It’s very disheartening to hear about the New Orleans VooDoo folding this year. I became a season ticket holder last season and had a blast at each game. It was fast-paced fun and gave you that football fix, albeit it different football, during the Saints’ off-season.

Despite the usual gripe about $7 beers, the tickets were extremely cheap for eight games and proved to be an inexpensive way to support a local team and the city.

Even though they went up against the Hornets toward the end of basketball season, the VooDoo continually posted some of the best attendance figures in the league and had built a pretty loyal fan base, looking at the number of jerseys and purple shirts filling the arena for home games and the car decals stuck on cars around town.

It was interesting to learn the VooDoo was not our first foray into the Arena Football League, with the New Orleans Night playing in the Superdome for two seasons in the early ’90s.

With the loss of the Brass several years ago, this makes me wonder if New Orleans really is just big enough to support the Saints, Hornets and Zephyrs or is it all about money and drawing the biggest crowd possible.•

The woman, who has not been identified, was beaten to death and her remains were found on Saturday in a village 15 miles east of Georgetown, police said.

Police have arrested three people and are questioning others, Superintendent Balram Persaud said.

"We are still investigating," he said.

Some expressed surprise at the persistence of belief in Higues, a creature said to take the shape of an old woman who can shrink herself to enter victims' homes through a keyhole.

At a ceremony Tuesday, voodoo high priestess Nagbo Hounon Gbeffa sacrificed a goat, a rooster and a chicken as divine offerings.

"I'm very moved," said Faith McDouglas, a 37-year-old nurse from Omaha, Neb., and a descendant of slaves.

Voodoo originated in West Africa. It holds that all life is driven by spiritual forces of natural phenomena like water, fire, earth and air that should be honored through rituals that include animal sacrifices. Followers believe they can communicate with divinities and spirits by putting themselves into a trance.

Countless Africans were shipped into slavery, taking voodoo with them, and cults still exist in the Caribbean, Latin America and the southern United States.

The religion was repressed in Benin, then banned during incumbent President Mathieu Kerekou's first 18-year stint in power, which ended in 1991. Kerekou's Marxist regime believed the rites went against the socialist work ethic.

But the religion, practiced by an estimated 60 percent of Benin's 7 million people, was impossible to suppress, and the government inaugurated National Voodoo Day in 1996, giving the religion an official place here alongside Christianity and Islam.

Source: Virgile Ahissou

African Witchcraft is a collective term used to describe the spiritual traditions of the different ethnic groups in Africa. From a historical point of view, Egyptian Witchcraft and Arabic Sihr traditionally formed a part of the mix. These two ceremonial forms of Witchcraft are nearly extinct, and have been replaced by the Islamic faith.

The witchcraft practiced in the rest of Africa is shamanistic in nature. Long before the East and the West converged on the continent, the shamanistic practices of Africans were remarkably similar in spite of the ethnic and tribal diversity that prevailed.

This is no longer the case, though. The influences of the Christian and the Islamic religions on African Witchcraft are noticeable. The colonization of Africa by the English, Dutch, French, Portuguese and Germans, brought its own set of cultural influences too. This accounts for the diversity now to be found in the practice of African witchcraft from ethnic grouping to ethnic grouping and from tribe to tribe.

This diversification should not be interpreted as dilution or intensification, though. It merely implies that African witchcraft in its purest form has been exchanged for African shamanism of an eclectic form.

The heinous practice of slave trading led to the export of African witchcraft to the Americas, where it now survives under the auspices of religions such as Voudun (or Voodoo), Obeah, Santeria, Quimbanda and Candombl.

What is African Witchcraft?

African witchcraft is a nature based religion, where one or more Deities, nature spirits and ancestral spirits are worshipped. The witchdoctor, with his or her ability to commune with Deity, nature spirits and ancestral spirits, is traditionally held in awe - an awe which is an odd mixture of respect and fear.

