Please pray

Hello...,
I am doing so well God is on my side, my only request is prayer for the children we are helping, we have began to face avery challenging moments, our country is in avery tough situation of starvation,please do pray.

Pastor T__ S_______,
Love Ministries of Kenya

Damn that Lincoln: Abe's to blame for Jindal

Thanks to Mick Gallagher.
***
Damn that Lincoln: Abe's to blame for Jindal
by Greg Palast


Exclusive to Buzzflash.com by Greg Palast

Damn that Abe Lincoln. When Louisiana and Mississippi seceded from the Union, a sensible president would have sent them a box of chocolates with a note, "Goodbye and good riddance."

Tonight, following Barack Obama's budget presentation to Congress, effectively the president's first State of the Union Address, the Republicans chose to give their party's response, the governor of the state that wanted to leave the Union, to Louisiana's Bobby Jindal.

Jindal's told us that Barack Obama is a terrible President who passed a stimulus bill "larded with wasteful spending." Where's the lard? All week, Jindal has been screeching that Obama wants to require states such as Louisiana to extend unemployment insurance to -- get this -- the unemployed! (Technically, the federal government would pay 100% of the cost of reforming Louisiana's and Mississippi's Scrooge-sized benefit requirements.)

Jindal, and some other Republican governors, notably Haley Barbour of Mississippi, are actually turning down millions in federal funds for their own state's unemployed out of fear that, four years from now, they may have to maintain full unemployment insurance like the rest of America.

Barbour's excuse, parroted by Jindal, is that the Obama payments to the unemployed of their states would mean, when the economy returns to expansion, that their state would have to increase unemployment insurance taxes and payments to the U.S. average, scaring away new employers. "I mean, we want more jobs," says Barbour. Um, this is the Governor of MISSISSIPPI talking. Exactly what new "jobs" is he talking about? Is Microsoft based in Gulfport? Is Genentech opening its new headquarters in Bogalusa?

As an economist, I can tell you that the only industry Mississippi leads in is deep-fried chicken-dog manufacturing. I will admit that Louisiana and Mississippi can boast of growing employment at several casinos and cathouses spilling across what the locals charmingly call the "Coon-ass Riviera." Jindal's Louisiana is, after all, the state that solved its unemployment problem by sending its unemployed to Texas in FEMA trailers.

And it's true that Jindal's and Barbour's states do lead the nation in a few indicators. Such as poverty: Mississippi has America's highest poverty rate. Louisiana is 3rd-worst in America.

How about their commitment to education? Louisiana ranks 5th and Mississippi 2nd worst in school kids' math scores. As Randy Newman notes about the Gulf States' education policies, "good ol' boys... from LSU, went in dumb, come out dumb, too."

Jindal himself is a product of a more advanced culture: His parents are Democrats. The Jindals are Hindus who come from the Punjab in India, a state known for its welfare safety net. Jindal, turning away from the successful example of his parents' politics and culture, has gone native, becoming a born-again Christian Republican who doesn't accept Darwinian evolution nor Keynesian economics. (I hear he may complete his redneck makeover next week by marrying his cousin at a tractor pull.)

For over a century, Louisiana and Mississippi have been trying to attract employers by changing their economy from one based on involuntary servitude to one based on voluntary servitude, selling their citizens to the lowest bidder. The results are blindingly visible: Mississippi and Louisiana have, under the Barbour/Jindal Republican regime, maintained the lowest per-capita incomes in the nation (50th and 46th respectively). Louisiana and Mississippi infant mortality rates (1st and 3rd in deaths in the USA) would shame Costa Rica.

Years back, when I worked as an economic consultant to New Orleans, the Louisiana State Legislature was about to require that schools teach evolution as merely a theory equal to the Bible's literal creation myth. When asked if this would harm big employers' views of the state, I said, "Not at all: most national employers think of Louisiana as a state filled with Bible-thumping, dumb-bell rednecks. You won't have to worry about changing that impression."

