31.8.07

The United States of America to have its first "general strike".
They've been organizing these things forever in India, Latin America and other outrageously poor countries around the world and apparently, they do work. Go here:

9/11 is a big fat obvious lie.

...and don't go here:

your local, personal labor camp. Or your job. Same difference for most people.
Ode to the Two Pointers

Hanging up there between our clothes line
and theirs, a hand could borrow sugar
from our open windows, that close,
a two-pointer hung by the haunches, eyes all froze.
We came home running to see what was shot,
heard it all the way down by Old Man Riley's garage,
a two pointer, not a doe. Everyone heard it.
It was big news, big game and there he was,
hanging over the squash and winter iris
looking out like that, just looking.
A pressure cooker steamed inside
the kitchen window, it tooted and hissed
while he dangled there waiting to be butchered.
Takes a long time to cut up a deer like that,
and longer still, to bag one.
Times were pretty lean, the winters pretty cold.
God is as an animal, our fortress.

30.8.07

The Eschatology of Laundry Hill

[2.256] There is no compulsion in religion; truly the right way has become clearly distinct from error; therefore, whoever disbelieves in the Shaitan and believes in Allah he indeed has laid hold on the firmest handle, which shall not break off, and Allah is Hearing, Knowing.


Clown_With_Coffin
Clown Carrying His Clown Father's Coffin
Photo by Richard Byrd


My husband looked as if we'd just asked him to eat a live goldfish.

He stood by the garage doors, speechless and obviously quite embarrassed. My sister-in-law looked at me sideways in her usual conspiratorial manner. Jack looked as is his usual like the cat who ate the canary and her babies.

She said, "So do you want to hold my breast Mel?"

My poor Arab husband just stood there, another helpless victim of our various Laundry Hill demons. We three are so used to these things and so enjoy getting a bite out of someone who doesn't understand the ethics of growing up on Laundry Hill.

So she reached inside her blouse and felt around on her left side and pulled her breast right out of her tank top. There it was.

Jack made it himself out of some old gray foam. He sized it properly and smoothed it out on some kind of lathe from inside his shop on Tombstone Canyon.

Breast Cancer. It's been an interesting few months with those two, Jack and Pat Porter. Two of the most ethical people alive and two of the most death ignorant people I've ever met. And, in the past, two of the most committed beer drinkers in town. They admit it. They gave it up after one of their acquaintances (a profound lush) shot himself in the head. That was enough for them and they quit cold turkey...over two years ago. Over two years before Pat discovered she had a malignancy in her left breast.

Their youngest son was the one to tell my son, his cousin, that his mom had cancer. "My mom has cancer." I think most people can conceptualize to a certain extent what that phrase sounds like but only those who have had it uttered to them or had to utter it to someone else can truly fathom the gamut of emotions a person and their family goes through when they hear those words for real.

For me, as a nurse with a long history of dealing with people in crisis, I felt that old familiar feeling. It is like watching a car wreck in slow motion. You know how it ends, you know the players at the scene but still, you cannot predict if a person who walks away from that accident won't be in another one the very next day. That is how life is and how death is.

I told Pat in the first few days and weeks that cancer wouldn't kill her. I said that Allah gives life and as well, Allah takes life away. "Your day is your day and there is no averting it." At first she wasn't too thrilled about that presumptuous statement coming from her very religious baby sister in law. I say "baby" because I grew up with Pat. She grew up with my brother. No one ever expected those two to end up getting married. I'll never forget their wedding out in Ventura, California. Jack's hair back then was longer than Pat's. He'd made a bet with a buddy of is that he would not cut it for five whole years and he didn't. He made fiddy bucks on that one. At their wedding (I was only about ten), one of their guests known only as Dirty Dave (uh...he came on to me too) tried to drive off with a loaded .45 on the roof of his car. Her parents weren't too thrilled about the match either and didn't attend the wedding which was home made, a nice little "personal affair" that took maybe two days to plan and execute. Not what I'd call a Crystal Shaw-Hayden type of shindig.

Pat was the sweetheart of Bisbee and still is actually. Dance classes, flawless skin and a special mixed breed (her father is an Okie and her mother of Mexican descent) beauty. She was never without a boyfriend and it was usually the captain of some team or another. But not Jack Porter. No...not a Porter. We used to be considered....on the bad team. The poor side of town and willing to defend ourselves from anything and anybody. We were rough and my mother could barely afford tuna on sale most of the time, never mind the dance classes at Crystal Shaw-Hayden's Dance Academy where Pat and those types of girls went to learn tap, ballet and jazz. I remember the sign even said " ...and Charm School".

I used to go up to Patricia's house all the time. Her father treated me like one of his own and used to carry me around on his shoulders and he built me a special swing out under the tree at the corner of the house because I was too small to play with all the older kids on the big tire swing out on a massive oak tree in the drainage channel in front of the Alexander homestead. And it was a "homestead" complete with a fire pit for garbage burning, three free standing shacks used for various things and a "workshop".

The Alexanders (and everyone else back then) were avid hunters. Almost every Sunday Mr. Alexander would be serving the catch of the day: frog's legs to havelina to duck. He'd try to get me to eat some but I'd just plug my nose and run away. I was from a deer, trout and rabbit only household even if my mother used to love brains and eggs. The workshop was covered with every set of antlers that Mr. Alexander and the two Alexander boys shot. The workshop was so picturesque that Richard Byrd (who traveled with the Beatles and studied with Ansel Adams) took one of his most popular photos using the zone system which was ideally suited to the boney white antlers against the grainy exterior of the shop.

Yes...their house was the place to be and sometimes Patricia would put me beside her on the piano bench and teach me a little 1-2-3, 3-2-1, 1-2-3-2-1-1. Or better yet, she would take me to the storage shack and pull out her old Barbie case which was turquoise with a line drawing of a fashion doll on front wearing a pink poodle skirt. And they had a dining room! They dried their dishes with hand towels and put them away whereas ours just dried in the rack. They had two bathrooms even! or at least, I believed they did. We had one and an old enamel chamber pot that someone would hand out if you couldn't hold it. Usually, when it comes to chamber pots, you can. Trust me.

It was heaven up there and they were a stable family in the midst of so much that was so unstable. No one though including her parents imagined that one day she would be under a car in a garage tightening a drive shaft or pulling out an oil pan. What kind of work is that for a woman with a Master's Degree in Social Work?

It's my brother Jack's work and so, it is her work because they are two people meant to be as they are, just as all people are as they are meant to be. She is his wife. Jack trained his wife to rebuild an entire engine. She does the ordering and the phone answering too, tends to the social work of a Bisbee business and is the wife of Bisbee's Ward 1 councilman, WJ "Jack" Porter. And Jack makes the breasts. Rather good at it actually.

One day after Pat had started her chemo, I was up at the garage on one of my weekly visits. It was very important to the two of them that people not over react to what they both must have seen "back then" as a death sentence. I kept repeating to them day after day, "Your day is your day." I followed this up with the explanation that even if you do get cancer then who says you aren't going to die on your way to see the oncologist? Neither one of them likes to wear a helmut as they cruise around town on their Harleys. Hers is red and Jacks is home made and silver.

