But first,

Punk…

is quite dead. in fact it was pretty close to being dead 20 years ago, though in the strange way that forms of cultural rebellion do retain some life beyond the dead, it keeps kicking. This is actually a slight lie, and as we’ll cover soon, there are some interesting things going on with Punk.

Underground Hip-Hop faces a similar situation as Punk and Hardcore, with many artists and acts churning out endless clichéd repetition of established forms, or established themes, with less creative ferment and a desire to simply become famous.

This isn’t always the case, there are some interesting underground Hip Hop acts, every local scene has one or two MC’s of talent and note (I refuse to dredge out the pretentious ‘emcee’)

Free Jazz has sort of become an artistic ghetto, and an excuse to simply play with low-fi recorded skronk, so atonal as to not only lack a key or scale, but in undisciplined fiddling around on a broadly conceived chromatic scale, producing sounds that seem simply not to fit any broadly defined idea of a musical sound. I like this, atonal noise makes me perk up and sometimes I’ll just turn on off-tune AM stations and listen to the static.

But listening to people trying to, over and over again, marry Sun-Ra to Napalm Death simply grows old after a while. Some experiments in dub like manipulations and the marriage of many Free Jazz acts to other noise and Industrial circles may produce interesting material and artists in time to come.

I am noticing a new wave of hardcore bands, sometimes called metalcore, but listening to them I really don’t hear the metal at all. I think metalcore is just a sloppy marketing term, back in the 80’s they used to call “metalcore” crossover thrash. There are some interesting acts out there like Dark Day Dawning, or Purity’s Failure, or - of course- the now totally clichéd Poison the Well, about whom little more will be said.

Here is one thing that I find interesting is the emergence of a mix of electronica gabber and deconstructed happy hardcore, a sort of twisted rave music, with a punk aesthetic and attitude.

Realicide Youth Records, a small DIY label in Cincinnati consisting of several extreme projects, including an electronic noise band, Realicide, an occasional guitar based grindcore act, a couple of rather twisted DJ’s, a deconstructed Rap MC, and other things that defies classification, is the closest thing to real punk I’ve seen in almost 2 decades. I’m sure that statement will piss some people off. Cincinnati has an interesting experimental electronic, noise and Industrial scene, including other such luminaries as C. Spencer Yeh, Ron Orovitz’s various projects, and many other unconventional and creative explorers at the boundaries of music.

There are still local hardcore scenes that evolved from the late 80s (Washington DC is a good example, New York as well) whose music displays authenticity, and some of the later new wave of hardcore bands (like Poison the Well) have some interesting fire behind them, but I think that if Punk as an overarching attitude of rebellion against artistic modes and commercial norms has any future, it’s not in Crusty kids churning out stuff that sounds like Discharge, Crass and The Exploited, but in creative urban kids taking electronics and abusing them in a DIY environment coming up with something so new and strange it defies easy classification.

Electro: Electro is more of a European thing, that said, there are some interesting electro acts out there who defy genre classification, and even who display somewhat of a punk like attitude as far as a defiant rejection of, and opposition to, music industry norms. I won’t discuss it much further because it’s discussed to death in other quarters.

At the end of the day, my opinion is that Western culture obsession with popular music and artistic expression borders on neurosis, and most new and original forms are quickly snatched up by corporate establishments for re-packaging.

Teenage rebellion sub-culture and the romance of the unconventional and bohemian is one of those themes that for almost 200 years has simply given a safe outlet for social pressures. I mean, step back and look at how conforming most non-conformists are. Beyond a few who set their own path and trail, you have millions who ape a neo-tribal lifestyle, a dress, piercings, mode of rejection of communal norms, and pre-packaged radical politics because they feel the need to rebel and not conform but cannot articulate it, so others articulate it for them.

Realicide are guys who step outside of the norm and set their own path and trail, and who live their art. This isn’t to engage in literary fellatio, it is simply my respect for them.

I respect their attitude and approach greatly. They are more punk than punk, and their DIY attitude reminds me of the creative ferment that characterized labels like Dischord Records in the80s and early 90s. Anyone who wants to see the future of Punk, may see it in the evolution of Realicide.

As for legions of others simply doing the scene, and finding some mammalian warmth in clustering around others who look talk and act like them, this isn’t non-conformity. But it is human, so very human, you see we seek to belong to those who are like us and share our values. It’s a very natural thing, only a few people seem cursed or blessed to perpetually blaze their own trails and they end up, by stint of irony, leading other herds whether they like it or not.

Realicide are such trail blazers, expect many imitators in the future, but none will match the original. If the sound of Buicks being crushed at high volume while you are being tasered is bearable to your aesthetic senses, then give Realicide a listen or better yet catch them live, they shine live, and also catch their members, like Jim Swill, or Mavis Concave, or Evolve’s deconstructed Hip Hop, doing their own thing.

Many cities have similar artists and scenes brewing, when I was in Vancouver I noticed some interesting acts brewing in Van. Look around and I’m sure you will find, in marginal spaces, interesting people doing interesting things with sound that defy the safe and bourgeois definition of “art.”

_EOF

I rarely agree with her views, but Anna Belle’s post on the Glen Beck rally, posted at Peacocks and lilies, is cogent and hits some good points.
She writes at: http://peacocksandlilies.com/2010/08/28/media-madness-the-glenn-beck-rally/

Someone really dear to me used to love Glen Beck, in between watching re-runs of Mystery Science theater and listening to old Dead Kennedys CD’s, we would argue over Glen Beck up to 4A.M. Since she’s passed away, I’ve found myself oddly nostalgic for Beck.

That said, I do not like Glen Beck very much, I find him to be a demagogue, an ideologue, and a blow-hard. Sort of like a White Al Sharpton.

But increasingly I respect him.

Where Al Sharpton can be an inchoate idiot, Beck displays an intelligent understanding of his image, audience, and message. Between Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Glen Beck - I’m impressed with, and respect, Beck the most.

Savage is a bloody twit and like certain other Krakens who shan’t be named, but rose to prominence in conservative circles after 2000, is an opportunist who simply knows which side of the bread his butter lies in today’s political discourse.

Now, on the controversy over Beck’s rally - look, the man is clearly within his rights to assemble and the fact that his voice echoes so often means that he’s saying something that should probably be listened to by his political enemies

I see him much as the Minister Farrakhan of populist white America. And like Farrakhan, Beck is increasingly a political voice to be contended with and commanding respect.

One doesn’t have to agree with a man’s politics or even like him very much to respect some aspects of his person. I think that, tactically, the outcry against the Beck rally has been mistaken shrill hysterics on the part of progressives, and most especially on the part of Black leadership.

Just as with Farrakhan’s march and rally, Glen Beck is proving himself to be a political voice of consequence, able to mobilize large numbers of people who find resonance in his message. I respect this in both men’s cases.

That book on the “Head Negro in Charge Syndrome” had it right, the sooner Black America [a complex and nuanced ethnic community not easily reducible to stereotypes] leaves behind an old generation of shrill, demagogic, and increasingly senile in extreme dotage, self-appointed “leaders” who have monopolized the discourse for decades, often times articulating social and economic views in complete opposition to what a substantial portion of black America actually advocates or believes in, the better.

