http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/right-to-remain-silent
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-tapes-inside-bed-stuy-s-81st-precinct/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
Police corruption is the first sign of the decline of a nation into fascism.
This story of the NYPD committing a whistleblower cop Adrian Schoolcraft to a psych hospital should make anyone familiar with the history of Soviet Russia worried for America.
The very act of being upset about a police invasion of your home certifies you as an EDP Emotionally Disturbed Person who must be hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Republicans - the Party of the Living Dead
since when have Republicans done anything good for the country? it boggles the mind. It is now a zombie party, full of the living dead, hell bent on destroying the country by mindless adherence to failed ideology. But the media need a horse race so they continue to maintain the fiction that the Republican party is actually viable and actually has ideas worth considering. George W Bush should have been the final nail in the coffin of the Republican party, but it continues to live on merely because it serves the ruling economic royalty who own the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/opinion/krugman-springtime-for-toxics.html?src=me&ref=general#comments
Martin SteinPortland, OregonMartin Stein is Trusted.Trusted Commenters enjoy the privilege of commenting on articles and blog posts without moderation.
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..Voters need to wake up to the fact that the Republican party as now constituted is a threat to the well being of the United States. They are against practically every measure that would improve the economic well being of ordinary Americans, the welfare of children,, and the environmental well being of the planet.
They are in favor of practically every every measure that would increase the coffers of the wealthiest Americans and corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans, men, women and children alike.
They are so cravenly immoral, that a former seemingly reasonable Republican like John Huntsman would decry environmental control regulations. I could envision a man losing his soul in order to gain the world. I cannot conceive of someone like Huntsman losing his in order to go from one to two percent in the polls.
Republicans warn us constantly about the "socialist ' threat, the threat posed by American Muslims and Sharia Law and numerous other manufactured political Freddy Krugers to scare the masses into compliance with their agendas.
However, to my mind the biggest threat to the health and well being of our society and our way of life is the Republican party who by their actions and proposals are truly the enemy of the good in our country.
At least hatters had a reason for their madness. What is the excuse for Republicans being so greed obsessed, nihilistic, irresponsible, and short sighted?
To me they represent a threat to our cherished ideals
Dec. 25, 2011 at 8:44 p.m.Recommended820
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Van Richardson, TXReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..Republicans usually deny the effects of things that exist but that they can't see (mercury, CO2, climate change) but pull out all the stops to combat things can't be seen because they don't exist (weapons of mass destruction, welfare queens, job-killing regulations).
Dec. 26, 2011 at 8:44 a.m.Recommended109Share this on FacebookShare this on Twitter.
..L.R.Upstate New YorkReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..The knee-jerk conservative reflex is to be anti-everything government. You can argue facts with them all day long; show them cost-benefit ratios that prove regulations save lives and money - and none of it matters. They don't dare admit any exceptions to their anti-government creed, lest the faith of their followers fall into doubt.
Complaints from the right about 'uncertainty' are a giveaway. Their believers follow them because they offer simple, unbending explanations of how the world works and enemies to explain away everything that contradicts those beliefs. To admit that there might be anything their rigid world view can't handle threatens the faith of their followers in their leadership.
They are no longer a political party. They have become an authoritarian cult. The party that invented "political correctness" as a disparaging label is now far more rigidly conformist than any liberal ever was, and the trend is accelerating. At some level the party leadership knows and understands this, but can't give it up without losing control of their base.
Let doubt of any kind seep in, and their control over their followers will begin to crumble. Keeping that control, even at the price of causing further damage to the country, is their first priority. The party of the Neo-Cons has evolved into the party of the Neo-Know-Nothings.
This pretty much explains the growing Republican antipathy to science, reason, or logical consistency.
Dec. 26, 2011 at 5:24 a.m.Recommended90
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/opinion/krugman-springtime-for-toxics.html?src=me&ref=general#comments
Martin SteinPortland, OregonMartin Stein is Trusted.Trusted Commenters enjoy the privilege of commenting on articles and blog posts without moderation.
Trusted Commenter FAQ
Trusted Report Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..Voters need to wake up to the fact that the Republican party as now constituted is a threat to the well being of the United States. They are against practically every measure that would improve the economic well being of ordinary Americans, the welfare of children,, and the environmental well being of the planet.
They are in favor of practically every every measure that would increase the coffers of the wealthiest Americans and corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans, men, women and children alike.
They are so cravenly immoral, that a former seemingly reasonable Republican like John Huntsman would decry environmental control regulations. I could envision a man losing his soul in order to gain the world. I cannot conceive of someone like Huntsman losing his in order to go from one to two percent in the polls.
Republicans warn us constantly about the "socialist ' threat, the threat posed by American Muslims and Sharia Law and numerous other manufactured political Freddy Krugers to scare the masses into compliance with their agendas.
However, to my mind the biggest threat to the health and well being of our society and our way of life is the Republican party who by their actions and proposals are truly the enemy of the good in our country.
At least hatters had a reason for their madness. What is the excuse for Republicans being so greed obsessed, nihilistic, irresponsible, and short sighted?
To me they represent a threat to our cherished ideals
Dec. 25, 2011 at 8:44 p.m.Recommended820
Share this on FacebookShare this on Twitter...
Van Richardson, TXReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
Flag
..Republicans usually deny the effects of things that exist but that they can't see (mercury, CO2, climate change) but pull out all the stops to combat things can't be seen because they don't exist (weapons of mass destruction, welfare queens, job-killing regulations).
Dec. 26, 2011 at 8:44 a.m.Recommended109Share this on FacebookShare this on Twitter.
..L.R.Upstate New YorkReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
Flag
..The knee-jerk conservative reflex is to be anti-everything government. You can argue facts with them all day long; show them cost-benefit ratios that prove regulations save lives and money - and none of it matters. They don't dare admit any exceptions to their anti-government creed, lest the faith of their followers fall into doubt.
Complaints from the right about 'uncertainty' are a giveaway. Their believers follow them because they offer simple, unbending explanations of how the world works and enemies to explain away everything that contradicts those beliefs. To admit that there might be anything their rigid world view can't handle threatens the faith of their followers in their leadership.
They are no longer a political party. They have become an authoritarian cult. The party that invented "political correctness" as a disparaging label is now far more rigidly conformist than any liberal ever was, and the trend is accelerating. At some level the party leadership knows and understands this, but can't give it up without losing control of their base.
Let doubt of any kind seep in, and their control over their followers will begin to crumble. Keeping that control, even at the price of causing further damage to the country, is their first priority. The party of the Neo-Cons has evolved into the party of the Neo-Know-Nothings.
This pretty much explains the growing Republican antipathy to science, reason, or logical consistency.
Dec. 26, 2011 at 5:24 a.m.Recommended90
Share this on FacebookShare this on Twitter..
Enjoy It While You Can - Before the Great AH5N1 Plague Purifies the Earth
Sounds like a civilisation terminating event once AH5N1 bird flu virus goes airborne, no more iphones, no more laptops, no more governments, no more gasoline, just a very bad smell everywhere and a sudden quietness once the weeping and gnashing of teeth stop, oh the humanity!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/science/debate-persists-on-deadly-flu-made-airborne.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
The A(H5N1) bird flu was first recognized in Hong Kong in 1997, when chickens in poultry markets began dying and 18 people fell ill, 6 of them fatally. Hoping to stamp out the virus, the government in Hong Kong destroyed the country’s entire poultry industry — killing more than a million birds — in just a few days. Buddhist monks and nuns in Hong Kong prayed for the souls of the slaughtered chickens, and world health officials praised Hong Kong for averting a potential pandemic.
But the virus persisted in other parts of Asia, and reached Europe and Africa; that worries scientists, because most bird flus emerge briefly and then vanish. Millions of infected birds have died, and many millions more have been slaughtered. Since 1997, about 600 humans have been infected, and more than half died.
Dr. Donald A. Henderson, a leader in the eradication of smallpox and now a biosecurity expert at the University of Pittsburgh, noted that even the notorious flu pandemic of 1918 killed only 2 percent of patients.
“This is running at 50 percent or more,” Dr. Henderson said. “This would be the ultimate organism as far as destruction of population is concerned.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/science/debate-persists-on-deadly-flu-made-airborne.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
The A(H5N1) bird flu was first recognized in Hong Kong in 1997, when chickens in poultry markets began dying and 18 people fell ill, 6 of them fatally. Hoping to stamp out the virus, the government in Hong Kong destroyed the country’s entire poultry industry — killing more than a million birds — in just a few days. Buddhist monks and nuns in Hong Kong prayed for the souls of the slaughtered chickens, and world health officials praised Hong Kong for averting a potential pandemic.
But the virus persisted in other parts of Asia, and reached Europe and Africa; that worries scientists, because most bird flus emerge briefly and then vanish. Millions of infected birds have died, and many millions more have been slaughtered. Since 1997, about 600 humans have been infected, and more than half died.
Dr. Donald A. Henderson, a leader in the eradication of smallpox and now a biosecurity expert at the University of Pittsburgh, noted that even the notorious flu pandemic of 1918 killed only 2 percent of patients.
“This is running at 50 percent or more,” Dr. Henderson said. “This would be the ultimate organism as far as destruction of population is concerned.”
Sunday, December 25, 2011
With Faith in the Buddha, Sariputta Walks on Water
South of Savatthi is a great river, on the banks of which lay
a hamlet of five hundred houses. Thinking of the salvation of the
people, the World-honored One resolved to go to the village and
preach the doctrine. Having come to the riverside he sat down
beneath a tree, and the villagers seeing the glory of his appearance
approached him with reverence; but when he began to preach, they
believed him not.
When the world-honored Buddha had left Savatthi Sariputta
felt a desire to see the Lord and to hear him preach. Coming to the
river where the water was deep and the current strong, he said to
himself: "This stream shall not prevent me. I shall go and see the
Blessed One, and he stepped upon the water which was as firm
under his feet as a slab of granite. When he arrived at a place in the
middle of the stream where the waves were high, Sariputta's heart
gave way, and he began to sink. But rousing his faith and renewing
his mental effort, he proceeded as before and reached the other
bank.
The people of the village were astonished to see Sariputta, and
they asked how he could cross the stream where there was neither a
bridge nor a ferry. Sariputta replied: "I lived in ignorance until I
heard the voice of the Buddha. As I was anxious to hear the doctrine
of salvation, I crossed the river and I walked over its troubled waters
because I had faith. Faith. nothing else, enabled me to do so, and
now I am here in the bliss of the Master's presence."
The World-honored One added: "Sariputta, thou hast spoken
well. Faith like thine alone can save the world from the yawning
gulf of migration and enable men to walk dryshod to the other
shore." And the Blessed One urged to the villagers the necessity of
ever advancing in the conquest of sorrow and of casting off all
shackles so as to cross the river of worldliness and attain
deliverance from death. Hearing the words of the Tathagata, the
villagers were filled with joy and believing in the doctrines of the
Blessed One embraced the five rules and took refuge in his name.
http://sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg86.htm
a hamlet of five hundred houses. Thinking of the salvation of the
people, the World-honored One resolved to go to the village and
preach the doctrine. Having come to the riverside he sat down
beneath a tree, and the villagers seeing the glory of his appearance
approached him with reverence; but when he began to preach, they
believed him not.
When the world-honored Buddha had left Savatthi Sariputta
felt a desire to see the Lord and to hear him preach. Coming to the
river where the water was deep and the current strong, he said to
himself: "This stream shall not prevent me. I shall go and see the
Blessed One, and he stepped upon the water which was as firm
under his feet as a slab of granite. When he arrived at a place in the
middle of the stream where the waves were high, Sariputta's heart
gave way, and he began to sink. But rousing his faith and renewing
his mental effort, he proceeded as before and reached the other
bank.
The people of the village were astonished to see Sariputta, and
they asked how he could cross the stream where there was neither a
bridge nor a ferry. Sariputta replied: "I lived in ignorance until I
heard the voice of the Buddha. As I was anxious to hear the doctrine
of salvation, I crossed the river and I walked over its troubled waters
because I had faith. Faith. nothing else, enabled me to do so, and
now I am here in the bliss of the Master's presence."
The World-honored One added: "Sariputta, thou hast spoken
well. Faith like thine alone can save the world from the yawning
gulf of migration and enable men to walk dryshod to the other
shore." And the Blessed One urged to the villagers the necessity of
ever advancing in the conquest of sorrow and of casting off all
shackles so as to cross the river of worldliness and attain
deliverance from death. Hearing the words of the Tathagata, the
villagers were filled with joy and believing in the doctrines of the
Blessed One embraced the five rules and took refuge in his name.
http://sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg86.htm
The Wise Contemplative Abstains From Debates Such as These
"Whereas some priests and contemplatives, living off food given in faith, are addicted to debates such as these -- 'You understand this doctrine and discipline? I'm the one who understands this doctrine and discipline. How could you understand this doctrine and discipline? You're practicing wrongly. I'm practicing rightly. I'm being consistent. You're not. What should be said first you said last. What should be said last you said first. What you took so long to think out has been refuted. Your doctrine has been overthrown. You're defeated. Go and try to salvage your doctrine; extricate yourself if you can!' -- he abstains from debates such as these. This, too, is part of his virtue. ~
sutta digha nikaya metta/canon/digha/dn2.html
sutta digha nikaya metta/canon/digha/dn2.html
We Pick the Buddha We Can Relate To
amorfati@geocities.com wrote:
>> " maybe we are projecting our own desires about the character of Shakyamuni on Him. We westerners desperately want a jolly santa claus type buddha, it seems."
>>> So what? Projection is the Name of the Game. ... I have a 'weight-challenged' friend who has a statue of the short fat buddha (Hotei) on his altar. I have an intellectual friend who has only the head of a greek apollo style buddha on his altar, detached from the body. I have a sensual friend who has the yab-yum buddha image on their altar. We pick the Buddha we can relate to. Soon, we will have Buddhas that look like Elvis, or Buddhas hanging from a cross.
>> We've already had those buddhas. They're called Elvis and Jesus.
>> " maybe we are projecting our own desires about the character of Shakyamuni on Him. We westerners desperately want a jolly santa claus type buddha, it seems."
>>> So what? Projection is the Name of the Game. ... I have a 'weight-challenged' friend who has a statue of the short fat buddha (Hotei) on his altar. I have an intellectual friend who has only the head of a greek apollo style buddha on his altar, detached from the body. I have a sensual friend who has the yab-yum buddha image on their altar. We pick the Buddha we can relate to. Soon, we will have Buddhas that look like Elvis, or Buddhas hanging from a cross.
>> We've already had those buddhas. They're called Elvis and Jesus.
Classified Ad Classics - Man Seeking Relationship
"Newly Separated in dead-end job seeks dumpy neurotic for mutual
psychological torture, tepid sex, and co-dependency. I enjoy drinking,
smoking, p0rn0graphy, and self-righteous indignation. I can't stand
movies, and the last album I bought was The Marshall Tucker Band's
Greatest Hits. I have middling intelligence but try to appear smarter
by affecting a world-weary air, memorizing useless facts, and
chuckling at my own mean-spirited, agenda-driven jokes. I'm 32 but
look 40 and feel 60.
You are a whiny, bitter shrew with a misplaced sense of entitlement
and unrealistic expectations. In time you will become coolly hostile
when I don't fulfill every unmet need you've ever had. Bonus points if
you just finished screwing every guy in town and but now want to take
it slow with me. My perfect night would include getting hammered in a
sh*t-hole bar while you flirt with seedy old drunks, followed by an
embarrassing screaming match.
I would be open to an unsatisfying fling that leaves me filled with
regret and dread but prefer a long-term, soul crushing descent into
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unimportant, but I will condescend to women under 30 and rehash mother
issues with women over 40. Serious replies only, please.
psychological torture, tepid sex, and co-dependency. I enjoy drinking,
smoking, p0rn0graphy, and self-righteous indignation. I can't stand
movies, and the last album I bought was The Marshall Tucker Band's
Greatest Hits. I have middling intelligence but try to appear smarter
by affecting a world-weary air, memorizing useless facts, and
chuckling at my own mean-spirited, agenda-driven jokes. I'm 32 but
look 40 and feel 60.
You are a whiny, bitter shrew with a misplaced sense of entitlement
and unrealistic expectations. In time you will become coolly hostile
when I don't fulfill every unmet need you've ever had. Bonus points if
you just finished screwing every guy in town and but now want to take
it slow with me. My perfect night would include getting hammered in a
sh*t-hole bar while you flirt with seedy old drunks, followed by an
embarrassing screaming match.
I would be open to an unsatisfying fling that leaves me filled with
regret and dread but prefer a long-term, soul crushing descent into
booze and pills. No friendships. I don't need any damned friends. Age
unimportant, but I will condescend to women under 30 and rehash mother
issues with women over 40. Serious replies only, please.
More Quotes to Live By
"The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible . . . Atoms are not things." Werner Heisenberg
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. --Friedrich Nietzsche
"The vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world.
And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice." - George W. Bush
(Washington DC, Oct 27 2003)
"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation
that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing
falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any
refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the
war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this
process of grotesque self-deception."
--Mark Twain, 1917
"The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong." Winston Churchill
"There are two ways of losing oneself: by insulation
in the particular or by dilution in the 'universal'"
Aimé Cesairé
"Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music."
- Anon
"Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
"If the law is on your side, argue the law; if the
law is against you, argue the facts; and if the law
AND the facts are against you, just argue."
"Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?" Stanislaw Lem
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance." -- Oscar Wilde
"A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory."
-Steven Wright
"It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others."
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - Hunter S. Thompson
"Brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells live forever."
"the tragedy of Canada is that they had the opportunity to have British culture, French cuisine,
and American technology. Instead they ended up with American culture, British cuisine, and
French technology."
"To meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer to the universe. I call it stillness, but it is a jewel with many facets: that stillness is also joy, and it is love."
eckhart tolle
"To read a book early in the morning, at daybreak, in the vigor and dawn of one's strength—this is sheer viciousness! —"
—Ecce Homo, WIASC, 8
"Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving
taxi cabs and cutting hair." George Burns
"Walk with the Gods. And he does walk with the Gods who lets them see his soul invariably satisfied with his lot and carrying out the will of that "genius", a particle of himself, which Zeus has given to every man as his captain and guide." Marcus Aurelius Antoninus [121 A.D. -- 180 A.D.] -- Meditations
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
- H. L. Mencken
"What do you call someone in possesion of all the facts? Paranoid." -William Burroughs
"What I see in Nature is a grand design that we can understand only
imperfectly, one with which a responsible person must look at with humility.
This is a genuine religious feeling and has nothing to do with mysticism."
Albert Einstein
"What is the difference between a sh*thead and a brown-noser"? the answer is depth perception
"When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."
- Barbara J. Winter
"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why
bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but
what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One
descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of
conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher
up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know." Rene Daumal
(Terence McKenna) They were urging me to experiment with my voice and I discovered years later, taking Ayahuasca in the Amazon jungles, tribes of Indians that have actually mastered this art, and that saturate their bodies with DMT and harmaline, and then sing. But for them this singing is not a musical exercise, it's a pictorial exercise. They see what they intend. This is a kind of telepathy. Well, it's humbling, it's transformative, it's astonishing to realise that Shamans all over the world for time uncountable have been accessing this appalling, complex, ontologically challenging, scientifically impossible, reality. This means that culturally we are living out some kind of schizophrenic delusion, because we live our lives totally ignorant of these possibilities, or perhaps only glimpsing them at the edge of anaesthesia, or something like that, unless, of course, we have the courage to be counter-cultural heads, but even then many people confine themselves in the private world of their own reflection because social pressure and, indeed, social legislation make it very touchy to talk about these things. But I say to you, this is part of the human birthright. This is as much a part of the game as birth, sex and dying.
From the Camden Center Talk
(Terence McKenna)
“Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspects of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man’s own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this “nausea,” as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd. Likewise the stranger who at certain seconds comes to meet us in the mirror, the familiar and yet alarming brother we encounter in own photograph is also the absurd.”
- camus
> "And if there is still one hellish, truely accursed thing in our time, it is > our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the > stake, signaling through the flames."-Antonin Artaud. ~
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. --Friedrich Nietzsche
"The vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world.
And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice." - George W. Bush
(Washington DC, Oct 27 2003)
"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation
that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing
falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any
refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the
war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this
process of grotesque self-deception."
--Mark Twain, 1917
"The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong." Winston Churchill
"There are two ways of losing oneself: by insulation
in the particular or by dilution in the 'universal'"
Aimé Cesairé
"Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music."
- Anon
"Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
"If the law is on your side, argue the law; if the
law is against you, argue the facts; and if the law
AND the facts are against you, just argue."
"Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?" Stanislaw Lem
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance." -- Oscar Wilde
"A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory."
-Steven Wright
"It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others."
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - Hunter S. Thompson
"Brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells live forever."
"the tragedy of Canada is that they had the opportunity to have British culture, French cuisine,
and American technology. Instead they ended up with American culture, British cuisine, and
French technology."
"To meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer to the universe. I call it stillness, but it is a jewel with many facets: that stillness is also joy, and it is love."
eckhart tolle
"To read a book early in the morning, at daybreak, in the vigor and dawn of one's strength—this is sheer viciousness! —"
—Ecce Homo, WIASC, 8
"Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving
taxi cabs and cutting hair." George Burns
"Walk with the Gods. And he does walk with the Gods who lets them see his soul invariably satisfied with his lot and carrying out the will of that "genius", a particle of himself, which Zeus has given to every man as his captain and guide." Marcus Aurelius Antoninus [121 A.D. -- 180 A.D.] -- Meditations
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
- H. L. Mencken
"What do you call someone in possesion of all the facts? Paranoid." -William Burroughs
"What I see in Nature is a grand design that we can understand only
imperfectly, one with which a responsible person must look at with humility.
This is a genuine religious feeling and has nothing to do with mysticism."
Albert Einstein
"What is the difference between a sh*thead and a brown-noser"? the answer is depth perception
"When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."
- Barbara J. Winter
"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why
bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but
what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One
descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of
conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher
up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know." Rene Daumal
(Terence McKenna) They were urging me to experiment with my voice and I discovered years later, taking Ayahuasca in the Amazon jungles, tribes of Indians that have actually mastered this art, and that saturate their bodies with DMT and harmaline, and then sing. But for them this singing is not a musical exercise, it's a pictorial exercise. They see what they intend. This is a kind of telepathy. Well, it's humbling, it's transformative, it's astonishing to realise that Shamans all over the world for time uncountable have been accessing this appalling, complex, ontologically challenging, scientifically impossible, reality. This means that culturally we are living out some kind of schizophrenic delusion, because we live our lives totally ignorant of these possibilities, or perhaps only glimpsing them at the edge of anaesthesia, or something like that, unless, of course, we have the courage to be counter-cultural heads, but even then many people confine themselves in the private world of their own reflection because social pressure and, indeed, social legislation make it very touchy to talk about these things. But I say to you, this is part of the human birthright. This is as much a part of the game as birth, sex and dying.
From the Camden Center Talk
(Terence McKenna)
“Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspects of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man’s own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this “nausea,” as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd. Likewise the stranger who at certain seconds comes to meet us in the mirror, the familiar and yet alarming brother we encounter in own photograph is also the absurd.”
- camus
> "And if there is still one hellish, truely accursed thing in our time, it is > our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the > stake, signaling through the flames."-Antonin Artaud. ~
Saturday, December 24, 2011
List of Corporate Scams
it's pretty surprising when you think how many commonly known companies have been around forever while practicing a business model based on outright deception, the only secret is not to get too greedy like Enron
like
Amway - scam poor desperate ignoramuses into thinking they are starting a 'business' by buying a garage full of motivational tapes and books from the scam artist
Sleep number mattresses - $3000 for a $300 air mattress
Quiznos sandwiches - though the scam here is to defraud the franchisee rather than the customer, with onerous operating rules and lockin contracts
Goldline - gold 'investing'
Hedge Funds - made-to-order out-of-the-box ready-to-wear Ponzi scheme
Credit Card companies - free 0 percent come-ons with sneaky overlimit fees
Traffic Camera Photo Ticket companies - setting yellow light timing to guarantee high numbers of $500 photo tickets
Cell Phone Companies like Sprint - relying on overage charges listed in incomprehensible units like cents per kilobbyte equivalent to tens of thousands of dollars per gigabyte
Payday Lenders - interest rates of +400% APR
like
Amway - scam poor desperate ignoramuses into thinking they are starting a 'business' by buying a garage full of motivational tapes and books from the scam artist
Sleep number mattresses - $3000 for a $300 air mattress
Quiznos sandwiches - though the scam here is to defraud the franchisee rather than the customer, with onerous operating rules and lockin contracts
Goldline - gold 'investing'
Hedge Funds - made-to-order out-of-the-box ready-to-wear Ponzi scheme
Credit Card companies - free 0 percent come-ons with sneaky overlimit fees
Traffic Camera Photo Ticket companies - setting yellow light timing to guarantee high numbers of $500 photo tickets
Cell Phone Companies like Sprint - relying on overage charges listed in incomprehensible units like cents per kilobbyte equivalent to tens of thousands of dollars per gigabyte
Payday Lenders - interest rates of +400% APR
The Original Confidence Man - Americas Great Invention
amazing, there actually is an identified original con man!
William Thompson (confidence man)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Thompson was an American criminal whose deceptions caused the term "confidence man" to be coined.
Operating in New York City in the late 1840s, a gently-dressed Thompson would approach an upper-class mark, pretending they knew each other, and begin a brief conversation. After initially gaining the mark's trust, Thompson would ask "Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?" Upon taking the watch (or, occasionally, money), Thompson would depart, never returning the watch.[1]
Thompson was arrested and brought to trial in 1849, in a case that made newspaper headlines across the country. The New York Herald, recalling his explicit appeals to the victim's "confidence," dubbed him the "confidence man." Per the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the term was printed in The New Orleans Picayune.
The Thompson case was a major inspiration and source for Herman Melville's 1857 novel The Confidence-Man.
[edit] References1.^ Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, p 6 ISBN 0-300-02835-0
[edit] External links"Arrest of the Confidence Man," New-York Herald, 1849
William Thompson (confidence man)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Thompson was an American criminal whose deceptions caused the term "confidence man" to be coined.
Operating in New York City in the late 1840s, a gently-dressed Thompson would approach an upper-class mark, pretending they knew each other, and begin a brief conversation. After initially gaining the mark's trust, Thompson would ask "Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?" Upon taking the watch (or, occasionally, money), Thompson would depart, never returning the watch.[1]
Thompson was arrested and brought to trial in 1849, in a case that made newspaper headlines across the country. The New York Herald, recalling his explicit appeals to the victim's "confidence," dubbed him the "confidence man." Per the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the term was printed in The New Orleans Picayune.
The Thompson case was a major inspiration and source for Herman Melville's 1857 novel The Confidence-Man.
[edit] References1.^ Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, p 6 ISBN 0-300-02835-0
[edit] External links"Arrest of the Confidence Man," New-York Herald, 1849
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Hedy Lamarr Quotes
Hedy Lamarr
Jack Kennedy always said to me, Hedy, get involved. That's the secret of life. Try everything. Join everything. Meet everybody.
I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.
I don't believe in life after death. But I do believe in some grinding destiny that watches over us on earth. If I didn't, the safety valve would give and the boiler would explode.
Analysis gave me great freedom of emotions and fantastic confidence. I felt I had served my time as a puppet.
It's funny about men and women. Men pay in cash to get them and pay in cash to get rid of them. Women pay emotionally coming and going. Neither has it easy.
All my six husbands married me for different reasons.
I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father's equal, and I never loved any other man as much.
American men, as a group, seem to be interested in only two things, money and breasts. It seems a very narrow outlook.
Lawyers know how to take isolated complaints in a divorce case and build them into one big one.
Let any pretty girl announce a divorce in Hollywood and the wolves come running. Fresh meat for the beast, and they are always hungry.
Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.
I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despise the conventional in anything, even the arts.
I've been an important star and lived a full life, yet I only hve three close friends. I guess that's all anyone can expect.
I don't have any gnawing guilt over contributing to any unhappiness suffered by my husbands. They were as much to blame as I was.
I enjoy countless hundreds pursuing me. I love those who love me the most. I am sort of flattered by men showing attention to me.
Perhaps my problem in marriage-and it is the problem of many women-was to want both intimacy and independence. It is a difficult line to walk, yet both needs are important to a marriage.
Some men like a dull life - they like the routine of eating breakfast, going to work, coming home, petting the dog, watching TV, kissing the kids, and going to bed. Stay clear of it - it's often catching.
The ceremony took six minutes. The marriage lasted about the same amount of time though we didn't get a divorce for almost a year.
The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent, actor, director, producer, leading man; and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude, but true.
I have always felt that if a man gives you a solid gold key to his door he is entitled to the courtesy of a visit.
I have not been that wise. Health I have taken for granted. Love I have demanded, perhaps too much and too often. As for money, I have only realized its true worth when I didn't have it.
I know why most people never get rich. They put the money ahead of the job. If you just think of the job, the money will automatically follow. This never fails.
I must quit marrying men who feel inferior to me. Somewhere there must be a man who could be my husband and not feel inferior.
I think women are concerned too much with their clothes. Men don't really care that much about women's clothes. If they like a girl, chances are they'll like her clothes.
I was born an only child in Vienna, Austria. My father found hours to sit by me by the library fire and tell fairy stories.
I would tell anyone who wants something from someone else to feign not wanting it. People are perverse. If you show great affection to them, they'll run the other way.
I'd rather wear jewels in my hair than anywhere else. The face should have the advantage of this brilliance.
Hedy Lamarr
Jack Kennedy always said to me, Hedy, get involved. That's the secret of life. Try everything. Join everything. Meet everybody.
I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.
I don't believe in life after death. But I do believe in some grinding destiny that watches over us on earth. If I didn't, the safety valve would give and the boiler would explode.
Analysis gave me great freedom of emotions and fantastic confidence. I felt I had served my time as a puppet.
It's funny about men and women. Men pay in cash to get them and pay in cash to get rid of them. Women pay emotionally coming and going. Neither has it easy.
All my six husbands married me for different reasons.
I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father's equal, and I never loved any other man as much.
American men, as a group, seem to be interested in only two things, money and breasts. It seems a very narrow outlook.
Lawyers know how to take isolated complaints in a divorce case and build them into one big one.
Let any pretty girl announce a divorce in Hollywood and the wolves come running. Fresh meat for the beast, and they are always hungry.
Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.
I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despise the conventional in anything, even the arts.
I've been an important star and lived a full life, yet I only hve three close friends. I guess that's all anyone can expect.
I don't have any gnawing guilt over contributing to any unhappiness suffered by my husbands. They were as much to blame as I was.
I enjoy countless hundreds pursuing me. I love those who love me the most. I am sort of flattered by men showing attention to me.
Perhaps my problem in marriage-and it is the problem of many women-was to want both intimacy and independence. It is a difficult line to walk, yet both needs are important to a marriage.
Some men like a dull life - they like the routine of eating breakfast, going to work, coming home, petting the dog, watching TV, kissing the kids, and going to bed. Stay clear of it - it's often catching.
The ceremony took six minutes. The marriage lasted about the same amount of time though we didn't get a divorce for almost a year.
The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent, actor, director, producer, leading man; and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude, but true.
I have always felt that if a man gives you a solid gold key to his door he is entitled to the courtesy of a visit.
I have not been that wise. Health I have taken for granted. Love I have demanded, perhaps too much and too often. As for money, I have only realized its true worth when I didn't have it.
I know why most people never get rich. They put the money ahead of the job. If you just think of the job, the money will automatically follow. This never fails.
I must quit marrying men who feel inferior to me. Somewhere there must be a man who could be my husband and not feel inferior.
I think women are concerned too much with their clothes. Men don't really care that much about women's clothes. If they like a girl, chances are they'll like her clothes.
I was born an only child in Vienna, Austria. My father found hours to sit by me by the library fire and tell fairy stories.
I would tell anyone who wants something from someone else to feign not wanting it. People are perverse. If you show great affection to them, they'll run the other way.
I'd rather wear jewels in my hair than anywhere else. The face should have the advantage of this brilliance.
Hedy Lamarr
Can Bank of America Escape the Derivatives Apocalypse?
Bank of America just pulled back from going below 5$ stock price, does that mean they have their trillions of exposure to risky derivatives and inherited countrywide toxicity under control?
--------------------------
....Nomi Prins: How Many Regulators Does It Take to Screw Investors Out of $1.2B?
..By Stacy Curtin
Daily Ticker – 7 hours ago
"Nothing has changed since AIG," says Nomi Prins, author of Black Tuesday. "These companies are too complex [and] the regulators too inept."
The most recent fallout from lack of regulatory oversight of the banking and investing industry is the collapse of MF Global, run by former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine. A stunning $1.2 billion in client funds are still missing more than month after the company buckled on fears of its leveraged bets on European debt. (See: It's the Leverage, Stupid: Jon Corzine's MF Global Goes Bust)
The problem is banks and brokers "have too many different competing businesses that are mixed with customer funds… and [there's] so many different regulators whooshing about not being responsive, not being accountable, not talking to each other," says Prins, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs and currently a senior fellow at Demos.
Well, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the regulatory body in charge of overseeing the securities industry and markets, has been busy -- but only in allowing banks to settle charges of wrongdoing with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. By neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing, the SEC has allowed banks from JPMorgan to Citigroup "get off" on a wide range of issues with just financial penalties and settlements. (See: Taken to Task: Jamie Dimon's House of Ill Repute)
Enough was finally enough for New York District Court Judge Jed Rakoff. Frustrated with inadequate punishment for financial malfeasance, he last month rejected the $285 million settlement between Citigroup and SEC, saying the deal was "neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest." (See: Taken To Task: Capt. Cronyism, Hank Paulson)
Comments:
nonamespecified
how is it possible? hahahah, Obama and Holder are both financial illiterates and Obama was rolled by Paulson. We will be asking the same question when the next hedge fund ponzi scheme folds like Bridgewater Associates. There are 8000+ hedge funds with no regulation, many claiming 18% yoy returns, go ahead and tell me that 20+% are not ponzi schemes.Reply. 27users liked this comment
bob308 6 hours ago
Relationships between federal regulators and big busness has always been a dubious arrangement. CRIME THAT PAYS IS CRIME THAT STAYS! Reply . 17users liked this comment
craign 6 hours ago
IMHO there will be no perp walks. Politicians are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. Oh there will be a lot of posturing and tough talk from both parties, but in the end nothing will be done. Reply . 12users liked this comment
Thumbs UpThumbs Down0users disliked this commentXX 5 hours ago Report AbuseNomi Prins is only telling half the truth. That's not the reason! The real reason is the special amendment inserted into the 2005 bankruptcy law by Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), the same guy who co-sponsored the Gramm-Bliley-Leach Act that repealed Glass-Steagal. The amendment to that law grants derivatives contract holders and hypothecation contract holders the right to KEEP whatever assets are in their possession when the firm that deposited went bankrupt - stepping ahead of line of all other claimants. No wonder the money's now in JP Morgan's (and other banks') systems now.
