How can Divine Grace be a bad thing?
Well, we should begin to suspect it immediately when we find it is an integral part of Paulist Christian Doctrine. But first, let’s see an explanation. You see, for these Paulist Christians Grace is the mechanism which brings them Righteousness. When a Paulist says he or she is ‘born again’, well, it is Grace that had been doing the rebirthing. So far it sounds fine, doesn’t it, but the problem occurs when we discover that Grace must be entirely relied upon at the exclusion of Will.
You see, the Paulists insisted that no one could be saved by Works, that is, simply being good, or acting good, and doing good things, being moral – all that had no religious significance at all. In fact Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans quite denigrates Good Works as ‘cheap rags and boasts’ before God. I’ve often seen enough in Christian Propaganda that the other Religions of the World are damned simply because they believe in Salvation by Works, which apparently then are not a very good thing to Christians. Christian Doctrine was very precise in requiring that one be saved, and then transformed and purified only by Grace.
The problem I see with that is that so very few Paulists ever really get around to being purified by Grace – at their first confession of Faith, subsequently, or at any time in their lives. But they are ‘saved’. You see, for them, ‘Forgiveness’ of sins is quite enough to allow them into Heaven. That Grace never laid its transforming touch upon them is of little ultimate import to them.
If you think I exaggerate, well, I refer you to the Case of the Bishop Pelagius who in the early centuries, early enough for Saint Augustine to make his career in condemning him, had issued the Teaching that men should endeavor to do good and refrain from sin, and that each man could summon his will power to resist Evil. Now, that was exactly the Teaching the Catholic Church needed, then and now, especially if it wished to honestly address its problem with pedophilia and corruption. But that’s not how it went down. Pelagius was accused and then tried for heresy, lost his case and was forced to recant (oh, his Recantation was clever enough – he said that by recanting he was committing Evil and by committing Evil he was now well in line with the other Bishops and Augustine). He placed Works above Grace, and one can simply not do that in the Paulist Church.
I have a feeling that the True Intent of that Doctrine of Grace is a bit sinister, that the Ruling Paulists, the True Leaders and not the often well-meaning but idiot and ignorant followers, that they explicitly are avoiding any injunction to Moral Responsibility, or any Order that they use their Will Powers to be Righteous Men. You see, while they are simply Saved and can wait at God’s leisure for some Magical Transformation to Goodness by Grace, then they can do just as Augustine had done, and spend their entire lives rolling in the mud and slops of, well, fully deliberate sin. I guess they simply assume that if God wants to change their Sinful Nature, then He could do that whenever He pleased, and until then they could simply and guiltlessly let Nature run its course where All is Forgiven anyway. And this gives us a World of surprisingly Self Righteous Slave Traders and War Mongers, on the Protestant Side, and Fat Cat Corrupt pedophile Bishops on the other.
Now, MOST Catholics didn’t use to believe such, well, Evil. Remember that Catholicism had comprised a Working Civilization, it had been the Thousand Year Reign of Christ on Earth prophesized by Scripture, and Civilizations simply can’t work if Evil is too openly condoned. The Marian Religious Orders that had been the backbone of Catholic Civilization before the Reformation insisted upon the actual practice of Conversion – people were expected to repent of sin, atone for sin, and then convert to Righteousness. All of these things were a matter of act and especially Will. Indeed, that is why the Protestants, particularly Luther and Calvin had such a hard-on against the Catholics – for ignoring the explicit Teachings of Paul on Grace and Salvation by Faith Alone. The Catholics were accused then, and even now to some extant, for believing in Salvation by Works.
I would wish that Modern Catholicism was as morally centered as the Old Brand, but with what we see of all the Pedophilia, we know that isn’t true. But still, it is JUST the Bishops. The Religious Orders still mostly have it right. Yet it is that when you talk about Catholicism, people think you mean exclusively the Teachings of the Bishops – the Bishops being the first to agree on that point. The problem there is that the Bishops effectively surrendered to the Protestants during the Wars of the Reformation (oh the Protestants speak of Catholic lack of tolerance, but Protestants won those wars simply by going way beyond the appetite of any Catholic for murder and rapine). At the Council of Trent, soon after the Catholic Surrender the Catholic Bishops underscored their acquiescence to the Doctrine of Grace. They promised heartily that never again would any Catholic ever intentionally do Good. Well, as they still insisted upon behaving better than any Protestant, the Protestants never believed them. Oh, yes, the Protestants have their Pedophiles aplenty too, but suing a bunch of Scout Masters is like squeezing blood from stone. The Lawyers go after the Catholics because they have all those Hospitals and Schools to sell. Notice that nobody ever takes the Pedophiles to Criminal Court. It is always just about the Money.
