"A View Upon Terrorism"

Let's begin with three simple definitions from the 1981 edition of "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language."

Terror: 1. Intense, overpowering fear. 2. Anything that instills such fear; a terrifying object or occurrence. 3. The ability to instill such fear; terribleness: the terror of the haunted house. 4. Violence toward private citizens, public property, and political enemies promoted by a political group to achieve or maintain supremacy. 5. Informal. An annoying or intolerable pest; nuisance. Often used in the phrase a holy terror.

Terrorism: 1. The use of terror, violence, and intimidation to achieve an end. 2. Fear and subjugation produced by this. 3. A system of government that uses terror to rule.

Terrorize: 1. To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. 2. To coerce by intimidation or fear.

Please note that there is no definition for the word "terrorist." This, of course, is not because the word didn't exist 20 years ago. I'm certain that there's a grammatical term for the reason that the word wasn't included for definition, but suffice it to say that it's merely a term for one who puts the forgoing words into action.

I have another "definition" I would like to share with you today; however, it doesn't come from any dictionary. Instead, its origin is in a science fiction novel. I'm talking about John Brunner's 1976 book, "Shockwave Rider." This tome turned me on to two intriguing ideas. The one we're concerned with here has to do with a claim made by the main character of the novel when he says, "if evil exists in the world, it is when human beings treat other human beings as though they are things." I've since clarified that statement by claiming that one of the chief ways in which we create this evil is when we speak of our fellow human beings through the use of labels.

Now I've not speaking about every use of labels where human beings are concerned. For instance, the use of the label, "children," is not, in and of itself, evil. I'm speaking, instead, of the situations where people group others together under a label for the purpose of criticizing and degrading them. There are numerous examples of these words/labels: nigger, kike, whore, psycho, yankee, redneck, hippie, biker, queer, etc. These are all words designed to render a negative connotation towards an individual or a group of individuals. We could go on with contemporary examples such as liberal, conservative, hawk, dove, atheist, communist, infidel, and terrorist, among many others. The main error which leads to the misuse of these words is when we take the "actions" of an individual, or a group of individuals, and give those actions a label which we then use to judge the person/people, and those who are similar to them, who perpetrated the actions in the first place.

So one who lies becomes a "liar." A woman who has sex outside a certain prescribed concept of acceptability, or worse, in a way that many men secretly dream that they would like her to have sex, becomes a "whore" or a "ho." One who is opposed to war becomes a "peacenik," or "unpatriotic," or a "communist." Those who promote war become "hawks" or "warmongers." One who believes in the rights of others becomes a "liberal." This is not an easy issue to deal with. I find myself slipping up quite regularly by "labeling people" unfairly. This sort of thing often happens in moments of passion.

Anyway, I think that "terrorist" and "American" are two labels which have fallen into this category of personifying evil by many who bandy those terms loosely. Understand, I'm not saying that "terrorists" or "Americans" are evil, but that classifying "large groups of people" under these labels is EVIL. I'm certain that King George considered the perpetrators of the Boston Tea Party to be terrorists, and probably therefore thought of most, or all, "Americans" as such.

With all of that said, I'm gravely concerned at what is presently happening in my country, in the United States of America. It's true that Osama bin Laden was apparently responsible for striking terror in the hearts of Americans as a result of the events of September 11, 2001. However, since then, it appears to be our own government that fosters terror in the hearts and minds of our citizens.

When reading the definition of "terror" in the dictionary, following the word, "and" in definition number 4, there was a line break in the dictionary. During a quick glance at the definition, beginning with the new line created by this line break, a new definition appeared: "political enemies promoted by a political group to achieve or maintain supremacy." And that sounded just like what those in our government who are hell bent on going to war are doing to this country and to the world. They are creating labels for political enemies in an attempt to instill fear and terror and thereby achieve or maintain supremacy.

I want to make it very clear here that I am an American. I feel extremely proud, without reservation, about the good fortune of my citizenship . I served my 4 years of active duty in the US Navy during the Vietnam War, with the government's acknowledgement that I was a conscientious objector. However, that does not mean that I feel better than anyone else. It is not my desire to "lord it over others" that I have more opportunity than they have nor that I should assume that others hate me for what I have that they don't. I believe that it is the role of Americans to figure out how to share their good fortune with others, not to merely say, "work hard and you can do it, too," and then turn our backs and walk away. There is a tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with our national wealth.

Unfortunately, I do not hear this from most of our government leaders, our economists, or the major representatives of the media (particularly where many talk show hosts are concerned). The actions of many of the foregoing people is very inflammatory. It's as though some of these people seem to think that the "free speech" of the First Amendment means freedom to verbally terrorize others. And that is scary. It breeds a feeling of impending terror for my fellow citizens. Sheets of plastic. Rolls of duct tape. Colors of terror. The daily spin upon where terror might strike next.

