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News Archive
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MONDAY, JULY 2. NO-BRAINER TURNS OUT TO BE LUCID. DEATH MAY NOT BE DEATH. ADD: Doctors at England's Southampton Hospital report, "...we have a group of people with no brain function...who have well-structured, lucid thought processes with reasoning and memory formation at a time when their brains are shown not to function." ADD: This is a one-year study. It is reported in the February issue of the med journal Resuscitation. ADD: Dr. Sam Parnia, one of the researchers, just reported this research at Cal Tech. ADD: Reuters gives the following explanation: "...63 heart attack patients who were deemed clinically dead but were later revived were interviewed within a week of their experiences...[four patients] reported lucid memories of thinking, reasoning, moving about and communicating with others after doctors determined their brains were not functioning." ADD: Clearly, the patients are reporting events which occurred during the period when their brains were flatlining. For example, the med efforts to resuscitate them in the hospital. ADD: Obviously, one can find ways to attack this research: It is all delusion, the patients are inventing memories, the brain measurements were wrong. ADD: But Parnia and his colleagues are pushing the envelope on a philosophy which says that ALL human activity is ONLY the interaction of particles of matter--and their conclusion is, this philosophy fails to explain phenomena that do exist, phenomena which by their existence reveal the philosophy is a lie. ADD: The key sentence in the Reuters story is this: "The brain itself is made up of cells, like all the body's organs, and is not really capable of producing the subjective phenomena of thought that people have, he [Parnia] said." ADD: Thought is not the province of the brain at all. The brain is not the mind. The brain is a lower-level translating organ. ADD: Thought is independent. Perception can occur without the assistance of the brain. "Let's go direct on this one." ADD: Of course, Parnia and his colleagues are describing what are called Near Death Experiences, thousands of which have been reported. But in this case, what the patients are describing corresponds with a MEASURED period of no brain activity. ADD: Once this cat is out of the bag, certain ideas occur. For example, why did anyone ever think that a mass of cells called the brain was capable of originating thought--a thought like, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." ADD: The BRAIN itself is going to start the ball rolling on THAT? The brain? ADD: That's like saying the lunar module invented the idea of going to the moon. ADD: That's like saying the postage stamp invented the whole process of mail delivery. ADD: Or that a radio invented the show called Jack Benny. ADD: And so we come to the debate which derailed all of Western philosophy. On the one side, the materialists with their vaunted science and technology, claiming that by their rejection of the non-material they built a new world that took the human race out of the scratching Stone Age. ADD: On the other side, those who believe that a conventional looking wise man with a great beard in a throne in the sky is the final summation of what reality is all about. ADD: Neither side willing to budge. Each side afraid that if it does budge, a Pandora's box will be unleashed on the world and sweep away all that is good. ADD: So entrenched are these positions, both sides fail to see the possibility that a third explanation is possible, one that embodies both underlying philosophies. Both sides firmly believe that to give an inch is to lose everything. ADD: Into the middle of this war comes Dr. Parnia's study, and it breathes new life into that third explanation. A new life neither side wants. ADD: But a factor greater than either side may be taking over. It is called the truth, and it can exist on bread and water for a long time. It may yet spawn a philosophy that, though unpopular, will force a resolution that has its own kind of triumph. Vast, open, free. ADD: Not Lucifer, not the Devil, not electrons, not quarks, not anything that history has taught us. WEEKEND EDITION. Yet one more piece of fallout from the war on drugs. The cashless society. ADD: Now the Post Office is getting into the act. They're watching out for people who are paying cash for their business postal-meter accounts. Oh yeah. ADD: Gerry Kreienkamp, PO spokesman, states, "If they [customers] wanted $5000 on their postage meter, they wouldn't pay for that in cash. That's just not the way business is done." ADD: Uh, Gerry, what business is it of yours "how business is done?" ADD: Just take the cash and shut up. Cash is legal tender, unless you factor in the matter of it not being redeemable for silver or gold. Which is another story for another time. ADD: Yup, they suspect anyone with significant cash is a drug dealer and they report them. When they remember to. ADD: "Here's the way America works now. Free enterprise, paper money, but if you carry too much around you're a drug dealer." ADD: I see. Even if you're a store owner who makes large cash deposits in the bank every day and you also use some of that cash to make a payment on your postage meter. ADD: And Gerry, since when does the Post Office know anything about doing business, since it's always running in the red and asking for more government bailouts, and since no one can figure out who really owns it? ADD: Automatically, Gerry, any STATE CORPORATION, a contradiction in terms, knows nothing about actual business. It only knows about getting its gold-plated operation out of debt by begging at the door of government. ADD: Actually, Gerry, everybody in the US is a drug dealer. That's right. We're all carrying paper money around, and we're all looking to score. "Could you mail this for me" is really code for "An ounce of China White, please." ADD: I propose we start reporting any little blue and white trucks in the neighborhood. Clearly, they're hustling coke to housewives. ADD: And the UPS trucks. Brown. A hashish operation in progress. ADD: The huge Del Mar Fair this weekend, just down the road from me? It's all a front for that infamous San Diego meth octopus. ADD: The PTA really stands for Preposterous Toking Association. ADD: Okay, I'm done. WEEKEND EDITION. Consider this a coda on yesterday's column about political parties. When people criticize at length a particular party, several possible things can be inferred. ADD: One, they are trying to save the party from its own faults. ADD: Two, they are knowingly beating a dead horse, as a buffer against their own deeper knowledge that they could start new parties of their own. Parties which presumably would be free of the faults they are so anxious to berate. ADD: In the latter case, they are afraid to find out that the real solution is to build a new party. ADD: Now the standard rejoinder against that solution is, "We can't have a country with thirty or forty political parties. This would dilute our effort against the political culprits who are stealing this nation." ADD: I beg to differ. What we exactly need is thirty or forty parties, because one of them might have the sine qua non of political life. ADD: And what is that? An indestructible honesty about its true aims, which aims are clearly stated and backed up by unswerving effort. ADD: Such a thing would be a startling development in the landscape of public life. ADD: Even if the objectives of this party were destructive. "We are the Monarchists, and we desire the return of the United States to a system of blood-line kings. We desire a new constitution which will allow, in the light of day, all private property to be restored to a throne of rule." ADD: It might at least provoke others to form parties which would be equally forthright--but armed with better goals. ADD: After all, hypocrisy is the god of modern politics, and to smash that throne is the first order of business. Otherwise, nothing will change. No trust will be born. No hope will spring up in the mud. ADD: We want what we want. We say what we mean. We keep open books. We seek leaders who can forward our revealed causes. ADD: And oh yes...about the open books? I do mean financial books. So that no leader can plot to pretend adherence to causes and steal at the same time. ADD: It's a start. |
The news on the left is by Jon Rappoport. Click here for todays news. News archive: Other Years: Search the news archive: |
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