By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA
The Associated Press
Friday, March 9, 2007; 12:20 AM
GUATEMALA CITY — Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.
“That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,” Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.
—snip—
Tiney said the “spirit guides of the Mayan community” decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of “bad spirits” after Bush’s visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites _ which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles _ would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.
—snip—
The tour is aimed at challenging a widespread perception that the United States has neglected the region and at combatting the rising influence of Venezuelan leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has called Bush “history’s greatest killer” and “the devil.”
Read on.
So…tell me again. Who are the people who are most successfully opposing U.S. economic imperialism at present?
The people of the ISLAMIC world.
Emphasis in the word ISLAM, folks.
A religion.
A belief system
NOT a race.
And where is the next most effective resistance beginning to take place?
In South/Central/Caribbean America.
The last stronghold of the old Catholic religion. YOU know…the one that actually believes in a just God? Not the devolved one that is represented by fascists in priest’s robes.
In South/Central/Caribbean America.
Also the last stronghold of the world’s older religions. (Save poor, fucked Africa, which is so broke that it’s hard enough just to survive, let alone do much in the way of thinking or feeling. When the white world stole a large percentage of the best…the strongest, the most “valuable” …of its people away [thereby irreparably harming the African gene pool in that act] its current troubles were guaranteed. 300 to 400 years ago. Guaranteed.)
South/Central/Caribbean American tribal religions made even greater by their contact with OTHER religions.
Ever hear of Santeria?
Voudun?
Candomblé?
No?
Not much?
Wake the fuck up.
And read this.
The religious practice was easily able to take root in the Roman Catholic cultures of Latin America, especially Cuba and Brazil, where the Catholic church venerated a multitude of saints with whom the African deities could be equated, she explained.
In countries such as Brazil, spiritist religions such as Santeria are reported to be widespread inside and outside of the dominant Roman Catholic Church. “If anybody makes the statement that Brazil is a Catholic country, he is completely out of the game,” states Dinho Pereira, an LAM missionary in the interior city of Tres Ranchos. “Brazil is a Spiritist country, not a Catholic country. If you ask people, they say they are Catholic. But, if you really start to analyze, they are Spiritists but they are ashamed to say that, so they say they are Catholic.”
Sandoval estimates that there are several-hundred places of Santeria worship in Miami, mostly among Cuban immigrants.
“I think that Santeria is as widespread in Miami as it is in Cuba–affecting up to sixty percent of the Cuban population,” estimates Rev. Tom Willey who was raised as the child of missionaries in Cuba and has worked extensively with Cuban and Haitian refugees through his position as Miami director for World Relief. “Now it’s spreading in the United States attracting “gringos” who want to experiment with it,” he said.
Make that up to 60% of the entire population of South/Central/Caribbean America, if my life-long immersion in those cultures is any indication.
MORE than 60%, probably.
I can hear it now.
Not.
Think again.
THINK, folks!!!
It has only been since the middle of the 20th Century…say after W.W. II…that ANY appreciable number of the human beings who live on this pretty little planet have not in one sense or another believed in something greater than themselves and have actually stopped trying to live within religious precepts handed down through centuries by the best and brightest of us all.
“We” are a drop in the bucket of human history.
And “we” are LOSING!!!
To people of faith.
To people of enough faith that they are willing to die for their beliefs.
I can hear this, too.
I can hear it from the troops and mercs in Iraq and Afghanistan who are mostly only fighting for personal survival and/or personal gain.
And I can hear it from the people who run this country as well.
Only…it ain’t quite working out that way, is it Mr. Cheney?
How’s the old leg feeling, Dickie Boy? I hear Fidel is recovering quite nicely. Foiled again, eh? No justice in this world is there, Dick? That 80+ year old motherfucker up and about while your sorry 60-ish ass can’t even manage to pump sufficient blood through your uptight, constricted, always angry arteries to keep your spindly white legs up underneath your sorry body.
Ever read Faust, Dick?
Pick up a copy.
Instructive, if you have the sense to understand it.
Which sense…sadly, especially to the 100s of thousands whose blood presently resides on your hands…you do not possess.
Too bad.
Does it not begin to dawn on you that you may have chosen the wrong side in this competition, you old shooter, you?
Three quarters of the population of the world is seeing the truth of that ever more clearly, as is a working majority of those in your own country.
