News of the Day: Careless World (video)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Xochitl,Wisdom Quarterly

Tom Tomorrow (thismodernworld.com)

 

(iTunes)
 
What are the "Akashic Records"?

In this episode of Ask Teal on the Akashic Records she explains that they are the human way of understanding that every (karmic act such as every) thought that has ever been thought still exists. Therefore, one aspect of collective consciousness is a vibrational "record" of every individual on its journey throughout all world-systems that have ever been before now and all future potentials originating from now. Teal describes the Akasha (aether, space) as being like a library where the planes, levels, or floors of a library of universal dimensions. The information in/on each dimension corresponds to the frequency specific to that dimension. To access specific information contained within the Akashic Records, one must first become the same vibration that contains that information. Teal explains what information is contained in each dimension. Animation by Jordan Duchnycz (thespiritscience.net). Music: "Diamond" by Cora Flora (coeur-de-fleurs.com).

Jade Buddha World Tour hits California (religion-events)

 

(Aside from rape) Indian women marry up; men left behind

(New York Times, "India Ink") There’s an unexpected problem in New Delhi’s high-end marriage market, according to Gopal Suri, who has been a marriage broker for two decades. There are too few “quality” men, he said in a recent interview, as a growing pool of young women with unprecedented levels of education are seeking and making matches with educated men from higher socioeconomic groups. The repercussions from India’s skewed sex ratios are being felt... 

• U.S. Hindus hear the call of India  
• Skirmishes threaten Pakistan-India thaw 
• India’s new focus on Rape shows surface of women’s perils 
• For India rape victim’s family, many layers of loss

"Sandy Hook" conspiracy theory (video)

Conspiracy theories too hard; easier to believe government lies (Gawker)

  

Conspiracy theories surrounding the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have reached a new level with a viral "truther" video that has been viewed by millions of people in just one week. "Experts"... claim to have debunked the video as mere questions, not answers. On Jan. 7, the video titled "The Sandy Hook Shooting - Fully Exposed" was posted to the YouTube channel ThinkOutsideTheTV, where it garnered more than 8.6 million views in just nine days. The 30-minute video uses news clips to point out "inconsistencies" in the Sandy Hook coverage.

• Obama announces GUN CONTROL (on pretexts)
• Fired porn-star-turned teacher can't get job back 
• Hate group drops Aaron Swartz funeral protest after Anonymous vows action

Golden Buddha altar Vajrayana-style (Buddhisttraintour)

 

Buddha collapsed

"As an 18-year-old girl who lives in Iran today and who faces very specific ideological, political and social pressures, I have a lot to say… Even though my film was not made in Iran, it shows my desire to speak of collective suffering, in Iran as well as in Afghanistan." That’s director Hana Makhmalbaf, whose feature-film debut, Buda as sharm foru rikht ("Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame")...

Golden Globes: Ferrell, Wiig, Fey, Poehler

When the 2013 Golden Globes story is written, it’ll be all about Jodie Foster’s meta, honest non-coming out and quasi-retirement, Anne Hathaway’s fake sincerity getting killed on Twitter, an appearance by former President Bill Clinton, Tommy Lee Jones’ grumpface, the best Taylor Swift joke ever, and a fantastic opening monologue from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. But don’t forget Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig’s presentation of Best Lead Actress in a Comedy or Musical...

• Tibetan cosmological models

Great stories make great change possible 

(Jonah Sachs) World-changing messages deserve to be heard -- really heard. But that only happens when we learn to tell a great story. Let’s re-invent our brands, make movies, or design and build websites. And along the way, get help telling the kinds of stories the world is waiting to hear: Free Range

Full Moon in Sagittarius

(Beth Owl's Daughter) ...In Western folklore, this full moon of May is sometimes known as the Dyad Moon or Lover’s Moon, celebrating the union of physical and spiritual. Also known as the Strawberry, Rose, or Flower Moon, some traditions say that this is the Moon that is most sacred to Artemis or Diana, the Huntress, and a Maiden aspect of the Goddess. This Moon favors expanding consciousness through chanting, sacred-sexuality, or working with plant allies (bhumi devas) and embracing the wild. Let the mood expand and become more adventurous and optimistic. Sagittarius is the consummate traveler, seeker, and vision quester. Sagittarius seeks wisdom through combining physical and spiritual experience in order to understand the true nature of existence. More