It's the same reason Bank of America recently moved $53 trillion in potential derivatives bets liabilities from its Merill Lynch unit to its main depositary unit holding some $1 trillion in mom-and-pop depositors' assets - OVER the objections of the FDIC, which is supposed to insure customer deposits. The derivatives contract holders required Bank of America to do it when its credit rating was downgraded. The counter-parties wanted their bets against Bank of America to remain safe. 7 Replies 4users liked this comment
axonmor 5 hours ago Report AbuseAmerica...of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy.. 0users liked this comment
bob308 5 hours ago Report AbusePut your comment into plain language XX.. 4users liked this comment
ethos 5 hours ago Report AbuseBofA put its risky derivatives into an account backed by your deposits. If the derivatives go bust, guess who pays off the counterparties. Not BofA. The dumb depositors. Take your money out of BofA.. 2users liked this comment
bob308 6 hours ago Report AbuseBring back Glass-Steagall! Reply . 24users liked this comment
Thumbs UpThumbs Down1users disliked this commentcecebe_ont 7 hours ago Report AbuseThere are no watch dogs, no accountability, and no ethical people at the top. Need I say more. Reply . 10users liked this comment
Thumbs UpThumbs Down0users disliked this commentmichelle 5 hours ago Report AbuseWhat the SEC is doing is disgusting and sickening!!!!!! We want real justice to be done, not just a little fine, with Absolutely No Accountability!!! Funny, if you or write a "bad check" we will go to jail, but these whoring thieves get not one day of jail time, not even being brought up on charges... More 2 Replies . 10users liked this comment
--------------------------
....Nomi Prins: How Many Regulators Does It Take to Screw Investors Out of $1.2B?
..By Stacy Curtin
Daily Ticker – 7 hours ago
"Nothing has changed since AIG," says Nomi Prins, author of Black Tuesday. "These companies are too complex [and] the regulators too inept."
The most recent fallout from lack of regulatory oversight of the banking and investing industry is the collapse of MF Global, run by former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine. A stunning $1.2 billion in client funds are still missing more than month after the company buckled on fears of its leveraged bets on European debt. (See: It's the Leverage, Stupid: Jon Corzine's MF Global Goes Bust)
The problem is banks and brokers "have too many different competing businesses that are mixed with customer funds… and [there's] so many different regulators whooshing about not being responsive, not being accountable, not talking to each other," says Prins, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs and currently a senior fellow at Demos.
Well, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the regulatory body in charge of overseeing the securities industry and markets, has been busy -- but only in allowing banks to settle charges of wrongdoing with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. By neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing, the SEC has allowed banks from JPMorgan to Citigroup "get off" on a wide range of issues with just financial penalties and settlements. (See: Taken to Task: Jamie Dimon's House of Ill Repute)
Enough was finally enough for New York District Court Judge Jed Rakoff. Frustrated with inadequate punishment for financial malfeasance, he last month rejected the $285 million settlement between Citigroup and SEC, saying the deal was "neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest." (See: Taken To Task: Capt. Cronyism, Hank Paulson)
Comments:
nonamespecified
how is it possible? hahahah, Obama and Holder are both financial illiterates and Obama was rolled by Paulson. We will be asking the same question when the next hedge fund ponzi scheme folds like Bridgewater Associates. There are 8000+ hedge funds with no regulation, many claiming 18% yoy returns, go ahead and tell me that 20+% are not ponzi schemes.Reply. 27users liked this comment
bob308 6 hours ago
Relationships between federal regulators and big busness has always been a dubious arrangement. CRIME THAT PAYS IS CRIME THAT STAYS! Reply . 17users liked this comment
craign 6 hours ago
IMHO there will be no perp walks. Politicians are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. Oh there will be a lot of posturing and tough talk from both parties, but in the end nothing will be done. Reply . 12users liked this comment
Thumbs UpThumbs Down0users disliked this commentXX 5 hours ago Report AbuseNomi Prins is only telling half the truth. That's not the reason! The real reason is the special amendment inserted into the 2005 bankruptcy law by Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), the same guy who co-sponsored the Gramm-Bliley-Leach Act that repealed Glass-Steagal. The amendment to that law grants derivatives contract holders and hypothecation contract holders the right to KEEP whatever assets are in their possession when the firm that deposited went bankrupt - stepping ahead of line of all other claimants. No wonder the money's now in JP Morgan's (and other banks') systems now.
It's the same reason Bank of America recently moved $53 trillion in potential derivatives bets liabilities from its Merill Lynch unit to its main depositary unit holding some $1 trillion in mom-and-pop depositors' assets - OVER the objections of the FDIC, which is supposed to insure customer deposits. The derivatives contract holders required Bank of America to do it when its credit rating was downgraded. The counter-parties wanted their bets against Bank of America to remain safe. 7 Replies 4users liked this comment
axonmor 5 hours ago Report AbuseAmerica...of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy.. 0users liked this comment
bob308 5 hours ago Report AbusePut your comment into plain language XX.. 4users liked this comment
ethos 5 hours ago Report AbuseBofA put its risky derivatives into an account backed by your deposits. If the derivatives go bust, guess who pays off the counterparties. Not BofA. The dumb depositors. Take your money out of BofA.. 2users liked this comment
bob308 6 hours ago Report AbuseBring back Glass-Steagall! Reply . 24users liked this comment
Thumbs UpThumbs Down1users disliked this commentcecebe_ont 7 hours ago Report AbuseThere are no watch dogs, no accountability, and no ethical people at the top. Need I say more. Reply . 10users liked this comment
Thumbs UpThumbs Down0users disliked this commentmichelle 5 hours ago Report AbuseWhat the SEC is doing is disgusting and sickening!!!!!! We want real justice to be done, not just a little fine, with Absolutely No Accountability!!! Funny, if you or write a "bad check" we will go to jail, but these whoring thieves get not one day of jail time, not even being brought up on charges... More 2 Replies . 10users liked this comment
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Ayn Rand vs Friedrich Nietszche - the prophet of selfishness vs the prophet of power
It boggles me how a third rate novelist wanna be philosopher like Ayn Rand is so popular now, it really bespeaks the anti-intellectualism of the American conservative that they would think a crackpot like Ayn Rand has any depth worth plumbing besides a few bon mots about the virtue of selfishness which so conveniently plays into their need to justify their greed and indifference to their fellow countrymen.
Whereas the prophet of will-to-power, Nietzsche, is now almost completely forgotten when his ideas about will-to-power are only all too much in evidence in the dysfunction in American government, petty power junkies giving each other the finger as they try to grasp more and more power for themselves.
Alas, woe is us, the idiocracy cometh!
Whereas the prophet of will-to-power, Nietzsche, is now almost completely forgotten when his ideas about will-to-power are only all too much in evidence in the dysfunction in American government, petty power junkies giving each other the finger as they try to grasp more and more power for themselves.
Alas, woe is us, the idiocracy cometh!
Monday, December 19, 2011
Given What We Know Will Happen - What is the Best Way to Invest and to Protect Savings?
Ok, it's pretty clear that the following will happen:
1. Obama will get elected in 2012
2. Wall Street will continue to roll him with impunity
3. Congress will continue to be worse than dysfunctional
4. Europe will break up as Greece and a few others default
5. The Arab spring will decay into a reign of terror like all good revolutions
6. The hedge fund implosion will get serious as more Madoff Ponzi schemes are discovered like Bridgewater Associates, and losses mount to 100's of billions instead of just a few billion
7. Global Warming will accelerate faster than most scientists expect, and the Greenland ice sheet will start to slide off
8. An asteroid will ....
wait
what?
oh, right, is gold going up or down?
1. Obama will get elected in 2012
2. Wall Street will continue to roll him with impunity
3. Congress will continue to be worse than dysfunctional
4. Europe will break up as Greece and a few others default
5. The Arab spring will decay into a reign of terror like all good revolutions
6. The hedge fund implosion will get serious as more Madoff Ponzi schemes are discovered like Bridgewater Associates, and losses mount to 100's of billions instead of just a few billion
7. Global Warming will accelerate faster than most scientists expect, and the Greenland ice sheet will start to slide off
8. An asteroid will ....
wait
what?
oh, right, is gold going up or down?
Impeach Supreme Court Justice John Roberts for Misrepresentation and Judicial Activism in Citizens United
why this idea to impeach Justice John Roberts never got off the ground is beyond me, he blatantly lied during his confirmation hearing about respecting precedent, then indulged in the most blatant ideological case of judicial activism in singlehandedly ramming through Citizens United and making it in effect a revolution in the country's electoral system that no one was asking for, to the detriment of democracy. If that isnt grounds for impeachment, I dont know what is. If Justice Roberts is never held to account for his overreaching then America is as good as finished.
Care2 petitionsite IMPEACH CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS
signatures: 124
signature goal: 1,000
to Vice President Biden
Sponsored by: G Evans
A Supreme Court Justice must be above politics, but not above the law. Justice Roberts lied to congress while under oath during the confirmation process, and is legislating from the bench. Robert's ruling has taken away the voice of the people and given all the power to the corporations, some of which are multi-national...giving foreigners more say in how our country will be run than you, the American citizen.
Dear Mr. Vice President Biden,
We the undersigned respectfully request impeachment proceedings be brought against Chief Justice Roberts for lying under oath during his confirmation hearings regarding legislating from the bench. A Supreme Court judge should possess the utmost integrity, honesty and trust. We feel he has betrayed and lied to the American public, and should be removed from that post.
This petition is now closed.
.# 12318:10, Jun 30, Ms. Debra Pilla, FL
Chief Justice John Roberts lied to me, and the American people, and the Judiciary Committee. This is treason!! It's high time for impeachment! Justice must be served. He is not above the law!! The Right-wing justices are taking lobbyist money to the court!! Treason!! Signed, A Responsible and highly disgusted Republican.
# 12210:33, Jun 12, Mr. Matthew Lewis, MN
Justice Roberts confirmation hearings were a sham. It's clear he values right-wing politics over the rule of law. It's a shame. The American public should not be forced to deal with this man's biased rulings for the next generation or more. Please do the right thing (no pun intended) and remove Justice Roberts from the Supreme Court..
# 12105:56, Jun 12, Mr. david vallely, WA
Justice Roberts lied to congress during his confermation and his rulings giving corporations more rights than real people is turning America into a third world dictatorship rather than a democracy. Real people go to jail when they kill people. Real people can only spend $5,000 on a political campain while he ruled corporations can spend any amount they want to influnce the peoples business. This ruling came in a case unrelated to political spending and violates the courts own rules. To save democracy in America he must go !.
# 12023:47, Jun 09, Ms. Debi Feistkorn, GA
This man has to go while we still have some semblance of a democracy..
.# 11612:30, Apr 20, James Hugh Sttrickland, FL
The activist republican court will vote for torture, corporate control of government and supression of human rights. It is an outrage..# 11520:43, Apr 19, Michele Lockman, PA
I am very disturbed by Justice Roberts' lack of ability to be bipartisan. He does not seem to understand the separation of church and state and other important tenets of the Constitution..
# 11405:32, Apr 16, Name not displayed, NC
This corporate puppet never should have allowed on the bench - never mind being assigned to the Chief Justice role..# 11317:05, Apr 12, Mr. Dwight Irons, NC
.# 10808:14, Mar 24, Mrs. Marguerite Pastirchak, NY
Want Judge Roberts because he has sided with the corporations over the people. He is a terrible leader and will only hurt our democracy more..# 10708:03, Mar 19, Mr. neal morell, CA
i will never pledge allegiance to the flag of the united CEO's of america. once a republic, which did not stand, one nation, under fraud, with liberty and justice for all multinational corporations..# 10606:54, Mar 18, Mr. Andrew Kaufman, TN
How can someone who is supposed to rule impartially make such a one-sided and obviously biased decision against the American people in general? I say that Chief Justice Roberts needs to be called to task and made to answer for this..# 10516:22, Mar 17, Ms. charlotte roginski, TX
.# 10414:06, Mar 17, Mr. Larry Sankey, CA
This is nothing less than the selling of our democracy to the highest bidder. It completely undermines the power of individual citizens. It is among the worst, if not the worst, Supreme Court decisions in the history of our nation. The people must send a message to those who would sell out our country. It is not acceptable. Not only Chief Justice Roberts, but every member who supported this decision should be impeached..
# 10314:45, Mar 16, Mr. richard beaudoin, CA
.# 10210:42, Mar 16, Mr. Rick Jones, CA
Money should not equal free speech..
# 10110:23, Mar 16, Jason Felts, MN
If gross incompetence is not a good enough reason to impeach someone, then what on earth is...?.
# 10010:07, Mar 16, Mr. James Ott, TX
Roberts was brought in as a pawn of the previois regime and will continue to do damage until he is impeached..
# 9909:41, Mar 16, Name not displayed, TX
I believe the only the best example of is too hold him accountable,he broke the law . End of story!.
# 9809:19, Mar 16, Ms. Joanna Freeman, TX
This kind of arrogance displayed by the supreme court is just further flagrant spitting in the face of the American public, and we can no longer stand for it. We must fight together to bring this injustice to an end, immediately! I have been fighting for America for as long as I have been able to, and it is an important thing to note that sometimes the largest threats to our country are not foreign, but domestic. The Supreme Court has long been the great justice in the world, but with a partisan leadership and a leadership built upon the corruption to which Chief Justice Roberts achieved this seat, we have no choice but to remove this man so that we can bring justice back to the people of this country. We must all stand together to fight, and protect the country that we all so dearly believe in..
# 9709:05, Mar 16, Mr. Ricardo Valbuena, CA
Corporate America already has too much power in our system. Adding unlimited corporate contributions to political campaigns will sell out America. We also need more regulations on banks, lobbying, and foreign imports. We need to go back to the basics, give everyone health care and buy American!!!!.# 9608:42, Mar 16, Name not displayed, CA
Chief Justice? What a joke. This man has no wisdom and only makes decisions based on his on self serving reasons..
# 9511:22, Mar 11, Mr. Anthony Marzullo, MD
Justice Roberts is a disgrace to the American judicial system. His disdain for public criticism and pandering to corporate greed needs to be eliminated from our government. We the people need to take back our country from these corporate puppets..# 9408:16, Mar 11, Susan Chemey, IN
.# 9306:47, Mar 11, Mr. David Cornwell, IN
Justice Roberts needs to go. Start the process of impeaching him, please..# 9212:05, Mar 10, Mr. James Weaver, WA
Justice Roberts is a disgrace to our judicial system of justice and impartiality..
# 9104:50, Mar 10, Mrs. Darlene Zelechowski, WI
Chief Justice Roberts lied to even get his job, Impeach him now..# 9003:38, Mar 10, Name not displayed, IL
He sold democracy to the highest bidder. This is NOT what the founding fathers envisioned..
# 8915:28, Mar 09, Name not displayed, OH
this guy is a disgrace to the bench.
.# 6800:19, Feb 03, Mr. Ian MacLeod, OR
I am a wartime veteran, son of two wartime veterans, brother of a wartime veteran, nephew, cousin, grandson, etc. of many other veterans all of whom joined during war as my brother and I did. We were raised on military bases by a father who spent his working life in the military. We were taught to love America, and to be active in the governing of it and to keep an eye on that government to keep tit honest. Well, we arrived on the scene far too late for that; all we could do is what we can. We were also taught to know the enemies of America by what they taught and what they did. My entire family swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic. By all that I've learned and been taught, it is clear that there are now domestic enemies of the Constitution of my country on the bench of the Supreme Court. They are: Sam Alito, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Their rulings to date have almost all been anti-worker, anti-environment and pro-corporate raiders. This time, they have over-reached in the name of a clear agenda that judges on the highest court in the land should never have! They have harmed my country, and now they have turned it over to the corporations in a way that will give these soulless, compassionless, destroying entities, even those from the lands of our greatest enemies, more power over both the electoral process and the legislative processes of my country than the originators and rightful holders of those powers - We the People! This must be stopped, repudiated, reversed, and the perpetrators, traitors all and criminals as they clearly lied to gain their positions, must be impeached, brought to trial and punished to the fullest extent that the laws they disrespected allow! My entire family for generations has risked their lives for this country; my nephew does so now. We have earned better than this, being ignored, from our representatives. You have sat there in safety and plenty while I and mine have gone out and willingly risked our lives in the name of service to America. What are you willing to risk?.# 6716:27, Feb 02, Ms. Cate Long, NY
The concept of "corporate personhood" has no basis in the Constitution. Extending the rights of individuals to "legal fictions" has caused the assumption of massive power by companies. This is weakening our nation and has corrupted the political process..
Care2 petitionsite IMPEACH CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS
signatures: 124
signature goal: 1,000
to Vice President Biden
Sponsored by: G Evans
A Supreme Court Justice must be above politics, but not above the law. Justice Roberts lied to congress while under oath during the confirmation process, and is legislating from the bench. Robert's ruling has taken away the voice of the people and given all the power to the corporations, some of which are multi-national...giving foreigners more say in how our country will be run than you, the American citizen.
