- Religion

A Glimpse Of The Other Side

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:40:00 -0700

Canada, Have We Lost Our Moral Compass?

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:32:52 -0600

Source: The Vancouver Sun - June 24, 2011

It has become obvious that it was not just outsiders and anarchists taking part in the riots after Game 7

As the evidence, apologies, threats and counter threats are now playing out on Facebook and Twitter can we put to rest the claims by our politicians that the Vancouver riot was constituted by a small number of troublemakers and anarchists? As we see the faces of middle class children with potentially bright futures splashed across the media doing horrific damage and mayhem is there any doubt that there is a lot more to this than pointing blame at a few? What is it, even hours before Game 7 of the Stanley Cup, that made young men in $100 Canucks sweaters express their attitude to "The Best Place on Earth" (B.C.'s official motto) and the self-described most livable, most beautiful, most sustainable place on Earth by spitting on it?

Of course, we know from studies, that when one person spits or litters it makes it far more likely that other people will follow along. And, when people start to smash windows and burn and damage cars, and loot, that too makes it more likely that other people will follow along - especially when their inhibitions have been lowered by hours of drinking to take their minds off the fact that in the land of $1.3-million "starter" bungalows, $400,000 one-bedroom condos and $750,000 two-bedroom condos, their prospects for a middle-class lifestyle with a family of two or three children are dim indeed.

It is telling that Mayor Gregor Robertson and others interviewed about this event described it as hooligans "smearing the name of the city," who "by no means represent(ed) the city of Vancouver." Even the heroes in the event, those isolated people who tried to stop the mayhem, at great personal risk, said nothing about the morality but emphasized that they did it because they didn't want Vancouver's name besmirched.

And, the next day everyone was relieved the real Vancouver emerged, when the right kind of people came downtown and volunteered in the clean up.

The only problem, of course, is that social media soon showed that Mayor Robertson was wrong. Thousands of young Vancouverites either participated or cheered on looters and property vandals and arsonists. They raised their arms in victory with each smash and burn. Perhaps even more shocking were the young people with their latest versions of iPhones standing in the middle of a riot, or within a few feet of a burning car, about to have its gas tank blow up in a fireball, snapping photos.

More bizarre still was the willingness of most to give media interviews. In this world, obsessed with celebrities and politicians behaving badly, these young people relish the chance to appear on old-style media or new social media, as if publicity for any reason is their raison d'être. One young woman asked why as she carried away a designer purse from a looted store stated the obvious: "Because I wanted it."

What if these young people do represent what Vancouver is and what it shall be? What if they are in fact dedicated to wanting to smear the reputation of the Best Place on Earth? What if the children of those who were hippies in 1970 and moved to Vancouver as part of their cultural revolution, have themselves decided to take part in their own, very different, cultural revolution?

Has anyone considered that the youth in a city where the average income is $56,000 and the average house price is $750,000 and who have no hope of entering the middle class, no hope of getting out of their parents' basements, and who occupy their time with toys (often violent video games), tweeting short inanities to their similarly situated friends, watching ultimate fighting championships and hockey "enforcers" and drinking and smoking dope, might really want to spit all over this city and smash it and boast about it to their friends by sending the photos out on Facebook?

What if what we see being reflected are the cultural consequences of a post-religious society with no clear moral compass and no overarching guiding values?

Vancouver has adopted a Lotus Land ideology of cultural relativism in which we tell our children that there are no good cultures and bad cultures and no good versus evil (nowhere in Canada is traditional religion more passé than in Vancouver). Moreover Vancouver is the place where there is the least stigma in Canada against getting high, using illegal drugs, stock fraud, drug dealing, and a whole variety of bad behaviours.

Vancouverites like to say that their high housing prices are the result of it being such a wonderful place to live and because of our high rate of immigration. This is only a small part of the story. A series of urban planning policies and programs have resulted in increased cost of new housing, all the better to benefit those lucky enough to have already purchased their fast appreciating huts in Lotus Land.

A vast number of people in Vancouver view themselves as "secular but spiritual." Too often it means a worship of nature and the absence of discussion of values and morality. If they are raised without any clear values, is it any wonder that young people use what spare cash they have to get tattooed with fetish-like body art? There is no point saving their money for a down payment on a house if the house requires a down payment of $300,000 and a mortgage of $700,000.

