Category Archives: spirituality

Mi’kmaq Warriors begin tour

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Mi’kmaq Warriors will begin a speaking tour on the environmental protests against fracking, but also pipelines and tar sands.

“We are all being systematically displaced within our own traditional territories,” Patles explained. “Once they destroy our territories and these resource companies are gone, we will be the ones left with destroyed land and poisoned water.”

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Again, we have the disaster capitalism…take the resources without even paying for them, and then leave poisoned land and water.  And no, I don’t think the Mi’kmaq would take money even if it were offered to them. Their spirituality cannot be bought…and the Earth is seen as connected to the Creator…

You can’t buy clean air, clean water, nor clean land after it’s been poisoned.  This point seems to always be lost on politicians and energy companies who couldn’t care less what happens to people after the fact…

…and the rape culture continues in India **edited

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In the latest gang rape of a woman from India.  I can’t even wrap my brain around elders ordering this brutality.  What kind of sick mind thinks this is okay??

Blessings to her and hopefully gaining strength from this…

**edited to add:  to elaborate more on my previous post on domestic violence–I  don’t mean to give men a pass for violence when I look for the cause behind it, such as heavy metal toxicity or steroids.  I do try to look for reasons other than surface reasons.

I think ultimately, the man makes that decision to hit her because:

1.  He can.

2.  Society has not strongly condemned such action, so he doesn’t feel the pressure NOT to hit or rape her.

3. Women and children are still looked upon as possessions.

4. Economic inequality plays a role in women being seen as second class.

5.  If she stays home instead of working outside the home, she is extremely vulnerable and society has not valued her being at home nor made provisions to help her if she needs to leave an abusive situation.  The opposite will happen, where she is pressured to stay in the relationship by society.

 

Dr. Martin Luther King

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Several folks have posts up this morning on Dr. King–

I’ll start with Mercedes Schneider — it is disgusting how George W. Bush used MLK to somehow try to link No Child Left a Mind with civil rights.  As we are seeing, most of the public schools being closed are in neighborhoods of the poor and minorities.  An excellent point made by Joanne Barkin about how they have appointed themselves as leaders of the reform movement without the rest of us included.  Our opinions don’t matter…unless, of course, we agree with them.

A quibble I have with “I Have A Dream…” is the sons of former slave owners and advocating brotherhood...what is glaringly missing are women being part of the whole.

As has been pointed out by others–Dr. King was defending workers who wished to unionize…he would have no part of the destruction of teacher’s unions.

Next, Diane Ravitch has a blog up on MLK.  When breaking the law is just…if one follows one’s conscience.

Finally, Democracy Now! has a video up on MLK.  When I first clicked on, I heard “I Have a Dream…” and sighed that it was going to be yet another rehash of the I have a Dream speech without reference to his other great speech, Beyond Vietnam. 

http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2014/1/20

I was so glad that they aired this speech.  It was so wonderful hearing Dr. King’s voice again…hard not to get emotional at the love that was flowing from him.  He and John F. Kennedy were advocates of Peace working against dark forces.  Both were killed for it.  But as Dr. King said prophetically, he had been to the mountain top and was not afraid of the consequences of doing what he knew God wanted him to do.

I want to say something about this speech by Amiri Baraka, also on DN!

He speaks about women being raped and wanting to have reparations for it…does he not think that white women have been raped, too?  Where is the white woman’s reparation?

What about the Irish slaves whom also worked for no wages?  Where are their reparations?  What about the Irish women whom were forced to birth babies for lighter-skinned African Americans?

The music we stole?  Didn’t all music come from the great classical composers?  Isn’t music supposed to be a shared experience?  Did we not enjoy each other’s music and share that special connection?  It is deflating to hear such anger for something we both enjoyed.

And then he says “give us our lives or be prepared to forfeit your own…”

Dr. King was against violence of any kind.  I can’t see him agreeing with advocating violence.

And I don’t understand “giving” someone their life….you can’t “give” someone their life.  You can’t give someone self-esteem nor a purpose in life–it has always come from within…from that connection to God (or your Higher Power).

Dr. King knew this…it emanated from him.  He was solidly connected and acted accordingly.   He mentions the overzealous need for material things…and questioned why someone had more than enough while others had to beg for the things they need.

Advocating violence against whites is just as bad as a KKK leader advocating violence against blacks.

I see white faces amongst the black faces in the civil rights protests.  I read a story of a white guy being hosed down and beaten along with the blacks during the civil rights riots.  He nearly had an eye gouged out.

Other whites wrote that they had fought alongside blacks and  then were told they were not welcome anymore.

White folk were right there alongside black folk, and now it seems that part of history is being rewritten.

I know I’ll probably catch hell for writing this, but it is written with an open heart, and not meant to offend, but to question biases and prejudices….and somehow get back to that love that emanated from Dr. King.   Violence, anger, and hatred don’t serve anyone.  Anger is only useful if that energy is used in a positive way.