On my visits Pat would vary between wanting to talk and not wanting to talk. She'd rush over to one of the grimy shelves and bring out a pack of papers her mother (also an RN) sent to her via email which detailed the various side effects and risks of her chemo. I'd just look at them and have to say, "I'm not a "cancer" nurse. I know about as much as you do." I know what I know about. I know about car wrecks. I've carried a few dead bodies myself from time to time and I've also seen the most miraculous things.

That day though I wanted to say something a bit more religious. It was clear to me that Pat was chosen to experience something and it was becoming more clear to her each time I'd pay her a visit. Our conversations grew deeper and more hushed. She said to me at one point, "It's strange, I feel kind of blessed by this." And I nodded to that one. I said, "Yes, you've received a warning."

Not everyone gets a warning you know. We are the lucky ones. Many people just venture forth every day and take life and death for granted. They assume so much and even assume that they might even die. So what! All very normal thoughts people have. Not many of them however understand something really fine about life and death. People think death is the exceptional day. Afterall, it only happens to each of us once. Fact of the matter is, the death day or as we say in Islam "The Hour" is not exceptional at all. It is guaranteed and shared by every single living thing. What isn't shared by every single living thing is the exceptional quality of life under the clause: you only wake up each day because you didn't die. Sounds simple enough but until you've seen death up close most people cannot possibly comprehend it on a personal level. Allah prevents people from dying each and every day. It isn't about how many people died today in Iraq or Utah. It's about how many people are allowed one more day to change something. Each and every day is a chance to change something.

So, on this particular day I looked at Pat. I hesitated to say the religious things to either one of them because they both believe they are athiests or at best, agnostics. The reason being is that the three of us had a bit of a conflict when I first arrived from Lebanon last year during the Israeli War Crime of 2007. They weren't used to me at all or the manner in which I express myself (constantly) about Islam. Non muslims really cannot understand Islam you know and for sure, cannot understand those of us who submit to it (even though they all think they are quite smart and can). In some realms this is called arrogance. In the case of Pat and Jack, I chalk it up to ignorance. That is a whole story in itself...the altercation between the three of us which threatened to alienate us forever. It actually made me look up into the night sky the evening I ran away from Jack after beating him in the chest and ask, "Why Allah, why?" Patricia...my big sister "in law" and my favorite brother Jack. Of Jack and Fish. Jack like Grandfather. THAT Jack and THAT Pat. My other sister. The one in the photograph in front of the Atlantic Richfield station where she is carrying a plaid lunch box and I'm trying to squirm away and obviously, laughing.

Well. We settled those differences just in time to get ready for Patricia's earth shattering diagnosis of breast cancer. Just in time.

So, on this particular day, although still a bit fearful and hesitant to express something even quasi religious to her, I knew I had to say it. I knew why I'd come to America. I knew why I couldn't leave. I said to her, "Now then, how on earth do you think you could have coped with chemo if you and Jack would have still been downing a twelve pack every single night?" Well...I didn't say it exactly like that but the reader must get the profound point I had to make to her.

Her eyes grew large and began to shine. She asked then, "Do you think I was being prepared for this?"

I said, "Absolutely." Not even a tiny doubt. She knew I was right. Pat runs over a hundred miles a week. Gosh, even when she and Jack were tossing down the Buds she ran at least that or more. Although being an athlete puts you in a certain "class" of nonbeliever it certainly does not cure cancer in and of itself.

And now, Pat is getting better. She showed me her head today. Lots of tiny hairs coming in and even a few eyebrows on her still gorgeous fifty plus face. She's almost done with her radiation now and told me today that her docs put her in the 90 percentile group of survivors. She is one of the reasons I took hijab. She was wondering whether or not to buy a bunch of cheesy wigs and I said, "Why on earth would you cover such a beautiful head? I mean, you are beautiful. I can see if you were a really unsightly person but you don't have to worry. You always look great and you'll look just as great bald." And I look just as great with a rag on my head. I really do. Or, so some people say.

And that is why I am here. Probably for even more reasons than that. A long time ago, another muslim questioned me about my American family. He wanted to know if they had accepted Islam. Back then I thought, "Oh...never. They just never could do that. Impossible." I gave up on that idea right there and then. I mean what do you do? Just come out and tell a person, "Look, I have proof that you are lacking something incredibly important, I know what it is and I'm gonna tell you what it is and you are going to accept it?" You just can't do that even though you might sometimes try. I guarantee you though, you only try and fail at that once to learn that particular lesson that is constantly reiterated in the Quran.

Miracles take time. I'm here to tell my family something and perhaps a few other people who see my covered head bopping around town and turn their heads in a state of shock, "What! A muslim here in South Eastern Arizona! In Minuteman territory? Right here next to the illegal alien Wall of China?"

No way.

Yes way. And Miracles take time. And yes, I smoke. It is a real fitna for me. But I also know how and when I am going to die.

When Allah chooses.
This looks exactly like the Israeli plan to destroy Hezbollah last year.

Massive invasion, air strikes, collateral damage...blah blah blah.

Hell it seems, is an ambush. If these morons decide to do this then...well. I'd say:

Bye Bye America. Because it will officially be "over". Americans will become not only bankrupt but will suffer what we muslims like to call:

a humiliating chastisement.

As if they aren't already suffering it. Geez.

[19.83] Do you not see that We have sent the Shaitans against the unbelievers, inciting them by incitement?[19.84] Therefore be not in haste against them, We only number out to them a number (of days).[19.85] The day on which We will gather those who guard (against evil) to the Beneficent God to receive honors[19.86] And We will drive the guilty to hell thirsty[19.87] They shall not control intercession, save he who has made a covenant with the Beneficent God. -Sura Miriam, The Glorious Quran
If you can't beat 'em, fire them.

Dr. Norman Finkelstein, the outspoken critic of Israel and Zionism is fired.

What a big surprise. Not.

28.8.07

Optics in Nomenclature

The use of descriptions of eye structure and optics may be of help in constructing decapod phylogenies as long as attention is paid to the restrictions alluded to above. If the stratigraphic ranges of the extant decapod crustaceans (excluding those with reduced or absent eyes) is combined with the known optical types, a number of patterns are apparent (Fig. 2). The extant Penaeidea, Caridea, Palinura and Astacidea all possess reflecting superposition eyes. These groups (with the possible exception of the Penaeidea) probably arose from an explosive radiation in the Devonian and Carboniferous (Hessler, 1983) from an ancestor that may have possessed reflecting superposition eyes. Although reflecting optics could have evolved independently in each of these taxa, there is no evidence to suggest that this was the case. If it is assumed that this state was common to all of the early Decapoda, it is only necessary to suggest that these unusual optics evolved once from the apposition eyes of the ancestral eumalacostracan. Accurate descriptions of the facet patterns in fossil decapod eyes may well provide an answer to this question.

"Their eyes cast down, going forth from their graves as if they were scattered locusts" From the Proof called The Moon

The eye (Harun Yahye here), the subject of this book, is one of those organs of the body that have kept evolutionists on the ropes ever since Darwin, who himself confessed, "I remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over."1 A close examination of the eye's structure and functions will make it clear why evolutionists have felt compelled to avoid it. The eye's complex structure has several distinct components and systems. An amazing scope of distinctly different functions are realized individually, but only as a result of harmonious cooperation between all of these components and systems. If even one of them is missing or fails to cooperate, the eye can't perceive images. This is a Catch 22 for the evolutionists, who hold that all body parts have emerged gradually by themselves. That the eye can only function as a whole only when all its every system and component are present and intact rules out any such gradual formation.
Remembering Raul Hilberg

Raul Hilberg passed away on August 4. A refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria, Hilberg was the founder of the field of Holocaust studies.

