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Giving an account of heaven, as all history demonstrates, is neither as entertaining nor as precise as the vivid and endless depiction of hell.   Hell is much more fun to describe than its counterpart, especially for those tender headed fundamentalists whose sole raison d¹être is to wish us there by creating it here. As Borges points out, and Bernard Shaw before him, there will be multitudes who will find hell as having been tremendously over-rated and in its torments hopelessly inadequate.  Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was born about 150 A.D. in Carthage, North Africa, a city then considered second in importance only to Rome.  An early Christian apologist and dogmatist, Tertullian, borrowed from the vividness of a depicted Hell to lend point to his depiction of Heaven.  Among the delights of Heaven, he decided, would be the contemplation of the tortures of the damned. 

How wonderful.
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...and what a deal!  Imagine the pleasures of watching a sixteen year old girl who managed to die of a heroin overdose in a Detroit ghetto spend eternity trying to kick heroin...  hey, she should have found Christ; her loss is our eternal gain; it's better than television. Or how about the Palestinian mother of six who was crushed to death along with her family when an Israeli bulldozer flattened her 500 year old home and garden.  Perhaps we'll get to watch it again and again, forever in slow-motion replay.  She was a Moslem; they don't get to go to heaven, only Christians, Catholics, Jewish Sephardics, Hindus and Moonies.  ...perhaps.  I'm not sure who gets to go, and doubtless there are many who will assure you that I definitely will not get there.  They are wrong; I've already arrived.  I live in Heaven, and I'm staring down into hell.  What a view.  ...let me tell you about it.

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The view of the USA from the outside looking in is definitely very different from the view from within.  Feedback, and unbiased observation, tells me so.  (I am as purely unbiased as a meadow of snow,   ...honest.) 

Ayn Rand once made the observation that "a dictatorship has four characteristics: one-party rule, executions without trial for political offenses, expropriation or nationalization of private property, and censorship. Above all, this last. So long as men can speak and write freely, so long as there is no censorship, they still have a chance to reform their society or to put it on a better road. When censorship is imposed, that is the sign that men should go on strike intellectually, by which I mean, should not cooperate with the social system in any way whatsoever."

This week, as I write this, Qatar-based satellite television station al Jazeera has broadcast parts of a 33-minute video recorded by Osama Bin Laden. The station says the full tape will be broadcast on Thursday (27 December 2001) at 1830 GMT.  When I got news of this event, it meant little or nothing to me.  The prospect of watching 33 minutes of Osama Bin Laden is actually less exciting than watching 33 minutes of a George W. Bush speech, and that my friends is really saying something. 

Who would be interested in watching 33 minutes of Osama Bin Laden? 

The Al Jazeera television network is carried by satellite to an estimated 35 million people in the Middle East. Over the last decade, satellite dishes have sprouted like mushrooms on rooftops from Cairo to Casablanca, the West Bank and beyond, including some places where you wouldn't think it was possible, like Bedouin tents in southern Jordan. It's part of an information revolution that allows Al-Jazeera to bypass government censors and broadcast directly into people's homes throughout the Arab world.  So, the facts are, someone is going to watch the video, perhaps all 33 minutes without falling asleep. 
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The consensus is that Mr. Bin Laden does not hold a mandate of popularity over the people of the region.  The fact that Afghanistan appears to be in the process of developing a stable government helps boost the credibility that Bin Laden and his cohorts were not doing Afghanistan a lot of good.  But this article isn't about Bin Laden, nor about the 35 million Arab speaking viewers who will watch the video.  This article is about the view from afar, the view of America from the outside, looking in.  How many readers living in America know that the video has been censored?  Not censored to the 35 million viewers who speak Arabic, but censored in America?  To clarify, so that there is no possibility of being misunderstood, it is Americans, and Americans only, who will not be allowed to see the video in its entirety.  It has been censored by the US government, and is prohibited to US citizens.

