The Jade Steps

Chapter Twenty Four:  The Jade Steps

When the food arrived, turkeys and maize cakes in great abundance, Malinali ate quickly.  She had no time for conversation with Bernal, eager to talk about the wonders of the palace.  She cast a knowing glance at Cortez and fled from the room.  She returned within the hour, Cortez inviting her to join the group of officers with whom he was conferring.  Everyone looked at her expectantly.

"I heard no talk around this palace or out on the plaza of any trap.  I overheard talk between guards, nobles, priests, and common people.  They all talk of you using the word teotl (tay-ottle), which means wonder, awesome, terrifying power.  They talk of how the strangers are men from another more powerful world, men they have never seen before.  Montezuma, it seems, can talk of nothing else.  There is no anger in what I heard, only teotl."

Chanceries, political elites and business federations across Europe, regardless of whether they are on the Left or the Right, are hoping the Conservative Party loses today's (5/07) general election.

All the better if a motley Labor government is strapped to a bloc of triumphant Scottish Nationalists, guaranteeing a double-lock against any further flirtations with Brexit (Britain's exit from the European Union). Or so goes the argument.

They should be careful what they wish for.

A Labor-SNP arrangement would be inherently weak and unstable, like the string of Gladstone governments dependent on the swing vote of the Irish Home Rule movement in the late 19th century.

A Tory defeat would flush out the last EU dreamers and leave a post-Cameron party with even less tolerance for the posturing of Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, who this week accused the Anglo-Saxon world of trying to destroy the euro and vowed to stop Britain imposing its "exclusive agenda on all the other member states of Europe."

In other words, Brexit and the doom of the EU is either on the horizon or just beyond it.

One of the most consistent pieces of truth that I've come to understand in the course of over three decades of working with people as a therapist and Life Coach is this: Everybody has something that they struggle with, have struggled with, or will struggle with.

We are very complex beings, all of us. The image of some kind of perfect, untroubled, constantly joyful and serene and bold and perfect life is an image from Hollywood; we are much more complex and magnificent than that.

My point is that if you are struggling with something; if you sometimes get depressed, or anxious, or obsessive, or scared, or confused, or distracted, or lazy, or feel overwhelmed... there is nothing unusual about you. These are all well within the normal range of human functioning, and they represent challenges to master, not failures to feel ashamed of.

The issues are not the issue. How you deal with them is.  Here's how to start doing so.

To The Point has long maintained that the Clintons will do what they can to make sure Obambi loses in November - for only then does Hillary have a chance for the White House in 2012.

Now there's more evidence.

In a private meeting earlier this month (9/10) in his Harlem office, Clinton met at his request with the publishers of a major online news site.  I cannot be more explicit at the request of my source.

After claiming Obama will win because his campaign has registered two million new Democrat voters, Clinton casually mentioned:

"You know, one thing that nobody has really checked out yet is Obama's long-standing and deep relationship with Louis Farrakhan.  It's going to really hurt him badly once it's fully disclosed."

Hint:  research and reveal Obama's connection with the most rabidly anti-Semitic black racist in America.

[This is the text of Robert Spencer's address at the Mohammed Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland Texas on Sunday, May 3^rd, just hours before two Moslem terrorists were gunned down trying to murder the attendees.]

A very good friend of mine told me right before I left for this event that - you're just poking them in the eye, you're trying to provoke them.  You know, why are you doing that?  You're the one that's being offensive.  And this was a friend, you know, and I was kind of taken aback.  And I had to stop and think - well, what exactly is wrong with that?

And what's wrong with that is that this is only offensive because Moslems have made it offensive. 

Okay, so we have to not draw Mohammed, because that'll poke them in the eye and offend them.  And then we have to not be Jewish, because that will poke them in the eye and offend them.  And then what?  Okay, I guess pork and alcohol are out.  Okay, and then what?

The Islamic State - the Islamic State is beheading people and taking sex slaves, and subjugating the Christians under the hegemony of the Islamic law.  And they're doing it all on the basis of Koranic directives.  And so that's all Islamic.  So I guess we can't say a word about that.  Because that would poke them in the eye and offend Moslems.

You see, step by step by step, we're ending up going in the direction of accepting Islamic law.  Let's put it this way: Every Western media outlet that refuses to publish the Mohammed cartoons is accepting Islamic blasphemy law.

I say it's time for a little cultural self-assertiveness.