Jing-reed's Musings from Thailand

Disclosure

The X-Conference: The State of UFO Disclosure - Press Conference - Washington, DC   2009

This Press Conference to members of Congress and the Media is a mile stone in the Disclosure Movement and will remain as one of the most historically significant events in UFO activism. The X-Conference, held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, is produced by X-PPAC (Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee) and The Paradigm Research Group, who's mission is to educate Congress, the Press and the Public about the Government imposed "Truth Embargo" and to bring about formal acknowledgment by the U. S. Government of an Extraterrestrial presence engaging the Human Race - Full Disclosure. With Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Nick Pope, Richard Dolan, Stephen Bassett, Milton Torres, Alfred Weber, and Dr. Roger Leir. Originally recorded in 2009.

"The Disclosure Project is a nonprofit research project working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems. We have over 500 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses testifying to their direct, personal, first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret."

UFO spotters slam 'US cover-up'  BBC

 

 

 

Currently the United States is one of the only countries in the world that does NOT endorse full disclosure.  WHY? 

 

Banned Books Week 9/24 — 10/01

Banned Books Week Reminds Us That Censorship is Alive and Well in the Internet Age

Molly Raphael
President, American Library Association (ALA)

"The week of Sept 24 - Oct 1 is Banned Books Week, a time when libraries, schools, and bookstores celebrate our First Amendment freedom to read while drawing attention to the harms that censorship does to our society and our individual freedoms.

Whether in print or digital format, books are a precious resource, providing us with information, entertainment, opinions, ideas, and a window on lives far different from our own. Free access to books and ideas is the foundation of our government and our society, enabling every person to become an educated participant in our democratic republic. Libraries are an essential part of this process, providing the only access for those who do not have the resources to purchase or access books and information on their own.

Yet, far more often than we may realize, individuals and groups have sought to restrict access to library books they believed were objectionable on religious, moral, or political grounds, thereby restricting the rights of every reader in their community. For example, this summer the Republic (Mo.) school board voted to remove Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer from the school library as a result of a complaint that the book "teaches principles contrary to Biblical morality and truth." More than 150 students and their families have lost access to those books; while a local and national outcry caused the school board to return the books to the library, the books are now on a locked shelf and unavailable to students absent the consent of a parent or guardian.   . . . . . "

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Music, Music, Music . . .

What was your very first memory in this lifetime?  That very first thing that was so important that it became a permanent part of your life?

My first permanent memory was that of sitting on the piano bench next to my father and watching the piano keys as he produced the most incredible sounds imaginable on his treasured Bösendorfer Piano.  This was in Bratislava, Slovakia and I was around 4 years old.  I don't recall what he was playing, probably something by his beloved Mozart, but I do remember the wonderful sensation that the music produced and which has lasted until the present day, some 70+ years later. 

Currently more than half of my many gigabyte computer harddisk is filled with music, primarily classical but the musical genres that I enjoy, on a daily basis, are quite broad and far reaching with lots of traditional world music.  As an adolescent I became a pest in the only record store in the smallish California town where I lived.  As a university student I joined every record club which existed. 


Today I was at Unreasonable Faith, a web site that I occasionaly visit and it had two video versions of a beautiful timelapse view of the Swiss Alps.  The original video had as the background music some smaltzy contemporary European music, then a YouTuber had utilized the same images, but had substituted the second movement from Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5. 

We all know that enjoyment of any music is very subjective, but for my personal taste the Beethoven version was far superior.  I immediately went to my musical selections stored on my computer since I knew that I had a recording of Claudio Arrau playing this piano concerto, but soon discovered that it seemed to have disappeared. 

So I rushed over to BeeMP3, did a quick search, found it, and downloaded.  [For many years I belonged to eMusic, and spent untold hours borwsing their enormous catalog and downloading selectons, but we parted ways last year  .  .  . ]

Then, I happened to remember a record which I had been inordinately fond of as an adolescent, 'Tchaikovsky Songs', sung  by a Russian soprano, Galina Vishnevskya.   I had played one selection, 'None But The Lonely Heart' every day for weeks since it appealed to my melancholic Slavic soul,  and then the record had just disappeared.  Eventually found it in my mother's bedroom, and she tersely explained, "My ears needed a rest".

Was surprised today to discover that YouTube has posted the original Vishnevskaya. What Wikipedia is to knowledge, YouTube has over the years fulfilled the same purpose as a world depository of music.

Galina Vishnevskaya -Tchaikovsky,  None But the Lonely Heart - Нет, только тот, кто знал. . .  
    None but the lonely heart
    Can know my sadness
    Alone and parted
    Far from joy and gladness...

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Troy Davis

Not in my Name Pledge

      By Amnesty International USA (Contact)

To be delivered to: Amnesty International USA
The state of Georgia shamefully executed Troy Davis on September 21, 2011 despite serious doubts about his guilt.


     But Not In My Name.

While a majority of the world – more than 65% of all countries – has abolished the death penalty in law or practice, the United States remains one of the top countries responsible for executing people.

Not In My Name.

Officials continue to allow this deeply-flawed, extremely arbitrary and severely-biased (both economically and racially) system to run rampant without checks, balances or concern for moral decency.

Not In My Name.

Guilty or innocent every person is a human being with human rights. Executions are always wrong.

I won't stand for it.

THE DEATH PENALTY MUST BE ABOLISHED. I take this pledge because human rights and human lives are on the line.

 

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New Raptor Dinosaur Species

Talos Sampsoni: New Raptor Dinosaur Species Discovered In Utah

"Scientists this week announced the discovery of Talos sampsoni, a new species of raptor dinosaur -- the first discovery of its kind in more than 75 years.

