A four-month old puppy that goes by the name ‘Ears’ is seen in Lima November 10, 2008. Peruvians crazy about their national dog the Peruvian Hairless Dog, a bald and often toothless breed popular among Incan kings, offered on Monday to send a hypoallergenic puppy to the Obama family.
Month: November 2008
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I’m with Hitchens and Dawkins.
And if you’re not yet, you ought to read this story about two young Afghan girls attacked with water pistols filled with acid by Taliban militants.
The reason?
They were on their way to school.
Do we really need more evidence of the corrupting and violent nature of religion than the blindness of innocent schoolgirls? Intelligent human beings are capable of codifying morality without the obscure absurdism of magic books and invisible creatures that historically tends towards oppression and warfare.
I’m perfectly aware that many will say these are just the “bad” religious people, but I’m quite capable of locating the “good” ones as well, most of them are my neighbors who voted to support Proposition 8 here last week…
More from Lee?
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Hey thanks for the invite to contribute! I’m looking forward to great company and great conversations.
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Today, ninety years ago, the guns fell silent and children of Europe viewed in horror the madness that had been unleashed by their leaders on their behalf.
Words are too few and too unsatisfactory to express what the hills and the valleys of Northern France and Belgium had been witness to during the previous four years. To this day, live ammunition and human remains are still to be found in the meadows and forests that nature has reclaimed for herself from what was once a cratered moon landscape of an endless battlefield.
The ghosts remain, in villages long gone and yet remembered, calling out to us after all these years, to remind us of what befell them by a cruel chance of fate.
The village of Ornes, one of the villages détruits close to Verdun which was almost literally wiped off the face of the earth. See the church on the first postcard, and what was left of it in the second, in 1918.
The village was abandoned, the emptiness that could not be filled by human hands or voices was absorbed into the landscape, pitted with reminders of a horrifying legacy we dare forget only at our own peril.
The church still stands, with a simple cross on the altar in the haunting silence, in a place where grenades, mortars and gas had silenced an army many years ago.
The fallen came to rest, at the Ossuaire de Douaumont, a cathedral for the fallen and a place of reflection for the living.
Inside, the vaults contain a monument presented by each of the French départments, the walls covered with plaques honouring the named and the nameless buried outside.
The young and the old lie together, brothers in arms united in a death not willingly sought.
The entrance, a message of hope passed on by a generation of survivors, entreating us not to forget the good in all of mankind despite all the demonstrated evidence to the contrary.
I originally started out looking for a YouTube clip based on Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, on the title page of the score of which was quoted:
“My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pityâ¦
All a poet can do today is warn.”
I settled however for a theme taken from the BBC series “Dr. Who” which, to all intents and purposes, conveys the hurt and the sadness of a generation which had so appallingly taken leave of its senses but was destined to do so yet again within another twenty one years.
Lest we forget…
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- Labels: war
Look here to see the secret of………the greatest story ever denied.
moon rising
- Labels: above top secret, aliens, disclosure, truth
Crazy, but thats how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe its not to late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hate
Mental wounds not healing
Lifes a bitter shame
Im going off the rails on a crazy train
Ive listened to preachers
Ive listened to fools
Ive watched all the dropouts
Who make their own rules
One person conditioned to rule and control
The media sells it and you have the role
Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
Im going off the rails on a crazy train
I know that things are going wrong for me
You gotta listen to my words
Yeh-h
Heirs of a cold war
Thats what weve become
Inheriting troubles Im mentally numb
Crazy, I just cannot bear
Im living with something that just isnt fair
Mental wounds not healing
Who and whats to blame
Im going off the rails on a crazy train
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Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me, ” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
~ a Zen koan
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In order to have effective communications, we must listen… with an open Heart… instead of with our ego.
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What is forgiveness?
What does it mean, to you?
I struggled with forgiveness for years. I defined it in the only way that I knew, from what I had been taught or what I had learned… and, I learned, in time, that forgiveness… just as ALL things do… has about as many definitions are there are people who practice… or not practice… forgiveness.