The largest single business in B.C., estimated to be in the order of $7 billion dollars per year, is the cultivation and distribution of marijuana and other illegal drugs. The Vancouver stock market is rife with stock fraud and white collar crime. Vancouverites had endless money to spend on the Olympics, but not enough for proper psychiatric care for the legions of homeless wandering around the Downtown Eastside or spending their days collecting bottles and cans in the alleys to redeem at seven to 10 cents each.

The enemy is not some hooligans, some anarchists, some out-of-towners, some criminal types at all. The enemy is us and what we are bequeathing to our children in terms of moral values, of understanding right from wrong, that celebrity misconduct should be pitied not emulated, and that justice and the respect for it is a hallmark of a civilized western society. Add to that moral confusion the extended adolescence of these young adults, and we have a recipe for just the kind of behaviour we witnessed in Downtown Vancouver in the Stanley Cup Riots of 2011.

They have not smeared our reputation. We have no reputation to smear. Much of our society is behaving badly. The riots are reflective of a loss of hope and a deep seated anger that we have created in our own children.

We all need to act better and then maybe our children will follow us.

The Apple Religion, Or (Brand Loyalty Beyond Reason)

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 09:00:23 -0600

Source: Digital Trends - May 18, 2011

In a recently screened BBC documentary, UK neuroscientists suggested that the brains of Apple devotees are stimulated by Apple imagery in the same way that the brains of religious people are stimulated by religious imagery.

People have often talked about “the cult of Apple”, and if a recent BBC TV documentary is to be believed, there could be something in it.

The program, Secrets of the Superbrands, looks at why technology megabrands such as Apple, Facebook and Twitter have become so popular and such a big part of many people’s lives.

In the first episode, presenter Alex Riley decided to take a look at Apple. He wanted to discover what it is about the company that makes people so emotional. Footage of the opening of the Cupertino company’s Covent Garden store in central London last year showed hordes of Apple devotees lining up outside overnight, while the staff whipped up customers (and themselves) into something of an evangelical frenzy. This religious-like fervor got Riley thinking – he decided to take a closer look at the inside of the head of an Apple fanatic to see what on earth was going on in there.

Riley contacted the editor of World of Apple, Alex Brooks, an Apple worshipper who claims to think about Apple 24 hours a day, which is possibly 23 hours too many for most regular people. A team of neuroscientists studied Brooks’ brain while undergoing an MRI scan, to see how it reacted to images of Apple products and (heaven forbid) non-Apple products.

According to the neuroscientists, the scan revealed that there were marked differences in Brooks’ reactions to the different products. Previously, the scientists had studied the brains of those of religious faith, and they found that, as Riley puts it: “The Apple products are triggering the same bits of [Brooks'] brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith.”

apple store church

“This suggests that the big tech brands have harnessed, or exploit, the brain areas that have evolved to process religion,” one of the scientists says. A meeting with the Bishop of Buckingham, who reads the Bible using his Apple iPad, appeared to back up this assertion. He pointed out how the Apple store in, for example, Covent Garden has a lot of religious imagery built into it, with its stone floors, abundance of arches, and little altars (on which the products are displayed). And of course, the documentary doesn’t fail to give Steve Jobs a mention, calling him “the Messiah”.

Related Video

Judgment Day Forecaster Now Points To October Doomsday

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:33:35 -0600

Source: Reuters - May 24, 2011

The evangelical Christian broadcaster whose much-ballyhooed Judgment Day prophecy went conspicuously unfulfilled on Saturday has a simple explanation for what went wrong -- he miscalculated.

Instead of the world physically coming to an end on May 21 with a great, cataclysmic earthquake, as he had predicted, Harold Camping, 89, said he now believes his forecast is playing out "spiritually," with the actual apocalypse set to occur five months later, on October 21.

Camping, who launched a doomsday countdown in which some followers spent their life's savings in anticipation of being swept into heaven, issued his correction during an appearance on his "Open Forum" radio show from Oakland, California.

The headquarters of Camping's Family Radio network of 66 U.S. stations had been shuttered over the weekend with a sign on the door that read, "This Office is Closed. Sorry we missed you!"

During a sometimes rambling, 90-minute discourse that included a question-and-answer session with reporters, Camping said he felt bad that Saturday had come and gone without the Rapture he had felt so certain would take place.

Reflecting on scripture afterward, Camping said it "dawned" on him that a "merciful and compassionate God" would spare humanity from "hell on Earth for five months" by compressing the physical apocalypse into a shorter time frame.

