Life is meant to be easy;

Life's road...our choices; our wisdom; our weakness...

In the seventies, Malcolm Fraser, a  former Australian Prime Minister said to the Australian people “Life isn’t meant to be easy.” 

 I do not agree with this saying. I say, LIFE is meant  and should be easy.

 It is the environment people are born into which lets or makes them forget that life should or could be easy.  Materialism has taken the number 1 place in peoples life, to strife for.  Advertisements are thrown at them day and night to buy this and that product like every ones life would depend on it.
 That’s why life is a hard task, pleasures have to be bought, mind you most of the time this pleasure is very short lived and something new must replace  it. This is the elusive perpetum mobile. Is it so important to drive the right car, to live in an appropriate area, to send the children to the right schools, to wear and drive status symbols, this makes life very hard.
Do I care if your T-shirt comes from some designer or from the next op-shop. Not at all I could not care less! Why do you want to pay for a silly designer name with your hard earned money, to fill his bank account, instead of keeping the money in yours and perhaps in time it will pay for a nice relaxing holiday!  In this process of  perpetual buying people have to work harder and harder.

Less materialism would mean less factories  less stress on nature and people.The question is do people want less materialism. Perhaps we have arrived at the point of no return.  The road we have chosen is wanting more and more, pointing towards buying and more buying of the latest gadgets, like the latest mobile telephone,  the latest I Pad  etc.etc.though the one from last month is still working and doesn't  need  to be replaced.

Unless the newest ones,  can be  used to clean your teeth and grill your sandwiches!


There was a time when people could buy only when they had the cash. I was brought up this way and it is still my way.
In simple terms explained  how the change came about;

At a certain time the bankers came together and said  people do not use enough money. We could make a mint  if we implement credit cards so people  use more money which we can lend to them.
The bank card was introduced and people had a fine time in buying what ever they wanted. More goods were produced; globalisation set in, goods were produced in countries were cheap human resources were available.
Now after perhaps 40 years of spending money that was never earned, the natural end arrived in the collapse of the economies. Banks were in dire straits and now came the payback.  People’s tax money bailed out the bankers and the people are sitting on a pile of rubbish they have accumulated over the years, with  cut wages, cut social services, cut retirement money and to the extreme with the loss of their homes and no jobs.
 The banks CEO still sits comfortably in his leather chair on the phone with a Saville Row tailor for a new silk suit and handmade shoes.


©Photo/text Ts

Agapanthus;

For a change come into my garden, the Agapanthus, also called Lily of the Nile are flowering now. The garden is fragrant with the blossoms of the Rollinia fruit tree. Yesterday a soft rain has brought out colours, scent and dancing butterflies. It is always a place of peace and tranquility, the mournful call of the rain bird makes it more so.

Impressions of a beautiful flower..

Enjoy!

Photos/text Ts

Mirror, mirror on the wall... Botox;

What is the last thing you would want to inject into your face? You have heard of Botox, no doubt, and “deadliest poison” is it’s main claim to fame. 
Botox uses botulinum toxin, produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, and it is so deadly, an amount equal to a grain of salt is enough to kill a 200 lb man. In fact, they even suggest that it would only take 4kg, properly dispersed, to kill every last person on earth. Maybe those crows feet around your eyes should be looked at as  beautiful!

Courtesy from ten most. com

Delenda est; next please;

Carthago delenda est; a sad satire;

Cato the Elder (234-149 BC),a persistent advocate in the Senate for the total destruction of Carthage, and associated with the phrase Delenda est Carthago.

"Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse" or "Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem delendam esse: "Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed" abbreviated to "Centerum censeo", "Carthago delenda est", or "Delenda est Carthago; "Carthage must be destroyed" is a Latin oratorical phrase which was  popular in the Roman Republic in the 2nd Century BC during the latter years of the Punic Wars against Carthage. Carthage, which had been defeated twice before and had a tendency after each defeat to rapidly rebuild its strength and engage in further warfare. It represented a policy of the extirpation of the enemies of Rome who engaged in aggression, and the rejection of the peace treaty as a means of ending conflict. The Roman senator Cato the Elder 234-149 BC was famous to end his speeches with the words Carthago delenda est. 