Yes, “God”, “Satan”, “the Spirits”, etc. are just temporary constructs to help us get some idea of the breadth and shape of the illimitable universe and how it works.
BUT THEY WORK!!!
On the evidence.
The idea of “One nation, under God” actually prevailed for several centuries.
Perfect, were we?
No more than any of the humans of which this country was comprised.
But it was going somewhere.
Up.
Now?
“One nation, under TV?”
Going nowhere.
Fast.
Wake up, folks.
Before it is too late.
There is more.
I am a Judeo-Christian Celtic Muslim, myself. What’s in YOUR spiritual wallet?
You got yer choice.
As always.
OM?
or just
MO’.
Your choice.
Bet on it.
You bet your life.
You bet your soul, too.
Bet on THAT, if you have the courage.
Bet on that.
Later…
AG
You know…
AG
With the surge in North American Christian Fundamentalism over the last quarter century? Are they not too grappling with the modern world and using their faith to find some warp and woof to the universe?
My wallet holds a Zen Practicing, buddhist sutra and commentary reading Celtic/Catholic Unitarian Universalist.
More warp than woof. northcountry.
And the woof is mostly wolf tickets. (Look it up if you are not familiar with the idiom. Also spoken as “woof tickets” sometimes. Aggressive posturing with not much to back it up.)
I find most of the Christian Fundamentalist movement to be VERY devolved from actual Christianity.
Look at the Fundamentalist preachers on TV for all you need to know about that.
There is religion…that which is founded in some sort of real belief system, usually handed down from teacher to teacher over centuries…and then there is “religion”…a devolved belief system that has lost its root in real, experiential knowledge.
Confuse the two at your own risk.
“Ye shall know them by their fruits” was what the supposed Jesus of Nazareth is unreliably reported to have said when asked how to identify false prophets.
Now…I wasn’t there, so I don’t know WHAT went down.
But that statement…I mean. SOMEBODY said it, right?…holds true on every level from higher than I can see right down to lower than I care to look.
As above, so below.
Look at the fruits of…oh, say Oral Roberts or Jerry Falwell. Look hard.
The rape and subjugation of the poor of all nations…including those of the U.S….is their real fruit.
Do you know them?
Yup. I’ll bet that you do.
Do their subjects know them? Apparently not.
So it goes.
Later….
AG
I have a relatively different perspective–or at least I try. I teach a course in environmental issues to a class, at least half of which are immigrants or guests from Latin America. Once they realize that I will listen to (and applaud) honest comments of any kind, they begin to talk…and boy, do I hear a lot!
There is a strong, growing tide of resentment among the indigenous peoples of Latin America–they believe (accurately) that American corporations have unfairly taken their natural resources. This is what Bush will be facing this week.
My guess? He’ll be shocked. His mother loves him. Rove loves him…and never allows anyone who disagrees with him in the same room. But in Latin America, he may hear some things he has never imagined.
So I step out my door today, and the superintendent of the building next door is standing on the sidewalk with three city workers and an open sewer manhole. We’re friends, so I go over and ask him “George…is there anything I should know?” Because it’s the Bronx and ANYTHING can go wrong. So he looks at me and says “No, not really. Only we just found out that your building is not connected to any of the sewer lines that come down this hill and never has been.” This is a building built in 1878. Only a few tenants…4 apartments and a couple of offices. Originally a bank for a Dutch shipping firm. But still…that adds up to a lot of shit to have disappeared into the black hole of the subterranean Bronx over 125 years.
No WONDER those rats look so healthy!!!
So the five of us start laughing. And then one of the workers starts talking in heavily accented Dominican English about how he was really digging so that he could find out why Columbus came to the New World and claimed to have “found” it. Laughing all the while, gesticulating, telling the STORY!!! How Columbus came and raped the women and stole the gold and how they are STILL doing it today and “Wha’ the fuck ees WRONG wi’ dese people!!!?”
A big, tough guy with hands like cement blocks…we gave each other five when I told him that I had played with Tito Puente and Celia Cruz…like cement blocks.
This is just a working guy. Making it through. Working in the sewers oin a cold cold day in the Bronx instead of being back in the Dominican Republic basking in the warmnth of the topics because Uncle Sam done fucked the Caribbean but GOOD. Working in the sewers of New York and glad of the gig.
And HE knew more than the assholes in Washington.
We all did.