No other ethnic group tolerates the buffoonery that my fellow African Americans tolerate from our public “leadership”

Glen Beck is a voice of consequence, and he is a shaper and influencer of opinion. Oppose him or not, one is best actually listening to what he is saying, as well as paying attention to the symbolic of his performance, before opening one’s mouth.

Again, I’m no fan of the man, but I recognize this; belittle him or minimize his role and you end up ignoring and entirely missing the groundswell of support he enjoys. You should try to understand why his voice resonates.

_EOF

Victim reveals horror of vaccine trials’ secret legacy
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/victim-reveals-horror-of-vaccine-trials-secret-legacy-2307272.html

Kill them all: James J. Lee and the fraud of environmentalism, by Ferdinand Bardamu
http://www.inmalafide.com/2010/09/02/kill-them-all-james-j-lee-and-the-fraud-of-environmentalism/

Democratic Voodoo Keeps Us on This Path
http://peacocksandlilies.com/2010/07/15/democratic-voodoo-keeps-us-on-this-path/

Haredis and FGM: like a newly caught fish
http://www.blogistan.co.uk/blog/mt.php/2010/08/01/haredis_and_fgm_like_a_just-caught_fish

Misquoting Qur’an To Misinterpret Islam by Sh. G. F. Haddad
http://www.livingislam.org/k/mqmi_e.html
“..GEERT WILDERS in his 15-minute yet tedious Fitna: the Movie has used a number of Quranic verses and a collage of news clips in his attempt to convince uninformed people about the supposedly violent nature of Quranic teachings. Like the medieval Islamophobes of the European Dark Ages, it is Wilders himself who does violence to the texts by deliberately taking them out of context. He fails to establish even a fictional relationship between the Quranic verses he cuts and the terror news stories he pastes them to..”

Smarter Men Have More Sperm
http://www.livescience.com/health/090109-smarter-men.html

Is Social Dominance a Prerequisite for Female Attraction? by Susan Walsh
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2010/09/03/relationshipstrategies/is-social-dominance-a-prerequisite-for-female-attraction/

How to go out like the Soviets, by Raul Singh
http://www.amerika.org/2010/organization/how-to-go-out-like-the-soviets/

A Political Solution? by Andre
http://www.outlawjournalism.com/?p=125

(this is not Roxana, but it is a reasonable proxy for a baby Roxana)

“The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage” is an autobiography, perhaps ghost-written (by Neil Straus a.k.a. Style one suspects) of an Iranian born rock groupie who in a deliberate rebellion against the patriarchal misogyny she perceived in her upbringing decided to become a Motley Crue and Guns and Roses cum receptacle, thus joining a legion of bleached blond young American neo-jawariya [*harem slave-girls, see note], from trailer parks and suburbs all across America.

Reading it, I thought to myself:
“I bleed for this?”

And indeed my heart wept tears of blood, in utter boredom, as I struggled to force myself to read Roxana Shirazi multimedia personal anthem of slut autonomy (multimedia, being of text, not so sexy photos of the author in slut drag, and several noxious fumes of donkey punched, scat spread, fluid bespeckled glory, wafting up from the book. One could virtually smell the sweat and feet.)

Slut autonomy - empowerment through sexual promiscuity. I am always a little suspicious of people who have something to prove through their sexuality, especially a social or political ideology, beyond a simple, and natural, “this feels really good, and I feel compelled to do it, so hence I do it.” Aught beyond this becomes somewhat contrived.

Since the author self identifies as a slut, as her personal badge of honor, we do not insult her by calling so, and thus let us continue.

The author is a groupie, sort of like Kat Stacks, though perhaps with less taste and less honesty. Kat Stacks and others like her admit that they are essentially tricking. Though Shirazi, through her book, certainly stands to make far more money than Stacks, and one can argue that Shirazi is certainly more attractive than Stacks (though without makeup this may be debatable)

Groupies are the courtesans and concubines of our age, not quite kept women, but rather shared women, among a wealthy and - somewhat - powerful though dissolute strata of wealthy and dominant Alpha males. Remember that in history nothing really changes except the names, and the neat toys we play with. Groupie drama is fairly equivalent to concubine drama in every age that we have record of [*see my note below]

I often find that people who base a good deal of their personal identity on their sexuality are intensely boring.
Such people, with a few exceptions, are often not truly very sexy, beyond a superficial show of sexuality. There are also exceptions, I’ve met a few very interesting complex and nuanced people whose primary pride and identification in life was being a slut, but I doubt the author would be one of them. I have no doubt Shirazi would protest over-much on this point, but I’ll let the reader decided from reading her book. I personally found nothing sexy about it.

The author’s greatest pride and achievement lies in emulating a groupie lifestyle mostly aspired to, in America, by girls coming from the lowest rungs of the social ladder. I mean, Biker girls typically emerge from lower social strata, but rock groupies aren’t exactly that high up on the rung. Being a shared woman amongst Alpha male rock stars is a more socially acceptable achievement than being a shared woman amongst Alpha male bikers, or street criminals, but here Baudrillard ’s Simulacrum comes into play since Rock Stars are faux biker and outlaw rebels, and biker outlaw rebels are faux pirates and brigands, and hence their groupies are ultimately faux camp followers.

I’m sure Mongol camp wenches in Genghis Khan’s camps could out fuck Roxana Shirazi and her peers, but need we consider this much further?

This book was an immense disappointment, and consisted of page after page of somewhat poorly edited vignettes of the author’s personal debauchery fueled by a glamorized Rock & Roll lifestyle, and presented as a bombastic middle finger raised in defiant anthem against the conservative, and found by her highly stifling, moral and gender values of her native Iran.

About as puerile as flinging a bloody tampon at the Ayatollah in defiance. Wow, “you go girl…”

Hell hath no fury like a libertine who is hell bent on proving that she is a libertine. Beneath the blood, excreta, semen, broken hearts, donkey punched violent coitus, S & M, multiple swords in a single sheath, one simply has to roll one’s eyes and wonder

“Do you actually get off on this or is it all just some sort of bizarre compulsion?”

The book is as slickly presented and packaged as, and somehow manages to be even more vapid than, Neil Straus’s “The Game”- I allude and suspect that he ghost wrote it anyway. Personally I found his Jenna Jameson biography to be more interesting reading.

I would be lying if I said there were not a few incidents of amusement, and perhaps of mildly titillating value, but over-all there isn’t much here folks.  Again, the book was a let-down

[* nb, the literary educated might notice my snarky usage of the term jawariya, and perhaps complain that my comparing Roxana to a harem slave girl is inappropriate, because her sexuality is consensual and freely chosen and hence empowering.

It bears noting that jariya girls in the middle east were typically free to choose lovers of their choice, this becomes very apparent when reading the literature of the period in depth. Jariyas were not necessarily forced to serve as their master's concubines, rather they could and would switch master by request, deny their favors to masters they disliked, and typically seemed to act with the drama of their modern hip-hop equivalent and actually suffered few social restrictions, other than being technically slaves.

