William Blake

Jerusalem
Poem lyrics of Jerusalem by William Blake.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

http://www.dalitstan.org/books/bibai/bibai1.html

Introduction
To The
Bible of Aryan Invasions

Aryan Invasions & Genocide of Negroes, Semites & Mongols

The Bible of Aryan Invasions, Vol. I

by Prof. Uthaya Naidu

Preface
The discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization in the 1920s brought to light a suppressed chapter of Indian history, namely the large-scale destruction and genocide perpetrated over 1000 years by the Aryan invaders on indigenous Negroid Sudras, Mongoloids and Semites. However, this episode is blatantly denied by the Brahmin-controlled press of India, which propagates highly distorted versions of history, and even goes to the extent of denying that any genocide took place. Such distortion of history leads to the continuation of crimes against humanity; the massacre of Sudroid Tamils in Sri Lanka by Aryan Buddhists and the genocide of Dalits by the Brahmanist Republic of India after 1947 are merely consequences of the negationist mindset. In order to comprehend current Caucasoid-Negroid conflicts in South Asia, it is necessary to comprehend the full history of the engagement. In order to solve the current Arya-Sudra problem in India a clear unbiased understanding of history is required. This book seeks to address some of these concerns, and hopes to provide a factual account of atrocities perpetrated by the Aryan invaders.

This book demonstrates that the Aryan invasions were the most severe catastrophe to afflict the Indian subcontinent. In fact, several Holocausts occurred during this period :

The Semitic Holocaust - This refers to the annihilation of the Indic Semitic peoples comprising the Indo-Assyrians (`Asuras') and the Indo-Pheonicians (`Pnais').

The Sudra Holocaust - By far the most severe Holocaust was that inflicted upon the Sudra Negroids, who were exterminated from all of North India. Under the impact of the Aryan invasions, the Sudroid race broke up into the disparate units of Dravidians, Kolarians, Dalits and Adivasis. The Dravidian Brahui isolate surviving in Baluchistan is an extremely northern isolate of the ancient Sudric stock.

The Naga Holocaust - The Indo-Mongoloid populations of Eastern India were also massacered during the Later Aryan invasions in what is referred to as the Naga or Kirata holocaust.
The behaviour pattern of the invaders was not limited to slaughter during war-times, but embraced the large-scale persecution of indigenous populations. There were several aspects to the invasions, which were as follows :

Mass slaughter of non-Aryans not only during war but also during peacetime.
Establishment of the Vedic Apartheid (`caturvarna') System based on varna (race, or skin colour).
Vedic human sacrifice (`purushamedha') of large numbers of non-Aryans by Vedic Brahmins.
Forced Labour extracted from non-Brahmins.
Capture of large numbers of non-combatant men, women and children as booty and their sale into slavery in Aryan households.
Forcible conversion of people, initially to the Vedic religion, and later to the 6 orthodox schools of Brahmanism, mainly to Vaishnavism.
Reduction of the Status of first non-Aryans and later non-brahmins to that of sub-humans through prevention of learning and destruction of non-Brahmin literature and culture.
Destruction of temples belonging to pre-Brahmanic religions like Shaivism, Shaktism and Tantrism and their replacement with Vedist and Vaishnava mandirs.
Impoverishment of the non-Aryans, and later of non-Brahmins, through religious fraud, appropriation of land, discriminatory taxes, and confiscation of womens' properties after the Sati ritual.
Nor was this conflict over with the end of the Brahmanic Dark Ages in 1000 AD. The Vijayanagar Kingdom of South India re-imposed the harsh Vedic apartheid caste system, whoch was again adopted by the Maratha kingdom. During the Anglo-Brahmin colonial era, this Aryan revival spread from the South and infected the more liberal Islamicised North. The Government of India also permits the continuation of the Vedic caste system in many parts of its territory.