As an example of how extreme some of this internal terrorist violence has become, I recently heard a talk show host "plead," on the air, for any listening gynecologist to voluntarily forcibly remove the sexual organs of a listener because the talk show host was offended by what the woman had said to him. I was offended by his statements and complained to the radio station hosting his program, but to no avail. It appears that certain forms of terrorism are tolerated by some in the media.

Many years ago I made the claim that, should a way be discovered to provide everyone on the planet with adequate food, clothing, and shelter, I was afraid that many of my fellow Americans would be the first to take up arms to put an end to such an endeavor. It greatly disheartens me how quickly many Americans jump to condemn others for reasons that often amount merely to the fact that those others are "different" and less fortunate.

On September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden and his associates were able to strike terror into the hearts of Americans and others around the world through their attacks upon the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Although there have been other alleged aborted attempts at acts of violence by people who might be associated with Osama and his crew of extremists, the overwhelming source of the continuing terror felt by many has been perpetrated and encouraged by the Bush Administration of the United States Government with massive amounts of help from the largely American media. Whether one likes it or not, by definition, President Bush and his political and military associates and a large portion of the media are, again I remind you, "by definition," terrorists.

And their brand of terror appears to possibly be motivated by the definition of terror that revealed itself through my misreading of the dictionary definition: "political enemies promoted by a political group to achieve or maintain supremacy." It is a fact that shortly after the events of 911, President Bush, with an apparent sense of great pride, announced that his administration had "found the purpose" for the remainder of his term, as a result of the horrific events which had just transpired. But somewhere the administration seems to have gotten sidetracked. It's been almost 18 months and bin Laden is still out there, and the color-coded alert levels imply that he is just as great a threat as he was before we "went after him," and the administration has yet to present convincing evidence that Iraq is knowingly tied to the events of 911. They said that they would get bin Laden and they have yet to fulfill that promise. Now they say that they're going to get Saddam, and the only thing I can see for certain is that thousands of innocent people will die as a result of the actions of our government, with no promise that they will be any more successful this time than they have been at eliminating bin Laden. You know, of course, that our actions in Afghanistan have resulted in more innocent people being killed in that country, by us, than the number of innocent people killed in this country on 9/11.

This country's (U.S.) refusal to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons in its war with Iran, gave Iraq our blessing with our silence. I hear people shout about learning from the lessons of history, and I wonder why they can not see the history within our own lifetime when this country, the United States, was involved in "encouraging" Saddam Hussein to do precisely what we now condemn him for. That's sheer hypocracy. It's lunacy. And it has become its own form of terrorism

Increasingly I find terror in "political groups" who "promote" or publicize "political enemies" "to achieve or maintain supremacy." And if I have any fear at all, it is a fear of those people, my fellow citizens, who are too blind to recognize these acts of terrorism and are all too quick to condemn any of their fellow citizens, often through the use of labels, who may disagree with them.

Terrorism knows no creed. It can spring just as quickly from the left or the right or even from the center. Terrorism does not justify counter terrorism. Terrorism can not be defeated by "might" without "might" resorting to terrorism, in which case "might" loses, for it becomes what it is fighting. Terrorism can only be overcome through coming together and building upon our commonalities while respecting our differences. And that's why those who want to go to war are so ruthlessly vehement in their insistence that their way is the only way. They don't have the backbone to actually overcome terrorism by diffusing it. They can only strike back and thereby keep the game of terror alive. They demand that we look at the lessons of history. Well, history proves that striking back only breeds hatred and more striking back. The reason John Lennon said, "Give peace a chance" is because peace has never been given a chance.

The only thing our institutions support is "business as usual." Well, Albert North Whitehead said, "It is the business of the future to be dangerous," and "every new breakthrough all but destroys the culture from which it springs." Those are the true lessons of history. Those who want war need to wake up and grow up. War does not work. It only lays the groundwork for the next war. That is the lesson of history.

To support war implies that somewhere there is a justification for killing other people. When people use their religious beliefs to back up, support, and justify their desire to kill other people, they do a grave injustice to their religion, no matter what that religion is. The one thing that all religions have in common is what is classically known as the Golden Rule. Check out: http://www.fragrant.demon.co.uk/golden.html or http://patriot.net/~bmcgin/golden.html . Those who find other statements in their religious documents to justify their ignoring this common moral underpinning that runs through all religious thought are essentially spineless when it comes to doing what needs to be done. They are not the kind of people that I would count upon in the clutch, for if they should decide that I was the enemy, they wouldn't blink an eye before labeling me, doing away with me, and feeling justified in doing so.