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What is it that the US government doesn't want you to see?  (......I know, and won't tell.) 

Okay, that's reason number one, of why it's better to live outside of the USA than inside the USA.  Let's move on to the next 38,999 reasons. 

Drugs. 

Do you take drugs?  Sure you do.  We all take drugs, unless we are Christian Scientists, or perhaps Seventh Day Adventists, or if we hold similar like-minded beliefs about the harmfulness of chemical intervention into our body. 

Were you aware of the wonderful advances that have occurred in life-extension drugs and in smart drugs?  How about Anti Aging Medicine and such drugs as HGH?  HGH is one of many endocrine hormones, like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, melatonin and DHEA, that all tend to decline in production with the aging process. While many of these hormones can be replaced to deter some of the effects of aging, HGH reaches far beyond the scope of any of these hormones. Not only does HGH prevent biological aging, but it also acts to significantly reverse a broad range of the signs and symptoms associated with the aging process.

Are you over the age of fifty?  HGH can extend your life and prevent disease.  If I were you, I'd go to the nearest pharmacy and buy some today.  Whoops.  You live in the USA?  Smart drugs are not legal in the USA, as the FDA does not view ignorance as a disease.  (Would you have guessed that?)   While HGH is legal, in the USA you can't simply go to your nearest pharmacy and buy HGH.  I can, but I live in Panama, and Panama is a free nation, not in rhetoric and bombastic statement, but in absolute fact. 

..and if I want smart drugs?  I simply go to my nearest pharmacy and pick some up. 

Isn't that harmful, you might ask. 

The main definition of smart drugs is the term Nootropics, and the defining characteristic of a nootropic is that it has to be able to improve your intelligence without any side effects.  Whoops, the FDA, cannot approve anything that doesn't have a side-effect, as they do not accept classification for any drug that is free of side-effects.  (If they would take smart drugs they would change the legislation, but they cannot because they aren't legal in the USA.)  Hmmm? 

Living in the USA can be very harmful to your health, not to mention your intelligence. 

Contact lenses?  I simply go and buy them...   no endless, and expensive, round of continuous high-cost prescriptions and purchases.   Get a check up every other year, at your discretion, so you can determine any changes in wattage, and viola; whenever you want what you want, you get what you want.  (Without filling the pockets of the ophthalmologists  who passed the heinous legislation that prevents you from pretending you are smart enough to use reason and make medical decisions for yourself.)   Why put up with a system that requires a level of obedient silence that closely resembles stupidity? 

Doctors?  Half the price.  Entry into American Medical Schools is hampered by AMA quotas. Ward Dean M.D. of The Center for Bio-Gerontology, Pensacola, Florida, spoke out on this issue in an article entitled Solving the Medical Care Crisis in the United States with a Free Market Approach. [See Resources] In this article he stated, "Open [up the] enrollments in the USA, for medical, nursing, and other health-care related fields like X-ray, laboratory technology, physical therapy, etc., to allow all qualified applicants to enroll. Acceptance into medical, nursing, and other schools in the health care field is very competitive. For example, there are probably 10-20 qualified applicants for every vacancy in medical school. Most nursing schools have 2-3 year waiting periods (despite an alleged chronic shortage of nurses). Many highly motivated and talented people wind up going into other fields. If there are not enough vacancies, or not enough schools to accommodate the demand, the class sizes should be increased, or more schools should be built!"  We agree with Dr. Dean. Until his advice is taken, if it is, students have the option of attending foreign medical schools rather than abandoning their dream, and patients have the option of going to foreign hospitals that charge lower prices for the same standard of medical care.  EscapeArtist.com has resources and articles on this subject and will continue to add more.   [See resources for links to foreign medical schools and overseas hospitals in the resource section at the end of this article.]