"Arendt borrowed extensively from Hilberg's work with less-than-generous attribution. He never forgave her this oversight and - what truly is unforgivable - her condescending references to his study in private correspondence and her recommending against its publication by Princeton University Press. In his memoir Hilberg parries the insult, asserting, wrongly in my opinion, that Arendt's study The Origins of Totalitarianism lacked originality. It is true that Arendt could be lazy about facts, which might account for Hilberg's harsh judgment, but the first part of Origins contains many shrewd insights on the dilemmas of Jewish assimilation and paradoxes of the nation-state."

Hilberg reserved even greater contempt (and loathing) for Lucy Dawidowicz, author of the highly touted The War Against the Jews. Here it can be said that his verdict was faultless. During the heyday of the Holocaust religion in the 1970s-1980s, Dawidowicz was its designated high priestess. The problem was that, as Hilberg brutally demonstrates in his memoir, she got the most elementary facts wrong. I once asked my late mother, who survived Maidanek concentration camp, about Dawidowicz's depiction of all the Jews in the ghettos and camps furtively staying faithful to their religion until their final steps into the gas chambers. "When I first entered my block at Maidanek, all the women inmates had dyed-blond hair," my mother laughed. "They had been trying to pass as Gentiles." The shocking accounts of Jewish corruption that could be found in conveniently forgotten memoirs like Bernard Goldstein's The Stars Bear Witness were deleted in Dawidowicz's fantasy."


"After a division of Henry Holt (Metropolitan) agreed to publish my (Finkelstein) critical essay on Goldhagen (together with one by Birn), the Holocaust industry went ballistic. Its attempts to halt the book's publication were neutralized, however, when Hilberg stepped forward to praise my contribution. But Adam Shatz, wielding the hatchet in Slate breezily surmised that Hilberg, along with the half dozen other leading scholars who blurbed the book, hadn't read carefully what I wrote. In light of what is known about Hilberg's fastidiousness, this would have been strangely out of character."

*Slate is a tabloid run by the Washington Post and hosts such venerable "artists" as the Allah Despising Christopher Hitchcock..Hitchens. Sorry. The Washington Post of course runs the mirror tabloid in Israel known as The Jerusalem Post.

Lebanon: Hizbullah, a progressive Islamic party?

-Interview with Joseph Alagha

"Basically, one can describe Hizbullah as a progressive Islamic jihadi movement. However, the use of the term “jihad” should not lead us to think that Hizbullah is inherently a radical group prone to violence. Its primary purpose has been, of course, military, deeply linked with the resistance against Israel (al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya), but is not exclusively so. Beyond the fact the Party of God has been capable of associating Christian or Sunni actors in some of its political fights, Hizbullah's jihad is not a militant struggle aimed at toppling an infidel government, but essentially a moral effort to discipline oneself. It may sound anecdotal, but, in many respects, this philosophy of al-Jihad al-Akbar has been translated into political results. The movement has not only been spared the corruption that erodes the reputation of all Lebanese political organizations, but it has also developed an internal policy contributing to its transparency and limiting individual ambitions. Whereas in Lebanon officials are known for taking their chairs with them when leaving office, Hizbullah has a rotation policy whose aim is to avoid bureaucratic corruption. The movement's cadres have to regularly change their jobs (the rhythm varying according to the importance of the service), moving from one post to another."

*Joseph Alagha worked on his doctorate at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), Leiden, the Netherlands, and received his Ph.D. in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from the Free University of Amsterdam. He is presently Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the Lebanese American University. He is the author of the book The Shifts in Hizbullah's Ideology, published by Amsterdam University Press in 2006. His various articles on Hizbullah, Iran and the Intifada have appeared in academic journals such as Middle East Report, ORIENT, Studies on Islam, ISIM Review, Sharqiyyat and Soera.

27.8.07

The Story of Faith

1. Go here to read The Tufla Syndrome. Then go to step 2 and review some of the stats:

2. Smile Train.org:

-100% of your donation goes toward programs.
-We’re the world’s largest and most cost-effective cleft charity.
-Meets extensive standards of America's most experienced charity evaluator


Funmi CLP

__$250.00 to provide cleft surgery for one child
__$125.00 to cover half the cost of one surgery
__$50.00 to provide meds for one surgery
__$25.00 to cover sutures for one surgery

Decide on what you want to "buy" and then go here to punch in some facts about yerself:

3. Visa, MC, etc. accepted.

4. Most important step: Treat yourself to something nice. Some pie or something while patting yourself on the back and then, on the tummy.

[41.34] And not alike are the good and the evil. Repel (evil) with what is best, when lo! he between whom and you was enmity would be as if he were a warm friend. -The Glorious Quran, Ha Mim
Bisbee Extravaganza

The Map of Cars,
Mercury and Marquis

-And you follow 'till your sense of which
direction completely disappears

That was the labyrinth in the Gulch,
a hard right past the Philadelphia where
hash was the babysitting tutorial,
the only baby is in a jar, it is lifted.
Carmen and Peter and Jewish Jon ran off
while sister tailed along to see
some more of the avante guarde
on subway street. Can't remember
changing the baby but I must have arrived
to that engagement in the brougham.
Boy it seemed so big then and the cop
found it parked a week later
in front of St. Elmo's bar and grill

Do that again young lady and you'll get
fleeing arrest. What a thing!
and now it's small.

Fleeing arrest, no better way to describe that
glide down Youngblood with brakes tapping,
the sides of the alley scraping
just short of a decision: up to Zacatacas
or down to the Lyric. Bear up
in the canyon casting spells on the mons, mine
and several others, decision made down
to the bottom another hard right past
the grassy, past the flood-stained county
library up to the Baptist church where pies
never burned, zig-zag the castle rocks
wherein Bisbee Bob was dealing coke
from an old taco stand window
nearwhere the brakeman cracked
his victorian spine in the liffy-ditch then
up to the Ironman part of Cork, all those
serenity-prayer miners hacking in the echoes,
crawling just out of sight of the rectory,
slow enough to catch a whiff of the votives.
Another right but not so hard into garden
past the chihuahua across from our cousin's
which was empty except for the touching
we did under the ocatillo canopy near
the tunnel under the stairs and into the garage,
buried in the hill as it always was.
Up to Mayer to tuck that brougham in,
her tail end and they are all girls we said,
part of the celtic myth of deers, all the cars
are girls and you got away and pushed her
spine to the end of Laundryhill
and let her down easy while
the eight track hauled out the year of the cat.




1975GrandMarquisBrgm

Bisbee to Oprah



..and the best way to go down the hill: Coasters. Jack (my honest, decent brother) in the cap asking the kids what they'll do if they lose their brakes. Good old Jack.



Jack & Fish

Everything happened suddenly, Jack surprised.
Jack? Jack surprised. Jack handsome.
Jack in the front seat, Jack driving.
Jack like father, Jack like Grandfather.
Jack like all Jacks. Jack of all trades
and Jack of all exiles.

Jack of the St. Louis Arches.
Jack of hippy hiking across the land of Jacks.
Jack of Sailor Suits. Jack of smiles.
Jack. Just Jack that day and John,

somewhere else
smoking cigarettes perhaps
in the tent. How did she catch that?