But he insisted that October 21 has always been the end-point of his own End Times chronology, or at least, his latest chronology.

The Party Monasteries Dancing Nuns

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:24:50 -0600

Source: AFP - May 24, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI has shut down a famous community in Rome that organised dances by a former nightclub dancer nun and hosted VIPs like Madonna, earning the disfavour of the Vatican.

The closure of the monastery of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which holds some of the Church's most prized relics, was reported by Italian dailies La Stampa and Il Foglio.

The reports said the community of Cistercian monks based at the church for more than five centuries was being transferred to other churches in Italy.

Contacted by AFP, the Vatican did not deny the reports.

The basilica had become a hub for the "Friends of Santa Croce", an aristocratic group, and had been criticised for some unorthodox practices including dances in which nuns pranced around the altar.

One of the nuns who performed at the church, a former disco dancer, can be seen in a YouTube video performing a modern dance with a crucifix.

Seymour Hersh: The Knights Of Malta, Crusaders Against Islam

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Mon, 16 May 2011 10:42:54 -0600

Related Story - Putin Likens U.N. Libya Resolution To 'Crusade'

Source: WhoWhatWhy - February 23, 2011

It seems unusual for a staid, respected publication (one that has received three National Magazine Awards in just this past decade) to start treating a celebrated journalist (who himself has won two National Magazine Awards in just this past decade) as if he were nothing more than a paranoid crank.

It seems unusual, but it’s exactly what the staff of Foreign Policy has done to Seymour Hersh, following a lecture the venerated reporter gave at Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar. You may know Hersh as the dogged investigator who exposed the My Lai Massacre during Vietnam. You may know him as the staff writer for The New Yorker who published some of the earliest pieces on Abu Ghraib in May 2004. You might even know him as the man derided and then vindicated for claiming that Dick Cheney was running a secret assassination squad right out of the Vice President’s office. (In truth, the squad was and is a bipartisan affair, initiated under Clinton and still operative under Obama.)

Yet, given the Foreign Policy staff’s derisive commentary on Seymour’s January 17th talk, you would think he was some credulous rube midway through his first Dan Brown novel.

Hersh “delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday,” Blake Hounshell reported on the magazine’s Passport blog. His delusional fantasia: The existence of ties between the U.S. Military’s Joint Special Operations Command and a secretive Catholic order called the Knights of Malta. As Hounshell elaborates:

[Hersh] charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative “crusaders” in the former vice president’s office and now in the special operations community:

That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”

He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.”

Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited [sic] to “defence [sic] of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,” according to its website.

“They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”

“They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins,” he continued. “They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”

Continue reading "Seymour Hersh: The Knights Of Malta, Crusaders Against Islam"

Jordan Maxwell - "Nothing In This World Works The Way You Think It Does"

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:33:58 -0600

Source: In Other News April 4, 2011

Jordan Maxwell Discusses The Reality Behind The Illusion

(Pause to stop - pressing stop will reset the player)

Destination Italy, Nigeria's Sex Slaves

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:28:59 -0600

Source: The Independent - April 7, 2011

It is 6pm on a Monday night on a highway outside Milan. The thermometer on the car dashboard says it is two degrees below zero, but every few metres our headlights pick out figures waiting along the roadside, some hunched with their palms splayed over makeshift fires. Silvio Berlusconi outlawed soliciting on the street three years ago, but the estimated 20,000 Nigerian women who work as prostitutes in Italy are easy to find. Even in winter, there is no shortage of customers.

This is one of hundreds of highways throughout Europe where Nigeria's trafficking victims are forced to work. We could be in Barcelona or Madrid, Paris or Berlin, Glasgow or London. There are 100,000 trafficked Nigerians in Europe, and 80 per cent come from Edo – a southern state that is home to only three per cent of Nigeria's population. It is the trafficking capital of Africa, and home of the traditional West African religion they call juju.

The condom-strewn lay-by near Bergamo where Rita picks up clients is a far cry from the Europe she imagined five years ago when traffickers approached her in Edo. "I was happy that I was going to Europe to feed my family," explains Rita, 27. "I didn't know it would turn out to be like this." She now sleeps with about 10 men a day, seven days a week, for €20 (£17.50) a time. She will work even if she feels ill, even if she has her period, even though she has been badly beaten in the past.

