Ironies, Complexities and Contradictions November 29, 2014

Hawaiian history. Did we ‘steal’ Hawaii from the Hawaiians? You betcha.

But remember, the indigenous Hawaiian had no concept of private ownership of land. The King owned it all. The people were to live productively-fish, farm, fight and die- peacefully on the land. Take care they  didn’t step in the King’s shadow.

The first white men to arrive, with billowing sails- and TB, venereal disease, measles, mosquitoes, nails, smallpox and other civilized gifts-were Englishmen. Captain James Cook-no ‘e’-and his horny crew. Cook got eaten. Long pig.

Russians popped in.  Popped out. Then come the American missionaries with their book and outdoor walk- around night gowns. Nudity was a sin. Sex was a sin. Everything was a sin. The Hawaiians say, “When the missionaries arrived, they had the Bibles and we had the land. Now we got the Bibles and they got the land.” Religion reared its ugly head. Most of those early missionary women had a terrible case of the ugugs.

Don’t forget the whalers. Fun and games when they came ashore. Hottest spot was Lahaina. Wow wow wow and whoopity do. Then commerce. Sugar. Queen Emma- a compassionate, sensible woman- looks around and sees that the pale faces controlled all the land. So she issued a decree-the Great Mahele-sign a paper, peasant, and your small piece of paradise-your kuliana- belong to you and you can ‘sell’ that piece of paper for a few bucks or a bottle of beer to any one who can then kick you off your land.

A personal touch, years later- the 1980s-my husband and I buy our land from Alexander and Baldwin. Where they got it, nobody knows. Or tells, anyway. We bought it. Worked for the money, used it to buy a piece of paper that says ‘we own it’. I ain’t given’ it back to no Hawaiians. I gave it to NTBG. John Allerton gets in the act.

Christian missionaries and American business men have a sacred economic system.  Greedy business.  Form a group, plea with Washington to become a territory-be sure you read Mark Twain. Call out the Marines. Haul Emma’s ass off to home detention.   Commerce reigns.  Tourism. Development. Suburban sprawl. Money. Money. Money, honey.Religion. Capitalism. Holy shit.

Then comes the  American military  in force. Big brass US Navy muckity mucks. So racist they make Ferguson look like a luau. Pearl Harbor was a big deal. Excellent Naval Base. Best in the Pacific. The Massey case was a scandalous yellow journalism news blast all over the country. Hearst had a field day. There goes tourism. Matson squeals. Help. Shirley Temple sails the Lurline.  Kind’a cleans up the act. Good for business.

Then come the Japanese and Pearl Harbor. Please note, they only bombed the bases. Made a mess. Martial law. Americans  put back to work-the Great Depression goes bye bye- and the rich get richer building war ships. Kaiser builds a gated community.

If I were an Hawaiian, I’d make ‘them’ clean the place up before I took it back.

 

 

 

 

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Bettejo’s Cat House November 20, 2014

Cat’s are really getting a bad rap. Not only on Kauai-the largest and most infamous extermination island in Hawaii-where we want to extinct parakeets, feral chickens- ‘specially crowing roosters-coqui frogs, cats and other living things. (Not tourists, or rich guys in gated communities, or military personnel who shoot off rockets and stuff at Barking Sands.} But lately, cat surfing around, I’ve discovered they don’t make  good pets. Too independent, won’t come when called, hate to be petted, undomesticated, night prowling predators, and-for goodness sake- a health hazard.

Cat poop causes dread disease and possible death! Horrors!! Why didn’t somebody tell me? I’ve been around cats and cat poop for 84 years. My first cat, Helen, a yellow tiger, slept with me in my crib. When she and I outgrew the  crib, she slept in an overhead light fixture in my bedroom and once I put her in a flour bin, which startled my mother when she opened it to bake a cake and a white flash of angry feline fur flew out in her face. My mother screamed. My father, busy chopping the head off a fat rooster in the back yard, yelled, “What now?”

“Helen just jumped out of the flour bin.”

“How’d she get in there?”

