Participatory democracy, in times of high taxes or big-moneyed ambition,
can serve as a "people's governor": that thermostatic feedback device capa-
ble of reducing high levees and abuse of power by the State or the excessive consumption of natural resources encouraged by those multinational corpor-
ations who, through mass media advertising, irresponsibly stoke the flames of our global furnace's economic appetite for ever-higher profits benefitting only the interests of financial elites.

Valentine hearts on Eros and Mars? Get the real story on those mysterious space photos(some of which have become a kind of paranoia-inducing internet industry built upon pseudo-science and mysticism for some), from this Space.com newspiece:

Monday, 12 February, 2001, 22:13 GMT
Probing the Secrets of Eros
By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

For only the fourth time in space flight history, a probe has touched another body in space. Asteroid Eros joins the Moon, Venus and Mars as celestial objects touched by a man-made craft. Although probes have flown through the tails of comets and even descended into the atmosphere of Jupiter, the Near Shoemaker spacecraft has revealed to us what is perhaps the strangest world ever encountered.

Lisa,
Referring to you post of Saturday, 02-10-01, 6:47 pm, where you said:

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Hi everyone. I didn't know beans about The Nature Conservancy before, but you guys got me looking! If they're being attacked by wackos among the environmentalists and the anti-environmentalists, they must be okay.

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Perhaps the reason Forrest asks questions about shooting and raping people is because that type of crime helps to minimize TNC's actions in Texas, the actions that resulted in them losing their tax-exempt status?

Re: Ida Matson's post of
Sunday, February 11, 2001 - 12:44 am.

The issue there, Forrest, is not who brought the issue to the public's attention. Rather, the issue is the substance of the matter:

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The Former Attorney of Texas, Dan Morales found out how TNC operates. After hearing evidence detailing TNC financial activities, he stripped them of their Texas tax-exempt status on February 28, 1997.

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A pine tree lining the winding road,

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Obviously, Forrest has dismissed the words based on style, not substance.

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The Keweenaw Today article about land use planning had this from an observer:

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The big historical difference between this process and the process that operated in the past was that (a certain) priority was implicit. Corporate interests from outside made decisions with the complicity of some government people, and private citizens didn’t have a role, and we hopefully now do.

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many decisions in the area are made by the large landowner (International Paper/Lake Superior Land Company). The observer asked how community planning can take place, how community values can become a priority for a large corporation.
What they decide to do, in many ways, shapes what happens in the entire community.

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Between June 7th and August 17th, 1995 public informational meetings were conducted in all five townships of Keweenaw County…participants included residents
And property owners in Keweenaw County

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9.1 Purpose. These public informational meetings were held to garner public input for use in the preparation of an economic development strategy for Keweenaw County.

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Hey "The Gods Must Be Crazy I & II", hear this you Godless Communist Scum:

4. Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him
17. The chariots of Gods are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them
33. To him that rideth upon the heavens of heavens, which were of old; lo, he doth send out his voice, and that a mighty voice

SAINT JOHN.
The Ages come and go,
The Centuries pass as Years;
My hair is white as the snow,
My feet are weary and slow,
The earth is wet with my tears
The kingdoms crumble, and fall
Apart, like a ruined wall,
Or a bank that is undermined
By a river's ceaseless flow,
And leave no trace behind!
The world itself is old;
The portals of Time unfold
On hinges of iron, that grate
And groan with the rust and the weight,
Like the hinges of a gate
That hath fallen to decay;
But the evil doth not cease;
There is war instead of peace,
Instead of Love there is hate;
And still I must wander and wait,
Still I must watch and pray,
Not forgetting in whose sight,
A thousand years in their flight
Are as a single day.

The life of man is a gleam
Of light, that comes and goes
Like the course of the Holy Stream.
The cityless river, that flows
From fountains no one knows,
Through the Lake of Galilee,
Through forests and level lands,
Over rocks, and shallows, and sands
Of a wilderness wild and vast,
Till it findeth its rest at last
In the desolate Dead Sea!
But alas! alas for me
Not yet this rest shall be!