Terror is based in fear. Some people find it easier to strike out than to confront their own fear. When we don't have the guts to deal with our own fears, then we take it out on someone else. That's where terrorism raises its ugly head. All violence is attached to terrorism. And all terrorism is intended to achieve a position of power ruling over others. That is not what America is about. That may be what some Americans believe, but it is not what all Americans believe.

No amount of judicial legerdemain will change the fact that the majority of Americans who voted in the last Presidential Election did not vote for the current administration. And it's only a matter of time before the sham of terrorism which is being perpetrated upon America and the rest of the world in an effort to cover up and accomplish "God knows what" will eventually unravel. I just hope that the unraveling comes before we go to war and thereby set in play events that will be extremely difficult to reverse, if reversal is even possible.

We intend to continue to comment upon this insane situation that has been created by the current ruling administration in our country. You can read about it here and at http://practicaltruth.blogspot.com .

I received the following letter in an email today and wanted to share it. I've done some investigation on this individual's credentials (who he is is self-expanatory), and I trust the person who forwarded the letter to me and the content rings true with what I believe to be the case for the overwhelming inhabitants of Iraq. However, note that the following letter appears to actually be a modification upon a letter of 12.07.02 (I don't know if that Dec 12 or Jul 7 of last year).You can find some of Thorne's work here: http://www.iraqjournal.org/index.html and here: http://www.klammeraffe.org/~fritsch/uni-sb/fsinfo/Papers/Cyberfamily/credit.html and here: http://www.heifer.org/kosovo/journalist.html and here: http://www.trifectapress.com/html/visual/anderson.html .

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Subject: Home in Belgrade
From: Thorne Anderson

Sorry to unload just one long letter on all of you. I didn't intend it that way, but this is what spilled out. I am writing to let friends and family know that I am home in Belgrade after spending a month in Iraq. Kael was in Belgrade with me last week. She just returned from 10 days in Albania with the NY Times. Before that, she was in Bosnia with US News. We were lucky we could both be home at the same time. She's back in Bosnia with the NY Times this weekend.

Some of you have written to me with concerns for my safety in Iraq, but this was easily one of the safest assignments I have taken. In all my time in Iraq, in spite of an intense awareness of the threat of an impending attack by the United States , I never met a single Iraqi who had a harsh word for me. Iraqis are very good at distinguishing between the U.S. government and a U.S. citizen. Some friends and family are also already wondering why I would want to go back to Iraq, as I am committed and already anxious to do.

It just seems to me that as a photojournalist, Iraq is where I might best play a role in making a small difference. I did some work for Newsweek and Time magazines while in Iraq, but that kind of work has really become secondary for me. I do what I can to influence (in admittedly small ways) what kinds of stories those big magazines do, but ultimately their stories are nearly worthless at confronting the inhumanity of American foreign policy in the Middle East. I will continue to work with Time and Newsweek (and with other corporate media) on stories that I don't find offensive, but the bulk of my efforts are now going into reaching alternative media and in supporting anti-war groups in the states. I hope I can find some time soon to come to the states for a speaking tour of sorts. There's a lot of talk about whether or not the U.S. will go to war with Iraq. What many people don't realize is that the U.S. is already at war in Iraq.

I made two trips last month into the "no-fly zone" created by the U.S. with Britain and France in southern Iraq. Actually it would be better named the "only we fly" zone or the "we bomb" zone. "We" refers to the United States who does almost all of the flying and bombing (France pulled out years ago, and Britain is largely a nominal participant). There is another no-fly zone in the north, which the U.S. says it maintains to protect the Kurds, but while the U.S. prevents Iraqi aircraft from entering the region, it does nothing to prevent or even to criticize Turkey (a U.S. ally) from flying into northern Iraq on numerous occasions to bomb Kurdish communities there. Turkey 's bombing in Iraq is dwarfed by that of the U.S. The U.S. has been bombing Iraq on a weekly and sometimes daily basis for the past 12 years.

There were seven civilians killed in these bombings about two weeks ago, and I'm told of more civilians last week, but I'm sure that didn't get much or perhaps any press in the U.S. It is estimated that U.S. bombing has killed500 Iraqis just since 1999. Actually I believe that number to be higher if you take into account the effects of the massive use of depleted uranium (DU) in the bombing. The U.S. has dropped well in excess of 300 tons of this radioactive material in Iraq (30 times the amount dropped in Kosovo) since 1991. Some of the DU is further contaminated with other radioactive particles including Neptunium and Plutonium 239, perhaps the most carcinogenic of all radioactive materials, and these particles are now beginning to show up in ground water samples.

