THE SECRET OF ENOUGH

Here is a Post from Freeacre that is on a subject that we discuss peripherally on a frequent basis.

Murph

The Secret of Enough

freeacre

A couple of weeks ago, I caught an Oprah show devoted to “The Secret” of creating an abundant life. On it, James Ray and Rev. Michael Beckwith were discussing the pretty classic teachings of Abundance Consciousness or the Law of Attraction. In a nutshell, they teach that “like attracts like”. The energy that you put into the world, both good and bad, is what comes back to you. You create the circumstances in your life with the choices that you make every day. Another way to put it is “what you put your attention into, you get more of.”

Personally, I have benefited from this type of thinking. A minister of mine once asked me, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” in reference to relationship difficulties I was having with my late husband. Most of my focus had been on in depth analysis of what was “wrong” with him, down to the bitter detail. But, when I chose to look at what was right, and go for the good, the relationship substantially changed for the better.

The idea that we come from an abundant universe and that we are limitless spiritual beings having a human experience can be somewhat misleading, however. In fact, it can be downright destructive and annoying, as portrayed by Matt Savinar on his Life After the Oil Crash website. He writes concerning “The Secret”…

“…it makes negative thinking almost heretical. As though there is something fundamentally wrong with you for being upset that your children's' futures have been mortgaged to die in the Middle East so that bloated Oprah viewers could drive their Urban Assault Vehicles from their McMansions to the movie houses at the shopping malls they've been so lustfully attempting to manifest themselves.

Turning positive thinking into a religion while making negative thinking heretical is great for the interests who don't want you getting upset should you realize there's a connection between the giant McMansion you've been visualizing and the dead bodies coming back from Mesopotamia. This is the real "mark of the beast." Bullsh-t propaganda designed to get you to smile as you sacrifice your freedom, your sovereignty, your children, your neighbor's children, etc for the gratification of your own beastly nature.

Of course they've got your son watching "300" so he can't wait to go die in Mesopotamia so I guess it all works out in the end. Wow, what a coin-inky-dink.

The really sad thing is even if you do figure out what the game is, most of your neighbors will not as they've been totally suckered and atomized themselves. That's the whole point, as long as they've got everybody visualizing their own personal aggrandization, nobody is going to band together. After all, why should I care about what is happening to other people when I believe it's just a matter of time before I manifest myself a career as a rock star or business mogul living in a giant home, driving a giant car, wearing a giant fake hair-piece and married to a blonde bimbo with giant fake boobs?”

Lololol… Matt pretty well summed up my own objections to “The Secret” as it is portrayed in the popular media. If one is a shallow narcissist, then one’s idea of their greatest good will most probably be status symbols – big cars, fancy houses, designer clothes, etc. etc. They’ll have no thought of the consequences of their purchases or of their actions. With that outlook, it is easy to blame people with less on their own sense of lack and let them stew in the products of “their own limitation”. It’s easy to discount our own complicity in the culture of corruption and greed which brings death and destruction to the millions who are systematically denied the prerequisites for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” while they labor in sweatshops or mines to produce our trinkets and toys. Or fight or die in our resource wars.

But, on the other hand, I have been able to manifest my dream of relocation and preparedness for the coming meltdown in a way that I would have thought to be a miracle, even though it is admittedly small potatoes compared to others that are more financially endowed. In fact, living in our forty year old mobile home in Central Oregon, on less than twenty thousand dollars a year, with a flock of chickens providing our main source of entertainment, would be considered pitiful by a lot of people’s standards. And yet, in many ways, I feel rich.

I have a loving and supportive relationship with the Murphman, who is my husband and best friend. Our place is paid for free and clear. We have a year’s worth of food stored up. And, I have been able to manifest FREE TIME and not have to be gainfully employed so I can take care of my health until I can collect social security in a couple of years (hopefully). It is enough for me. In fact, it is plenty.

When I started on this quest to cultivate abundance consciousness, I was dead broke. I began Science of Mind classes at the United Church of Religious Science back in 1985 or so. I figured that if the class worked, I’d somehow manifest the money to pay for it. Surprisingly, it worked. I took the classes for five years, and it was truly transformational. I became a licensed practitioner and practiced for twelve years at the Carson City church in Nevada. During that time, I was also in a women’s spiritual drumming circle for eight years in Tahoe. I studied “A Course in Miracles”.