Neither Helen nor I ever told. When Helen went to cat heaven, my father bought me a Siamese cat.  At that time we lived in an apartment in San Francisco  and she walked around a six-story ledge every night-rain or shine- red eyes scaring the neighbors. We named her Wishee.  We also had a Collie, named Lady,  who chased cable cars. My next cat was a black cat named Moses, who lived with us in Montclair, then Pleasanton, then Marin County. Mose would only enter the house on Wolf’s Grade through a living room window, and exit from my parents bedroom in the middle of the night. He’d put a paw under their closed-door and shake it.  It had a wrought iron handle that rattled down the hallway like an angry wraith. I don’t know that it awakened the dead, but it certainly wakened me and my parents. I guarantee you, one of us got out of bed and let the cat out.

Someone, in the cat bad- rapping scene, asked when and why we domesticated the damn things to begin with and, indeed, it is somewhat of a mystery.

What we know is by the Middle Egyptian Empire the cat as a fisher, hunter, and ratter was known and appreciated. Later on it was worshipped as a god.

So? Well, my two new kittens, Reba and Rosa, love to be petted. Come when called. Purr in harmony. Live in a three-story cat palace that probably cost more than most kid’s cribs. My house is a cat house. They romp in the rafters. Climb the walls. Jump up and down on counters and tables. Sleep in a lump in my water-bed. Eat like horses.

And, dare I ask? Why do you think they call it pussy?

 

THE CHURCH, THE STATE, AND THE MILITARY November 14, 2014

 

The church, the state and the military are the three most powerful constructs in the world and, like a three-legged beast, they teeter on the slope of a crumbling economic decline.

Of the three, the church is the most powerful. The patriarchal Gods of the three dominant religions are proof of this power. Without the vast numbers of ignorant followers there would be fewer wars. These are the rank and files who die in the battles their Gods create. On the one hand Gods preach love and peace, on the other they preach hate and war. The peace message of Their Holy Books is cherry picked to lure the credulous into the fold. Then, when it suits Them, God flips a page.

Almost everyone remembers, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, ” Isaiah 2:4; but flip a page, read Joel 3:10, “You can beat your plowshares into swords, and your prune hooks into spears.”

As for Christ,  in Mathew 10:34 He said

“I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword.”

To obey these contradictions, and they are multitude, would drive a sane human up a wall. They keep true believers busy beating plowshares and pruning hooks into spears and swords.

Selling spears and swords is a profitable proposition. War is good for the pocket book. Make hoards of innocent humans miserable and millions, armed with spear and a sword, march off to fight for God and country.

We’re living it. Kauai is a microcosm of this alliance, a resort-coated, church-attending fortress. Count the houses of worship and in front of none of these, except at Christmas, does the banner of peace wave. One of Kauai’s largest employers is now the Pacific Missile Range Facility. PMRF is big on the Westside.

Today America is at the center of the mess, a power player in a world gone mad and, in many ways, we’re responsible. We’ve spent much of our time feeding the slouching beast, it’s a moneymaker and we’ve down little if anything to slow it down. We had voices, why didn’t we use them?

Many of us did and hopefully our numbers are growing. Growing because religion, and its warrior Gods, has dug itself into a pit from which there is no escape. Fewer worshippers every day can swallow the hate spewing from the mouths of bigots; nor would they consider being part of the multitudes who flock to their call. God’s mindless followers are not only a secular anathema, they are a malignant mass growing on the face of faith itself.

Reasoning minds know that most of this assembly joined the ranks because their lives are so miserable they have nowhere else to go. In the Christian neck of these dark woods, they’ll buy anything, Armageddon, Rapture, because death is the answer to their prayers: God will destroy the world in order to save it.

Introduce Muslims fanatics and you’ve got a death cult run amok. The blood curdling commands of their peace loving God send reasoning Muslims running for cover; and their neighbor, the Jewish warfare state, has a God so fierce He rattles his nukes.

But who, the sanest voice amongst them, dare point a finger?

Where the Islamic religion has taken hold in foreign countries, they frequently carry banners KILL THE INFIDEL in the street.

In many of these civilized societies religious differences are not to be tampered with and signs like these are tolerated.

The Muslim fundamentalist believes martyrs, who die for their Gods, are awarded with 72 virgins. Think of the Islamic furor created when a Danish cartoonist dared to depict the Muslim guardian in the sky proclaiming that so many martyrs had died Paradise had run out of virgins. There were death threats over that one and the presses stopped in many of the most civilized countries.

Does freedom of religion trump freedom of the press?

In our neck of this dense wood we have an almost sacred secular document, our Bill of Rights. The First Amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion is our birthright and we set religious freedom on a high rock. So how do the sanest voices in American get around that?

