STOP-THE-CLASH Who's afraid of Muslim Rage?

Our perception of reality is heavily influenced by what we choose to pay attention to as well as what the media decides to present to us. In both cases we are severely limited by the narrowness of those two perspectives. Recently we have been all but bombarded by images and media coverage focused on the unrest in the world apparently the result of a trashy islamophobic film entitled The Innocence of Muslims; violence which has led to or been associated with the death of the US Ambassador to Lybia, as well as to many other deaths and countless injuries. One could be forgiven I suppose in believing that every Muslim sanctions and participates in such irrational and violent reaction to something that should be dismissed out of hand as a ridiculous individual rant, of which there are countless examples in a free society.

But this would be unforgivable. Responsible thinking people should question the tendency to swallow hook line and sinker the media depiction of "news". The fact is, gaining an understanding of our world and the events that shape it requires a suspension of immediate perception in favor of a more measured and porbistic reflection. This means work, and unfortunately only an alarming few have the stomach for it. WPS

To gain some perspective on the unrest I propose the following article.

http://en.avaaz.org/783/muslim-rage-protests-newsweek-salafists?utm_source=avaaz_newsletter&utm_medium=blast&utm_campaign=stop-the-clash

Deepak Chopra: The Mideast Protests, Social Networks & the Global Brain

There’s a fascinating connection between the social network and where the human brain is going. For a long time, neuroscience held a wrong belief—several, actually—about the brain. The number of brain cells we have was seen as a fixed number that declined over time. No one realized that stem cells in the brain can renew lost neurons at any time of life. But the most exciting discovery was that everyday experience rewires the brain.

Even though it looks like a thing, your brain is a process. It is always in a state of dynamic flux. New connections and new cells are being born, and as the rewiring occurs, something astonishing happens. Your personal reality changes. The brain processes reality, and when new pathways are formed, the world becomes different.

We are witnessing a global test of this thesis in the Middle East. The future there seems to be a race between the mullahs and the iPad, between sermons in the mosque and tweets on a smartphone. After the Bush administration’s disastrous invasion of Iraq, the number of cellphones in that country exploded, even amid social collapse. Young people desperate to be part of the wider world started expressing their yearning through social networks. Tweets and texts were critical during the Arab Spring, especially in getting large numbers of protesters to gather in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

When the moderate, progressive elements in Egyptlost to the Muslim Brotherhood, it seemed like a huge setback for social networks and a massive victory for the mullahs. Yet the long view is far more hopeful. Millions of tweets, texts, emails, and phone calls have one thing in common: they are neural signals in the global brain. A cabdriver talking all day on his cellphone in Manhattan is weaving himself into the society back home, and the more he communicates, the stronger the neural pathway he is creating.

Silent opposition brought down the Berlin Wall because consciousness, although invisible, is incredibly powerful. Social networks have the capacity to swiftly alter the global brain. On the surface, most tweets are small passing events. But stand back a bit, and you see that a new identity is being formed, a global “we” that anyone can participate in. This newly shaped global brain can topple the traditional barriers of religion, tribalism, nationalism, and political oppression.

Before the social network, think of what it took to escape the mindset of a repressed culture. You had to physically move away, plant yourself in a foreign country, and probably continue to fear for your relatives stuck back home. Now, in the darkest hours of Syrian resistance, as in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt, anyone can send and receive messages from the global brain. As this stream of messages continues, it reshapes the individual brain, too.

What I’m saying isn’t mystical or hypothetical. The destiny of the whole planet depends on reaching beyond the narrow interests of rich nations and multinational corporations. A community of humanity needs to be formed. It’s completely possible for that to happen. In fragile, hopeful ways, it already has.

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Deepak Chopra is the author God: A Story of Revelation, in addition to more than other 60 books that have been translated into more than 80 languages and include numerous New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Chopra is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, adjunct professor at Kellogg School of Management, and senior scientist with The Gallup Organization. Timemagazine has described Dr. Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century and credits him as “the poet-prophet of alternative medicine.”

