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"Happiness needs unhappiness.
Joy goes hand in hand
with sorrow.
It is
thanks to the shadow that we exist.
We must not dream of
an absurd abstraction.
We must guard the bond that links us blood to earth.
We are a
great mixture.
We are more than we believe."
Henri
Barbusse
In the case of sickness (physical, mental, or
social) or other such needs for
regeneration or
restoration,
symbolic burial can be
the equivalent of baptismal
regeneration and its appeal to
rebirth
symbolisms.
Breaches in the
moral,
ethic, or
social order can be
mended in the earth.
"... a Scandinavian belief a witch can be saved
from eternal damnation if she is buried alive, seed is sown over her and the
resulting crop harvested." - Mircea Eliade
Initiation rites among
many indigenous tribes
include some sort of burial
from whence a "new man"
emerges.
0 woe, woe,
People are born and die,
we also shall be dead pretty soon,
let us act as if we were dead
already.
Ezra Pound
"I asked my grandfather once
if he could tell me what truth was.
"I don't think I've lived long
enough to know that," he said, "all I know is that without truth
Iktomi, the Trickster, would be the
most powerful being."
Having lived more than half a century, I think
I'm just beginning to gain some
insight into my
grandfather's reply.
Truth is often difficult to distinguish.
Truth can be a gift or
a burden; it can be
kind or
cruel.
Truth
frequently eludes our grasp and we find it
difficult to describe.
Truth can at times
hide so well that we can't find it to save ourselves, or it
disguises itself so skillfully
that we walk all over it without knowing.
In the next instance it
becomes plain as day, whether we want it to or not.
In the end we learn we can't
live without truth.
"Truth is the marker along
the roads we travel in
life," my grandfather said.
The Red Road, the good or straight way,
has many markers.
If you choose the
Black Road, there is only
the illusion of
truth.
We can be
influenced by truth or by illusion.
Two chieftains met on a plain
while their two armies waited.
"I have ten thousand warriors, skilled
with weapons and seasoned by battle. Victory will be mine," said the first
chieftain. "What do you have?"
"Only the truth," replied the second
chieftain. "This war has decimated my people so I face you now with an army of
children.
This truth will either destroy you or glorify you."
The first chieftain returned to camp, where his army stood ready for
battle.
He ordered his army to put aside their weapons while
he went into seclusion to
ponder the truth his enemy had spoken.
With the new dawn he sent
his chief aide with gifts of
food and an offer of peace to the army of children.
The chieftain
then returned to his homeland and stood to be judged before his countrymen,
fully expecting to be dishonored for his weakness.
Instead the
people fell down on their knees praising his good sense.
Truth is
also like sunrise and
sunset.
We see the sun come up over the
eastern horizon in the morning and then
disappear behind the western horizon
in the evening.
From
the perspective
of our existence on a spinning
sphere, the sun appears to "rise" and
"set."
In reality the sun
does neither.
Reality is what is, first and
foremost, to be reckoned with on Earth.
Lakota know
four seasons cycle in precisely the
same order year after year.
Reality is lakes
freeze in winter and thaw
in the spring.
All living
things die, that change is
inevitable.
Truth is the result of
the trials and errors of life.
"Without evil, goodness
would be harder to recognize."
"The first casualty of war is
truth."
"A bird in
the hand is worth two in the bush."
Some lessons rise out of
the illusions we have
acquired.
"Good will always prevail
over evil."
Some truth is subjective and subject
to change with new
understanding.
"Man was not intended to
fly."
If there is
a universal human
weakness it is that we want static answers.
Truth consists of two parts.
That which is given and that
which is accepted.
We Lakota have heard Iktomi sing several times.
Fort Laramie Treaty Council of 1851
As thousands upon thousands
of white emigrants made their way along the Oregon Trail from Missouri to
Oregon and passed through Lakota territory, the US peace commissioners told us,
"They are only passing through and need only as much room as the width of their
wagon wheels."
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868
Establishment of
the Great Sioux Reservation - the entire western half of the current state of
South Dakota - for "as long as the sun shall rise, as long as the rivers shall
flow, as long as the grasses shall grow."
We are survivors.
We took on the worst our
"conquerors" could throw and are still standing.
The cognitive illusion is that
we are part of the past - something to
be studied, analyzed, measured, dissected, and ultimately judged.
The truth is we are still a viable
culture with traditions, customs, and values.
The idea of death is avoided and
most feared by American society.
Death, an American taboo, is the
standard against which all is measured.
References to death are made in hushed and
apprehensive tones.
Visit
a cemetery and confirm the
general state of denial about death.
Funeral directors sell coffins to
"protect your loved one for ages to come."