I spent a lot of time in overcrowded cancer wards in Iraqi hospitals. Since U.S. bombing began in Iraq, cancer rates have increased nearly six fold in the south, where U.S. bombing and consequent levels of DU are most severe.

The most pronounced increases are in leukemia and lung, kidney, and thyroid cancers associated with poisoning by heavy metals (such as DU). But the most lethal weapon in Iraq is the intense sanctions regime. The toll of the sanctions is one of the most under-reported stories of the past decade in the U.S. press. I have seen a few references to the sanctions recently in the U.S. press, but invariably they will subtly discredit humanitarian concerns by relying on Iraqi government statements rather than on the statistics of international agencies. My careless colleague at Time magazine, for example, recently reported that "the Iraqi government blames the sanctions for the deaths of thousands of children under the age of five." That's simply not true. The Iraqi government, in fact, blames the sanctions for the deaths of *more than a million* children under the age of five. But lets put that figure aside, for there's no need to rely solely on the Iraqi government, and let's refer instead to UNICEF and WHO reports which blame the sanctions directly for the excess deaths of approximately 500,000 children under the age of five, and nearly a million Iraqis of all ages.

We all have an idea of the grief borne by the United States after the September 11 attacks. Employing the crude mathematics of casualty figures, multiply that grief by 300 and place it on the hearts of a country with one tenth the population of the United States and perhaps we can get a crude idea of what kind of suffering has already been inflicted on the Iraqi people in the past decade. The greatest killer of young children in Iraq is dehydration from diarrhea caused by water-borne illnesses, which are amplified by the intentional destruction of water treatment and sanitation facilities by the United States. The U.S. plan for destroying water treatment facilities and suppressing their rehabilitation was outlined just before the American entry into the 1991 Gulf War. The January, 1991, Dept. of Defense document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," goes into great detail about how them destruction of water treatment facilities and their subsequent impairment by the sanctions regime will lead to "increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease." I can report from my time in Iraq that all is going to plan. Cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid (previously almost unheard of in Iraq) are now quite common. Malaria and, of course, dysentery are rampant, and immunities to all types of disease are extremely low. Even those lucky children who manage to get a sufficient daily caloric intake risk losing it all to diarrhea. Around 4,000 children die every month from starvation and preventable disease in Iraq-a six-fold increase since pre-sanctions measurements.

Treatment of illnesses in Iraq is complicated by the inability of hospitals to get the drugs they need through the wall of sanctions. In a hospital in Baghdad I encountered a mother with a very sick one-year-old child. After the boy's circumcision ceremony, the child was found to have a congenital disease which inhibits his blood's ability to clot, which results in excessive bleeding. The child encountered further complications when he took a fall and sustained a head injury which was slowly drowning his brain in his own blood.

In any other country the boy would simply take regular doses of a drug called Factor 8, and he could then lead a relatively normal life. But an order for Factor 8 was put "on hold" by the United States (prohibited for import), so the doctor, the mother, and I could only watch the child die.

Much is made of Iraq 's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, but it is the sanctions, the use of depleted uranium, and the destruction of Iraq 's health and sanitation infrastructure that are the weapons of greatest mass destruction in Iraq. The situation is so bad that Dennis Halliday, the former Humanitarian Coordinator for the UN in Iraq, took the dramatic step of resigning his position in protest at the sanctions. "We are in the process of destroying an entire society," Halliday wrote. "It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral." And Halliday isn't alone. His successor, Hans Von Sponeck, also resigned in protest and went so far as to describe the sanctions as genocide. These are not left-wing radicals. These are career bureaucrats who chose to throw away their careers at the UN rather than give tacit support to unethical policies driven by the United States. Being in Iraq showed me the utter devastation U.S. policy (war and sanctions) has wrought there and has given me a vision of what horror a new war would bring. And, of course, an attack on Iraq would be just the beginning of a terrifying chain of reactions throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world. Having worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Palestine in the past year, I am intensely aware of how the fragile politics and powers outside Iraq can be dramatically unsettled by a U.S. invasion within Iraq.

It's easy to imagine an impending tragedy of enormous proportion before us, and I ask myself who must step up and take responsibility for stopping it.

Clearly the U.S. government is the most powerful actor, but it is equally clear that we cannot turn aside and realistically expect the U.S. government to suddenly reverse the momentum it has created for war. So I feel the weight of responsibility on me, on U.S. citizens, to do whatever we can with our individually small but collectively powerful means to change the course of our government's policy. I try to picture myself 10 or 20years in the future, and I don't want to be in the position where I reflect on the enormous tragedies of the beginning of the 21st century and admit that I did nothing at all to recognize or prevent them.