How far have we progressed?  I am afraid not very far;

This slogan is still accurate and well used;

 per example

Irak  delenda est;

Afghanistan delenda est; 

Libya delenda est;

Syria delenda est;

next please...what about Iran? OK Iran delenda est...next....next...

nearly forgot tiny Gaza delenda est..

Who knows what is cooking and brewing in the kitchens of big business, big banking and  corrupt governments.

©Text/Photo Ts

The Nobel peace prize...a worthless piece of paper;

Since  its establishment, an  award in tatters not as much worth as the paper it is written on; it has been reduced  into a nasty political tool. Instead of honoring the goodness in people, as it was intended to, it is used to honour people with the most slyness, nastiness, hypocrisy, the ones who have started wars, destroyed countries and killed people who have done them no harm.The Oslo Peace committee is a plunder on its own. If it would not be so sad it would be laughable.

A world in tears...

Link  http://titania-threemonkeys.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/nobel-peace-prize-is-farce.html

The Nobel Peace Prize for War

By Michael Parenti

October 19, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -  Those who own the wealth of nations take care to downplay the immensity of their holdings while emphasizing the supposedly benign features of the socio-economic order over which they preside. With its regiments of lawmakers and opinion-makers, the ruling hierarchy produce a never-ending cavalcade of symbols, images, and narratives to disguise and legitimate the system of exploitative social relations existing between the 1% and the 99%.

The Nobel Peace Prize would seem to play an incidental role in all this. Given the avalanche of system-sustaining class propaganda and ideological scenarios dished out to us, the Nobel Peace Prize remains just a prize. But a most prestigious one it is, enjoying a celebrated status in its anointment of already notable personages.

In October 2012, in all apparent seriousness, the Norwegian Nobel Committee (appointed by the Norwegian Parliament) bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize upon the European Union (EU). Let me say that again: the European Union with its 28 member states and 500 million inhabitants was awarded for having "contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe." (Norway itself is not a member of the EU. The Norwegians had the good sense to vote against joining.)

Alfred Nobel's will (1895) explicitly states that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

The EU is not a person and has not worked for the abolition or reduction of standing armies or promotion of any kind of peace agenda. If the EU award looked a bit awkward, the BBC and other mainstream news media came to the rescue, referring to the "six decades of peace" and "sixty years without war" that the EU supposedly has achieved. The following day, somebody at the BBC did the numbers and started proclaiming that the EU had brought "seventy years of peace on the European continent." What could these wise pundits possibly be thinking? Originally called the European Economic Community and formed in 1958, the European Union was established under its current name in 1993, about twenty years ago.

The Nobel Committee, the EU recipients, and the western media all overlooked the 1999 full-scale air war launched on the European continent against Yugoslavia, a socialist democracy that for the most part had offered a good life to people of various Slavic nationalities---as many of them still testify today.

The EU did not oppose that aggression. In fact, a number of EU member states, including Germany and France, joined in the 1999 war on European soil led largely by the United States. For 78 days, U.S. and other NATO forces bombed Yugoslavian factories, utilities, power stations, rail systems, bridges, hotels, apartment buildings, schools and hospitals, killing thousands of civilians, all in the name of a humanitarian rescue operation, all fueled by unsubstantiated stories of Serbian "genocide." All this warfare took place on European soil.

Yugoslavia was shattered, along with its uniquely designed participatory democracy with its self-management and social ownership system. In its place emerged a cluster of right-wing mini-republics wherein everything has been privatized and deregulated, and poverty has replaced amplitude. Meanwhile rich western corporations are doing quite well in what was once Yugoslavia.

Europe aside, EU member states have sent troops to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and additional locales in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, usually under the tutorship of the U.S. war machine. But what was I to expect? For years I ironically asserted that the best way to win a Nobel Peace Prize was to wage war or support those who wage war instead of peace. An overstatement perhaps, but take a look.