Atlantis: The Lost Continent

(JoeMozzone)

(3:10 mins) Leaked From NASA: Nibiru's Projected Path 2012

   

Danger: Flax seed is toxic and harmful! 
THE FACTS ON FLAX (Bruce Fife, N.D., Saturated Fats May Save Your Life)

[Try hemp, chia, or soaked raw nuts instead.] Many people nowadays are avoiding all types of meat and meat byproducts including fish. People prefer a vegetable source for Omega-3 fatty acids. Alpha-linolenic acid, which the body can convert into EPA, is found to some degree in many plants. Flaxseed contains [too much] alpha-linolenic acid (57%) of any commercially grown plant. [This causes an imbalance of the vital 3-6-9 ratio.] ... It's been hailed as a panacea for many ills. No respectable health food store would be caught dead without a half dozen assorted varieties available for sale.  Both good and bad can be said about alpha-linolenic acid and flaxseed oil in general. Unfortunately, the bad is ignored in preference to promoting only the good. This has created the misconception that flaxseed oil provides great benefits with little risks. In reality, there are many risks. More

• Seeds of Enlightenment 
• Bikini waxes cure lice
• Killing Web activist Swartz
• FBI investigated Scientology labor practices

Eating is Optional

WARNING: Without live guidance and proper practice, food is needed!

In India some practitioners are perfectly certain that no human food is necessary to sustain life and vigorous health. Breatharian-yogis living on prana (breath), solar emanations, exuded nectar, and perhaps water. The Buddha Boy did it. Here is one old man who has not eaten for 70 years. For some the practice of not-grounding, not touching earth, allows celestial energy to be collected without grounding out leading to incredible longevity (as understood by modern alchemists creating Ambrosia/Philospher's Stone from rarefied salts from evaporated dew that has not touched the ground).

 

EXPOSED: Satanism in the music industry

(Scrawny2Brawny) Music, Hollywood, Illuminati, NWO... This is a glimpse at the hidden force controlling "Hollywood" and its corrupt corporate music industry. We have looked over the Jordan and we have seen. Things are not what they seem..., as Pink Floyd phrased it ("Dogs"). Can anyone hear what Michael Jackson was saying?

"Being the artist that I am, at Sony, I've generated several billion dollars at Sony -- several billion. And they really thought that my mind was always on music and dancing... and it usually is. But they never thought that this performer, myself, would... OUT THINK THEM."

"I just need you to know, that this is very important what we're fighting for. Because I'm tired -- I'm really tired of the manipulation. I'm tired of how the press is manipulating everything in this situation.. They do not tell the TRUTH... They manipulate our history books."

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places" (Judeo-Christian scripture Ephesians 6:12).

"Sound City"


(Banana1015.com) Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor recently gave further details on [Nirvana drummer, Foo Fighters frontman] Dave Grohl’s upcoming Sound City Studios documentary and confirmed that their recent collaboration was part of the project. Grohl hasn’t volunteered much information about his upcoming movie on the studio where Nirvana recorded their famous album "Nevermind" -- the now closed Sound City Studios. The one thing Dave has hinted at is that we can “expect some epic jam sessions.” They will presumably involve: members of Ratt, Cheap Trick, REO Speedwagon, and Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor. Most of the information on the upcoming documentary has come from the other parties involved with the project, not Grohl. More

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What must they think in space? (cartoon)

Tom Tomorrow "This Modern World"; Wisdom Quarterly

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Meditation: gaining "absorption" (jhana)

Gary Sanders (Dharma Punx), edited by Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

Every counterpart sign or nimitta is different prior to jhana (lemeach/tumblr.com)

 

(simpsoncrazy.com)

I have purposely not done a lot of reading on the meditative absorptions (jhanas). My thinking has been, "The Buddha mastered them and found they weren't the 'be all, end all,' so why bother?" This was what I thought until a retreat I sat this summer.