Jack said. No one knew.
As big as her arm. As long as her pony.
Her two ponies, Apaloosa and Pinto.
The ones they all dream of at certain times.
Come here little fishes. She said come here
little fishes, big ones too. I'll get rid of you!
Or, I'll let you go, or you will get away.
But for now, I'll catch and pull you in.
Jack pulled it in. Jack slit the trouty guts
with his Jack Knife. Jack, just jack all over.
Perhaps the most Unreported Story of our times are the numerous sightings of strange lights ALL over the planet. They've been seen in Phoenix, Chicago, Poland, the UK, Mexico and many, many other places. Why isn't someone talking about this? The following are a few from Poland, Italy, Taiwan, Ohio, Belgium, Peru.. One of the most documented sightings occurred twice in Phoenix and were witnessed by thousands of people. That incident is simply referred to as The Phoenix Lights incident.















..there's too many to show here. One of the best ones I think is from Mexico and shows the Mexican Air Force flying side by side with these lights.

Hmm.

"That this light was physical as well as spiritual was borne witness to most amply by those who saw him. The Lady ‘A‘isha related how she saw the whole room fill with light one night, then it disappeared, while the Prophet continued to call upon his Lord. Then the room was filled with a more powerful light which disappeared after a while. She asked, "What is this light I saw?" he said, "Did you see it. O ‘A‘isha?" "Yes!" she replied. He said, "I asked my Lord to grant me my nation, so He gave me one third of them, so I praised and thanked Him. Then I asked him for the rest, so He gave me the second third, so I praised and thanked Him. Then I asked Him for the third third, so He gave it to me, so I praised and thanked Him." She said that had she wished to pick up mustard seeds from the floor by this light she could have.[13] In the famous description of Hind ibn Abi Hala, the Prophet’s stepson from the Lady Khadija, "He was dignified and awe inspiring, radiant like the radiance of the moon on the night it is full…"[14] Ibn ‘Abbas described how he saw light shining from between his front teeth.[15] Abu Qursafa, as a boy, went to swear allegiance to the Prophet, together with his mother and her sister. When they returned home they told him, " My son, we have never seen the like of this man, nor anyone better looking, cleaner dressed, or gentler in his speech; and we saw as if light came out of his mouth." [16]

"The Companion, Anas ibn Malik, may Allah be pleased with him, described how, when the Prophet, may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him, first entered Madina, everything in Madina became illuminated, then how, when he died and was buried in ‘A’isha’s house, the light disappeared. The phenomenon was so sudden that the Companions were taken aback and began to doubt whether they had really seen it at all.[17] This was only the light that radiated from his blessed body, for Madina itself remained the city of Light. Ab? Hurayra related how they were once praying the night prayer of ‘isha’ with the Prophet, may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him, and how the Prophet’s two grandsons, Hasan and Husayn climbed onto his back when he went into prostration. When he was done, he placed one of them on his right and the other on his left. Abu Hurayra asked him, "Shall I take them to their mother?" he replied, "No". Then a flashing light appeared from the sky, at which he said, "go to your mother." The light remained until they reached their house.[18] On another occasion, Anas said that, he accompanied the Prophet, may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him, into the mosque where they saw a group of people with their hands raised, calling upon Allah. "Do you see in their hands what I see?" the Prophet asked. "What is in their hands?" Anas replied. "There is light in their hands," replied the Prophet. "Ask Allah the Exalted to show it to me," said Anas. At the Prophet’s request, Allah showed it to him.[19] Another Companion, ‘Amr al-Aslami, said that once they were with the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him, on a very dark night and lost sight of each other. Suddenly ‘Amr’s fingers shone forth with light so that they were able to round up their mounts and gather again. The light did not subside until they had finished gathering.[20] As for Abu ‘Abs, he used to pray all the ritual prayers with the Prophet, then walk back to his dwelling, at Bani Haritha, a few miles from the mosque. One dark rainy night, as he left the mosque, his staff was made to shine forth with light, so that he was able to walk safely back home.[21] On another occasion, two of the Prophet’s well known Companions, Usayd ibn Hudayr and ‘Abbad ibn Bishr, left the Prophet’s house late on a dark night. The tip of the staff of one of them lit up like a lamp and they were able to walk. When they came to the place where they usually separated, the tip of the other staff lit up as well.[22] Another Companion, al-Tufayl ibn ‘Amr al-Dawsi, related how, after his first visit to the Prophet, when he accepted Islam and was about to return to his tribe, he asked the Prophet for a sign to show to his tribesmen, at which a light shone forth from his forehead. He exclaimed, "Not here, O Messenger of Allah, they will think it a curse!" So the Prophet moved the light to the tip of al- Tufayl’s whip. He returned to his tribe with this sign and most of them accepted Islam.[23]
"

....it might also explain what happened to the fourth plane which was "downed" (it didn't crash and this can be proven because the wreckage was spread over a vast stretch of farmland unlike your run o'the mill plane wreck in which the wreckage is usually distributed over less than a few acres or miles). It is what you call a "heavenly" SNAFU. And then tower seven had to be taken down due to the massive amount of incriminating evidence it contained (against the real perpetrators of 9/11).

And no. I am not embarrassed at all to share this hypothesis. I stand absolutely by my own reason. It hasn't ever let me down. Except that one time....well. Nevermind. Another time and another paradigm.

http://www.themodernreligion.com/prophet/light.html

And this by our very own Air Force:



...and the Messican one:



...and the CNN report about same:

26.8.07

The Heraclitian Seasons

GREECE FIRES

greece fires 2

GREECE FIRES

greece fires


[25.14] Call not this day for one destruction, but call for destructions many.
Namlites

The conflict offers a glimpse into a complex insect society that is neither an absolute monarchy under the control of the queen, nor a workers' paradise where the queen is a slave to the will of her offspring. Rather, workers and queens have arrived at a kind of negotiated middle ground, according to research conducted at North Carolina State University and published Friday, Aug. 17, in the journal Science.

Proof 27 The Ant, The Glorious Quran

And say, "Praise be to GOD; He will show you His proofs, until you recognize them. Your Lord is never unaware of anything you do."

She (Sheba, the ant queen) said, "O my advisers, I have received an honorable letter. "It is from Solomon, and it is, `In the name of GOD, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.' "Proclaiming: `Do not be arrogant; come to me as submitters.' " She said, "O my advisers, counsel me in this matter. I am not deciding anything until you advise me."

The Lie That Bush Built

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece

"But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory." Robert Fisk

....of course. It isn't even essential to establish anything other than the tower 7 was blown up to destroy the evidence which was meant to be destroyed by the flight that was downed in the field when the passengers did the unexepected. They took over the flight. Oops.

A first grader could figure this out. Heh...and they probably will when they get to high school and beyond. They are of course, "the future".

23.8.07

Coney Island


Henri Cartier-Bresson, Coney Island

22.8.07

shriners Henri Cartier-Bresson


http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.PhotographerDetail_VPage&l1=0&pid=2K7O3R14T1LX&nm=Henri%20Cartier%20%2D%20Bresson

Today, he would have been 99.
The Pissant*
(or, Welcome to my Qibla)




[33.46] And as one inviting to Allah by His permission, and as a light-giving torch. -The Glorious Quran, "The Clans"



"With their combined weight greater than the combined weight of all humans, ants are the most numerous type of animal.
Strong in relation to their size, ants can carry 10 to 20 times their body weight. They work in teams to move extremely heavy things.
Ant brains are largest amongst insects. Mushroom shaped brain appendages have function similar to the gray-matter of human brains.


