Friday, May 31, 2019
Friday, May 24, 2019
Friday, May 17, 2019
Friday, May 10, 2019
Friday, May 03, 2019
Friday, April 26, 2019
Friday, April 19, 2019
Friday, April 12, 2019
Friday, April 05, 2019
Friday, March 29, 2019
Friday, March 22, 2019
Friday, March 15, 2019
Friday, March 08, 2019
Friday, March 01, 2019
Friday, February 22, 2019
Sunday, December 16, 2018
The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery
Recently, my account was purged from the Facebook platform. As if moderating some sort of Kafkaesque reality show, and despite having asked them several times for an explanation, no one from Facebook will explain to me what aspect of its community guidelines I, supposedly, have violated or the nature of the existential standards against which I, supposedly, have transgressed.
The absence of a response raises the possibility that no one at Facebook will respond to my overtures because such individuals, or their handlers, know that what they are doing and have done in the purging affair cannot be defended with actual evidence and rational argument but must stay in the shadows of mere allusions concerning the possibility of guilt without having to bother with any sort of due process through which such Facebook employees could demonstrate to me and others that what has occurred in conjunction with the purged accounts is justified. I believe the evidence shows that what has transpired is nothing more than a abuse of corporate, technocratic power that is seeking to transform society in its own ideological image.
Indeed, as the following video demonstrates, I am not guilty of anything except being a person toward whom one or more individuals at Facebook has taken an irrational, biased, ideologically-driven, and anti-humanitarian dislike and, in the process has committed a variety of offenses against me … including elderly abuse as well as attempting to deny me a number of first amendment rights -- not just with respect to what is, or is not, taking place in conjunction with the Facebook platform, but, in addition, with respect to what is taking place beyond Facebook's borders as well, as the company also seeks to have a say in what takes place outside of Facebook.
In response to the bullying tactics employed by someone at Facebook, I have made an hour and 46 minute documentary that provides an overview of, and critical reflection concerning, "The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery". Below are links to a page that will provide people who are interested a free viewing of the documentary:
(1) The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery
(2) The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery (Mirror Site #1)
(3) The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery (Mirror Site #2)
By eliminating alternative perspectives, Facebook appears to be trying to force its members to accept various ideologically constructed filters and lenses through which the company wishes unsuspecting individuals to engage and interpret reality, and in the process the corporation becomes an active purveyor of a form of Orwellian Newspeak and Thoughtcrime that helps create conditions that are conducive to the growth of fake news, false information, and social -- if not political and ideological -- control.
Presently, I -- along with 800 other accounts and individuals -- have been disappeared. Tomorrow, some anonymous power-hungry and self-serving narcisstic technocrat at Facebook might very well be coming for you.
Therefore, I do believe that what has happened to me does have relevance to whomever reads this blog entry. As a result, I hope you will set aside the roughly two hours that will be required to view "The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery" documentary and begin to think creatively and constructively about what can be done to stem the tide of the on-going corporate, technocratic attempt to undermine and gain control over inalienable human sovereignty.
The absence of a response raises the possibility that no one at Facebook will respond to my overtures because such individuals, or their handlers, know that what they are doing and have done in the purging affair cannot be defended with actual evidence and rational argument but must stay in the shadows of mere allusions concerning the possibility of guilt without having to bother with any sort of due process through which such Facebook employees could demonstrate to me and others that what has occurred in conjunction with the purged accounts is justified. I believe the evidence shows that what has transpired is nothing more than a abuse of corporate, technocratic power that is seeking to transform society in its own ideological image.
Indeed, as the following video demonstrates, I am not guilty of anything except being a person toward whom one or more individuals at Facebook has taken an irrational, biased, ideologically-driven, and anti-humanitarian dislike and, in the process has committed a variety of offenses against me … including elderly abuse as well as attempting to deny me a number of first amendment rights -- not just with respect to what is, or is not, taking place in conjunction with the Facebook platform, but, in addition, with respect to what is taking place beyond Facebook's borders as well, as the company also seeks to have a say in what takes place outside of Facebook.