I don't know how this letter will sound to my friends and family who are living in the U.S., in a media environment which does very little to effectively question U.S. policy and almost nothing to encourage ordinary people to participate in making a change. I imagine this letter may sound like the political rant of some kind of extremist or anti-American dissident. But that's not how it feels to me. This doesn't feel like a political issue to me so much as it feels like a personal issue. I am appalled on a very human level at the suffering which U.S. policy is already inflicting and am terrified by the prospects for an even more chaotic and violent future.

And let's be honest about U.S. policy aims. Those in the U.S. government pushing for war say they are doing so to promote democracy, to protect the rights of minorities, and to rid the region of weapons of mass destruction. But is the U.S. threatening to attack Saudi Arabia or a host of other U.S. allies which have similarly un-democratic regimes? How many of us would advocate going to war with Turkey over the brutal repression of its Kurdish minority and of the Kurds in Iraq? And do we expect the U.S. to bomb Israel or Pakistan which each have hundreds of nuclear weapons? Let's remember that leaders in the previous weapons inspection team in Iraq had declared that95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities were destroyed. And let's not forget that in the 1980s, when Iraq was actually using chemical weapons against the Kurds and the Iranian army, the U.S. had nothing to say about it.

On the contrary, at that time President Reagan sent a U.S. envoy to Iraq to normalize diplomatic relations, to support its war with Iran, and to offer subsidies for preferential trade with Iraq. That envoy arrived in Baghdad on the very day that the UN confirmed Iraq 's use of chemical weapons, and he said absolutely nothing about it. That envoy, by the way, was Donald Rumsfeld. While Iraq probably has very little weaponry to actually threaten the United States, they do have oil. According to a recent survey of the West Qurna and Majnoon oil fields in southern Iraq, they may even have the world's largest oil reserves, surpassing those of Saudi Arabia. Let's be hones about U.S. policy aims and ask ourselves if we can, in good conscience, support continued destruction of Iraq in order to control its oil.

I believe that most Americans-Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Purples or whatever-would be similarly horrified by the effects of sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq if they could simply see the place, as I have, up close in its human dimensions; if they could see Iraq as a nation of 22million mothers, sons, daughters, teachers, doctors, mechanics, and window washers, and not simply as a single cartoonish villain. I genuinely believe that my view of Iraq is a view that would sit comfortably in mainstream America if most Americans could see Iraq with their own eyes and not simply through the eyes of a media establishment which has simply gotten used to ignoring the death and destruction which perpetuates American foreign policy aims.

While the American media fixates on the evils of the "repressive regime of Saddam Hussein," both real and wildly exaggerated, how often are we reminded of the horrors of the last Gulf War, when more than 150,000 were killed (former U.S. Navy Secretary, John Lehman, estimated 200,000). I simply don't believe that most Americans could come face-to-face with the Iraqi people and say from their hearts that they deserve another war. I believe in the fundamental values of democracy-the protection of the most powerless among us from the whims of the most powerful. I believe in the ideals of the United Nations as a forum for solving international conflicts non-violently. These are mainstream values, and they are exactly the values that are most imperiled by present U.S. policy. That's why, as a citizen of the United States and as a member of humanity, I can't rest easily so long as I think there is something, anything, that I can do to make a difference.

Love,
Thorne

Dear friends -

I began writing these thoughts while out of town in Detroit at the first of the year. I know you haven't heard from me for a while. There are a number of reasons for that, and they can all be found in a file labeled "Life." I've been working, on and off, at finding the structure and processes that feel right for resuming our regular communication on a new and more sustainable and practical mode for sharing ideas. Now, as often happens, circumstances evolve their own priorities and planning is superceded by the action of the universe. That's a highfalutin' way of saying that I got a good self-butt kicking, so here I am again.

I'm also writing today to solicit financial support for what we are doing at Practical Truth Ministry. If that bothers you, we apologize, but it is a fact of our current human experience that most people have to be prompted to share what they have with others. We appear to be brought up in an advertising culture in which people are conditioned to act only when prompted, solicited, cajoled, enticed, or otherwise encouraged to participate. When one thinks about it, the fact that many charlatans and false prophets can generate millions of dollars in support of their spiritually bankrupt endeavors through extensive advertising and television broadcasts, while what we are doing here receives a trickle of financial support, is puzzling, to say the least. One of the basic differences between some of those who receive $millions and us is that we don't invest as much time and money in hammering people to give. We would like to think that it is not necessary to do that. We would like to think that people consciously just give regularly out of the goodness of their own hearts. Unfortunately, experience indicates that our thinking is out of touch with the reality of far too many people (we'll be talking about the reasons for that in the near future on the Web). So Please Stop Now And Seriously Consider How You Can Help To Financially Support This Ministry.