Tnis book does not attempt to study all aspects of the age under question, but shall present a brief account of the events. By necessity, the ghastly nature of the Aryan invasion makes any such task extremely unpleasant. More so, when one comes to Brahminist politics, with its ruthless Kautilyan creation and destrucion of entire states and peoples. Yet all throughout, I have kept a basically objective view of events.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0226-27.htm

Published on Saturday, February 26, 2005 by CommonDreams.org  
The Language Police: Gettin’ Jiggy with Frank Luntz  
by Nancy Snow
 
If you need any more confirmation that America is the numero uno propaganda nation, look no further than the GOP language meistro Frank Luntz, who has produced a memorandum of “The 14 Words Never to Use.” Thanks to the Internet and the blogosphere, we mere mortals can get our grubby mitts on what the conservative elite persuader Luntz is doing to scrub our brains free of individual thoughts.
Luntz teases, “This memo was originally prepared exclusively for Congressional spouses because they are your eyes and ears, a one-person reality check and truth squad combined…However, by popular demand, I have included and expanded that document because effectively communicating the New American Lexicon requires you to STOP saying words and phrases that undermine your ability to educate the American people. So from today forward, YOU are the language police. From today forward, these are the words never to say again.”

Parents and teachers, cover the ears and eyes of the young ‘uns, because this could get ugly. You may have to throw out those Dick and Jane readers and start anew. Consider the first word expunged from our memory—government. It’s such a bad word to Luntz that it must be replaced by Washington. “The fact is, most Americans appreciate their local government that picks up their trash, cleans their streets, and provides police and transportation services. Washington is the problem.” This is why he tells members of Congress (and their spouses!) to remind voters that Washington is the bogey man, Washington is the problem, Washington has regulations, Washington taxes. Hmm. Something seems fishy here. Does this mean our own President hates his government job in Washington? If Washington is the problem, then why doesn’t the President, who represents Washington, just step aside and let the people rule themselves? I may be overthinking the Luntz lexicon.

But wait, there’s more! Never say privatization in reference to social security. It evokes images of fat cats on Wall Street picking our pockets. Reserve privatization for everything else related to the social good and collective security (education, health care, trade, criminal justice). The better choice is personalization and personal accounts. This sounds like ‘We The People’ have more control over our private, oops, I mean personal lives. Luntz explains: “Personalizing Social Security suggests ownership and control over your retirement savings, while privatizing it suggests a profit motive and winners and losers. BANISH PRIVATIZATION FROM YOUR LEXICON.” [Author’s note: only in reference to social security and nothing else. Privatization good, government bad.]

Another zinger Luntz offers is to NEVER say global economy/globalization/capitalism. That’s right. Never refer to the way things really are. Instead, refer to the way you’d like things to be and make that your reality. Luntz warns, “More Americans are afraid of the principle of globalization than even privatization. The reason? Globalization presents something big, something distant, and something foreign.” And I thought he was talking about my Aunt Virginia’s fruitcake. So what to use? Free market economy, free market economy, free market economy! Capitalism is a major no-no because it reminds us of a world of winners and losers. And of course we’re not supposed to think about our pocketbook realities. Better to tune in to ESPN and find out the only winners and losers we need to care about--who’s going to make it to the Sweet Sixteen during March Madness.

CNN’s Lou Dobbs won’t like this but Frank Luntz just can’t stand that word outsourcing either. “We should NEVER use the word outsourcing because we will then be asked to defend or end the practice of allowing companies to ship American jobs overseas. Rather, we should talk about the ‘root cause’ why any company would not want to hire ‘the best workers in the world.’ And the answer: ‘over-taxation, over-regulation, too much litigation, and not enough innovation or quality education.’ Because it rhymes, it will be remembered.”

Getting the picture? We need to stop using the language of what happens to real people and replace it with the language of the corporation, which has no purpose other than profit and no conscience. Luntz is particularly jiggy with trade language. He implores us to stop using “foreign” or “global” and replace it with “international.” Foreign is just too scary to patriotic nativists. In his memo, “The Eleven Steps to Effective Trade Communication,” he says that wordsmiths must appeal to America’s greatness. “Americans love being told we’re the best, that we’re number one. We will do anything—ANYTHING—to remain number one, and will oppose anything that undermines our superiority. It is essential in any discussion of trade to declare that we are ‘the greatest economic power in the world’ and that ‘we will remain the greatest economic power in the world only so long as we continue to do business with other nations.’” Anyone who opposes “international” trade should be called a “defeatist” for giving up the fight to be number one. There’s just a tiny step further here to calling anyone who questions the fairness and justice of certain trade agreements as, dare I say it, “un-American” or even “anti-American.”