In response to the bullying tactics employed by someone at Facebook, I have made an hour and 46 minute documentary that provides an overview of, and critical reflection concerning, "The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery". Below are links to a page that will provide people who are interested a free viewing of the documentary:
(1) The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery
(2) The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery (Mirror Site #1)
(3) The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery (Mirror Site #2)
By eliminating alternative perspectives, Facebook appears to be trying to force its members to accept various ideologically constructed filters and lenses through which the company wishes unsuspecting individuals to engage and interpret reality, and in the process the corporation becomes an active purveyor of a form of Orwellian Newspeak and Thoughtcrime that helps create conditions that are conducive to the growth of fake news, false information, and social -- if not political and ideological -- control.
Presently, I -- along with 800 other accounts and individuals -- have been disappeared. Tomorrow, some anonymous power-hungry and self-serving narcisstic technocrat at Facebook might very well be coming for you.
Therefore, I do believe that what has happened to me does have relevance to whomever reads this blog entry. As a result, I hope you will set aside the roughly two hours that will be required to view "The Great Facebook Bullying Mystery" documentary and begin to think creatively and constructively about what can be done to stem the tide of the on-going corporate, technocratic attempt to undermine and gain control over inalienable human sovereignty.
Monday, October 29, 2018
Bilquees Press Catalog
Recently, I have updated my books in a variety of ways -- including formatting changes as well as, in some cases, the introduction of new material. You can find out more about the aforementioned changes by either going to the: Bilquees Press Catalog page or by downloading a free copy of the catalog software (right-click on the previous link) that contains information about 39 books and one DVD (The catalog software will only work with Windows, Parallels, Fusion, and Boot Camp enabled computers).
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Framing 9/11, 3rd Edition
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
A Sufi' Way of Gifting Books to Libraries Through Patreon.com
If you would like to learn how to have access to a software package that contains 40 books(exploring all manner of subjects ranging from: The Sufi path, Islam, shari'ah, religion, and spiritual abuse, to: Science, evolution, psychology, cosmology, quantum physics, philosophy, political science, constitutional law, education, and 9/11), 39 pieces of floetry, 10 episodes of the Sufi Study Circle Podcast, and five videos (including an hour talk on revivalism and an half hour talk entitled: 'An Appeal to Christians, Jews and Muslims'), please read the following material.
-----
The Sufi path is a (not the) way of seeking truths concerning the nature of one's relationship with Being. I have had two spiritual guides in my life -- one was authentic and one was a charlatan, and both individuals had something to teach me about myself, life and the nature of my relationship with Being.
Struggling to establish the truth is of fundamental importance to any mystical pursuit. However, without character, the search for truth tends to become very dysfunctional, and, therefore, those who have aspirations concerning the mystical path (whether Sufi or otherwise) come to understand the importance of seeking to acquire qualities of: Honesty, fairness, patience, tolerance, nobility, courage, humility, gratitude, generosity, perseverance, self-sacrifice, equanimity, forgiveness, friendship, love, and compassion.
The following are a few truths concerning my life. To what extent those truths helped me to develop and realize any of the foregoing traits of character is a more difficult issue to assess.
----
I am 73 years old … hoping to become 74 in September.
I was born in Colorado but grew up in various parts of Maine. The year (1962) that I graduated from high school in north-central Maine there were 44 students in my school, 11 of whom were in my class.
After high school, I went to Harvard College. I've often thought that, perhaps, individuals at the Harvard medical school might have wanted me for experimental purposes, but a mistake was made, and a letter of acceptance emerged from the wrong department.
I began university with a pre-theological major. However, before finishing university, I transitioned through a number of majors including: Physical science, philosophy, and, finally, social relations (an interdisciplinary curriculum involving sociology, anthropology, and psychology) before graduating with honors.
Within 6 months following graduation, I went to Canada to protest the Vietnam War. While in Canada, I was initiated into a Sufi mystical order and, in the process, became a Muslim.
