Showing posts with label Huffington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Huffington Post. Show all posts

Saturday, 21 June 2014

Litha 2014: Pagans welcome Summer Solstice

summer solstice

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.
 
summer solstice
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.
 
summer solstice
 
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."
 
summer solstice
 
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.
 
summer solstice
 
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)

Wednesday, 14 May 2014

What child molesters look like (photos)

Ashley Wells, Amber Larson, Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Huffington Post; RAINN
Jackson family child rapists and sex abusers (Perquimans County Sheriff's Office)

 
Not a "victim," Grace McDonnell
The sheriff of a small American county in northeast North Carolina says he is "disgusted." Why?

He is disgusted by the parents of six men who are accused of sexually abusing their sister for nearly a decade, at a private family compound.
 
"I blame the parents for this," Perquimans County Sheriff Eric Tilley told The Huffington Post on Tuesday.

Prison guard/sexual predators arrested
"It's your responsibility as a parent to teach [your children] right and wrong. When you see a child doing something that is totally wrong and you don't correct them, then the child thinks it's okay."
  • [Are they Christians? Not "good Christians," of course. But, yes, they are all Christians, patriarchal Protestants. FEMEN says no to patriarchy.
"Silent all these years" (rainn.org)
Tilley said his deputies charged the six brothers, ranging in age from 19 to 27, on May 6 [2014], with a number of crimes related to the alleged sexual abuse of their 16-year-old sister [which means she is still a child].

The sheriff said the alleged abuse began when the girl was 4 years old and continued [for a decade] until she was almost 15.
 
Authorities have identified the brothers as Aaron Jackson, 19, Benjamin Jackson, also 19, Nathaniel Jackson, 21, Mathew Jackson, 23, Jon Jackson, 25, and Eric Jackson, 27.
 
I raped Justin Bieber. He was asking for it?
Charges against the brothers range from rape to sexual assault, according to Tilley.
 
The men's parents -- John Jackson, 65 and Nita Jackson, 54 -- face charges of felony child abuse.
 
"Part of the investigation revealed that, at one point, the mother observed some of this activity and never did anything about it," Tilley said of the charges against the parents. More

Wednesday, 19 February 2014

Beautiful Buddhist Cave Temples (photos)

Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; HuffingtonPost.com (Religion)
Khao Luang Cave Temple, Phetburi, Thailand (Punjest Rojanapo)
  
Dawdawtaung (MyanmarVisa)
After seeing these stunning Buddhist temples located inside caves, we want to drop everything we are currently doing and visit them. The isolation of these sites serves to intensify the spiritual connection experienced by tourists and devotees. While some places of great veneration use architectural height to draw attention to the heavens (akasha deva loka or celestial worlds of great beauty and ease), these cave temples highlight the value of spiritual treasures that lie within. More
 
Datdawtaung Cave Temple, Mandalay region, Kyauk Sel, Burma (Leopard)
Ajanta Cave Temple Complex miraculously cut into solid stone, India (iloveindia.com)
Yungang Grottoes, Shanxi, China (Timothy Allen/Getty Images)

Jan. 25, 2014, Burmese Theravada Buddhist monks and tourists visit Kawgoon Cave, Pa-An township, Kayin state, Burma amid protective devas (Khin Maung Win/AP).
(SMS) A visit to Kaw Goon Cave, Burma, with this Mon language inscription: "This Buddha image was built while I, the queen of Mote-ta-ma, was staying in the town of Duwop. All Buddha images in the town of Duwop and its rural regions were built by me and my fellows." More
Dambulla Cave Temple, Dambulla, Sri Lanka (Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne/jetwingeco.com)
Batu Caves in formerly Hindu/Buddhist peninsular Malaysia, Gombak (Laurie Noble/Getty)

Sunday, 1 December 2013

NSA spying on American's PORN habits

Maya, Wisdom Quarterly; OnTheMedia.org
The NSA Spies on People's Porn Habits: Whistle blowing journalist Glenn Greenwald, formerly of Britain's The Guardian, pops up in The Huffington Post today with a new Edward Snowden leak story. This one is about how the NSA has spied on the porn viewing habits of six unidentified Muslim targets [and one can bet countless nominally-Christian Americans who could be transcending by crossing their legs].

2012 review (thismodernworld.com)

Monday, 11 November 2013

No "Armistice" on US's global war on V Day

Take your psych meds and commit suicide if you don't "like" it, b-tch!! - Sir, yes, sir!
I should have killed that m@therf@&#$r for calling me a "b-itch" instead of taking it out on those Hajjis and Afghani civilians trying to defend themselves against us. God, I need a drink.

Today marks Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, now called "Veterans Day" to glorify war heroes and heroines in the US. It is a federal holiday that tries to encourage new recruits to sign up to go on killing missions and to honor, or at least pretend not to forget, about former US men and women who fought for America's military-industrial complex, the joint corporate-governmental organizations that keep war going.
 
Veterans continue to face extremely high levels of planned suicide (brought on by psychotropic medications that bring suicidality on as a known side effect, particularly after iatrogenic addiction to opioid painkillers), unemployment, homelessness, traumatic brain injury, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and homicidal and violent tendencies, particularly when someone secures a job in law enforcement upon returning and concealing one's traumatic brain injury and PTSD symptoms.
 