What, then! doth Charity fail?
Is Faith of no avail?
Is Hope blown out like a light
By a gust of wind in the night?
The clashing of creeds, and the strife
Of the many beliefs, that in vain
Perplex man's heart and brain,
Are naught but the rustle of leaves,
When the breath of God upheaves
The boughs of the Tree of Life,
And they subside again!
And I remember still
The words, and from whom they came,
Not he that repeateth the name,
But he that doeth the will!

And Him evermore I behold
Walking in Galilee,
Through the cornfield's waving gold,
In hamlet, in wood, and in wold,
By the shores of the Beautiful Sea.
He toucheth the sightless eyes;
Before Him the demons flee;
To the dead He sayeth: Arise!
To the living: Follow me!
And that voice still soundeth on
From the centuries that are gone,
To the centuries that shall be!
From all vain pomps and shows,
From the pride that overflows,
And the false conceits of men;
From all the narrow rules
And subtleties of Schools,
And the craft of tongue and pen;
Bewildered in its search,
Bewildered with the cry,
Lo, here! lo, there, the Church!
Poor, sad Humanity
Through all the dust and heat
Turns back with bleeding feet,
By the weary road it came,
Unto the simple thought
By the great Master taught,
And that remaineth still:
Not he that repeateth the name,
But he that doeth the will!

Hey Big Red, ain't Blue Cheese awesome?

The Old Man, Forrest spoke thus: My experiences teach me that honest people trying to make a valid point never use this style.

What world have you been living on?

In a poll, 43.7% said: Well, that reading is better than no reading at all. And perhaps the point, if you will, has been made and the evidence is the reading, itself.

#409: And that is supposed to suggest that there is a right way and a wrong way to make a point. It's too bad that the purveyors of this stuff are trying to take over this site now.
Obviously, Forrest has dismissed the words based on style, not substance.
Give me Liberty! Or give me death! Well, here we have a style that is designed to inflame the heart and kindle the passions of those who heard the words. Where would we be if the people had dissed the words due to style.

An article on The Nature Conservancy, entitled "Quietly Conserving Nature",
by Edward O Wilson, (National Geographic Magazine, December 1988), paints
another view of how conservation easements will be used to "conserve
nature".


And Dear Eagle Eye Wide Open,
You spoke thus:
What I have a problem with is the selling of paranoia rather than a documenting of facts. In the quote you share the word "boast" alone is an example of their subtle manipulation. This isn't journalism it is brainwashing.

Your reference posted again here:

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What is more, the Conservancy boasts that their efforts in acquiring such choice and increasingly rare properties are tied closely with the United Nations "Man and the Biosphere Program" which is intended to guarantee UN supervision over the most desirable natural lands in 100 countries throughout the world. Better forget U.S. sovereignty, too.

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On Sept. 26, 1973, WUPPDR made its first proposal for a Plan to guide future zoning and development in Keweenaw County. But eight years later the county withdrew from WUPPDR and was still without a Comprehensive Land Use Plan. Over the years WUPPDR has tried to help the county out, but the county has not followed through.

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Jacobo and Company,

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What do you object to, Forest, the information that is being shared, the content of the message, or the character of the message?

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For better or worse, depending on your point of view, The Nature Conservancy is about to raise its national profile:

February 8, 2001
Advertising: Nature Conservancy to Acquaint Public With Goals
By BERNARD STAMLER
Founded in 1951, it has 1.1 million members and an annual budget of about $740 million. Its mission is to acquire and preserve ecologically fragile places around the world or to assist local groups in doing so, and millions of acres of land worldwide are under its protection, more than 12 million of them in the United States alone. (That's more than the combined area of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Delaware.)