Some time ago I discovered Weblogs. For the uninitiated, these are essentially websites, or web addresses, where one can do a sort of online journaling. And that's what many hundreds of thousands of people all over the world use the concept for. An additional number of people, however, go beyond just journaling thoughts about their personal lives, instead creating commentary upon every topic one can possibly imagine, and designing ways, both textual and graphic, for expressing themselves in the realm of cyberspace. For many, this is a very regular process.

I quickly realized that I could convert our cyber expressions from the near 5,000 word eLetters which I used to post weekly, to regular journaling, and use email merely to periodically bring you up to date upon the latest highlights of my weblogging and where to find the output. This "great idea" didn't manifest immediately because the "fortunes of the business world," and the vagaries of life in general, once again intervened to temp me into not finding and applying the time necessary to underwrite this weblogging effort. I'm certain that many, if not all, of you can relate to the way we get sidetracked from what we desire to do. I remember Bucky Fuller telling me that once one no longer had to "work for a living, to work in order to justify one's existence," that they find themselves one day asking themselves the question, "what was I thinking about before I got interrupted." I have had exactly that experience upon more than one occasion. And it is those experiences that help us to get back on track with what we really want to do, and therefore what we should be doing with our lives.

Anyway, I've been legally unemployed for almost two and a half years now. To meet financial obligations, I have done a plethora of things to create a steady flow of financial income in order to "keep afloat." That's why I was in Detroit the first of the year, generating additional income by driving one of two 27' trucks and helping someone to move. And that's also why I began this past month as a part time Revenue Auditor on the midnight shift at UPS. Part of the price of "odd jobs" has been the amount of time such ventures have consumed and the difficulty that it creates for finding the sufficient, consistent time to "do what I really want to do, which is to share ideas and turn people on to possibilities, and thereby perhaps influence beneficial changes in people's lives, and through them (you), to positively influence the rest of the world." Now, with the end of the holiday season, I was suddenly notified, while in Detroit, that both my wife and I had been terminated from work that we had been doing for the past couple of years: she working full time, and me working part time. So, financially, we were once again standing upon the proverbial precipice which waits patiently just ahead of everyone's best laid plans.

My friend, John Crockford, recently forwarded a quote from Bucky Fuller stating that "the universe always provides," but with an additional "always" of "just in the nick of time." It's the "nick of time" that I am tiring of. The "nick of time" is totally incompatible with our current "economic system." But it's what we have to deal with.

Well, I'm taking all of this as another wakeup call. My dear friends, I need some cash and I need it now. If you have found benefit from the ideas and concepts that I have shared in the past, some financial remuneration would go a long way toward contributing to the continuation and expansion of those ideas and their proliferation throughout the world. If everyone on this list gave just $10 a month, I would not be working for someone else, but would, instead, be devoting my full time to expanding this ministry and what we have to share. Just $10 a week and we would be touching thousands of lives regularly instead of hundreds of lives occasionally.

I'm doing my part on this end, honestly seeking and accepting whatever work I can find while working on expanding my world of possibilities by initiating new ventures. And I regularly (daily) practice what I teach, which is why my attitude and expectations are still very positive and the universe continues to manifest in our lives here in miraculous ways, "just in the nick of time." But I throw a reminder in here by quoting Paul in his 1st letter to the Corinthians when he said (9:11), "Now if we have sown among you spiritual things, is it too much that we should reap material things from you?" Seems that this situational relationship has existed from the beginning.

Now, a look at what I offer on the net, just to bring you all up to date. My original websites are still on AOL. They haven't been touched in a couple of years because I maxed out the storage allotment (5 MB), but they are still very relevant. Please NOTE if you type the addresss that with AOL, upper case characters are apparently important in the URL address. In other words, if you have to type in the address yourself, be sure to pay attention to the capital letters (i.e. "SurfCity" rather than "surfcity"). To access a website, highlight the whole address (http://?.) by clicking and holding the left button on the mouse while identifying all of the text you wish to highlight, copy it (you can use the "Edit" dropdown menu in the top left corner of the screen or hold the "Ctrl" key down while pressing "C") and then paste it into your browser's address location bar on the upper part of the browser screen (again use either the Edit dropdown menu in the top left corner of the screen or hold the "Ctrl" key down while pressing "V") and then press "Enter" (be sure to first delete any "address" that may already be in the address location bar). I point out the foregoing because it has been my experience that many people who use the Internet for email nevertheless have little clue about where to go from there. And I don't know about you, but I've never liked having to admit to others that I have no idea what it is that I'm doing (personally, it doesn't keep me from admitting it, but I still find it uncomfortable at times). If you're already Net savvy, don't let the foregoing details bother you. The Net's there for everyone, old and new.