Nobody was surprised when they found out that the sewers simply had not been connected. One of the other guys rolled his fingers in the classic sign for “Money talks.” We all knew.
But the DemRats and RatPubs sitting up in their glass houses in DC?
They still do not have a clue.
Iwill GUARANTEE that Nancy Pelosi has NEVER looked directly into the eyes of a man like this as if he was her equal. Never. Only for votes, and she looked away VERY quickly. Looking around for someone more important.
YOU know.
White and wearing an acceptable suit.
The tide is turning, and someone is going to start throwing the first stones very soon if these fools do not wise up.
VERY soon.
Too many people like this guy now.
WAY too many.
There’s an old variation on that “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” story.
Write it yourself.
All you really need is the punchline.
“People who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.”
Somebody tell King George before it’s too late.
It’s all turning now.
Quickly.
Critical mass has just about been reached.
Something drastic is going to happen.
Soon.
I can feel it.
Watch.
Something interesting this way comes.
Soon.
Bet on it.
We have ALL been born into interesting times.
Later…
AG
So where the hell was the sewage going since 1878?
Never connected?
I don’t believe it.
Bet on it!
Soon.
Later…
Arminius
Down into the rocks. I live on a hill that abuts extensive landfill.
Down into the rocks.
AG
By the way, do you think it’s really EXCEPTIONAL that you speak with working people?
Shit. I’ve been doing that every day of my life.
I actually agree with Maryscott O’Connor that your tone is needlessly condescending.
It really is possible to modify one’s tone.
Bet on it!
later…
Arminius
Did I say it was exceptional?
I live in a working class neighborhood.
Who the fuck ELSE would I be talking to?
This sewer worker was exceptional, though. A born comedian/rabble rouser.
So I told the story.
You don’t like my tone?
I’m sorry.
i really am.
I play long tones every day, trying to make it better.
Go pick on someone else.
AG
P.S. I went over to MLW to see what bee had bitten you in the bonnet. I found a post where you said something about how I should “apologize” for pointing out that MLW had become a Maryscott-centric soap opera over the last several months.
Do you mean that you cannot see where it’s gone?
Or that I should not point it out?
I am SORRY it went in that direction.
Or maybe you were referring to the post where I suggested respectfully that the Big Pharma industry was the most dangerous institution in America, and that the various people who are strung out riding its pharmacological carousel should…with the help of an awakened M.D. if at all possible or words precisely to that effect…get the fuck off that poisonous merry-go-round just as soon as they possibly can.
You expect me to apologize for that?
Don’t hold your breath.
When every other week comes up with another set of Big Pharma drugs that will FUCK YOU UP?? Ones that they have hyped for the bucks in clear disregard of the safety of the people who take them?
Big Pharma is no different than Big Tobacco.
Except they’re more clever.
My attitude is OK as long as it’s aimed at the EASY enemies, eh?
Is that it?
You wrote in that comment:
But only if I agree with you?
If I don’t, I’m a “a hard-headed asshole who cannot ever admit fault!” (another quote), right?
I should apologize?
Listen, Aminius.
If I wrote something for which I thought I would have to apologize, I simply wouldn’t post it.
I’ll tell you what.
Prove to me that MLW is NOT currently mostly a meta-soap opera…you read my post where I counted up the comments of various kinds of posts and it came to some riduiculously large number of comments on meta and complaint posts. If you didn’t…here it is some of it again.
By the Numbers. Reply and comment numbers. (The only way to accurately judge how much general interest there is on a blog of this sort.)
Front paged posts. (As of 11:30 AM, EST, 2/23)
1635 replies.
Of those…the number that are MSOC-related, MLW meta or sheer personal complaint about how things are going in the everyday world?
1060.
65%!!!
Largest number of replies? By a function of 10 and 15 times, in most cases?
“Is Maryscott Anti-Semitic?” 161 comments.
“Question of the Day–Banning vs. Severe Disciplining on Blogs/Forums–Where to Draw the Line? ” 98 comments.
“My God, What Have We Done?” 154 comments.
Please.
This was NOT the case when I first came here.
MLW has seriously devolved.
MLW has become a Komplaint Kaffeklatch.
Show me how it has NOT devolved and I will apologize.
Or show me why I should not say so in public.
Otherwise, I remain your devoted whatever.
Anonymous tube giver.
Sheesh!!!
Later…
AG
Yes I too will spend a moment of meditation to help these wise shamans rid the world of evil.