A big motivation for going on a retreat in Northern California at Spirit Rock led by Theravada Buddhist nuns was

• to push myself
• to step outside of my comfort zone
• to go on retreat with teachers I wasn't already friends with
• to be  surrounded by people I'm not closely connected to
• to visit a place I haven't been before. 

The week-long retreat started off great. The first two days were a relief, decompressing from the daily grind of being a suburban working father of two, a husband, an Against the Stream Buddhist Mediation Society recovery group leader, a Santa Clarita [Saint Clare/Sainted Clarity] Valley mindfulness meditation circle facilitator, and music lover.

Spirit Rock is beautiful, very peaceful with rolling landscapes, and I felt great to be there. Then came the pain. I'd never experienced pain this bad on retreat. It started with my knees leading me to escape to a chair for a bit. Then it got worse. My lower back was screaming in pain, and more of my sitting had to be done in a chair. I even graduated to standing when pain and sleepiness got overwhelming. That was all just "pain," which could not compare to the "suffering" to come:

"What, me worry?"

Doubt and anger started creeping in. I began imagining, "These nuns are sadistic! How can we do silent hour-long sits WITHOUT guidance!?" "If I can't handle this, all these old people must really be hurting!!" "I can't even do metta (loving-kindness meditation) anymore; I'll never be able to do it again!"

We had exit interviews on the second to last day. I talked a little about what was arising. Then to my good fortune, before the last sit of the night, I ran into one of the nuns outside the quiet zone. We talked about my practice, and I got some answers. 

I described what had been happening for awhile in my practice, which turned out to be "access concentration." The nun told me about a technique -- picking one spot on the tip of the nose or nostrils and just staying exclusively on that single spot. She told me more, but apart from the subtleties, this was the salient point. Stick with a single spot to the exclusion of everything else.

I went into the last 60 minute sit of the night, taking to the cushion in Burmese pose, focusing just on a point inside one nostril. I stayed there like a cat at a mouse hole. 

Success

"Heyyy, it's all good!"

Before long, ALL of the hindrances fell away. With persistent effort, I stayed on that spot the whole sit. I sat like a ROCK. No pain, no discomfort, and to my astonishment, I felt an overwhelming joy (piti) washed through me. [Perhaps my earlier pain had been a clearing or an obstacle hindering me and encouraging me to give up like my very own struggle with "Mara"?]

The bell rang an hour later as the group called it a night. I was still glowing. The rest of the night, I felt blissful, effervescent, full of joy. It was spilling out of me. My original intention for going on retreat came to mind. I was flooded with total appreciation for both nuns leading. I slept like a baby.

The next morning was our first and only sit of the day. I went right to the single point of focus again. BUT this time it didn't take much effort at all. With zero hindrances, I sat like a rock, euphoric, saturated with joy. Time FLEW by.

Cut to today. I've read up on the meditative absorptions, the jhanas, a bit. I have been practicing the single point of focus a lot, but not necessarily as a daily practice. And I have not been reaching the joy and bliss I experienced on retreat. 

Recently, I read [Ayya Khema's student] Leigh Brasington's instructions on reaching the first jhana. I followed his instructions thoroughly. I started with loving-kindness for myself then went to the single point of concentration. 

Joy

"Who me, worried? Ha!"

Once the breath started to become barely noticeable [because the real object of meditation is not gross breathing but this very subtle breath, the calmed breath, which one could speculate may be prana], I stayed with that then switched to the pleasant feeling of the semi-smile I'd been holding most of the sit.

 

[Where attention goes, energy flows.] As that pleasant feeling built up more and more, I felt my smile grow bigger than my head. It was smiling on its own. I didn't will it. I wasn't trying to smile. The pleasant wholesome sensation -- which was more pleasing than the sensual pleasure I'd been chasing all my life -- seemed to be swirling, flowing, in motion. It was taking over my whole head, then my whole body then, surprisingly, it just kept expanding outside of my body, my environment... 