In that time, in my own way, I did experience miracles. I did open up to a sense of personal power and the loving support of an intelligent and responsive universe. But it wasn’t quick or easy. It did require self discipline. It required being in integrity and not lying at all. Not cheating on anything. Not going back on my word. And, that was just for starters…

Now, I am no Deepak Chopra or Neale Donald Walsch, that’s for sure. But, I think I have something to add to the mix that is missing from the greater New Age culture: the concept of “enough”.

If one truly recognizes the beauty and integrity of this limitless universe of which we are all a part, then one will also note the balance and connection that keeps it all functioning. Our system of unlimited growth to support capitalism and our lifestyle of more and more to sustain that cancer-like growth of money or goods, is what is killing us now. Our land, air, rivers, and oceans are polluted, dying, and making us sick. There are too many people for this planet to sustain.

But, it is almost “un-American” to say “enough.” The very dollars that we use for currency are loaned to us with interest. So, right there, we constantly need more of them just to stay even. The struggle for more is the fabric of our culture. More products, more services, more buyers, more sellers, more profits, more dividends – and all these require ever more resources. But, there are a finite amount of resources on this planet. So, until we have the ability to exploit additional planets, we better begin to get our minds around the concept of “enough.” We don’t have a “Miracle Max” (Billy Crystal in “Princess Bride”) to pull us out of this one.

I have a ways to go in terms of wrestling my own consciousness around this issue. I think it is the challenge of our generation to come to terms with “How much is enough?” How much money is enough? How many things are enough? How much food is enough? How much recognition is enough? How much power is enough? How much control is enough? How much time is enough?

At this time, for instance, many Americans spend more money on medical drugs and procedures just before they die than in any other part of their lives. This is in order for them to extend their lives for a few extra months or years while the medical industry picks whatever they can get from their pockets, savings, pensions, or estates until they are finally allowed to croak and their families are disinherited. What if people decided that it was not necessary to have that open heart surgery at 85 or that colostomy at 90 or a lung transplant at 50? What if they just decided to be grateful for the life that they’ve led and move on before the big transfer of their resources to the medical establishment took place?

What is enough? How does it feel to have enough? What will I do differently when I have a sense of enough?

These are questions that need to be addressed if we are to prepare for the scarcity that is to come or make plans that are sustainable. We won’t be free until we can create a sense of what is enough.

ARE WE LOCKED UP?

ARE WE LOCKED UP?

An analysis and story from Murph

As we continue to be amazed at the sordid escapades of the political elite, the brazen pursuit of power and privilege, the unbridled lack of respect for the less than rich citizens of this country, we can wonder at what to do about it. All we see is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg from articles and exposés on the internet and occasionally in national news media. I get to speculating about how far down the power ladder this corruption falls. Here is what I am observing.

I am seeing more and more of the neocon method of governance trickling down to the local community governance. I suppose we could assume that attitudes and political agendas at the national level might take a bit of time to filter down to local politicians. Now I realize that corrupt local politics have always been around, I’ve seen too much of it to deny its pervasive intrusion in our lives. But I also see intensification at the local level to run things along the neocon line, namely, ‘it don’t matter what the citizens want, or whether they take us to court, we are going to do what we want’, attitude.

Why would the citizens at the local level or even at the federal level be willing to put up with this? I suspect there are a very few basic replies to this. One of which is fear:

fear of losing income, fear of losing privilege, fear of incarceration (or worse), fear of losing respect. The amount of fears we can list can be quite extensive. Fear is probably the most effective means of keeping citizens from objecting too heatedly to policy and corruption.

I suspect that all these fears that keep us inactive or paralyzed from taking action against the power brokers has more to do with a desire for security. In order for any society to be able to have security for its population, it demands a certain amount of conformity; there are some things that simply can’t be allowed to happen if you want security. The more security that is demanded by the population, the more regulation accompanies it. While we haven’t quite reached the extreme position of Orwell’s book “1984”, we are sure getting close to it. Part of the regulations that we are going to have is going to be loss of individuality, loss of decision making, loss of independence. This is accompanied by a very steep increase of authority and authoritarian governance. It is a vicious circle, each increasing component creating an intensification of the other components. It is easy to view this process and conclude that individual freedom is a long past glitch in the human condition.

