Jerome

From the page: "In 2003, police in Warwickshire, England, opened a garden shed and found a whimpering, cowering dog. It had been locked in the shed and abandoned. It was dirty and malnourished, and had clearly been abused.

In an act of kindness, the police took the dog, which was a greyhound female, to the nearby Nuneaton and Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary, run by a man named Geoff Grewcock and known as a willing haven for animals abandoned, orphaned or otherwise in need.

Geoff Grewcock and the other sanctuary staff went to work with two aims: to restore the dog to full health, and to win her trust. It took several weeks, but eventually both goals were achieved.

They named her Jasmine, and they started to think about finding her an adoptive home.

The dog had other ideas. No-one remembers now how it began, but Jasmine started welcoming all animal arrivals at the sanctuary. It wouldn't matter if it was a puppy, a fox cub, a rabbit or, probably, a rhinoceros, Jasmine would peer into the box or cage and, where possible, deliver a welcoming lick.

Geoff Grewcock relates one of the early incidents. "We had two puppies that had been abandoned by a nearby railway line. One was a Lakeland Terrier cross and another was a Jack Russell Doberman cross. They were tiny when they arrived at the centre and Jasmine approached them and grabbed one by the scruff of the neck in her mouth and put him on the settee. Then she fetched the other one and sat down with them, cuddling them."

"But she is like that with all of our animals, even the rabbits. She takes all the stress out of them and it helps them to not only feel close to her but to settle into their new surroundings.

"She has done the same with the fox and badger cubs, she licks the rabbits and guinea pigs and even lets the birds perch on the bridge of her nose."

Jasmine, the timid, abused, deserted waif, became the animal sanctuary's resident surrogate mother, a role for which she might have been born. The list of orphaned and abandoned youngsters she has cared for comprises five fox cubs, four badger cubs, 15 chicks, eight guinea pigs, two stray puppies and 15 rabbits.

And one roe deer fawn. Tiny Bramble, 11 weeks old, was found semi-conscious in a field. Upon arrival at the sanctuary, Jasmine cuddled up to her to keep her warm, and then went into the full foster mum role. Jasmine the greyhound showers Bramble the roe deer with affection and makes sure nothing is matted in her fur.

"They are inseparable," says Geoff Grewcock. "Bramble walks between her legs and they keep kissing each other. They walk together round the sanctuary. It's a real treat to see them."

Jasmine will continue to care for Bramble until she is old enough to be returned to woodland life. When that happens, Jasmine will not be lonely. She will be too busy showering love and affection on the next orphan or victim of abuse."

From the page: "Just before Saturday's decision by Israeli officials to declare a 'ceasefire' in Gaza, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni received a signed assurance from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the US government would provide security and intelligence personnel to assist the Israeli military in its ongoing military occupation of all Palestinian land.

Previously, the US role in the conflict had been limited to material support, including weapons shipments and billions of dollars in financial commitment to Israel each year. Now, the US has committed in writing to the Israeli Foreign Minister (although no Congressional debate or resolution took place), to provide "resources, wherewithal and technology necessary in order to fulfill our part of the bargain", according to Condoleezza Rice.

The "US part of the bargain", according to Rice's spokesperson, thus consists of military and intelligence equipment and personnel with the aim of "inhibit[ing] the ability of Hamas to rearm."

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called a meeting with Condoleezza Rice just two hours before the Israeli cabinet was set to vote on a unilateral ceasefire. But some analysts say that this bold strategic maneuver may have been years in the making. It secures a new role for the US military and intelligence agencies in the region, on the very last day of business for the administration of George W. Bush.

The commitments made by Rice will hold for the incoming Obama administration as well."

Frank Zappa
Interview by Bob Marshall, October 22, 1988

From part 8: "Bob Marshall: Where I get the idea part is, I remember you did an interview in the L.A. Free Press in the summer of '69 and you mentioned Pauline Oliveri's work with sound, above the audible and below, creating a mass, and you liked that idea.

