An important message from your local safety council

Beer and nail guns do not mix.

Thank you.

--The Management

The CIA, busy protecting the world's "democracy" again...

from New Boss, Worse Than the Old Boss

The Bushies have learned from their failed attempt to overthrow President Hugo Chávez. Rather than rely on a pathetic grab bag of businessmen and fringe political hacks to pull off a civilian putsch as they did in Venezuela, the CIA directly funded and armed Duvalier-affiliated thugs to seize control militarily. U.S. Special Forces-trained ex-coup leader Guy Philippe and leaders of the CIA-backed paramilitary FRAPH death squad, supplied with thousands of U.S.-made M-16 and M-60 rifles as well as rocket-propelled grenades and tank-busting artillery shells (most likely at U.S. taxpayer expense), invaded Haiti from bases in the Dominican Republic. "Congress needs to seriously look at what the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency has been in this operation," says Ira Kurzban, a Miami lawyer representing the Aristide government. "Because it is a military operation. It's not a rag-tag group of liberators, as has often been put in the press in the last week or two."

Amazingly, Bush's spokesman argues that there's nothing undemocratic about deposing a popularly elected president. There are times when people lose faith... in the ability of their leaders to govern effectively, and this is what happened." says Scott McClellan. He called the coup "a democratic and constitutional solution that we achieved working with our international partners."

Ken Wilber is writing for Beliefnet now!

In his debut column there, he lists seven principles which run as a common thread throughout the religions of the world. Stop me if you've heard these before:

1. Spirit, by whatever name, exists.

2. Spirit, although existing "out there," is found "in here," or revealed within to the open heart and mind.

3. Most of us don't realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin, separation, or duality -- that is, we are living in a fallen, illusory, or fragmented state.

4. There is a way out of this fallen state (of sin or illusion or disharmony), there is a Path to our liberation.

5. If we follow this Path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience of Spirit within and without, a Supreme Liberation, which

6. marks the end of sin and suffering, and

7. manifests in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings.

I've made links of each of these to posts of my own, not simply to brag, but to demonstrate how it is religion has arisen in every human society. To see an essay like the one Wilber has written is edifying for me, because it confirms and underlines what I have been saying all this time. This "perennial teaching" is what continually pours forth from the mystical well of spirit, because it describes human spiritual experience on the most basic level.