Fear not Palestinian peacemakers, the Lion of God is also a servant of Prospero. Don't let the militants brainwash you. Jerusalem is safe for all who believe in Abraham's God.

splish splash I was taking a bath, when over the radio came the following message,

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Smithson stated, "As far back as 1994 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was secretly 'studying' our area. We have documentation proving that a $25,000 grant was given to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) by The Columbus Foundation 'for Darby Bioreserve' but, even as recently as late 1997, no one in our area was aware of these actions. They accomplished their studies of our private lands in secrecy!"

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What is The Matrix?

Morpheus: A computer generated dreamworld built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this:

Speaking of endangered species, biodiversity and such, here's an interesting perspective we came across while surveying your planet for our coming biomass harvest:

The Evolution of Gods
YOWUSA.COM, January 28, 2001
Steve Russell, Earth SIG Moderator
http://www.yowusa.com/Archive/January2001/evolution_of_gods/evolution_of_gods.htm

Have you ever wondered where the human species came from? Science has drawn a line in the sand and called one side Creation, the other Evolution. The debate over which theory is correct, sends the scientists into an eternal spin where each have their own true and false statements depending on who is doing the writing and who is doing the interpreting.
Science is never complete or absolute. As Einstein says, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". Similarly, for every theorem that science has written, an opposite can be written to disprove the other, resulting in endless insensible debates.
For questions like the ones raised above, we need to step back from ourselves and look closely at our surroundings and deep within ourselves. There we will learn the true meaning of what it is to be human, our effects on our natural surroundings, and our future as the most dominant species on Earth.

In The Beginning
If you were asked to identify which country still harbours the most elaborate ecosystem consisting of a variety of small and large animals, jungles and savannas, one would have to answer Africa, the human species birthplace.
Given that the Earth was once covered with these same animals and millions of other mega-fauna species, an interesting question is; what happened throughout the rest of the world to eradicate the larger mammals?
Archaeological evidence shows that there is a direct link between the human expansion out of Africa, and the loss of large species around the world. America was once home to mammoths, sabre tooth cats, ground sloths weighing over three ton, and beavers the size of bears. These and many other animals were all believed to have been killed by hungry migrating humans.
If this was truly the case, two valid questions come to mind. Why is Africa still littered with such animals if this is where we all lived for thousands of years? In addition, how could mere humans travelling on foot with only rocks and spears have such a detrimental effect to the rest of the world's animal population?
During our life spent in Africa, we were successfully evolving alongside the other peaceful animals. As we slowly developed our hunting skills, the animals quickly learnt that we were an enemy to be feared, and knew to flee when they spotted us. After becoming over populated, we spread out across the world to find new homes and easier prey. The animals living in other parts of the world were completely oblivious as to what humans were and what they were now capable of doing. The animals were easy prey against the human hunting machines that had begun taking over the world.
We had the advantages of being completely localised in our beginning and the ability to spread quickly over vast distances, and we were able to fashion instruments of destruction to enhance our superior predatory instincts. These initial signs of superiority significantly characterise a distinction between humans and animals, one that we are exploiting to this very moment in history.

Power and Pace of Our Population
Before the advent of humans, the inhabitants of the Earth experienced five great mass extinctions according to the fossil record. The last of these was caused by a meteor impact that killed off the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Many distinguished people now believe that the consequences of human activity, represents the biological equivalent of a modern-day meteor impact.
By studying the fossil record and vast numbers of carefully recorded extinctions in our recent past, we have been able to predicate the rate at which extinctions have been occurring. What the evidence shows, is that extinction rates are now 100 to 1000 times higher due to the spread of humans over the Earth.
Given that the last five mass extinctions took place over thousands of years, the next great extinction could happen over just 100 years. We could go the way of the Do-do bird in only a single human's lifetime. No other species in all of nature's wonderful creations has had such an awesomely detrimental effect on the state of the planet.
It took all of human history for our population to total one billion. It then took only 130 years to reach two billion in 1930. Our third billion was achieved in just 30 years, and the fourth billion in only 15 years. We now total approximately 6 billion people. The night view of Earth above shows where we are most commonly populated.
To get this populated and advanced, we have been following an instinctive plan that has been etched into the very fabric of who we are.