Slave classes in that era were fairly well equivalent to the modern working class, in terms of autonomy and legal rights, they could and did often own property, leave endowments, inherit, maintain their own businesses, and apart from the legal status of being legally owned really would appear free to most modern observers. There are exceptions in history, but it bears mentioning that in the medieval middle east some slaves were wealthier, and indeed more powerful, than free citizens. Unlike in the West, where typically slaves did not end up ruling nations, or forming the elite managerial class of such states (see Mamluke Egypt and the Ottoman empire, where the Janissaries formed an elite administrative strata)

Qiyan girls were able to acquire great prestige and wealth in much the same way that modern high class prostitutes are able to. Comparing Roxana Shirazi to a Jariya would no doubt insult most Jawariya, in the sense that comparing an alley cat dragged from underneath a rutting tomcat boinking and caterwauling in an alleyway, to a well maintained house cat, could well irk the house cat;
"You compare her to me? Just... look at her?!?"

Among groupies too, there is a hierarchy.
Women have a fine and refined sense of relative comparisons between themselves and fury awaits the man insensitive to their multiple status markers...

I refer the diligent reader to al-Jahiz's Kitab al Qiyan - the Book of Singing Girls. Reading it one notices that the differences between today and yesterday are far fewer than one would imagine...]

Through most of my childhood I had a mild weight problem. Even into adulthood I carried a small, slight, paunch even when other parts of me were lean. This was annoying. Why, Allah, why I asked?

Power cleans, kettlebell swings, stair climbs and runs, I developed lean muscle and, strangely, abdominal definition on top of visceral belly fat. Quite surreal, to flex one’s abs harder than wood but still have a pot belly, however slight. After making some fundamental changes in my diet, including intermittent fasting, this belly fat is mostly gone, though it makes occasional reappearances commensurate with my consumption of ghee and sugar.

Recently I’ve come to realize some of the likely reasons for this, and much of it has to do with difficult to metabolize placements of adipose tissue (”that’s fat cells y’all”) developed from childhood on up. Diets and exercise were not able to metabolize these deposits of stored fat, and their origins lay in to excessive consumption of certain things like sugar, and to a slight degree products containing high fructose corn syrup. Now such products were rare in my youth, most sweet goods were simply sugar based, High Fructose Corn Syrup didn’t start popping up in things until I was in the 8th grade, oddly enough when my slight childhood chubbiness passed into “dude you have boy-boobs” territory.

My youthful penchant for eating cake icing out of the can, consuming Little Debbie’s by the box like they were tic-taks, and walking less than I should, while drinking too much soda pop, may have had to do something with this.

The tendency of my siblings to run around like terrors throughout Avondale, armed with sticks and rocks, and harassing other kids kept us reasonably slim. I offer no apologies for this gang like tendency, a bunch of nerdy doctor kids living on the fringes of the ghetto sort of need safety in numbers. Alone anyone could, and did, take us. Together with sticks running around like savages we found some security… and exercise.

I blew up a bit when my sister and I moved back to DC, into a nice neighborhood, away from most of our siblings. There, our only walks were to the Metro station. I did need to out run thugs on Bladensburg Rd, when cutting over to the Rhode Isl. Metro Station. But those were short runs, and I really wasn’t jumped that often. So this meant less exercise, and hence I became a chubbier kid.

7-11 Doughnuts and Fritters didn’t help, of course. But what really sealed the deal was soda. Yes, soda pop.

Uncle’s fridge was chock full of it, all of the rare brands they didn’t have in Ohio, like Squirt Soda. And who could resist Squirt?

And somehow after 9 months of steady soda drinking I found myself a very unhappy and very chubby young teenager. Not obese by any means, but possessed with fat that no jogging during soccer practice seemed to budge.

Being a chubby kid growing up in the 80’s, looking back on it and on old photos of myself I was actually almost normal by today’s standards. And this recently shocked me. As much of a fat ass bookish little nerd boy that I thought I was, I would have fit right into most middle schools today. At least here in the midwest. What I thought of as ugly, aberrant, fat when looking back at t was actually almost trimmer than some of the normal kids that I see today, especially in middle class areas of town.

I think that two things prevented me from the sort of full fledged childhood obesity that seems almost a norm nowadays. One, the fact that as Much Atari or Nintendo that I played between the 6th and 9th grades (before I outgrew video games, they just felt boring and childish after that) I got some exercise walking to the metro station, or out running mean kids who wanted to beat me up.

Two - the fact that most of my favorite sin foods back then just had regular sugar in them, sucrose, and not high fructose corn syrup.

Ok, so many of you will roll your eyes “not some sort of high fructose conspiracy theory again’ - bear with me a bit, before jumping to conclusions.

Let’s look at something else, Agave nectar. Most of the women I know are natural health food store types. NPR, Herbal Tea, Yoga classes, and of course Alternative sweeteners. Place white sugar in front of them and they turn their noses, place brown Sugar in the Raw in front of them and somehow it’s acceptable. Sucrose is sucrose baby, trust me on this one.

One spunky young thing recently told me, in bated breath, about Agave syrup. She even baked me cookies with the stuff. Since it’s bad form to reject baked goods from pretty and excited young women who simply want to please you in so many ways I, of course, accepted the offer. I am a gentleman, after all.

However something did not sit right with me. Agave syrup? What the hell are people doing using a cactus for sweetener, I thought to myself. So, intrepid, I decided to poke into a few books and articles and unravel the source of the intuition that nagged at me.

What I found shocked me. and perhaps it may shock you.

Agave nectar is unhealthy for you, like the clap or Chlamydia or other unpleasant things. However pleasant the consumption is the result is most baleful.

Agave nectar is given to us as a “health food” but it’s not.

Regular table sugar, refined white sucrose, is “better” for you by any metric than agave nectar. Look up how Agave is processed, it’s actually more processed than table sugar. THAT should tell you something. The organic stuff is just as bad. Just eat a bunch of honey or something, if you must.

Agave Nectar and High Fructose Corn Syrup suck.

Indeed, I tell you truthfully that in my more paranoid moments, which are few and far between, I maintain a healthy suspicion that this degree of sheer suckiness is actually by design.

Permit me to explain- this stuff seems almost designed to make us unhealthy. So it would be wise of you to try to avoid eating it. What follows isn’t biochemistry 101, and I admit taking some liberties with a fast and loose explanation, but I encourage you to do some research and look at multiple sides of the issue.

Most of us have the common sense not to believe the industry adverts on High Fructose Corn syrup - and indeed that stuff is really worse for you than refined sugar. But few know that agave nectar, as sold in health food stores, is as bad as high fructose corn syrup. And both are worse than sugar.

Lest pedants hit me over the head - “Worse” is a subjective appraisal on my part. “They suck” is also subjective, but can be substantiated.

The reasons why refined sugar, while not being the best thing in the world to consume (it’s better than Meth, of course) beats out high fructose corn syrup or agave nectar lies in how our bodies metabolize each.

It has nothing to do with the calories - calorie counting leads us to wrong impressions.
Calorie counting, as most people commonly understand, is a scam.

It does have to do with how Sucrose (white sugar) is metabolized and how Fructose is metabolized.

With how both are broken down into glucose, with the mechanisms by which fructose is converted into triglycerides and adipose tissue (yummy fat!)

Sucrose, table sugar, is broken down by your body into glucose, which can be used in the Krebs cycle for energy, and l-fructose, which can be further broken down into glucose, but some of it is converted into triglycerides and eventually adipose tissue. Your fat cells becomes stuffed with the stuff. Now, the type of fructose that you will consume in fruit is more easily broken down into glucose, so less of it is converted into triglycerides and stored as fat - anyway your body needs these things at some level. The problem is in excess.