Not sure how long it was, but I stayed with it until it seemed to just fade a little. Once I felt grounded in my own body, I got off the cushion. It was quite late at night, and I felt very joyful and contented. Again I got to sleep like a baby. [Maybe this is what Zen means by beginner's mind, throttling back the breath to the softest purr, a sweet infantile innocence and peace.]

The Five Hindrances

Wisdom Quarterly edit of Wikipedia entry hindrances

(Quest4pce/flickr)

Five negative mental states impede success with meditation (jhāna and bhāvanā) and lead away from enlightenment and nirvana. These states are:

1. Sensual desire: craving for pleasurable stimulation of the senses
2. Anger or ill-will: feelings of malice, annoyance, aversion
3. Sluggishness-sleepiness (sloth-torpor): lack of physical or mental energy
4. Restlessness-worry: the inability to calm the mind
5. Skeptical doubt: lack of conviction, confidence, trust

• The Mystery of the Breath Sign (Arrow River)
• PHOTOS: Trip to Buddhist Pagan, Burma (Meg Williams)
• New Year's Intention Setting Ceremony, Hollywood

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What if the "apocalypse" is a fiscal cliff?

Harry Shearer ("Monty Burns," The Simpsons); Occupy; Wisdom Quarterly, COUNTDOWN: -3

Still reeling from the results of the presidential election, Burns tries to explain the upcoming "fiscal cliff." Although it is a creation of the mainstream media, we are all talking about it as a reality. Why would the MSM promote fear and loathing with this fiction? It is because now any eventuality, any fiscal fiasco, can be used as a pretext for war, austerity, police state surveillance and other measures... for depriving the needy and further enriching the greedy. But never mind. Look, over there, Justin! Stars! Hot girls!

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GUIDE TO MASS SHOOTINGS

Mark Follman, Gavin Aronsen, Deanna Pan (MotherJones.com); Wisdom Quarterly

A Guide to Mass Shootings in America

There have been at least 62 in the last 30 years -- and most of the killers got their guns legally.

• Never again (until the next time) 
• Why do these things happen?
• Why are 15 million Americans breathing fire?

Update, Dec. 14, 2012: On Friday morning, 27 people were killed in a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Among the fatalities are 20 children, six adults, and the shooter. Mother Jones is following the story closely with regular updates here.

 

It's perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened. The horrific mass murder at a movie theater in Colorado on July 20, another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on August 5, and another at a manufacturer in Minneapolis on September 27 are the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three decades. 

Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass murders* carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. MJ mapped them below, including details on the shooters' identities, the types of weapons they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed. More

Commentary

Wisdom Quarterly (EDITORIAL)

Since these are not likely "crazed lone gunman" incidents as the corporate media has reported for decades, we ask what is really going on. Manchurian Candidates are not so easy to produce and release into society. Just ask Judyth Vary Baker.

So they must serve some useful purposes. They spread fear and obedience/acceptance of police state tactics. We accept the encroachment of Orwellian surveillance and just about anything in the name of "security." 

Such horrific events are also exploited as pretexts for curtailing rights, liberties, and dissenting viewpoints. The founders realized that an armed citizenry was harder to conquer than a disarmed one. But now it isn't the British to worry about so much as their representatives in our own government. 

How easy it will now be to ban ordinary citizens from owning or possessing guns, but federal agents and "police" of all kinds keep arming themselves to the teeth. We assume it is for our protection, but FEMA camps are not for outsiders. We are the intended targets, "we the people," as every Occupy activist soon realized.

Anyone trying to free the country is in the way of those who would subvert our liberties and institute draconian measures to assure compliance. Not only will our policemen uncles but also our soldier brothers and sisters will surely turn their guns on us; it's in their training! 

• (They are almost all white males committing these mass murders, so the old shorthand "Beware of strangers" doesn't work to keep us falsely feeling safe anymore. But we can't call it racial if we're the race being named. Xenophobia says it's other, always "other.")
• Look how everyone now accepts "school lockdowns," a prison term used to break and abuse inmates in the name of security, without question. Accepts? They now demand it in the name of "security."
• Remember the founder who said something like, Those willing to give up liberty for security deserve neither and will lose both? (It was good ol' boy Ben Franklin, whose name in Israel could be translated as "Son of Frankenstein")

It is the point of their training: Practice on foreign enemies then search and destroy the "enemy within" whoever that may be. Who is it? Is it you? Is it me? We can't trust anyone! Run, hide, turn in your neighbor! Crawl and beg for your life. How could the population not stand up to this transparent set up.