Dear Mr. Vice President Biden,
We the undersigned respectfully request impeachment proceedings be brought against Chief Justice Roberts for lying under oath during his confirmation hearings regarding legislating from the bench. A Supreme Court judge should possess the utmost integrity, honesty and trust. We feel he has betrayed and lied to the American public, and should be removed from that post.
This petition is now closed.
.# 12318:10, Jun 30, Ms. Debra Pilla, FL
Chief Justice John Roberts lied to me, and the American people, and the Judiciary Committee. This is treason!! It's high time for impeachment! Justice must be served. He is not above the law!! The Right-wing justices are taking lobbyist money to the court!! Treason!! Signed, A Responsible and highly disgusted Republican.
# 12210:33, Jun 12, Mr. Matthew Lewis, MN
Justice Roberts confirmation hearings were a sham. It's clear he values right-wing politics over the rule of law. It's a shame. The American public should not be forced to deal with this man's biased rulings for the next generation or more. Please do the right thing (no pun intended) and remove Justice Roberts from the Supreme Court..
# 12105:56, Jun 12, Mr. david vallely, WA
Justice Roberts lied to congress during his confermation and his rulings giving corporations more rights than real people is turning America into a third world dictatorship rather than a democracy. Real people go to jail when they kill people. Real people can only spend $5,000 on a political campain while he ruled corporations can spend any amount they want to influnce the peoples business. This ruling came in a case unrelated to political spending and violates the courts own rules. To save democracy in America he must go !.
# 12023:47, Jun 09, Ms. Debi Feistkorn, GA
This man has to go while we still have some semblance of a democracy..
.# 11612:30, Apr 20, James Hugh Sttrickland, FL
The activist republican court will vote for torture, corporate control of government and supression of human rights. It is an outrage..# 11520:43, Apr 19, Michele Lockman, PA
I am very disturbed by Justice Roberts' lack of ability to be bipartisan. He does not seem to understand the separation of church and state and other important tenets of the Constitution..
# 11405:32, Apr 16, Name not displayed, NC
This corporate puppet never should have allowed on the bench - never mind being assigned to the Chief Justice role..# 11317:05, Apr 12, Mr. Dwight Irons, NC
.# 10808:14, Mar 24, Mrs. Marguerite Pastirchak, NY
Want Judge Roberts because he has sided with the corporations over the people. He is a terrible leader and will only hurt our democracy more..# 10708:03, Mar 19, Mr. neal morell, CA
i will never pledge allegiance to the flag of the united CEO's of america. once a republic, which did not stand, one nation, under fraud, with liberty and justice for all multinational corporations..# 10606:54, Mar 18, Mr. Andrew Kaufman, TN
How can someone who is supposed to rule impartially make such a one-sided and obviously biased decision against the American people in general? I say that Chief Justice Roberts needs to be called to task and made to answer for this..# 10516:22, Mar 17, Ms. charlotte roginski, TX
.# 10414:06, Mar 17, Mr. Larry Sankey, CA
This is nothing less than the selling of our democracy to the highest bidder. It completely undermines the power of individual citizens. It is among the worst, if not the worst, Supreme Court decisions in the history of our nation. The people must send a message to those who would sell out our country. It is not acceptable. Not only Chief Justice Roberts, but every member who supported this decision should be impeached..
# 10314:45, Mar 16, Mr. richard beaudoin, CA
.# 10210:42, Mar 16, Mr. Rick Jones, CA
Money should not equal free speech..
# 10110:23, Mar 16, Jason Felts, MN
If gross incompetence is not a good enough reason to impeach someone, then what on earth is...?.
# 10010:07, Mar 16, Mr. James Ott, TX
Roberts was brought in as a pawn of the previois regime and will continue to do damage until he is impeached..
# 9909:41, Mar 16, Name not displayed, TX
I believe the only the best example of is too hold him accountable,he broke the law . End of story!.
# 9809:19, Mar 16, Ms. Joanna Freeman, TX
This kind of arrogance displayed by the supreme court is just further flagrant spitting in the face of the American public, and we can no longer stand for it. We must fight together to bring this injustice to an end, immediately! I have been fighting for America for as long as I have been able to, and it is an important thing to note that sometimes the largest threats to our country are not foreign, but domestic. The Supreme Court has long been the great justice in the world, but with a partisan leadership and a leadership built upon the corruption to which Chief Justice Roberts achieved this seat, we have no choice but to remove this man so that we can bring justice back to the people of this country. We must all stand together to fight, and protect the country that we all so dearly believe in..
# 9709:05, Mar 16, Mr. Ricardo Valbuena, CA
Corporate America already has too much power in our system. Adding unlimited corporate contributions to political campaigns will sell out America. We also need more regulations on banks, lobbying, and foreign imports. We need to go back to the basics, give everyone health care and buy American!!!!.# 9608:42, Mar 16, Name not displayed, CA
Chief Justice? What a joke. This man has no wisdom and only makes decisions based on his on self serving reasons..
# 9511:22, Mar 11, Mr. Anthony Marzullo, MD
Justice Roberts is a disgrace to the American judicial system. His disdain for public criticism and pandering to corporate greed needs to be eliminated from our government. We the people need to take back our country from these corporate puppets..# 9408:16, Mar 11, Susan Chemey, IN
.# 9306:47, Mar 11, Mr. David Cornwell, IN
Justice Roberts needs to go. Start the process of impeaching him, please..# 9212:05, Mar 10, Mr. James Weaver, WA
Justice Roberts is a disgrace to our judicial system of justice and impartiality..
# 9104:50, Mar 10, Mrs. Darlene Zelechowski, WI
Chief Justice Roberts lied to even get his job, Impeach him now..# 9003:38, Mar 10, Name not displayed, IL
He sold democracy to the highest bidder. This is NOT what the founding fathers envisioned..
# 8915:28, Mar 09, Name not displayed, OH
this guy is a disgrace to the bench.
.# 6800:19, Feb 03, Mr. Ian MacLeod, OR
I am a wartime veteran, son of two wartime veterans, brother of a wartime veteran, nephew, cousin, grandson, etc. of many other veterans all of whom joined during war as my brother and I did. We were raised on military bases by a father who spent his working life in the military. We were taught to love America, and to be active in the governing of it and to keep an eye on that government to keep tit honest. Well, we arrived on the scene far too late for that; all we could do is what we can. We were also taught to know the enemies of America by what they taught and what they did. My entire family swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic. By all that I've learned and been taught, it is clear that there are now domestic enemies of the Constitution of my country on the bench of the Supreme Court. They are: Sam Alito, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Their rulings to date have almost all been anti-worker, anti-environment and pro-corporate raiders. This time, they have over-reached in the name of a clear agenda that judges on the highest court in the land should never have! They have harmed my country, and now they have turned it over to the corporations in a way that will give these soulless, compassionless, destroying entities, even those from the lands of our greatest enemies, more power over both the electoral process and the legislative processes of my country than the originators and rightful holders of those powers - We the People! This must be stopped, repudiated, reversed, and the perpetrators, traitors all and criminals as they clearly lied to gain their positions, must be impeached, brought to trial and punished to the fullest extent that the laws they disrespected allow! My entire family for generations has risked their lives for this country; my nephew does so now. We have earned better than this, being ignored, from our representatives. You have sat there in safety and plenty while I and mine have gone out and willingly risked our lives in the name of service to America. What are you willing to risk?.# 6716:27, Feb 02, Ms. Cate Long, NY
The concept of "corporate personhood" has no basis in the Constitution. Extending the rights of individuals to "legal fictions" has caused the assumption of massive power by companies. This is weakening our nation and has corrupted the political process..
Constantine's Sword - Another Heartwarming Christmas Movie
wow, this film should be a holiday tradition along with 'It's a Wonderful Life', maybe then America's creeping towards theocratic military christian fascism might be slowed down a little.
This review is from: Constantine's Sword (DVD)
51 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A Man's Struggle with His Father, September 4, 2008
By
HoustonReviewer
"Constantine's Sword," the movie version of John Carroll's book, is now available on DVD; it can also be watched on-line if you have Netflix.
There's a great deal of autobiography in the film. Carroll's father, Joseph Carroll was an important Air Force general; an FBI agent, Joseph Carroll was then sent to the new Air Force, commissioned a colonel, and within two years was a major general. He was the founding director of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, and then the founding director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; it was he who brought the photos of Russian missles in Cuba to Kennedy's attention.
The younger Carroll grew up on military bases, met John XXIII with his family as a teenager, and in the wake of the nuclear uncertainty of the Cold War, opted to pursue those things that would last. His first mass was celebrated at a chapel on an Air Force base; growing disillusioned with the war in Vietnam, and feeling called to follow the Prince of Peace, he slipped in just a tiny allusion in that first homily. He preached on Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones; he mentioned they had been burned by the sun. More than that, burned by napalm. Such a tiny rebellion-such a miniscule insult to the military-but enough to drive a wedge between James and Joseph.
Carroll was a priest from 1969-1974, increasingly active in opposing the war, which destroyed his faith in both governmental and churchly authority. In an interview from those days he notes the silence of the US Catholic hierarchy to the bombing of civilians in Vietnam and opines, "Were US bombers dropping contraceptives on the Vietnamese, the American Catholic hierarchy would have condemned it quickly; but we were dropping napalm, and they said nothing."
These personal stories are sketched throughout the movie, which begins at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and the issue of aggressive evangelization of non-Christians, especially Jewish students, by evangelical churches in the area and by evangelical faculty, staff and students of the Academy. He interviews Academy graduate Mikey Weinstein, who was shocked when one of his two sons then at the Academy told him of anti-Jewish slurs he had been subjected to, and of the aggressive promotion of "The Passion of the Christ" by the Academy.
Carroll uses this incident to launch into a discussion of two issues: the history of Christian hostility to Jews, and of the linkage of Christianity with military power. He visits Milvian Bridge outside Rome, and Constantine's vision of a cross with the motto, "In hoc signo vinces," becomes the guiding metaphor for the book-"Cross and sword become one. Christianity turns violent."
He surveys how this baptized violence spread across Europe, and became a means to unite feuding Christian kingdoms in a war against a common enemy, the Muslim "infidel"-and against closer enemies, against whom Christians had a long-standing grudge.
Carroll relates how he grew up in a typical Irish-Catholic family, trusting in a holy church with holy saints, priests and bishops. Now he saw those "holy" priests and bishops calling for bloody conquest, even leading pogroms against Jews in the name of Christ.
He travels to Spain, where Jews were first forced to convert to Christianity; then, when Christians became suspicious of the integrity of those they had forcibly converted, the Spanish Inquisition was created to investigate and to punish. When Jews were expelled from Spain, many were welcome in Rome, until 1555, when chief Roman inquisitor Giovanni Cardinal Caraffa became Pope Paul IV, who restricted Jewish intercourse with Christians and created a ghetto in which they must live.
Though recent popes, especially John Paul II, have taken great strides to repair relations with Jews, Carroll doesn't think they've gone far enough. John Paul denounced Nazi antisemitism, but blamed it on neo-paganism, refusing to acknowledge that another part of its foundation was the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism, of accusations of "Christ-killer" and the blood libel. Only this can explain the collusion of many Catholic prelates with Nazism. He goes to Trier, where one of the supposed relics brought back from the Holy Land by Helena, the Robe of Christ, has been kept since the time of Constantine. The Bishop of Trier supported the National Socialists in the election of 1933, and to celebrate their victory, arranged for the Robe to be displayed. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen represented Hitler, and, with the bishop, sent a telegram to Hitler pledging their mutual cooperation. While it was on display, Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) signed the concordat with Hitler-protecting the institutional church while accepting Nazi rule. Pacelli might not have been "Hitler's Pope," says Carroll, but he was certainly "Hitler's Cardinal."
That same year Edith Stein wrote to the pope to warn of Nazi antisemitism and of the dark future that would face Europe's Jews; five years later, now known as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, she lamented in her diary that the pope had never bothered to respond ... and that all she had predicted had come true. This wasn't mentioned in her canonization in 1998; she was canonized as a martyr, despite the fact that she went to Auschwitz not because of her Catholic faith, but for her Jewish blood.
In Rome, the anti-Jewish legislation of Paul IV was rescinded when Italy unified and the pope was banished to the Vatican; it was revived by Mussolini, however, and when in 1943 Mussolini rounded up the Jews of Rome to deport to Auschwitz, the pope said nothing. A survivor says in the film, "If the pope had only taken the trouble to go outside the gate-and not say anything, just do as he did when Rome was bombed-just go outside the gate and stand in silence, with his arms raised in the form of a cross, there might never have been a deportation. Italians and German Catholics would not have gone along with it." But he never appeared.
Carroll affirms the strides taken forward by the Catholic Church in the latter part of the 20th century, especially the "change that mattered most" at Vatican 2, the decree, Nostra Aetate. But he wonders how much it has sunk in. He speaks with Fr. Stanislaw Obirek, a Polish Jesuit, suspended by his order because, Carroll says, he wanted a fuller accounting for the Catholic Church's role in Polish antisemitism.
Returning to the US, Carroll listens to the rhetoric of George Bush's "war on terror"-language of "crusade," "good vs. evil," "God is not neutral"-and hears echoes of past attempts to fuse cross and sword That's what frightens him about what he saw happening at the Air Force Academy; it appears to be a case of religion and military power coming together, with young evangelicals in the military inspired by their religious zeal to fight Middle East enemies. This isn't the spirit of Jesus, but the spirit of Constantine, which is still alive after 1700 years.
The movie can be faulted for its disparagement of Scripture (Carroll accepts uncritically whatever Elaine Pagels tells him), but it remains a powerful testimony to the experiences of those who have been cut by Constantine's sword.
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Constantine's Sword Constantine's Sword B00181XY6M Philip Bosco FIRST RUN FEATURES Constantine's Sword Movies & TV A Man's Struggle with His Father
"Constantine's Sword," the movie version of John Carroll's book, is now available on DVD; it can also be watched on-line if you have Netflix.
There's a great deal of autobiography in the film. Carroll's father, Joseph Carroll was an important Air Force general; an FBI agent, Joseph Carroll was then sent to the new Air Force, commissioned a colonel, and within two years was a major general. He was the founding director of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, and then the founding director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; it was he who brought the photos of Russian missles in Cuba to Kennedy's attention.
The younger Carroll grew up on military bases, met John XXIII with his family as a teenager, and in the wake of the nuclear uncertainty of the Cold War, opted to pursue those things that would last. His first mass was celebrated at a chapel on an Air Force base; growing disillusioned with the war in Vietnam, and feeling called to follow the Prince of Peace, he slipped in just a tiny allusion in that first homily. He preached on Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones; he mentioned they had been burned by the sun. More than that, burned by napalm. Such a tiny rebellion-such a miniscule insult to the military-but enough to drive a wedge between James and Joseph.
Carroll was a priest from 1969-1974, increasingly active in opposing the war, which destroyed his faith in both governmental and churchly authority. In an interview from those days he notes the silence of the US Catholic hierarchy to the bombing of civilians in Vietnam and opines, "Were US bombers dropping contraceptives on the Vietnamese, the American Catholic hierarchy would have condemned it quickly; but we were dropping napalm, and they said nothing."
These personal stories are sketched throughout the movie, which begins at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and the issue of aggressive evangelization of non-Christians, especially Jewish students, by evangelical churches in the area and by evangelical faculty, staff and students of the Academy. He interviews Academy graduate Mikey Weinstein, who was shocked when one of his two sons then at the Academy told him of anti-Jewish slurs he had been subjected to, and of the aggressive promotion of "The Passion of the Christ" by the Academy.
Carroll uses this incident to launch into a discussion of two issues: the history of Christian hostility to Jews, and of the linkage of Christianity with military power. He visits Milvian Bridge outside Rome, and Constantine's vision of a cross with the motto, "In hoc signo vinces," becomes the guiding metaphor for the book-"Cross and sword become one. Christianity turns violent."
He surveys how this baptized violence spread across Europe, and became a means to unite feuding Christian kingdoms in a war against a common enemy, the Muslim "infidel"-and against closer enemies, against whom Christians had a long-standing grudge.
Carroll relates how he grew up in a typical Irish-Catholic family, trusting in a holy church with holy saints, priests and bishops. Now he saw those "holy" priests and bishops calling for bloody conquest, even leading pogroms against Jews in the name of Christ.
He travels to Spain, where Jews were first forced to convert to Christianity; then, when Christians became suspicious of the integrity of those they had forcibly converted, the Spanish Inquisition was created to investigate and to punish. When Jews were expelled from Spain, many were welcome in Rome, until 1555, when chief Roman inquisitor Giovanni Cardinal Caraffa became Pope Paul IV, who restricted Jewish intercourse with Christians and created a ghetto in which they must live.
Though recent popes, especially John Paul II, have taken great strides to repair relations with Jews, Carroll doesn't think they've gone far enough. John Paul denounced Nazi antisemitism, but blamed it on neo-paganism, refusing to acknowledge that another part of its foundation was the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism, of accusations of "Christ-killer" and the blood libel. Only this can explain the collusion of many Catholic prelates with Nazism. He goes to Trier, where one of the supposed relics brought back from the Holy Land by Helena, the Robe of Christ, has been kept since the time of Constantine. The Bishop of Trier supported the National Socialists in the election of 1933, and to celebrate their victory, arranged for the Robe to be displayed. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen represented Hitler, and, with the bishop, sent a telegram to Hitler pledging their mutual cooperation. While it was on display, Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) signed the concordat with Hitler-protecting the institutional church while accepting Nazi rule. Pacelli might not have been "Hitler's Pope," says Carroll, but he was certainly "Hitler's Cardinal."