The ultimate irony is that Luntz points to a foreigner (my bad) internationalist Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger as the poster he-man for the most effective way to discuss the American economy’s relationship with trade: “To those critics who are pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don’t be economic girlie men.” Luntz tells us to pump up American exceptionalism, just like Arnold, and “talk about the economy, but talk about it in terms of perseverance, stamina, and WINNING.”

So remember, do six reps of You Own It, It’s Personal, It’s Your Choice in the Free Market Economy Where Everyone’s An International Trade Winner. DO NOT READ BETWEEN THE LINES.

Nancy Snow (nsnow@fullerton.edu) is an internationally-minded author, citizen and academic who teaches courses in propaganda and persuasive communications at Cal State Fullerton and the University of Southern California. She thanks Frank Luntz via the Internet for this exercise in brainscrubbing.

http://www.geocities.com/go_darkness/god-medusa.html

Women in Antiquity
Alicia Le Van
Final Paper
5/7/96


The GORGON MEDUSA


Her Name and Origin


Medusa means "sovereign female wisdom," in Sanskrit it'sMedha, Greek Metis, Egyptian Met or Maat.

Medusa was actually imported into Greece from Libya where she was worshipped by the Libyan Amazons as their Serpent-Goddess. Medusa (Metis) was the destroyer aspect of the Great Triple Goddess also called Neith, Anath, Athene or Ath-enna in North Africa and Athana in 1400 c. BC Minoan Crete.

Medusa was originally an aspect of the goddess Athene from Libya where she was the Serpent-Goddess of the Libyan Amazons. In her images, her hair sometimes resembles dread locks, showing her origins in Africa. There she had a hidden, dangerous face. It was inscribed that no one could possibly lift her veil, and that to look upon her face was to glimpse ones own death as she saw your future.


Medusa as an Archetype


Medusa has historically been seen as the archetype of the nasty mother, however she is far more complex. She symbolizes the following:

Sovereign female wisdom. The female mysteries. All the forces of the primordial Great Goddess: The Cycles of Time as past, present and future. The Cycles of Nature as life, death and rebirth. She is universal Creativity and Destruction in eternal Transformation. She is the Guardian of the Thresholds and the Mediatrix between the Realms of heaven, earth and the underworld. She is Mistress of the Beasts. Latent and Active energy.

Connection to the earth. The union of heaven and earth. She destroys in order to recreate balance. She purifies.

She is the ultimate truth of reality, the wholeness beyond duality. She rips away our mortal illusions. Forbidden yet liberating wisdom. The untamable forces of nature. As a young and beautiful woman she is fertility and life. As crone she consumes by devouring all on the earth plane. Through death we must return to the source, the abyss of transformation, the timeless realm. We must yield to her and her terms of mortality. She reflects a culture in harmony with nature.


Images of Medusa


In her image alone we can find this constellation of archetypal meaning. Throughout archeological history, there have been patterns of correspondence of her image around the world as the ancients translated the powers of the natural world into an organic image that was accessible, practical, ceremonial, mystical and potent. In the beginning, her images represent a powerful natural force that is worshipped and revered by cultures as sacred and holy as she was a symbol of the full potency of the Great Triple Goddess.


In the Beginning:

Medusas' images in Old Europe begin several thousand years prior to her reinvention in classical Greek Myth. In the Upper Paleolithic, her power is represented in labyrinth, vaginal, uterine, and other female designs. Throughout the Neolithic, her forces are symbolized by the female figure positioned in holy postures and gestures of empowerment, with the presence of animals, primarily birds and snakes whom she is intimately connected with. These images appear in the Mediterranean area and continue to extend into the late Bronze Age of Minoan Crete,(1600 BC) where she is represented as the refined serpent-goddess-priestess. (modern copied image of the serpent goddess-priestessAriadne and the original serpent-goddess-priestesses found at the Palace of Knosses inivory and gold,and infaience)

Birds are appear on her head or shoulder, signifying her generative as well as death wielding powers of her dark, crone aspect. They also represent the heavens of the sky.