Of course, we never believe anything bad about our government. We, however, have no trouble seeing the bad in other governments. So one can look in the mirror by seeing the same thing happening in China. On the same day as the Newtown shooting, a crazed man in China walked into a school (again) to slaughter children.

"Let's blame guns"? If guns were to blame, and they almost are, we should ban guns, ALL guns. But guns aren't going anywhere. There are 300,000,000 (three hundred million) in this country, a gun for everyone but the infants. And these crimes send sales soaring. What about when they are confiscated by those with the guns, the "security" forces? Then will we be safe from their enforcement schemes  

• Watch: The Year of Mass Shootings
• Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy
• More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence?
• What Exactly Is a Mass Shooting, Anyway?
• "I Was a Survivor": Recalling a Mass Shooting Four Years Ago Today
• What Happened in the Newtown School Shooting
• Guns and Mass Shootings
• • Doomsday Alert: the New Noah's Ark
  • Global warming and FBI secrets
  • "The perfect storm is unfolding" 

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The Zen of Rapping (2 Chainz)

Boo and Tee, recorded and edited by CC Liu and Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

Mysterious sign in Macau that may read "No photos" or "This way to WC" (Evs_in_Nz)

   

Dragon incense bowl (Evs_in_Nz)

"Everything hot, skip lukewarm. Tell Shorty, Bust it open, Uncle Luke on. Got a present for the present and a gift rappin'. I don't feel good, but my trigger happy. Like the stripper happy. Like they wish they had me. And I wish a [brutha] would like a kitchen cabinet. And me and you are cut from a different fabric. I ain't feeling so good, it's a bad habit. [Sista], sit down! You got a bad atti'. Gave her the wrong number and a bad addy. You ain't going nowhere, like a bad navi'. [Back] so big, I told her look back at it, look back at it, look back at it. Then I put a fat rabbit on her Craftmatic..."

• The "wacky" pot law that faltered in Oregon (ABC)
• Colorado, Washington await Fed response to new pot laws
• VIDEO: 2Chainz "Birthday" and "I'm Different" live
• VIDEO: "The History of the Internet" (The Onion)
• VIDEO: Kid Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness" (on drugs)

Zen: The way to meditate is not to meditate

Zen (absorption) meditation (Jennifer Clark)

Amber: What in the samsara is going on here? Why are you two quoting Zen Master 2 Chainz like he's dispensing koans?

Boo and Tee: It's our meditation! "Im Diffrent."

Amber: How in the world is that meditation?

Boo and Tee: You and Seven say, "The way to meditate is not to mediate." What better way not to meditate than to listen to rap?

Amber: That's not what that means! Zen teaches... [listen to an expert explanation by Alan Watts: PLAY]. Seven, let's explain this to them.
 

Amber and Seven: Zen Buddhism teaches people to BE HERE NOW. Where else can you be, if you really think about it?

Boo: I have to be here, don't I?

A&S: Do you?

Tee:  No, no, I can go somewhere else!

A&S: Then where would you be?

Boo and Tee: Uhhh...

A&S: Here would be there, and you'd be here. 

Boo: Why?

A&S: Because wherever you are, there you are!

Tee: WTF?

A&S: Where are you, Tee?

Tee: Right here.

Amber: And if we go over there and I ask you, "Where are you, Tee," then where are you?

Tee: Over there? No, right here! It depends where you ask me.

Amber: Does it?

Tee: Doesn't it? 

Seven: No, you always are where you are. And that's always here. Not here-here, but wherever "here" happens to be at the time.

Boo: I get it. [Explains it to Tee.]

Amber: *Laughing*
 

Seven: Of course, most of us aren't here even while we're here, in spite of the fact that we have nowhere else to be. That's the point.
A&S: That's why in yoga we constantly remind yogis, BE HERE NOW.