OK, it's easy to make jokes about America's own Third World states. And before I get a zillion complaints, I'll be the first one to note that Louisiana has birthed the extraordinary, including the greatest of America's investigative journalists, the late Ron Ridenhour, jazz, Ruth Chris' Steakhouse, and gris-gris. And it was Louisiana that long ago led the nation in social reform, whose governor in 1932 led the national fight to create a program now known as "unemployment insurance." Really.

Nevertheless, Jindal's rejection of funds for his state's own unemployed simply follows a history of local Republican plantation-mentality cruelty. After Hurricane Katrina, I met a young man, Stephen Smith, who was stranded with a family on Highway 10 for four days while George Bush photo-strafed him from overhead. An elderly man with Stephen died of dehydration after giving his grandchildren his last bottle of water.

I investigated the drowning of New Orleans and the "let'm drown" rescue plans of the Bush Administration. What I found was sickening, heartless, and Republican. Marie Antoinette at least offered cake.

Now, once again, the Republican Party, by making Jindal the party's official spokesman, is adopting the Barbourous refusal to reach out a saving hand to Americans drowning in this economy.

So, let me make a suggestion for Governors Jindal and Barbour. If you cannot join America in accepting our President's call to arms against disaster, if you reject our President's State of the Union -- then leave the Union.

As the prescient Phil Ochs sang,

And here's to the government of Mississippi

In the swamp of their bureaucracy they're always bogging down...

...And the speeches of the governor are the ravings of a clown

Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of

Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of

Amen.

U.S. Shadow Banking System

Thanks to Mick Gallagher.
***

U.S. Shadow Banking System
***

Ironically now it's a battle of psychological as well as economic malaise, because of fear to buy things. We are in a socioeconomic deepfreeze. Now's when we need a confidence builder.... That's why our steller 2 party system needs to cut the [nonsense], and harmonize for a change, instead of willing the new deal stuff to an early death, so they can take the majority in two years! Have they ever just tried to be positively constructive? I mean seriously look[ing] back over the Clinton years; they beat his... brains out everyday--and I guarantee, you do that to someone-- a team, a party, a person-- the sheer negative, constant pounding from within/without will make that person [or] administration fail, and collapse; and whatever happened to "United We Stand"? Or is that only when one party sits, and the other "stands"?...The many "chosen" few caused this... abyss. The poor don't cause global economic meltdowns, wars for profit, power, control of resources in foreign lands. It's usually the rich guys, who just dont have "enough."
***
This was by far the most intelligent, rational, informative discussion I've heard to date, re how we arrived here. I suspected the usual suspects, and am now zeroing in on them,... Greenspan, Robert Rueban, Larry Summers all held high court over these
bizarre, convoluted, greedy, dark market schemes, since early Clinton days, I suspect. I am leary also of "Rambo" [Rom] Emmanuel [although I have] no clear cut evidence as of yet. But their all... sharks, both parties, both houses. Not all Congresspeople, though; we must not paint a broad stroke on all. No, that is not fair, or reasonable....Let's not let these scumbags deflect all the anger back to the victims of the dark side of unbridled capitalism.

go to wamu.org


U.S. Shadow Banking System
http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/09/02/24.php#24937

Completely Wrong-headed Obstructionist, Socially Irresponsible GOP is Killing America

Thanks to Barbara Baty.

Completely Wrong-headed Obstructionist, Socially Irresponsible GOP is
Killing America
*******

For those who are still interested in reading, learning, and maybe even
changing:

Obama needs to realize the truth about [most] Republicans: "Their loyalty is to a fundamentalist Christian ideology, on the one hand, and American exceptionalism of perpetual warfare and hatred and fear of the 'other' on the other hand. Between the neoconservatives and evangelical Religious Right Republicans you have no friends."
--Frank Schaeffer (see below)
***

Blinded by Greed, Oblivious to Need:
How Socially Irresponsible Republicans are Killing America
***
By Dennis Rahkonen
Feb 12 2009
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20266
***

Most of us aren't old enough to remember the Great Depression.

But "The Grapes of Wrath," stark photographs of pathetically poor folk with life's spark absent from their eyes, and Dust Bowl accounts somberly related by Grandpa have given us grim insight into how hard times were for so many back then.

The elders of my family talked about it often while I was growing up.