Rita says she has no choice but to carry on working. Before she left Nigeria, she swore an oath of loyalty to her traffickers in a traditional religious ritual, a practice I was investigating for Channel 4's Unreported World programme. She promised to pay back the cost of her transportation to Europe and offered up her soul as collateral for the debt. When she arrived in Italy, she was told she owed her traffickers €50,000 (£44,000), as well as extortionate living costs, including €300 a month in "rent" for the right to solicit from her particular patch. "I can't escape this unless I pay," she says. "Africans have very strong charms that can destroy someone in the twinkle of an eye."

Nigeria's human traffickers are using black magic to trap thousands of women like Rita into a life of sex slavery in Europe. Eastern European gangs use violence to coerce the women they transport, but the "madams" at the top of the Nigerian trafficking chain don't need muscle – they have juju on their side. It is a form of ritualised extortion that allows Nigerian women to be both perpetrators and victims of the exploitation.

Three thousand miles away in the small Edo village of Ewhoini, I meet 23-year-old Vivian Peter – intelligent, beautiful and full of aspirations that are hard to realise in rural Nigeria. The £2 a day she earns selling tomatoes at the market isn't enough to put her younger brothers and sisters through school, and buy a home where she can live with her boyfriend, Elonel. But he says he has the answer to their problems: he is arranging for Vivian to go and work for someone he says is his sister in Italy.

Paved roads and reliable electricity may not have reached this part of rural Nigeria, but the myth of the "Italos" – the women who have made a fortune in Italy – has permeated every household. It is an open secret that the Italos earn their money by selling sex, and there is no shame in it – Nigerian women who travel are stigmatised only if they return home penniless. But many do, often beaten and HIV-positive, and are rejected by their families.

Vivian doesn't know exactly where she will be taken, or how much she will owe her traffickers, but she imagines her debt will be paid within a few months. "I won't have any idea until I get there," she tells me. Her boyfriend has no qualms about sending her to sell sex on Italy's streets. "A lot of people do it over there," Elonel, 27, says matter-of-factly, "I'm not going to stop her." All the arrangements are in place: he has bought her plane ticket to Rome and booked her in to see Doctor Stanley, the local juju priest. He says the ritual will "help her out" and bring her luck in Italy. Juju has been practised in West Africa for centuries, and it would be hard to find anyone in Edo who is prepared to say they don't fear it. Believers say invisible spirits govern the earth and control every aspect of human existence, and nothing can be hidden from their scrutiny. The spirits can be called on to protect people, but they can also destroy them.

"If she breaks the promise she makes at my shrine, we need blood from her," Dr Stanley tells me on the morning of Vivian's ritual. "I can use my power to destroy anything I want. I can throw any type of sickness to a person, whether cancer or stroke." He boasts that "uncountable" trafficked women have sworn oaths at his shrine. I ask if he feels responsible for compelling so many to a life of prostitution. He fixes me with a stern gaze. "When you promise this is what you will do, unfailingly you must do it."

Continue reading "Destination Italy, Nigeria's Sex Slaves"

The Spiral Stairs Of Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:04:09 -0600

Source: Spirit Daily

You perhaps have heard of it, the staircase at Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where -- according to the literature -- nuns who operated a convent there began a novena to Saint Joseph, patron of carpenters and builders, when they needed a way to easily traverse up to the choir loft, which previously had been accessed by ladder. Their dilemma was that there was no room for a stairway as normal stairways go. A flurry of carpenters they consulted had said so.

According to accounts, on the last day of the novena, a gray-haired man came to the convent with a donkey and a tool chest -- basically, a saw, a hammer, and a square. He also needed tubs to soak wood. They gave him the job, and he set about the work on July 25, 1873, taking what is now estimated as six to eight months to complete it. Only wood pegs (no nails) were used. And the result was exquisite.

"The winding stairway that the old man left for the sisters is a masterpiece of beauty and wonder," noted St. Joseph Magazine. "It makes two complete 360-degree turns. There is no supporting pole up the center as most circular stairways have. This means it hangs there with no support. The entire weight is on the base. Some architects have said that by all laws of gravity, it should have crashed to the floor the minute anyone stepped on it and yet was used daily for nearly a hundred years." Indeed, there are photos of the staircase filled with members of the choir!

When the sisters went to pay the man, continues the account, he had vanished. There is no record of paying anyone a penny for the incredible piece of carpentry.