Tee: Where else would you be? Where else could you be?

A&S: We're wading back to the past or swimming toward the future like misguided salmon. [It's a space-time thing; we're here in space but not in time.] Sometimes we're trying to rush downstream, down the falls instead of holding still or struggling up. Down is easy. Just do nothing and the stream will take you down.

In the same way, meditation is easy because it is just not doing, not struggling, not striving and, most importantly, not getting in the way or flagging. But in a way it is something: preparing the soil, cultivating it, so that something can grow. And what grows is calm-collected-concentration to zen (jhana), that is, to absorption. This happens by paying constant attention to a single object.

In other words, "The way to meditate is not to meditate." Is not to "try," not to force, not to struggle, not to doze off, not to think, not to drop attention from the object, but just place it there and leave it there and STAY right there. Stay with it instead of going away to something "more interesting." BE HERE NOW. What could be more interesting than right here right now?

Tee: Anything else at any other time. Naw, I feel ya.

Boo: *Giggling*

Boo and Tee: Can? Wait. Can..? Wait. That makes sense.

A&S: It does? Then we should follow our own advice.

Boo and Tee: Don't you?

A&S: I for one think too much. Me, too. But you guys can just drop things, just not think, just "concentrate" -- sequester the mind/heart/attention -- on a single thing so there's nothing else. It's not nothing. It's one thing and one thing only, like the subtle breath at the nostril when the mind is quiet or watching. Or a dot on the wall or a mantra or a candle flame... So the mind can rest and blossom and do what we can't do with it. We can't concentrate, but the mind/heart can, and a concentrated mind can do anything. Like in that scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when they're out of control on that all black spaceship. They get it under control by stopping trying to control it. They've just come from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe and realize that it has a far better idea of where they are going, as they time travel (like we are doing right now), than they do. Let go and let Brahman. Trust in the Universe. Karma is not mocked. It's like so many Judeo-Christian terms tweaked slightly to return them to a meaning they once conveyed.
 

What has rap come to? French Montana (with surprise guest P Diddy) live

at the Key Club, CA, Dec. 1, 2012. The crackling sound is our ear drums.

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Super Mario is a Buddhist (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; GodSlayerNES; Dr. Jane McGonigal (BuddhistGeeks.com); Dan Milano (ABC)

A short film about two Buddhist moments in Mario and Zelda for the NES.

  

Super Mario is a Buddhist

Dr. McGonigal and Mario, 1st BG Conference

(WQ) Prof. Jane McGonigal, Ph.D., is a game designer at Stanford Univ. who wants to change the world through gaming. She delivered a riveting presentation with her twin sister, also a Stanford professor (different hairdo), at the first Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011 at the Univ. of the West. She detailed the benefits of multiple-player games where people are going into the world and using gamer virtues for real-life good. From better community organizing, to solutions for regional famines, to possible treatments for cancer, McGonigal and her gamers are changing the world one epic win at a time.

• VIDEO: Who is Mario? (Trivia by WatchMojo)
• (Sept. 13, 2012) This high-jumping overall-wearing Italian is the world’s most beloved video game mascot. Join WatchMojo to explore ten pieces of trivia about The Super Mario Bros.
• Will gaming save the world?

New Super Mario Bros. U features five players

Dan Milano  (ABC News, Nov. 25, 2012)

Mario in high definition. That sounds like something Nintendo fans should be scrambling over each other to get their hands on. The issue is, with the release of "New Super Mario Bros. U" for the Wii U, this visual update is six years too late. Xbox and Playstation games have been wowing us visually for that time and in 2012, the "HD" angle is pretty, but old hat. So what else is new?

  

Tanooki suit folklore (nintendolife)

Well, for one, Mario is flung southwest from Princess Peach's castle at the start of the game, technically landing him in a new area of the Mushroom Kingdom. There are a handful of new baddies mixed with classic foes, with a new power-up or two to compliment the always-flawless level design. The stages are presented with an over-arching map that you can zoom in and out of, very much akin to the world map in "Super Mario World."
 