Shortly after stepping onto the Sufi path, I entered a doctoral program in education at the University of Toronto. Due to a variety of issues, 17 years passed before I was able to obtain my degree.
To make a very long story mercifully much shorter, my graduation only became possible after I fired my original thesis committee and went about cobbling together my own oral examination committee. Following their examination of me, that committee (which consisted of several physicists, a linguist, two specialists in the philosophy of science, as well as several other individuals) voted to accept (by a tally of 7-0) my dissertation on hermeneutical field theory .
Several years before I obtained my doctorate, my spiritual guide passed away. Feeling the need for further guidance, I went in search of another teacher, and, several years later, found someone.
Initially, the new teacher seemed ideal. However, it took me 11 years to discover that he was a charlatan.
Despite the difficulties entailed by those 11 years, I learned a great deal about myself, other people, the Sufi path, and life. In many respects, those 11 years helped to constructively (if rather painfully) complement what I had learned from my first spiritual teacher (someone whom I consider to have been quite authentic).
During the foregoing period of time, I moved from Toronto to Ottawa and, then, to New York, New Jersey, and, finally, back to Maine. For the final 4 or 5 years of that 11-year time frame, I was -- with the exception of a few odd jobs here and there -- both unemployed and couch-surfing (in fact, for more than a year, I slept on the floor of an office managed by a friend of mine, and the logistics of removing myself from the office before workers arrived for the day was always a challenge).
Six months, or so, after arriving back in Maine, I went to work for my brother in his insurance firm. When my brother sold his business a year, or so, later, the new owner decided not to keep me on and, as a result, I went through several more years of unemployment and semi-homelessness (my age, education, "checkered" past, lack of a vehicle, and living in an economically depressed area all served as obstacles to obtaining gainful employment).
I finally got a position as an adjunct professor of psychology in a local university. This lasted for about six years before the opportunities associated with that position began to dissipate.
I resigned and began to devote my time to writing full time. Although I had written and published several books prior to moving to Maine, my career as a writer didn't really begin to blossom (in terms of production but not in terms of financial success) until after I resigned from my day job and retired at age 63.
To date, I have written 39 books (mostly non-fiction), 39 pieces of floetry (poetry set to music), as well as produced a DVD. While over the last 10-12 years, I have managed to sell 3,000, or so books, in some 20 countries, making money as a writer of books is fairly difficult to accomplish (especially since, for the most part, I do not engage in advertising), and, consequently, if my motivation for writing was financial, I would have stopped generating books a long time ago.
My written works explore an array of topics. These range from: Quantum physics to: Cosmology, psychology, political science, constitutional law, religion, evolution, mysticism, spiritual abuse, 9/11 (no conspiracies are advanced but plenty of questions are asked), shari'ah (I think about this in a manner that is very different than many, if not most Muslims, do), terrorism, mythology, economics, philosophy, and education.
Last year I died … several times. Not only were the percentages running fairly high against my surviving the ordeal, but even if I did survive, only a small number of people who experienced what I did actually escape suffering neurological deficits, of one kind or another, as a result of such problems.
After being put in a medically induced coma for several days, I was brought back to consciousness and went through a couple more days of medication-psychosis (i.e., this condition was caused by the drugs that I had been given to help keep me alive). During this phase of things, I was operating under the delusion that the medical staff was going to kidnap me, ship me overseas, and, then, have my body parts harvested to be sold on the black market.
Naturally, given the foregoing circumstances -- or what I thought those circumstances to be -- the idea of escaping from the hospital seemed like a rational thing to do. Despite having been tethered to the hospital bed by a series of restraints to help manage my medical situation, I somehow managed to pull free from the system of restraints and, subsequently, began to pull out many -- but not all -- of the tubes that were running in and out of me.
Blood started flowing in every direction. Fortunately, the nursing staff was able to stop me from doing any real damage to myself while they wrestled me back under control.
A day later, the medication-psychosis passed. My sensibilities returned, and I began to work toward recovery.