I would like to propose that it is not long past. Admittedly, it sure looks grim at this time, but we do have 5000 years of recorded history to look at to see there is reason to believe it has not always been so, and that it will not always be so into the future. I would assert that the complexity of a society is not a necessary condition (it can be a sufficient condition), for this search for security, nor is the loss of freedoms for the individual. It does not appear to me that there is any logical reason that there cannot be a complex society and still have freedom. This of course would necessitate a change in the rank of what we consider important in our lives. If security is at the top of the list, yes, nothing will change. The problem that I see we have as a complex society and civilization is that we have been sold the concept that security is something that can be legislated, can be enforced by law. I assert that is bull shit. I will assert that there are degrees of security. If you want no risks in your life, you are making a wish for something that is not possible. Anyone, and I mean anyone that tries to make a promise to you that they can provide security in this life is a liar. And if you accept this as a possibility, you will notice what accompanies the statement: “you got to give up freedom to get this security”. At the present time, we are promised security in the form of protection from terrorists at the expense of having none of the freedoms that were guaranteed in the original document contract with the government and its citizens. The liberal administrations had their own version of selling security at some expense.

So what we have currently ended up with is a society of cowed, non independent fearful citizens that increasingly are willing to sell their souls for the mythical god of security.

It is my observation that this type of society is more a product of human density than anything else. What I have observed and experienced is that the less human density, the more independence and freedom the individual exercises. And that is what I am going to point out now.

I live in a fairly low density populated area. The town that is a mile down the road has, by last census, 6500 people. The close surrounding area that is about 20 square miles has maybe another 8 to 10 thousand people. I have lived where there is far less than this. I lived in a county that was the largest in the state that had only 5000 residents. I could see my closest neighbor’s roof in the fall when the leaves were off the trees, and it was a long way to the next neighbor. I assert from these living experiences that as I went down in population density, the self reliance went up, the independence went up, and the relative freedom to do as you please went up.

In this community I now live in, we are in the process of fighting the very forces that try and keep us in fear and subjugation; the county commissioners. I want to give a brief description of the issue and how it is being handled in an effort to show that independence and self reliance and freedom is not entirely dead, in bad shape and struggling for breath, but it is still there.

In 1995, long before Freeacre and I moved here, the county got its ass on a drive for clean water. Incidentally, this area has the national rep of having some of the cleanest ground water in the country. As an advanced projection of increasing population density that is going on in the county, they concluded that a study must be made of how to keep the water clean with the increasing population pressure. That I find to be admirable. Advanced planning by the government? Holy wowsee! You don’t see that every day. So, they got the grant money (holy s—t, 5 mil folks) and started studying the ground water, focusing their study on the south county area where we live. The EPA, CDC, DEQ and god knows what other 3 letter government bodies got in on the act. At the present, the methodology and data isn’t complete, parts of the study have not been concluded even, and when requests for the study data and methodology are requested, you are turned down with the statement that it isn’t complete. Oh oh, does this sound familiar?

Well, moving on. So in the year 2000 they decide to declare some kind of emergency. This supposed emergency was to take place anytime between 10 and 40 years down the road. The emergency to the ground water aquifers was nitrate contamination from individual home septic systems. They were also focusing their attention on contamination of the river waters, which, believe me, are pristine and gorgeous, trout fisherman paradise. Depending where you live in the county, you can have ground level water as high as 2 feet in some areas. In our particular area it is 15 feet. So, the county commissioners hired a staff to put this information all together as it came in and to make recommendation at the prompting of the CDC on what to do about this coming emergency. They have proposed a thing called the “home rule policy” which mandates that in 10 years every person not hooked up to some kind of municipal sewer system must put in what amounts to an approved nitrogen reduction system that costs anywhere from 8-25 thousand dollars, depending on who you talk to about it. To even build in the area at this time, or in our case, get rid of the single wide trailer and put in something better, there is the prerequisite that you install a 14-18 thousand dollar sand filter system which does not do anything at all with nitrates. So to take care of the non existent nitrate problem at this time, you have to retrofit ALL existing systems with this nitrate reduction system for the 8-25 thousand dollar cost, and they want to mandate it happen in 10 years. To enforce this, they will institute fines for every year you are out of compliance, put a lien on your property and make you install the system and if you can’t pay the lien, take the property. I am assuming that all of you reading this understand the impact this will have on people with fixed incomes, those that are working poor, and to property values. I think I saw a figure that over 40% of the south county residents are either retired on fixed incomes, or are at or just above the poverty level.

So since the county commission has not for the last 15 years notified people of this and not encouraged or allowed public input, clear up to 5 months ago, when the information came out about this proposal, a citizens action committee was instantly developed. Freeacre and I were in on that at the ground floor. We now have a whole bunch of very pissed off older folks that are threatening physical retaliation, like about 5,000.