Snakes coil around her arms, legs or are entwined in her hair and are shown whispering into her ear. The serpent is a totem of the cycles of life, death and rebirth and the seasons. It is the connection to the fertile earth and to the underworld. It also symbolizes immortality as it was thought to shed its skin indefinitely.

Because of this the serpent was placed in relationship to women throughout antiquity as they correspond to the immortal properties of the blood of menstruation. Back then menstruating women were feared by men with holy dread as they inexplicably bled without wound or pain synchronized with the moon-tide cycles.

The serpent is also an emblem of the ocean as the sea was known as an earth girdling serpent. Centuries later, the myths of classical Greece cast the serpent as an evil, deceitful, revolting character associated with "witchy," (wise), women.

In 750 BC, the full-bodied image of Medusa in Greece is a central piece on their oldest surviving temple, that of Artemis, one of their oldest gods. She is the Lady of the Beasts who carries with her memories of Crete and Angolia. Like Medusa, she kills in a sacred manner so that life may continue. In this image of Medusa, snakes are tied around her waist in the sacred healing knot as they were used for medicinal purposes. She retains spiraling hair, large bird wings on her back and even on her feet that sometimes have claws. The wings symbolize her freedom and dynamic movement between the worlds. There are even surviving images of Artemis wearing the mask of Medusa, also called the mask of the Gorgon or Hecate.


The Mask:

Medusas' ancient, widely recognized symbol of female wisdom was her threatening, ceremonial mask . It has wide unblinking eyes that reflect her immense wisdom. They are all knowing, all seeing eyes that see through us, penetrating our illusions and looking into the abyss of truth. Her mouth is deathly; it looks like a skull. It is devouring of all life, returning us to the source. Sometimes she has the frightening tusks of a boar which is meant to scare men, yet these hearken back to the pig, an ancient symbol of the uterus of rebirth. Her tongue protrudes like a snakes' and her face is surrounded by a halo of spiraling, serpentine hair which symbolize the great cycles and her serpent wisdom.

The mask was used to guard and protect women and the secret knowledge of the Divine Feminine. It literally warned men to "Keep Away! Female Mysteries." It was erected in stone,(corresponding to her look of stone), on caves and gateways at sacred sites dedicated to the Goddess. It also appeared on stone pillars erected in honor of her deceased lovers. Even after the degradation of Medusa Athenian culture after 7th c. BC, her mask image continued to be used until the reign of Christianity.

Her defilement began in Greece in the 7th-6th c BC, yet at this time there still exist images that revere Medusa in her full power. There was found a Cretan-like image of the Gorgon Medusa in a war chariot flanked by lions. It looks much like the Great-Mother Goddess Cybele, goddess of wild beasts and fertility of nature. At the same time there was found a relief of a woman wearing the Gorgon mask while in the menstrual/birth/erotic position, a posture of women's power in Neolithic imagery. But her face and mask continued to be used in temples and sanctuaries, and to be commonly placed on columns, doorways and gateways, signifying her role as the guardian of the thresholds and mediatrix between realms. (Medusa's face at Didyma, Temple to Apollo and a description of her image as it appears at the temple at Kalaaktepe)


Medusa in Patriarchal Greece


Patriarchy began in the bronze and iron age of first millennia Greece. In this mind the world is no longer born of a sacred mother deity but from a supreme father. Earth and heaven are split eternally. In myth heroes and gods are created to dominate and subjugate the female and natural forces over and over again in various forms, the most common of them being gigantic snakes and serpent monsters. A prime example of this is the serpent dragon called Eurinaes who is overpowered by Apollo.

The god Apollo represents the rising patriarchy and the contemporary male interests. The Eurinaes is a dynamic female force representing the old, matrifocal civilizations, and the female values that pre-date the Olympian gods. The Eurinaes is subordinated, mastered and tamed by Apollo as she is forced to leave the sanctuary so he can establish his shrine at the temple of Delphi. Through domination the hero constantly conquers the cyclical pattern of nature and tries to make it linear. He tames the wild feminine forces and makes women conform to male-servicing gender roles.