The type of fructose found in Agave syrup and high fructose corn syrup is mostly just converted into fat by your body. I’ll skip the specific pathways and mechanisms, you can feel free to look that up on your own.

Basically if you eat a pound of white sugar and a pound of high fructose corn syrup and a pound of pure refined fructose (the stuff is tasty, I used to buy it at Clifton natural foods) your body will store MORE of the fructose as fat, and less of the table sugar as fat, and use more of the table sugar as energy in the form of glucose (research the Krebs cycle, or go back to your sophomore biochem course notes) and store less of the table sugar as fat.

Again, that’s a fast and loose explanation.

Fructose consumption suppress leptin secretion and insulin, when this happens your body experiences hunger pangs, because even though you are stuffing your face with enough calories to light a light bulb, your body thinks it isn’t eating - again fast and loose explanation.

Leptin suppresses our appetite. Without it we pretty much will stuff our faces because we will feel hungry. Hence we will get fatter, this isn’t biochemistry 101. I could explain how the stuff is converted into adipose tissue, how triglyceride levels increase, and explain how the Krebs cycle works, and so on, but it’s complex and you can Google it up or hit your old college textbooks.

The general point is that consuming large quantities of sugar isn’t good for you, but consuming large quantities of some types of sugar can be worse for you in subtle ways, including by increasing your appetite you end up consuming a larger quantity of food, and your body ends up storing more of it as fat, and all sorts of other nasty problems with blood pressure and so on and so forth.

Basically high fructose sugar sucks and makes us fatter, and as we become more obese we face other health problems, while the people selling us this crap to consume are laughing all the way to the bank.

Just use regular sugar in moderation. Or honey. Or maple syrup. Granted the stuff is expensive as sin.

OB disclosure: I have invested interests in sugar industry stakeholders - on a small level anyway.

I have no fiduciary interests in the honey or maple syrup industry, and I still recommend both of them over sugar anyway, so like just use honey or something.

High fructose sugar sucks, makes us obese and unhealthy, and only benefits Cargill and ADM stakeholders, it’s bad, avoid it like you’d avoid the plague, or worse syphilis, avoid it like you’d avoid fornicating in alleyways with sketchy people for free, met in dive bars after 2 AM.

Some risks are, obviously, not worth the imagined payoff - which like so many things sold to us in life, is often a massive disappointment. So like…

Just don’t do it. I mean, why consume something that tastes like sugar but destroys your body faster than sugar? Is this wisdom? Is this intellect ? No, far from it.

_EOF

Per my earlier posting a couple of quotes, from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four [Amazon link] and the Club of Rome’s The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of Rome [Amazon link], here are further comments on a couple of provocative ideas.

I will discuss these ideas logically and soberly, I will not refer to wild conspiracy theories, just simple facts as they are known, and obvious logical implications from these facts.

First: I agree in spirit with the need for greater environmental stewardship and sustainability - our civilization wastes an incredible amount of energy and materials. This will catch up with us. The idea of sustainability is pushed forward largely by bodies and individuals responsible for the grossly unsustainable mold of our society, but even the devil utters a truth now and then.. when it’s in his interests, in furthering a larger scam..

Second: Agreeing with the need for greater environmental stewardship, I see the entire climate change discourse, as a discourse, is a hoax. It is one largely believed in, by the mass of both sides - those believing in anthropogenic climate change and those rejecting it. But it is a hoax, notice my wording. This hoax remains a hoax even if, especially if, the facts spoken of, regarding increases in average global temperature due to human activities, are true.

And I’m increasingly convinced that there is something significant to it.

A good deal of the evidence supports the general idea of Global Warming at first glance, and one can make inferences from this data to support the idea that the drivers of Global Warming are anthropogenic - human caused. There are immense problems with the data, increasing evidence that much of the data has been all but deliberately fudged, in some cases falsified, or otherwise skewed by certain biases in the collection methods. And there are immense problems with the interpretation of such problematic data.

But even with the all but fraudulent abuses of the data I still think that Global Warming can be demonstrated in the data - and therein lies a deeper issue, one outside of this little blog post.

Even with this, however, the whole matter is still a hoax. Both Global Warming advocates, and Global Warming Skeptics, are to some degree victims of a hoax. A provocative and, to some, silly claim, but lets jump to something else for a moment.

Conspiracy theories - an amusing thing is that in all Western societies, only Americans display a constant allergy to making political speculations that verge away from the standard media discourse in suggesting willful collusion by multiple people, outside of the law and in secret, to commit large scale crimes. The legal definition of conspiracy is dragged out in small scale conspiratorial crimes, a couple of mobsters shaking down shopkeepers, a few Rabbis acting out some ghoulish X-files like plot. And other fiends

Everywhere in Europe, either on the Right or the Left, it’s a given that what’s discussed in the media is likely incomplete and purposefully fraudulent, of course the left blames the right for fraud, and vice versa, but the plain fact of fraud isn’t disputed. Corruption and the use of power to skew the terms of a discourse are a given - the only thing debated are the ultimate beneficiaries and their motivations. To get around this silly allergy here, I’m stating from the start that none of this is conspiracy theory fare, where I speculate it’s on the basis of logical deductions, or inductions, from known facts.

The quote previously mentioned.

From Page 75, of ‘The First Global Revolution.’ Chapter ‘The Vacuum’
The common enemy of humanity is Man.

In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.”

Now, many implications of this quote should be obvious to anyone who passed the 11th grade. That an implication exists does not mean, necessarily, that a writer or speaker intended the implication. But it does remain latent within the text. So we have some obvious implications.

And we have some less obvious implications, ones more subtle.

The authors explicitly state that theirs was a specific idea, within their circle of influence, an international set of stakeholders - various policy makers, business executives and investors, private persons of influence, essentially constituting what’s often called the global super-elite.

This idea of theirs was this - articulating a discourse in which the collective enemy of humanity is humanity itself. An enemy in a conflict used to harmonize and unify our human efforts and activities towards specific ends. That in order to unite humanity, or at least - one imagines - the leadership of humanity, it is necessary to present to humanity a project that is a conflict, and the enemy to oppose in that conflict is humanity itself.

The assumptions are that there is a need to unify humanity, that the only way to unify humanity is to give it an external enemy, and that the best enemy to give it is itself. This is, I think, a somewhat cannibalistic idea. There is the idea that the world, however defined, faces immense threats based on human action.

This can be debated, but I’m inclined to support it. Human activities often demonstrably impact ecosystems in a negative way, alter the balance of life, and often are wantonly destructive beyond any possible pay off.

I do not dispute this in itself. The Club of Rome believes that material over-consumption and growth produce certain phenomena, such as water or food shortages, that is famines, they also mention Global Warming. I think that it is closer to the truth that the genesis of these problems lie less with humanity itself, and more with specific segments of humanity, essentially a managerial class, to which the authors of this report actually belong.

Frankly none of you out there, readers and commentariat, nor myself, are capable of marshalling the resources to dam an entire river and build a hydroelectric project. Our individual impacts on the environment are small. In totality, as an aggregate mass, yes our collective impacts matter greatly.

However do we hold primarily responsible a crew of sailors on an ill fated voyage, or the Captain and command staff? Responsibility is firstly directed at the top of the chain of command, not firstly at the base of schmucks largely carrying out Command’s commands.

In other words “blame yourself schmucks, point your finger at me and I’ll poke your eye out with it.”

