PonderEthereal

Every day, I get an email in my mailbox from google alerts. It includes all blog entries and news stories from that 24 hour period with the word ‘witchcraft’ in it. Aside from the blog posts with the occasional spell, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the news. All over the world, innocent people are being stoned, burned and otherwise murdered for witchcraft.

All over the continents of Africa and Asia, in Saudi Arabia, India and in Papua New Guinea, people are still persecuted with a death sentence for practicing witchcraft and the terror and craze that comes over people at the mention of witchcraft still causes innocents to be murdered.

Only this month, a child was accused of witchcraft in the Central African Republic because she had nightmares and walked in her sleep, something that is known as a sleep disorder.

This WEEK alone, A story appeared of two children…

There was no one or nothing in the dream that was familiar to my waking life. I was homeless, I think. Most people were, actually. There did seem to be the remnants of war… a militant outlook on life. I was taking care of a baby that wasn’t mine. I realized with rousing horror that it was now legal for anyone to ask you personal questions before deciding what services or goods to offer you. It was now possible to be denied housing, food or access to anything based upon your personal preferences and attributes.

It was legal because of some sort of unilateral decision made by the president in this ‘very different political time’. It was a decision made for the ’safety of the people’. Somehow, we, the people, went right along with questionable step after horrible decision based upon obviously bullshit rhetoric that we swallowed because it was…

Republicans are moving out, Britney Spears is divorcing Kevin Federline… the world, is finally recovering from this funk of absolute insanity that it fell into.

It’s the sort of insane drawl like when you’re really high on whatever your substance of choice is was and you start to make a really great point but you ramble off into TMI territory in some self revelation and ‘wake up’ and realize that you’ve forgotten what your point was and you’ve just gone WAY over the line in TMI and everyone around you is staring at you? It’s like that.

Kevin filing for sole custody and spousal support and Bush trying to get his Lame Duck congress to push his last few strokes of legislative genius through is like the scramble to recover any sort of dignity one would have left after that sort of thing. I have it on good authority that it…

I dread 9/11 every year. Not because I remember the tragedy… although I do, in passing, before I send love and compassion and call it a day. But because the entire nation braces for reliving this tragedy. It’s not the event that haunts us, it’s the scar it left on our collective psyches. The nation braces and in the process, they harden and become defensive and afraid and it hurts me. All of this fear and hurt floating willy-nilly about. It’s jarring.

When I dropped Ethan off at school, there was a red, white and blue banner up so I explained what it was for. He was only 1, a week from turning two, when the World Trade Center was attacked. He doesn’t remember it.

Howard Stern was replaying the 9/11 broadcast this morning. Parts of his broadcast were relaying live broadcasts fromt he big news channels. When I tuned in,…

I am open to the idea that some individuals might be ready for marriage or sex before the age of 18 or 21.. whatever the legal age is in your state. I am ok with the idea of polygamy as long as the wives and kids are taken care of appropriately. I am pro-religious rights even when I don’t understand your practices.

But IMO, it is sick and wrong to force a young person into marriage/sex in the name of anything - even religion.

I am totally pro-diversity. I love brown people as much as white people. I think that people should be able to LEGALLY immigrate to the US. I think that people should be able to seek amnesty in the US. I know that immigration is part of what America is. We’re the mixing pot, remember?

I think that the bill that is up for a vote is shit.

1. If you are not an American Citizen, you aren’t covered by the Constitution and you don’t have the right to protest here. End of discussion.
2. If you want to be a citizen, do it legally. Learn the language, pay taxes, be responsible. Once you’ve gone through the process, I fully advocate you ability to be treated as a full citizen.
3. Thankfully, they struck the part about making them felons. Not because I think we should go easy on them - but because it was stupid…

… at this new video. But not because of what she’s going through bue because of what I know the next video will be of. We aren’t going to give them what they want. We never do. They will kill her.

Each family just sits and waits.. hoping beyond all hope - but knowing they are waiting simply for it to be over. And that it is only ever over one way. Families have come before them and families will come after. Sacrifices came before her and sacrifices will come after and in the middle is this woman that is about to lose her life. That video is like watching a killer sneak up behind someone and being powerless to stop them.

Sad and sickening… and terrifying.

We can stop states from recognizing loving marriages between people of the same sex… but we CAN’T stop states from assisting suicide? Not that I’m claiming anti or for either of them, mind you. But when you talk about moral degradation, and then put the concepts of love and death side by side and a nation stops the marriage but not the suicide, you have to wonder.

Hm.

I’m not sure where to even start with this. The Vatican announced that “men with “deep-seated” homosexual tendencies should not be ordained but those with a “transitory problem” could be if they had overcome them for three years.”.

More of the same uneducated religious bullshit, of course. Transitory Problem. I have an idea. Lets just ignore fact and believe what we WANT to believe because religion gives us that power.

Secondly, the article says that there is concern that this could cause a shortage of priests in the United States. Hell, it would be NOTHING compared to if they said child molesters couldn’t be priests. Then we’d have to come up with a new religion to replace Catholicisim cuz lord knows women aren’t good enough to be priests and all the men who want to be priests would be disqualified.

And really, who says having a shortage of Catholic priests in…

I’m about to step into Journalcon tonight and I havent written a post of substance in some time. It usually isn’t this dead around here, I promise. So on that note, there was something that I noticed on my trip to Mexico that I thought I’d share.

We camped at a privately owned campground that was well kept. It was relatively clean, they picked up trash on a daily basis, it had bathrooms with toilets that were cleaned daily and they had showers. We heard, as we approached the campground, about how this hadn’t been done last year or a few years ago, they hadn’t even had this other thing completed. The bathrooms were standing testament to the slow development of creature comforts here. The ladies bathroom was almost complete. The men’s bathroom, not quite and the showers were still cement stalls with pull strings - but maybe they would…