on this beautiful earth, all the precious creatures here, and all those of the future generations who depend upon us to be responsible for our actions. As Gandhi said, "There is enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed." Many will be fasting and praying for deeper understanding and peace from September 21 through September 30. Perhaps you would like to participate.

So should we go back to glorifying Krishna, or keep glorifying the USA instead?

Doesn't matter, we're moving soon. Did you want to get together for harinama samkirtan or did you were you planning on following through on your wish to murder me?