Stone or cement crypts and
mausoleums are used for the same reason.
Logically, we are at least
apprehensive about anything we don't know.
People fear death when they
fail to understand the reality of consciousness.
The truth about
death is simple. It will happen.
Nothing is more inevitable, no matter
how vigorously we deny it or fight it.
We can fight to live, but we
will always lose the fight against death.
A profound and reassuring
truth about death is that it is a part of life.
Life begins with
birth and ends with
death.
Death is the great equalizer connecting all living
beings.
Iktomi,
on the other hand, presents illusion as truth, and always will.
Beware of Iktomi."
adapted from Joseph M. Marshall, Keep Going: The Art of
Perseverance
"It is
pleasant to punish those who
shock us, and we do not like to admit that
indulgence in this pleasure is not
always socially desirable." - Bertrand Russell, Impact of Science on
Society
"A study commissioned by the American Law Institute said
that decades of experience have proved that the system cannot reconcile the
twin goals of individualized
decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness.
It
added that capital punishment is plagued by racial disparities; is enormously
expensive even as many defense lawyers are underpaid and some are incompetent;
risks executing innocent people; and is undermined by the politics that come
with judicial elections." - Adam Liptak 01/04/09
"Jesus, a decidedly
nonviolent man, would have abhorred the death penalty,
a government policy of which he himself
was a victim.
If
Jesus where to return today he would likely
meet the same fate at the
hands of his most publicly
fervent 'believers'." - John DeCure
February 8,
1924 Gee Jon becomes the first person to be executed in a gas chamber.
State of Nevada, United States of America.
List of countries that
executed people in 2007:
Iran
(265), Saudi
Arabia (156), USA (42),
Pakistan (29),
Iraq (29),
Afghanistan (15),
China (13),
Japan (9),
North Korea (8),
Yemen (7),
Bangladesh (6),
Syria (5),
Somalia (3),
Singapore (2),
Sudan (2),
Belarus (1),
Botswana (1),
Ethiopia (1),
Indonesia (1),
Kuwait
(1).
List of countries that have no death penalty in
2007:
Andorra, Angola,
Armenia,
Australia,
Austria,
Azerbaijan,
Belgium,
Bhutan,
Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Bulgaria,
Cambodia,
Canada, Cape Verde,
Colombia, Costa Rica,
Côte d'Ivoire,Croatia, Cyprus, Czech
Republic, Denmark, Djibouti,
Dominican
Republic, Ecuador,
Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany,
Greece, Guinea-Bissau,
Haiti, Honduras,
Hungary, Iceland,
Ireland, Italy, Kiribati, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Macedonia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova,
Monaco, Montenegro, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal,
Netherlands,
New Zealand,
Nicaragua, Niue, Norway, Palau,
Panama, Paraguay,
Philippines,
Poland,
Portugal,
Romania, Samoa, San Marino, Sao
Tome & Principe, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Slovak
Republic, Slovenia, Solomon Islands,
South Africa,
Spain,
Sweden,
Switzerland, Timor-Leste,
Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu,
Ukraine,
United Kingdom,
Uruguay, Vanuatu, Vatican,
Venezuela
List
of countries that have no death penalty except in times of war or under martial
law in 2007:
Albania,
Argentina,
Bolivia,
Brazil,
Chile, Cook Islands,
El Salvador,
Fiji,
Israel, Latavia,
Peru
List of countries
that have the death penalty but have not executed anyone during the past 10
years in 2007:
Algeria, Benin, Brunei
Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic,
Congo, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana,
Grenada, Kenya,Kyrgyzstan,
Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Myanmar, Nauru, Niger,
Papua New Guinea, Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Suriname,
Swaziland, Togo,
Tonga, Tunsia
"I am troubled by the report's general
finding that far too many forensic disciplines lack the standards necessary to
ensure their scientific reliability in court." - Patrick J. Leahy |
February
18, 2009
American
crime laboratories are grossly underfunded, lack a scientific foundation in
forensic techniques and are compromised by critical delays
in analyzing physical evidence.
Among the problems:
there
is little if any scientific research to support the claim that no two people
share identical fingerprints;
chemical analysis of the lead in bullets
has been determined to be flawed and unreliable;
crazed glass, the
tiny, weblike lines that spread across glass that lead arson investigators to
determine a set fire was found to be caused by water dousing the fire;
bite-mark comparisons are
subjective.
These
methods of forensic analysis send innocent people to Death Row.
