The Great Pyramid of Titicaca, Bolivia

Crystal Quintero, Xochitl, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly;  "Lost Temples: Mystery of the Akapana Pyramid" (NationalGeographic.com, NatGeo)

Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, with Andes mountains in the distance (Anthony Lacoste)

LAKE TITICACA, Bolivia - Titicaca (in the hispanicized spelling) or Titiqaqa is a lake in the Andes on the border of Peru and Bolivia. By volume of water, it is the largest lake in South America. Lake Maracaibo has a larger surface area, but it is considered to be a large brackish bay due to its direct connection with the sea. Titicaca is often called the highest navigable lake in the world, with a surface elevation of 12,507 feet (3,812 m)... Bolivia has a mystery beyond the lake, that of Akapana. Scientists decode the life-giving riddle of Bolivia's great Akapana pyramid.

• Maya Pyramids of Chichen Itza
• Lost City of Buddhism's Angkor Wat

World media offers glimpses of Israel's crimes

Sheldon S., Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Al Jazeera America (July 29, 2014)

"Only stones remain": civilian Gaza Strip in ruins after Israeli attack

Analysis: Israel’s Prime Minister [and chief CIA-sponsored war criminal] Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed its war is proof Israel can’t accept an independent Palestinian state.

This year there was no EID in Gaza (Palestine, which Israel has invaded and claimed for its state and has now set out to kill 1.8 million inhabitants trapped by Israeli and Israeli-controlled Egyptian borders), but there was aparthEID.

 

PLO says factions offer 24-hour Gaza truce

Civilian murders in the "Gaza Strip" section of Israel may amount to war crimes, U.N. human rights chief says

At least 100 Palestinians were murdered overnight by Israeli bombardment that targeted and shut down territory’s only power plant.

A senior Palestinian Liberation Organization official said Tuesday [July 29] that all Palestinian factions have offered a 24-hour cease-fire in Gaza, but minutes later Hamas appeared to reject the plan. The possible development came after a night of heavy Israeli shelling that shut down the [world's largest open air, concentration camp]’s only power plant.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a PLO executive committee member, said that all Palestinian factions had agreed on the offer and that a unified delegation had been sent to Cairo to talk about the next steps.

 

"The factions, including Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad, are prepared for a 24-hour truce, and Israel will be held the responsible if it doesn't accept the truce as well," he said. "There is a proposal from the U.N. to extend the truce to 72 hours. And we look favorably upon that."

Obama’s insensitive iftar comments irk American Muslims

 

But Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri denied that the group agreed to the truce, with the Palestinian news agency Maan quoting him as saying that "Yasser Abed Rabbu's statement that Hamas agreed to a cease-fire for 24 hours is not true and has nothing to do with the resistance's stand."

"We will consider a cease-fire when Israel commits to it with international guarantees," Abu Zuhri added. Hamas has said its conditions for a truce include Israel's ending its siege of Gaza and the release of long-serving political prisoners that was agreed to in a 2012 cease-fire but not carried out completely.

 

Israel has said it will not comment until Hamas officially presents the offer.

Israeli strikes continue as PM Netanyahu warns world of [its U.S.-backed] "prolonged" war [to destroy and ethnically cleanse Palestine of all Palestinians]

 

Word of the possible cease-fire came after Israel's military continued to pound the Gaza Strip overnight, killing at least 100 people in assaults launched from air, land and sea after midnight, according to Palestinian officials.

 

Five families were almost entirely wiped out in Khan Younis and Rafah, according to reports by Israeli news website Haaretz. For many Gaza residents, it was the heaviest night of bombing since the military offensive against the territory began three weeks ago.

 

Gaza's only power plant was shut down overnight because of a large fire caused by Israeli shelling, Palestinian officials said. More

I'm an American teenager beaten by Israeli police caught on video in Palestine.

Family urges US to lobby Israel over plight of beaten American teen

Tariq Abu Khdeir, the cousin of a Palestinian youth murdered in an attack by illegal Israeli settlers, was pummeled by Israeli police.

In Gaza, a funeral for the two-state solution?