Now it is, I admit, far more complex than this. The broad mass of humanity, when human nature is allowed its course, will, and do, consume in excess of its actual true needs. Some over consumption is no vice, after all humanity has never sought just mere survival, but rather some degree

The problem is gross excess and stupidity.

There is a more elitist and egotistical way of seeing things, and a less elitist and egotistical way of seeing things.

Both have some basis in truth, and are really just a matter of seeing the same things through different lenses.

First the snarky elitist view:
Walk through a shopping mall or on a busy street, and the conclusion that we live in some semblance to idiocracy cannot be avoided. When looked at narrowly, at first glance, there are a lot of folks alive who really seem to be little other than extras on the set. And bumbling, annoying, loud, uncouth, coarse, and frankly sheep like extras at that.

Now the less elitist and more sympathetic view:

Is it not possible that such matters are not accidental? That to some degree certain things may be by design?
That a populace is deliberately kept somewhat in the dark and given open access to the most base amusements and entertainments as distractions.

Isn’t it the case that, given the amount of string pulling that goes on today, it’s a miracle anyone keeps some degree of reflectiveness?

A more sympathetic, and less elitist view could see that, by in large, most people just pursue the ideals their culture and society gives them. A society’s leaders espouse certain ideals as molds, the broad mass subscribes to such molds. Such are taught to us as truths from an early age and reinforced constantly.

[I refer you to Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt 'deliberate dumbing down of america' or any of John Taylor Gatto's writings. Muslim readers, in particular, may want to examine Hamza Yusuf Hanson's talks on education and home schooling. He and Gatto did a nice joint symposium available from Zaytuna.]

I think that, in large, most people just want to survive, stay out of trouble, and follow their natural inclinations without interfering with others.

That, really, most people just want to get by and cause no trouble to others. Humans crave comforts and so will pursue comforts given to them. Most people are not given a broader context into which the small particular facts of our lives can be placed. Lacking such a matrix it is difficult to see where and how our actions affect the totality of society or the world.

Furthermore certain ideals of behavior and aspiration are given enormous emotive weight , from childhood on up. Romanticized, glamorized, when they intersect with our emotional makeup, especially in areas like sexuality or food consumption, our reasoning takes a back seat and our emotions take a front seat.

None of this is rocket science and is easily observable, go with your best friends to a mall, then to a night club, and then to a bikini beach, and watch the changes in their, and your, expressed personality. Pay attention to your own hopes, your own cravings, your own desires, and your behavior, and then watch the behavior of your mates.

So, all of that meandering and waffling crap out of the way, let’s jump forward.
Thesis: no matter what the observed facts are, in the Climate Change debate, the whole debate and its terms are a fraud, or more to the point, a hoax.

And now, my comments - this is simple folks, distance yourself from emotions to see the matter clearly:

It matters not whether or not there has been an overall increase in measured average global temperatures - as caused by human actions - the anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change hypothesis.

And it matters not whether or not there has been - as some of the Climate Change skeptics, so-called “Global Warming Deniers” assert - an overall decline in average global temperatures, e.g. Global cooling.

It is the discourse itself, on Climate Change, on both the Left and Right, which is stilted in such a way as to be the perfect hoax.

Read that again with care, I said the discourse. A discourse is independent of the facts discoursed. The hoax lies in the discourse itself, there could also be a hoax in the factual situation as well, but let’s focus on one thing at a time.

It matters not whether either phenomenon exists, in the past or present, or has quickened, slowed down, or ceased. The rhetorical and propagandist use of the theme is alone what concerns us.

As my friend Abu Abdullah likes to point out, there is one tell tale sign of a perfect hoax - not only non falsifiability, but non verifiability. If data verifying or denying a thesis is kept closed, selectively released, if private discussions are made public regarding proposals to alter such data, “fudging” for any reason whatsoever, this shows that the discourse is only secondarily about science, and primarily about political or ideological agendas, and hence enters into the realm of emotions and rhetoric.

The anthropogenic Global Warming thesis could be factually correct based on the data recovered and yet the whole discourse still simply be a fraud.

This is counter-intuitive, most people are accustomed to thinking of a fraud in either or categories, true or false. Things are not this simple, which no doubt facilitates fraud greatly.

I will explore this theme in more depth shortly, for now just mull over that possibility.

The conclusions you are able to draw from the data, and the actual significance of the data in itself, may not match what the discourse is bearing. You can draw significant conclusions from meaningless or nonsense data, or data only relevant in a narrow domain.

The significance of conclusions drawn from a data acquired from a limited number of temperature readers and collection stations can be questioned. Heck, it’s actually all but meaningless. This is the scam, such conclusions are discussed outside of their proper domain without the full context of the situation being mentioned.

Here is a blindingly simple fact - the earth has a given landmass - around 510.000 million sq km - and each square km, each square meter, each square inch even, is subject to random temperature fluctuations between a few fractions of a degree or more even, due to a bewildering variety of reasons.

Temperature collecting stations are placed in certain specific areas, some rural, some urban, at varying distances from each other. Their output only has significance within a certain range - short of all sorts of monkey business involving certain types of statistical normalization, because I can assure you that the number of temperature readers, and where they are placed, comes nowhere near to covering enough area of the earth to give statistically meaningful data when applied to the earth at large. Huge temperature variations from an average norm exist everywhere. In fact the fluctuations experienced even in a small area, take 1 square KM, are significant enough to belie real trends occurring on a macro scale.

Mongolia is on the verge of utter poverty and economic collapse due to “the white death” an unusually horrible winter. Scotland, England, a good deal of the US east coast have all recently seen bizarre cold spells, though not as horrible as Mongolia.

And right now some areas are in veritable heat waves, yesterday many areas in California has temperate weather, in the 60’s, while more northern areas in the middle of Ohio has baking heat.

The models used to extract meaning from a statistically meaningless blizzard of numbers collected from a paucity of locations and hence entirely non-representative of the world at large, can only give us just so much information that’s useful.

The truth that everyone is afraid to admit is this - we have no bloody idea, we are effectively blind, honest scientists have admitted, and will admit, this when not faced with social opprobrium.

This is the hoax - we could be facing environmental catastrophe next year, and we have no way of knowing this, and we could simply be in a normal stable period of average temperature variation, and we have no way of knowing this, because as many thousands of temperature data collection stations as there are out there, they only give us a peephole, a small peephole, in what’s going on.

They are worse than misleading. Again everyone with a reasonable degree of scientific training and an IQ over 110 knows this, if pressed against the wall, they simply don’t like it and find it distasteful. Because we have an innate need for certitude, and we have none here.

That is the hoax. Consider yourself warned. You are the subject of a very bad and distasteful joke, you can either exercise some personal responsibility, learn more, and god forbid think for yourself, or you can choose not to. Your life, not mine.

_EOF

Of all worldly pleasures and urges, sexual desire motivates in a half hidden, half seen, way that colors and affects most of our activities, our yearnings, our quests.

Knowing about the history of sexual arrangements in society helps us better understand ourselves, how we got here, and where we came from. The benefits are too obvious to bother mentioning.

Here are three reads I’m finding valuable and interesting. You can order them from Amazon or simply check them out in your library

1. Pricy, but a very good read, Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty and License in the Eighteenth-Century. is a book chock full of information on a little considered memetic aspect of Enlightenment era europe - the sexual ideas and construction of the Rake and the Libertine. It’s an academic work, but a stimulating one.. at times.