"Finding a decent specimen of this type of dinosaur in North America is like a lighting strike," Lindsay Zanno, the lead author of the study naming the new dinosaur, said ..... "It’s a random event of thrilling proportions.”

The dinosaur, which is part of a group of theropod dinosaurs that are closely related to birds, weighed about 83 pounds and most likely had a carnivorous diet. It had feathers, wing-like features and feet with three talon-like toes.

One of the talons on each foot was raised while the creature walked, and scientists say that this indicates it was used for another purpose.

“It was an instrument meant for inflicting damage," Zanno said in the statement. . . . . . "

Rick Santorum at Presidental Debate

From the Republican Presidential Debate at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. a YouTube question regarding 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' from Stepehen Hill, a soldier serving in Iraq, was directed at Rick Santorum.

Hill asked Santorum:  “Do you plan to circumvent the progress that has been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?”

[Then, Hill's video was booed by some members of the GOP audience at the debate. It was a disgusting response to a member of the military in Iraq, but what many have come to expect from Republicans.]

Then Santorum answered:

"Any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military. And the fact that they are making it a point to include it as a provision within the military - that we are going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege, I think tries to inject social policy into the military and the military's job is to defend our country. We need to give the military, which is all volunteer, the ability to do so in a way that is most efficient and protective of our men and women in uniform and I believe this undermines that ability."

Santorum is so fixated on sexual activity that he doesn't seem to realize that the repeal of DADT was about basic HUMAN EQUALITY. The miliatry should not be discriminating on the basis of sexual ORIENTATION.  This DOES NOT mean soldiers can fuck in the barracks or whatever. It doesn't give any gay soldiers free license to molest or sexually harass fellow soldiers.  All it does is allow them to SERVE OPENLY. 

Why is this so difficult for Rick Santorum to understand? [Of course he is an advocate of teaching 'Intelligent Design' in schools, which is an indication that his mental facilicties are not too well honed. . . . . ]

 

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"God" and "gods"

One item that many place implicit faith in is the "Big Bang Theory," which tells us that the universe began 15-20 billion years ago from a single point. Who can prove to us the reality of a phenomena that took place tens of billions of years ago? There's no instant replay when we're dealing with life and time. We can't be shown what happened that far in the past. There may be some evidence and reason to believe that this is how it happened, but at the end of the day we can't know for sure and that's where 'faith' comes in

In an article, in the U.S. News and World Report, physicist Roger Penrose theorized that the Big Bang might be one in a cycle of such events, suggesting that the universe has had multiple existences. This is common knowledge to one familiar with Vedic philosophy and cosmology, which very clearly indicates that the universe has had many births and deaths.

The centuries-old wisdom of the Vedic texts doesn't stop there. They claim that our universe is just one of many universes, a concept entertained by modern science and referred to as "the multiverse theory." The description given is that our universe is one mustard seed in a bag full of a practically uncountable number of mustard seeds.

"Hinduism is the only relgion whose timescales corespond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. A night of Brahama is 8.64 billion years long - about one half of the time since the Big Bang."  It is said that men may not be the dreams of the gods, but rathere that the gods are the dreams of men."

Carl Sagan talks about "the gods." This clip is from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, episode 10, "The Edge of Forever."

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Telling my dad . . . that I am Gay

A very special moment when the 'faceless' military member of the YouTube channel Are You Surprised shows his face for the first tiime, and calls his father in Alabama to tell him that he has a gay son. [He is currently stationed in Germany.] 

During the phone call, I was most impressed by the father's immediate and unconditional love for his son, gay or straight. I also suspect that the father already had an inkling that his son might be gay.  Parents somehow just know these things . . .

I also know that 'coming out' to one's parents can be very diffucult.  I recall that I attempted to have this conversation with my mother [my father had died when I was seven years old] for some time after I suspected / knew that I was gay, but was never able to do so.

Then I entered the military when I was 18 with that particular subject never having been discussed.   I guess I sort of hoped that the 'gay' portion of my personality would just disappear of its own accord while in the military.  Quite the contrary, in that rather soon after enlisting, I fell in love with Gregg, the fellow who was to be my roomate during my training at Ft. Devins, Mass.  Fortunately it was mutual and we decided to spend the rest of our lives together when we were discharged form the military. 

After our schooling at Ft. Devins we were sent to the National Defense Language school in Monterey, California for a year of language study. Though we had known each other for nearly a year, I finally took Gregg home to meet my mother towards the end of our language training.  It was one of those fortunate experiences in that my mother and Gregg became instant friends.

On the second night home, we had gone to a Greek Restaurant and Gregg, with number of other men, was dancing a tradtional folk dance. My mother had been watching him dance, when she suddely leaned over and said to me, "I couldn't help but notice that you two are very much in love."  In essence, I had just been 'outed' by my mother — and in the same breath she announced that she very much approved of my choice of a lifetime partner.

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DADT — Going, Going, [Almost] Gone

Tomorrow, September 19 at the stoke of midnight DADT will become a part of history as the American military forces join the rest of the civilized world in allowing homosexuals to serve openly.

The US military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell"  policy regarding gays and lesbians serving in the US Armed Forces has been the subject of controversy since it was introduced in 1993.

DADT was intended as a compromise, one that prevented questioning military recruits about their sexual preferences. It has since been used as a license to conduct homophobic witch hunts, resulting in unprecedented numbers of career soldiers, most with medals for distinguished service, being discharged when their sexual preferences were noted.

From 1994 to 2010 there were 13,650 military people discharged under the DADT policy. 

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Gymnopedie No.1 — Erik Satie

. . . l'unité parfaite de la musique et l'image

        . . . la mélancolie dans un petit paquet de notes musicales

 
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