Gaza’s underground: A vast tunnel network that tries to overcome Israel blockade

Arizona (USA) inmate dies two hours after execution begins

Driven by far-right ideology, Azov Battalion mans Ukraine’s front line

I'm not lovin' it [McDonalds]

Trying to cook, eat, and survive under siege

• Most Discussed
• Most Shared
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Protests roil the West Bank [the other remaining Israeli-occupied part of indigenous Palestine in Israel] overnight; at least 1 dead, 150 injured

Why is America really called "America"?

Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; "The Naming of America: Fragments We've Shored Against Ourselves" by Johnathan Cohen (uhmc.sunysb.edu)

USA is #1 at ideals but not soccer, human rights, peacemaking... (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Where are all the fireworks and star-spangled spectacles? (losangeles.cbslocal.com)

Local MTV feeder, KROQ FM (CBS, Inc.) reveals best places in LA/OC to watch fireworks

 

Navajo flag representing Native Americans

USA - It's [Declaration of] Independence Day, the 4th of July, so it's time to decry war and conquest and to celebrate rebellion.

England sent out invaders with lots of technology, took over most of the known world, including this ancient naga territory of America -- which is NOT named after Amerigo Vespucci or any old European map. Then we rebelled, absorbed people from all over the world, mostly from Africa, where are forebears stole them from, and mixed with the indigenous people we did not kill off.

 

This country belongs to the 99% (occupy.com)

It's odd that place names are kept the same when invaders can easily change them on a whim, as they do in many places to remind them of home. Whatever the reason, whatever its name, the English, Spanish, French, Vikings -- and earlier the Afghans/Chinese (judging from the body of written records and anthropological evidence), Egyptians (judging from the pyramids and the trace amounts of "New World" cocaine in ancient Egyptian mummies), the Khmer (judging from the megalithic architecture and strange demise of various pre-Mexican Mesoamerican empires mimicking the history of the Southeast Asian Empire of Angkor in present-day Cambodia), and Africans or Australian aborigines (judging from the fossil record). But the story is even stranger, and it is certainly connected one way or another to the very ancient earthling nagas.

• USA (NSA) declares war on all electronic privacy
  

How it's done in formerly Buddhist Kyrgyzstan, Independence Day, Bishkek (Cyrille Gibot)

The name America (applied to present-day Brazil) appeared for what is believed the first time on Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 world map, known as the Baptismal Certificate of the New World and also America's Birth Certificate. More

América, no invoco tu nombre en vano

["America, I don't invoke your name in vain"]

-Pablo Neruda, Canto General

The Naming of America

Johnathan Cohen (edited by Wisdom Quarterly)

"America" (gabelli-us.com)

AMERICA, we [incorrectly] learn as schoolchildren, was named in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, for his discovery of the mainland of the New World. We tend not to question this [deceptive] lesson about the naming of America.
 

By the time we are adults it lingers vaguely in most of us, along with images of wave-tossed caravels and forests peopled with naked cannibals. Not surprisingly, the notion that America was named for Vespucci has long been universally accepted, so much so that a lineal descendant, America Vespucci, came to New Orleans in 1839 and asked for a land grant "in recognition of her name and parentage."
 

Since the late 19th century, however, conflicting ideas about the truth of the derivation have been set forth with profound cultural and political implications. To question the origin of America's name is to question the nature of not only our history lessons but our very identity as Americans.
 

Traditional history lessons about the discovery of America also raise questions about the meaning of discovery itself. It is now universally recognized that neither Vespucci nor Columbus "discovered" America. They were of course preceded by the pre-historic Asian forebears of Native Americans, who migrated across some ice-bridge in the Bering Straits or over the stepping stones of the Aleutian Islands.

 

A black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago and influenced the development of Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations [judging from facial features of the large stone monuments and other records].
 

The records of Scandinavian expeditions to America are found in sagas -- their historic cores encrusted with additions made by every storyteller who had ever repeated them. The Icelandic Saga of Eric the Red, the settler of Greenland, which tells how Eric's son Leif came to Vinland, was first written down in the second half of the 13th century, 250 years after Leif found a western land full of "wheatfields and vines"; from this history emerged a fanciful theory in 1930 that the origin of "America" is Scandinavian: Amt meaning "district" plus Eric, to form Amteric, or the Land of (Leif) Eric.
 