We have had an article on this previously. "I spoke with Urban C. Weidner, a Santa Fe architect and wood expert, about the staircase," noted Sister M. Florian. "He told me that he had never seen a circular wooden stairway with 360-degree turns that did not have a supporting pole down the center. One of the most baffling things about the stairway, however, is the perfection of the curves of the stringers, according to Mr. Weidner. He told me that the wood is spliced along the sides of the stringers with nine splices on the outside and seven on the inside. Each piece is perfectly curved. How this came about in the 1870s by a single man in an out-of-the-way place with only the most primitive tools has never been explained."

Continue reading "The Spiral Stairs Of Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico"

Close Encounters of the Buddhist Kind

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 11:38:26 -0700

Source: Foreign Policy - January 20, 2011

Picture this: millions of followers gathering around a central shrine that looks like a giant UFO in elaborately choreographed Nuremberg-style rallies; missionary outposts in 31 countries from Germany to the Democratic Republic of the Congo; an evangelist vision that seeks to promote a "world morality restoration project"; and a V-Star program that encourages hundreds of thousands of children to improve "positive moral behavior." Although the Bangkok-based Dhammakaya movement dons saffron robes, not brown shirts, its flamboyant ceremonies have become increasingly bold displays of power for this cult-like Buddhist group that was founded in the 1970s, ironically, as a reform movement opposed to the excesses of organized religion in Thailand.

Yet, despite the pageantry, the inner workings of this fast-growing movement are little known to Thailand's general public, and certainly to the rest of the world, though its teachings loom large among the legions of devotees.....

This obscurity is because -- despite its 24-hour satellite TV station -- Dhammakaya has diligently worked to avoid the limelight. Until now. Over the past year, photographer Luke Duggleby and reporter Ron Gluckman have been granted unrivaled access to the facilities and ceremonies of Dhammakaya, and they provide an exclusive look at this mesmerizing movement.

The Mothership: The gold-topped Cetiya temple is the center of the Dhammakaya's expanding global meditation movement and the focal point of ceremonies. The dome is actually composed of 300,000 identical titanium- and gold-coated bronze statues of Buddha -- another 700,000 are nestled inside a temple that even devotees will admit looks like a UFO. Some call it "The Mothership." Estimates have placed the value of the temple complex at around $1 billion. - Foreign Policy

Buddhism on Life in the Universe

The Budhha's explanation of the universe was what the present scientists found out to be. He divided the process of "creation" (for lack of better word) into four stages...formation, existence, degeneration, and destruction. Upon destruction, all the material elements returned to their original base elements, and after a long long time, they began to group together and the process of formation would start again. So you can understand, that the whole process is a cycle, and has no beginning or ending. These forces of "creation, formation, existence, and destruction" are universal throughout the entire cosmic space which has no ending. Time is a non factor, it has no meaning in this cosmic display of life cycle. Space is also a non entity; it is just void.

At any point in time there is this incessent cycle of creation, existence, degeneration and destruction of stars, planets, and even galaxies! Space has no ending, which can be better decribed as void. The Buddha called our galaxy, Cakkavala. Cakka meaning wheel or spiral. Our galaxy is spiral in shape. The whole universe, the Buddha called it Loka Dhatu, meaning, world of elements. In this endless void, there exists countless galaxies. The size and distance of these galaxies are beyond our human imagination and understanding! Our earth world is just an insignificant speck of dust in this whole unimaginable universe of cosmic existence! As a law of probability alone, if such an insignificant speck of dust can support life, what about the others in this gigantic display of cosmic drama! The answer to both your questions is that Buddhists KNOW that there exists extraterrestrials; but very very very far away.

In many of the Buddha's discourses there were always the mention of beings from 10,000 world systems gathered to listen to him. The Buddha also revealed that in our world alone there were 31 planes of existence (life forms). Humans and animals are 2 planes that we can see. The others, such as ghosts and higher plane beings, we cannot see with our limited vision. Wherever there are life forms in any of the worlds (planets) in other galaxies or universes, these 31 planes of life forms take hold. All are subject to this universal cycle of formation, existence, degeration, and ultimate destruction; and the cycle repeats itself ad infinitum. - Justin Choo

Flashback: The Amazing True Story of Zeitoun

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 16:27:05 -0700

Source: The Guardian - March 2010

Saturday afternoon and the Zeitoun household is bustling with activity, as you quickly get the impression it always is. Kathy Zeitoun, dressed in a blue silk shirt and matching hijab, is fluttering around making spiced pumpkin-flavoured coffee and answering the constantly ringing phone. Noises emanating from four of her five children bubble up like broth from the back room where they are watching Kung Fu Panda on a giant flat-screen TV. Kathy seats me in the neat and orderly living room, which is dominated by cream leather sofas and a watercolour of a street scene from her husband's native Syria. Beside it is a framed 3D model of the Qur'an.