Last summer (some seven months after dying), my wife and I took to a trip to the Boston/Cambridge area. One of the purposes of this trip was to make some inquiries at Harvard to determine whether the University might be interested in receiving some of my books as a gift.
I left a 5-volume set of books with the staff at Widener Library along with a covering letter. In that communique, I indicated that I would like to gift to Harvard the set of books that I had left at Widener Library during my visit. In addition, I indicated in the letter that I was probably one of the most prolific, diverse, innovative, and, for a variety of reasons, unknown Muslim/Sufi writers in North America, and, if the people at Widener were interested, I would be quite willing to donate whatever other books of mine in which they might be interested.
Less than a week later, I received a letter from a librarian at Harvard indicating that Widener would be quite happy to accept whatever additional books I would like to send. So, I sent him the rest of my body of work -- including several CDs of floetry and a DVD (An Appeal to Christians, Muslims, and Jews) that I had made.
The foregoing series of events eventually gave birth to the idea of wanting to do the same sort of thing for a variety of other libraries … a sort of Johnny Appleseed project with books taking the place of apple seeds. However, although I paid for the books that I sent to Harvard, I really don't have the financial wherewithal to repeat the process in conjunction with other libraries since supplying such material costs approximately $900.00 for all 40 books (as well as CDs and DVDs) plus the added costs required for packing and shipping those books, and this is one of the reasons why I have signed up with Patreon.
I believe the perspective that is given expression through the foregoing works is fairly unique and has something constructive to offer to civil discourse. To reduce that message down to its bare minimum, I am committed to exploring how the idea of inalienable sovereignty is at the heart of both western and Islamic approaches for trying to understand, as well as bring to fruition, the constructive potential that is inherent in the relationship among human beings, society, and reality.
I do not profess to have all of the answers or even any of the answers. Nonetheless, I feel that my work might serve as a useful resource for anyone to consult and critically push against in his, her, or their own search for the truth concerning the nature of that individual's relationship with Being.
-----
To gain access to the foregoing Bridge software package, go to:
Patreon
and pledge your support, and you will be provided with a link that gives you access to the aforementioned package. By participating in the patreon program, you also will be helping to provide libraries with learning materials that will enhance their current holdings.
-----
The Sufi path is a (not the) way of seeking truths concerning the nature of one's relationship with Being. I have had two spiritual guides in my life -- one was authentic and one was a charlatan, and both individuals had something to teach me about myself, life and the nature of my relationship with Being.
Struggling to establish the truth is of fundamental importance to any mystical pursuit. However, without character, the search for truth tends to become very dysfunctional, and, therefore, those who have aspirations concerning the mystical path (whether Sufi or otherwise) come to understand the importance of seeking to acquire qualities of: Honesty, fairness, patience, tolerance, nobility, courage, humility, gratitude, generosity, perseverance, self-sacrifice, equanimity, forgiveness, friendship, love, and compassion.
The following are a few truths concerning my life. To what extent those truths helped me to develop and realize any of the foregoing traits of character is a more difficult issue to assess.
----
I am 73 years old … hoping to become 74 in September.
I was born in Colorado but grew up in various parts of Maine. The year (1962) that I graduated from high school in north-central Maine there were 44 students in my school, 11 of whom were in my class.
After high school, I went to Harvard College. I've often thought that, perhaps, individuals at the Harvard medical school might have wanted me for experimental purposes, but a mistake was made, and a letter of acceptance emerged from the wrong department.
I began university with a pre-theological major. However, before finishing university, I transitioned through a number of majors including: Physical science, philosophy, and, finally, social relations (an interdisciplinary curriculum involving sociology, anthropology, and psychology) before graduating with honors.
Within 6 months following graduation, I went to Canada to protest the Vietnam War. While in Canada, I was initiated into a Sufi mystical order and, in the process, became a Muslim.
Shortly after stepping onto the Sufi path, I entered a doctoral program in education at the University of Toronto. Due to a variety of issues, 17 years passed before I was able to obtain my degree.