Other Norsemen went out to the land Leif had discovered; in fact, contemporary advocates of the Norse connection claim that from around the beginning of the 11th century, North Atlantic sailors called this place Ommerike (oh-MEH-ric-eh), an Old Norse word meaning "farthest outland."
 

(This theory is currently being promoted by white supremacists of the so-called Christian Party, who are intent on preserving the nation's Nordic character, and who argue that the Norse Ommerike derives from the Gothic Amalric which, according to them, means "Kingdom of Heaven.")
 

But most non-Scandinavians were ignorant of these sailors' bold exploits until the 17th century, and what they actually found was not seriously discussed by European geographers until the 18th century.

 

Further, other discoveries of America have been credited to the Irish, who had sailed to a land they called Iargalon, the land beyond the sunset, and to the Phoenicians, who purportedly came here before the Norse.
 

The 1497 voyage by John Cabot to the Labrador coast of Newfoundland constitutes yet another discovery of the American mainland, which led to an early 20th-century account of the naming of America, recently revived, that claims the New World was named after an Englishman (Welshman, actually) called Richard Amerike.
 

 
Yet, despite the issue of who discovered America, we are still confronted with the awesome fact that it was the voyages of Columbus, and not earlier ones, that changed the course of world history.

Indeed, as Tzvetan Todorov, author of The Conquest of America (1984; tr. Richard Howard), has argued,
 

"The conquest of America...heralds and establishes our present identity; even if every date that permits us to separate any two periods is arbitrary, none is more suitable, in order to mark the beginning of the modern era, than the year 1492, the year Columbus crosses the Atlantic Ocean."
 
Columbus clearly made a monumental discovery in showing Europe how to sail across the Atlantic; Vespucci's great contribution was to tell Europe that the land Columbus had found was not Asia but a New World (and that a western route to Asia involved yet another ocean beyond it). 
 
[What about the name?]

The naming of America, then, becomes essential to a full understanding of our history and cultural values -- ourselves -- especially when considered in terms of the range of theories about the origin of the name. 

The Maya Connection

The most explosive, haunting, almost credible etymology -- the so-called Amerrique theory, which was first advanced in 1875 -- reappeared in the late 1970s in an essay by Guyanan novelist Jan Carew, titled "The Caribbean Writer and Exile."

Here Carew focuses on the identity struggle of Caribbeans who are "subject to successive waves of cultural alienation from birth -- a process that has its origins embedded in a mosaic of cultural fragments -- Amerindian, African, European, Asian."

He adds that "the European fragment is brought into sharper focus than the others, but it remains a fragment." It is in his discussion of this European fragment that he turns to the early historical accounts written by "European colonizers, about their apocalyptic intrusion into the Amerindian domains" -- histories which, he argues, are largely fictions "characterized, with few exceptions, by romantic evasions of truth and voluminous omissions."

Carew moves from the "fictions" of Columbus to those of Vespucci with these striking words: "Alberigo Vespucci, and I deliberately use his authentic Christian name, a Florentine dilettante and rascal, corrected Columbus's error [thinking he had found the Orient]...Vespucci, having sailed to the American mainland... More

The Ancient Aliens of Egypt (David Wilcock)

Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; David Wilcock (DivineCosmos.com)

David Wilcock (2012) was, in a past life, America's "Sleeping Prophet," Edgar Cayce (1910)

(HH) David Wilcock (Edgar Cayce) on ancient Egyptian aliens, Great Seal, the White House dome. Listen to full lecture on evidence of visitors from the past.

The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce? details the intriguing connection between Edgar Cayce and David Wilcock and presents the case for both having the same source for their prophetic information.

Through the inspirational, life-transforming words from Wilcock's "higher self," part of a group known as soul readers, can learn how the present Earth changes are energetic increases also occurring on the Sun and all other planets in our solar system in scientifically measurable ways.