The Human Plan
Nature herself causes many ecological disasters that destroy thousands of animals and plants. However, these natural events are all small and localised against the backdrop of the entire Earth. The continuous cycle of life and death allows Earth to recover quickly from the wrath of nature. However, humans change things permanently.
The human species is following a five-step plan that is being increasingly boosted by population growth that will soon achieve biological annihilation.
In order to supply the demand from our population, we are over harvesting our natural resources before they have enough time to reproduce sufficiently.
Our ability to travel internationally allows us to bring new species of animals, plants and disease to parts of the world untouched by such species. Many of the worlds quarantine and customs systems are inadequate to stop the hazardous spread of foreign species not designed by nature to be introduced.
The Hawaiian Islands were once home to more unique species than any other group of islands on Earth. Since human contact and the introduction of killer snails, rats, pigs etc, hundreds of native species simply no longer exist. It has become severely impoverished and serves as an example of the Earths predicament in miniature.
The worst step of all is the destruction of habitat. Our ingenious chainsaws, bulldozers, backhoes and other instruments of destruction, causes more damage than any other human activity.
During the destruction of habitat phase, in our occasional generosity we leave small patches of forest for the animals to live. These undisturbed pieces of land are the result of what is called islandization. This simplification of the ecosystem is having damaging effects on the species trying to survive in their small cramped homes.
The ant bird for example, follows the trail of army ants to eat the insects they dig up from the ground foliage. These ants require a large area to find enough insects to survive. Naturally, they will go anywhere to find this food, even if it means going out of the small boundary of forest. However, the ant birds are too cautious and will not follow the ants out of the confines of the forest. They simply die of starvation. Even a simple road encircling a forest is enough to isolate this bird. Our scattered nature reserves are also in effect, merely islands.
The last step is pollution. The majority of our pollution is only damaging local areas. However, our greenhouse gases that reach the atmosphere are having global consequences.
These five activities unique to the human species are having a measurable unnatural effect on the bio-diversity of this planet. How severe is this damage really?

Damaging Bio-Diversity
After observing the wildlife of Africa, it may appear that the majority of species there consist of the larger mammals. However, after studies were conducted to focus on the smaller species, 50% found were completely new to science. The vast number of distinct species was overwhelming.
When scouring the forests for new species, we could only search up to a few feet above the ground until recently. Only now have we found ways of discovering and examining the life high up in the roof of the rainforests. Similarly, the depths of our discoveries underwater are severely limited due to the extreme pressure of the water. Oceans cover two thirds of the planet, meaning there is an abundance of life below we do not know about.
We have successfully managed to name approximately 1.5 million species. The bio-diversity on Earth is estimated to consist of up to 100 million species. If we are currently witnessing a dramatic and damaging loss of life in the mere 1% of known species, how can we expect to accurately measure the true effects of the human species? The damage from humans must be far greater than we truly understand. We must be losing species of life right now that we have never seen or understood.

The Nature of Humans
Since we are superior to all other creatures, one would assume humans to be the oldest creature and thus the most developed. However, the Bible and science both agree that we are latecomers to the Earth. We are only the last few pages in history. We defy the evolutionary process that governs the development of all other species.
Humans are conclusively different from all of natures other truly wonderful creatures. No other species on Earth is capable of achieving the incredible accomplishments of the human race. No other species have landed themselves on the moon, examined the sights of every planet in our solar system, or been able to play god by recreating themselves by means other than sexual or asexual reproduction. We appear to be unconventional anomalies in a master plan that has been disturbed.
Every species on Earth has a natural instinct to preserve the harmonious coexistence between themselves and their surroundings. Humans on the other hand, behave like a disease, continually spreading out, reproducing, feeding and destroying until all natural resources have been consumed. The interests of humans and the interests of nature seem to be conflicting paradoxes.
How, in the natural course of evolution, could we have possibly evolved into this? All other creatures have gradually evolved with periodic enhancements that allow them to survive without destroying everything around them. They have been provided with a safe level of intelligence, not a level that is dangerous to nature, like we currently exhibit. How could all these uniquely human traits have possibly occurred naturally? They do not benefit nature in any way, shape, or form.