The commissioners then had to have public hearings. The first one was two weeks ago and was a disaster. Held at the high school auditorium that wouldn’t hold more than 800 seated because of fire regs, they turned away close to 300 people. Standing room only. For 3 hours. Needless to say the meeting got a bit testy and some verbal rowdiness happened with the effect that the commissioners said we either acted ‘professionally’ (whatever in hell that was supposed to mean) or they were going to take their slide presentation (bat and ball) and go home. They proceeded to give one of the most ridiculous presentations I have ever seen for a public hearing. If you were a professional hydrologist or lawyer, it would have been informative. They even had the gall to put on the screen a calculus formula showing how smart they were in programming a computer model for the next 50 years of ground water contamination. Thank goodness they said they would be back next week, same time same place, for public input.

Now here is the important part of this story. About two weeks before this meeting, during meetings of the action committee, (2-3 per week) we laid out how to deal with this and what the issues really were. After that 3 hour meeting with the commissioners, the one that was in charge of the meeting said the attendance was a “fluke” and would never happen again. After all, we were south county and we couldn’t get together on anything. The woman that had headed up the action committee told him, just wait, there will be even more at the next meeting. His statement was the momentous neocon attitude, that in effect said, “dumb tobacco chewing drooling hillbillies don’t cooperate”.

Next meeting this last Tuesday, more showed up. They had a large amount of additional seating and the place was packed again, with even more people and standing room only. You could literally see the commissioners faces becoming longer and longer. It is true, that for this little community, this was very unusual. But, now there was an issue that affected every single person in the area.

During the meeting, the first 40 min. was taken up with written questions that they hadn’t gotten around to answering during the last meeting. That involved a lot of prevarication on the part of the people supposedly answering the question. THEN came the presentation period, you could get up and make a presentation to the commissioners and their staff. Because so many people had put their names on the list, we were held to 5 min each except for the first one. The first one was from an executive of the Orenco Co. which is one of the approved systems to put in. He has a doctorate in 2 disciplines. He chewed up and spat out every single rational that the commission had put forth to justify this new proposal. Every single one. He got a standing ovation. Then 40 more presented their statements. Freeacre and I were two of them. People that had signed up for a presentation that had their points covered by someone ahead of them graciously surrendered their place. I was blown away. Retired engineers, retired bio engineers, medical people, a few housewives, chamber of commerce, mechanics, ranchers and cowboys, and just plain folks got up and laid out well thought out articulate condemnation of the commissioners and what they propose, disputing every thing these people have been saying since 1995. All of this done by internet research on an individual basis and it didn’t even cost 5 million dollars to do it. Amazing, right? Even our local wing nut got up and presented a thoughtful commentary. (But, keep in mind, he is OUR wing nut) The commissioners were put on notice that if they pass this, they are going to be involved in an extensive legal battle which will eat up funds and a probable recall action initiated.

The point of this narrative? Well, it is what I consider a rare example of a small community pulling together regardless of social or economic background. Showing once again that cooperation and passion can accomplish a block for these power people. The issue is to have the final vote the end of the month with the one more meeting for public input which I anticipate will be very similar to the last one I described. I know that if they fly in the face of public pressure on this issue, the real fight will be on, Freeacre and I in the middle of it. If they turn it down, we plan a whole south county party in celebration for the community coming together.

In response to those people that say that this society is completely made of up sheeple who will not resist the power brokers, I offer the preceding story as a refutation. The drive for independence and freedom is not gone, only seriously crippled. Get your communities together and learn how to fight these ass holes.

Anyone else has a similar story? Write me, Sunrise3@coinet.com.

