Gayle T. 4/13/08 11:18 pm Surround yourself with smart, fun, & intelligent people. Take care of your health, and never loose your self-respect. Tell the truth even if it’s difficult, and be a person of your word. Make it a habit to be punctual.

Prepare for your future. Educate yourself. Live a life full of as much diversity as possible. This will help you along your way in life.

Learn to live on half of your salary and save the rest. Not only will you have a small earth footprint, you will be independent and free!!!

Begin with your aims uppermost in mind, because destination gives the journey and journey gives the life. Do things with a sense of order, beauty and perfection. Be in love with life, learning, and the quality of your own life. Be a woman in the ultimate sense.

Get involved in the politics and be active, like we were during sixties/seventies; demonstrating against our atrocities on other lands. My fear is ignorance, and indifference, of people on the most important issue of our time; the war and peace and intrusion of us into other nations lives. The founders did not mean our country to become a savage empire; devoid of immorality. Please spread this far and wide. Also, call/write your local and national representatives and free press to, via neutralizing the suffocating self censorship of the accomlice Press and Media, neutralize the attempts to start anothe catastrophic war with the most peaceful and civilized nation on the face of the earth. Please read the news in Le Monde of the excavated glorious first ancient (~1500 years earlier than Persian and Greek [Romans]) democracy in Iran [near Birjand around the Halil-rood] of which ancient Roman historians had, then, been remembering of [“the old glorious lost] with admiration. Let us not de-humanize/demonize Iran for short-term/near-sighted “interests” which can be re-gained with a with respect and equal-regard dialogue with Iran. Iran is NOT making Atomic bombs. ***************** “We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security”: Dwight David Eisenhower : 34th president of the United States, 1890-1969 = When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing: Dwight David Eisenhower : 34th president of the United States, 1890-1969 = “I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction” : John Steinbeck: American novelist, Nobel Prize for Literature for 1962, 1902-1968 = “The only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the use of force” : Norman Cousins: American essayist and editor, long associated with the Saturday Review, 1912-1990 = “Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous” : William Proxmire = Everything, everything in war is barbaric… But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being: Ellen Key = Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear: Bertrand Russell: English logician and philosopher 1872-1970 = Fear always springs from ignorance: Ralph Waldo Emerson : American lecturer, poet, and essayist, 1803-1882 = Fear follows crime, and is its punishment : Voltaire : French writers and philosophers, 1694-1778 === “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly…it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”: Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister = “The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt…. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary.”: George Orwell in the book 1984 = “Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter”: Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and social philosopher, 1900-1980 = “The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.” — Paul Johnson = “In violence, we forget who we are “: Mary McCarthy : American novelist and critic,1912-1989 = “Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes” : Murray Edelman === If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels Repeat after me…The surge is working…The surge is working…The surge is working…The surge is working…The surge is working …. === Officials Confirm Iran’s Role in Truce: Officials in Iran confirmed for the first time Saturday that the country played an important role in brokering a recent truce between the Iraqi government and anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. http://tinyurl.com/6oxo82 === Putin: Iran Should Be Helped, Not Threatened: “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S.,” a source in the Russian delegation at the NATO-Russia summit in Bucharest quoted Putin as telling leaders. “Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent.” http://tinyurl.com/5s9elj === McCain doesn’t rule out preemptive war : Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain said on Wednesday he would not rule out launching preemptive wars against future enemies. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19710.htm === Manufacturing Consent For An Attack On Iran Iran Top Threat To Iraq, U.S. Says Focus on Al-Qaeda Now Diminishing By Karen DeYoung Last week’s violence in Basra and Baghdad has convinced the Bush administration that actions by Iran, and not al-Qaeda, are the primary threat inside Iraq, and has sparked a broad reassessment of policy in the region, according to senior U.S. officials. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19720.htm === Al Qaeda to Iran Khaleej Times Editorial LATEST movements in Washington’s war lobby indicate a reassessment of the Iraq policy with Iran slowly replacing Al Qaeda as the prime terrorism threat as officials juggle with justification for continued surge level troops. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19724.htm === It’s Occupation, Not War By Charley Reese The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended some years ago. In Iraq, the war ended with the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government; in Afghanistan, with the fall of the Taliban government. What’s been happening since is occupation and resistance to occupation. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19721.htm === Semantics Can’t Mask Bush’s Chicanery By Robert Fisk Now he’s gone a stage further. After announcing victory in Iraq in 2003 and “mission accomplished” and telling us how this enormous achievement would lead the 21st century into a “shining age of human liberty”, George Bush told us this week that “thanks to the surge, we’ve renewed and revived the prospect of success”. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19726.htm === Notes From The Iraqi Resistance… Transcript of an interview with M.Al-Shammari, ( head of the Islamic Army of Iraq/IAI ) By Layla Anwar The Resistance did change its tactics but not its strategy. The Americans are desperate for some calm before the November elections, but the Resistance will decide when to implement an upsurge in its attacks against the occupier, maybe during certain “crucial moments” but this is up to the Resistance to decide when and how. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19733.htm === Bush ‘Divorced From Reality’ By Chris Gelken Former Senator blasts US occupation during lively television debate on Iraq. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19722.htm === In Case You Missed It What Are We Doing? 10 Minute Video Bud Deraps, an 82 year old WWII Navy veteran, speaks out against Depleted Uranium. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19734.htm === The Architects Of war: Where Are They Now? : President Bush has not fired any of the architects of the Iraq war. In fact, a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded - not blamed - for their incompetence. http://thinkprogress.org/the-architects-where-are-they-now/

Trust me, M. Morgan, any 21-year-old I know wouldn’t read your post.

Embrace your talents, but don’t let your spotlight be too small. You’ll often find a true passion in the process of seeking your goal, which means keep your mind open to those opportunities that seemed off the beam just a few years back. Write down each enriching, life-affirming adventure you’ve ever fancied and remember that the seed is planted as you dream, giving purpose to all the decisions you make. People who never have a goal: spending the summer on the Algarve, climbing Mount Washington, taking that photographic safari; Mardi Gras in Rio;teaching English in Mozambique, walking the Wall of China, nurturing a child or not are wandering aimlessly, wondering why they never have time for the “life-altering” experiences. Remember, you don’t have to live your entire life in the next 24 hours. Stay focused on your passions; don’t sacrifice them for a “job”. Accept that there will be disappointments and losses, and learn from them; don’t fight the emotions that go with them; embrace your losses as well as your triumphs. The journey defines who you are; you’ll never control what challenges you, but you can control how you respond. Pay yourself first out of every paycheck, beginning with your first, no matter how small…you want always be in a position to generate control over your decisions. Being self-sufficient is not being selfish. As Thoreau said, “I wished to live deliberately and not when I come to die, discover that I had not lived.” And remember Sandra Cisneros marvelous story “Eleven”, With each new year, you are not releasing all your previous years. When you are thirty, you will have within you the five year old, the six year old and so on; you will always be adding a year, but you are not losing your childhood, your adolescence…you celbrate your life, not a number. Vaya con dios, me amiga,

In fact, I’m not sure any 21-year old is going to listen to advice. Period. My advice might well be, so, lissen, already.