What I recall most vividly from those retellings is the contemptuous sneering over Republican President Herbert Hoover's response to the staggering calamity unleashed after Wall Street's 1929 crash.

The impoverished masses were expected to sell apples on street corners to survive!

Under left-wing leadership, the American people angrily rejected such absurdity, mustering sufficient militancy to force FDR's enactment of the broadly beneficial New Deal. They also organized the great industrial unions that gave ordinary citizens the means to attain prosperity and protection on a nationwide scale.

Ever since, conservative Republicans have reached deeply into their rotting bag of depravity to constantly come up with increasingly more selfish schemes to try to undo whatever gains workers have won through necessary, arduous struggle.

One particularly vile effort was "Reaganomics," so destructively thrust upon us during the awful '80s.

Prior to that period, the only poverty I'd ever experienced was in the early '60s, when Eastern mining companies abruptly quit Upper Michigan's once-booming Gogebic Iron Range. Everyone was suddenly jobless, Dad included.

We received welfare assistance for several months, manifested most notably by cans of Kennedy-era USDA mystery meat on Mom's pantry shelves. Our local economy eventually rebounded, but not soon enough to erase my lingering memory of that meat's "unique" taste.

The Reagan recession, though, was much harsher. It affected many millions more.

What's worse, it was deliberately contrived, to break the back of union power and thereby transfer American societal wealth to corporate/financial coffers to a degree that made storied sea piracy seem ethical and paltry in comparison.

Members of my extended family and I were unemployed for an excruciatingly long while. The same could be said for most everyone we knew. Packages of generic macaroni and cheese were supermarket shoppers' first pick, and easily half the passengers on our city buses were down-and-out souls either going to or coming from selling their blood plasma, out of desperate need.

Meanwhile, this country's upper crust -- the primary Republican constituency -- flourished like a fattening pig.

Huge tax breaks for the wealthy, coupled with deregulation of all institutions having direct bearing on the quality of our lives, and our very safety, became the American norm.

Most of us finally went back to work, but at jobs that generally paid much less than those we'd held earlier. Former auto makers became hamburger flippers at fast-food joints.

Rapacious class warfare conducted against America's wage-earning majority -- an open plunder thinly disguised by "trickle down" balderdash -- became thoroughly institutionalized.

Along with all this came the rapid growth of deep, ultimately insoluble contradictions that, in the final quarter of 2008, would make a very compelling case for Karl Marx's famous quote that "capitalists are their own gravediggers."

The entire system collapsed, most spectacularly in its finance sector, but chiefly because American labor had been exploited for so long that workers could no longer afford to buy back what they themselves produced. "Consumer confidence" understandably eroded, and store shelves gathered dust in the uneasy months before their final going-out-of business sales.

Giving Marx credit again where it's definitely due, here is the long-predicted "overproduction crisis" for which private-profit capitalism simply has no solution.

Into this impending catastrophe came Barack Obama, a decent man with ultimate loyalties lying with the common people, by whose status he knows that America's societal health must be measured. Not by how flush and plush things might be with a tiny, superrich minority.

So Obama and the Democrats sought to advance a "stimulus package" to "jump-start" the failing economy.

Never mind that it was too little, too late, or that probably nothing can be done, now, to slow our greased-skid slide to disaster.

Republicans resisted this good-faith effort with all the typical, pro-plutocracy nonsense they could shamefully muster. They wanted even more tax advantages and subsidies for business interests, coupled with demands for less regulation, forgetting that the Bernie Madoff rip-off and the current peanut-butter salmonella scare are two salient examples of deregulation's abject bankruptcy.

Cancer-stricken Ted Kennedy had to return to Washington, since his vote was needed by the Democrats to prevent a Republican senatorial filibuster.

All this completely wrong-headed obstructionism occurred as the unemployment rate soared to record levels and mass hardship was becoming epidemic. Elkhart, Indiana will soon be Everytown, USA.

It happened shortly after one of our community's television stations ran a sobering piece on area homelessness, featuring a man who lived in a scrap-built shelter in the woods, when the wind chill routinely exceeded 30 below!