Soon the holy image of the Gorgon Medusa as an ancient symbol of female power and wisdom became totally unacceptable. By the 6th c. BC her rites were disrupted, her sanctuaries invaded, the sacred groves were cut down, her priestesses were violated and her image defiled. Her images, (as well as women), are mastered and domesticated. Her mask was used on elaborate Etruscan lantern fixtures and stoves, probably for her relation to alchemical fire. Although the mask was widely used by country-folk, her female wisdom, natural forces, powers of creativity, destruction and regeneration were demonized and made evil. She was made into a horrid, ugly monster, (most monsters were female or born of the Earth). Her most popular image became that of her defeat in the Athenian myth of Perseus.

In Archaic art the moment in the story most often depicted is the chase after the beheading, when Perseus flees with the severed head pursued by the Medusas' Gorgon sisters. In 550-450 BC, painted mainly in early and proto-attic black figure vases was the image of the hero sneaking up on his victim while she sleeps or cutting her throat while the gods look on. On these she is represented as a hideous snaky monster. (vase image of Perseus beheading Medusa while Hermes looks on and its description, also,a description of the slaying on another vase) At his time the remaining rituals of Medusa were allowed only for military function and her image was reserved for armor, on the breat plate or on their shield. (description of her image on a sacred sheild)

In the course of the fifth century, she will emerge again as a beautiful woman in her maiden aspect. But when the Persians introduce the plumed serpent, her powers are transformed yet again into a dragon which is phallicaly speared into its mouth, an image that is highly popular throughout the Middle Ages.


Medusa-Metis-Athene in Classical Myth


Athenian Myth fragmented and reduced the Libyan Triple Goddess Athene to Athena, Metis, Medusa and her Gorgon sisters. Gorgo, Gorgon, or Gorgopis was the `Grim Face'- and besides Medusa (Metis), was the title of Athene as Death Goddess. The eldest sister was Medusa, who represented Female Wisdom, her younger sisters were Stheino as Strength, and Euryale as Universality. All were born of Ceto and Phorcys, but Medusa was the only mortal. They were originally beautiful. Like Medusa, they had wings on their back and ankles, and wore the mask of Hecate, the mask of the Gorgon. (an image of a Gorogn sister wearing the mask while chasing Perseus after the murder)


In the 7th c. BC, Athenians recreated Athene as their patron Goddess. Through myth the Greeks severed her ancient roots in women's culture by dividing her from her dark aspect as Medusa and Metis. In the seperation of Athene from Metis and Medusa, the two were overlaid; Metis became her mother and Medusa her enemy.

Her mother Metis the shape shifter was said to be the original mother as well as the wisest and greatest of all the gods. To Athenians, she was raped and swallowed by Zeus. Thus Zeus gained his power over the other gods by consuming her ancient lineage along with her immense wisdom. [He used her shape shifting ability primarily to seduce/rape females]. Metis's wisdom was so great that it impregnated Zeus's head and from it sprang the new Athena.

Betraying her ancient lineage, traitor Athena became the dutiful daughter who retained only her virginal, fertile aspect. She was the municipal goddess of Zeus's intelligence, in service of the male-solar ego, making men into heroes who dominate women and nature, and representing the patriarchal values, roles and ideals of Athens. She offers women a new blessed role; absent from the public sphere, and in the service of the male. Women are prescribed the role of virgin, wife and mother. As virgin, proof of his fatherhood is confirmed. As mother, she is the nurse of his children. And as wife she is in devoted service of her man.

In 458 BC, she blatently rejects her mother Metis in Aeschylus's Oresteia , as she also justifies the priority of men over women; "It is my task to render final judgment here...There is no mother anywhere who gave me birth... I am always for the male with all my heart, and strongly on my father's side. So, in a case where the wife has killed her husband, lord of the house, her death shall not mean most to me."(p.161)

Yet Athenas' character contains many contradictions that show the struggle of the male order to manage her potent past. One example is that her favorite animal is the owl, an ancient symbol of bird of death and regeneration, as well as female wisdom, darkness, night, the moon and mystery. However, Athena never uses the darkness to realize her self.

Athenas' new enemy Medusa rivaled her in beauty and power. Even Perseus was said to have admired Medusa's beauty while she was dead, which is why he took her head with him to show the Greeks. When Medusa became a mythological monster, it was Athena herself who made Medusa ugly. According to Ovids' Metamorphosis, when Medusa was a virgin, she was raped by Poseidon in Athena's temple. Athena blamed Medusa for the sacrilegious act and punished her by changing her loveliest feature, her hair, into snakes, (at this time snakes were considered revolting). But even the monster Medusa responds to the abuse with rage- a burning charge of a fiery vitality to protect life. From then on she forever uses her powerful gaze to turn her male enemies to stone, among others, Atlas is turned into a stone mountain.