That same year Edith Stein wrote to the pope to warn of Nazi antisemitism and of the dark future that would face Europe's Jews; five years later, now known as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, she lamented in her diary that the pope had never bothered to respond ... and that all she had predicted had come true. This wasn't mentioned in her canonization in 1998; she was canonized as a martyr, despite the fact that she went to Auschwitz not because of her Catholic faith, but for her Jewish blood.
In Rome, the anti-Jewish legislation of Paul IV was rescinded when Italy unified and the pope was banished to the Vatican; it was revived by Mussolini, however, and when in 1943 Mussolini rounded up the Jews of Rome to deport to Auschwitz, the pope said nothing. A survivor says in the film, "If the pope had only taken the trouble to go outside the gate-and not say anything, just do as he did when Rome was bombed-just go outside the gate and stand in silence, with his arms raised in the form of a cross, there might never have been a deportation. Italians and German Catholics would not have gone along with it." But he never appeared.
Carroll affirms the strides taken forward by the Catholic Church in the latter part of the 20th century, especially the "change that mattered most" at Vatican 2, the decree, Nostra Aetate. But he wonders how much it has sunk in. He speaks with Fr. Stanislaw Obirek, a Polish Jesuit, suspended by his order because, Carroll says, he wanted a fuller accounting for the Catholic Church's role in Polish antisemitism.
Returning to the US, Carroll listens to the rhetoric of George Bush's "war on terror"-language of "crusade," "good vs. evil," "God is not neutral"-and hears echoes of past attempts to fuse cross and sword That's what frightens him about what he saw happening at the Air Force Academy; it appears to be a case of religion and military power coming together, with young evangelicals in the military inspired by their religious zeal to fight Middle East enemies. This isn't the spirit of Jesus, but the spirit of Constantine, which is still alive after 1700 years.
The movie can be faulted for its disparagement of Scripture (Carroll accepts uncritically whatever Elaine Pagels tells him), but it remains a powerful testimony to the experiences of those who have been cut by Constantine's sword. HoustonReviewer September 4, 2008
* Overall: 3.0 out of 5 stars5
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Showing 1-3 of 3 posts in this discussion
Initial post: Dec 25, 2008 1:14:51 PM PST
MD says:
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Truh in action is hard to swallow! Denial over the centuries is quite characteristic of human nature and political entities when wrong is committed. This is a 5 star presentation of anti-Semitism at its zenith. GNW, Colorado
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6 of 8 people think this post adds to the discussion. Do you?
Posted on Jul 23, 2010 12:48:22 PM PDT
Jerren Gould says:
thanks for mentioning it was on Netflix.
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Posted on Sep 5, 2011 11:18:43 AM PDT
Last edited by the author on Sep 5, 2011 11:21:31 AM PDT
Desertwriter says:
It was a close accounting of the film, rather than a 'review' ...until nearly the end of it where he definitely editorialized by claiming that Scripture was the holy word of God. For those grown ups who continue to believe that that collection of parables and myths over hundreds of years was dictated as if each transcriber/stenographer was Mohammed being dictated to, I hate to shake your world but there were no records of exactly what anyone said or did, (no burning bush photoshop then, red seas parting, water to wine, etc). The entire book was written and re-written according to Church decree hundreds of years LATER. It is manmade and created accounting/explanation of human origins as people moved from paganism, idol worshipping to monotheism. The Bible is largely a book of fiction with tiny amounts of history here and there. For example, as Shlomo Sand points out in his book, though hundreds of thousands if not millions of so called Israelites fled Egypt and wandered the desert for 40 years in all archaeological exploration's history not one trace of ANY civilization has been found anywhere in the region....nothing...that from globally respected archaelogists from Israel who have tried to prove the "exodus" but none have done so. Other than this criticism of previous 'review' he did an admirable job of summing of this most excellent film...though it is NOT about Carroll's opposition to his father whom he loved. It was about Carroll finding his "heavenly Father" voice...Carroll had wanted originally to become an Air Force Pilot but found his spiritual path/calling, which took precedence in his life, fortunately.
An excellent film.
This review is from: Constantine's Sword (DVD)
51 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A Man's Struggle with His Father, September 4, 2008
By
HoustonReviewer
"Constantine's Sword," the movie version of John Carroll's book, is now available on DVD; it can also be watched on-line if you have Netflix.
There's a great deal of autobiography in the film. Carroll's father, Joseph Carroll was an important Air Force general; an FBI agent, Joseph Carroll was then sent to the new Air Force, commissioned a colonel, and within two years was a major general. He was the founding director of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, and then the founding director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; it was he who brought the photos of Russian missles in Cuba to Kennedy's attention.
The younger Carroll grew up on military bases, met John XXIII with his family as a teenager, and in the wake of the nuclear uncertainty of the Cold War, opted to pursue those things that would last. His first mass was celebrated at a chapel on an Air Force base; growing disillusioned with the war in Vietnam, and feeling called to follow the Prince of Peace, he slipped in just a tiny allusion in that first homily. He preached on Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones; he mentioned they had been burned by the sun. More than that, burned by napalm. Such a tiny rebellion-such a miniscule insult to the military-but enough to drive a wedge between James and Joseph.
Carroll was a priest from 1969-1974, increasingly active in opposing the war, which destroyed his faith in both governmental and churchly authority. In an interview from those days he notes the silence of the US Catholic hierarchy to the bombing of civilians in Vietnam and opines, "Were US bombers dropping contraceptives on the Vietnamese, the American Catholic hierarchy would have condemned it quickly; but we were dropping napalm, and they said nothing."
These personal stories are sketched throughout the movie, which begins at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and the issue of aggressive evangelization of non-Christians, especially Jewish students, by evangelical churches in the area and by evangelical faculty, staff and students of the Academy. He interviews Academy graduate Mikey Weinstein, who was shocked when one of his two sons then at the Academy told him of anti-Jewish slurs he had been subjected to, and of the aggressive promotion of "The Passion of the Christ" by the Academy.
Carroll uses this incident to launch into a discussion of two issues: the history of Christian hostility to Jews, and of the linkage of Christianity with military power. He visits Milvian Bridge outside Rome, and Constantine's vision of a cross with the motto, "In hoc signo vinces," becomes the guiding metaphor for the book-"Cross and sword become one. Christianity turns violent."
He surveys how this baptized violence spread across Europe, and became a means to unite feuding Christian kingdoms in a war against a common enemy, the Muslim "infidel"-and against closer enemies, against whom Christians had a long-standing grudge.
Carroll relates how he grew up in a typical Irish-Catholic family, trusting in a holy church with holy saints, priests and bishops. Now he saw those "holy" priests and bishops calling for bloody conquest, even leading pogroms against Jews in the name of Christ.
He travels to Spain, where Jews were first forced to convert to Christianity; then, when Christians became suspicious of the integrity of those they had forcibly converted, the Spanish Inquisition was created to investigate and to punish. When Jews were expelled from Spain, many were welcome in Rome, until 1555, when chief Roman inquisitor Giovanni Cardinal Caraffa became Pope Paul IV, who restricted Jewish intercourse with Christians and created a ghetto in which they must live.
Though recent popes, especially John Paul II, have taken great strides to repair relations with Jews, Carroll doesn't think they've gone far enough. John Paul denounced Nazi antisemitism, but blamed it on neo-paganism, refusing to acknowledge that another part of its foundation was the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism, of accusations of "Christ-killer" and the blood libel. Only this can explain the collusion of many Catholic prelates with Nazism. He goes to Trier, where one of the supposed relics brought back from the Holy Land by Helena, the Robe of Christ, has been kept since the time of Constantine. The Bishop of Trier supported the National Socialists in the election of 1933, and to celebrate their victory, arranged for the Robe to be displayed. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen represented Hitler, and, with the bishop, sent a telegram to Hitler pledging their mutual cooperation. While it was on display, Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) signed the concordat with Hitler-protecting the institutional church while accepting Nazi rule. Pacelli might not have been "Hitler's Pope," says Carroll, but he was certainly "Hitler's Cardinal."
That same year Edith Stein wrote to the pope to warn of Nazi antisemitism and of the dark future that would face Europe's Jews; five years later, now known as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, she lamented in her diary that the pope had never bothered to respond ... and that all she had predicted had come true. This wasn't mentioned in her canonization in 1998; she was canonized as a martyr, despite the fact that she went to Auschwitz not because of her Catholic faith, but for her Jewish blood.
In Rome, the anti-Jewish legislation of Paul IV was rescinded when Italy unified and the pope was banished to the Vatican; it was revived by Mussolini, however, and when in 1943 Mussolini rounded up the Jews of Rome to deport to Auschwitz, the pope said nothing. A survivor says in the film, "If the pope had only taken the trouble to go outside the gate-and not say anything, just do as he did when Rome was bombed-just go outside the gate and stand in silence, with his arms raised in the form of a cross, there might never have been a deportation. Italians and German Catholics would not have gone along with it." But he never appeared.
Carroll affirms the strides taken forward by the Catholic Church in the latter part of the 20th century, especially the "change that mattered most" at Vatican 2, the decree, Nostra Aetate. But he wonders how much it has sunk in. He speaks with Fr. Stanislaw Obirek, a Polish Jesuit, suspended by his order because, Carroll says, he wanted a fuller accounting for the Catholic Church's role in Polish antisemitism.
Returning to the US, Carroll listens to the rhetoric of George Bush's "war on terror"-language of "crusade," "good vs. evil," "God is not neutral"-and hears echoes of past attempts to fuse cross and sword That's what frightens him about what he saw happening at the Air Force Academy; it appears to be a case of religion and military power coming together, with young evangelicals in the military inspired by their religious zeal to fight Middle East enemies. This isn't the spirit of Jesus, but the spirit of Constantine, which is still alive after 1700 years.
The movie can be faulted for its disparagement of Scripture (Carroll accepts uncritically whatever Elaine Pagels tells him), but it remains a powerful testimony to the experiences of those who have been cut by Constantine's sword.
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Constantine's Sword Constantine's Sword B00181XY6M Philip Bosco FIRST RUN FEATURES Constantine's Sword Movies & TV A Man's Struggle with His Father
"Constantine's Sword," the movie version of John Carroll's book, is now available on DVD; it can also be watched on-line if you have Netflix.
There's a great deal of autobiography in the film. Carroll's father, Joseph Carroll was an important Air Force general; an FBI agent, Joseph Carroll was then sent to the new Air Force, commissioned a colonel, and within two years was a major general. He was the founding director of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, and then the founding director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; it was he who brought the photos of Russian missles in Cuba to Kennedy's attention.
The younger Carroll grew up on military bases, met John XXIII with his family as a teenager, and in the wake of the nuclear uncertainty of the Cold War, opted to pursue those things that would last. His first mass was celebrated at a chapel on an Air Force base; growing disillusioned with the war in Vietnam, and feeling called to follow the Prince of Peace, he slipped in just a tiny allusion in that first homily. He preached on Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones; he mentioned they had been burned by the sun. More than that, burned by napalm. Such a tiny rebellion-such a miniscule insult to the military-but enough to drive a wedge between James and Joseph.
Carroll was a priest from 1969-1974, increasingly active in opposing the war, which destroyed his faith in both governmental and churchly authority. In an interview from those days he notes the silence of the US Catholic hierarchy to the bombing of civilians in Vietnam and opines, "Were US bombers dropping contraceptives on the Vietnamese, the American Catholic hierarchy would have condemned it quickly; but we were dropping napalm, and they said nothing."
These personal stories are sketched throughout the movie, which begins at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and the issue of aggressive evangelization of non-Christians, especially Jewish students, by evangelical churches in the area and by evangelical faculty, staff and students of the Academy. He interviews Academy graduate Mikey Weinstein, who was shocked when one of his two sons then at the Academy told him of anti-Jewish slurs he had been subjected to, and of the aggressive promotion of "The Passion of the Christ" by the Academy.
Carroll uses this incident to launch into a discussion of two issues: the history of Christian hostility to Jews, and of the linkage of Christianity with military power. He visits Milvian Bridge outside Rome, and Constantine's vision of a cross with the motto, "In hoc signo vinces," becomes the guiding metaphor for the book-"Cross and sword become one. Christianity turns violent."
He surveys how this baptized violence spread across Europe, and became a means to unite feuding Christian kingdoms in a war against a common enemy, the Muslim "infidel"-and against closer enemies, against whom Christians had a long-standing grudge.
Carroll relates how he grew up in a typical Irish-Catholic family, trusting in a holy church with holy saints, priests and bishops. Now he saw those "holy" priests and bishops calling for bloody conquest, even leading pogroms against Jews in the name of Christ.
He travels to Spain, where Jews were first forced to convert to Christianity; then, when Christians became suspicious of the integrity of those they had forcibly converted, the Spanish Inquisition was created to investigate and to punish. When Jews were expelled from Spain, many were welcome in Rome, until 1555, when chief Roman inquisitor Giovanni Cardinal Caraffa became Pope Paul IV, who restricted Jewish intercourse with Christians and created a ghetto in which they must live.
Though recent popes, especially John Paul II, have taken great strides to repair relations with Jews, Carroll doesn't think they've gone far enough. John Paul denounced Nazi antisemitism, but blamed it on neo-paganism, refusing to acknowledge that another part of its foundation was the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism, of accusations of "Christ-killer" and the blood libel. Only this can explain the collusion of many Catholic prelates with Nazism. He goes to Trier, where one of the supposed relics brought back from the Holy Land by Helena, the Robe of Christ, has been kept since the time of Constantine. The Bishop of Trier supported the National Socialists in the election of 1933, and to celebrate their victory, arranged for the Robe to be displayed. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen represented Hitler, and, with the bishop, sent a telegram to Hitler pledging their mutual cooperation. While it was on display, Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) signed the concordat with Hitler-protecting the institutional church while accepting Nazi rule. Pacelli might not have been "Hitler's Pope," says Carroll, but he was certainly "Hitler's Cardinal."
That same year Edith Stein wrote to the pope to warn of Nazi antisemitism and of the dark future that would face Europe's Jews; five years later, now known as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, she lamented in her diary that the pope had never bothered to respond ... and that all she had predicted had come true. This wasn't mentioned in her canonization in 1998; she was canonized as a martyr, despite the fact that she went to Auschwitz not because of her Catholic faith, but for her Jewish blood.
In Rome, the anti-Jewish legislation of Paul IV was rescinded when Italy unified and the pope was banished to the Vatican; it was revived by Mussolini, however, and when in 1943 Mussolini rounded up the Jews of Rome to deport to Auschwitz, the pope said nothing. A survivor says in the film, "If the pope had only taken the trouble to go outside the gate-and not say anything, just do as he did when Rome was bombed-just go outside the gate and stand in silence, with his arms raised in the form of a cross, there might never have been a deportation. Italians and German Catholics would not have gone along with it." But he never appeared.
Carroll affirms the strides taken forward by the Catholic Church in the latter part of the 20th century, especially the "change that mattered most" at Vatican 2, the decree, Nostra Aetate. But he wonders how much it has sunk in. He speaks with Fr. Stanislaw Obirek, a Polish Jesuit, suspended by his order because, Carroll says, he wanted a fuller accounting for the Catholic Church's role in Polish antisemitism.
Returning to the US, Carroll listens to the rhetoric of George Bush's "war on terror"-language of "crusade," "good vs. evil," "God is not neutral"-and hears echoes of past attempts to fuse cross and sword That's what frightens him about what he saw happening at the Air Force Academy; it appears to be a case of religion and military power coming together, with young evangelicals in the military inspired by their religious zeal to fight Middle East enemies. This isn't the spirit of Jesus, but the spirit of Constantine, which is still alive after 1700 years.
The movie can be faulted for its disparagement of Scripture (Carroll accepts uncritically whatever Elaine Pagels tells him), but it remains a powerful testimony to the experiences of those who have been cut by Constantine's sword. HoustonReviewer September 4, 2008
* Overall: 3.0 out of 5 stars5
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Showing 1-3 of 3 posts in this discussion
Initial post: Dec 25, 2008 1:14:51 PM PST
MD says:
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Truh in action is hard to swallow! Denial over the centuries is quite characteristic of human nature and political entities when wrong is committed. This is a 5 star presentation of anti-Semitism at its zenith. GNW, Colorado
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6 of 8 people think this post adds to the discussion. Do you?
Posted on Jul 23, 2010 12:48:22 PM PDT
Jerren Gould says:
thanks for mentioning it was on Netflix.
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Posted on Sep 5, 2011 11:18:43 AM PDT
Last edited by the author on Sep 5, 2011 11:21:31 AM PDT
Desertwriter says:
It was a close accounting of the film, rather than a 'review' ...until nearly the end of it where he definitely editorialized by claiming that Scripture was the holy word of God. For those grown ups who continue to believe that that collection of parables and myths over hundreds of years was dictated as if each transcriber/stenographer was Mohammed being dictated to, I hate to shake your world but there were no records of exactly what anyone said or did, (no burning bush photoshop then, red seas parting, water to wine, etc). The entire book was written and re-written according to Church decree hundreds of years LATER. It is manmade and created accounting/explanation of human origins as people moved from paganism, idol worshipping to monotheism. The Bible is largely a book of fiction with tiny amounts of history here and there. For example, as Shlomo Sand points out in his book, though hundreds of thousands if not millions of so called Israelites fled Egypt and wandered the desert for 40 years in all archaeological exploration's history not one trace of ANY civilization has been found anywhere in the region....nothing...that from globally respected archaelogists from Israel who have tried to prove the "exodus" but none have done so. Other than this criticism of previous 'review' he did an admirable job of summing of this most excellent film...though it is NOT about Carroll's opposition to his father whom he loved. It was about Carroll finding his "heavenly Father" voice...Carroll had wanted originally to become an Air Force Pilot but found his spiritual path/calling, which took precedence in his life, fortunately.