Where is the "Christianity" of those who greedily devote all their efforts to preserving their privileged, luxurious status, derived by a parasitic sucking of working-class lifeblood?

What manner of "human" can see profit and suffering before him, know that relentless pursuit of the former inevitably causes the latter, and still blithely seek more profit, at the painful expense of public welfare and the common good?

Before our sofas and televisions become evicted furniture out on the sidewalks, we need to rise from our torpor and fight back, like our forebears did in the Rebel '30s, using exactly the same tactics.

Get mad as hell. Unite, organize.

This is our country, and we can't allow traitors loyal only to The Almighty Dollar to destroy America.
_______

About author

Dennis Rahkonen, from Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing progressive commentary with a Heartland perspective for various outlets since the Sixties.

US-Israeli Interactions

Thanks to Mick Gallagher.

US-Israeli Interactions
*******
www.uruknet.info [51986]
***

U.S.-Israel Storm Clouds Ahead?

February 20, 2009

After eight years of the closest possible relations, the United States and Israel might be headed for a period of increasing strain, particularly given the likelihood that whatever Israeli government emerges from last week's election will be more hawkish than its predecessor.
While Iran, with which Barack Obama has pledged to engage in a "constructive dialogue," and the future of its nuclear program, will no doubt serve as the greatest source of tension between the two allies, the new president's commitment to achieving real progress on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict might also provoke serious friction, particularly if a reunified Arab League launches a major new push for its 2002 peace plan.
Last week's election produced a clear majority for right-wing parties led by the Likud Party of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly declared his opposition to a settlement freeze, territorial concessions, and the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
Even if the more-centrist Kadima leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, can patch together a government of national unity, the right-wing parties will be able to effectively block major concessions in any peace talks, in the absence of any external pressure.
"Given the philosophical differences between Kadima and Likud on peace issues, such a unity-government would be hard-pressed to make the historic decisions needed to reach a deal with the Palestinians," wrote former U.S. Mideast peace negotiator, Aaron David Miller, in the Jewish Forward this week.
But Obama and his Mideast special envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, might indeed be willing to exert pressure on Israel, among other things, by tabling their own views about a final peace agreement and how precisely it might be achieved, especially if ongoing Arab efforts to reconcile Hamas and Fatah in a new coalition government succeed.
If all goes well on that front, the Arab League, fortified by a developing rapprochement between Syria and Saudi Arabia, could announce the latest version of its 2002 peace plan at next month's summit in Doha, according to Marc Lynch, a George Washington University specialist on Arab politics. Such a move "could galvanize the situation and put the onus on whatever Israeli government emerges to respond positively," he wrote on his widely read blog on the Foreign Policy Website this week.
"If you have a unified Palestinian government and a unified Arab move for peace," added Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, "then it's much more likely that Obama will step up his own efforts, ideally, working with an Israeli government that's ready to go along with a serious peace process, but, if not, being willing to make his disagreement (with that government) known."
The result could be a serious test between the next Israeli government and its influential advocates here and an administration which clearly believes that real progress toward resolving the 60-year-old conflict is critical both to restoring Washington's credibility among the Arab states and curbing the further radicalization of the region's population, particularly in the wake of Israel's recent military offensive in Gaza.
A more likely source of tension between the U.S. and Israel, however, will be Iran's nuclear program.
"Iran is going to be the most likely issue on which Israel and the United States will have a serious difference of opinion, if not a confrontation, in the next year," warned former U.S. Ambassador Samuel Lewis after the election last week.
Although Netanyahu has been the most outspoken, virtually the entire Israeli political and military establishment has described Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions as an "existential" threat to the Jewish state; [they have] suggested that Israel should be prepared unilaterally to attack Tehran's key nuclear facilities as early as within the next year if it cannot persuade Washington to do so.
Already last year, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asked bush for bunker-busting bombs, refueling capacity, and permission to fly over Iraq for an attack on Iran, according to a new book by New York Times correspondent David Sanger, entitled "Inheritance."
That request was strongly opposed by Pentagon chief Robert Gates, who has been retained by Obama, and ultimately rejected by bush. According to bush's former top Middle East aide, Elliott Abrams, bush, who almost never denied the Israelis anything, was worried that any attack on Iran risked destabilizing Iraq.
While the violence in Iraq has continued to decline, U.S. military commanders insist that stability there remains "fragile," so that bush's concerns about the implications for Iraq of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran are likely to be shared by Obama.
Even more important, however, is the new administration's conviction that Afghanistan and Pakistan, which, like Iraq, also border Iran, constitute the true "central front in the war on terror," an assessment backed up by Obama's announcement this week that he will deploy 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan over the next few months, bringing total U.S. and NATO troop strength there to 80,000.
Top U.S. civilian and military officials dealing with "AfPak," as the new administration has dubbed the two countries, have made clear that they hope to enlist Iran, with which Washington cooperated in ousting the Taliban in 2001, in helping to stabilize Afghanistan.
"It is absolutely clear that Iran plays an important role in Afghanistan," Obama's special "Afpak" envoy, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, said in Kabul earlier this week in an interview during which he pointedly declined to repeat bush administration charges that Tehran was aiding the Taliban. "[Iran has] a legitimate role to play in this region, as do all of Afghanistan's neighbors," he insisted.
Most regional specialists, including Bruce Riedel, who co-chairs the White House's "AfPak" policy review, and John Brennan, Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, have long argued that Iran's cooperation would make Washington's effort to stabilize the region and ultimately defeat al Qaeda markedly easier; conversely, its active opposition, as in Iraq, is likely to make the task considerably more difficult.
That assessment has, if anything, gained strength in just the past few weeks as Washington has scrambled to secure new supplylines into landlocked Afghanistan after a key bridge in Pakistan's Khyber Pass was destroyed by Taliban militants there; and Kyrgyzstan threatened to end Washington's access to its Manas air base.
While U.S. efforts to compensate have focused so far on the overland route through Russia and the Central Asian "Stans," a growing number of voices have noted that a much less costly and more efficient alternative route would run from Iran's southern ports into western Afghanistan.
Although Tehran would no doubt be very reluctant to permit the U.S. military to use its territory at this point, NATO's supreme commander, U.S. Gen. John Craddock, said earlier this month that he had no objection if other NATO members could negotiate an access agreement with Iran.
Of course, it is not yet clear whether U.S. success in "AfPak" and Iran's possible role in securing it, will help trump Washington's concerns about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
But the clear priority [of] stabilizing Southwest Asia is being given by the new administration; and the abrupt change in the rhetoric emanating from Washington about Iran, not to mention abiding concerns regarding Iran's ability to destabilize Iraq, clearly run counter to Israel's efforts to depict Tehran's nuclear program as, in Netanyahu's words, "the greatest challenge facing the leaders of the 21st century."