Let us not overlook Mother Teresa. All the western world's media hailed that crabby lady as a self-sacrificing saint. In fact she was a mean spirited reactionary who gladly welcomed the destruction of liberation theology and other progressive developments in the world. Her "hospitals" and "clinics" were little more than warehouses for the dying and for those who suffered from curable diseases that went untreated---eventually leading to death. She waged campaigns against birth control, divorce, and abortion. She readily hobnobbed with the rich and reactionary but she was so heavily hyped as a heavenly heroine that the folks in Oslo just had to give her the big medal in 1979.

Then there was the Dalai Lama who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. For years the Dalai Lama was on the payroll of the CIA, an agency that has perpetrated killings against rebellious workers, peasants, students, and others in countries around the world. His eldest brother played an active role in a CIA-front group. Another brother established an intelligence operation with the CIA, which included a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet to foment insurgency. The Dalai Lama was no pacifist. He supported the U.S./NATO military intervention into Afghanistan, also the 78 days' bombing of Yugoslavia and the destruction of that country. As for the years of carnage and destruction wrought by U.S. forces in Iraq, the Dalai Lama was undecided: "it's too early to say, right or wrong," said he in 2005.

Regarding the violence that members of his sect perpetrated against a rival sect, he concluded that "if the goal is good then the method, even if apparently of the violent kind, is permissible." Spoken like a true Nobel recipient.

In 2009, in a fit of self parody, the folks in Oslo gave the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama while he produced record military budgets and presided over three or four wars and a number of other attack operations, followed a couple of years later by additional wars in Yemen, West Pakistan, Libya, and Syria (with Iran pending). Nobel winner Obama also proudly hunted down and murdered Osama Bin Laden, having accused him---without a shred of evidence---of masterminding the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

You could see that Obama was somewhat surprised---and maybe even embarrassed---by the award. Here was this young drone commander trying to show what a tough-guy warrior he was, saluting the flag-draped coffins one day and attacking other places and peoples the next---acts of violence in support of the New World Order, certainly every bit worthy of a Nobel peace medal.

There are probably other Nobel war hawks and reactionaries to inspect. I don't pretend to be informed about every prize winner. And there are a few worthy recipients who come to mind, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Linus Pauling, Nelson Mandela, and Dag Hammarskjöld.

Let us return to the opening point: does the European Union actually qualify for the prize? Vancouver artist Jennifer Brouse gave me the last (and best) word: "A Nobel Prize for the EU? That seems like a rather convenient and resounding endorsement for current cutthroat austerity measures. First, corporations are people, then money is free speech, now an organization of nation states designed to thwart national sovereignty on behalf of ruling class interests receives a prize for peace. On the other hand, if the EU is a person then it should be prosecuted for imposing policies leading directly to the violent repression of peaceful protests, and to the misery and death of its suffering citizens."

In sum, the Nobel Peace Prize often has nothing to do with peace and too much to do with war. It frequently sees "peace" through the eyes of the western plutocracy. For that reason alone, we should not join in the applause.

Michael Parenti is the author of The Face of Imperialism and Contrary Notions. For further information visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org

©Photo/Text Ts

Food for thoughts; The wishing tree;

The wishing tree; 

I wished...

©Photo Ts   Stanthorpe Qld

On February 17, 1950, James Paul Warburg [banker] confidently declared to the United States Senate: "We shall have World Government [run by bankers], whether or not we like it.
The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent."
James Paul Warburg (1896-1969) was the son of Paul Moritz Warburg, nephew of Felix Warburg and of Jacob Schiff [grew up in a Jewish Rothschild's bankers home], both of Kuhn, Loeb & Company which financed the Russian Revolution [communism] through James' brother Max, banker to the government of Germany.  A world government is a world without borders, national sovereignty, constitutions, privacy, autonomy, individual liberties, religious freedoms, private property, the right to bear arms, the rights of marriage and family and a dramatic population reduction (two thirds). A world government establishes a slave/master environment wherein the state controls everything."



David Rockefeller admits media collusion with his one world plans: "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the light of publicity during those years. But now the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government.
The supra-national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries." 

Today Australians are being indoctrinated without our RIGHT at referendum into the "new international order" agenda.

Other deceptive names used...