Does someone need to be forgiven?
Do we have to forgive?
Does the person/entity, whom we are contemplating forgiving, have to ask forgiveness, in order to be forgiven?
Is forgiveness conditional?
Does forgiving mean forgetting?
I read a book called The Locket, years back… that explained forgiveness in a way that I had never thought of. For myself, I had been taught that I must forgive, because it was part of my youthful Christian upbringing… yet, it was hard forgiving. Part of that was wrapped up in the idea that… because I had not forgotten… then, surely I must not have forgiven.
In time, I learned that we never forget… and I can parallel that thought with the death of a loved one… we never forget… we just find ways to go on living, re-arrange the thought processes, in order to deal with what is lain before us, in more positive and constructive ways.
I’m not going to hunt the book down, to get the quote exactly right… but, the essence of it goes like this… you don’t forgive, for the other person’s sake… not for their benefit… you forgive for your own sake… forgiving is letting loose the anchor that would keep your ship from sailing to new shores… or else we remain stuck in the same place. I thought it was an excellant way to learn how to forgive.
And it isn’t, in my mind, about them asking for forgiveness… because, some never will.
Do all deserve forgiveness?
It doesn’t matter… what matters is the forward motion of our ship… our soul… which can’t happen, if we’re anchored in anger and bitterness.
Sometimes ones do not know how to ask forgiveness… their reality is different from our own.
What we sometimes see as something that needs forgiveness, may be our own selfish mind, in no way connected to the reality of the situation.
Perhaps no forgiveness is necessary, after all… just forward movement.
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Watching Face The Nation, this morning, Bob Schieffer interviews Rahm Emanuel, the USA’s upcoming Chief of Staff. Bob made a very interesting statement at the close of this morning’s program. I wish I could quote him, verbatim, but… being exact is for the sake of argument, yes? Often, it is the essence that is important to remember… and the thought that Bob imparted, this morning, was this: … ‘sometimes saying nothing at all is the best way to communicate’… I couldn’t agree more. We have to know when to speak and when to be silent to keep the proper energy moving. It’s, sometimes, a hard pill to swallow, but it works. I’ve been practicing for years, but have failed to perfect it… but… I’m getting much better.
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Imagine a cat………………………..what flavor did you imagine?
From a mix of many spices…..comes flavor.
What flavor are you?
Tasty?
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If being exact is for the sake of argument . .
allowing conceptual development is for agreement . . ?
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ONE BLOOD
ONE COLOR
ONE BLOOD
ONE COLOR
ONE BLOOD
ONE COLOR
ONE BLOOD
ONE COLOR
ONE BLOOD
ONE COLOR
ONE BLOOD
ONE COLOR
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The human race is one species; one species with a beautiful variety of colours.
One species; one race.
Let us live it like we mean it.
One.
No nations apart from the human nation.
No patriotism, no borders.
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I hope this will not offend anyone, but you know… this is what many of us… who still have Hope… are feeling, today.
This is about rising back up from the ashes… because if we are lame and crippled, then we are of no use to anyone. Not to ourselves, or to the rest of the world.
I hope you can feel the spirit of this song.
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Dear Bastard Offspring,
I know, I know, I haven’t written to you in an age and the age of man moves so damn swiftly doesn’t it? They say that time flies like a New York minute when you are having fun.
I just wanted to say, to let you know, that I love you. I love all of my offspring. Your sibling brothers and sister and mixed blood cousins. But I also love you.
Canuck, dare I say it, is even bigger than you but has never attained or made his mark in our global society quite the way you have, but then again who has?
Oz? Ha! What can you say about dear old Oz? Nothing bruises that boys ego and besides he does what he does and doesn’t give a damn what any of us think, just stick another steak on the barbie!
Kiwi? Ah, so beautiful and, to be honest my dear, more like me in looks than any of my rugged boys.
Yes, I am very proud of all my offspring.
But you my son, with your muscle and your might, with your industrious mind and the enormous wealth that you have accrued, it is you that worries me. Just a tad.