(Reba Ann Karp)

Breathtaking new evidence indicates how this energy can transform DNA, potentially making ESP, telekinesis, levitation, and other paranormal capacities as common as breathing, ushering in the promise of a "Golden Age" promise... More

• SLIDE SHOW: Photoshop art
• GALLERY: What will kill you Down Under

Litha 2014: Pagans welcome Summer Solstice

CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Antonia Blumberg (HuffingtonPost.com, June 21, 2014, AP)

The summer solstice arrives in the northern hemisphere on June 21 at 6:51 am EDT, bringing us the longest day in the year -- which means lots of extra sunlight for festivities. The day is also considered to be sacred by many pagans and Wiccans around the world who celebrate the solstice among their other yearly holidays.

Some refer to the summer solstice as "Litha," a term that may derive from 8th century monk Bede's The Reckoning of Time. Bede names "Litha" as the Latin name for both June and July in ancient times.

 

The summer solstice is one of four solar holidays, along with the autumnal equinox, the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. The other major pagan holidays are Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasadh.

 

 

Observers celebrate the solstice in myriad ways, including festivals, parades, bonfires, feasts and more. As one member of the Amesbury and Stonehenge Druids explains, "What you're celebrating on a mystical level is that you're looking at light at its strongest. It represents things like the triumph of the king, the power of light over darkness, and just life -- life at its fullest."

 

 

Celebrations for the summer solstice take place around the world, and not all are pagan-affiliated. One of the biggest pagan celebrations occurs at Stonehenge in England, but others take place among indigenous Latin and South American communities, and in Russia, Spain, and other countries.

 

 

As the official first day of summer, the solstice is a time of celebration. Cities around the world will mark the day with spiritual and secular celebrations, like this yoga festival in New York's Times Square, expected to draw thousands for some mid-city, summer realignment. More (PHOTOS)

BuddhaFest (June 19-22, 2014)

Ashley Wells and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; BuddhaFest.org via Tricycle.com

BuddhaFest 2014: A Festival for Heart and Mind. The fest is inspired by the principles of mindfulness and compassion and features four days of films, talks, Buddhist meditation, and music at the Spectrum Theatre at Artisphere in the Rosslyn area of Arlington, VA, just outside of Washington, D.C. (See complete BuddhaFest Schedule)

Opening Night Film: "Blood Brother," Sundance Grand Jury and Audience Award winner!

"Good Morning America" (GMA/ABC) panicky Weekend Anchor Dan Harris will speak on opening night about the spiritual odyssey that led him to Buddhist principles and mindfulness.

Sign up for updates, and events (buddhafest.org/sign-up-for-updates/)

UN: Is America "the land of the free"?

Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Kevin Uhrich (pasadenaweekly.com, 4-8-14)

The Mirror Turns: UN Human Rights Committee says...

This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow)

Despite our government’s many military entanglements and abuses of authority at home, most Americans still maintain a pretty high opinion of our country and the way our government treats its citizens and others around the world. 

  

The thing is, the unquestioning zeal regularly expressed for “our way of life” by cheerleading mainstream media personalities and politicians isn’t something that’s universally shared, according to a recent report issued by the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

What's America really like? This map shows some snapshot traits (koalogist.tumblr.com)

 

Whereas it is usually the United States that stands in judgment of other countries, and has traditionally used the UN to justify the wars it’s waged since the Korean Conflict, the script has been flipped in this case, with America now being portrayed as a bully and a villain, not only abroad, but at home as well. 

Uncle Sam (Big Brother) is watching

“The committee’s recommendations highlight the gaps between US human rights obligations and current laws and practices,” said ACLU Human Rights Program Director Jamil Dakwar in a statement issued last week by the organization’s national office. “The Human Rights Committee rightly called out the United States for setting dangerous examples from counterterrorism operations to an unfair criminal justice system to inhumane treatment of migrants.”

Local reactions to the report released on March 27 were no less critical of the United States, as well as the American media, few of which gave much play to the committee’s findings.

Heads or Tails, Lesser Evil vs. Greater Evil...