Our master website can be found at http://members.aol.com/ZTANSTAAFL . That site is known as TANSTAAFL City, CyberSpace, and it is a focal point for entering several different parts of our web sites, each part of which, incidentally, is directly accessible, as I'll explain. There are presently five components to TANSTAAFL City. The first is information about TANSTAAFL City itself. This is where you will find the story of why we decided to get involved in the Internet. There's also some background information about me, along with a resume. You might want to start by checking out "Current Highlights" and "What's New in TANSTAAFL City." Although what's new is old, it'll be new for most of you.

The second area in TANSTAAFL City is Practical Truth Ministry, accessed directly at http://members.aol.com/RevDeTurk . This is my ministry taken to the World Wide Web. As an ordained Unity Minister, I am using the Practical Truth Ministry site to make available that which I teach. I've always believed that the heart of a ministry is in sharing and practicing practical truth principles rather than in erecting large buildings with huge budgets and lots of politics. (For those who do buildings, I admire you and am grateful to you for your interest and expertise, for it provides locations in which people like me can teach; and we, in turn, can thereby help to draw new people to the ongoing work that you do.) Being nondenominational we can share these principles with anyone, anywhere, and they can then practice the principles that work for them wherever they choose to be, whether in another church or anywhere else in God's kingdom here on earth. A look at the "Sunday Services" area of Practical Truth Ministry will reveal new and helpful approaches to the truths that underlie our existence. There is also a section on tapes of various talks and classes we have presented in the past.

The next location in TANSTAAFL City is Major Domo's World, accessible directly through http://members.aol.com/ZMajorDomo . This is a very exciting part of our web site, for it is where the more secular Major Domo part of our consciousness is sharing new ideas, new concepts, and new perspectives that many people have never considered before. This is cutting edge. Be certain to check out "New Perspectives" while visiting Major Domo's World. It is guaranteed to excite or incite many of you out there. The world is changing dramatically at an increasing pace and Major Domo has his finger on the pulse of those changes and is very adept at explaining them.

Next is a site that is still being developed and is tentatively called "Beading Adventures". Directly accessible at http://members.aol.com/SherriSite , Beading Adventures is a site for my wife to do her thing. She designs exquisite beaded jewelry and has become quite knowledgeable in the world of decorative adornments. As we find time and more storage, this site will begin to take shape and develop its own slant.

Finally, there is a site called "Surf City". This is where we have provided links to other websites on the Net that we find pertinent. You can access it at http://members.aol.com/ZTANSTAAFL/SurfCity.html . Surf City contains over 7,000 links to websites that we think are interesting. Check out the site map. AOL and Yahoo and others have their own lists of what they feel are pertinent links. We've done the same, but hopefully from a different slant that will make Surf City a must for bookmarking (favorites). As time and space allow, this site will see more additions of new, efficient, quality links. We literally have thousands of new links that we have compiled over the years. Many of these links are literally quite astounding. I'd give you some examples here but once I got started it would be hard to stop.

So much for the work that we did in the past. Now let's get more current. Last year we created several weblogs, otherwise known as "blogs." For those interested in getting involved in blogging themselves, we recommend going to Blogger.com at http://www.blogger.com . Just be careful; blogging has been known to be somewhat addicting. That's not necessarily bad; it just means that one can develop an habitual interest in it. But that's just a part of our human nature. We all have habits that we've developed. Habits, in and of themselves, are not good or bad. The key word to always remember is "moderation."

Our first weblog is Practical Truth, located at http://practicaltruth.blogspot.com . On August 26, 2002, we logged the text for our series of classes that we teach entitled, "What We Believe That Makes Us Different." These are an update of the text which we had posted at our AOL RevDeTurk website under Sunday Services. In the future, we will be posting thoughts relevant to our ministry on this site. Of course, these will regularly share insight into better understanding the Bible by considering translations directly from Aramaic into English with an emphasis upon understanding ancient Aramaic culture, customs, and idioms. Our latest blog is the text for a basic introductory talk that we give entitled "The Quantum Physics of Spirituality."

Our second weblog is "Still . . . . . after all these years." You will find this located at http://zmajordomo.blogspot.com . On August 18, 2002, we posted our article, "In A Little Grain Of Sand," from our AOL ZMajorDomo website. In the future, this blog will be a continuation of what we had begun with "New Perspectives" before we ran out of space at AOL. This is where we will be examining the latest in scientific discoveries, free energy, quantum physics, the technological singularity, UFO's, the new economics, and much more. We will soon be posting an updated version of our paper, "Money And You." It will appear under the new title, "In God We Trust: The Truth Behind Money And You."