"Crime laboratories should be managed separately
from police departments to ensure that their findings are protected from
bias. The potential for
conflicts of interest between the needs of
law enforcement and the
broader needs of forensic science are too great." - National Academy of
Sciences
"Law
enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to
include millions more people
who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. Sixteen states
now take DNA from some who have been found guilty of misdemeanors." - Solomon
Moore 03/18/09
"According to population geneticists, it is indeed
possible to have the six loci match in perhaps many dozens of individuals whose
DNA is contained in a databank of 700,000." - Andre A. Moenssens October 2000
"State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's
DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar
genetic profiles.
The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on
chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.
The FBI
estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as
remote as 1 in 113 billion.
The mug shots of the two felons suggested
that they were not related: One was black, the other white.
In the
years after her 2001 discovery,
Kathryn Troyer found dozens of similar matches -
each seeming to defy
impossible odds.
The FBI laboratory tried to stop distribution of
Kathryn Troyer's results and began an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign to
block similar searches elsewhere, even those ordered by courts." - Jason Felch,
Maura Dolan 07/19/08
FBI resists scrutiny of 'matches'
Crime labs finding questionable DNA matches
How reliable is DNA in identifying suspects?
Accuracy of DNA ?"Matches" to Definitively Identify Suspects
Questioned
A nine STR locus match between two apparently unrelated
individuals using AmpFlSTR® PROFILER PLUS™ AND
COFILER™
"The illusion of gentleness
of lethal
injections has made executions far less of a taboo experience for the
public.
Albert
Camus wrote in 1957 in "Reflections on the
Guillotine," those who actually witness an execution know it for the
horror it is." - David DeKok
"I stand before you to explain my
frustrations and deep concerns about both the administration and the penalty of
death.
Today America is not in league with most of our major allies:
Europe, Canada, Mexico, most of South and Central America.
These countries rejected the death penalty.
We are partners in
death with several third world countries.
Even Russia has called a
moratorium.
The death penalty has been abolished in 12 states.
In none of these states has the homicide rate increased.
You
are 5 times more likely to
get a death sentence for
first degree murder in the rural area of Illinois than you are in Cook
County.
Half of the nearly 300 capital cases in Illinois had been
reversed for a new trial or resentencing.
33 of the death row inmates
were represented at trial by an attorney who had later been disbarred or at
some point suspended from practicing law.
46 inmates were convicted on
the basis of testimony from jailhouse informants." - Governor George H. Ryan of
Illinois
With this statement Governor George H. Ryan of Illinois
commuted all death sentences in the state of Illinois to life in
prison!
According to Alberto Gonzales George H. Ryan
accepted gifts and steered
government business to friends and associates.
On September 6,
2006, Ryan is sentenced to six and a
half years in prison and is released on July 3, 2013.
In July 2016, the
Valparaiso University Law Review published an article titled "How
Frank Easterbrook Kept George Ryan in Prison" in which
serious accusations of
judicial misconduct were leveled against Easterbrook.
"As long as
the political state is
permitted by its citizens to kill
helpless, restrained prisoners as a
solution to a problem the
door to State sponsored
genocide remains open.
Capital punishment is, and always will be,
political power in search of a crime, whether it's murder,
treason, being
a member of a hated ethnic group or
anything else that inflames
public opinion.
States, just like citizens, should only have the
power to kill in immediate self-defense, and never
in the service of punishment." - Lindsie Carlsen
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This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a new
perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The
author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has
forged a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has
been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their
agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race.
Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious
practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This
web site marks the founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of the
Way of the Lumière Infinie - a rational gnostic mystery religion based
on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme
leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is
encouraged to develop a personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer
through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the
spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The
Truth of the Way of the Lumière Infinie are spelled out in detail on
this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their
religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate crime."
This web site
in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the
violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels
desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already
controls the world economic system, corporate media worldwide, the global
industrial military entertainment complex and is responsible for the collapse
of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of
global ecosystems. Civilization is based on coöperation. Coöperation
does not occur at the point of a gun.
American social mores and values
have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international
cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to
deceive the populace in general through corporate media by pressing emotional
buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through prior
corporate media psychological operations. The results have been the destruction
of the family and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to
the corrupt international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction
and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been
directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that
further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.
All
views and opinions presented on this web site are the views and opinions of
individual human men and women that, through their writings, showed the
capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational, insightful and unpopular
thought. All factual information presented on this web site is believed to be
true and accurate and is presented as originally presented in print media which
may or may not have originally presented the facts truthfully. Opinion and
thoughts have been adapted, edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to,
re-edited and re-corrected as nearly all opinion and thought has been
throughout time but has been done so in the spirit of the original writer with
the intent of making his or her thoughts and opinions clearer and relevant to
the reader in the present time.
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 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
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