Cuban Cigars

Cuban Cigars?  Hell yes, why not?  Life without Cuban cigars is hardly bearable.  My friend Clayman, who sells Cuban cigars over the internet tells me that over 75% of his customers are in Washington D.C. Hypocrites rule you.  Why should you deny yourself the lifestyle that they take for granted?  They don't care about you, they take you for granted, and what they do for their own pleasure on a daily basis they make forbidden to you.   You live at the whim of people whose power does not derive from your own consent, and who regard you as expendable, disposable drones, strategically designed by them to support their power. Neither black nor white are true colors,   ...but then neither is gray. 

Why should you be denied the luxury of a Cuban cigar because a bunch of perverts in Washington D.C. have an ax to grind with Castro?   As in all things relating to the USA government, the embargo on Cuba is a subliminal program that is irrational, irrelevant, and immoral. It serves their own hidden agenda and violates your freedom of choice.  Are you so stupid that you will do what you are ordered to do even if you perceive it to be wrong? 

America is one of the least free nations in the so-called free world.  You can scream about how free America is until you are blue in the face, but that is just rhetoric.  The fact is, it is not free.  Nor is it fair. 

Cubans enjoy a high standard of health care and a level of education unprecedented in Latin America. Over 70% of all adult Cubans have a college education. One in 300 Cubans is a medical doctor. The level of medical care and the standard of medicine in Cuba is superior to any country in Latin America and is without any question among the very best medical care in the world. 
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There has been a tendency, especially by the American government, to ignore these gains.  The standard argument against the existence of Cuban successes is that Cubans are not free. The so-called free world uses the lack of civil liberties in Cuba as the yardstick for judging everything else about Cuba.  There is no question in my mind that freedom is my most excellent possession, and I¹d hate like hell to have to live without freedom.  But in much of Latin America, freedom has meant being able to work in maquiladora-like zones or starve.  Worst, the deck is stacked.  What is passed off as capitalism by the U.S. government, resembles capitalism only in its most orchestrated form.    "Capitalism,  in much of latin America, is a dwarf ...pretending to be a child."    -  Eduardo Galeano

In the 'Free World' Honduran girls go to work in the morning at a maquila producing garments for "The Gap." They work long shifts, 6 days a week, for pennies an hour. They can't go to school, and they are forced to take birth control pills, despite the fact that they are Catholic. The US Government position?  "Hey, it's the free market... it's good for them."

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The orchestration of economics is geared to produce slaves and beneficiaries, and it does so very efficiently. There are plenty of bright people who would argue that this isn't so. They will tell you that the current style of orchestrated capitalism will produce a better world. They are idiots, willfully blind, have a vested interest to obfuscate the facts, or they are bullshitters. 

I would ask those astute believers in today's version of capitalism to consider what the consequence of a totally open Cuba would bring. How long before the economic wizards in Washington would reduce all the Cuban women back into whores, the men into banana pickers, and destroy the educational system?  Would we have another Guatemala? Another Colombia?  How good were conditions in Cuba prior to Castro?  Wasn't the nation of Cuba prior to Castro little more than a country club where Americans could gamble, debase women, and milk the fruit of Cuban resources?  It sure as hell was. It was a pigsty of immorality in which the average Cuban had neither hope of an education nor medical treatment for his family. What American-style success story in latin America would the believers in reform grant to the Cuba they envision?  Name any country in latin America.  How about the maquiladora zones? Would the living hell of the maquiladora zones be preferable to today's Cuba?  By whose standards? Hitler's? 

But why single out Latin America?  Forty million Americans are murdered, maimed, raped, mugged, or robbed every year.  Why are these conditions and comparisons not made when comparing Cuba to the so-called free world?  It's very clear that there is a vested interest among US government power-brokers to view things the way the power-brokers want us to perceive them. China murdered its children on television (Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989), yet the U.S. trades with China because Boeing had a crying jag when a French airplane manufacturer got a large contract that Boeing wanted. So the legislation in Washington D.C. was Œadjusted¹ to allow free-trade with China. "Engagement accomplishes more than trade boycott" was the rallying cry.  What about Cuba?  The children of Cuba are alive and in school.  There is a street sign in Havana which reads, ³200 million children in the world sleep in the streets, today. Not one of them is Cuban."  I told an acquaintance of mine about this street sign, and he made a rather sardonic remark, and then he added that he thought it sounded like propaganda.  He's never been to Cuba. The fact is that 200 million children in the world sleep in the streets, today, and not one of them is Cuban. 