To make a very long story mercifully much shorter, my graduation only became possible after I fired my original thesis committee and went about cobbling together my own oral examination committee. Following their examination of me, that committee (which consisted of several physicists, a linguist, two specialists in the philosophy of science, as well as several other individuals) voted to accept (by a tally of 7-0) my dissertation on hermeneutical field theory .
Several years before I obtained my doctorate, my spiritual guide passed away. Feeling the need for further guidance, I went in search of another teacher, and, several years later, found someone.
Initially, the new teacher seemed ideal. However, it took me 11 years to discover that he was a charlatan.
Despite the difficulties entailed by those 11 years, I learned a great deal about myself, other people, the Sufi path, and life. In many respects, those 11 years helped to constructively (if rather painfully) complement what I had learned from my first spiritual teacher (someone whom I consider to have been quite authentic).
During the foregoing period of time, I moved from Toronto to Ottawa and, then, to New York, New Jersey, and, finally, back to Maine. For the final 4 or 5 years of that 11-year time frame, I was -- with the exception of a few odd jobs here and there -- both unemployed and couch-surfing (in fact, for more than a year, I slept on the floor of an office managed by a friend of mine, and the logistics of removing myself from the office before workers arrived for the day was always a challenge).
Six months, or so, after arriving back in Maine, I went to work for my brother in his insurance firm. When my brother sold his business a year, or so, later, the new owner decided not to keep me on and, as a result, I went through several more years of unemployment and semi-homelessness (my age, education, "checkered" past, lack of a vehicle, and living in an economically depressed area all served as obstacles to obtaining gainful employment).
I finally got a position as an adjunct professor of psychology in a local university. This lasted for about six years before the opportunities associated with that position began to dissipate.
I resigned and began to devote my time to writing full time. Although I had written and published several books prior to moving to Maine, my career as a writer didn't really begin to blossom (in terms of production but not in terms of financial success) until after I resigned from my day job and retired at age 63.
To date, I have written 39 books (mostly non-fiction), 39 pieces of floetry (poetry set to music), as well as produced a DVD. While over the last 10-12 years, I have managed to sell 3,000, or so books, in some 20 countries, making money as a writer of books is fairly difficult to accomplish (especially since, for the most part, I do not engage in advertising), and, consequently, if my motivation for writing was financial, I would have stopped generating books a long time ago.
My written works explore an array of topics. These range from: Quantum physics to: Cosmology, psychology, political science, constitutional law, religion, evolution, mysticism, spiritual abuse, 9/11 (no conspiracies are advanced but plenty of questions are asked), shari'ah (I think about this in a manner that is very different than many, if not most Muslims, do), terrorism, mythology, economics, philosophy, and education.
Last year I died … several times. Not only were the percentages running fairly high against my surviving the ordeal, but even if I did survive, only a small number of people who experienced what I did actually escape suffering neurological deficits, of one kind or another, as a result of such problems.
After being put in a medically induced coma for several days, I was brought back to consciousness and went through a couple more days of medication-psychosis (i.e., this condition was caused by the drugs that I had been given to help keep me alive). During this phase of things, I was operating under the delusion that the medical staff was going to kidnap me, ship me overseas, and, then, have my body parts harvested to be sold on the black market.
Naturally, given the foregoing circumstances -- or what I thought those circumstances to be -- the idea of escaping from the hospital seemed like a rational thing to do. Despite having been tethered to the hospital bed by a series of restraints to help manage my medical situation, I somehow managed to pull free from the system of restraints and, subsequently, began to pull out many -- but not all -- of the tubes that were running in and out of me.
Blood started flowing in every direction. Fortunately, the nursing staff was able to stop me from doing any real damage to myself while they wrestled me back under control.
A day later, the medication-psychosis passed. My sensibilities returned, and I began to work toward recovery.
Last summer (some seven months after dying), my wife and I took to a trip to the Boston/Cambridge area. One of the purposes of this trip was to make some inquiries at Harvard to determine whether the University might be interested in receiving some of my books as a gift.