An excellent film.
Father Daniel Berrigan - last of the True Christians
This review is from: The Kings and Their Gods: The Pathology of Power
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars MOST RECENT THUS MOST URGENT CRY FROM OUR MOST CATHOLIC PROPHET OF PEACE IN THIS CORONATION YEAR OF COMMANDER IN CHIEF, May 6, 2008
By
C. Scanlon "least helpful reviewer" (among us humans) - See all my reviews
As this most recent installment of the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan's exegetical Old Testament series falls upon this current year of presidential appointment (dare we yet nor ever again write election?) in direct response to such anointments this millennium and their bloody, bitter fruit, we must not avoid its careful contemplation as lectio divina, as reading the writing upon the wall, as warning and as holy prophecy. Other essential readings from this great series include Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears, Jeremiah: The World, the Wound of God, Job: And Death No Dominion and Ezekiel: Vision in the Dust.
Indeed we read upon the cover the words of the great Jim Wallis (author of Faith Works: How to Live Your Beliefs and Ignite Positive Social Change and Living God's Politics: A Guide to Putting Your Faith into Action): "Part biblical commentary, part poetry, and part prophecy - this is Berrigan at his best."
Again, upon its book this sacred text bears these blazing and true words of the Reverend Father Andrew Greeley (author of A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq, 2001-2007): "In this powerful and disturbing meditation on the books of Kings, Father Daniel Berrigan, with all his usual prophetic fervor and scalding wit, compares Israel in the time between David and Isaiah with the United States today."
Our beloved and revered Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister (author most recently of The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully) joins this holy chorus with these instructive words: The Reverend Father "Daniel Berrigan's Kings and Their Gods is not one book but three. The first book in question is scripture's two books of Kings, which most people ignore. The second book is Berrigan's own poetic, piercing interpretation of the books of Kings. The third book is about us - our country, our times, ourselves. In each case, the language is elegant and the narrative is dramatic and chilling. Most of all, Berrigan's interpretation is disturbingly real, frighteningly true. My advice is to read this book with the scripture in one hand and the newspaper in the other. But whatever you do, read it. Once you do, you'll never think of the books of Kings as useless history again. On the contrary, you may think of them all the time."
Like the great and grim Samuel Beckett curled seriously in a corner of a gay Parisian cocktail party when invited to join the fun responded he was drearily thinking about Dante, you might arouse from your deep meditations with the weary wail, you think only of Berrigan's Kings and their prophetic revelations within today's newspaper.
We have an octogenarian papacy in Rome continuing weakly to emit encyclicals which oddly fail to resonate, such as Spe Salvi Salvados En La Esperanza, Benedicto XVI which paints as grim and despairing a picture of human efforts as anything in Jean Paul Sartre. At least Camus granted Sisyphus the dignity of his existential efforts.
Here in Berrigan's Kings we find our Roman Catholic octogenarian prophet and priest of peace inscribing with the same profound clarity and concision, elegant grace and unsparing, courageous truth as when he wrote over forty years ago his monumental ode to peace and universal compassion Night Flight To Hanoi - War Diary With 11 Poems or his own chronicle from the court records The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.
This book calls us forth to individual repentance. This book encourages us bravely as Virgil along our way from darkness unto God's peace, stability and unity. This book calls us forth like Lazarus from the busy groaning grave of avarice and lust, of bloodletting and war, unto the fulfillment of the commandments of Love and of the blessings of Peace. The Reverend Father Berrigan speaks with authority and with truth, with courage and wisdom, with guidance as wise counselor, as merciful and compassionate father seeing us all so lost, and scattered, and eagerly pursuing that which leads to no peace.
To quote the great Catholic nun, Sister Joan, "But whatever you do, read it." You must read this book. Even if you have not seen the rest of his great and holy and prophetic opus, we must all now today, and forever, read this book, if we are to discover once more peace, and real hope.
Near the end of this great and holy book, the Reverend Father Dan Berrigan writes: "There came an interruption. A stick was driven in the chariot spokes of empire. The impediment was thrust in place by the hands of prophets, the great disequilabrists of self-interest and murder. They denounced the old order as inept, intolerable. They defended and cherished the poor, challenged and rebuked the oppressors. To Isaiah and his like, all praise (p. 201)."
Father Dan then soon recalls the first words of public ministry of Jesus, read from the scroll of Isaiah: "What we find in the Gospels is hardly reassuring: a strict repudiation of the wars of the Hebrew Bible. No word indicates admiration or empathy for the violence of Saul, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and the others. Jesus never draws on them, even by way of rebuttal, to enlarge or illustrate his teachings. The contempt, the silence are deafening. In place of the kings, images of the prophets loom large. In the synagogue of Nazareth, through the words of Isaiah, Christ conveys the substance of his vocation. Works of mercy and mitigation will mark his days: 'Good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty for the oppressed . . . (pp. 201-202)"
"Blessed - and lonely and powerless and intent on the Master - and, if must be, despised and scorned, locked up - blessed are the makers of peace."
Read this book; whatever you do, read it.
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars MOST RECENT THUS MOST URGENT CRY FROM OUR MOST CATHOLIC PROPHET OF PEACE IN THIS CORONATION YEAR OF COMMANDER IN CHIEF, May 6, 2008
By
C. Scanlon "least helpful reviewer" (among us humans) - See all my reviews
As this most recent installment of the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan's exegetical Old Testament series falls upon this current year of presidential appointment (dare we yet nor ever again write election?) in direct response to such anointments this millennium and their bloody, bitter fruit, we must not avoid its careful contemplation as lectio divina, as reading the writing upon the wall, as warning and as holy prophecy. Other essential readings from this great series include Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears, Jeremiah: The World, the Wound of God, Job: And Death No Dominion and Ezekiel: Vision in the Dust.
Indeed we read upon the cover the words of the great Jim Wallis (author of Faith Works: How to Live Your Beliefs and Ignite Positive Social Change and Living God's Politics: A Guide to Putting Your Faith into Action): "Part biblical commentary, part poetry, and part prophecy - this is Berrigan at his best."
Again, upon its book this sacred text bears these blazing and true words of the Reverend Father Andrew Greeley (author of A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq, 2001-2007): "In this powerful and disturbing meditation on the books of Kings, Father Daniel Berrigan, with all his usual prophetic fervor and scalding wit, compares Israel in the time between David and Isaiah with the United States today."
Our beloved and revered Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister (author most recently of The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully) joins this holy chorus with these instructive words: The Reverend Father "Daniel Berrigan's Kings and Their Gods is not one book but three. The first book in question is scripture's two books of Kings, which most people ignore. The second book is Berrigan's own poetic, piercing interpretation of the books of Kings. The third book is about us - our country, our times, ourselves. In each case, the language is elegant and the narrative is dramatic and chilling. Most of all, Berrigan's interpretation is disturbingly real, frighteningly true. My advice is to read this book with the scripture in one hand and the newspaper in the other. But whatever you do, read it. Once you do, you'll never think of the books of Kings as useless history again. On the contrary, you may think of them all the time."
Like the great and grim Samuel Beckett curled seriously in a corner of a gay Parisian cocktail party when invited to join the fun responded he was drearily thinking about Dante, you might arouse from your deep meditations with the weary wail, you think only of Berrigan's Kings and their prophetic revelations within today's newspaper.
We have an octogenarian papacy in Rome continuing weakly to emit encyclicals which oddly fail to resonate, such as Spe Salvi Salvados En La Esperanza, Benedicto XVI which paints as grim and despairing a picture of human efforts as anything in Jean Paul Sartre. At least Camus granted Sisyphus the dignity of his existential efforts.
Here in Berrigan's Kings we find our Roman Catholic octogenarian prophet and priest of peace inscribing with the same profound clarity and concision, elegant grace and unsparing, courageous truth as when he wrote over forty years ago his monumental ode to peace and universal compassion Night Flight To Hanoi - War Diary With 11 Poems or his own chronicle from the court records The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.
This book calls us forth to individual repentance. This book encourages us bravely as Virgil along our way from darkness unto God's peace, stability and unity. This book calls us forth like Lazarus from the busy groaning grave of avarice and lust, of bloodletting and war, unto the fulfillment of the commandments of Love and of the blessings of Peace. The Reverend Father Berrigan speaks with authority and with truth, with courage and wisdom, with guidance as wise counselor, as merciful and compassionate father seeing us all so lost, and scattered, and eagerly pursuing that which leads to no peace.
To quote the great Catholic nun, Sister Joan, "But whatever you do, read it." You must read this book. Even if you have not seen the rest of his great and holy and prophetic opus, we must all now today, and forever, read this book, if we are to discover once more peace, and real hope.
Near the end of this great and holy book, the Reverend Father Dan Berrigan writes: "There came an interruption. A stick was driven in the chariot spokes of empire. The impediment was thrust in place by the hands of prophets, the great disequilabrists of self-interest and murder. They denounced the old order as inept, intolerable. They defended and cherished the poor, challenged and rebuked the oppressors. To Isaiah and his like, all praise (p. 201)."
Father Dan then soon recalls the first words of public ministry of Jesus, read from the scroll of Isaiah: "What we find in the Gospels is hardly reassuring: a strict repudiation of the wars of the Hebrew Bible. No word indicates admiration or empathy for the violence of Saul, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and the others. Jesus never draws on them, even by way of rebuttal, to enlarge or illustrate his teachings. The contempt, the silence are deafening. In place of the kings, images of the prophets loom large. In the synagogue of Nazareth, through the words of Isaiah, Christ conveys the substance of his vocation. Works of mercy and mitigation will mark his days: 'Good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty for the oppressed . . . (pp. 201-202)"
"Blessed - and lonely and powerless and intent on the Master - and, if must be, despised and scorned, locked up - blessed are the makers of peace."
Read this book; whatever you do, read it.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Ray Dalio - Transcendental Ponzi Meditation on Radical Truthiness
Psych 101 - whoever professes to be passionately dedicated to radical honesty and truth is a liar and a fraud.
You dont have to know anything about finance to smell something fishy about Bridgewater Associates, a passing familiarity with human psychology of the cult leader and the culture of conformity of the cult followers is all that is needed. Just listen to a Ray Dalio speech, and the alarm bells warning of con artist alert should be ringing loudly.
For a 120 billion $ company, Bridgewater Associates has a pretty small website, but it is quite revealing in some ways, they certainly want you to believe how passionate they are about truth, and they evidently need lots and lots of fresh new MBA grads to presumably replace all the ones who quit once they find out what a pack of lies they got hired to perpetuate.
http://www.bwater.com/home/our-company/company.aspx
"Bridgewater’s unique results are a product of its unique culture. Truth and excellence are valued above all else. In order to be excellent we need to know what’s true, especially those things that we would rather not be true, so that we can decide how best to deal with them. We want logic and reason to be the basis for making decisions. It is through this striving to be excellent by being radically truthful and transparent that we build meaningful work and meaningful relationships."
Does TM Transcendental Meditation have anything to do with it, hmm? That was a systematic program of lying and deception, excellent training for anyone in finance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Associates
No surprise that for the last year, the Bridgewater wikipedia page has been edited hundreds of times by one user who also happens to be a TM'er.
It should be interesting to see how long they can go on with the Madoff deception.
I used to be a little doubtful if Ray Dalio was a real Ponzi schemer, and then I saw the Bridgewater YouTube video where Ray Dalio drones on in platitudes about values and truth and sounds a little too stupid. His body language definitely has the air of hiding something. Plus there are only two videos on the Bridgewater youtube channel, both are Dalio being given an award from a hedge fund association, and you can see the archetype of the follower of the con-artist in the introductory speech.
How such a dimwitted guy like Dalio bamboozled so many rich rubes is a pretty amazing story that hopefully some Harry Markopolis investigator willl reveal to us all in the not too distant future.
You dont have to know anything about finance to smell something fishy about Bridgewater Associates, a passing familiarity with human psychology of the cult leader and the culture of conformity of the cult followers is all that is needed. Just listen to a Ray Dalio speech, and the alarm bells warning of con artist alert should be ringing loudly.
For a 120 billion $ company, Bridgewater Associates has a pretty small website, but it is quite revealing in some ways, they certainly want you to believe how passionate they are about truth, and they evidently need lots and lots of fresh new MBA grads to presumably replace all the ones who quit once they find out what a pack of lies they got hired to perpetuate.
http://www.bwater.com/home/our-company/company.aspx
"Bridgewater’s unique results are a product of its unique culture. Truth and excellence are valued above all else. In order to be excellent we need to know what’s true, especially those things that we would rather not be true, so that we can decide how best to deal with them. We want logic and reason to be the basis for making decisions. It is through this striving to be excellent by being radically truthful and transparent that we build meaningful work and meaningful relationships."
Does TM Transcendental Meditation have anything to do with it, hmm? That was a systematic program of lying and deception, excellent training for anyone in finance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Associates
No surprise that for the last year, the Bridgewater wikipedia page has been edited hundreds of times by one user who also happens to be a TM'er.
It should be interesting to see how long they can go on with the Madoff deception.
I used to be a little doubtful if Ray Dalio was a real Ponzi schemer, and then I saw the Bridgewater YouTube video where Ray Dalio drones on in platitudes about values and truth and sounds a little too stupid. His body language definitely has the air of hiding something. Plus there are only two videos on the Bridgewater youtube channel, both are Dalio being given an award from a hedge fund association, and you can see the archetype of the follower of the con-artist in the introductory speech.
How such a dimwitted guy like Dalio bamboozled so many rich rubes is a pretty amazing story that hopefully some Harry Markopolis investigator willl reveal to us all in the not too distant future.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Diotima - the Mother of Philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diotima_of_Mantinea
Teachers of Socrates were women. They are named in the Dialogues of Plato.
Yes, it is true. Socrates may have been the teacher of Plato but Socrates himself acknowledged THREE teachers.... and all three of them are women.
Who are these Teachers of Socrates? Why have we not heard more about them - especially since they all figures in the Dialogues? Let's begin with the first question, Who are they?
1.Pythia, the oracle at Delphi. This woman who played a role in Greek religious rites taught Socrates in what was later known as a Socratic manner. She did not tell him anything. Rather her words presented him with a puzzle and as he spent his life trying to unravel the meaning of her words, Socrates became the philosopher we know him to be.
Socrates tell us in the Apology that a friend of his named Chaerephon went to the Pythina Oracle at Delphi and asked. 'Is anyone wiser than Socrates?' And the Pythian priestess answered, 'No one.' When Socrates heard this he was puzzled since he knew that her KNEW nothing.
So he assumed it was his duty to either figure out what the Oracle meant...or to prove the Oracle wrong - thus showing up a religious figure as a sham. Socrates tell us that this is how he started out searching for a wise person...asking questions to find out who was wise and who thought he was wise but really was not wise at all.
Socrates tell us he devoted his life to this quest and in the end her realized the truth of the Oracle's saying because others thought themselves to be wise but were not, while Socrates knew he was not wise....and thus had a sort of wisdom...the kind possible forhuman beings to hold.
This Teachers of Socrates story is told in Lives of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius
See also: Broad, William The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets. New York: Penguin Press, 2007 p.63.
2.Asphasia of Miletus
Socrates states that Asphasia of Miletus was his teacher of rhetoric. To learn more about her, click on Asphasia, one of the Teachers of Socrates
3.
4.Teachers of Socrates: Diotima of Mantinea:
The dialogue called the Symposium offers a long discussion of the meaning of love. Several friends, Agathon, Alcibiades, Aristophanes, , Eryximachus,Pausanias, Phaedrus, Plato and Socrates gathered at Agathon's house, probably to celebrate his winning Agathon's first prize for a tragedy. Aristodemus, the deme of Cydathenaeum was also there since it was he who related what happend that night to Apolodorus and Phoenix. Apolodorous, who was not at the banquet, says that hehad checked with Socrates about the story he heard and Socrates confirmed that the events did happen as Aristodemus described.
After they had eaten and were about to start drinking, they decided not to make drinking their main object but concentrate instead on good conversation. Eryximachus says, "for I mean to propose that each of us in turn, going from left to right, shall make a speech in honour of Love
. Let him give us the best which he can; and Phaedrus, because he is sitting first on the left hand, and because he is the father of the thought, shall begin." [ Symposium translated by Benjamin Jowett. ]
The dialogue continues and each person speaks of love. Towards the very end it is Agathon's turn and when he finishes Socratessays :
"You made a very good speech, Agathon, replied Socrates; but there is yet one small question which I would fain ask:-Is not the good also the beautiful?
Yes.
Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?
I cannot refute you, Socrates, said Agathon:-Let us assume that what you say is true.
Say rather, beloved Agathon, that you cannot refute the truth; for Socrates is easily refuted." Symposium translated byBenjamin Jowett.