And it will surely make it more difficult for him or anyone else in the next Israeli government to "harness the U.S. administration to stop the threat."

***
Taken from www.uruknet.info
***
http://ww.uruknet.info?p=m51986
***

Movie Review: "Black Snake Moan"

This movie is as bizarre and eccentric as its title. It is a story, produced in twenty-oh-seven, of the many ways in which human beings can get lost, and the one Way that we find redemption-- Love. Only when we learn to love and to forgive ourselves and others can we find peace and joy.

The main characters are an African American man and a Caucasian woman. The man is named "Laz," and the woman is called "Rae." She has a terrible reputation as a "slut" or "whore," largely the outworking of her having been abused as a child. Laz has just lost his wife, and is in mourning over it; he heals himself by sincerely attempting to heal Rae. She later redeems her sanity by aiding her boyfriend Ronny. (In the end,she and Ronny are married.)

The bizarre story begins as Laz discovers Rae on the road, drunk and high, where she has been kicked from the car by her latest lover. Laz has no sexual interest in Rae; and he does not become sexually interested in her during the entire movie. Instead, he truly serves her by recognizing-- perhaps, for the first time-- that she is a human being, in need of real help. To keep her from fleeing, Laz wraps a very long chain around Rae. She resents this, and him, with extreme and great bitterness. But later, as she sees his good heart, she abandons her negativity, and begins to love him in her own way-- again, in a sexfree mode!