It has been estimated that an ant's brain may have the same processing power as a Macintosh II computer."

If only we could say the same thing about human beings.


How The Ants Got Famous

They stood on their hind legs
congratulating themselves. How
they did, the ants, become famous.
Lifting six times their weight:
grains of sugar, wheat capsules
and so many types of resins
called capitulations. Even
in the love generations, men
were heartier than their women,
chosen very well, as is always
the case, for their breeding:
Connecticut to New Hampshire,
Wilshire to Orange

and Pinal to Greenlee county.
The march of these creatures
was not very long to us
but to them, it was
a very long and hoary deal.
Tree trunks to consider, alimony,
panhandling and no hole to crawl into.
It was a very long way to Mecca.








[27.23] Surely I found a woman ruling over them, and she has been given abundance and she has a mighty throne:

"But an attempt to overthrow the alpha female is risky. If the challenging beta ant is not successful she is often killed in the attack, and even if she survives, she loses her beta status and becomes a low-ranking worker."

[27.13] So when Our clear signs came to them, they said: This is clear enchantment.

"To do this, they must have in their "cockpit" a compass for determining direction, a gauge for measuring distance, and some record of the pathway they have taken, as well as an integrator to tell them the direct path home. The latest research into this tiny creature shows that when it moves over little hills, it can calculate the distance back along the flat.

The compass used by this ant (Cataglyphis fortis) is based on sunlight, which is scattered as it meets air molecules in the earth's atmosphere. The result is that the light is polarised in a way that we humans are not able to see. But the ant has cells in its eyes that are sensitive to this polarised light, and the information is processed so that the ant has a sense of the direction in which it is facing."

[27.23] Surely I found a woman ruling over them (the Namlites or "Ants"), and she has been given abundance and she has a mighty throne: [27.24] I found her and her people adoring the sun instead of Allah, and the Shaitan has made their deeds fair-seeming to them and thus turned them from the way, so they do not go aright...

"But it does not only use this system, together with how far it has travelled, to get back home. It also uses landmarks along its horizon to correct any errors it might make in its calculations. Experiments have shown that, as it approaches its home, the ant continually compares what it sees with a memorised snapshot that it took when it set out, and moves so as to reduce any difference between the two. If the terrain is flat with no landmarks, the ant adopts a systematic search strategy, looping around the area where the home base is most likely to be."

[27.38] He said: O chiefs! which of you can bring to me her throne before they come to me in submission?[27.39] One audacious among the jinn said: I will bring it to you before you rise up from your place; and most surely I am strong (and) trusty for it.[27.40] One who had the knowledge of the Book said: I will bring it to you in the twinkling of an eye. Then when he saw it settled beside him, he said: This is of the grace of my Lord that He may try me whether I am grateful or ungrateful; and whoever is grateful, he is grateful only for his own soul, and whoever is ungrateful, then surely my Lord is Self-sufficient, Honored.[27.41] He said: Alter her throne for her, we will see whether she follows the right way or is of those who do not go aright.

"It turns out that the US Navy uses a similar looping strategy to that of our ant for searching for missiles lost by the US Air Force. And robots are now being built that roam the desert using the mechanisms first identified in the ant. Surely, no engineer working at the drawing board could ever have come up with such imaginative solutions."



http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20010713/ai_n14415791

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=586505

Aye..."surely" no engineer could have come up with that!

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1567920

"Our data further suggest that the ant’s polarization compass works independently of the sun compass."

Historically speaking, the orientation of "this" anthill (humanity) was turned southward from its original location (Jerusalem) to the new one (Mecca) by Allah via his communications to the last prophet Mohamed (SA) but this caused the Christians and Jews much distress. Distresses them to this day and don't even talk about athiests. That sort of stuff just burns them up. But who understands all of that!

[2.142] The fools among the people will say: What has turned them from their qiblah which they had? Say: The East and the West belong only to Allah; He guides whom He likes to the right path.
[2.143] And thus We have made you a medium (just) nation that you may be the bearers of witness to the people and (that) the Apostle may be a bearer of witness to you; and We did not make that which you would have to be the qiblah but that We might distinguish him who follows the Apostle from him who turns back upon his heels, and this was surely hard except for those whom Allah has guided aright; and Allah was not going to make your faith to be fruitless; most surely Allah is Affectionate, Merciful to the people.
[2.144] Indeed We see the turning of your face to heaven, so We shall surely turn you to a qiblah which you shall like; turn then your face towards the Sacred Mosque, and wherever you are, turn your face towards it, and those who have been given the Book most surely know that it is the truth from their Lord; and Allah is not at all heedless of what they do.
[2.145] And even if you bring to those who have been given the Book every sign they would not follow your qiblah, nor can you be a follower of their qiblah, neither are they the followers of each other's qiblah, and if you follow their desires after the knowledge that has come to you, then you shall most surely be among the unjust. - The Glorious Quran, "The Cow" which is a mandatory Sura and one that contains many of the fundamental readings for the jurisprudent.


*"He is an angry as a pissemyre,Though þat he haue al that he kan desire."[Chaucer]

More about ants, pissants and firebeasts:

http://www.hawaiiantgroup.org/solenopsis/solinv.htm

FIRE ANTS COULD COST CALIFORNIA MILLIONS

DAVIS, California, March 12, 2002 (ENS) - If the imported red fire ant becomes established in California, the insect could cost Californians from $387 to $989 million a year, says a researcher from the University of California at Davis.

"There's no way of predicting how far and how fast the ants will spread in California," said Karen Jetter, a postdoctoral researcher at the UC Davis-based Agricultural Issues Center. Jetter and colleagues released their findings on the potential economic impact of the fire ant in the January issue of "California Agriculture" magazine, published by the University of California's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The fire ant, already established in several Southern states, was discovered in California's San Joaquin Valley almond orchards in 1997 and has since shown up in many parts of Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles counties. Last October, it also was found and destroyed on the Cal Expo grounds in Sacramento County.

The authors estimate that, in the absence of eradication efforts, it would take 10 years for the ant to become established and could inflict costs totaling from $3.9 to $9.9 billion during that period, mostly to households.

A $65.4 million, five year eradication program is being coordinated by the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the nursery industry to prevent, lessen or delay the projected losses from the ant's arrival in California.

Based on the biology of the fire ants, the researchers think it is unlikely that they will be eradicated during the first five year funding period. The project will be reviewed, however, and considered for extension based on progress made during the first five years.

In agriculture, the ant's large mounded nests can damage mowing and harvesting equipment, irrigation lines, and electrical equipment. The ants girdle and kill young citrus trees and attack cattle and other livestock. They also damage vegetable and melon crops by eating developing fruit, seeds, roots and tubers and subject nursery and hay crops to quarantine regulations.


http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/archive/2007-05/2007-05-14-voa2.cfm

"Now, government researchers want to work with a private company to produce large amounts of the virus. It could then be used as a biological control."

