can't think what to call this one

[september 8th] ......... already!!!

Could it be that it was not yesterday when I posted on Beslan? It seems like yesterday. Why is time flying past so quickly and why can't we find any time to do the things we need to?

[infidelity] do single email accounts and open passwords help

There's a part of one of my books where the husband becomes suspicious of his wife, not in infidelity but in disloyalty to the group they've set up. A key employee comes to him to voice her suspicions about a money transfer, which raises issues in itself but still ... :

‘Another thing. I noticed now that you accessed her account without a password.’

‘Our accounts are open to each other. We use a password to enter the computer.’

‘Very touching. Your idea or hers?’

‘Mine.’ ‘And she went along with it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wouldn’t a woman who knows that £5000 is coming her way do something to create a password? Or alternatively, wouldn’t she start up a new account in another name?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘She either doesn’t know about this money, she’s naïve or else she’s an amazingly cool operator.’

Running a single email is what some couples are doing and it's a double-edged sword:

James Furrow, a professor of marital and family therapy at Fuller Theological Seminary, an evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif., said sharing an account can be helpful if the goal is promoting openness.

But he said the practice can hurt a relationship if it's meant "as an act of deterrence." "We can take steps to manage our behavior, but then the problem with that is it begins to become the emphasis rather than the trust of giving the other the benefit of the doubt," Furrow said. "What you end up with is the doubt."

He has a point about trust, the central issue in many partnerships. A single email account can deter the would-be philanderer from outside but does nothing to help trust. And just how much contact is permissible before it becomes cheating? It's a sad thing but any sort of contact between a man and a woman, however innocuous, is going to cause slurs and suspicion and if he or she is married - that's a double-whammy.

We're not talking here about the partner who already wants to cheat or to have some light relief, we're not talking about an unattached freewheeler who can't commit and wants to play the field well into his or her 30s. We're talking about a contact where one or both parties have partners already and both want to do the right thing. If the groundrules are laid down, it deters the crossing of any lines and allows the contact to be maintained without suspicion.

I'm not sure about joint emails but each to his or her own, of course. Passwords then become the issue. Do both partners have them or not? Is there any innocent reason to have separate passwords? Are there some things which are said which, while not cheating per se, would not be what one partner would want known by the other?

Or is that cheating?

Can each partner in a relationship maintain other contacts of the opposite gender or does that come under the umbrella "cheating", by definition? Should the method be to include the other's partner in the trialogue or quadralogue?

How to resolve this thing?

[christians] and their worst enemies - the pseudo-christians

The word Christian is becoming a dirtier and dirtier word and that's the general idea at this major juncture in the Great Work of Ages.

It should mean Albert Schweizer [though he challenged the accepted view], Mother Teresa, anyone of compassion who has a healing mission. It should be synonymous with caring and reasonableness. If you go to a Christian, you have a right to expect succour, with a bit of preaching on the side [Salvation Army].

Christians didn't corner the market in compassion and softness but they certainly became synonymous with it.

What you most definitely do not need but are increasingly expecting these days, is the Ian Paisley type and this sort of man:

About 100 protesters arrived at Tempe's Faithful Word Baptist Church on Sunday to demonstrate against controversial comments from its pastor, Steven L. Anderson.

The pastor delivered a sermon last month that was entitled, "Why I Hate Barack Obama," and called on his parish to pray for the death of the president.

This is Imam jihadi stuff.

Look, this blog joined others in slamming Obama. He is currently America's worst nightmare but a Christian doesn't pray for his death. He prays for deliverance from the man. G-d can go about it any way He likes.

This has always been the cross the Christian has had to bear - the bad press. The Crusades were a state run affair, in pure white livery, under the banner of Christendom and involving rivers of ankle-deep blood. The Inquisition was another state affair, masquerading as Christian. The American "Christian" Right is its own worst enemy and they drag the substance and message down into the money coffers.

Just as people such as Rumsfeld gave small c conservatives a dirty name, so all these people give Christians a dirty name too. Nowhere does it say, in scripture, that a believer has to be a narrow-minded bigot and yet doesn't this faith attract that sort, like fireflies?


In the name of the Father and of the Son and into the hole he goes ...

Dave Allen pricked that bubble with his sketches on the Church and Christians could well do with a dose of self-deprecating humour.