The Heavenly Plan
Genesis 1:26-28: "And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us. They will have power over the fish, the birds, and all animals, domestic and wild, large and small." So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, blessed them, and said, "Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. "
The Bible explicitly states our purpose; to populate the entire Earth until we have taken control over nature herself and she is at our mercy. We only have to look at what we have done to the bio-diversity on this planet to see that we have successfully accomplished this task. Our next natural progression will be to evolve spiritually or we may destroy ourselves through overpopulation and have to start the domineering process all over again.
In the nature of life, only introduced species have the kind of domineering effect on an ecosystem that we have. Thus, our behaviour is no different. We are essentially an introduced species to Earth. Our superior intelligence, aggressive viral instincts, and spiritual souls given to us by the gods have enabled us to fulfil our purpose.
It important to note that Gods speech used plural terms such as "us" and "we" when referring to what has been mistakenly interpreted as only God himself. This use of language hints at a controversial sign that there was more than one God involved in our creation. The Bible states that we were created in the image of the gods, however it does not specify just how similar we are.
The ancient Sumerian texts that every piece of religious material can be traced back to, also states that there were many gods responsible for the creation of humans. The Sumerians were the first organised civilisation on Earth. Their list of firsts make it overwhelming to think how their knowledge could be so extensive, considering their civilisation appeared overnight in relation to all other biological evolutions. Sumerian knowledge consisted of:

Agriculture
Kilns for the reinforcing and firing of bricks
Anatomy
Law codes and social reforms
Art
Medical practices of "therapy", "surgery" and "commands and incantations".
Astronomy
Metallurgy
Building constructions
Music
Calendars
Petroleum products for bitumen, waterproofing, caulking, painting, cementing and moulding.
Cosmogony
Printing
Cosmology
Sexagesimal mathematical defining the 360-degree circle, the foot and its 12 inches and the "dozen" as a unit of measure.
Dance
Schools
Deep-water seafaring
Textiles and clothing
Historians
Writing

If we are to believe our wise ancestors, we were created by the "Anunnaki", literarily meaning "Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came". The Sumerians believed these gods were a race of humans from which we were created and where their knowledge came from. It is the only plausible explanation for the astounding Sumerian knowledge, especially of the solar system, which they could count and describe every planet including Pluto. If this is true, that our creators were merely technology-advanced humans, the religious factions in the world have no need to worry. For somewhere out there and within ourselves, is the God that created the universe. We know that God loves us all, because he allows us to live amongst his creations. He allows us to have a future.

The Future of Gods
From our humble beginnings in earthly structures built from the materials of Earth, to our future homes in space built from materials of the stars, we have been created by and for greatness.
Our physical stature of strengths and mental capacities for knowledge has provided us with the tools for dominating our corner of the universe. Our most credible scientists like Stephen Hawking are telling us that we must colonise other planets like Mars if we are to continue surviving as a species.
Hopefully our past, present and future missions to Mars will have provided us with a priceless understanding of this alien environment. By understanding Mars now, before human contact, we will be able to measure and quantify our effects with more success. This should enable us to take better care of our new home, in our next stage of enlightenment.
Since we will be the ones to bring abundant life to this barren planet, we as gods will have more control over life than we do today here on Earth. As the master plan continues, we will become like the gods that created us. However, if we do not take this final opportunity to grow spiritually, we will fail. For to become as gods, we must each find God.