At that point Socrates continues:
"And now, taking my leave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I heard from
Diotima of Mantineia, a woman wise in this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when the Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague, delayed the disease ten years. She was my instructress in the art of love, and I shall repeat to you what she said to me...." You can read the rest of the in the Symposium by Plato
To read more about this philosopher Diotima of Mantinea one of the Teachers of Socrates
Go to Articles about Women philosophers
Teachers of Socrates were women. They are named in the Dialogues of Plato.
Yes, it is true. Socrates may have been the teacher of Plato but Socrates himself acknowledged THREE teachers.... and all three of them are women.
Who are these Teachers of Socrates? Why have we not heard more about them - especially since they all figures in the Dialogues? Let's begin with the first question, Who are they?
1.Pythia, the oracle at Delphi. This woman who played a role in Greek religious rites taught Socrates in what was later known as a Socratic manner. She did not tell him anything. Rather her words presented him with a puzzle and as he spent his life trying to unravel the meaning of her words, Socrates became the philosopher we know him to be.
Socrates tell us in the Apology that a friend of his named Chaerephon went to the Pythina Oracle at Delphi and asked. 'Is anyone wiser than Socrates?' And the Pythian priestess answered, 'No one.' When Socrates heard this he was puzzled since he knew that her KNEW nothing.
So he assumed it was his duty to either figure out what the Oracle meant...or to prove the Oracle wrong - thus showing up a religious figure as a sham. Socrates tell us that this is how he started out searching for a wise person...asking questions to find out who was wise and who thought he was wise but really was not wise at all.
Socrates tell us he devoted his life to this quest and in the end her realized the truth of the Oracle's saying because others thought themselves to be wise but were not, while Socrates knew he was not wise....and thus had a sort of wisdom...the kind possible forhuman beings to hold.
This Teachers of Socrates story is told in Lives of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius
See also: Broad, William The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets. New York: Penguin Press, 2007 p.63.
2.Asphasia of Miletus
Socrates states that Asphasia of Miletus was his teacher of rhetoric. To learn more about her, click on Asphasia, one of the Teachers of Socrates
3.
4.Teachers of Socrates: Diotima of Mantinea:
The dialogue called the Symposium offers a long discussion of the meaning of love. Several friends, Agathon, Alcibiades, Aristophanes, , Eryximachus,Pausanias, Phaedrus, Plato and Socrates gathered at Agathon's house, probably to celebrate his winning Agathon's first prize for a tragedy. Aristodemus, the deme of Cydathenaeum was also there since it was he who related what happend that night to Apolodorus and Phoenix. Apolodorous, who was not at the banquet, says that hehad checked with Socrates about the story he heard and Socrates confirmed that the events did happen as Aristodemus described.
After they had eaten and were about to start drinking, they decided not to make drinking their main object but concentrate instead on good conversation. Eryximachus says, "for I mean to propose that each of us in turn, going from left to right, shall make a speech in honour of Love
. Let him give us the best which he can; and Phaedrus, because he is sitting first on the left hand, and because he is the father of the thought, shall begin." [ Symposium translated by Benjamin Jowett. ]
The dialogue continues and each person speaks of love. Towards the very end it is Agathon's turn and when he finishes Socratessays :
"You made a very good speech, Agathon, replied Socrates; but there is yet one small question which I would fain ask:-Is not the good also the beautiful?
Yes.
Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?
I cannot refute you, Socrates, said Agathon:-Let us assume that what you say is true.
Say rather, beloved Agathon, that you cannot refute the truth; for Socrates is easily refuted." Symposium translated byBenjamin Jowett.
At that point Socrates continues:
"And now, taking my leave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I heard from
Diotima of Mantineia, a woman wise in this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when the Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague, delayed the disease ten years. She was my instructress in the art of love, and I shall repeat to you what she said to me...." You can read the rest of the in the Symposium by Plato
To read more about this philosopher Diotima of Mantinea one of the Teachers of Socrates
Go to Articles about Women philosophers
Saint Thomas Aquinas - I Cannot Go On, All That I Have Written Seems Like so Much Straw to Me
the story of Thomas Aquinas hanging up his pen after his epiphany should be the first topic of any class in religion, Christian or Buddhist.
"Of the Making of Many Books there is No End, and Much Study is a Weariness of the Flesh" - Ecclesiastes
"One glimpse is worth a thousand books"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#Final_days_and_.22Straw.22_.281272.E2.80.931274.29
Final days and "Straw" (1272–1274)
In 1272 Thomas took leave from the University of Paris when the Dominicans from his home province called upon him to establish a studium generale wherever he liked and staff it as he pleased. He chose to establish the institution in Naples, and moved there to take his post as regent master.[28] He took his time at Naples to work on the third part of the Summa while giving lectures on various religious topics. On 6 December 1273 Thomas was celebrating the Mass of St. Nicholas when, according to some, he heard Christ speak to him. Christ asked him what he desired, being pleased with his meritorious life. Thomas replied "Only you Lord. Only you."[34] After this exchange something happened, but Thomas never spoke of it or wrote it down. Because of what he saw, he abandoned his routine and refused to dictate to his socius Reginald of Piperno. When Reginald begged him to get back to work, Thomas replied: "Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me."[35] (mihi videtur ut palea).[36] What exactly triggered Thomas's change in behavior is believed to be some kind of supernatural experience of God.[37] After taking to his bed, he did recover some strength.[38]
Looking to find a way to reunite the Eastern Orthodox churches with the Catholic Church (the Eastern Orthodox were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church, and vice versa, in A.D. 1054 over doctrinal disputes) Pope Gregory X convened the Second Council of Lyon to be held on 1 May 1274 and summoned Thomas to attend.[39] At the meeting, Thomas's work for Pope Urban IV concerning the Greeks, Contra errores graecorum, was to be presented.[40] On his way to the Council, riding on a donkey along the Appian Way,[39] he struck his head on the branch of a fallen tree and became seriously ill again. He was then quickly escorted to Monte Cassino to convalesce.[38] After resting for a while, he set out again, but stopped at the Cistercian Fossanova Abbey after again falling ill.[41] The monks nursed him for several days, and as he received his last rites he prayed: "I receive Thee, ransom of my soul. For love of Thee have I studied and kept vigil, toiled, preached and taught..."[42] He died on 7 March 1274[41] while giving commentary on the Song of Songs.[43]
"Of the Making of Many Books there is No End, and Much Study is a Weariness of the Flesh" - Ecclesiastes
"One glimpse is worth a thousand books"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#Final_days_and_.22Straw.22_.281272.E2.80.931274.29
Final days and "Straw" (1272–1274)
In 1272 Thomas took leave from the University of Paris when the Dominicans from his home province called upon him to establish a studium generale wherever he liked and staff it as he pleased. He chose to establish the institution in Naples, and moved there to take his post as regent master.[28] He took his time at Naples to work on the third part of the Summa while giving lectures on various religious topics. On 6 December 1273 Thomas was celebrating the Mass of St. Nicholas when, according to some, he heard Christ speak to him. Christ asked him what he desired, being pleased with his meritorious life. Thomas replied "Only you Lord. Only you."[34] After this exchange something happened, but Thomas never spoke of it or wrote it down. Because of what he saw, he abandoned his routine and refused to dictate to his socius Reginald of Piperno. When Reginald begged him to get back to work, Thomas replied: "Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me."[35] (mihi videtur ut palea).[36] What exactly triggered Thomas's change in behavior is believed to be some kind of supernatural experience of God.[37] After taking to his bed, he did recover some strength.[38]
Looking to find a way to reunite the Eastern Orthodox churches with the Catholic Church (the Eastern Orthodox were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church, and vice versa, in A.D. 1054 over doctrinal disputes) Pope Gregory X convened the Second Council of Lyon to be held on 1 May 1274 and summoned Thomas to attend.[39] At the meeting, Thomas's work for Pope Urban IV concerning the Greeks, Contra errores graecorum, was to be presented.[40] On his way to the Council, riding on a donkey along the Appian Way,[39] he struck his head on the branch of a fallen tree and became seriously ill again. He was then quickly escorted to Monte Cassino to convalesce.[38] After resting for a while, he set out again, but stopped at the Cistercian Fossanova Abbey after again falling ill.[41] The monks nursed him for several days, and as he received his last rites he prayed: "I receive Thee, ransom of my soul. For love of Thee have I studied and kept vigil, toiled, preached and taught..."[42] He died on 7 March 1274[41] while giving commentary on the Song of Songs.[43]
Philosophy Professor Erling Skorpen - The Ideal of Humanitas
Professor of philosophy Erling Skorpen taught the freshman introduction to philosophy class at UMO circa 1975, the class title was 'The Ideal of Humanitas', it was a medium size lecture hall, maybe 100 students. The reading list covered a wide range, starting off with the classic 'Apology of Socrates' the three small essays describing Socrates trial and death, and included 'Black Elk Speaks' and Vasari's 'Lives of the Artists', the classic of life during the Renaissance.
Class discussions focused on the author's ideal exemplar of humanity from Socrates to Michelangelo to Black Elk. Professor Skorpen was a fairly cheerful person for being a philosopher, and there were supposed stories that he worked as a lumberjack prior to being a philosophy professor, but maybe that was just a legend befitting a professor in the Maine woods, at the campus next to the Old Town canoe factory.
Obituary - ERLING SKORPEN
Posted Sept. 25, 2008, at 11:17 p.m. ERLING SKORPEN VERONA – Erling Skorpen died on Jan. 8, 2004, of complications of Alzheimer’s Disease. Erling, the son of John and Gyda Skorpen, was born into a Norwegian community in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Nov. 20, 1929. He earned a B.A. from the College of Idaho, an M.A. from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale. He taught at Yale, the University of Nevada in Reno, and the University of Maine, where he was recognized as a Distinguished Professor. While at Oxford, Erling volunteered for work camps in Sicily and Lebanon with The American Friends Service Committee. He was very active in the civil rights movement and the peace movement during the Vietnam war. Erling was a devoted husband, father and teacher. A memorial service will be held 10 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004, at St. John’s Episcopal Church, French St., Bangor, with the Rev. Kevin Holsapple, rector, officiating. Those who wish to remember Erling in a special way may make gifts in his memory to the American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102 or AFSC.org. A service of Brookings-Smith, Bangor.
Works by Erling Skorpen
Erling Skorpen (1991). Images of the Environment in Corporate America. Journal of Business Ethics 10 (9).
Three nature images influence the environmental policies of major American corporations. Successively they are images of the (1) unfouled nest, (2) protected habitat, and (3) uncontaminated environment. Each contains unexpected surprises for its corporation, however. Polaroid, for example, does not foul its company precincts, but is now a Superfund Potentially Responsible Party for its deposited wastes in its home and neighboring states. This anomaly thus extends its unfouled-nest image to its dumpsites and beyond, but also implodes upon its workplace. Parallel (...) extensions and inversions affect Martin Marietta's favored image of the protected habitat and Union Carbide's of the uncontaminated environment. These are shown with references to Kant and to Aristotle, but a concluding moral compares further neglect of the full consequences of such images to Dante's allegorical Circles 4 and 5 of Hell. (shrink)
Erling Skorpen (1989). Are Journalistic Ethics Self-Generated? Journal of Mass Media Ethics 4 (2):157 – 173.
Media Ethics in Applied Ethics
Erling Skorpen (1973). Pin-Pricks to the Body and Pains to the Mind: A Natural History and Philosophy. Philosophy Forum 14 (September):53-79.
Other Psychophysical Relations, Misc in Philosophy of Mind
Erling Skorpen (1971). The Philosophy of Renunciation East and West. Philosophy East and West 21 (3):283-302.
Erling Skorpen (1968). Kant's Refutation of Idealism. Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1).
Immanuel Kant in 17th/18th Century Philosophy
Erling Skorpen (1966). Goodness is Non-Natural and Simple. Southern Journal of Philosophy 4 (1):14-26.
Professor Skorpen Memorial
Senator Michael Howard read a memorial in honor of the recently deceased Philosophy Professor Erling Skorpen. The memorial was written by Professor Jeff White.
“As many of you know, Erling Skorpen, died Thursday, January 8. He was a great friend and esteemed colleague of many on this faculty. He came here in 1968 after remarkable careers at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, at Yale, and at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was born with an excess of talent and charm to which he gave bountiful public expression in scholarship, teaching and civic life. A special scholarly interest was in what he called in one of his papers, ‘symbols of condensation’. These are linguistic and behavioral expressions which contain multiple levels of meaning and significance. Erling’s award as Distinguished University of Maine Professor for 1975 is a symbol of this sort. Other symbols of his achievements abound, however, and in closing I want to mention, briefly, one of these.
A few days after announcement of Erling’s death, I received an unexpected e-mail from Houston, Texas, written by a former student of Erling’s. So far as I know no member of our Department – including Erling – had been in contact with this student since his graduation. How he learned of Erling’s death I don’t know, but here, in part, is how the message read:
“I had several classes in philosophy before graduating in 1993. Ethics, with Erling Skorpen, was one of the best. I found him engaging, utterly charming and enthusiastic beyond measure. I will remember him fondly…Life has turned out quite well for me, and I attribute a great deal of any small success I have had to my experience at Maine. Erling Skorpen was a part of that, and I guess I simply wanted to share this with someone.”
It is impossible to make teaching like Erling’s register in ‘Outcome Assessments‘ and the like. It is impossible, in part, because often the deepest effects of classroom work pass virtually without notice — until, sometimes through loss, they are momentarily recovered and find expression. There have been, and will continue to be, such recoveries and expressions in Professor Skorpen’s case. He occupies a unique and lasting presence in the collective, long-term memory of the Faculty of the University of Maine.”
Andrew Perry Skorpen, 43
PORTLAND -- Andrew Perry Skorpen passed over on March 7, 2011, apparently in his sleep, one week shy of his 44th birthday. Andy was born on March 14, 1967, in Reno, Nev. He was proud of his indigenous American roots and our family lore was that he was, by blood, in line for a chiefdom had he remained with his biological family. At the age of one Andy moved to Maine with his adoptive parents, Erling Skorpen and Elizabeth Moak Skorpen, along with five older siblings, and settled in Hampden.
From kindergarten and into high school Andy attended Skitikuk School, in Orono. He also attended Hampden Academy for a brief period.
In lieu of flowers memorial
contributions may be made to:
The Animal Refuge League
Attn.: Gayle Dunnigan
P.O. Box 336
Westbrook, Maine 04098
Class discussions focused on the author's ideal exemplar of humanity from Socrates to Michelangelo to Black Elk. Professor Skorpen was a fairly cheerful person for being a philosopher, and there were supposed stories that he worked as a lumberjack prior to being a philosophy professor, but maybe that was just a legend befitting a professor in the Maine woods, at the campus next to the Old Town canoe factory.
Obituary - ERLING SKORPEN
Posted Sept. 25, 2008, at 11:17 p.m. ERLING SKORPEN VERONA – Erling Skorpen died on Jan. 8, 2004, of complications of Alzheimer’s Disease. Erling, the son of John and Gyda Skorpen, was born into a Norwegian community in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Nov. 20, 1929. He earned a B.A. from the College of Idaho, an M.A. from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale. He taught at Yale, the University of Nevada in Reno, and the University of Maine, where he was recognized as a Distinguished Professor. While at Oxford, Erling volunteered for work camps in Sicily and Lebanon with The American Friends Service Committee. He was very active in the civil rights movement and the peace movement during the Vietnam war. Erling was a devoted husband, father and teacher. A memorial service will be held 10 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004, at St. John’s Episcopal Church, French St., Bangor, with the Rev. Kevin Holsapple, rector, officiating. Those who wish to remember Erling in a special way may make gifts in his memory to the American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102 or AFSC.org. A service of Brookings-Smith, Bangor.
Works by Erling Skorpen
Erling Skorpen (1991). Images of the Environment in Corporate America. Journal of Business Ethics 10 (9).
Three nature images influence the environmental policies of major American corporations. Successively they are images of the (1) unfouled nest, (2) protected habitat, and (3) uncontaminated environment. Each contains unexpected surprises for its corporation, however. Polaroid, for example, does not foul its company precincts, but is now a Superfund Potentially Responsible Party for its deposited wastes in its home and neighboring states. This anomaly thus extends its unfouled-nest image to its dumpsites and beyond, but also implodes upon its workplace. Parallel (...) extensions and inversions affect Martin Marietta's favored image of the protected habitat and Union Carbide's of the uncontaminated environment. These are shown with references to Kant and to Aristotle, but a concluding moral compares further neglect of the full consequences of such images to Dante's allegorical Circles 4 and 5 of Hell. (shrink)
Erling Skorpen (1989). Are Journalistic Ethics Self-Generated? Journal of Mass Media Ethics 4 (2):157 – 173.
Media Ethics in Applied Ethics
Erling Skorpen (1973). Pin-Pricks to the Body and Pains to the Mind: A Natural History and Philosophy. Philosophy Forum 14 (September):53-79.
Other Psychophysical Relations, Misc in Philosophy of Mind
Erling Skorpen (1971). The Philosophy of Renunciation East and West. Philosophy East and West 21 (3):283-302.
Erling Skorpen (1968). Kant's Refutation of Idealism. Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1).
Immanuel Kant in 17th/18th Century Philosophy
Erling Skorpen (1966). Goodness is Non-Natural and Simple. Southern Journal of Philosophy 4 (1):14-26.
Professor Skorpen Memorial
Senator Michael Howard read a memorial in honor of the recently deceased Philosophy Professor Erling Skorpen. The memorial was written by Professor Jeff White.