"globalist" "globalism" "global governance"

UN rejects water as basic human right

UN Trivia You Should Have Already Been Taught In Public Schools. 

World War 1 was created by design in an attempt to create a world governance body run by unaccountable European bankers called the...

"League of Nations"

The first failed attempt at a global governmental body for the Rothschild bankers to straddle as a political tool to enter into Sovereign nations "privatizing" public owned infrastructures.

Is well under way  and done.

World War 2: Another attempt to create a world governance body...

"The United Nations" (U.N.)

The United Nations Charter (rule book) is a near copy and paste of the Russian Communist Manifesto!

Odd, when you think how long the theater of the cold war was kept going by the masters of  the puppets.

The U.S. land that the U.N. building is sitting on was donated by  banker Rockefeller.

The time has arrived when the puppets slowly get the drift what is happening and how they are manipulated by the 1 % under  the mantel of a mock democracy tacitly agreed by their

governments.

"What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea."  - Mahatma Gandhi

Damocles sword;

Dejà vue...

©Photo/Sunrise; my garden;

While western countries bleed to conquer foreign nations the people drown in barbiturates, junk food, junk music, junk movies; dream on and get drunk on junk TV shows.

The sword of Damocles

The phrase has also come to be used in describing any situation with a sense of impending doom, especially when the peril is (or should be, to the astute observer) visible and close at hand—regardless of whether the victim is in a position of power. 

The American president John F. Kennedy compared the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation to a sword of Damocles hanging over the people of the world.

The Damocles of the anecdote was an obsequious courtier in the court of Dionysius II of Syracuse, a fourth century BC tyrant of Syracuse, Italy. Pandering to his king, Damocles exclaimed that, as a great man of power and authority surrounded by magnificence, Dionysius was truly extremely fortunate. Dionysius then offered to switch places with Damocles, so that Damocles could taste that very fortune first hand. Damocles quickly and eagerly accepted the king's proposal. Damocles sat down in the king's throne surrounded by every luxury, but Dionysius arranged that a huge sword should hang above the throne, held at the pommel only by a single hair of a horse's tail. Damocles finally begged the tyrant that he be allowed to depart, because he no longer wanted to be so fortunate.


More generally, it is used to denote the sense of foreboding engendered by a precarious situation, especially one in which the onset of tragedy is restrained only by a delicate trigger or chance. Shakespeare's Henry IV expands on this theme: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

The Roman 1st century B.C. poet Horace also alluded to the sword of Damocles in Poem 29 of the Third Book of Odes, in which he extolled the virtues of living a simple, rustic life, favoring such an existence over the myriad threats and anxieties that accompany holding a position of power.

Some excerpts from Wikipedia 

Photo/Text Ts

Gore Vidal, a life ended;

Sunset, Longreach Queensland; 

Gore Vidal born October 3. 1925;  died July 31. 2012

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer known for his essays, novels, screenplays, and Broadway plays. 

Gore Vidal Eulogized as Great American Wit, Cynic, Idealist.

In my view he was a normal human being. He had an acute  mind  for justice and he was not a hypocrite. If there were more like him the world would be in a better shape.

I'm a born-again atheist.

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal reached amazing heights but missed out on main ambitions;
That is just an assumption of journalists.

I think Gore Vidal missed out on nothing.  He was a great thinker.  He could never have been a politician, not like it is mentioned because he had an acerbic view of USA,  he relied on justice and politics are not made of justice. Because he was a homosexual he was dismissed from politics.  If he would have been a practicing hypocrite of any religion he would have been accepted with open arms, that’s how the establishment works
His analysis of America. Politically, she was a corrupt and failing empire with a government that ruled through paranoid invocation of national security. However, he liked to reassure people that there was no risk of American culture dying – because it had never existed.


"The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return"

A sad day, a fine man has died.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/01/gore-vidal-dies

Curiosities; Eco Spheres

Inside these sealed glass balls live shrimp, algae, and bacteria, all swimming around in filtered seawater. Put it somewhere with some light, and this little ecosystem will chug along happily for years, no feeding or cleaning necessary, totally oblivious to the fact that the rest of the world exists outside.