Racism makes war make sense (Occupy)
Since 2000, nearly 6,000 service members have experienced traumatic amputations from injuries caused by improvised explosive devices and other war-related dangers. Nearly one million active service members have been diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder since 2000; nearly half of those have been diagnosed with two or more. Alcoholism and pharmaceutical drug addiction, far from being counted as mental health disorders, are counted as "treatment" when they are causing and contributing to so much of the problem.

The Pentagon's pentagram where most wars are planned long in advance of a provocation. And if the MIC is not provoked, a pretext is developed. This is standard operating procedure.
  
Suicide is murder, too
According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an estimated 22 veterans take their own lives each day. These are just active duty service members; no one is counting former active duty members, whose suicide numbers are much higher. How many years does one have after returning from committing war crimes and getting insufficient to no help at all from the VA, what does anyone expect? The Pentagon is happy to drug anyone who asks for help, because numb zombies can hardly speak up about what America is doing. Whistleblowers are annihilated or "neutralized" for fear that they undermine morale and reduce recruiting numbers.

Last year, more US military personnel died by their own hands than the hands of others. On any given night, nearly 63,000 veterans are homeless. Many suffer chronic debilitating mental health problems. These numbers do not look at wars of old. This is from the new wave of conflicts in the pretext we all accept as the "war on terror," a tactic, making it endless war, having set up an "enemy" we could never exhaust. 

Sometimes ya have to burn a village.
Now war is permanent. No peace is at hand. No armistice is possible, because there is no one who could give up if they wanted to. So innocent noncombatants are targeted with drones, likely in the hopes that someone will come fight back. And that will be the enemy. It is like a bully going around pushing and killing other students, daring anyone to come do something about it, thus justifying the military-industrial complex's ongoing terror and war-making.

Democracy Now! was joined today by longtime writer and photographer Ann Jones, author of the new book, They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars—The Untold Story. More

No "Armistice" for Washington's Global War

I was raped for my service.
It was exactly 95 years ago: the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the moment when major hostilities in the charnel [ground] that was World War I ended. In 1919, November 11th officially became "Armistice Day" [marking the cessation of hostilities] in the United States. 

As it happened, though, major hostilities were suspended for just two brief decades before an even more devastating global war [was begun]. In 1954, nine years after World War II ended, with the previous "great" conflict having proved [to be] anything but -- as once advertised -- "the war to end all wars," and the memory of its armistice fading, the holiday was officially relabeled "Veterans Day" [War-makers Day].
  
Who is being charged for US govt's wars?
And so it has remained in the second half of the last century and the first 13 years of this one as those veterans piled up.
 
There were the ones from Korea, Vietnam [Cambodia, Laos, and secret wars elsewhere, leaving rarely a single year since the founding of the USA that it was not engaged in making war somewhere, usually in more than one place at a time], and too many American [kinetic or low-level conflict] interventions to mention. 

[There were also in the] new century -- from the disastrous counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [with secret bombing runs over and the establishment of US military bases in Pakistan, Waziristan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan...with all eyes on nearby Iran]. (In Washington's conflicts in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, where the "soldiers" or "airmen" are generally drone-robots, there really are no veterans [except the Las Vegas remote controllers suffering PTSD for their war crimes].) More

Tuesday, 15 October 2013

What's wrong with American men?

Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Huffington Post
I filled this veggie-fridge, Joe. If I want to empty it, I'll empty it! Get yourself to the gym!



 
Yeah, girl, yer FAT; go make me a sandwich.
The average American man is named Joe (or Jose), is fat, and lives at my house. Why won't he exercise and lose weight? His toe hurts.
 
Why does his toe hurt? Because he stubbed it on his way to the fridge for a late night snack. Hey, Jojo, put down the mooncake, get out of the kitchen, and onto the bathroom scale! (Too harsh? 10 Things to Say to Make Men Go Ballistic)
  
The fact is American men are pudgy, sloppy, and potato-couchy. They won't deny it. It's not as if men have ever had to live up to the standards of beauty, physical attractiveness, and shapeliness females are forced to deal with from. We give men a pass, but that was when they did a lot for us beyond being eye candy. Now, guys, at least have the decency to look good! And shower. And use a dab of natural (non-aluminum) baking soda under the armpits; it's a wonderful natural deodorizer. And work off that flab.
  
Hey, fatso, look to your left and stop stuffing carbs, flesh, and fast food (Big Deals/HuffPost)
 
(HP) America's expanding waistline may not be new news, but throwing the average American male's body into a line-up spotlights America's obesity epidemic. This is exactly what Pittsburgh-based artist Nickolay Lamm did when he created these visualizations (which obviously deal only with body size and not race, ethnicity, or skin color).  "I wanted to put a mirror in front of us," Lamm told The Huffington Post in an email. "Americans like to pride ourselves on being the best country in the world [WQ EDITORIAL: when everybody knows that's Switzerland]. However, it's clear that other countries have lifestyles and healthcare better than our own. More

Buddhist missionaries from India and Afghanistan were welcomed in ancient Greece.
  
More proof we're fat