“As many of you know, Erling Skorpen, died Thursday, January 8. He was a great friend and esteemed colleague of many on this faculty. He came here in 1968 after remarkable careers at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, at Yale, and at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was born with an excess of talent and charm to which he gave bountiful public expression in scholarship, teaching and civic life. A special scholarly interest was in what he called in one of his papers, ‘symbols of condensation’. These are linguistic and behavioral expressions which contain multiple levels of meaning and significance. Erling’s award as Distinguished University of Maine Professor for 1975 is a symbol of this sort. Other symbols of his achievements abound, however, and in closing I want to mention, briefly, one of these.
A few days after announcement of Erling’s death, I received an unexpected e-mail from Houston, Texas, written by a former student of Erling’s. So far as I know no member of our Department – including Erling – had been in contact with this student since his graduation. How he learned of Erling’s death I don’t know, but here, in part, is how the message read:
“I had several classes in philosophy before graduating in 1993. Ethics, with Erling Skorpen, was one of the best. I found him engaging, utterly charming and enthusiastic beyond measure. I will remember him fondly…Life has turned out quite well for me, and I attribute a great deal of any small success I have had to my experience at Maine. Erling Skorpen was a part of that, and I guess I simply wanted to share this with someone.”
It is impossible to make teaching like Erling’s register in ‘Outcome Assessments‘ and the like. It is impossible, in part, because often the deepest effects of classroom work pass virtually without notice — until, sometimes through loss, they are momentarily recovered and find expression. There have been, and will continue to be, such recoveries and expressions in Professor Skorpen’s case. He occupies a unique and lasting presence in the collective, long-term memory of the Faculty of the University of Maine.”
Andrew Perry Skorpen, 43
PORTLAND -- Andrew Perry Skorpen passed over on March 7, 2011, apparently in his sleep, one week shy of his 44th birthday. Andy was born on March 14, 1967, in Reno, Nev. He was proud of his indigenous American roots and our family lore was that he was, by blood, in line for a chiefdom had he remained with his biological family. At the age of one Andy moved to Maine with his adoptive parents, Erling Skorpen and Elizabeth Moak Skorpen, along with five older siblings, and settled in Hampden.
From kindergarten and into high school Andy attended Skitikuk School, in Orono. He also attended Hampden Academy for a brief period.
In lieu of flowers memorial
contributions may be made to:
The Animal Refuge League
Attn.: Gayle Dunnigan
P.O. Box 336
Westbrook, Maine 04098
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Obama on the Couch - Yet Another President with Daddy Issues
Bush then Obama, just imagine if Newt is next! My god Newt would make both Bush and Obama look like the epitomes of mental health.
Dr Frank's prediction: "Bush is on the brink of his greatest business failure ever." is all too true, let us remember Bush's last words "This sucker could go down".
Dr Frank's prediction: "Bush is on the brink of his greatest business failure ever." is all too true, let us remember Bush's last words "This sucker could go down".
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Ted talks -TiltingAgainst the Global Windmill of Willfull Ignorance
Ted talks – Nic Marks and Johan Rockstrom Aug 29 31 2010
Will ignorance or enlightenment prevail in the next 50 years? When we hit the peak population in the year 2050 will it be a holocaust unimaginable in one hemisphere with the other hemisphere living fat dumb and happy? Are we now in a dark age and it is getting darker? Where are the signs of encouragement for the future? Is science breeding even more atheistic idiot savants with no inkling of the true feelings behind the awe of a Newton or an Einstein? Is religion breeding even more fundamentalist literalists with no inkling of the real message of the world behind the veil, of the world outside the cave of shadows that we live in? When we go outside at night, can we not even see any stars anymore? Wouldn’t even one bright star be enough to cause wonder in anyone living in front of liquid crystal screens all day long? Are we not at the terminus culture of the Time Machine of Morlocks toiling all night in the subterranean semiconductor fabs and ipod assembly lines and the blonde Eloi living in blissful ignorance of what it takes to deliver the electronic toys and the fast food to their tastefully decorated condominiums.
Son: I don’t want to watch another TED talk! One more story of the dying oceans or extinct wildlife or idiot obsessive-compulsive dilettante scientists and I will kill myself! I know the Earth is dying already! So what! I didn’t ask to be born! Don’t tell me about 2050 and 9 billion ignorant dumbfounded dipshits all suffering in the same soup, I have a good enough imagination to know it aint going to be pretty.
Dad: Ok, ok, just these two, I promise. I’m sorry I’m so negative all the time, I just cant stop thinking of how if not for like one person, just one person like Karl Rove, the future of the entire planet might not be so bleak.
Son: Karl Rove? Yeah, right. What was he, Hitler’s grandchild? How could one person have tilted the future of the earth so much?
Dad: Just imagine if Al Gore’s election wasn’t voided by the activist radical Republicans on the Supreme Court. 2000 was a watershed moment, a time for an example to be set for the future, the future of how countries could get along as resources became more scarce and dictatorships became more unstable, and coordinated global action to avert climate catastrophe became more necessary. And one guy, Karl Rove, swung the vote just enough, just a few percentage points, by dirty tricks of voter turnout suppression, vote caging, voter intimidation, ballot confusion, to throw the Florida vote into a confusing recount allowing the Supreme Court to dictate the outcome according to their political ideology, stealing the vote from the electorate.
Son: I know I know, leading to a total retreat on climate action, to setting the worst example for international relations, to the Third Great Republican Depression as deregulation set the stage for the near collapse of the entire world’s financial ‘system’ such as it is.
Will ignorance or enlightenment prevail in the next 50 years? When we hit the peak population in the year 2050 will it be a holocaust unimaginable in one hemisphere with the other hemisphere living fat dumb and happy? Are we now in a dark age and it is getting darker? Where are the signs of encouragement for the future? Is science breeding even more atheistic idiot savants with no inkling of the true feelings behind the awe of a Newton or an Einstein? Is religion breeding even more fundamentalist literalists with no inkling of the real message of the world behind the veil, of the world outside the cave of shadows that we live in? When we go outside at night, can we not even see any stars anymore? Wouldn’t even one bright star be enough to cause wonder in anyone living in front of liquid crystal screens all day long? Are we not at the terminus culture of the Time Machine of Morlocks toiling all night in the subterranean semiconductor fabs and ipod assembly lines and the blonde Eloi living in blissful ignorance of what it takes to deliver the electronic toys and the fast food to their tastefully decorated condominiums.
Son: I don’t want to watch another TED talk! One more story of the dying oceans or extinct wildlife or idiot obsessive-compulsive dilettante scientists and I will kill myself! I know the Earth is dying already! So what! I didn’t ask to be born! Don’t tell me about 2050 and 9 billion ignorant dumbfounded dipshits all suffering in the same soup, I have a good enough imagination to know it aint going to be pretty.
Dad: Ok, ok, just these two, I promise. I’m sorry I’m so negative all the time, I just cant stop thinking of how if not for like one person, just one person like Karl Rove, the future of the entire planet might not be so bleak.
Son: Karl Rove? Yeah, right. What was he, Hitler’s grandchild? How could one person have tilted the future of the earth so much?
Dad: Just imagine if Al Gore’s election wasn’t voided by the activist radical Republicans on the Supreme Court. 2000 was a watershed moment, a time for an example to be set for the future, the future of how countries could get along as resources became more scarce and dictatorships became more unstable, and coordinated global action to avert climate catastrophe became more necessary. And one guy, Karl Rove, swung the vote just enough, just a few percentage points, by dirty tricks of voter turnout suppression, vote caging, voter intimidation, ballot confusion, to throw the Florida vote into a confusing recount allowing the Supreme Court to dictate the outcome according to their political ideology, stealing the vote from the electorate.
Son: I know I know, leading to a total retreat on climate action, to setting the worst example for international relations, to the Third Great Republican Depression as deregulation set the stage for the near collapse of the entire world’s financial ‘system’ such as it is.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
The Apostle Paul - the First Closeted Conservative Fundamentalist Christian?
Was St. Paul Gay? Claim Stirs Fury
By ARI L. GOLDMAN
Published: February 02, 1991
Throughout his ministry as an Episcopal priest and bishop, John S. Spong has been surrounded by controversy as he has labored on the leading edge of movements to bring blacks, women and homosexuals into the full life of his church.
But now that he has written that St. Paul, the apostle and first great teacher of Christianity, was a "self-loathing and repressed gay male," even his defenders are expressing shock. Many are saying that this maverick voice of mainstream Christianity is fast losing credibility and may soon be regarded as little more than a street corner prophet whom everyone sees but no one hears. Bishop Spong, the 59-year-old head of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, has managed to keep a loyal and attentive following despite a swirl of Spong-centered disputes both nationally and in his home diocese. Understanding Paul
Conservative bishops, for example, asked that Bishop Spong be censured for ordaining a sexually active gay man, but the House of Bishops refused, deciding instead to merely "disassociate" itself from his actions. And, in his own diocese, at least one priest has sued Bishop Spong in court, charging that he illegally withheld parish funds. Most of his priests, however, have stood by him, either out of genuine admiration or, some suggest, fear.
Bishop Spong, married and the father of three grown daughters, makes his argument about Paul's sexuality in a new book, "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism," published yesterday by Harper Collins.
In an interview held before he left on a cross-country book tour, Bishop Spong said that seeing St. Paul as a homosexual has helped him understand the apostle's anguished cries ("Wretched man that I am!"), his apparent hostility toward women ("wives submit to your husbands") and the fact that he never married.
But criticism of his thesis on Paul has come from all quarters, friends and foes, liberals and conservatives, Protestants and Catholics.
"I think that rescuing the Bible from fundamentalism is a good thing," said Pheme Perkins, professor of New Testament at Boston College and a specialist in St. Paul. "But I think Jack Spong has gone too far."
In Bishop Spong's previous theological works, she said, she has found him to be "fun, interesting and intelligent." But his new work, she said, is part of "a tendency to attribute to Paul all the neuroses of later Christianity."
"The danger is that whenever we want to psychoanalyze any figure from antiquity, we simply project our own psychological complexities," said Dr. Perkins, the author of 14 books on the New Testament.
Others are not so kind. "This is not only shocking, it's one of the craziest things I've heard so far," said Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark.
Archbishop McCarrick's remark came just a few days after he broke a long silence on Bishop Spong by writing in a newspaper column of the Bishop's "strange journey" and suggesting that he has created a "church without morals."
Conservatives in Bishop Spong's own denomination were no happier.
"I think Spong is self-destructing," said the Rev. Todd Wetzel, the executive director of Episcopalians United, a conservative group based in Cleveland. "Much of his thinking will soon be dismissed. It no longer represents constructive theological thinking nor responsible thinking."
Bishop Spong sees his latest thesis as consistent with his career in the ministry. As a young priest in his native North Carolina in the 1960's, he fought for the equality of blacks both inside and outside the church. In the 1970's, he became an early champion of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church. In the 1980's, he called on the priests in his diocese to "bless" homosexual unions and later ordained a sexually active homosexual man against the rules of his own denomination. 'Self-Judging Rhetoric'
By viewing St. Paul as a gay man, he said, he hopes to make homosexuals more comfortable in the Episcopal church and to attract people who left the church feeling that it was a moribund institution wedded to ancient ways of thinking.
In his book, the Bishop writes that he does not mean to be "salacious or titillating" by suggesting St. Paul was gay. But, he adds, "Nothing else, in my opinion, could account for Paul's self-judging rhetoric, his negative feeling toward his own body and his sense of being controlled by something he had no power to change."
In the interview, Bishop Spong said that he sees himself as playing an important role challenging accepted notions within the church and society.
He believes he stands in the tradition of such free-thinking 1960's bishops as John A. T. Robinson, of England, who questioned the virgin birth and other accepted notions, and this country's James Pike, who believed he could commune with spirits.
"By today's standards, Robinson and Pike seem very tame," he said.
Bishop Spong said his conclusions about St. Paul come from serious Bible study and from time he spends in libraries at Yale and Harvard and at Oxford and Cambridgeduring his annual monthlong study sabbaticals.
If he did not eke out this time for study, he said, he would be overwhelmed by the administrative tasks of running his diocese, which has 125 churches in northern New Jersey. He has been in the post for 15 years. 'A Religious Experience'
Re-reading the Bible with that notion in mind was "a religious experience," Bishop Spong said. Nearly half of the books in the New Testament are attributed to St. Paul or his disciples.
Other Bible authorities, however, said that it would be wrong to draw conclusions from the text that St. Paul was either a mysogynist or someone filled with self-loathing.
Father Wetzel, of Episcopalians United, said that St. Paul's attitudes toward women were merely a reflection of the dominant Jewish culture of his time. "In the context of his day, St. Paul was rather liberal," he said.
By ARI L. GOLDMAN
Published: February 02, 1991
Throughout his ministry as an Episcopal priest and bishop, John S. Spong has been surrounded by controversy as he has labored on the leading edge of movements to bring blacks, women and homosexuals into the full life of his church.
But now that he has written that St. Paul, the apostle and first great teacher of Christianity, was a "self-loathing and repressed gay male," even his defenders are expressing shock. Many are saying that this maverick voice of mainstream Christianity is fast losing credibility and may soon be regarded as little more than a street corner prophet whom everyone sees but no one hears. Bishop Spong, the 59-year-old head of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, has managed to keep a loyal and attentive following despite a swirl of Spong-centered disputes both nationally and in his home diocese. Understanding Paul
Conservative bishops, for example, asked that Bishop Spong be censured for ordaining a sexually active gay man, but the House of Bishops refused, deciding instead to merely "disassociate" itself from his actions. And, in his own diocese, at least one priest has sued Bishop Spong in court, charging that he illegally withheld parish funds. Most of his priests, however, have stood by him, either out of genuine admiration or, some suggest, fear.
Bishop Spong, married and the father of three grown daughters, makes his argument about Paul's sexuality in a new book, "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism," published yesterday by Harper Collins.
In an interview held before he left on a cross-country book tour, Bishop Spong said that seeing St. Paul as a homosexual has helped him understand the apostle's anguished cries ("Wretched man that I am!"), his apparent hostility toward women ("wives submit to your husbands") and the fact that he never married.
But criticism of his thesis on Paul has come from all quarters, friends and foes, liberals and conservatives, Protestants and Catholics.
"I think that rescuing the Bible from fundamentalism is a good thing," said Pheme Perkins, professor of New Testament at Boston College and a specialist in St. Paul. "But I think Jack Spong has gone too far."
In Bishop Spong's previous theological works, she said, she has found him to be "fun, interesting and intelligent." But his new work, she said, is part of "a tendency to attribute to Paul all the neuroses of later Christianity."
"The danger is that whenever we want to psychoanalyze any figure from antiquity, we simply project our own psychological complexities," said Dr. Perkins, the author of 14 books on the New Testament.
Others are not so kind. "This is not only shocking, it's one of the craziest things I've heard so far," said Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark.
Archbishop McCarrick's remark came just a few days after he broke a long silence on Bishop Spong by writing in a newspaper column of the Bishop's "strange journey" and suggesting that he has created a "church without morals."
Conservatives in Bishop Spong's own denomination were no happier.
"I think Spong is self-destructing," said the Rev. Todd Wetzel, the executive director of Episcopalians United, a conservative group based in Cleveland. "Much of his thinking will soon be dismissed. It no longer represents constructive theological thinking nor responsible thinking."
Bishop Spong sees his latest thesis as consistent with his career in the ministry. As a young priest in his native North Carolina in the 1960's, he fought for the equality of blacks both inside and outside the church. In the 1970's, he became an early champion of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church. In the 1980's, he called on the priests in his diocese to "bless" homosexual unions and later ordained a sexually active homosexual man against the rules of his own denomination. 'Self-Judging Rhetoric'
By viewing St. Paul as a gay man, he said, he hopes to make homosexuals more comfortable in the Episcopal church and to attract people who left the church feeling that it was a moribund institution wedded to ancient ways of thinking.
In his book, the Bishop writes that he does not mean to be "salacious or titillating" by suggesting St. Paul was gay. But, he adds, "Nothing else, in my opinion, could account for Paul's self-judging rhetoric, his negative feeling toward his own body and his sense of being controlled by something he had no power to change."
In the interview, Bishop Spong said that he sees himself as playing an important role challenging accepted notions within the church and society.
He believes he stands in the tradition of such free-thinking 1960's bishops as John A. T. Robinson, of England, who questioned the virgin birth and other accepted notions, and this country's James Pike, who believed he could commune with spirits.
"By today's standards, Robinson and Pike seem very tame," he said.
Bishop Spong said his conclusions about St. Paul come from serious Bible study and from time he spends in libraries at Yale and Harvard and at Oxford and Cambridgeduring his annual monthlong study sabbaticals.
If he did not eke out this time for study, he said, he would be overwhelmed by the administrative tasks of running his diocese, which has 125 churches in northern New Jersey. He has been in the post for 15 years. 'A Religious Experience'
Re-reading the Bible with that notion in mind was "a religious experience," Bishop Spong said. Nearly half of the books in the New Testament are attributed to St. Paul or his disciples.
Other Bible authorities, however, said that it would be wrong to draw conclusions from the text that St. Paul was either a mysogynist or someone filled with self-loathing.
Father Wetzel, of Episcopalians United, said that St. Paul's attitudes toward women were merely a reflection of the dominant Jewish culture of his time. "In the context of his day, St. Paul was rather liberal," he said.
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