More musings from Murph

Let’s Take a Look at the Money

I have been spending more and more time reading the economic sites referred to on LATOC and at other sites on the web. Hopefully, in an attempt to understand what is happening to this country financially, and this insane system we are trying to operate under. I am coming to the opinion that it is like a lot of the systems in our society - it has been deliberately made so complex and intertwined that even the experts don’t grasp the full ramifications of what is happening, much less being able to project accurately even a few months down the road. One example of this complexity is the official figures for unemployment. As I mentioned in a few post back, from what I have read, the actual unemployment is around 10% and not the under 5% of official figures. With the housing market going down the tubes, it is going to increase a whole bunch more too. In actuality, it appears that official unemployment figures are only composed of the number of people collecting unemployment insurance and those that have applied. One of the ways they can keep the figures from rising too much is making everything so complex that it takes an expert to do anything at all about it. That keeps a whole bunch of people employed. For many aspects of our society, as an example, it is mandatory that you hire an attorney for a variety of reasons. If we took all the tax attorneys and tax accountants and threw them out of work because the relevant codes were made very simple, the unemployment rate would bloom big time. Can’t have that now can we? Let’s keep employment higher by only having mostly less skilled or less educated people not working. Besides, it would take away the incentive to hire more high-powered lawyers to squelch law suits and find loopholes so the wealthy don’t have to pay taxes and be responsible for their actions in the market place. Not coincidentally, who makes the rules? Lawyers! Nope, it is going to get worse until these elites have absolute total control, then they won’t have to justify legally their theft, they can just say ‘get used to it’. So far, Bush and crew have done a monumental job progressing toward this very goal.

In this mixture of opposing views and analysis of economics (depending on who is spouting off today) several general principles seem to stand forth: 1. The higher the liquidity in the society (how much cash is available for use), the higher the rate of inflation (increasing relative cost of stuff, or the less your money will buy). (In terms of 1940 dollars, you dollar will buy 4 cents now). 2. Historically, any nation that engages in increasing the liquidity of the money supply in the society will self-destruct the economic system and create chaos within the society, eventually and without fail. 3. Every government that has tried to spend its way to prosperity fails eventually. 4. Every government believes that it has found the secret to avoid this (but it never has worked). In all cases every time, it is the general population that pays the price for this folly. It sure isn’t going to be the top financial people of the world. They have their private estates and islands they can snuggle down in and wait out the caused chaos.

In almost all the countries of the world, this increasing of the liquidity of the markets is taking place with a vengeance. This is especially noticeable in America. The Federal Reserve is printing money at an alarming rate to allow the government to have money to pursue its goals (like Iraq). They do this by exchanging this newly printed money for government bonds and securities (which of course have a rate of return on them). So, in effect, the government is borrowing money from a private entity (the Federal Reserve) that prints the money with nothing of tangible value behind it and charges the U.S. government interest on it. In actuality, it has no value beyond the paper it is printed on, and this makes money for the people running the whole scam. In turn, we pay the interest on this paper money by taxes and inflation, of course using this paper money that has no value other than what the government says it has. So those that can accumulate money faster than the taxes and inflation take it away, make out like literal bandits. But, that is just the beginning.

This increased debt liquidity is being poured into all kinds of newly created financial entities, like bundled bogus mortgage packages and hedge funds and smoke and mirrors devices. Huge amounts of American workers’ mutual funds have been poured into the big gambling hall racket on Wall Street. In this scam, the truly rich are getting richer by making sure that wealth is being transferred to them through market manipulation. If the workers’ pension funds get lost in the process, who gives a rat’s ass? The Plunge Protection Team is there to save the rich not the middle class or the poor. According to what I read, the banks, mortgage companies, and the big players in the markets are so over extended with leveraged debt that it won’t take much of a cage rattling to bring the whole kit and caboodle down. Who gets hurt if that happens? All the people with the Ira’s, the 401K accounts, and the poor suckers that have their life savings into the markets. The really big boys in finance won’t get cut bad enough to notice.

They will do whatever it takes, even if it means increasing the heroin trade to prop up the banks and stock markets. If you haven’t been keeping up with what is happening in Afghanistan lately; since we kicked out the Taliban and are effectively running the country, the drug trade has exceeded what it was before the Taliban. The Taliban dropped the growing and harvesting and processing of the hard narcotics to 5% of what it was before. Who says the Muslims are stupid? They knew perfectly well that Allah wouldn’t approve and banned the growing and processing of the stuff. Talk about an effective war on drugs! But our good Christian Judea-praise-the-lord-government can’t do that. Instead, since we took over, the growers and processors of opium are going full blast. Where are these billions of dollars going? Spell stock markets through laundered drug money through American owned banking systems, (of course our country isn’t the only one doing so). So in effect, the drug markets are being supported essentially by the U.S. and British governments. Is your bullshit antenna quivering yet?