As a side note~ Dr. King spoke about them keeping Vietnam going when they knew it was wrong.  I happened upon this the other day–and how Kissinger was behind the scenes prolonging the war…because he loved the power and he, Nixon, et al, wanted to “save face”.  They prolonged death of our soldiers, death of Vietnamese so they could keep their reputation intact.  Remember, he had stated that power is an aphrodisiac…it’s as if he thought of himself as some sort of “James Bond”….how disgusting.

Update: Mother Agnes and Syria

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In this post, I came upon a link someone provided in the comments section about Mother Agnes Mariam and her assertions on stuff going on in Syria.

Someone pointed me towards this piece in the Guardian and how Human Rights Watch disputed Mother Agnes’ assertions.

Human Rights Watch carries more weight with me than Mother Agnes, because I don’t know enough about her.  I think she is probably scared.

Stay tuned…

Huffington, Gates, join forces

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In what could be called the Billionaires’ News Service, Ariana Huffington and Bill Gates, amongst other billionaires, want to control even more of the media message….er, I mean, news…

…and this, my friends, is why we need the Fairness Doctrine.  This is why we need a break up of the monopoly of the press and media by the 1%–they already have their voices heard, over and over.  They were able to sell the Iraq War through their monopoly of the news outlets–radio, paper, TV–as we saw in the previous blog on Iraq Veterans against the War.  It was scripted without so much as one critical media reporter…oh, wait, Phil Donahue was critical…and he was fired.  The more that media is concentrated, the less independent voices are heard.  If we had the media we had in the 60s and 70s, there would have been more investigating of WMD’s, and less cheerleading by the talking heads.

The Guardian link, has a little more detail.  Keep in mind that the Guardian has also joined forces with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation… further concentrating Gates’ media messaging…

A side note~~A commenter on the commondreams site has this link up**.  Wow. If this is true, it opens up yet another can of worms of falsifying evidence to get us into yet another war….

And the questions begin:  Why did Scahill and Jones refuse to share a stage with Mother Marian?  If Scahill is as good as investigative reporter that he is reported to be, then why would he not investigate the accusations against Mother Marian?  Why did he not seek her out to get her side of the story?  This is all just mindboggling.

**also note that the author writes articles published in Huffington Post.

Mall of America…not for *that* America

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The women of Idle No More tried to hold a Native American dance in the Mall of America, which promptly had them arrested.  I kid you not.

123 years after Wounded Knee, and they’re still objecting to the Native Americans dancing.

 

What is the harm in that?  I thought it was quite moving.

 

 

They won’t even give her the respect of telling her a valid reason why they can’t be there….because they don’t have one…

 

The benefits of Winter

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Okay, people, stop your whining about how c-c-c-c-cold it is and the snow…

So…I thought I’d list the benefits of Winter:

–The snow is ESSENTIAL for us not to have a drought.  A biology teacher once said that we needed at least two feet of snow each winter to avoid having a drought.  With the climate change weird weather, I would up that to three feet of snow.  Right now, we’ve almost gotten that, so we’re looking pretty good for next summer.

–The freezing weather kills a lot of bugs.

–Playing in the snow is fun.  The beauty is phenomenal.

–After a winter is through, we can appreciate Spring and warmer weather.  Would we appreciate it as much if we didn’t have the colder weather?

–Winter isn’t for sissies.  Like the butterfly struggling out of its cocoon, the struggle makes one stronger.

–The winter allows the plants to “sleep” and rest.  The snow protects the roots from the severe cold.  I dislike the “bad” part of this post, because it is always from a human’s perspective, instead of all of nature.  The broken branches or dead trees serve as homes to creatures, or as a base for other living plants that use the decaying matter as food.

Here’s a neat video with an amazing dead tree hosting several plants:

And here is a video on life beginning again after a devastating wildfire.

Related to the trees, I found this video on saving acorn seeds for planting:

(As a side note~ I just have to say that I’m digging the hairy arms.  I don’t know how it all got started, but men shaving their arms and chests bare is a turn off.  )

Also related to winter, I came across this ecotraction substitute to winter salting on roads.  Great idea.  I heard that they were using beet juice now in salt mixtures for the roads, and at first I thought that was better than the destructive effects of salt, but then I thought…they’re using food when people are hungry…yeah, can’t support that.  Beets are especially good for their detoxing effects.

 

Preppers versus Tradition

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Granny Miller has a post up on the curious phenomenon of preppers.

 

I am positively revolted by the survivalist perception and belief that somehow there will not be enough food, water, clothing, shelter and goodness and humanity to go around when “the collapse” comes.

…wisdom from the elders….

( TEOTWAWKI = The end of the world as we know it.  TSHTF= the sh*t hits the fan.)