Italy - two lands in one

Italy is impressive, you know - crosses on walls in supermarkets and even in police stations, a fierce determination to keep the country papal and yet the worst men and women in the world, the Black Nobility, are right alongside them, wreaking havoc and spitting on the word Christian.

It's been noted by many that wherever compassionate Christianity goes, so too goes all the dirt and sleaze, such as that which Berlusconi represents. It shows a fundamental flaw in Catholicism although I'm a fan of Catholicism for its standing firm on the rock while all around are wandering about on the shifting sands.

Their own worst enemies

There is always this seemingly dualistic aspect of Christianity - that where it goes, preaching its message of love, also go the false Christians, preaching their messages of hate. These latter are not part of Christianity in gospel terms and the purpose is clear - false flags, fifth columnists - to bring it down from within. Nothing is more designed to turn the populace off an idea than a nasty zealot narrowmindedly pursuing it, oblivious to all around.

Is it any wonder the Gnostics saw their opening, turning the whole idea on its head and casting G-d as the Demi-urge?

Gary H. Kah, in "En Route to Global Occupation", Huntington House, 1991, wrote:

Gnosticism, the most effective and widely accepted form of pantheism, was more deceptive and clever than the others, developing the occult's only major counter explanation to the Message and Person of Christ.

The Gnostics were the chief adversaries of the Apostle Paul and the early Church, relentlessly pursuing Christians wherever they went, long before the mystery religions even began to crumble.

The world has remained largely ignorant of this eternal war and the problem is that even scholastic Christians must admit that what the other side says does refer to historical events and what could well be truths, albeit selectively chosen, incorrectly interpreted, twisted and arranged to open a portal for one you really don’t want to have as your god.

It’s a finely woven pantheistic synthesis of all religions and philosophical thought, the ‘big tent’ concept, thereby appealing to a far broader base than mere Christianity, Islam, Judaeism or any other single school of thought.

This is what the Gnostics say:

‘The blame for the world’s failings lies not with humans, but with the creator. In the Gnostic world, there are many beings and one is called Sophia [or wisdom]. In the course of her journeys, Sophia came to emanate, from her own being, a flawed consciousness, a being who became the creator of the material and psychic cosmos, all of which he created in the image of his own flaw.

This being, unaware of his origins, imagined himself to be the ultimate and absolute God, the Demiurge, but was not and brought chaos. Humankind contains a perishable physical and psychic component, as well as a spiritual component which is a fragment of the divine essence.

Human nature mirrors the duality found in the world: in part it was made by the false creator God and in part it consists of the light of the True God.

LOL. So, ignoring the compassionate and healing mission urged by JC in the gospels, the Gnostic says that this compassionate creator is flawed and the other fella, the one who actually brings human misery, is in fact Good and is the True Light.

Sigh.

I blame the false Christians for letting this get a foothold - the ones who focus exclusively on the negative aspects, the stern and unbending bigotry, standing in pairs in those awful suits, lightyears form the real world, to the exclusion of what they should really be about - about building things like communities, spreading goodwill and ministering to the disadvantaged, devoid of weird rituals and sacrifices and all that and looking so unnaturally strange, like the Pod People.

The Church in Russia

This is a perfect example of Christianity removed from the people and the people reduced to superstitious reverers of icons. The sight of the kiss between the Patriarch and the leaders reinforces the statist nature of the church over there, although many do believe and it's almost an act of defiance against the repressive history that they do so.

Doctors minister to the sick instead of driving Formula 1 cars for a living. Accountants attend to the numbers instead of doing reviews on stage. Why don't Christians stick to what they should be doing - attacking all wrong and humbug and tending to the unfortunate?

Not urging people to pray for someone's death.

[what to tax next] france's novel approach

What they give with one hand, they take with the other:

Pour compenser la suppression de la taxe professionnelle, Bercy réfléchit à une taxe de 1 000 euros par antenne de téléphone mobile.

En plein débat sur les ondes radio, cette taxe n'a pourtant rien à voir avec la problématique des antennes et de leur effet potentiel sur la santé. Cette nouvelle taxe serait créée pour compenser partiellement la disparition de la taxe professionnelle, décidée par le gouvernement.

Tax on mobile phone antennae. Hmmmm. I wonder what other taxes they could dream up. Window tax? Here are some of the more bizarre taxes:

Peter the Great ... souls

Nero ... urine

Tennessee ... illegal drugs

If you were the taxman - what would you tax?

[photos] of this sceptred isle

Try these photos for size - impressive.