Kindle Version

Rakes do make for interesting reading, sans descriptions of venereal disease. Being a rake is an interesting experience, but the returns are far more modest, mediocre, and damaging than some would admit. Included among the risks is a certain insipid boredom with things that once were fresh, wonderful, and amazing.. and a certain disillusion. That and non-sociable diseases.
There are better occupations for men.

2. Also pricy, but a classic and indispensible, though quite rare now and out of print: Abdelwahab Bouhdiba’s Sexuality in Islam. - it’s simply one of the best books exploring the historical and theological issue of Sexuality in Islam.

Bouhdiba’s view is highly idiosyncratic and debatable, but he gives an interesting read and displays a fidelity to both the actual textual sources of Islam and an understanding of the social practices. His greatest strengths seem to be the sexual history of the Western lands of Islamdom, North Africa, Spain, Sicily and so on.

3. Finally Sexual Encounters in the Middle East: The British, the French And the Arabs This is an interesting source book with some analysis - and deals with colonialism to some degree, and the ways in which questions of sexuality actually affected the history of the Middle East.

The book also discusses issues like clothing and gender differences, with europeans and native Arabs, also of interest are the ways in which Westerners projected certain attitudes or desires on their encounters with Middle Eastern social institutions.

What cancer is there like globalism?

Please read the piece below, and consider it’s words with care. The author wishes to remain anonymous, but I can vouch for his integrity. He has had considerable opportunity to observe the developments spoken of herein.

What follows is a critical call, made at the eleventh hour. It would be wise to consider these points well. There is a covert pincer movement trying to co-opt the folk, the fuqara and travelers on the path, while also co-opting more exoteric, traditionalist and political Islamist organizations.

The situation grows more critical by the day, much of the violence and confusion we see in the world today is simply the action of the forces some have termed the counter-tradition or the counter-initiation. In fact, what is happening is far more insidious than just a simple attempt by certain globalists to pacify and make a ’safe’ version of sufism. Both sides are played against the other while a co-opting effort takes place at the same time. To what ends, the reader can use his or her intellect.

I cannot and will not speak for the author, but am posting this piece for wider distribution. The message needs to be heard.

SUFISM IN CHAINS

Dear Friends:

Asalaamu alaikum. I have sent this “report” to every Sufi group I could locate in Britain, Australia and North America. As you continue to read, you will understand why I have chosen to remain anonymous.

If tasawwuf in the west is going to retain its independence, it will have to sever ties with the national governments and globalist organizations that are presently exercising control over it, groups whose influence is deeper and more widespread than many suspect. The goal of these forces is to groom Sufism as an alternative to “fundamentalist” Wahhabi/Salafi Islam, an alternative that will hopefully be more passive to control by the West and/or the Globalists. Certain Sufis may naively think that there is nothing wrong with playing this role; after all, haven’t they been oppressed by these fundamentalist/Islamicists? And aren’t they now collecting powerful allies at last? Success! It is unfortunately the case, however, that certain Islamicist groups are also being supported by the West and the Globalists; their support and funding of Sufism is more-of-less open (except for their CIA contacts and things of that nature), their support for Islamicist groups clandestine. It is common knowledge, however, that the CIA all but founded the Taliban, that the bin Laden family had/has cordial relations with the Bush family—ex-president Bush also being past head of the CIA—and that the major “ally” of the U.S. in the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia, is also the stronghold of the Wahhabis. Those western military forces presently fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban may know—or their leaders may know—that they can’t “win”. But they also know that they can create chaos and accelerate the dissolution of traditional dar al-Islam; perhaps that is their real goal.

Why would the powers that be support both sides? Easy: the powers that be always attempt to control both sides so they can “play both sides against the middle”, the middle in this case being traditional Sufism and traditional Islam. The West and the Globalists are dedicated to busting dar al-Islam, both by military force and by cultural/spiritual infiltration. They want to destroy Islam as a religion because it is one of the main obstacles to their plans for a One World Government. And they have realized that the best way to do this is to separate batin and zahir and set them at war. The more violent the Islamicist terrorists become, the more vulnerable the Sufis become to co-optation and control by those forces who oppose the Islamicists on one level, attempt to control them on another level, and are actually behind some of them on a third. The co-optation of tasawwuf, the spiritual heart of Islam, by these forces leaves the remaining zahiri Islam just that much more vulnerable to radicalization; if hearts are veiled from true remembrance of God, all that people can see any more is al-dunya, the world of politics and its “imperatives”.

The following “items” are in no way an exhaustive report on the co-optation of Sufism, just a guide to what is clearly visible on the internet, to a mountain of evidence that demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt just how far the powers that be have gone in controlling tasawwuf and using it for their own ends.

But who exactly are these “powers that be”? The best book I or my colleagues have found to answer this question is The Committee of 300 by Dr. John Coleman, late of British Intelligence (http://www.coleman300.com/). The Committee, which has been in operation for the past 150 years, is the closest thing that yet exists to a global “shadow-government”, based in the English-speaking world but exercising its influence on a much wider scale. Dr. Coleman lists its members; some you have likely heard of, many you have not. I have no independent way of verifying Dr. Coleman’s assertions, which seem at least to be well researched—but when I ran down the list of “organizations directly controlled by the Committee of 300″ (italicized and underlined below) and searched them on the internet, over 1 in 4 of them proved to be involved in some way with Sufism! And that’s just the information that’s publicly available!

The matter is put succinctly on the website of The Council for Foreign Relations—which, though it appears to disagree with the policy of the western powers to groom Sufism as the spearhead of anti-Islamicist “moderate” Islam, treats this policy as common knowledge. Here is the summary of the article in question as it appears on the website:

State-Sponsored Sufism

Author: Ali Eteraz

June 2009

Why are U.S. think tanks pushing for state-sponsored Islam in Pakistan?

Once certain ideas go mainstream, it often takes a pretty big flop to disprove them. The United States was supposed to be hailed as the liberator of Iraq, just as it was going to be easy to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. Well now, according to commentators from the BBC to the Economist to the Boston Globe, Sufism, being defined as Islam’s moderate or mystical side, is apparently just the thing we need to deal with violent Muslim extremists. Sufis are the best allies to the West, these authors say; support them, and countries as diverse as Pakistan and Somalia could turn around.

The Sufi theory has a lot of variations, but at its core, it’s pretty simple: Violent Muslim extremism, rather than having material and political bases, is caused by certain belligerent readings of Islam usually associated with Salafism, a movement that attempts to resurrect the Islam of the prophet Mohammed’s time, and Wahhabism, a similarly conservative branch. If Muslims can be indoctrinated with another, softer, interpretation of Islam, then the militants, insurgents, and guerrilla fighters will melt away. http://www.cfr.org/publication/19959/fp.html

Some of you have not even suspected that you are vulnerable to such forces. Others are uneasy, but unsure as to how they might find out more. Still others know quite well already. And Allah most certainly knows, and has known, from all eternity. He will be the final judge, and no human being or jinn can avoid being brought before his Bench at the end of time, or simply at the end of his or her short life. If only we truly feared Allah! If we did, then the fear of al-dunya, which is always hidden under some sort of glamour or blandishment or bribe, would have no power over us.