[See list of the polarized seperation of Athena and Medusa][1]


The Myth of Medusa the Monster


In the Athenian myth of the Greek hero Perseus, Medusa's female wisdom along with the potential of women in general is silenced and the forces of nature are conquered in an ultimate act of domination and vengeance.

Perseus is sent on a quest, by King Polydictes of Seriphos and Athena herself, to retrieve the head of the Gorgon, a deed said to require the maximum of heroic-male courage and skill. He is given magic winged sandals, a cap and a pouch,(a kibisis), from Hermes. Guided by Athena the entire time, he flies over the ocean to Lake Tritonis in Libya where makes his way through rough, thick woods. On the way to Medusa's palace he sees several statues of men and beasts. There are also stone pillars erected in honor of her deceased lovers. Perseus comes upon the sleeping Gorgons. While Athena holds out a shield as a mirror, Perseus decapitates Medusa with his crescent sword,(a harpe). Enraged, the Gorgon sisters chase after him but to no avail as his cap makes him invisible.

Perseus could not have completed this task without the help of the traitor warrior goddess Athena. It is she who guides and instructs him throughout his journey and slaying. Since the myth symbolized the usurping of her powerful roots in a culture where she and Medusa were one, it is appropriate that only she would know the secrets to find and defeat Medusa. (Apollodorous's Perseus myth andPausanias's rational version of the myth)


The Blood of Medusa:

Even in death Medusa's blood retains its powers. It gives life to Pegasus, the winged, militant steed of Zeus that creates serpents in the earth with the touch of his hoof, and who also introduced Dionysiac worship to Athens. Also Chrysaor, the golden bladed giant, is born from her bleeding neck. Medusas' blood is drained from her body and later used to raise the dead, (making Asclepius a great healer). Used from her right vein it heals and nourishes life, from her left serpent it kills.

The snakes, her dreaded face, her look of stone, and her magical blood all correlate with the ancient menstrual taboo. Primitive folk believed that the look of a menstruating woman could turn a man to stone. Menstrual blood was also thought to be the source of all mortal life and also of death, as the two are inseparable.


The Head of Medusa:

Perseus puts Medusa's head into his pouch. He uses her head as a weapon during other exploits and when he reaches home he returns it to Athena. The head of Medusa is then wrought onto the center of Athena's aegis and Zeus's shield which is given to Athena. (description of Athena's aegis at the Parthenon) Even after her defeat, the face of Medusa forever maintains its Gorgon power to protect the Goddess from enemies by turning them to stone. It is the striking, central image on renderings of Athena. Medusas' face continues to symbolize her fierce strength in military ritual and in battle on the warriors' armor.

[See encyclopedia entry of Gorgon Medusa in classical Greek literature][2]


The Symbolism of the Myth


The mythological beheading of Medusa symbolizes the ultimate silencing of female wisdom and expression. It is the act which stops her growth, limits her potential, movement and cultural contributions. She is obliterated and her severed head is flaunted on the Acropolis and other works of art in pride of her and all women's subjugation by violent men. She is broken and her body enslaved. Her spirit, her mind, her spiritual powers are killed. Her once honored forces of female creativity and destruction are halted. Her role as dynamic mediatrix degraded. Her life-giving, death-wielding powers and wild forces of nature are controlled, tamed, and mastered by the male order. The cycles of life and nature are made to conform to his linear perspective.


The Motive Behind the Myth


The Perseus myth was invented to explain the appearance of Gorgon Medusa's face, or mask, on Athena's shield and aegis, the image of Athena that was inherited from the pre-Hellenic period. It is not surprising to learn that the earliest images of Athena had a striking resemblance to the revered Cretan serpent-goddess-priestess. Although Athena changes, in art she is consistently associated with snakes as they appear on her shoulders and on her armor, along with Medusa's face as the central image.

