Ted Cruz Tries to Comprehend the Nets and Tubes of the Internet

On Net Neutrality:

I am just naturally hostile and cannot understand neutrality. 

I understand the Tubes part of the Internet, but where are the Nets?


.

100 Italian Priests Blackmailed In Internet Sex Ring

Blackmailed Italian Priests

Up to 100 priests in Italy were blackmailed by two men who used Facebook and Messenger to snare them, according to a police investigation. The men, who were arrested on suspicion of blackmail on 26 July, demanded up to €10,000 (£8,000) from priests in return for keeping quiet about erotic webcam sessions and real sexual encounters, reported Italian weekly Panorama citing judicial sources… 

The priest paid Trementino regular sums of money and bought him a car but eventually reported him to the police. 

In the meantime, Trementino said a second priest contacted him through Facebook and invited him to spend three days in a hotel in Rome with him, offering him a train fare and €300 to buy cannabis, alcohol and condoms. 

Trementino claims he then began to receive requests for erotic webcam sessions from "tens" of priests. He added: "I would get up to five requests per day from all over Italy, even one from France. I felt I had ended up in a net of perversion."

La Dolce Vita de Celibacy!  Oh those crazy I-talians.  Whatever.

The Present Burnout of Christianity

The present burnout in Christianity is the result of many factors.

One, the fundamentalists, the literalists have been waiting in high gear for the end of the world for forty years now and two thousand years before that. I can remember before cable TV there was a Saturday night gospel show on a UHF channel called “The King is Coming”. Of course to a raised Catholic, somebody reading the book of revelation, it was an education of sorts. It must have made money because it has had a lot of imitators since.

The fundamentalists are a breed of people in the rural areas and on the sidelines of modern society in the big cities. With television you can transport their isolationist bubble into the minds of people in the cities. This whole hate of success and love of the end of the world scenario is something best left to psychologists. But after forty years, fatigue has set in because the last book of the bible is so vague. God and Jesus are just not cooperating in the end of the world obsession for the losers and the world haters of fundamentalism.

World hating and deferring on important life decisions like climate change are an institutionalized arm of fundamentalism not really found in any bible but don’t try and tell that to any fundamentalist.

So too fatigue for the RCs with their promises of change in Vatican II stalled for four decades over their command to have their morals as part of law of the land in the abortion issue. The abortion issue started when birth control, born of science and a need for it in a crowded polluted age, got stuck in neutral amidst gritty local politics.

While the RC faithful have been waiting for the lifting of celibacy and a golden age in faith, the fat corrupt bishops just keep selling off property one lawsuit at a time. The hierarchy of the RC church worships the golden idol of their own hierarchy and will do so until the last piece of property has been sold.

The mainstream Prots have cash and old buildings but if you look at the British or European version of entitled religious and official and semi-official government status, the Prots have not gone very far on their own since Martin Luther. The RCs may have come up with their own hundreds of pages of boilerplate belief in the Council of Trent, the Prots have their own version of boilerplate faith as well.

The main reason for so many years of study in any seminary is memorization and the PC way to talk about the bible and or God and or Jesus. God and Jesus are merely stage props in the talk the talk and the walk the walk of mainstream religion.

Sad to say, there would appear to be no unified Christian message to the world two thousand years after Jesus.

The smug science and industry successful west has atrophied over the ages. Islam, while not a superior belief system has the energy at the moment. The energy is born of hate and conflict of it bumping up against the godless capitalist west as exemplified in the metaphoric movie Avatar. Which leads to a brief reaction to that movie as a coded message of redemption for the whole human race in this decayed age of materialism and blind adherence to the centuries old boilerplate beliefs of both Christendom and Islam.

If you are half way religious you see a religious theme in Avatar. If you are from the second or third world you see a brutally unfair military that wants to destroy everything not American. Nature is the enemy because it is not certified as an acceptable PC religious experience. If you are a godless capitalist, greed is the important factor. Avatar plays on many levels.

Boilerplate religionists want to waste time on words. It has to quack like a duck and be labeled like a duck before it is a duck. No wonder the old religion is dying if you need a patent from the government before you can begin to have any heart felt communication with the divine through nature or even through yourself.