The reason for this fear is simple. Magic in the African sense may be used for both positive and negative purposes. It can be used to bless and to curse, to cure and cause disease, to bring peace and to initiate battle, to protect and to harm, to create and to destroy.

The witchdoctor can be either male or female. Although there is no gender equality in African culture, no distinction is generally made where spiritual practices are concerned. The witchdoctor is responsibile for divination, healing, presiding over rituals, conducting rites of passage, performing sacrifices, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, casting and removing spells, and narrating the history and myths of old.

For harmony between the living and the dead, which is an essential component of leading a trouble-free life, ancestors are shown respect by means of daily offerings, prayers and songs, elaborate rituals and animal sacrifice.

Proverbs 15:1 says "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."  This goes along with my prayer for a gentle spirit.

God, help us today at work, school, home or at play to use gentle words.  It may be that our silence will bring You glory this day.  We lay down our judgmental, critical, self-righteous, foul, condemning mouths/hearts at the altar and walk away with a bridled tongue and a mind in alignment with the thoughts of Christ.

Har det verkligen gått snart tio år sedan D'Angelo släppte albumet Voodoo? Och i så fall, har det släppts något lika bra r'nb-album sedan dess? Om nån tycker det - tipsa gärna med en kommentar! Jag tycker fortfarande att Voodoo låter fruktansvärt cool när jag spelar den. Idag slumpade ipoden fram Devil's Pie till frukosten. Fint!/C

Ceremonial magicians find inspiration in the 'Greater Key of Solomon', and grimoires such as the 'Heptameron', and 'The Book of The Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin The Mage'.  Whereas practitioners of Voodoo who believe in the power of 'wonder working' find the secrets to working magick in the sixth and seventh Books of Moses Check out THE WHITE CRAFT.

Dead Zone (1983) Dir. By David Cronenberg based on the novel by Stephen King (4/5)

This supernatural thriller/mystery features Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith, a young teacher who suffers a terrible accident and lies comatose for five years before waking up and discovering he has psychic abilities and that there’s not much for him to live for anymore (apparently Anthony Michael Hall stars in the TV version of the story, which I have yet to see, but there couldn’t be too more different actors playing the same role). This film is right up there with the original Manchurian Candidate (1962). It’s a quiet, leisurely paced thriller featuring a great cast: Martin Sheen as the corrupt politician, Tom Skerritt as the sheriff of course, and Brooke Adams as the love interest.

October 12, 2008

Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) Dir. By Wes Craven based on the book by Wade Davis (1/5)

I’ve never been much of a Wes Craven fan, so I guess it’s not surprising that I didn’t think this film was that great. Bill Pullman plays Dennis Alan, a doctor looking for a magical drug in Haiti which can bring people back from the dead (a.k.a. the Zombie powder). While in Haiti he meets Dr. Marielle Duchamp (Cathy Tyson) and soon he’s drawn into the mystic world of voodoo and the superstitious Haitian culture. Before he knows it the Haitian dictator is after him, threatening to steal his soul, haunting him wherever he goes. The effects in this movie are incredibly dated and cheesy, like those in A Nightmare on Elm Street; however the story for A Nightmare on Elm Street was at least interesting while the story for this film wasn’t. There wasn’t really anything suspenseful or scary about the film and it wasn’t even so bad that it was good a la Evil Dead, Re-Animator, etc. However, if you’re a fan of Craven’s this might be right up your alley, but I found watching it to be a waste of time.

October 13, 2008

Night of the Hunter (1955) Dir. By Charles Laughton based on the novel by David Grubb (5/5)

This film reminded me a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films, with its awesome camera angles and slow building suspense. Robert Mitchum plays the deranged preacher, Harry Powell, with the words “love” and “hate” tattoed on the fingers of his right and left hands respectively (something which Spike Lee later borrowed in Do the Right Thing, using rings instead of tattoos). Powell preys on widows by marrying them for their money and then murdering them, which is how he comes into the life of Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), a bank robber’s widow and her children John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce). Unfortunately for Willa she doesn’t know where her husband hid the money, but her children do and soon they are on the run, seeking help from strangers, including Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish). This is more than just a thriller; it is also a film about religion (Old Testament vs. new), corruption, greed, survival and more. This is the kind of film that you could get something new out of each time you watch it. Mitchum is truly creepy as Powell and various images and songs from this film will haunt you long after it is over.