Joseph Campbell said, “When Gods die there’s hell to pay.”

A bottom line problem, as I see it, is that one is not born religious. One is born human. Then, with a sprinkling of water, a dunking, a whisper in the ear, and the passage of a holy scroll one’s faith is defined and a beautiful young mind is crippled.  Soon the concept of sin is introduced. Hell and damnation and Satan are boogies that hide in the dark and there is no school in this neck of the tangled woods where a child is told there is no Santa. One can spend a lifetime trapped in the myth. A few fight their way out of this dark place, which can be as painful for the adult as it was for the child, but many never escape. They slump to another house of worship. Dyed in the cradle believers. To dare speak the truth on any subject, if it displeases their God, is a perilous endeavor.

What kind of mind believes pandas sprang full blown ten thousand years ago? We are not subjected here to the bleating of the sheep, they who proclaim themselves men of science presented these beliefs in court. Creative men with a grand design vomited gibberish, jabberwocky and gobbledygook in an American courtroom, were called down on it by the judge, but left the room with their beast drawn carts filled with true believers. In many ways we have not evolved since the Scopes trial.

So let us now dare say it: to hold staunchly to a story one’s reasoning mind tells you is a lie is an emotional disease. Belief thinking is the most dangerous force in the world today. With our voices we must break the back of this rough beast. Shove the creature off the cliff and let the voice of reason ring out loud and clear.

 

 

 

 

THE OCRACY November 6, 2014

Fortunately, here in Hawaii, we lucked out. There are more sane and intelligent voters than there are nuts. Also, it seems, some folks have long memories. Thank goodness,

I’m speaking about Duke Aiona. In the 2010 Gubernatorial election,  Pastor Ed Silvoso declared, “It doesn’t matter if the Republican or the Democratic win the governorship of Hawaii. Either one is  already in the kingdom.” He was referring to Duke Aiona, who ran as a Republican and Mufi Hanniman who ran as a Democrat.

Ed Silvoso also, in Mar  del Plata, Argentina, likened opponets to his movement ‘rats that would be killed when necessary.”

Duke Aiona, said at  Silvoso’s conference, November 7, 2009 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, “We’re one body of Christ, we’re one church , and we’re all here to disciple the nations, here in Hawaii and everywhere else, and I want you all to know that. May God’s grace be with the participants of the International Transformation Network Global Conferencd. Aloha from myself, Lt.Governor Duke Aiona to all but particularly Ed (Silvoso.)”

In that race, Duke ran as a Republican and Mufi ran as a Democrat competing in the primaries with Neal Abercrombe.

In the last, most recent election-11/2014-  Duke ran as a Republican and Mufi ran as an independent spoiler to destroy Ige’s chance of winning. Once again sanity reigned.

ITN-International Transformation Network- is that network of which Silvoso is CEO. ”ITN operatives have played a significant role organizing and inspiring Uganda’s legislators who have drafted, cosponsored, and backed draconian  an Anti Homosexuality Bill before Uganda’s parliament the execution of many HIV positive Ugandans…” The penalty for being homosexual in Uganda is life imprisonment.

ITN efforts in Hawaii were coordinated with an entity called Transformatio Hawaii of which Duke was  listed as Hawaii’s honorary chairman and member.

Happily, today, many remembered the association with a religion-political movement that beyond US shores, is brutally eliminationist. It’s goal is to bring its version of Christianity into all areas of society. Government, media, education and business.  Isn’t that just too too Republican?

On December 8, 2004, Duke proclaimed, “..our school will become God’s school, our community will become God’s community, our city will become God’s city, our island, our State will become God’s Hawaii…”

A theocracy is a social structure. Like a Monarchy, a democracy, a dictatorship. Theocracy being the absolute worst.

THEOCRACY:

A government which claims to be immediately directed by God, and divinely blessed. The country tends to be intolerant either passively or overtly to faiths other than that recognized by the state. The country identifies itself and its laws within religion and religious doctrine. There is no legal separation between church and state, and citizens of other faiths are often excluded or hampered from participation or expelled. Because a theocracy is exclusionary, it can never be a democracy which requires inclusion without exception of all equally. It cannot be a republic because a republic requires the separation of church and state and equal rights to all.

Examples of theocratic countries include Israel and Iran.

…and Hawaii?