Of course we have the war on drugs to oppose this, right? Wrong again. Since we have privatized the prison system making it a bottom line business, you can’t make money without having the beds filled and cells stuffed. So who is being used for the stuffing and filling? Oh my goodness, 30% of the Afro American male population in this country is either incarcerated or has been incarcerated to make money for the privatized prison system. This was accomplished by introducing hard drugs in huge amounts into the black urban areas where they were embraced (of course), with passion, as a means of making money in an otherwise hopeless economic situation. It also provided an easy way to numb a hopeless social situation, and this despite the heavily promoted few that made it out without drug addiction. We make drugs illegal (unless you’re a big pharma outfit) then distribute drugs to those parts of society least able to say ‘no’. It is a win-win situation for the capitalistic way, don’t ya think? I am sure you all have read the statistics that the good old US of A has a higher prison population than the combination of the other top five industrial countries in the world. Most of this population is from minor drug offenses. By the way, the Democrats, for years, have been sitting on their hands regarding this one. It reminds me much of how our medical system works. You first create a medical situation where a large amount of the population needs treatment; then you create the treatment at exaggerated cost and you never do address why or how the medical situation came about in the first place. Same old bullshit in a different package.

Economically, the only positive information I find circulating around is put out by the government itself or assorted chambers of commerce. It centers on what I have mentioned before: low unemployment, booming stock market. Neither of which is true and the figures have to be heavily doctored to get people to accept the statements. The very few (but increasingly larger group) that is trying to put out accurate information on the internet (seemingly the only mass media that consistently publishes this information) are starting to gain some traction. It further appears that this year has a high probability of being the year where it all ends economically. But then again, this has been predicted since the late 70’s and it hasn’t yet all come crashing down, which gives substance to the supporters of this insane system more leverage. “Wolf” has been cried too many times and it didn’t happen. But it sure looks like we are on the edge of the cliff again. While the country is being looted of every single tangible asset and a consistent increase in the poor or marginally poor is taking place, we are being bombarded with “how good it is” and, “some sacrifices are going to have to take place” propaganda. Meanwhile, the neocon supporters, wealthy and poor alike, keep screaming their invectives at those warning of doom.

I think I am going to do another post on this subject, taking a historical and analytical look at what happens when a country loses its currency. But for the time being, amid all the confusion and technical talk buzzing around at economic sites, try and understand what they are saying and what it means to us personally and the country at large. One of the more entertaining and interesting writers on the economy is Mogambo Guru with a new post every Wed at:

http://www.independencejournal.com/mogu/

I haven’t found a way to access his back issues yet, have to keep up with him on a weekly basis. (I would surely plagiarize his style of writing if I thought I could get away with it)

Follow the money if you can. Just doing that is a full time proposition with the incredible intertwining and complex system around money and who handles it.

Ok, I issued an appeal for posting help last post, and I have started to
get some response.

This post is by Stoney. He has done some research that I had been thinking
doing and just never got around to it. Thanks Stoney. Reads somewhat
similar to a synopsis of Old Testament history. Murph

What's the Deal between Sunnis and Shias?

Why the hell can't these people just get along? Why are
they trying to kill each other off in Iraq? What the fuck
does this have to do in any way with us? And finally, what's
the difference between Sunnis and Shias anyway?

Let's try to get some answers!

Shias and Sunnis split back in 632 CE when
Muhammad (praise be upon him, PBUH) went flying off
the "Dome of The Rock" to be with Allah. It seems
that there were two chains of thought as to who
would be his successor.

The Sunnis. (Their name means "One who follows the
traditions of The Prophet"), decided that the new leader
of Islam should be elected from those who were most able
to fill the job. When the voting was done, Muhammed's (pbuh)
close friend and advisor Abu Bakr became the first "Caliph" of
the Islamic Nation.

The Shias felt that the leadership should come directly
for Muhammed's (pbuh) own family, and chose his cousin/son
in law, Ali to be the next "Imam". The word "Shia" is
shortened from "Shia-t-Ali" or "The Party of Ali"

After Abu Bakr became Caliph in 632 CE, he held the post
until 634 when he died. Next came Umar who served from 634
until 644, then Uthman who served from 644 until 656 when
he was murdered at prayer, which really pissed off the Sunnis
who considered this (and rightly so) a seriously chicken-shit
way to kill a man!

Ali finally got his shot at the title and was elected
in 656, but was opposed by Aisha ,Wife of Muhammed (pbuh),
and the daughter of Abu Bakr, who thought he was being a
slack-ass when it came to bringing the murderers of Uthman
to justice, and raised an army to fight him. However, Ali's
forces soundly thrashed Aisha's army at The Battle of Camel
in 656, and that took care of that! However Ali allowed Aisha
to seek his forgiveness which he gave her, and allowed her
to return to her home in Madinah. There to live out her last
years in peaceful seclusion.