“It is shocking that media in Los Angeles [capital of the world] -- print, broadcast, and social -- have nearly entirely ignored what can only be called a factual but nevertheless horrifying, detailed indictment of violations of human rights in our country,” said local civil rights activist Marvin Schachter. Schachter is a longtime member of the ACLU, both its Southern California and Pasadena Foothills chapters. He is also a member of the Pasadena United Nations Association. More

LA "gangs" spread to Buddhist Thailand (video)

Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; co-hosts A Martinez, Alex Cohen; Leo Duran, photographer Zanya Tanantpapat (Take Two/SCPR.org)

"LA" Los Angeles gang hand sign or mudra by Thai fake neo-cholos (scpr.org)

(Coconuts TV) A curious phenomenon - Mexican-style gang motifs and monikers rise up in the most Theravada Buddhist country in the world.

  

We graffiti and no one knows what we're doin'!

For anyone who has visited Los Angeles, cholos are a welcome sight -- bald, in white tee shirts and prison-issue baggy pants, sporting corporate logos of all their favorite shoe brands and sports teams, the Raiders in particular.

Wait till Cypress Hill* arrives in music stores

It's a menacing sight, like riding through a wildlife park. We snap photos and speed away. These lions mean no harm to drivers, but the park rangers -- gun happy Sheriff deputies and LAPD Crash Squad -- will not tolerate gangsters or wannabes. Looking a certain way will daily get you harassed, arrested, and accused of felonious acts. And if you have a face tattoo, it's even worse.

The ink is real, the meaning completely lost

We're talking to you, Mara/MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha Trece, the El Salvadoran version of exported L.A. culture; see "Sin Nombre" (Spanish, literally "Without Name," figuratively "Without Hope") for one of the scariest portrayals of gang life that viewers will have to interpret as pure fiction but it's real. Buddhists will certainly see the influence of the ancient demon MARA, the gang's nickname). Now imagine that same look, that very ethos, that barrio creation in Buddhist Thailand.

We continue the exposé below, but first let's talk about the two cities in which this phenom is spreading.

Wait, is this bustling Los Angeles or busy Bangkok? (Gift-of-Light/flickr.com)

 
There are similarities between Los Angeles and Bangkok (although lately Bangkok is bloodier and more dangerous for tourists), two places most of the world is likely to visit at one time or other.

For one, they have the same name, "City of Angels" (Spanish, Los Angeles, Thai Krung Thep).
 
Both are built along polluted rivers close to world-famous beaches -- Santa Monica for L.A. and Pattaya for Bangkok. And both are getting to be like Mexico City -- three hot megalopolises, endless expanses of breaking concrete, conspicuous consumption alongside shantytown blight.
 
Now each has costumed (uniformed) "gangstas" of the same stripe. They are hot Latin "thugs" envied by boys, admired by girls. Cypress Hill seems much to blame for this typecasting and American export. The cities are getting to be a lot like chaotic Calcutta in India (Kolkata on the Hooghly) that was old when the colonial British arrived as immortalized by Rudyard Kipling:

A Tale of Two Cities

[T]he midday halt of Charnock -- more's the pity!
    Grew a City.
As the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bed,
    So it spread --
Chance-directed, chance-erected, laid and built
    On the silt --
Palace, byre, hovel -- poverty and pride --
    Side by side;
And, above the packed and pestilential town,
    Death looked down.
But the Rulers in that City by the Sea...

• LOS ANGELES' actual name is El Rio de Nuestra Señora la Reyna de Los Angeles de Porciúncula Spanish for "The River of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels [the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe/Guan Yin Boddhisattva] of Porciúncula."

Bhumibol Bridge in beautiful Buddhist Bangkok, like the City of Los Angeles by the bridge over our concrete-lined and graffiti-ridden Los Angeles River (HappySUN/flickr.com)

Protesters wave Thai flags in Bangkok

BANGKOK is a city of extremes and superlatives, a city one does not react to with indifference, says Thailand at a Glance. Recently declared the world's hottest city by the World Meteorological Organization, it also boasts the world's longest name: Krung-thep-maha-nakorn-boworn-ratana-kosin-mahintar-ayudhya-amaha-dilok-pop-nopa-ratana-rajthani-burirom-udom-rajniwes-mahasat-arn-amorn-pimarn-avatar-satit-sakattiya-visanukam. Not surprisingly, only a handful of Thais use that mouthful, preferring the abbreviated version: "Jeweled City of the deva Sakka (India's Indra)." However, most Thais refer to it simply as Krung Thep, "City of Angels." Bangkok wordsmith Theppitak Karoonboonyanan separates the words of K161t and translates them:

• 

  Bangkok temple, muddy river

  Krungthep mahanakorn
  The great city of angels,
• amorn rattanakosin mahintara yutthaya mahadilok phop
  the supreme unconquerable land of the great immortal divinity (Indra/Sakka),
• noparat rajathani burirom
  the royal capital of nine noble gems, the pleasant city,
• udomrajaniwes mahasatharn
  with plenty of grand royal palaces,
• amorn phimarn avatarnsathit
  and divine paradises for the reincarnated deity (Vishnu),
• sakkatattiya visanukam prasit
  given by Sakka and created by the deva of crafting (Visnukarma).

"Latin Thugs" (South Gate to Hollywood)

*Gang-member/hip hop artists Cypress Hill are the USA's most famous "gangsta" rappers -- one Swedish, one Black, one Mexican -- from Los Angeles with more than 18 million in CD sales and many hits like "Insane in the Brain."

"Latin Thugs" featuring Tego Calderon
Spanish to English translation by Wisdom Quarterly editors
LYRICS: [WARNING: violent, graphically sexual, and gang-affiliated references! Bad karma.]

• This song is slang, which is impossible to translate satisfactorily. But one gets the idea of extreme daily, run of the mill violence. These are the "teachings of the vicious" the Buddha warned about. People are4 getting caught up in endless reprisals and troubles, where hate is never able to end hate. All available lyric sites are incomplete and misleading, so we are depending on our own ears on what to translate the studio track. 

Don't be like, uh, a [stuck up] Cuban./ Be like in Rio, a real stoned [easygoing] pothead./ This kingpin ping-ping [gunshots]/ Swing is here with the force of a machete./ Kick mad lingo [slang] from Spain to Tijuana./ Real son of a b, homeboy; ask your momma./ I don't care [about] gunshots, my girl./ All I wanna know is, How good was it singing [sexing, seeing ya]?/ Don't be scared, get over here./ What's the play, dawg, homeboy [what's] goin' on?/ Ni**as, O.G., straight veteran[s of gang warfare]./ Master the Spanglish-style mad-crazy./ Y'all fools know that right here we don't play around./ Don't act a fool, and don't break the rules./ We [are] real crazy ass'sassins./ Get your guns ready; here comes danger!/

[Chorus: Tego Calderon] Come out [party] with Tego./ They've arrived, the main main ones./ Cuba, Borinquen [Puerto Rico], Mexico, all of Los Angeles./ It's like up-up, go on:/ Light up the weed, but what I want is *ss./Cypress with Tego,/We've arrived, the main main ones./ Cuba, Borinquen, Mexico, all of Los Angeles!

Racist neo-Nazi skinhead with US prison tattoos

[B-Real] They call me sweet daddy./ You know I'm pure [complete, refined, a fully "made" man, a Mafioso]./ I never fade away [I will never be forgotten]./ You see me comin, [better] get your *ss runnin./ I know you hate away./ Hit the take harder than most tough-guys you idolize./ Get it started quicker, and hit you before you try to hide!/

[Sen Dog] Latin thug, roll deep, gangster [gang member]/ Purely Los Angeles [style], southside [South Gate, the city next to Watts, their hometown] ghetto:/ Carpet, car black, and crazy [pet] dog./ Keep an eye on that fiend, because I will grab it for myself [pick it up, take it from you, steal it]./ A mofo [pinger, shooter], [you] slight little-girl,/ I will take out my ping [pistol] and [make it] sing [double entendre, make my ping sing is also make my beer (bottle) whistle; taking a shot is taking a swig]./ Can't get enough of them L.A. sluts [skunks, hoodrats, stinkers]./ Get a little wild and I eat [sex act] that [stuff]./ Listen up, good friend [companion, godfather], the big Cypress Hill/ [is] Still right here, and it still controls./ This ain't no Telemundo [Latin TV] special [spectacular]./ The homies that I roll with for real will come wet [bloody] you./[Chorus]


For anyone critical of our coverage exploring this "fringe" topic, we ask, How fringe could this violent song, this band, this movement be? Just look at it being performed live for non-Latinos.