Laz gets much help, assistance, and practical aid from his friend who is a minister; but this minister is refreshingly human. He is no stuck-up, selfconscious, preachy "Christian." He lives, acts, thinks, and speaks like a "normal" human being, even swearing from time to time.

There is, in fact, quite a bit of swearing in this movie. But it is not used for shock-value or to stun. Instead, it seems to reflect the normal ambience of the people involved, and the atmosphere of their little southern town. It also reflects their deep frustrations with their lives.

The movie is rough and uncultured; the characters are hardly "finished," refined, or polished social products. They are all very human, in ways that all of us can recognize-- in ourselves as well as in others.

But it is in the over-riding transcendental theme that the movie really shines. For its theme is definitely Love, and how we can shine Love, as understanding, patience, and kindness, into each others' hearts and lives.

Love is stronger than associates, stronger than abuse, stronger than the past, stronger than mental or emotional illness. Love is irresistible; it is the greatest Power in the universe!

Refresher Course

Thanks to Mick Gallagher.

Refresher Course
*******

[This is written] just to clear up any misunderstandings. I thought I'd forward the Webster's New World Dictionary definitions of a few terms distorted and twisted by the wealthy owners of our public airwaves.

Why would they do that? Because they are greedy. Because they 'fear' someone, or something, will take some of their god away. Therefore, they use the airwaves to scare you about such ideologies and systems of governing. And here are those big scary systems for you to [contemplate[:

Socialism: 1. any of various theories or systems of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community rather than by private individuals, with all members of
society or the community sharing in the work and the products. 2. a political movement for establishing such a system. The doctrines, methods,etc of the socialist parties. 3. the stage of society, in Marxist doctrine, coming between the capitalist stage and the communist stage (see COMMUNISM, sense2), in which private ownership of the means of production and distribution has been eliminated.

Fascism: the doctrines, methods, or movement of the fascisti. 2. {sometimes} a system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic
enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism, and militarism, etc.; first instituted in Italy in 1922. 3. a) a political movement based on such doctrines and policies b) fascist behavior See also "Nazi.")

Communism: 1. an economic theory or system based on the ownership of all property by the community as a whole. 2. a hypothetical stage of socialism, as formulated by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others, to be characterized by a classless and stateless society and the equal distribution of economic goods; to be achieved by revolutionary and dictatorial, rather than gradualistic [evolutionary], means.

One last note: Remember that there are many actual examples of active socialism in our capitalistic society: The Fire Dept., the Police Dept., the military and it's healthcare system, etc.

No one is even being tortured by [these socialistic systems]. Now, see, that wasn't so dark & evil, was it? Now, think about the last eight years: And think which definition these more closely fit, where we have been heading.

A True Christian Community, in the New Testament, [was identified by its possession of the] Mind [and] heart of Jesus [Christ]. [This kind of community] is more closely aligned with socialism, and more evolved modes of communism. But the powerful people want you to fear these systems. And no, they are not perfect either, because of [the hu]man's propensity towards our lowest nature-- greed,etc. But today's Western style capitalism, if you take a good, hard, sober look at the realities of it, well, I'll say [simply] it works extremely well for the wealthiest ten to twenty percent. And below that [small economic demographic,], well, [it doesn't help much.] one more thing to prove that socialism is what we have now for the rich, and so called "free enterprise" for the working class. [This is] proof that socialism will outlive capitalism, because "we the people" have to bail out the [evil and ignorant people] at the top, after their scams and dime-dancing are through, and they've sold us out.

The Illusory Values of Travel

A person who does not like herself very often will seek something to "compensate" for the absence of selflove, or for feeling inadequate (low selfesteem). Very often, she will brag or boast about her "important" or "famous" friends; in essence, she is pathetically begging, "Please pay attention to me and say that I am worthy, good, or important." This is replacing healthy selfesteem with damaging friendesteem.

People do something similar with travel. Just as having "famous or important" friends does nothing to make you a truly "better" person, so, in itself, travel does nott improve you-- mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Historically, people who travel much are no more tender or compassionate generally than are those who never have left home.