I watch you with such pride as you swagger about the globe like a comic book hero in your gaudy red, white and blue, fixing this and righting that. Sometimes your heart is too big and, as much as you try, even you cannot fix all of the global families woes.
There is another side of you though that frightens me and like any good parent or friend, I feel it is my honour bound duty to let you know.
Sometimes you behave like a school yard bully.
You come across someone who doesn’t do things the way you do and, without consulting any of us or going through the proper channels you go ahead and let that passionate heart of yours rule your head. You raise your big ham of a fist and smack it firmly on Johnny Foreigners face. You kick his arse from here to hell and back.
Son, violence is sometimes necessary when defending yourself or those you love but breaking into someoneâs house, smashing and burning their furniture, breaking the arms and legs of their children is not an act of defense but that of a vandal.
Of a hoodlum.
I really do think enough is enough don’t you?
You have left your footprint on the surface of the moon. A testament to your everlasting and greatest achievement. Do not leave your boot print on the face of Iraq.
Being the biggest and the best means that your mistakes can be proportionately as large. We all make mistakes and we all have to own up to them. I have. Remember the poor old Boers?
As I said, we all are guilty of making mistakes but we all have to know when to stop and when to put things right before they get worse.
Only you can decide.
Your loving parent,
Albion
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âThe ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.â
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Democracy! How can a choice between two political parties, neither of which truly represents the people be a democracy?
Nothing will change, the fat cats will get fatter, and the oil companies richer and atrocities will still be carried out world wide in our name. Capitalism needs the underdog, needs peaks and troughs and a democratic change of leadership is simply a distraction from the price of oil, food, and housing.
Obama will no doubt now be blamed for the global slump in the economy, just as Gordon Brown is blamed here in the UK, he will not be able to change anything because capitalism is too entrenched world wide, too many rich and powerful people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
This can be heaven or this can be hell and capitalism with itâs constant majority of losers makes our beautiful world hell for too many people, innocents are brow beaten into conforming to a regime that will only serve them as an undermined, underpaid often confused member of the peasantry.
To accept democracy as anything other than an illusion and capitalism as a necessary and unchangeable way of life is to accept defeat, for us, for our planet and for our children. The planet, our mother earth will continue to be raped and pillaged in the name of capitalism and innocents will continue to be murdered in the name of democracy.
We must begin to think, theorise, debate and develop new ways that the world can be led, we need a brighter future than the one offered by capitalism, a fairer future, with peace, people allowed and encouraged to think and be responsible for themselves. Itâs easy to hunker down and declare that nothing can change, but they can be because all things change.
Democracy, as we know it is just a way of bolstering and backing capitalism, there is enough of everything to go around, we could all share and still have surplus, but to begin we must be open minded, honest with ourselves and to dare think for ourselves and not be scared to communicate our thoughts.
A lot to ask? Perhaps we have to begin somewhere though and a deeper and more realistic look at the political and monetary system we are all living under seems a good place to start, otherwise I will always be banging my head against those two walls democracy and capitalism and I have a head ache already!
~ One World, One Tribe, One Love ~
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For real change in the White House, don’t vote for the old vanilla guy. The United States of America has 219 years of old vanilla guys, 43 old vanilla guys to be exact, and enough is enough. Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton (and me), the U.S. wasn’t ready for a vanilla broads–yet–(we broads didn’t get the right to vote until 1920) so give the chocolate guy a chance. Vote Obama.
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Politics is about, or should be, policy. I like Obama. He seems ‘real’: of the people somehow and very charismatic but you need more than charisma to lead America away from its need for greed. Obama is sadly lacking any policies and that worries the hell out of me.
The other fellow, short man with white hair, what’s his name? McKain? Another republican with a moral standing. More Christian men misinterpretting god’s (G) logic. As though you could shackle something so wonderous to something so trivial as mans primitive logic.
Gods help us all. God help America.
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I wonder if consciousness is al-one
but awareness must (at least)
share a time and place?
(location ~ duration)
Anything compared is shared?
Does that place consciousness
beyond Big Bang?
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