Eco Spheres came out of research looking at ways to develop self-contained ecosystems for long duration space travel. They're like little microcosms for the entire world, 

It would be for someone who  has no garden, nor time to look after pot plants, but still wanting something living around. In secret, I feel  sorry for the algae and shrimps to be contained in this sealed glass sphere… instead of tumbling around in a lake or sea or some normal, natural environment.

A bit of Philosophy; Epicurus;

My philosophy teacher; Epicurus;

Born 4 February 341 BCE

Archonship of Sosigenes

Died 270 BCE (aged 72)

Archonship of Pytharatus

Nationality Greek

Era Ancient philosophy

Region Western philosophy

School Epicureanism

Main interests Atomism, Materialism

Influenced by

Democritus, 

Must have: A delight in the countryside and gardens.

Key promise: Peace and tranquillity.

Epicurus

(Ancient Greek: Epikouros, "ally, comrade"; 341 BCE – 270 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.

 Only a few fragments and letters of Epicurus's 300 written works remain. Much of what is known about Epicurean philosophy derives from later followers and commentators.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. 

He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared; the gods do not reward or punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space. Epicurus

The school

Epicurus' school, which was based in the garden of his house and thus called "The Garden" had a small but devoted following in his lifetime.
 His school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception. 
 An inscription on the gate to The Garden is recorded by Seneca in epistle XXI of Epistulae morales ad Lucilium:
Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.

Science and ethics

Epicurus is a key figure in the development of science and the scientific method because of his insistence that nothing should be believed, except that which was tested through direct observation and logical deduction. 

Many of his ideas about nature and physics presaged important scientific concepts of our time. He was a key figure in the Axial Age, the period from 800 BCE to 200 BCE, during which similarly revolutionary thinking appeared in China, India, Iran, the Near East, and Ancient Greece.

His statement of the Ethic of Reciprocity as the foundation of ethics is the earliest in Ancient Greece.

 Like Democritus, he was an atomist, believing that the fundamental constituents of the world were indivisible little bits of matter (atoms, Greek atomos, indivisible) flying through empty space (kenos). Everything that occurs is the result of the atoms colliding, rebounding, and becoming  

entangled with one another, with no purpose or plan behind their motions.(Compare this with the modern study of particle physics.

He regularly admitted women and slaves into his school and was one of the first Greeks to break from the god-fearing and god-worshipping tradition common at the time, even while affirming that religious activities are useful as a way to contemplate the gods and to use them as an example of the pleasant life.

 Epicurus participated in the activities of traditional Greek religion, but taught that one should avoid holding false opinions about the gods. The gods are immortal and blessed and men who ascribe any additional qualities that are alien to immortality and blessedness are, according to Epicurus, impious. The gods do not punish the bad and reward the good as the common man believes. The opinion of the crowd is, Epicurus claims, that the gods "send great evils to the wicked and great blessings to the righteous who model themselves after the gods," whereas Epicurus believes the gods, in reality, do not concern themselves at all with human beings.

Epicurus' teachings were introduced into medical philosophy and practice by the Epicurean doctor Asclepiades of Bithynia, who was the first physician who introduced Greek medicine in Rome.

 Asclepiades introduced the friendly, sympathetic, pleasing and painless treatment of patients. He advocated humane treatment of mental disorders, had insane persons freed from confinement and treated them with natural therapy, such as diet and massages. His teachings are surprisingly modern, therefore Asclepiades is considered to be a pioneer physician in psychotherapy, physical therapy and molecular medicine.

He also believed (contra Aristotle) that death was not to be feared. When a man dies, he does not feel the pain of death because he no longer is and he therefore feels nothing. Therefore, as Epicurus famously said, "death is nothing to us." When we exist death is not, and when death exists we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death there is awareness.

From this doctrine arose the Epicurean epitaph: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo (I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care) – which is inscribed on the gravestones of his followers and seen on many ancient gravestones of the Roman Empire. This quote is often used today at humanist funerals. 

Also quoted in the Shakespearean To be or not to be that is the question.