After that was all done with, along came Mu'awiya Umayyad,
who was Uthman's cousin, and the governor of Damascus.
He also had the ass about poor old Uthman getting snuffed
on his rug, and refused to accept Ali as Caliph until Uthman's
killers had been hooked and hanged! Ali and Mu'awiya met on
the field of battle at the Battle of Suffin, where the
soldiers of Mu'awia attached verses for the Quran onto
their spears! The devout men of Ali's army refused to fight
against them!

Ali had no choice but to try and establish a compromise
with Mu'awiya, but this shocked and outraged some of his
die-hard supporters! So much so, that one of his own men
whacked him in 661!

Mu'awiya declared himself Caliph. Ali's oldest son
Hassan was offered a pension if he didn't pursue the
Caliphate, which he accepted.  Hassan was dead before
the year was out, thought by many to have been poisoned.
Ali's younger son Hussein agreed not to purue the Caliphate
until after Mu'awia's death, but in 680 when Mu'awiya kicked
the bucket, his son Yazid usurped the Caiphate! Hussein
led an army against Yazid, but he and his men were slaughtered
in mass at the Battle of Karbala. Yazid went on to establish
the Ummayad Dynasty, splitting the Sunnis and the Shia even
 further until the 750's.

In 750 The Umayyad family had been wiped out (except
for a few that managed to escape to Spain) after The Battle
of Zab in Egypt, in a revolt which was led by
Abu Al Abbas al-Saffah. This revolt was assisted a great
deal by Shia support. So much, in fact that the Shia spiritual
leader Jafar As-Saddiq, (great-granson of Hussein), was
promised the Caliphate after Abbas' death in 754. However,
this arrangement had never been finalized, and Abbas' son All
Mansur murdered Jafar and seized the Caliphate for himself,
founding the Abbasid Dynasty which based itself in Baghdad
until Baghdad was sacked by The Mongols in 1258.
The line of Muhammad (pbuh) died out in 873 when the last
Shia Imam Muhammad Al-Mhadi, and only son, disappeared
without a trace just a few days after inheriting the title
at age four. For centuries The Shia proclaimed that the child
was not dead, just "hidden" and would return when the time
was right. When it became clear this was not going to happen,
the spiritual power of The Shia was delegated to the "ulema"
or "Council of Twelve" who were given the task of electing
the supreme Imam. This has pretty much been the system ever since.

What's the difference now?

It works best if we think of the Shias as the Catholics and
the Sunnis as the Protestants.  Like the Catholics, the Shias'
supreme Imam is considered infallible and imbued with Pope-like
power. The religious hierarchy of the Shia is also quite similar
to The Catholic Church.

Sunnis on the other hand have no formal clergy, just scholars,
and jurists which offer their people non-binding opinions,
much like the many independent American Protestant churches.
Like the Catholic and Protestant faiths, there has been a lot
of bad blood between them, and nobody on either side
(who has the power to do so), has decided to let it go!
Both believe in the tenants of Islam and The Five Pillars
of Islam. Both believe in Allah as the supreme, one and
only god, yet they have displayed all the fear, loathing,
and intolerance as the Catholics, and The Protestants against
each other.

Both Shia, and Sunni are losing hundreds of members
a day to the more laidback Sufi Muslems, who believe in
brotherhood and charity, and show their love for Allah
with songs and dancing, not dressing up in explosive clothing,
and killing innocent people!

It really doesn't matter whether the reason is high
ideals, or lowly political ambition, killing yourself
to kill your enemy is stupid! Besides! Allah said to
knock it off down here! He's running out of virgins!

New post from Murph and Freeacre. An appeal.

A SMALL PART OF THE FUTURE

I have been sitting in front of my keyboard for some time now trying to decide how to approach this subject. So far I can’t come up with some clever introduction, so I’m just going to jump into it.

The subject today is this blog. It appears to me that we are at some kind of intersection, decision point, whatever we want to call it. Something is about to change. First, a bit of history and my perspective.