Oh...I'll bet they do. I'd say it isn't a very good idea. Afterall, we did get the polio vaccine out in time but ended up spreading AIDS all over the darn place. Seems we just can't seem to figure this stuff out and dig our ant hill deeper and deeper.
"Tell me what you're wearing?"

http://www.slate.com/id/2151428/

Heh. I used to really wonder at that tradition that states our paradigm is coming to a close soon when we see people committing illegal sexual acts on the "highways". I imagined all sorts of horrors! Driving down I-10 or the Beirut Autostrat and seeing men and women and menandmen and womenandwomen engaged in all types of coital excess.

Guess I was just over reacting again!

I suppose illegal meant, "not legal" as in...not under any statute, secular or otherwise. ROFLOL

20.8.07

The Flood(s)

http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/2006/02/flood-how-is-it-one-waits-in-womb.html
ABOSOLUTELY Must-See

Footage you cannot and will not find on any news channel.

How the US and Israel have
always shot themselves in the Foot

Before the Non Muslim army arrived in Iraq




After the Non Muslim army is in Iraq for five years



Sadly enough...this is the will of Allah to show the world the face of the great Satan.

Can you see him? I sure can.

[13.11] For his sake there are angels following one another, before him and behind him, who guard him by Allah's commandment; surely Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition; and when Allah intends evil to a people, there is no averting it, and besides Him they have no protector. (The Glorious Quran)

*Interestingly enough...some people are beginning to see "our" problem (the muslim one). If only...if only they knew what it was before this trial and tribulation. The Shia of Southern Iraq like the Shia of South Lebanon actually believed that the US and even Israel (in Lebanon) might relieve them of the oppression of Sunni muslims (the Sunnis have oppressed the Shia for centuries people) as well as their oppression under the Maronite Christians in Lebanon who commonly referred to the poor Shia of Lebanon as "the people with tails" or "abu thanab". In Lebanon as well, it was the PLO and the Palestinian factions who terrorized the Lebanese during the Civil War of the last century and were not very good "guests" (that fact is why Hezbollah's defense of the Palestinians is such a profound statement to all muslims Sunni or Shia). No one ever really wants to hear about the crimes of Palestinians in Lebanon, especially now that so many non muslims have thrown their support in the direction of two diametrically opposed groups i.e. the Sunni Palestinians and the Shia muslims of Hezbollah. Many of our "new" supporters fail to realize that Sayyed Nasrallah supports the Palestinians as muslims but does not support their Sunni doctrine.

As it turned out in Lebanon, the southerners at one time literally threw rice on the Israeli army as they entered the south (1982) as they felt the IDF would bring order to the situation there. Eventually however Israel was exposed as was the Maronite Christian sect. All the parties in that conflict (the US, Israel, Christian Maronites (Phlangist Party)) sought to establish a "Christian State" in Lebanon to improve or guarantee the so-called existence of the highly illegal and immoral state of Israel. What most people believe to be the biggest threat to Lebanon was the always touted "Islamic State". News flash...theUS and Israel wanted a Christian State (a far less threatening ideology to most Westerners who are mostly non muslim and hence, "pro" Christian states that masquerade as "democracy")... there and actively sought it via the support of Lebanese factions AGAINST other Lebanese, mostly innocent people with no particular membership in any faction whatsoever regardless of sect. This is the second part of the profound lesson of Hezbollah. Not only have they not (up until now) sought to create an Islamic state in Lebanon but they have refused to commit atrocities against their own "kind" i.e. citizens of Lebanon regardless of sect. Until now. Indicators exist that suggest the idea that Nasrallah may indeed seek one if foreign interventionism as well as internal collaboration (Siniora (Sunni Beaurocrat) and Jumblatt (Druze warlord with alot of blood on his hands, mostly Maronite Christian blood) seek to engage them in another internal struggle. Some observers in the past have suggested that such a battle would last less than six hours and Hezbollah would overwhelm Lebanon literally in the blink of an eye and form another Shia dominated Islamic State in the region.

Secondly, the US sought to end the war in Iraq against Iran (1970s) which both the US and Saudi Arabia financed, advised on and played both ends against the middle (with Israel's arms sales to Iran during the Iran Contra affair) using their generalissimo Saddam Hussein. In that war, the US and Israel and Saudi Arabia are guilty on ALL COUNTS. Ayatollah Khomeini who KNEW he had been given a very raw deal (an eight year fiasco) refused to give up and I imagine expected the US to make good on its foul deed in which Iraq invaded Iran without any reason whatsoever to do so except US/Sunni hegemony in the region. Well, they never did (reparate) and instead they began a different Civil War in Lebanon, a Proxy war in order to distract attention, arms and "energy" from the long and criminal action of what I and many others call, "The First Gulf War" i.e. the Iran/Iraq debacle. We are actually now in stage three or rather Gulf War III even though most do not realize that nor do they believe the US had a role in that.

They blame Khomeini. When in doubt, always blame Khomeini or maybe Idi Amin or Fidel Castro. Villify him even. Like Idi Amin...they relate stories of cannibalism about him i.e. that he destroyed his own people in order to gain power. Just as the US and Israel have attempted to put Sayyed Nasrallah in that position AS IF he invited Israel into Lebanon last year. Yeah right. He took a few prisoners...an age old practice between countries who are at war and one that Israel and Hezbollah had engaged in between each other on numerous other occasions. It was NOT the basis for starting a war and it certainly wasnt the reason Israel attacked Lebanon this time either. Israel committed one hell of a big stupid mistake. A mistake that many believe is the beginning of the end of Israeli oppression in the ME if not the end of the Israeli state itself and Zionism in general.

This all had to happen unfortunately. Yes. It did. I suppose many believe it could be avoided or even thought it would be best avoided...tolerated I imagine (the bitter oppression of the Shia in the ME) for a "bit longer". Toleration in the sense that the US has (in the words of Condi Rice) "sacrificed human rights for diplomacy" in the ME. She spoke the truth but it appears she and others had no desire to actually honor the intent of that statement i.e. to stop sacrificing human rights for so called "diplomacy" or rather, backscratching each other's backsides. None at all.

I'd say the US is not only the loser in this overall but they do not have any legs left to stand on. Not even with the Sunnis. Although the Sunni monarchies in the area remain on good terms with the US I assure you, most of their subjects do not. Anywhere in the region.

And that is due to what Nasrallah and everyone else who understands Islam knows about last year's "war" with Israel.

It was literally a divine victory. It does not belong only to the Shia, the Lebanese or to Nasrallah. A divine victory is fought in the way of Allah, for the good of all people and without regard to personal loss. Just like the old days in revolutionary America when we all used to be far better people with much higher values and standards for society and government.

That victory over Israel belongs to us all. In fact, it belongs to humanity as a whole including Jews who are as much victims of religious exploitation as anyone else.

Zionism is not only evil, it is temporary as all such things are.