PR rapper Tego Calderón

[Tego Calderon] Hey, who the f is that?/ Another black [dark] crazy, daddy [and nickel-plated]./ So hang one [wring his neck, give him a bad necklace a noose] of the bad-ducks [a "gay," the worst insult in Spanish in that those who hear it grow feathers and lay eggs on the spot]./ A lotta lotta shots for the rats [finks] to knock 'em out [cause to faint, make dizzy, make to lose heart, discourage]/ [So] That they die for sure, without fail./ I ain't never scared, you heard?/ Another idiot is harassing, I will control him [emasculated to a she]./ Go manly, go easy, stay alive./ However you want me to put it to you, what there is is punishment [castigation]./ I'm a lively Latin [double entendre, also a Latin who's still alive], [with] pistol, [and] knife/ To defend against enemies./ These are malignant; they don't have a ticket nor singing [sex],/ But they say so anyway./ You bet, the Tego, the one with the messed up [a]fro, that one who sure is a [horny] goat,/ A major [Jewish], blastin' all these mofos,/ Envious, toads and testes./ Aim for his head! If he goes, he won't be returning./ So his gang will know it [para que su pandilla lo sepa]./ Another one, by turning [what comes around goes around] there goes the father./ And I won't cry nor the mother [that is, I won't cry nor even when the mother goes, or I won't cry for him nor will his mother]./[Chorus]. More

• How Buddhist Japan copied American culture and made it better (Smithsonian)
• Get used to Eminem. Apple's $3.2 billion "Beats" buy out makes Dr. Dre "rap music's richest man"
• The real American gangsters (are banksters): ALEC 

OUR EXPOSE CONTINUES

I also like Star Trek; live long and prosper!

Well, no need to imagine. It's arrived. But as in Japan, which has a startling array of Americana (Harajuku-style as Gwen Stefani teaches us) from Marilyn Monroe to Marilyn Manson, it's only fashion, a style, an homage. These guys, cholos, straight up eastside gangsters, have never been to L.A. or U.S. prison.

They've never been jumped in (beaten in a hazing induction), they just look that way. And they're loving it. And where there are gangsters, oh yes, can gangsterettes be far behind? (One is show at far right of second photo above). Where are all the cholas? Betty Boop stickers and hairstyles will be skyrocketing on the streets of Bangkok -- once the Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts settle their differences, now that the radicals have deposed the corrupt government and the conservatives are licking their uber patriotic wounds. Take Two investigates.

Real Gangs (from El Salvador to L.A.)

THE REAL THING: MS-13. Fear, fear, be afraid, it's a human "virus" and we need a police state to protect us because what we give up when we give up civil liberties is everything. "Who trades liberty for security deserves neither," explained Ben Franklin.

 

Latinos leaving Catholic Church

It's an old All Boys Club of sexist clerics and old child molesters. What are the young to do?

  

Interestingly, Latinos are leaving the Catholic Church. There has been a 12% loss to the Vatican Corporation's numbers. Some have gone on to evangelical Christianity, but many have gone to that favorite category of Census takers "unaffiliated." That includes Buddhist or "spiritual but not religious," which often includes Buddhist meditative practices of mindfulness and loving-kindness (metta), compassion and insight (vipassana). 

Oh, there was that Spanish Inquisition

Attend a group meditation in your area and you are bound to see disaffected Catholics in large numbers. People need a spirituality the corrupt Church has simply not been able to provide. It's not that Catholic priests molested our children, no, we're not mad about that.

Dia de los Muertos making a comeback (npr)

We just could no longer relate to the official and hypocritical teachings of Imperial Holy Roman Catholicism.
 
If it were up to us, we would go Charismatic -- an authentic dance with "spirit" and speaking in tongues -- rather than remain in a backward, hypocritical gay child molesting factory.
 
And the Catholic Church knows it, at least in the Latin American community of L.A. because it allows the Charismatics to use its basements, and their numbers are growing as the numbers attending mass dwindle.

UN Torture Committee probes Vatican like a priest on an innocent child; survivors of clerical sexual abuse urges end to Church cover-up (DemocracyNow.org)

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