I left a 5-volume set of books with the staff at Widener Library along with a covering letter. In that communique, I indicated that I would like to gift to Harvard the set of books that I had left at Widener Library during my visit. In addition, I indicated in the letter that I was probably one of the most prolific, diverse, innovative, and, for a variety of reasons, unknown Muslim/Sufi writers in North America, and, if the people at Widener were interested, I would be quite willing to donate whatever other books of mine in which they might be interested.
Less than a week later, I received a letter from a librarian at Harvard indicating that Widener would be quite happy to accept whatever additional books I would like to send. So, I sent him the rest of my body of work -- including several CDs of floetry and a DVD (An Appeal to Christians, Muslims, and Jews) that I had made.
The foregoing series of events eventually gave birth to the idea of wanting to do the same sort of thing for a variety of other libraries … a sort of Johnny Appleseed project with books taking the place of apple seeds. However, although I paid for the books that I sent to Harvard, I really don't have the financial wherewithal to repeat the process in conjunction with other libraries since supplying such material costs approximately $900.00 for all 40 books (as well as CDs and DVDs) plus the added costs required for packing and shipping those books, and this is one of the reasons why I have signed up with Patreon.
I believe the perspective that is given expression through the foregoing works is fairly unique and has something constructive to offer to civil discourse. To reduce that message down to its bare minimum, I am committed to exploring how the idea of inalienable sovereignty is at the heart of both western and Islamic approaches for trying to understand, as well as bring to fruition, the constructive potential that is inherent in the relationship among human beings, society, and reality.
I do not profess to have all of the answers or even any of the answers. Nonetheless, I feel that my work might serve as a useful resource for anyone to consult and critically push against in his, her, or their own search for the truth concerning the nature of that individual's relationship with Being.
-----
To gain access to the foregoing Bridge software package, go to:
Patreon
and pledge your support, and you will be provided with a link that gives you access to the aforementioned package. By participating in the patreon program, you also will be helping to provide libraries with learning materials that will enhance their current holdings.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Unscientific America: 9/11, Harris and Chomsky - New Book
This book serves as a concise and incisive introduction into various aspects of the 9/11 issue and does so in a unique fashion. Among other things, it gives expression to an overview of the transformation that took place in the understanding of Peter Michael Ketchum, a former employee of NIST, with respect to the issue of 9/11, and the book also pursues a fairly extensive round of critical reflection in relation to the rather disturbing views of Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky on matters pertaining to 9/11. More specifically, despite the fact that both Dr. Harris and Professor Chomsky are considered -- at least by some people -- to be scientists, nonetheless, rather surprisingly -- if not shockingly -- in the matter of 9/11, neither of the foregoing two gentlemen seems to exhibit the basic qualities one might expect from a scientist -- namely, curiosity, rigor, insight, methodology, attention to detail, concern for the quality of evidence, logical analysis, or the capacity to ask probing questions, but, instead, they appear to be preoccupied with manufactured conspiracies of one kind or another. This book -- Unscientific America: 9/11, Harris, and Chomsky -- will present a substantial amount of evidence to demonstrate that in the matter of 9/11, neither Dr. Harris nor Professor Chomsky appears to know all that much about the actual facts of 9/11. Yet, such a lack of knowledge has not prevented either of those two individuals from making all manner of allegations concerning the events of that tragic day that seem to be unsubstantiated. In the matter of 9/11, both Dr. Harris and Professor Chomsky behave in a way that suggests that they -- each in his own inimitable style -- appear to have become deeply entangled in a process of willful blindness in which they could have known relevant facts concerning 9/11 and should have known those facts but, instead, seem to have taken active steps to ignore such information and, as a result, bear a certain amount of responsibility for the ensuing tragedies that might have been prevented, or lessened to some degree, if Dr. Harris and Professor Chomsky had been less cavalier in their mishandling of the actual evidence of 9/11 and, in the process, appear to have misled millions of other individuals concerning the facts of that occasion.
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