The Perseus myth was also an attempt to conceal Athena's roots in the Libyan Amazon Serpent-Goddess-Trinity-Athene, (a deity that was also present in Minoan Crete). In pre-Hellenic myths Athena was said to have come from the uterus of Lake Tritonis, (meaning Three Queens), the same place that Medusa is said to have ruled, hunted and led troops in Athenian myth. The older myths are more specific, they say that Athene was born of the Three Queens of Libya themselves, the Triple Goddess, with Metis-Medusa as her destroyer aspect.



Bibliography


Barbara Walker: TheWoman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, and TheWoman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects


Marija Gimbutas: The Civilization of the Goddess


A special thanks to Joan Marlers' Celebrating the Gorgon slide lecture and workshop at Interface, in Cambridge MA, March of 1996.




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although filled with a bit of the rosy colored glasses view of a bygone era of a supposedly "good America," this is definitely an interesting view from the "right."  i would hope that we can get beyond the polarity of left and right to peer closer at the truth

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_02_28/buchanan.html

February 28, 2005 Issue
Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative

The Anti-Conservatives

Who convinced the president that our democracy depends on a worldwide crusade?


by Patrick J. Buchanan


That George W. Bush would seek to embed the Iraq War in the higher cause of global democracy was to be expected. That is the way of wartime presidents.

By late 1863, Lincoln’s war to crush Southern secession was about whether “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall ... perish from the earth.” By 1917, the European war whose causes Wilson professed not to understand in 1916 had become “the war to end all wars” and to “make the world safe for democracy.”

Leaders alchemize wars begun over lesser interests into epochal struggles for universal principles because only thus can they justify demands for greater sacrifices in blood and treasure. But Bush has gone Wilson one better. He is not only going to make the world safe for democracy, he is going to make the world democratic. Where Lincoln abolished slavery in the South, Bush is going to abolish tyranny from the earth: “So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”




A conservative knows not whether to laugh or weep, for Mr. Bush has just asserted a right to interfere in the internal affairs of every nation on earth. Why? Because the “survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” But this is utterly ahistorical. The world has always been afflicted with despots. Yet America has always been free. And we have remained free by following the counsel of Washington, Jefferson, and Adams and staying out of foreign quarrels and foreign wars.

Who is feeding the president this interventionist nonsense?

The president now plans to hector and badger foreign leaders on the progress each is making toward attaining U.S. standards of democracy. “We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and nation—the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right.” This is a formula for “Bring-it-on!” collisions with every autocratic regime on earth, including virtually every African and Arab ruler, all the “outposts of tyranny” named by Secretary Rice, most of the nations of Central Asia, China, and Russia. This is a prescription for endless war. Yet as Madison warned, “No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Who and what converted a president who came to office with no knowledge of the world to the idea that only a global crusade for democracy could keep us secure? Answer: 9/11—and the neoconservatives.

In his inaugural address, Mr. Bush calls 9/11 the day “when freedom came under attack.” This is sophomoric. Osama did not send fanatics to ram planes into the World Trade Center because he hates the Bill of Rights. He sent the terrorists here because he hates our presence and policies in the Middle East. He did it for the same reason FLN rebels blew up cafes in Paris and Hamas suicide bombers blow up pizza parlors in Jerusalem.

From the Battle of Algiers to the bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks, from the expulsion of the Red Army by the mujahideen of Afghanistan to the expulsion of Israel from Lebanon by Hezbollah, guerrilla war and terror tactics have been the means Muslims have used to expel armies they could not defeat in conventional war.

The 9/11 killers were over here because we are over there. We were not attacked because of who we are but because of what we do. It is not our principles they hate. It is our policies. U.S. intervention in the Middle East was the cause of the 9/11 terror. Bush believes it is the cure. Has he learned nothing from Iraq?

In 2003, we invaded a nation that had not attacked us, did not threaten us, and did not want war with us to disarm it of weapons it did not have. Now, after plunging $200 billion and the lives of 1,400 of our best and bravest into this war and killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, we have reaped a harvest of hatred in the Arab world and, according to officials in our own government, have created a new nesting place and training ground for terrorists to replace the one we lately eradicated in Afghanistan.