Stirling Newberry, Firedoglake, October 13, 2008

Giving the Nobel Memorial prize to Paul Krugman was not just recognition of his theory of economic geography, but a strong message. This would not be the first time, nor will it be the last time that those awarding the prize have sent a message.

One part of this message is on trade and globalization, and why developed nations should not fear global trade, another, however, is more direct and more blunt: it is about a changed world. In a year which has seen more tumult in not only the markets, but the basic institutions that support them, it is a message that the United States can no longer maintain an exceptionalist policy.

It is a message that the Era of Reagan is Over writ in large letters. A message that Europe sees the Republican Party as having turned dangerously towards politics and policies that are coming close to spiraling into the abyss.

There is a great deal of fear in Europe about the possibility of a resurgent far right in Europe and globally. Many in Europe look at the recent elections in Austria with the creeping fear that comes from memory. For Americans, the 1930's were "The Great Depression." For Europe, it was the rise of Nazi Germany. Some people regard the satire of Jesus' General in comparing the GOP to Naziism as over the top. But really it is the Republican Party which has gone beyond reason. Krugman has seen this side of America's far right as well.

One of the people who needs to heed this message is Ben Bernanke, who has been one of the worst central bankers in a developed nation since the Second World War, and to whom Paul Krugman has been a good deal kinder than the record perhaps allows for. That message is that he cannot both be supportive of certain ideological outcomes, and save the banking system. The markets have realized that the age of greed is good is over, and so have European governments, whose pledges of aid to banks helped create today's massive stock market rally. If Bernanke cannot stop backing bad policies in public, then the incoming Obama administration should invite him to return to academic work, and appoint a Fed Chair who be part of a new policy regime.

Read More Here

Ben F. Terton, The Moderate Independent, October 14, 2008

Half a decade.  That's how long I've waited to write this article.

For half a decade the only articles I've been able to write were the ones that explained that, despite "expert" commentary to the contrary, the nation was headed toward a major economic collapse.  And then that the collapse was beginning.  And then to repeat, yes, really, there's going to be a collapse.  And then, finally, I guess now you see what I meant.

The reason I've been able to predict exactly what was going to happen to the economy half a decade ahead of time was not because I'm psychic.  It was because during that period, with Republican conservatives in control of the government, there were no significant changes of policy.  And so the disastrous course that was set beginning with the first round of Bush tax cuts just trickled on and on, like a slow motion bullet headed toward the nation's heart but with the nation pinned there by the GOP, blindfolded by media nonsense, and so doomed by an easily escapable problem.

Any significant change of policy during that time could have headed off this disaster.  But neither Republican nor Democrat ever really hit the mark.

Until now.

Senator Obama's plan was shocking for many reasons.  So far ahead in the race, it was unexpected that he would release such a bold, detailed plan.  But more than that, it was truly shocking to see, for the first time in a generation, a politician hit a mark so directly on the head.  Delivering exactly to the true middle class, rather than to either the poorer people or the richer, Obama's simple, relatively cheap economic rescue plan, if enacted, would immediately and significantly alter the course of the American economy for the better.

Here's why this plan blows all previous ones away.

Read More Here

I felt like this is for someone logging on today.  So, here's the excerpt that I chose for the day:

"Christ died for our sins...and...He was buried...and...He was raised on the third day...He has been raised from the dead...HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET...all things are subjected to Him...that God may be all in all..."DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP IN VICTORY.  O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY?  O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING"...Therefore beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the word of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord."

Be encouraged this day, friends!  Heads Up: We won't have Internet service tomorrow so the reading will be from Proverbs chapter 15. 

Thanks!