18.8.07

ODE TO TENNESSEE

Once upon a time everything
was homemade. The tortillas
down to the choclate eclairs
the little girls and little boys
would pick their share of as they
dangled from the arms
of chain-smoking, novena-plastered
mothers in pill box hats. The bread
smelted forth out a great silent
machine, those round

gray towers – a day's worth of bread
handed over the counters
of grocers and day-old places
full of handwritten credits.
The sales-girl faces the same
over and over from the liquor shops
to the mercantile where the women
felt the worth of yards of gingham
with garden-tended hands stuck
in apron pockets over poodle frocks.
And as they fondled bolts of laundry
hung out to dry on sagging lines
nearwhere the stockyard blood
soaked into the sawdust from coin-op horses,
they hummed the benediction


another day older and deeper in debt.
Eight hours in the mineral graves
for ten loaves or six yards of eyelet,
before the burns and infestations,
the migrations of paisley, the formation
of smokes over the Dead Sea downwind
from Cananea, pleurosis-nervosis in most of us.
The commemorations were handmade and so trusted,
the dusting powders and ore cars full of snuff,
Yardley Rose of Avon, poor damn Lucky Strike.
The seas too tired to part.



The Douglas smelter was the single most polluting industrial plant in North America, and Phelps Dodge "did everything to maintain production" despite its clear violation of the 1970 Clean Air Act (p. 137).

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3686/is_200204/ai_n9035572







17.8.07



Islam will be Culturally Determined and will be the religion of the world. Like it or not people.



"One of the most extraordinary human beings..." named Joseph Cohen. "One day Joseph was chatting on a religious website..." This Jew says he now has "true belief" and he is absolutely correct. "It is in the Quran, there is no belief after disbelief. You cannot go in and out."

**Renouncing "certitude" carries the penalty of death, not renouncing the lesser form of Islam called "faith". Most muslims including almost all Sunnis have faith and lack certitude which is what most Shia have (not all of course but most). It is a goal and when it is reached one cannot "turn back". Certainly there is no such thing as turning back from certitude. This is the inner meaning of being steadfast. Steadfastness refers to adherence to the actual Sunna of the prophet and NOT the "sunna" of what is known as "ahl al sunna wa jummah" or the "Sunni Doctrine" which was a doctrine that rose in response to the actual party mentioned in the Quran called the Ahlul Bayt.



Between Genesis and Organogenesis! Man oh man!



Redefining what is "beautiful" and defining what is "truth":



"Islam is a logical religion."



"It was a process of becoming disenchanted with the truth."

Another amazing person. His mother was the oldest muslim in Europe and would have been 119 at the time of this video but she died some time just before:





"I could no longer preach things that I didn't believe."

Canadian Muslim:



Surfer Girl Muslim:



Scientist becomes muslim "in a flash". Just like that!



Admission for this British muslim equated with admitting she is "gay"! Wow. And when she is covered, she redefines for women what is beautiful and yes...she is gorgeous. Absolutely. She is "ammar" or like a "moon". What a face.



A Greek German? Well..whatever. Al'ham'du'lillah.



Here is one of the losers whom you can identify by his speech/knowledge level and behavior:



[47.30] And if We please We would have made you know them so that you would certainly have recognized them by their marks and most certainly you can recognize them by the intent of (their) speech; and Allah knows your deeds.

2:99
We have sent down to thee Manifest Signs (ayat); and none reject them but those who are perverse.

Chant for this guy: loser, loser, loser. Like to mock eh? Get ready pal for the real mocking.

And remember this message: Peace to all who believe in Allah.

16.8.07

Lights, Lights and More Lights!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mysterious+lights

orangelight1

The best Waggle Dance Video ever!



And this is also quite exciting:



That guy is just too much.

Mike Mayfield...who understands that guy either!

He is almost as good as StrongBad:



That last video is perhaps the best Strong Bad ever made. Burninating the countryside, burninating the peasants. Reminds me so much of South Lebanon.

Not even Charlie the Unicorn is as good as that. Maybe that energy drink video though....powerspawning and all of that. Just like the bees.

Charlie the Unicorn goes to Candy Mountain:



Shun the nonbeliever....chaaahlie.

And there are always copy cats. Can't ever think up their own ideas:

Get Read!

http://www.cfr.org/publication/11176/shia_revival.html

The Shia Revival effectively demonstrates the political and
historical counterpoints to modern Iraq, asking Westerners to
reconsider their assumptions about the Shia and recognize the
delicate balance that must be maintained with the Sunnis. Throughout
the Middle East, the presence of Sunni extremists retaliating
against the Shia revival will pose the gravest danger to the United
States.

Nasr voices an uncomfortable point: Westerners have too often
conceived of the Middle East through a rarefied Sunni perspective.
In these changing times, the Western world must learn to understand
the history, motivations, and philosophy of the Shia, and how the
differences between Shias and Sunnis will help shape the future of
the region.

ADVANCED PRAISE FOR THE SHIA REVIVAL:

“The Shia Revival is a treasure trove of information and analysis….
A ‘must read’ for anyone interested in American foreign policy
today.”

—Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Sultan of Oman Professor, Harvard University
and author of Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.

“Brilliant, clear, and erudite. This is indispensable reading for
anybody who is trying to make sense of the tragic conflict in the
Middle East.”

—Karen Armstrong, author of Islam, A Short History

“The best book by far on Shiism and Shia-Suni conflicts…. An
extraordinarily insightful analysis, engaging and accessible to
policymakers, scholars, students, and nonspecialists alike.”

—John L. Esposito, University Professor of Religion and
International Affairs, Georgetown University and author of Unholy
War: Terror in the Name of Islam

“As enlightening as it is thought-provoking, The Shia Revival is
important to both the expert and the layperson…. It is lively,
engaging, provocative, and should not be missed.”

—Kenneth M. Pollack, Director of Research at the Saban Center for
Middle East Policy, The Brookings Institution and author of The
Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America

“ Smart, clear and timely.”

—Warren Bass, Washington Post

“So enlightening and perspective altering that no one concerned
about the Middle East should miss reading it.”

—Ray Olson , Booklist

“ Historically incisive, geographically broad-reaching, and brimming
with illuminating anecdotes.”

—Max Rodenbeck, New YorkReview of Books

15.8.07

The Good Crop

amgothic


American Gothic



The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none.The simulacrum is true.=Ecclesiastes, from Baudrillard's The Precession of the Simulacra.

Accidents are essential to nature. Someone, somewhere said that I'm sure. It would make sense you know for people to happen into their accidents a little too late. - Lady Jane Thomas to Lanny Muss

It used to be the sky
and vast dominion meant
this crop next,

fill it up or erase it.
All the water in

the far off sea was clean-under
and outrageously deep,
freshening the edges
of such flat places.
Once upon a time mom and dad
could fill a car for the weekend
with gum and wrappers
as children fell

asleep in the corners,
jarred and blinking in the glow
of good intentions.
There was no where to run,

no real need to
with plenty of jargon to fill the time.
Nothing needed to be done about
the same old secrets:

engine on, engine off.
Easy does it and upsy daisy

in the rigamarole, we kept
the getty-up and go
in the thingamajig under the hood.
Time doesn't pass

in these juke boxes anymore,
there's more fidget in a pesky market
than on the streets

where everyone used to ride

look no hands


by the seat of the pants
all torn and socks full of thorns.
The weeds mattered more

...than the sanctions
when girls got up slow,

boys grew up thin.
Way back when a window was

mostly pegs and putty
instead of glide and shine

no one minded a crack.
No one bothered to count the missing bits
of paint or the patches on a pair,
it was expected.


We could stitch-up

the universe with a thread,
..that is how strong we were
to organize the world

with a rake and we sure did.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070814/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq



What The Thunder said:

[13.11] For his sake there are angels following one another, before him and behind him, who guard him by Allah's commandment; surely Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition; and when Allah intends evil to a people, there is no averting it, and besides Him they have no protector.