The following findings are simply the product of two or three says in the internet. I simple googled Dr. Coleman’s list of organizations plus the word “sufi”, and noted the first one or two entries that confirmed my suspicions; in some cases the entries contained new research leads, but I didn’t follow them up in any great depth: the globalists are so confident of success in their attempt to co-opt Sufism, and have already been so successful, that they hardly bother to hide their plans. The URLs below ought to give anyone interested in such information many leads for future research. Some of these connections may be harmless, or relatively so, and in many cases the Sufis involved undoubtedly entered into them innocently enough. Others show an undisguised will on the part of the western powers and the globalists to co-opt tasawwuf; they are as follows:

The Aspen Institute sponsors a Sufi gathering: http://www.sufism.org/society/articles/Gathering%20the%20Spiritual%20Voices.htm

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation gives an award to a Muslim filmmaker for a film on the environment:

http://www.icnyu.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=179&Itemid=183

This article contains mention of a Rand Corporation study of the effectiveness of Sufism in promoting moderate Islam:

http://equal-life.blogspot.com/2010/04/sufi-teachings-in-algeria-how-islam.html

Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization by Sufi teacher Nahid Angha, published by the Brookings Institution Press:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Brookings+Institution+Sufi&btnG=Google+Search&rlz=1R2RNTN_enUS372&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=Brookings+Institution+Sufi&gs_rfai=Ckfl1_g5bTLyAPYmgjQOpw8H5CAAAAKoEBU_QlsLv&fp=d9804d37b84b33a1

The article “Salman Ahmad: Turning a Whisper in the Heart into Sufi Rock Music” appears on the website America.gov:

http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplace-english/2010/April/20100420120112kJleinaD0.7894251.html&distid=ucs

The article “Understanding Sufism and its Potential Role in US Policy” appears on the website of the Hudson Institute:

http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/Understanding_Suffism.pdf

The pro-Sufi, anti-Taliban article “Radio-Free Swat Valley” also appears on the Hudson Institute site:

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=6128&pubType=Eurasia

This Bilderberger-watchdog website has much to say about all about Prince Charles and Rumi; (According to Dr. Coleman, Charles’ mother the Queen is on the Committee of 300; some claim she is their chairperson): https://secure.gn.apc.org/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5296&sid=ea7eff518a5c02a10f8127cf8de94253

TIME Magazine article: “Can Sufism Defuse Terrorism?”: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1912091,00.html

Qawwali: Sufi Music Of Pakistan, 1998 Nonesuch Records, manufactured and distributed by Rhino Entertainment Company, a Warner Music Group Company:

http://www.rhapsody.com/sabri-brothers/qawwali-sufi-music-of-pakistan

Fox News reports on Sufi music festival:

http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/entertainment/music/new-york-sufi-music-festival-20100719-akd

Cathedral of St. John the Divine co-sponsors Sufi teacher: http://www.sufifoundation.org/about.htm

The Cini Foundation sponsors a concert/seminar From Shamanism to Sufism: Music

and Spiritual Practices in Central Asia:

http://www.cini.it/uploads/box/5214c64037f87a86d7eab7257901d648.pdf

The Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences prepared an early draft of the book A History of Islamic Societies by Ira Marvin Lapidus, which has much to say about Sufism: http://books.google.com/books?id=I3mVUEzm8xMC&pg=PR24&lpg=PR24&dq=center+for+advanced+study+in+the+behavioral+sciences+sufi&source=bl&ots=0VzWW1zlmP&sig=8XEGsVeBbLdBL8A0q2q8rJPmzNY&hl=en&ei=01pQTMz2HsGJnQfx9pzADg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

An article from Psychology Today about Idries Shah which claims that he was a founding member of The Club of Rome:

http://www.katinkahesselink.net/sufi/suf-shah2.html

Kalki Gaur, who identifies himself as a Neo-Conservative, claims that the Neo-Cons support mysticism, including Sufism:

http://sites.google.com/site/kalkigaur/38

Indian Express article about the ASI Sufi Fest, partly funded by the Ford Foundation: http://sjpaderborn.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/indian-express-asi-sufi-fest-finds-way-into-city%e2%80%99s-cultural-calendar-aktc-jashn-e-khusrau-a-festival-of-poetry-and-music-as-part-of-delhi-urban-renewal-rrogramme/

Also funded by the Ford Foundation: Sufism and the ‘Modern’ in Islam By Martin van Bruinessen & Julia Day Howell:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Oj21I-zWWgIC&pg=PR8&lpg=PR8&dq=Ford+Foundation+sufi&source=bl&ots=q1iz8OV-_n&sig=Wf_-u3U9zgeZLKONoDOy81Kia-U&hl=en&ei=cpNRTKP-IcL_nAeKiLH5Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CB0Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Ford%20Foundation%20sufi&f=false

Fordham University sponsors Sufi Circle’s Interfaith Conference on the Abrahamic Prophets:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Fordham+University%3A+Sufi+Circle%27s+Interfaith+Conference+&rlz=1W1RNTN_en&aq=f&aqi=m1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=C_QI2pgtbTI7uIIfAzQTfk9GqCgAAAKoEBU_QbxsS&fp=d9804d37b84b33a1

Harvard University is host to the Pluralism Project, which profiled The House of Sufism, located in Boston, on its website:

http://pluralism.org/profiles/view/72202

The BBC website, dated Wednesday, 19 July 2006, has an article entitled “Minister Backs New Muslim Group”, the Sufi Muslim Council:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5193402.stm

The World Council of Churches website has an article “Islam and Violence”, by Imam A. Rashied Omar, who quotes both Jalaluddin Rumi and former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at CIA, Graham Fuller:
http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/interreligious/cd39-06.html

According to Dr. John Coleman in The Committee of 300, the royal family of Jordan is under the direct control of the Committee. The Royal Islamic Institute for Strategic Studies, under the patronage of the King of Jordan, publishes every year a book entitled The 500 Most Influential Muslims, which list includes a number of Sufis:

http://www.rissc.jo/

The website of The Strategic Studies Institute of the United States Army War College features an article by Dr. Jonathan N. C. Hill, “Sufism in Northern Nigeria: A Force for Counter-Radicalization?”:

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=989

Some of you may feel that to refuse to take sides against the Islamicists, no matter who one must ally with to do so, is to lend them support: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. However, the actual situation may be more on the order of “The enemy of my enemy is also the friend of my enemy, and therefore both my friend and my enemy at the same time”. Some groups may be in a sufficiently desperate situation that they must accept any help that offers itself, no matter what strings may be attached. But any Sufi tariqa that can maintain true independence from political influence of any kind—which is still more or less possible in the west—should, in my opinion, not throw this opportunity away while it still exists.

In conclusion, I would advise:

1) Never accept funding or patronage from a group, foundation, or interfaith organization whose background you have not thoroughly researched—and even then be wary. Be especially wary of any group that approaches you.