This blog has been in existence since November 2005. What started out by Cyclone as a political exposure and commentary on political happenings at the time has morphed into a lot more than that. Our discussions have wandered all over the place. The blog has, overall, attracted few continuous readers, but the ones that do frequent this site have formed some interesting bonds. We are continuously sharing information and personal perspectives on a wide range of subjects. I know that for Freeacre and myself, a significant amount of time every day is spent either reading what has been written at the site, following links from comments, doing some of our own nosing around to contribute to a particular subject, and of course periodically writing posts, and this doesn’t include the time spent with emails back and forth with the regular readers. Both Freeacre and I have commented on several occasions that we consider this site unique and having value to both of us and I surmise, for you reading this also. In the last year, Cyclone has had (for what I understand is a variety of reasons) less and less time to devote to the site. I suspect this situation is not going to change any time soon.

I expect that in the next year, you are going to see a lot of sites that are devoted to commentaries somewhat similar to Cyclones site fold up and go away. This is going to be the result of several factors; Burn out by the authors, Government intervention, Changing circumstances by the blog initiators, lack of readers, the list can be quite extensive. It is the same for why blogs are started, a whole variety of reasons. I do expect the government to get more involved in web sites that are critical of the government. How this will be manifested is open to speculation. So, in reality, sites critical of the shenanigans of elected and unelected officials I expect to be taken down under duress.

So, here is our particular situation. Neither Freeacre nor myself are prolific enough writers to keep even a post a week going, and even if we did, being critical of the government might bring the wrath of Homeland Security down on us, force the site to register as a lobby, or any other sort of limiting regulation since of course we would be contributing the perception that your either for us or for the world wide terrorists, which of course is not the case, but we aren’t dealing with people who take criticism easily. A classic tautology. So we might just have this to deal with somewhere in the future, with or without Cyclone’s contribution.

Which means that to have something meaningful and timely, there is by necessity, going to have to be contributing writers for the site besides Freeacre and Murph, and on a steady basis. If we don’t have fairly steady input, it is going to get pretty clumsy in the comments. If in a week, we have 40-70 comments, how many would there be in 2-3 weeks of the same post. We start having much over 70 or so comments, there is going to be a lot of wading around in old material that for sure is not going to attract new readers and will make further comment contribution clumsy. I am sure many of you have been to sites where they have significantly more than a 100 comments, it becomes very difficult to go through all of them, and then to add more thought on a subject. There are other formats that would make that more viable, but I have no idea how to do that, and I suspect that it would cost money, and that, I sure am not in a position to deal with anyway. I have been to forums as part of a site that may have over 1000 comments but they are catalogued

So, from all of this above, I conclude that to keep things moving at a sustainable pace and keep interest going, there is gong to have to be several more contributing writers that are able to write in a manner that is fairly consistent with how we have been doing it to this point. We are going to need reasonable documentation, (not necessarily exhaustive research) for assertions, reasonably stated positions and thoughtful analysis. I know that Freeacre and I do not have contacts outside of the web that can validate information I would present for most subjects that deal with the government. Cyclone had those kinds of contacts. So what we would be doing is summarizing a lot of what we researched on the web.

For myself, I have contributed about 50 posts to the site. I find that except for spurious moments, I am running out of new information to present for discussion, running out of fresh perspectives on situations, events and concepts. You cannot imagine the admiration I have for the writers that can continue to do this on a steady basis, for very long periods of time.

We are at another turning point. Some decisions need to be made, and because of the nature of the steady readers on this site, I think it needs to be taken up at a council fire. Aho.

Okay, now it’s My Two Cents…

Freeacre

Our venerable leader, Cyclone, has contacted us and told us this morning that he is sick once again and also swamped with work from his two jobs, both of which take him out of town. He is planning to purchase a lap top computer so that he can contribute to the blogsite from wherever his jobs take him as he has time. But, he’s not going to have much time. He’s asked us to appeal to all of us regulars to keep the site going.

So, that’s what we are doing. Murph and I will contribute posts as they occur to us and for which we have the wherewithal. But, we need your help if we are to post things regularly enough to keep the site viable and interesting.

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail message with a quote from Bill Moyers:

"I mean, think about it. Other than the war
in Iraq, the Katrina disaster, the deficit, the
CIA leak, torture, stopping stem cell research,
homeland security, global warming and
undercutting science, we've yet to really feel
the negative effects of the Bush administration."
-- Bill Moyers

These are the Ides of March. It’s still a very pivotal period with lots of implications for our country and our selves. I know that I have come to rely on this site and its people for emotional support as well as information with which to prepare and come to terms with events. I would like to see it continue as long as it serves us or as long as it can be maintained.

So, the question is: what do you think? And, would you contribute to posting to help keep it going?

That’s it, My Friends. We are looking forward to your thoughts.

aho