Gradually, out of this domestic pleasure dome, telltale signs emerge of the calamity that struck the Zeitouns almost five years ago. An outside wall of the house is stained with a faint but still clearly discernible line at about shoulder height, a record etched in paint of where the flood waters settled.

"Most of the time I don't think about what happened at all," Kathy says, as she pours the coffee. "Until I step out on to the street – then it all comes back to me."

In recent days Kathy has been forced to think back a lot on the events leading up to and following 29 August 2005, when hurricane Katrina ripped through her city of New Orleans, breaching its levees and immersing much of it, including her home, in several feet of water. The reason for her current preoccupation is the publication of the new book by that one-man literary factory Dave Eggers, whose best-known previous work is the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

The book, entitled Zeitoun, is, as its name suggests, a very personal telling of a national tragedy. It explores what happens when the entire fabric of society collapses, plunging a city into a parallel universe where there is no justice, no government, no protection, no respect. It does so exclusively through the eyes of the Zeitouns. Eggers spent three years on and off interviewing the family, then translating their memories into his trademark vivid yet restrained prose.

At the centre of the book is Kathy's husband, Abdulrahman, or Zeitoun as he is universally known, a New Orleans building contractor who has attained almost mythical status. Not only is he the dominant character in the 339 pages of Eggers's book, but in the US press he has been dubbed an "all-American hero" for the phlegmatic way he conducted himself in the midst of catastrophe.

That said, when I arrive at his house he is nowhere to be seen. He turns up an hour and a half late, which Kathy insists is wholly true to form and actually not that bad: he kept her waiting for two hours on their wedding day. He could have turned up 10 hours late and still you'd forgive him, just as soon as you felt his firm handshake and the embrace of his warm smile. "Zeitoun," he says in self-introduction, as though there were any doubt.

He comes into the room straight from a building site with his trousers splattered in mud. "I really don't feel we deserve all this attention," he says in a thick Middle-Eastern accent. "I only did what I had been brought up to do."

What he did was to stay in New Orleans when the hurricane struck, driven by a conviction that that is where he belonged. While Kathy and the kids joined the mass evacuation from the city, he hunkered down at home; and when the levees broke and the flood water poured in, he put to use a battered old canoe he owned to navigate the streets of his neighbourhood, now turned into canals.

Zeitoun paddling through New Orleans in his canoe may well become one of the enduring images of Katrina. A line drawing of him in the boat is printed on the cover of Eggers's book, and the film director Jonathan Demme plans to make an animated movie of his story next year.

Zeitoun takes us on a guided tour of the route that he negotiated in his canoe in the days after the storm. He begins by pointing to a pillar at the front of his house. "That's where I kept the canoe tied, like you'd tie up your horse."

We set off by car along the maze of streets around his neighbourhood. On every street corner he has a tale to tell. The first stop we make is at a house of grey clapboard standing on stilts. In the hurricane, the flood waters reached almost up to its windows. As he paddled by, Zeitoun explains, he heard a voice faintly crying "Help!". He swam to the front door and inside found a woman in her 70s hovering above him. In one of the most memorable phrases of the book, Eggers writes: "Her patterned dress was spread out on the surface of the water like a great floating flower."

"She was inside the house holding on to the bookshelf with water up to her shoulder," Zeitoun recalls, as we stand outside the house. "She must have been in the water for about 24 hours by then."

Zeitoun helped the woman reach safety in a fishing boat, which was no small feat given that she weighed 90kg (14st). His construction skills and great strength proved invaluable as he levered her on a ladder out to the vessel.

Our tour continues and we pass the house of a local Baptist church pastor and his wife whom the Zeitouns had known for years and who similarly cried out for help. Further on, we come to the residence of a man who was stranded and to whom Zeitoun brought food and water every day while he still had his canoe and his liberty.