Am I a socialist? The answer is no.   But I am on the outside looking in, and I can assure you that what you get in the U.S. press if as far from the truth as is possible. It's as subliminally loaded and distorted as the computer generated world in the movie Matrix.  I'm neither celebrating Cuba nor socialism.  I'm mourning the US government's lack of honesty, its tendency towards data-distortion, as well as its impoverished level of factual information about the world. If you live in America, you live like a blind fetus in a tank where all of the incoming data is as make-believe as a fairy tale and as deadly as a cobra.  When you're on the outside looking in, it all becomes apparent. 

The Names Of Movies:
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'Operation Just Cause,' 'Desert Storm,' etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum.  What does  the accolade Desert Storm mean?  Does it mean that 500 civilians, mostly women and children, are going to get burned alive in a Baghdad bomb shelter?  Does it mean that thousands of American GIs are going to get Gulf War Syndrome, and be forgotten? Or does it inspire a view of a clear blue, morning movie set with Gregory Peck heroically leading a squadron of fighter planes on a dawn raid against a villainous enemy? (Badly out-numbered, though they are, our heroes save the day.)   Where's Yossarian? Where are the forgotten victims of Gulf War Syndrome? That's for later, after the movie and the popcorn... when the ether created by the false name wears off and reality sets in. 

The use of a false cinematic name for unspeakable acts is like someone splashing on a bottle of sweet smelling perfume when they stink. What kind of idiot would use the name of a movie to describe a war?  What kind of people would accept it without comment or protest?  Why not call World War II, 'Gone With The Wind,'  and Vietnam, 'Doctor Kissinger's Magic Show?'   If the propaganda ministers in Washington D.C. paste a cinematic name on an atrocity, it does not change the fact that it is an atrocity.  Nor does it change its true nature.

From the outside looking in, it is clear that the Emperor is stark naked, as well as obscene (It's also clear that he is much in need of liposuction.), but the saddest part is the audience accepts the tinsel-town name and views the savagery as soap opera, while the media orchestrated public debate that accompanies the film bites is carried out and accepted as if it were truth.  Which it is not.  Manipulated consensus does not change reality, nor is truth up for popular vote.

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And as for Mr. "Doctor" Kissinger, the "Manhattan Milosevic," when is he going before the Hague?  (Doctor?  How did he pull that one off? That's almost as rich as calling Joseph Mengele, Doctor Mengele.) It's a given that adding "Doctor" to your name adds weight, even if it's Doctor of Divinity.  Get a Doctor of Divinity degree by mail, no special training required, and while you might not be able to butcher 1,000,000 Cambodians,  you can still claim be an authority of sorts.  There is the story of a person who claims to have been on an elevator once with Henry Kissinger. He asked, "Aren't you Henry Kissinger?" The reply was, "No. I'm Dr. Kissinger." 

"Hey pal, did you lose your first name somewhere? Maybe we can help you look for it."

Why isn't Doctor Kissinger (Doctor of Diplomacy) pulled before the Hague you ask?  Whoops, he worked for both houses of Congress.  We can't bust Ali Baba without busting the entire den of thieves; that's a no-no. Also, note that our good friend Senator Helms has made it clear that he will block any treaty that would turn any American over to foreigners for war crimes trials.  What's good for the goose is an action only done on someone else's backside. 
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For more of the above, plus a photograph of your author, Doctor Roger Gallo D.D.  - Click Here -.
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