Among those who have converted President Bush to the notion that without Arab democracy there can be no Mideast peace is Natan Sharansky, and much of what the famed Soviet dissident writes is undeniably true. Even inside the darkest despotism, people yearn for freedom. They hate tyranny and love liberty. They wish to live in lands that allow them to choose their own leaders. And as democratic rulers must return to the people for renewal of their mandates in free elections, they are more likely to seek the peace and prosperity their people desire. Thus, only democracy can pave the way to true peace and security. This is the message of Sharansky’s Case for Democracy, which the president has embraced and encouraged all to read.

But what is often true is not always true, and U.S. foreign policy, which is to protect U.S. vital interests and the peace and freedom of Americans, cannot be rooted in the idealism of an ex-Soviet dissident or the ideology of neoconservatives who promised us a “cakewalk” in Iraq and assured us we would be welcomed with flowers. Sharansky notwithstanding, democracy is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of America’s peace and security, nor even of Israel’s.

In 1967, David Ben-Gurion told Richard Nixon and this writer he hoped Nasser would survive Egypt’s humiliation in the Six-Day War because only Nasser had the prestige to lead the Arabs to accept peace with Israel. Sadat was no democrat when Israel gave him back the Sinai and signed a peace. Arafat was no democrat when Rabin and Peres agreed to the Oslo Accords and shared a Nobel Prize with him. Assad was no democrat when Israel negotiated a truce with him on the Golan Heights. That truce has held. Nor was Khadafi a democrat when Bush agreed to lift sanctions imposed on Libya for the massacre of Pan Am 103 if Khadafi would surrender his weapons of mass destruction. Khadafi did, and Bush rightly claims this as a diplomatic success of his first term.

While it is true that the dictatorships of Franco, Pinochet, and Marcos gave way to democracies, that was not true of Batista, Somoza, or the Shah. When Carter undermined the Peacock Throne, we got the Ayatollah.

Urging Bush not to press Israel into making peace with the Palestinians until Palestine embraces democracy is a clever way to postpone peace indefinitely and let Israel expand its settlements and consolidate its hold over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That may be in Israel’s interest. But it is not in America’s interest. Sharansky’s idealism just happens to coincide with Sharon’s agenda. Can President Bush not see this?

America has old friendships and important interests in the Middle East that cannot await the dawn of democracy in the 22 Arab states where it currently does not exist. We cannot make the best the enemy of the good. And if democracy means rule by the people, how enthusiastic should we be about its introduction into the Middle East? In 1991, Algerians were given a democratic vote—and elected an Islamist regime. The army intervened, igniting a civil war that left 100,000 dead. President Bush might ask his father why he did not speak up for Algerian democracy then.

Unlike Eastern Europe, where communism was imposed on Christian countries with traditions of self-rule, democracy never took root in the Arab lands of the caliphate. Thus King Farouk’s ouster gave us Nasser. King Idris’s ouster gave us Khadafi. And King Feisal’s ouster gave us Saddam Hussein. How certain are we that if the kings of Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia fall, democracies will arise?

Given that the neocons were wrong on every count about Iraq, does Bush truly wish to gamble the Middle East on their confident predictions that, once the Arab monarchies fall, Western democracy will flourish among people who seem to revile Bush and revere Osama bin Laden?

After the shocked reaction in many quarters to the president’s inaugural address, the White House, George H.W. Bush, and later the president himself hastened to explain that there was nothing new or radical in the speech. Perhaps a sense of reality has already begun to manifest itself.

We are simply not going to stop buying Saudi oil or cut off our $2 billion in annual aid to Egypt or sever relations with Musharraf or sanction a China that could sink the dollar because these regimes refuse to make the reforms Bush demands. It is not going to happen. President Bush will either wind up eating his overblown rhetoric or following it over the cliff and taking us with him.

America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy,” said John Quincy Adams, “She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” Under the tutelage of Jacobins who call themselves idealists, Bush has repudiated this wise core doctrine of U.S. foreign policy to embrace Wilsonian interventionism in the internal affairs of every autocratic regime on earth. We are going to democratize the world and abolish tyranny.

Giddy with excitement, the neocons are falling all over one another to hail the president. They are not conservatives at all. They are anti-conservatives, and their crusade for democracy will end as did Wilson’s, in disillusionment for the president and tragedy for this country.    

February 28, 2005 Issue