Sermon 5, The Peak of Eloquence:

(Delivered when the Holy Prophet died and `Abbas ibn `Abd al-Muttalib and Abu Sufyan ibn Harb offered to pay allegiance to Amir al-mu'minin for the Caliphate.)

O' People! Steer clear through the waves of mischief by boats of deliverance, turn away from the path of dissension and put off the crowns of pride. Prosperous is one who rises with wings (i.e. when he has power) or else he remains peaceful and others enjoy ease. It (i.e. the aspiration for Caliphate) is like turbid water or like a morsel that would suffocate the person who swallows it. One who plucks fruits before ripening is like one who cultivated in another's field.

If I speak out they would call me greedy towards power but if I keep quiet they would say I was afraid of death. It is a pity that after all the ups and downs (I have been through). By Allah the son of Abu Talib (2) is more familiar with death than an infant with the breast of its mother. I have hidden knowledge, if I disclose it you will start trembling like ropes in deep wells.

13.8.07

In The Locality Of Whimpers
(from the Book of Warnings)

The static of those times was deafening,
transcripts and telegrams bogging
down all the lines, apothecaries
and epistlaries grew quite rich.
They all began to tell their stories,
everyone of them, quite dismal
because of the chatter and negations. We all
hoped for more but came up with so much
less. So many forgotten aftermaths,
so many more to make, we felt quite sad.
Our whimpers grew into infamous
proportions, exponential even,
until we cried with a single voice:
Enough is enough, we want more!
Lost as strangers in the strangeness
of going home to find the huts burned
to their most basic ashes, those
ashes in the sky or the breath
of our friend Iblis. He was tremendously
hard to find except in the fine print
of certain texts and tribunals. He wasn't
what you would call, a good listener.
These ashes like whispers,
that spooky action at a distance
while he stands to gain more than a few
untended souls and heartbroken women.
A real deadbeat dad rounding up his vixen.

That is what they say about him anyway.

She said to him early on, "Come and get me,
if you can. I hide quite near the tan area
called the gray matter. It isn't easy to find
but try anyway. I've got nerves of steel."

12.8.07

A reading suggested by a rather famous fellow (who insists he is not famous but I assure you...he is accomplished):

Briggflatts I imagine is about as important as this 'ourville with words as obscure to some as are his. Slag and dump, muck and blue eyed Mexican.

http://slought.org/content/11120/

Lan would suggest such things I might add. Cloud's Hill, Tehran and all of that. Those who have some connection to the things that I am connected to.

Kismet. Karma. Fate.

Poets and all their nuances.

"Rocks happen by chance." -Bunting

"Washed stones strike
in salty kilns the others,
the smooth and rocky
exile, this forgery
and treason*." -Porter

Bunting on Islam:

"Sooner or later we must absorb Islam if our own culture is not to die of anaemia."

...and yes...he is rather delightful and no, I haven't mowed the lawn.

A bit about the artist and a nice bit:

http://jacketmagazine.com/10/cadd-bunt.html

*Because the poem about City Sheepherders is about the Palestinian issue, the sonics of "reason" was replaced with treason. The assumed rhyme is there for the careful "sonics" oriented reader you know but there aren't many of those left who can get out of the poem and add to it on their own.
On Mining and Prayers for Miners

While watching one of the prolonged segments concerning this weeks disaster: Utah Miners Buried....I heard yet another broadcaster tell a family "spokesperson" that "our prayers are with you" and I had to wonder...

Really? Do each and every one of those newscasters actually go and "pray" for the "victims" of such things? And what exactly are those things? Who exactly are the "victims"?

Not to be critical or profit from those that are awaiting word about a person buried in a mine, a snow cave or a child whose blood has been found in a hotel room from where she was abducted. But to focus in on that idea that death comes to us all and why is one death more important than another? Well obviously..it is big business i.e. "The News". It gets viewers, it distracts people from their own death more or less and it is "exciting". Not to miners no doubt and perhaps I'll find and post that old soggy poem called "In the Mines of Mexico, They Weep". Because all miners and miner families know exactly what this is about. It is about their worst fear and that fear would be: dying in a mine collapse.

My very own miner father demanded that when he died he should be cremated and not BURIED. Not even in death does a miner want to be buried...it is THAT bad. All the same...it is just death and I must wonder....why is it we do not wait with our breaths held for every single death as it approaches? I must wonder at how many people actually cry over someone else's death and realize in a very serious way that their own death is FAR more important than anyone else's. It's always been that way you know because a miner is really buried and might experience that thing called "the agony of the grave" that some of us Shia know all about.

Back to the point however. How on earth do people on the TV get away with saying such things as "our prayers" are with you. I have a feeling that most of them don't pray, don't know how to pray and do it about as often as they clean up their sheds out back. Once a week if you are conscientious and maybe once a month if you are the guilty type; and once a year if you only hope to find something lost and suspect it might be there and never if you are really messy, disorganized and have better things to think about and always have, always will. Those usually end up on Oprah and two British ladies go in and muck them out.

Muck of course.....is a mining term.

My prayers haven't been "with" anyone in particular except a girl I met in the ER the other day. She truly affected me and I've actually prayed for her twice specifically. I had good reason to. She was a miracle to me and I pray that I was a miracle to her.

In The Mines Of Mexico They Weep

Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos . . . . the elder encourages the younger and shows him how . . . they two shall launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for itself and looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars and sweeps through the ceaseless rings and shall never be quiet again. - Walt Whitman, in the preface to Leaves of Grass.

In a twilight pilgrimmage
via these frost-cracked streets
close to the Campbell or Shattuck shaft
full of our father's breath and breathing,
we unfold our own cloth on the Fourth of July
one crease at a time on the crags
near the Vista in Warren, down from
the Loma Linda and the old mine-boss palaces.
Flashlights dangle at dusk in the hands
of children. The night catches us deeply
unaware but children don't think like that

they are that

and think more about the starting time
and the firemen on top of the dumps
who begin and end the show
in a wave of lanterns.
How we crave that signal
up there on those mountains of slag
thinking, as ours do, of the breath
of canaries and candles deep in those old holes.

A persistent and unheard whimper
fills space on this weary-
happy picnic in July or maybe
it only fills the weariness with something else.
I clasp a child tight in my arms,
a finger closes the tender wound:
hush hush, our waiting begins, we settle down.

Our Fourth of July is in sweet-tortuous ruin
flung aside into a bin of appetites lost.
We've run from one excitement to another
thankful for a gentle sun, there was no burning
and there will be few scars if any.
The miles between this and that
contract like stars in heaven where
light reaches us much too late
and we as well, get there accordingly.

This is the anniversary of all
that's happened here -
for each body on this ragged quilt,
each poor soul and dumbstruck
face tipped up toward the sky.
The silence between one person and the next
is only the truth where commentary has failed.
I look around me one last time
before the sun takes all the light away -
count the faces I own, erase what's left.
It is a small town thing on such occasions.

The darkness is complete
when the fireworks begin.
My daughter tells me
during one of the beautiful
interims which go like this:

ooh, aah, wonderful!
then another interim and another

'one day, the sun will die'

as copper sulphur spark comets flower dark,
my father scatters in the sky.
Oh! Mufasa, talk to me!

Mufasa