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An End To Ignorant Bias

Elizabeth Windsor taks with  Kirsten Gillibrabd (D-NY)

Several challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act could reach the Supreme Court within the next year, but only one involves the estate tax that surviving same-sex spouses are forced to pay when a partner dies. The consequences can be severe, as Edith Windsor, the 83-year-old plaintiff in that case, learned after her wife, Thea Spyer, died in 2009.

A mathematician and former IBM programmer, Windsor calculated the financial impact of 1996’s DOMA, which just added to the unquantifiable pain of losing her partner of more than 40 years. She paid over $363,000 in federal estate taxes on two properties the couple owned, in Manhattan and on Long Island, solely because the U.S. government did not recognize their marriage. The women married in Canada in 2007 after first becoming engaged in 1967, and Windsor cared for Spyer, a clinical psychologist, as she battled multiple sclerosis for three decades.

“However, if Thea had been Theo, I would have had to pay no estate tax whatsoever,” she says. “Even if I had met and married ‘Theo’ one month before he died, I would have had to pay no estate tax.”

That unequal treatment did not compute, and Windsor sued the government with help from the American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison. She argued that DOMA violated her equal protection rights, and in June a federal judge in New York agreed and found section 3 of the law, which limits the federal definition of marriage to unions of a man and a woman, unconstitutional.

The House Republican–controlled Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, which took up the defense of DOMA after the Obama administration declined to defend section 3 of the law, has appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Oral arguments are scheduled for September 27. Windsor has also petitioned the Supreme Court to hear her case, in part because of her advanced age and fragile health due to a heart condition.

Windsor sold bonds, a major source of her retirement income, to pay her tax bill, and she estimates that a significant portion of her finances will be depleted within four years. In addition to a refund and a Supreme Court ruling against DOMA, she wants her case to result in “a gradual lessening of ignorant bias.”

“I think about teenagers falling in love for the first time and knowing that they could marry someday, feeling not excluded and denigrated by their government,” she says. “I think about the children of same-sex couples no longer having to defend the legitimacy of their families. And I think about the beginning of the end of stigma and gay bashing, internalized homophobia and closets, and lying about who we are. I think about hope for our lives fully in the open in our country and society.”

Edie (right) and Thea in the '60s.

 

Known as “Edie,” Windsor has volunteered for many LGBT organizations over the past 30 years, including service on the board of Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders and overseeing the computers for swimming meets at the 1994 Gay Games. Her plight has captured hearts, with spectators at the New York City Pride March this year shouting her name and approaching to shake her hand.

Could this profile make Windsor the perfect foil for House Republicans who strongly oppose taxes? The courts will decide, but her legal team is hopeful.

“We believe that anyone can relate to what happened to Edie after Thea died,” says her attorney Roberta A. Kaplan. “The injustice of losing one’s spouse and then having to pay a large portion of your inheritance as a widow to the government as a tax is something that is painfully clear to every American.”

And Speaking Of Beauty

Ugliness

I was listening to an interview with Alain De Botton, founder and director of The School of Life in London, and he said something which I thought was both profound and on reflection self-evident. It was the idea that "ugliness" was one way that "evil" found it's way into us. Granted, there is a certain problem with the subjective definition of the two terms since everyone defines the two based in large part on cultural milieu, but I believe there is much truth in the idea, especially if we can agree that evilness is anything the reduces our capacity to experience joy and a sense of harmony and balance within our environment. 

Where is it that we experience ugliness? Certainly our abuse of the natural environment turns vast areas of previously undisturbed landscape into wasteland. One can easily see the effect in the mountains of West Virginia, where mountain top removal has destroyed the environment and the lives and spirit of the people who live there and suffer from the toxic affect. Similarly clear cutting vast tracks of forest in the Amazon has transformed the landscape and lives of the native people who have lived in harmony there for millennia and who now have been reduced to wandering ghosts. And in urban environments we can feel the negative effects of poor planning and architecture that alienates those who must live within this diminished (ugly) environment. This must be a form of evil in that it robs us of joy and connection. Consider also the effects of the tenor of public discourse that is too often hostile and seeks to prevail rather than understand and compromise. Does this not produce internal states that diminish us and is this not in some way "evil"?