The wellknown Chinese mystic who is the founder of Taoism, whose name is Lao Tzu, wrote, "The sage can see the whole world without moving her front gate." For the enlightened have no need for all the "hassles" involved with travel.

Time is the "gold" of the cosmos. It takes quite a bit of time to invest in yourself, and in your friends or community. And it takes time to reinforce your spirituality-- reading, discussion, meditation, etc. The person who travels too much actually is putting her spirituality in danger; she is exactly like the materialistic or greedy person, who simply "does not have time" for spiritual concerns. Travel takes much timenergy-- so much that you no longer have time for God (Love) or truth. The genuine Way is lost to you simply because you have not taken the time to study, learn, and meditate.

People who do not like themselves often use travel to hide feelings of unworthiness, believing the illusion (lie) that travel itself somehow makes you "more important" or a "better person." But it does not; the truth is that, historically, many fools have traveled all their lives, every day or every week. And, because they spent all their time in travel, at the end of their lives, they died in their ignorance and foolishness. For an entire life spent in travel, and its many arrangements, cannot be spent in the pursuit of wisdom, peace, joy, or
Love.

Thus, as the people of Love and enlightenment, we must find the wisdom and courage to turn away from the illusion-laden, and glittering, promise of travel. All that glitters... Travel offers distractions to the average person, but has very limited value to the person of Spirit. (Her Journey is interior, and infinite.) Thus, the person of wisdom is not impressed by travel, and she does not encourage this unhealthy form or expression of illusion in her friends.

She might enjoy some moderate travel, and might even discuss this; but she does not support the unhealthy illusion that travel is important in itself. For travel itself is not therapeutic; and too much of it can harm your selfesteem, your family, your friends, or even your community. (For you cannot and do not usually serve anyone when you are always "gone.")

Like everything else, travel is good in moderation, but too much can have a negative effect on your psychology or even your psychospirituality. It can make you feel, subconsciously, unstable, that you have no "solid base" or strong foundation, no firm footing. It can make you feel as if you were walking on quicksand, and its effect can be troubling and unsettling.

It also costs not only much timenergy, but money. The wise would be better served, and truly improved, by taking this timenergy and money to improve her own home.

For the goal of the enlightened is to create a home so beautifully attractive that she does not have to leave it in order to enjoy her time. For the "travel-bug" can also "infect" people who secretly hate their homes. These homes can be greatly improved energy-wise (as in feng shui), by the addition of color, candles, fountains, mirrors, music, chimes, hard floors instead of carpet, and by the complete eradication of all "junk" and clutter. Try to minimize argumentation, disagreements, quarreling, shouting, loud talk, dissonant music, and similar negative
behaviors in the home.

If you "sweeten" the home, it will no longer seem dreary or boring; then, you will not need to "run away from," or "escape," your home. A happy home creates much in the happy life.
*******

We've Created a Frankenstein Monster

Thanks to Barbara Baty.

We've Created a Frankenstein Monster
*******

Steve Cyester wrote this in 1996:

It has all the "rights" of human beings, but few of the limitations. It has the world's resources at its disposal, and is unencumbered by borders, states, or nations. Granted immortality by its creators, it amasses wealth and power beyond the capabilities of human beings. It corrupts schools, governments, and imposes its will throughout our society. It controls most of our access to food, housing, energy, and other important resources. By manipulating the news in all forms of media, it determines what is the "truth" in the eyes of most people. If we have the audacity to fight back against its tyranny, we find ourselves the object of harassment, lawsuits, firings and sometimes even murder.

Are we speaking of a malevolent God of some sort? In a sense, we are. We are describing the corporation. How have we allowed our own creation to turn into a
Frankenstein with such immense power over our world?