While there are some new elements at play, most of it equates to the same old platformer as far as gameplay is concerned. Some levels are indistinguishable from zones in previous "New Super Mario Bros." titles.

 

The Wii U's big new thing is the touch-screen GamePad controller, which is used most creatively in this game's co-op mode. Up to five players can... More

• Wii U Game Review: "Nintendo Land"
• Nintendo's Era of Censorship 
• Games Radar: New Mario
• SOURCES: FilibusterCartoons.com; Ksitigarbha; Swastika as Buddhist symbol; Shigeru Miyamoto; North American video game crash of 1983; Tanuki; Best-selling franchises

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Obama reorienting our Moral Compass (cartoon)

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY) based on Linn Washington, Jr. (PhilyTrib.com, 11-13-12)

Business as Usual: Obama meets with dictator in Buddhist Cambodia this month (AP).

Put it on the prompter and Ill say it.

On the eve of the 2012 presidential election, Selma James, an internationally-respected activist living in London, offered some insights bound to anger Obama-hero-worship circles:

“Obama has disappointed us so much, but he has a second chance, and we will not leave it up to him,” James said before she delivered an address in Center City around her latest book Sex, Race and Class, featuring a collection of writings by the widow of famed Caribbean author/intellectual/activist CLR James.

One area that President Obama and America’s political-power elites cannot ignore any longer, James said during an interview, is America’s alarming and growing rates of poverty [due to incessant war, racism, hypocrisy, and empire-building which enriches the the military-industrial complex as it impoverishes its 310 million expendable citizens].

“The U.S. has more poverty than any industrialized country,” she says about the nation she was born in in 1930 but left for a better life in England a quarter-century later.

“If we don’t address poverty, we will be suicidal. Suicidal greed got the U.S. into this economic mess,” James said. “Remember that Nelson Mandela said that poverty is made by man and can be stopped by man.”

James isn’t blaming Obama for causing poverty or exacerbating it, as his Republican presidential challengers fraudulently did in calling him the “food stamp president.” [That title would better suit George W. Bush. But no one wants to know that most people on welfare in America are White because that counters the stereotype promoted by the mainstream media.]

However, James and others are rightly noting that as president, Obama has a responsibility to address dire issues confronting the country's citizens.

Those issues include poverty (particularly the obscene numbers of children living in poverty), structural joblessness, unjust mass imprisonment, urban decay, climate change, and a host of other issues brushed aside by the body politic for too many years.

As the first Black man nominated by a poltical party to run for the U.S. presidency, thereby making history in the arena of U.S. presidential campaigns noted, “…whenever a government fails to secure for all its citizens that which it guarantees, such a government is nearing dangerous ground...” with such “neglect” becoming like a “cancer” that will continue to grow and spread.

But that Black man was not Barack Obama, nominated by the Democratic Party in 2008. It was George Edwin Taylor, nominated by the National Liberty Party in 1904....

 

During the first term of Philadelphia’s first Black mayor, W. Wilson Goode Sr., there were calls for him to end racially discriminatory police brutality.

 

It was implausible in the 1980s to assert that Mayor Goode didn’t know about it. And it’s implausible in the 21st Century to assert that President Obama doesn’t know what is going on with war, unemployment, poverty brought about by the government, and urban violence throughout the land. 

But the Powers That Be profit from mass incarceration. It's implausible to think the president is unaware of what is happening to Blacks while he sits in the White House reading teleprompters for war-profiteering companies, spying agencies, and the Dept. of War (Pentagon). He should read Dr. Michelle Alexander's books to better understand what he continues to promote after Bush and Cheney.

• Incarceration Nation: Jim Crow in the Age of Colorblindness
• Obama, speak truth to Cambodia's dictator Hun Sen

Holding the U.S. president accountable does not diminish the history-making or role-modeling stature of Barack Obama....

This problem of losing our "moral compass" is not just a Black problem. It is a fundamental problem with America.

And the source of this problem is that Americans believe the myths we concoct about ourselves just as others around the world believe the myths we Americans project about our country.

“One problem I have been having for decades is that many people here believe the myth of the U.S. as the ‘panacea’ of democratic order, which is that they cannot believe their ears... More

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