The "Epicurean paradox" is a version of the problem of evil. It is a trilemma argument (God is omnipotent, God is good, but Evil exists); or more commonly seen as this quote:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?

Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?

Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?

Then why call him God?

More facts and notes  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus 

Photos/my garden

Link  Poetic Takeaway's; a trivial world of words;

Link Titania Everyday;

Holiness,

Photo/my garden

What is holiness?  (Ex mea sententia )

Mankind is sometimes called his or her holiness;  I do question mankind called holy.

Popes of the catholic faith are called holiness.  Many predecessors of today's pope have been quite debauched. Perhaps many popes  have been good men, but surly not holy.

The Dalai Lama is called his holiness, he might be a good man but not holy.

Mother Teresa is sometimes called holy.  She might have been a good woman but also not holy. 

Mankind can not be holy, our nature does not allow it.

Holiness has been a  term adopted by religions or monarchs to be special, to be above normal mankind.

To install respect and worship towards certain people or gods.

Holiness is pure like a  flower. 

Mankind is not pure.

Mankind is hypocritical, slaughters, steals, lies, is envious, traits which are in all mankind. 

A tiny child, a baby animal, a tree, a plant, even a weed can be holy; but not adult people.

If you want to worship, bent your knees

 in front of  a flowering meadow.

Photo my garden

♥

(Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) of, relating to, or associated with God or a deity; sacred

2. (Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) endowed or invested with extreme purity or sublimity

3. (Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) devout, godly, or virtuous

holier-than-thou offensively sanctimonious or self-righteous a holier-than-thou attitude

holy terror

a.  a difficult or frightening person

b.  Irish informal a person who is an active gambler, womanizer, etc.

© Photo/Text Titania


Link  Poetic Takeaway's; a trivial world of words;

Manifest Truth;

Come you masters of war

You that build all the guns

You that build the death planes

You that build the big bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

Bob Dylan

§

Wars haves been and still are dirty, deadly games, played on the chessboard of the world by people with no conscience and an insatiable love for money. 
There is nothing genuine about the politics of war. The common people are the pawns. There is one question I ask myself why is it ,that always the worst of people land themselves in the highest echelons. Do they have such flawed characters that they do anything for power and money?
Politicians never work for the people who have actually voted them into office.  Politicians always  work against the interest of the people. They favour Plutocracy and  Oligarchy and  the banking hierarchy. When the people  protest they send in the police, the military and the guns to quickly subdue them . Democracy is only a word with nine letters, there is no more meaning to it in today’s world.  Titania

§

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel . . . And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth.
Mark Twain

§

It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.

Plato

§

All warfare is based on deception.

Sun Tzu

The Art of War

© Titania  Photo  Hervey Bay;

Contemporary witches;

The three witches;  

Cast; Margaret Thatcher; Madeleine Albright; Hilary Clinton; 

(A fourth witch in waiting, Angela Merkel.)

There are so many around, have been around, and are still emerging;  Nasty women abound when it comes to politics; 

They are stirring the pot with mighty spoons;

In go the ingredients.

Lies upon lies, polished with a smile and an ice cold heart.

In go thick slabs of deceit and arrogance  delivered with  flourish and Pearls around their necks.

A good serve of venom from their lips plus cunning to thicken the broth;

Adding iniquity and covetousness;

Spice it with malice and slander, 

Ready to be delivered to the hungry!

 For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. 

Double, double toil and trouble; 

    Fire burn, and caldron bubble. 

Macbeth; William Shakespeare.

Thatcher, you might like to know that she was also a very, very close friend with General Augusto Pinochet, fascist President of Chile who was responsible for the deaths and torture of tens of thousands of Chilean people, all of which Thatcher wholeheartedly endorsed!

Madeleine Albright confronted on New World Order WAR crimes - ONE MILLION CHILDREN DEAD! She looks like a witch and acted like a witch.

Hillary Clinton "She who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a criminal". Bertolt Brecht

©Titania

Science;

Scientist creates lifelike cells out of metal
Researcher says he has created living cells made of metal instead of carbon — and they may be evolving;

Scientists trying to create artificial life generally work under the assumption that life must be carbon-based, but what if a living thing could be made from another element?