All in all, Zeitoun reckons he must have helped to save or rescue more than 10 neighbours. "The way I thought of it was, anything you can do to help. God left me here for a reason. I did what I was brought up to do – to help people."

At this point, our journey begins its descent to a much darker place. Zeitoun points out the spot where he saw a human body floating in the filthy water. Then we arrive at Claiborne Avenue where the weirdness truly began. It was 6 September, six days after the hurricane, and he was in the house – his own property, which he rents out – along with a Syrian friend, Nasser Dayoob, his tenant Todd Gambino and Ronnie, a white man Zeitoun didn't know but who had asked to stay in the house for shelter. Zeitoun was on the phone to his brother in Syria when six unidentified police officers and National Guardsmen burst through the front door dressed in military fatigues and bullet-proof vests and carrying M16s and pistols. Zeitoun explained he was the landlord, but the only response was a demand from one of the National Guardsmen for his identity card.

"All he did was look at my ID," Zeitoun says, "and that was enough. Nothing else. No other questions. The moment he saw my name he said, 'Get into the boat!'"

Continue reading "Flashback: The Amazing True Story of Zeitoun "

I Couldn't Make It Up If I Tried

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:45:29 -0700

I considered not posting this trash, but I had to remind myself that this blog is a chronicle afterall.

Related Post : The Pope Says Pedophelia Not Necessarily Evil

The Little Drummer Boy

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 14:11:24 -0700

The tune of the drummer boy is still what comes to mind for me on Christmas Eve.

The little drummer boy @ Yahoo! Video

The Pope Says Pedophelia Not Necessarily Evil

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:57:14 -0700

The hell you say!

Source: The Belfast Telegraph - December 21, 2010

Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict's claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn't considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.

In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than' and a ‘worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.

Asking how abuse exploded within the Church, the Pontiff called on senior clerics “to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred” and to help victims heal through a better presentation of the Christian message.

“We cannot remain silent about the context of these times in which these events have come to light,” he said, citing the growth of child pornography “that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society” he said.

But outraged Dublin victim Andrew Madden last night insisted that child abuse was not considered normal in the company he kept.

Mr Madden accused the Pope of not knowing that child pornography was the viewing of images of children being sexually abused, and should be named as such.

He said: “That is not normal. I don't know what company the Pope has been keeping for the past 50 years.”

...

“The Pope insists on talking about a vague ‘broader context' he can't control, while ignoring the clear ‘broader context' he can influence — the long-standing and unhealthy culture of a rigid, secretive, all-male Church hierarchy fixated on self-preservation at all costs. This is the ‘context’ that matters.”

The latest controversy comes as the German magazine Der Spiegel continues to investigate the Pope's role in allowing a known paedophile priest to work with children in the early 1980s.

Libido Dominandi

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:42:33 -0600

Source: Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation & Political Control

Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices. St. Augustine, City of God

Writing at the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire, St. Augustine both revolutionized and brought to a close antiquitys idea of freedom. A man was not a slave by nature or by law, as Aristotle claimed. His freedom was a function of his moral state. A man had as many masters as he had vices. This insight would provide the basis for the most sophisticated form of social control known to man.

Fourteen hundred years later, a decadent French aristocrat turned that tradition on its head when he wrote that the freest of people are they who are most friendly to murder. Like St. Augustine, the Marquis de Sade would agree that freedom was a function of morals. Unlike St. Augustine, Sade proposed a revolution in sexual morals to accompany the political revolution then taking place in France. Libido Dominandi the term is taken from Book I of Augustines City of God is the definitive history of that sexual revolution, from 1773 to the present.

Unlike the standard version of the sexual revolution, Libido Dominandi shows how sexual liberation was from its inception a form of control. Those who wished to liberate man from the moral order needed to impose social controls as soon as they succeeded because liberated libido led inevitably to anarchy. Aldous Huxley wrote in his preface to the 1946 edition of Brave New World that as political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. This book is about the converse of that statement. It explains how the rhetoric of sexual freedom was used to engineer a system of covert political and social control. Over the course of the two-hundred-year span covered by this book, the development of echnologies of communication, reproduction, and psychic control including psychotherapy, behaviorism, advertising, sensitivity training, pornography, and plain old blackmail allowed the Enlightenment and its heirs to turn Augustines insight on its head and create masters out of mens vices. Libido Dominandi is the story of how that happened.