2) Be extremely wary of the interfaith movement; it is one of the main vectors of globalist control over the world’s religions. (For an exhaustive analysis of this from the Christian perspective see False Dawn: The United Religions Initiative, Globalism and the Quest for a One-World Religion by Lee Penn; www.falsedawn.us) Many local interfaith groups are sincere, but often they have never thought to question the motives and hidden agendas of the groups and foundations who support them. And if our central duty is to remember God, why do we need to spend a lot of our precious spiritual attention dialoguing with people from other religions? We certainly ought to familiarize ourselves with the basic tenets of the other religions, but beyond that, why dialogue? In specific instances, when difficult community relations are involved, or when a pressing need appears to diffuse potential interfaith violence, such dialogue may have a place. But if we are reasonably sure that no-one from the other religions in our community plans to bomb our mosques and dergahs and zawiyas, just as we have no plans to bomb their churches or synagogues, or even to speak disparagingly of them either in public or behind their back, then let us turn our attention to Allah and how he is dealing with us in our own lives, and forget useless dialogues that at best are a waste of time, and at worst may be preparing the groundwork for the syncretic One World Religion that the globalists ultimately wish to impose on all of us, which will without a doubt be the religion of al-dajjal.

3) Beware of the desire that “Sufism take its place on the public stage.” Beware especially of public demonstrations of any kind, especially if they are organized by groups you don’t know! Don’t militantly demonstrate for peace—BE peace. Realize the nafs al-mut‘ma’inna. And be willing—not just willing, I would say, but eager—to embrace anonymity, marginalization, irrelevance—irrelevance to anything but the eternal destiny of your soul, and the souls of your brothers and sisters. It is through this alone that you will serve Islam and humanity, more deeply than you can possibly know before the Day of Resurrection. According to the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, “Islam began in exile and will end in exile; blessed are those who are in exile!”

Yours Truly,

Anonymous

“Just as most genetic mutations are useless, most original things are useless” - Erranter commenting on Harold Bloom and his lack or originality

“..it doesn’t do any good to blame the people or the time - one is oneself all of those people. We are the time.”
-James Baldwin, in Another Country

“..Eastern despotisms have arrived nearer the idea of equality and fraternity than any republic yet invented.” -Sir Richard Francis Burton, in 1886, commenting on the character of the Arab per his experiences in the Middle East as an explorer.

“Take a Celeron CPU, after all it’s a lobotomized Pentium. Can you believe it, it actually takes more money to make A Celeron, but it’s the cheaper CPU chip ! How much sense does that make?”

Kemal lazily tries to flag down the Barista, but her back is turned, idly picking at the peeling paint on the table, he notices the somewhat surreal, or rather hyper real in congruent assemblages of flea market tables, half broken chairs, frayed sofas, and cobwebs that made up the 40 year old presence of the Café.

No one ever dusts here, it’s probably last been cleaned in 1985.

“Yeah, I can see your point. Take flour, unbleached flour costs more than bleached flour, but they have to do something extra to bleach it, add to the process. It costs more to make bleached flour but bleached flour costs less than unbleached. Does this make sense?”

Abu Abdullah frowned

“That’s why I only buy bleached flour. The cheapest stuff from Kroger’s”

Kemal burst out laughing, a hacking cough escapes his throat:

“Dude do you realize how bad that stuff is for your family? You might as well bake with sawdust….”

The girl sitting at the next table giggled “That’s rather spontaneous.”

Abu Abdullah laughs “Spontaneous? Do you want spontaneity? If you want real spontaneity, go to a fricking war.”

On the benefits of spontaneity:
Often we yearn for things, that we think we should yearn for. We talk about them with each other, bouncing them back and forth. Some ideas of ideals we yearn for are things we’ve read in a novel, or heard in a movie, but don’t have the slightest clue what we are actually talking about sometimes.

We want things to be spontaneous, we want things to be natural. But what does this actually mean? We think we know, but do we?

The scheming never ends,

Consider the possibility that some things we think of as ideals are actually just a false bill of goods sold to us for monopoly money. A scam within a scam, inside of a scheme.

Who really wants to have to calculate everything out in life? Who wants to try to become more consciously aware of our ideas, what makes us tick, what our conditioning is… reflecting on the ideas and assumptions we have been taught since Kindergarten, things reinforced between our friends and peers, the shows we watch, the books or magazines we read, the things we hear forming a consensus view of the world, of your world, of our world…

A question to wonder about: can we ever escape thought? Can we escape Calculation and Planning?

Spontaneous flowing action and motion is often romanticized, seen as somehow more valid, and more real.

Is not being artful making the difficult and planned seem perfectly natural and easy?

Sometimes we yearn for spontaneity.

We yearn for just being, instead of planning and doing.
Sometimes we think of this like a Buddhist like state of nirvana, of pure spontaneous and natural action and being. Without discursive thought. Without agenda. To just be in the bliss of being.

To be - without schemes, or without plans, or without thought.
After all, why think man? Thought’s heavy man, why not simply be?

But can  you just be?

Sometimes we may think that if we just ignore the voice in our head it will go away. I think this is a misconception.  I’ve meditated for almost 2 decades, I know the difference between quieting thoughts and trying to shut off the mind. People aim for the wrong thing because of something they read that sounded good, but had little practical significance.

There is always a voice somewhere, even if that voice has paused speech. Are there moments of extinction, of fana, pure ineffable state of experiencing some peak state.

This is never permanent, nor should it be. To be permanently blissed out is to be a veggie.
In observing the voice that never goes away, you realize that enlightenment isn’t no thought, enlightenment and illumination is correct thought and correct perception.

Seeing things as they are, at least to our capacity.

You are free to disagree, but I don’t think you have a choice in the matter.

Ah, there he sits down, and closes his eyes, and tries to shut down all the services running in his head, all of the routines, all of the voices, all of the thoughts, to reach that point of stillness.

And yet does he ever truly?
It is possible, for a while. But of those few who do, is this a desirable goal? Is that actually bliss, or is that simply the sound and feeling of one bell clapper striking the side of an empty bell?

A head full of air, empty, in bliss, is by definition an airhead.

Inescapable conundrum - to have no plan is to have a plan. To have no agenda is to have an agenda. To aim at spontaneity is a form of artificiality. Because your are trying to be spontaneity, as soon as you try it’s artificial.

A computer operating system’s random number generator is a function, therefore it’s output is not completely random. There is a pattern, it simply looks like noise due to the immense variation involved.

We have no option to getting around our thoughts, unless we want to be thoughtless.
But if you aim for thoughtlessness, you are actually thinking. Just… very badly.

We yearn for natural spontaneity, we talk about it, but when we get sudden surprises something hit our pants.

He who wants spontaneity must expect the unexpected. This is a paradox. War is spontaneous. No one wants to be caught in a battle field, and yet total war is pure spontaneity and randomness.

Could it be that Spontaneity is oversold, in fact oversold by those people who talk about it the most.

Ah, behold ! The eternal monkey grins at us, and then turns to gazing at its face in a mirror. It sits, and watches for eternity, making faces, scratching, touching the mirror, not understanding that what it sees is a reflection.

Often times we are very much like a Monkey in front of a mirror, we see the reflection but do not understand it or know what to make of it.

Look. There is no way around thinking, you cannot get out of thinking without getting rid of your brain. This, obviously, is not a desirable state.

Can you escape exercising your brain, or is it that whoever said ignorance is bliss is a liar.

Ignorance sucks, we have all tried it, it sucks once it catches up with you. Childhood protection only lasts for so long, at a certain point ignorance takes a toll.

We have no choice in not considering certain things, and there is no life without thought. Extinction of perception and cognition, that’s death.

Think. it’s a good thing. Put the random monkey to rest for a moment, he’s not as random as you thought and you can always let him run around outside the cage for your amusement a little later.