In the early days of our country, corporations were created to perform tasks that might not be done otherwise. Building toll bridges or roads was a typical purpose for which people allowed a corporation to exist. Their existence was authorized by a charter, a license to operate which could be revoked at any time
if the corporation caused harm to the people. This country's founders were well aware of the potential threats of corporations. Thomas Jefferson spoke of the need "to crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Corporations were kept under tight citizen control. In almost all states, these restrictions applied:

-- Corporations' activities were strictly limited to the purpose for which they were created.
-- Charters were granted for a limited time, after which the corporation's charter would expire unless it was decided that the people's interests would be serve to extend it.
-- Corporations were explicitly chartered to serve the public interest. Profit for shareholders was a secondary consideration.
-- Corporations could be terminated if they engaged in activities not specifically permitted in their charters or if they were considered not to be serving society's interests.
-- Charters did not prevent owners or managers from being prosecuted for criminal acts.
-- Corporations were prohibited from making any political or "charitable" contributions.
-- Corporations could not own stock in other corporations, and could not own any property not essential to their task.

Most of this important history is unmentioned today, and our children go through school without ever questioning corporate-dominated society. Through gradual corruption of our government and our courts, corporations have abandoned their proper role as tools for improving the lives of real people. So thoroughly
have our laws been perverted that corporations are now considered "natural persons" in our courts, and given "Bill of Rights" protections. Thus, our courts now permit exactly what the Bill of Rights was created to prevent: domination of public thought, discussion and policy. Corporations corrupt our schools, media, and government, and we know it! However, we continue to let power concentrate in the hands of corporations, even while their impacts become increasingly destructive to our freedom and prosperity.

Every day, there are people around the world fighting oppression of women, the poor and minorities. Others struggle to stop environmental destruction or the corruption of their governments. All these problems, and more, have roots in uncontrolled corporate power. We must attack at the roots to halt corporate corruption, and to put corporations back in their rightful place as servants, not masters of the people. In almost every state, corporate charters give citizens
the right to fight back against corporations that are harming them. It is up to us to re-educate ourselves, enforce these laws, and take further action to
regain control from the corporate Frankenstein.

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Spiritual Pre-schoolers

Most of us spiritual seekers are not, and have never claimed to be, Jews. The same is very probably true of the fundy lady you mention. But fundies are just not programmed to think these matters through. In fact, their "training" (programming) does not usually teach them even to think independently at all. And, usually, they are "proud" of this absence of thought!

But because we are not members of the Jewish faith, Jewish laws do not restrict mystics in general, or Christians (followers of Jesus). The early Christian Church, in fact, had to struggle long and hard with this issue. Paul, in Galatians as elsewhere, makes it plain that Christians are not "under the Law" or the Mosaic or Levitical codes. Christ has freed us from all the laws of the Hebrew Scriptures ("Old Testament"). Christians, and other free spiritual people, are free from the necessity of studying or obeying the laws of ancient Israel. But Christian fundies, who always vacillate in confusion on this point, are woefully inconsistent on this matter; for they say that they must "obey the laws of Jehovah" in the old Jewish Bible, but then, ignore "Jehovah's laws" about sacrificing animals for sins, and many other Levitical provisions.

As far as Christianity is concerned, there is only one reference to astrology in the Christian Scriptures, and that is when the famous magi came to visit the Christ-child. An angel appeared to them, and they followed his advice. In short, they are not presented as "bad guys," but as heeding the direction of God, and following it. They were the only ones in the world who knew what was going on when Jesus was born. This presents astrology in the most positive light imaginable, and is the
opposite of fundy criticism and condemnation. And it is no mere coincidence that Jesus chose twelve apostles; for he wanted his apostles to represent all persons, and so, chose one for each sign of the zodiac.

Fundy "Christians" are Love-challenged. Their dogmas have blinded them to whatever Love they might have otherwise felt. You, in knowing with certainty that your friend is "in heaven," are blessed with a much greater, and more healing, faith; and congratulations on that!:)

Until this whole world grows up, we will always be burdened with the terrible ignorance and pride of fundies of various kinds. They help us, because they test our patience and Love. But it helps greatly to realize that what they think is irrelevant to how the universe actually works: God, happily, is completely unaffected by, independent of, what people say about God!:) So, in time, all this fundy nonsense will perish utterly, and be totally forgotten. It is just a minor "blip" that, in the one Mind, is quickly and quietly forgotten. So, let us not "give it power" by becoming upset about spiritual "pre-schoolers.":)
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