One British researcher may have proven that theory, potentially rewriting the book of life. Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow has created lifelike cells from metal — a feat few believed feasible. The discovery opens the door to the possibility that there may be life forms in the universe not based on carbon, reports New Scientist. 

Even more remarkable, Cronin has hinted that the metal-based cells may be replicating themselves and evolving.

"I am 100 percent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology," he said.

The high-functioning "cells" that Cronin has built are constructed from large polyoxometalates derived from a range of metal atoms, like tungsten. He gets them to assemble in bubbly spheres by mixing them in a specialized saline solution, and calls the resultant cell-like structures "inorganic chemical cells," or iCHELLs.The metallic bubbles are certainly cell-like, but are they actually alive? Cronin has made a compelling case for the comparison by constructing the iCHELLS with a number of features that make them function much as real cells do. For instance, by modifying the outer oxide structure of the bubbles so that they are porous, he has essentially built iCHELLs with membranes capable of selectively allowing chemicals in and out according to size, much as what happens with the walls of real cells.

Cronin's team has also created bubbles inside of bubbles, which opens the door to the possibility of developing specialized "organelles." Even more compelling, some of the iCHELLs are being equipped with the ability to photosynthesize. The process is still rudimentary, but by linking some oxide molecules to light sensitive dyes, the team has constructed a membrane that splits water into hydrogen ions, electrons and oxygen when illuminated — which is how photosynthesis begins in real cells.

Of course, the most compelling lifelike quality of the iCHELLs so far is their ability to evolve. Although they aren't equipped with anything remotely resembling DNA, and therefore can't replicate themselves in the same way that real cells do, Cronin has nevertheless managed to create some polyoxometalates that can use each other as templates to self-replicate. Furthermore, he is currently embarked on a seven-month experiment to see if iCHELLs placed in different environments will evolve.

The early results have been encouraging. "I think we have just shown the first droplets that can evolve," Cronin hinted.

Though the idea of a strange new metal-based form of life rapidly evolving in a lab somewhere on Earth may sound ominous, the finding could forever change how life is defined. It also greatly improves the odds of life existing elsewhere in the universe, since life forms could potentially be built from any number of different elements. 
The possibilities are exciting to imagine, even if Cronin's iCHELLs eventually fall short of full-blown living cells. His research may have already blown the door off previous paradigms about the conditions necessary for life to form.

Photo P Gordon

By  Brian Nelson

Where are we going from here?

Baby Rockstar;

©Ts

Justice;

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973 

J. R. Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature there from 1945 to 1959. 

He was a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings manuscripts,  The Silmarillion  together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings.

While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature,  more precisely, of high fantasy

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Tolkien thoughts

Many that live deserve death.

 And some die that deserve life.

 Can you give it to them?

 Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety.

 Even the wise cannot see all ends.

 -   J. R. R. Tolkien  -

The Lord Of the Rings, Book Four, Chapter One

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Dick Cheney  received a Heart transplant to continue his life.

  In the name of justice, I say there is no justice; 

Dick Cheney, whose actions directly caused deaths and injuries that number in the hundreds of thousands. The deaths he is responsible for are ongoing to this day, in fact  If there were any justice to be found, whatever profits he earns from his book would be spread out between the families of dead and wounded soldiers whom he lied into war in Iraq, between the families of dead and wounded Iraqi civilians, and between Americans like Valerie Plame, who along with numerous other intelligence figures, had their lives bulldozed by Cheney's eight-year rampage through our system of government.

By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed   Read here  Dick Cheney the ultimate American Terrorist.

Been there, done this;

Paris

Place de la Concorde  one of the major public squares in Paris, France. Measuring 8.64 hectares in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.

In  2008  Sacré Coeur  was visited by 10,5 Million people.

7 Million visited the Eiffel Tower.

Notre Dame was visited by 13.6 Million  people.

French Trivia

A Powder Room was strictly used to powder the wig!

Coco Chanel said:" There is time for work and time for love; that leaves no other time!

Bistro comes from the word bistrouille. French slang for a mixture of inexpensive brandy and coffee!