This makes the argument for creating beauty wherever and however we can, in large and small ways as an antidote to "evil" Taking time to pay attention to how we do something with the goal of making every effort as beautiful as possible in every possible dimension reduces the overall "evil" in the world.

Dave Matthews (Crush)

Undertow (Film by Javier Fuentes-Leon)

The tragic story of a married Peruvian fiusherman, Miguel,  who falls in love, despite the strict moral code imposed by the church, with another man who has come to his seaside village to paint . The story is both beautiful and heartbreaking and shows the terrible price exacted by religious dogma. When his lover drowns and returns as a ghost, Miguel must come to terms with his own sexuality and is faced with revealing his secret relationship. The cost is high but his happiness hinges on becoming a real man and doing what is necessary to free both himself and his departed lover.

The film is shot on location in Cabo Blanco, Peru and the location is beautiful and the cinematography is simply stunning. You should not miss this film.

Synopsis


Miguel is a handsome, young and beloved fisherman in Cabo Blanco, a small fishing village in the Northern coast of Peru, where the community has deep-rooted religious traditions. Miguel is married to the beautiful Mariela, who is 7-months pregnant with their firstborn, but Miguel harbors a scandalous secret: He is having a love affair with another man, Santiago, a painter who is ostracized by the townsfolk for being agnostic and open about his sexuality.
When Santiago drowns accidentally in the ocean's strong undertow, he cannot pass peacefully to the other side. He returns after his death to ask Miguel to look for his body and bury it according to the rituals of the town. Miguel must choose between sentencing Santiago to eternal torment or doing right by him and, in turn, revealing their relationship to Mariela and the entire village. Miguel is forced to deal with the consequences of his acts and to come to terms with who he really is, even if by doing so he stands the chance of losing the people he loves the most.
With sweeping images of the beautiful Peruvian coastline, UNDERTOW (Contracorriente) is the emotional intersection of contemporary sexuality, confronted by tradition and belief. This sexy and redolent love story is the feature film debut of Javier Fuentes-León and stars Manolo Cardona (Beverly Hills Chihuahua and the hugely popular telenovela series, Sin tetas no hay paraiso, and was also named by People en Espanol as one of its 50 Most Beautiful People in 2005), Cristian Mercado (Che) and Tatiana Astengo. The film is produced by Javier Fuentes-León and Rodrigo Guerrero (Maria Full of Grace, Dog Eat Dog).



 http://movies.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70129390&trkid=7636966&t=Undertow&pt_request_id=5649980a-e382-49a1-8129-d73f5e21a827-1985627&pt_rank=1&pt_row=4&pt_location=WATCHNOW

Summer Trip to Hawaii 2012

Sometimes one meets someone who embodies something very special. Such a person is Danny, a guide we hired to take us into a remote part of Kauai , HA called the Kalalau Valley in the remote northwestern part of the island. There we hiked the Kalepa Ridge that looked down into the valley thousands of feet below. The hike was breathtaking and at times quite hair raising as the ridge narrowed in some places to only several feet in width with sharp drop-offs on either side. There would be no second chances in some areas. Even our experienced guide had some harrowing tales to tell of careless slips and near misses. But even more impressive than the hike for me was Danny and I'll tell you why. At 64, he possesses enough positive energy to light a city. He goes about every small task with an abundance of attention and enthusiasm. Not once did he have a negative thing to say during the entire day. He managed to turn every negative comment, no matter how small, into a positive. There was just no negative vibe emanating from this man at all. Watching and listening to him, I had the distinct feeling that I had to change my life. I want to be that kind of person. It is beautiful to behold. And more, I could see how that positive energy had the power to change the universe. When he spoke of rainbows, they somehow suddenly appeared , as if to please him. When he praised the light falling on the volcanic flanks of the valley sides, it shone even more magnificently, dazzling us with even more spectacular changes and variations.  Preparing the mid hike dessert was an unforgettable experience. All along the way he collected the most amazing flowers and leaves with which he decorated samples of different exotic desserts he had concocted the evening before the hike; cacao mousse with various other live super foods mixed in, coconut mango mousse, and a third treat made with passion fruit. The attention he paid to the presentation and to the preparation was impressive and eating them was quite near a religious experience.

Summer Trip To Hawaii 2012