Frank Zappa: Not that it created a mass. It created something audible. It produced a sum indifference tone which happened to be located within the audible frequency range. By combining something so high you couldn't hear it and something so low you couldn't hear it, it yielded something in the middle that you could hear. Whether or not you like what you hear in the middle is another question. The concept is brilliant.

Bob Marshall: Yeah, because it showed you how physical reality is, or the way it is, right?

Frank Zappa: It's one aspect of it.

Bob Marshall: Are there other aspects you could talk about?

Frank Zappa: If you buy the idea that the vibrational rates translate into matter, and then if you understand the concept of vibrational rates above perception and below perception combining to create a reality, that opens up the door to some pretty science-fiction matter possibilities. If you can create an audible reality by a sine wave above the range of what your ear can hear and another one from below, and you put them together and suddenly it creates something that your ear can detect, is it not possible that solid matter of an unknown origin could manifest periodically because of frequencies of some unknown nature above and below which, for short durations, manifest solid objects? It could explain a lot of strange things that people see.

Bob Marshall: UFO's come to mind immediately.

Frank Zappa: Yeah.
[...]

Bob Marshall: I think it was during that interview where you were talking about the speech-song, "sprechstimme", you were saying you had solved some musical problems. Who had those musical questions? Did Varese have them?

Frank Zappa: No, questions that I have to answer for myself. These are questions about how you get the point across. And oftentimes I've just appropriated the speech-song. When a person sings a word, the idea that is transmitted transcends the word because there's so much other data connected with the word at pitch. Understand?

Bob Marshall: Are you talking about sound?

Frank Zappa: No, the person hearing, receiving the data, is not only receiving the word.

Bob Marshall: The "meaning"?

Frank Zappa: That's right, the text of the word. He is also receiving the pitch data at which it is sung. In other words, that same word sung at a high pitch means something different than the word sung at a low pitch. He is receiving the data of the harmonic climate in which the word exists. He's also receiving the data of the relationship of the pitch of the word to the climate itself. In other words, if you have an A minor chord and the word is sung on a B, then that word is going to stick out because it's not part of the chord. There are three notes in an A minor chord - A, C, E. If you sing that word on any of the notes which are part of the chord, it recedes into the chord. It's part of the background. If the word is sung on a note which is not part of the chord, it steps out from the chord and draws attention to itself and becomes a matter of emphasis. These are the types of extra data that exist when you sing a word. An extra spin gets put on the word if you half say it, half sing it. It makes it even more 3D. It leaps out from the harmonic support and draws even more attention to itself if you've been singing along and you hear this melody and you get to this certain part and you half sing it, half say it. And it sticks out even further if you absolutely say it because it's incongruous in the setting."

A Letter to America
Anwaar Hussain

From the page: "With your election of Barack Hussein Obama, you have almost realized the dream of Martin Luther King. Now truly you have a chance to rise up as a nation and live out the proper meaning of the creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Now you have an opportunity to ensure that `on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners indeed are able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood'. Now is the time to make certain that your great country does really get `transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice'. Now is that moment in time to become color blind forever to the skin tones of not just your countrymen but of all the citizens of our planet. Do that and you have arrived.

But before you can join Barack Obama's sweet lilting voice in singing, Free at last! Free at last!, Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!, you have one last ritual to perform. And that is the killing of the demons of your recent past lest they come back to haunt you yet again. Unless you perform that sacred rite too, this transformation stands incomplete.

Look around yourselves and you will see on your national scene the authors of your misfortunes still strutting about in full vigor. Your dictator president with a God-complex, your conceited leaders with a talent in exploitation, your self-righteous and egotistical political elites who dived to the murkiest depths to perpetuate their villainous rule and your bigoted religious leaders who poured venom in the name of God; all are there.

Switch on a TV channel, read a newspaper report, listen to the radio and you will find that the supporting cast of parasites, plunderers and human lowlifes, who helped your previous masters put on the gaudy show full of blood and gore, are fast camouflaging themselves to ensure the survival of their craft. With the latest change in the political landscape of your country, they are about to merge with the background wherefrom they will stalk your great nation, lying in wait, for a chance to seize its jugular once more; this time for good if they can help."

Continued here.