Late in the 17Th  century small rooms designed for grooming - les toilettes, meaning both dressing room, cabinet de toilette - and the toilette itself - appeared.

Marie Antoinette was partial to purple. she splashed her private rooms in her favourite shades; washed wooden pieces in dignified greenish grey.

Centuries ago, Empress Eugenie's  love for perfumes led to a race to produce alluring perfume bottles. Today, factices - factitions,  bottles that serve as prototypes for perfumeries - are collectibles.

©Ts

Bookshelf;

The written word abides;

The winter Palace;   by Eva Stachniak;

From the book:  ...…I was a tongue, a gazette. The bearer of the truth of the whispers”…

Elizabeth and Catherine had their female spies at court; these girls or women were called  "a tongue".

A well written and researched novel, brings to life the Empress Elisabeth and the early years of

  Catherine the Great;  

 Elizaveta Petrovna (29 December 1709 – 5 January 1762), also known as Yelisavet and Elizabeth, was the Empress of Russia (1741-1762).

As a child, Elizabeth was bright, if not brilliant, but her formal education was both imperfect and desultory. Her father, Peter the Great adored her. Elizabeth was his daughter and in many ways resembled him as a feminine replica, both physically and temperamentally. Peter had no leisure to devote to her training, and her mother, Catherine I of Russia, was too down-to-earth and illiterate to superintend her formal studies.

She had a French governess, and was fluent in Italian, German and French. She was also an excellent dancer and rider. From her earliest years she delighted everyone with her extraordinary beauty and vivacity. She was commonly known as the leading beauty of the Russian Empire.

Born: April 21 (May 2), 1729 Szczecin, Pomerania (Prussian Kingdom)

Died: November 6 (17), 1796 Tsarskoye Selo, Russia

The future Catherine the Great was born a German princess in one of many tiny German states, but ended her life a powerful and enlightened ruler of the vast Russian Empire. In 1745 she married Prince Carl Peter Ulrich, the heir to the Russian throne (the future Emperor Peter III). Being a bright personality with a strong sense of determination she joined the Russian Orthodox Church, learned the Russian language and through personal study acquired a brilliant education. She was proud to be a friend and an active correspondent of some of the brightest thinkers of the day, such as the prominent philosophers of the French Enlightenment, Rousseau and Diderot.

In June 1762 Catherine took an active part in a coup against her husband Emperor Peter III. He was overthrown and later killed "in an accident", and Catherine became Russia's autocratic ruler. Throughout her long reign she undertook many reforms and ensured the extension of the Russian Empire by acquiring territories in Southern Ukraine and the Crimea. Amongst her reforms was the extension of rights and privileges granted to the Russian nobility, which won Catherine popularity among the Russian social elite.

Catherine had a string of sensationalized and widely publicized love affairs with various army officers and politicians, although much of what was reported was untrue. Nevertheless, she promoted most of her lovers to the highest ranks and some of them proved themselves extremely talented and able figures (for example Prince Potyomkin, a very prominent general and political figure of the day).


Catherine the Great, being the foreign element in the Romanov dynasty, wanted to establish strong links with earlier Russian history and the Romanov Tsars and with this in mind she commissioned an impressive monument to Peter the Great - the Bronze Horseman. Most experts agree that Catherine changed the appearance of St. Petersburg quite significantly, and turned it into one of the most impressive capital cities in Europe.

Catherine the Great died in 1796 at the age of 67, having lived longer than any other Romanov monarch. She was buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.


My thoughts about Monarchies;

Monarchies in the 21 first century  are outdated and should be abolished!

I do not think they have a genuine place in today’s society. The term aristocracy is nothing else then a man made word to deceive the people, duped to function as the tool of another person or power.There is no aristocracy this is a man made invention.
 Aristocracy had its time and  worked well for them but now it is time to get rid of this invention as it  is absolutely superfluous. People are people,  none has blue blood, the so called aristocracy are humans like everybody else, they have the same bodily functions, nothing superior.

Why should tax payers money be used to prop up the spongers of society, whose forefathers have killed, lied and robbed the people for centuries?

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.