Finally, our third weblog is "Welcome To World Of The Web," which is located at http://welcomewebworld.blogspot.com . This is a continuation of sorts of what we were doing at Surf City. Here, however, we will be turning you on to Net Links, one-at-a-time with some explanatory commentary. In other words, instead of merely saying, "check out this link," we'll share the link with you in the way that we would if we were talking with you face to face. Just as a teaser, the next few links we will be blogging will have to do with the Global Consciousness Project, the entire California coastline in high quality photographs, and an audio and text transcription of a 42-hour seminar videotaped by R. Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller in 1975 entitled, "Everything I Know."

We are already aware that these three weblogs are going to occasionally bleed over onto one another, and that just means that you'll have to check them all regularly to keep up with what we're sharing. Our part of the bargain is to keep them updated regularly. Now, we hope that you'll excuse us if we sound a bit self-promoting, but if you read all of the information that we have mentioned above, we guarantee that you will discover ideas and perceptions that you've never known or considered before. We believe that we were all created for the purpose of growing in our knowledge and awareness, and so we attempt to stay out there on the cutting edge, hanging ten, and sharing what we find with you.

At last count we had over 600 people on this mailing list. That will probably change soon. We plan on moving our emailing efforts to a listserv, in which case everyone on the list will have to reply with a response agreeing to remain on the list. We are already aware that a large percentage of you will not do this, if for no other reason than that you just never get around to doing things like that (check out the end of our blog on "Quantum Physics and Spirituality"). We didn't want to make this change, however, until we had our weblogging in gear and had notified "all" of you of such. Now that that is done, we can continue with moving the list.

It is our intention that our emailing in the future will be roughly a monthly affair, bringing you briefly up-to-date on the latest of what we have posted on the web. But we will use our weblogs for the bulk of what we share. That way, you will be saved the large weekly emails of the past and can then keep your email box open and available for all of the spam that you receive on a daily basis. Also, what we have to share will always be available to everyone, everywhere, all of the time by being on the Web. We just hope that you will check out what we're doing before you decide to let yourself slip out of our loop.

You are always in our thoughts, our prayers, and our plans. We do what we do because we love sharing with others. Decades ago we realized that we all learn from experience. Actually, that's not exactly true. We actually "learn" from "new experience." When we discovered this fact, we determined that we would attempt to be, or to create, new experiences for people in the hopes that they would then continue to grow in whatever ways were most beneficial to their own individual development. In other words, we're not here to try to get you to think or to be any particular way, but rather to assist you in the eternal growth that is a part of your own divine nature. The only ideas we promote for everyone is healthy moderation, inclusiveness, and non-interference. We'll expand upon those three guidelines sometime in the future.

In synopsis, the following are the many ways in which you may access what we are doing:

Websites:

TANSTAAFL City, CyberSpace - http://members.aol.com/ZTANSTAAFL

Major Domo's World - http://members.aol.com/ZMajorDomo

Practical Truth Ministry - http://members.aol.com/RevDeTurk

Surf City - http://members.aol.com/ZTANSTAAFL/SurfCity.html

Beading Adventures - http://members.aol.com/SherriSite

Weblogs:

Practical Truth - http://practicaltruth.blogspot.com

Still . . . . . after all these years - http://zmajordomo.blogspot.com

Welcome to World of the Web - http://welcomewebworld.blogspot.com

Email:

revdeturk@yahoo.com

zmajordomo@yahoo.com

practicaltruth@yahoo.com

Snailmail:

3519 Westbrook Drive SE
Smyrna, GA 30082

Paypal:

https://www.paypal.com

We can now accept donations via PayPal. If you haven't been to PayPal, it's very easy to connect and make payments or otherwise transfer money with a credit card or with a bank account withdrawal. You have to create an account with them, however it is relatively simple and costs nothing for you or for us. If you wonder "how can they do this for free" then you will be most interested in my upcoming posting at our blog, "Still ?.. after all these years", entitled "In God We Trust."

Our nom de plume at PayPal is revdeturk@earthlink.net . We will soon have links to PayPal on our Blogs and the PTM Website. If you choose instead to mail a check, please make it payable to Rev. Charles DeTurk, as that is how our accounts are presently set up. Again, whether any of us like it or not, money is a major lubricant in our society that improves the ease and speed with which many things work. We are asking you, right now, for more financial support. Check out what we're doing and give generously today. You have no idea how many people your gift will touch.

Finally, I want to express my sincere gratitude to those who have been faithfully (regularly) supporting this work that we are doing. Your active faith in us goes a long way in inspiring us to continue with what we love to do. You are truly blessed and we thank God for your interest and support every day.

Again, as always, you are all in our prayers and have our blessings. We enjoy your feedback. Keep in touch. And we're glad to be able to say "hello" once again.

-- Charles