The Dirt Trail

A herd of elephants on a dirt trail makes for a very noisome combination.

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://zeppcommentaries.com/10/13/2008

Usually, at this point, just 22 days before the election, I’m at the
point where I’m running out of things to say about the campaigns and am
looking around a bit desperately for something non-political to write
about, just to take a break and maybe restart my brain. This time
around, I had an essay about a kitten – yes, a kitten, that’s what I’ve
descended to – on the back burner ready to go against the point where I
couldn’t post one more Palin quote without puking.

But of course, this year has been a little different. The worldwide
economic crash is huge, news that is once-in-a-lifetime, vast in its
implications. It has been so big that even the campaign for what is
arguably the most important election America has seen since 1932 has
been pushed to the side.

So: three weeks to go, and I’m looking for opportunities to write about
politics. Right now, the kitten’s not even on the horizon, even though
he is indisputably a very nice kitten.

Europe is effectively nationalizing their banks while US “leadership” is
dithering. Tick, tick, tick. That’s where the economy stands. We’re at
that point in a Roadrunner cartoon narrative where we’re Wile E. Coyote,
and we’ve just noticed a shadow forming around us, bugged our eyes
skyward, and opened a little paper parasol in an effort to shield ourselves.

Paul Krugman just won the Nobel Prize for Economics. I posted
congratulations to his blog, noting that if elected, Obama was going to
need a really, really good economic advisor.

So let’s talk about the campaign. First, there’s the right wing smear
machine. Smearing isn’t limited to the right, and you can find Democrats
willing to swear that McCain caused the Forrestal accident, or is
actually not a citizen and not eligible to run for president, or turned
coward and traitor whilst being held captive in North Vietnam. All three
can be regarded, at best, as unprovable and more likely to be
politically motivated nonsense.

But the smears against Obama are organized, coordinated, carefully
planned, and crafted, and repeated, over and over. However, between the
huge distraction of the economy and Obama’s willingness to fight the
smears, they just aren’t gaining ground.

The far right, predictably, has become pretty hysterical. One user on
Usenet breathlessly posted recycled stories of a silly case demanding
that Obama prove his citizenship with the breathless header, “This could
be a game-changer!” The source in this case was something called “The
Illuminati Press.” That just added to the gravitas. Apparently he didn’t
know that the Dark Illuminati, by all accounts, aren’t very nice people.
Or if David Icke is to be believed, aren’t people at all. Another user
has posted at least 300 messages claiming that Obama had gay sex in the
back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair. Another claimed
that Obama boasted of having sex with 10,000 white women, which would be
nearly a different one every day for his entire adult life. Forget
electing him president: vote him in for God!

Along with the usual suspects – Sun Myung Moon, Richard Scaife, Karl
Rove, Dick Morris, and Matt Drudge – the smear machine has some other
faces.

The NY Times just did a piece on Andy Martin, the clown who started the
“Obama is secretly a Muslim” crap back in 2004. They noted, among other
things, that Martin was diagnosed “moderately severe character defect
manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a
grandiose character.” In other words, he invents and may well believe
lurid and crazed conspiracy stories in which he is a hero. The problem
was evident enough that it was used to stop him from being accredited as
a lawyer. The NY Times notes that over the years, he’s filed hundreds of
crackpot lawsuits, despite being too mentally unfit to even be a lawyer.

Larry Sinclair has been discredited as a felon with a 27 year track
record of lies, fraud and deceit. He’s the one who claims that Obama had
sex with him in the back of a limo. Larry himself gave a press
conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC, which tells you
volumes about the state of American journalism, and at the end of the
conference, was arrested for the umpteenth time, this time on charges of
larceny in Delaware. He spent 12 years in prison for one fraud
conviction in 1987. According to Tim Shipman of the Daily Telegraph,
Sinclair came to the conference with a lawyer in tow, one Montgomery
Blair Sibley. Sibley, who wasn’t licenced to practice law in DC, was
wearing a kilt, and took advantage of his time at the mike to explain to
all assembled that he had to wear a kilt instead of trousers because of
his enormous genitalia. For some reason, News of the World didn’t cover
that story, but if Monty is Scottish, then perhaps there was mention of
it in Ewes of the World. Even Sibley’s, um, imposing presence didn’t
stop his client from being arrested. Again.