Which brings me to the future of any religious beliefs. We have come to a strange fork in the road. In the age of the Internet, individual reaction to the split second interface with knowledge, images, political and social concepts flash around the planet faster and more often than heartbeats.

Control of the Internet is coming in it being taxed, fees added, and censored. In the meanwhile new ideas as revolutionary as the 95 Theses or the science of a printing press as it was in it’s day five hundred years ago are occurring all around us in virtual time and presence – even if we are not aware of these milli-second, millimeter paradigm changes into our new global culture.

Global interface consensus is the future eyes, ears, and perception of a future human race. That race has piggybacked over many cultures and many belief systems to this point in time. It would all seem to be part of a creative force in the universe and in compliance with a concept of evolution as a positive force of the Creator.

How the world sees itself and functions for the next five hundred years, the outline of thoughts and protocols are being formed in these early years of the 21st century of a global common era.

Look forward. Be positive. Be creative. Act with love for one’s local and global neighbor. Think. Be wise. Be fruitful.

Let social justice rule and multiply.

Pax – Mundo - Humanitas ! (Peace – Global – Humanity)

How Goes Maine So Goes The Nation ?

The political saying above was about Presidential Elections that saw the State of Maine voting for the winner 90% of the time in the past century. Maine in the past seemed to be right in the middle but on the fine winning edge of how to judge the mood and course of the nation.

Gay marriage has come to Maine. There is obviously something going on out there in the world. Being the flaming liberal that I am, I believe in equal rights and opportunities for everyone. The liberal in me is also still a little bit homophobic. That is what I was taught in the American Culture that I grew up in. The American Culture I will die in someday in the future will have Gay Marriage almost everywhere. Theory is one thing. The facts staring at you in the face is quite a different thing. It will take some getting used to (for me at least).

I have known and socialized with Gay people in the past. Having lived on and off in NYC for close to a quarter century, it is impossible not to know any gay people. Live and let live has always been the common attitude for the most part. Hate crimes can happen just as easily here in NYC as they do in Wyoming. Social mores can change. Human nature remains the same.

This is where the paradigm shift happens in our Global Culture. This is where there are no real roadmaps. What was described in the Bible as a no-no is now getting mainstream secular attention. Without a Constitutional amendment supporting rights to gay marriage I would guesstimate this status will be a permanent civil function of a dozen to half the fifty states in the next decade. Once the novelty, fear and bias wears off, perhaps all or almost all states will recognize this as a legal status.

Isn’t it odd how so much of what the common culture now wants comes from the culture itself and not from tradition and not from sacred texts anymore? The secular state has arrived even with all the right wing evangelists screaming and kicking and spouting ancient words every step of the way.

What I first thought of as a Global Town Square and as perhaps a variation of the old concept of the “global village” is nothing quite as I imagined it to be – today.

We all not in a physical town square anymore. We are in a virtual town square and it is the same in Iowa as it is in New York City. We cling to our homes, our worlds and we wrap ourselves in a bubble with cell phones, iPods, earphones, laptops and centered around the virtual Yellow Pages, Webster’s Dictionary and Sears Catalogue of the new age – the Internet. We reinforce our own view of the world instead of the other way around as it has been for centuries.

My need to be spiritual depends on me. I do not trust the moral authority of the Christian or Catholic Church that I have seen reshape itself into its own financial and survival mode self interests and at the expense I think of the people who once sat in the pews of churches. Even the intimacy of being in a small church or chapel to pray or meditate is dwarfed by Mega churches designed more for rock concerts than spirituality that I feel comfortable with.

Part of my reason for writing this blog has been to keep an ongoing interest and observation of the day to day lives of people in the domestic end of my street and all the way to the national culture generated from Hollywood, NYC or Wash. D.C.. The view I see today is a remarkable but twisted view through a prism.

What I see through that prism I sometimes do not grasp easily or understand but stand by in cautious curiosity and feel that no matter what I see or feel does not matter much. The world and the culture is evolving all around us. I only hope that the end results or the discernible results down the road somehow match what is now, has been and will hopefully remain a human culture.

The future has arrived! (and we all remain pilgrims in search of something)