Finally, there was Larry Corsi. He of the “swiftboat” fame in the 2004
election. He released a book, “Obama Nation” which promptly sank in a
sea of derision except among the double-digit IQ members of the extreme
right, who quote it to one another endlessly. When last heard from Corsi
was in Kenya trying to find more dirt on Obama, and annoyed the
authorities and got kicked out of the country. That may not have the
cachet of being a mentally-ill lawyer, but it’s still pretty good.

It would be nice to say these are just fringe crackpots, but
unfortunately, these fringe crackpots have pretty much become the voice
of the GOP. They have a new leader in Sarah Palin, who has been inciting
crowds to shout things like “Traitor!” and “Kill him!” of Obama. One
half expects her to start hoisting a noose every time she mentions his
name, to cheers from the hooded crowd.

I noted at the second debate that then was the time for McCain to
apologize to Obama and disassociate himself from such tactics. The press
was beginning to notice the really ugly tones Palin was deliberately
whipping up among the mentals who believe that people like Sinclair,
Corsi, and Martin are telling the truth, and Obama really is a gay
moslem communist, his wife a black panther, and his daughters suicide
bombers. What’s left of the GOP these days has no shortage of ignorant,
hate-filled nuts.

But that moment has passed. McCain clearly realizes that his campaign
misstepped, and it’s possible that deep in his heart, the man genuinely
regrets it. But with it now getting widespread attention in the press,
he can’t make a show of changing the tone without it looking like yet
another erratic political gambit to try to save a campaign that is
foundering.

There’s also the fact that people like the woman who told McCain she
supported him because “Obama is an Arab” (McCain called her to task on
it) make up most of McCain’s support these days. If McCain loses them
(and they support Palin in the American European Heritage Party in 2012
or some damn thing) then he’ll be lucky to get Arizona and Utah in the
electoral college. Most responsible conservatives have already bugged
out from the GOP, leaving only the loons.

But McCain should do it anyway, if only because it’s the right thing to
do, and if he is to lose, at least he can do so with some class and dignity.

And it can start the GOP on the path to breaking away from the clutches
of the lunatic-fringe right. The lies and smears aren't working, that's
for sure, and people are getting pissed off that in the middle of a
major crisis, that's about all they have to offer.
ated at $200bn (£118bn) to

The Times-Picayune today, citing Arena Football League sources, reports that New Orleans Voodoo owner Tom Benson, in a letter to the league's interim commissioner, Ed Policy, said VooDoo is folding.

"According to sources, Voodoo officials met with representatives with the AFL and the other teams on Friday and left unhappy with the state of the league and the direction in which it is headed," the story says.

On the T-P's Web site, boywonda posted this comment: "We had an afl team?"

This begs a question? Does the team have enough of a following to sustain itself in New Orleans? Is this city an arena football town? And is New Orleans big enough for the Hornets, Saints and VooDoo?•

Promises from God's word: Jeremiah 31:17 "There is hope for your future, declares the Lord."

Personal promises for my family: God promised to make us water in a dry land.

Another good reading for today would be from Isaiah 58.  The entire chapter is about committing to a "true fast".  "Seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways...They ask Me for just decisions, they delight in the nearness of God...the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke...divide your read with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into the house; when you see the naked...cover him...not to hide yourself from your own flesh...then your light will break out like the dawn..."  Definitely not a time to be "self focused."

The word that "jumps out" at me is dawn.  Last night I  had a bit of a revelation that since yesterday was the first day  the word "light" would be symbolic as it was the first of God's creation.  God wants to shed light on things in our lives and He wants us to break forth into His Light which reveals truth.

Be blessed this day!

Gloria