Now, back to the point of Grace against Works, as I insist, it is ONLY the Bishops who PRETEND to speak for the entire Church, but it is obvious that the Monks and the Nuns believe no such thing, as they completely fill their lives with Intentional Good Works. It is only the Bishops and the Secular Clergy (the Priests who have no affiliation in any Religious Order) who have been involved in these horrid Sexual and Corruption Scandals. Or, wait, no, I do remember some old problems within the Religious Orders, but at least the Order Superiors had their hands free to exert Discipline and demand Moral Retribution. The Religious Orders never stood by doing nothing, waiting for Grace.
The Bishops, and especially the Paulist Protestants, if they would take seriously their Nominal Beliefs (so few people care to bother to know what they are actually supposed to Believe) really are backed into a corner when Caught in Scandal. As the Bishops had said repeatedly, they are supposed to Forgive. They are supposed to depend upon the Grace of God and not take Judgment (where they mean discipline and correction) into their own hands.
You see, where Protestants are mostly ignorant, the Bishops – even if they are Evil, well, at least they are Educated, and they KNOW about the history of the Bishop Pelagius and the Doctrines sourcing from Paul through Augustine which insist upon Grace over Will. Christian Doctrine being what it is, morally their hands are tied.
But Christ reminded us that we would know a Tree by its Fruit. Where ‘Grace’ is a pretty enough name for a Tree, we find that its fruit makes the Tree in every sense a tentacle sprouting up from the bowels of Hell to strangle any reasonable Hope for Righteousness in the World.
So, on the whole, Grace is not really a very good thing, is it?
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Privacy, The Root of All Evil
It is ordinarily supposed that money is the root of all evil; however, this is only so to the extent that money is able to purchase effective exemptions from the usual social supervision that is brought to bear upon those with less money. In short, people with more money acquire with it a greater extent of privacy. And it is that privacy which allows for all of their notorious evil.
Most Theological Philosophy attributes to God the quality of being All Knowing. Such All Knowingness would certainly make any kind of Privacy impossible. So it is that in Heaven, where God enforces His Moral Judgment, that the Blessed Souls maintain a moral perfection because they know they can keep no dark secrets from God, that they have no Privacy. While their Goodness is real enough, much Evil is probably avoided because there are no opportunities for private indulgence. Perhaps it can be compared to how anybody would behave if always in the presence of those whom one respects the most, with no slipping away to the dark side, ever.
Now, down here on Earth, we are presently going through the threshold of capabilities, in information technology, that could effectively eliminate Privacy, and with it put an end to most crimes and instances of corruption. Cash money could be made contraband and replaced exclusively by systems of monitored electronic transfer – allowing for only honest exchanges. Also, it would take relatively little to almost completely monitor, with video and audio, at least all of the Urban Areas, at least the public areas where most crimes being committed. Where all movements are tracked, no criminal could ever “get away”. If it would not quite be the same as God watching our every move, still there would be the moral comfort of knowing that we could all be watching each other, that is when in the public sphere. I suppose it would not hurt to still have our homes to ourselves… at least our bedrooms.
But the trends in this direction are not favorable. Now, especially in America, where the propaganda is so entirely relentless and pervasive, that people assume that they are quite certain of what they think, and that they are quite right to think it, it is thought that Privacy is the preferred thing. We hear endlessly of protecting our rights to Privacy. Yet, all crime and corruption relies first upon privacy. Where charity and honesty preen in the light of day, all of the worst aspects of humanity lurk in the shadows of privacy. But it is considered the first priority of Political Correctness to protect what can only lead to endless harm.
Politically, privacy is now making strange alliances. The Left is screaming for protections of Privacy, perhaps only to spite the Right. But they should consider that Socialism and the Left could very well thrive in a totally open and monitored Society, but we can only imagine what a blow it would be to the Wealthy and the Corrupt Classes if suddenly all information were to be reviewed for ethics and legality. Does it not become obvious why so much Propaganda, that only the Wealthy and Powerful Classes can so well arrange for, has gone into convincing one and all of the supposed Blessed Sacredness of ‘Privacy’. The Dark have the most to gain in this atmosphere of Darkness, and so it is odd that the Left, so charitable and enlightened in every other regard, should side with the Devil in this particular case. Yes, they may be afraid of Right Wing Governments overhearing their secret Left Wing Conspiracies, but they should well consider that the same Darkness that shields them also shields their enemies who thrive so much better in the dark than they could ever do. Complete Disclosure would be the better strategic weapon for the Left. Besides, who needs secret police when you have undercover reporters.
There would be some problems and complications with implementing a totally Open Society. As it now stands, the Status Quo relies heavily on crime and corruption, indeed, there is a complete economic subculture that funds itself on drug sales, prostitution, car theft and warehouse pilferage (up to about 40% of the household goods found in poverty level households had ‘fallen off the truck’, that is, were pilfered from warehouses and sold at discount on the street. So this practice provides effective ‘employment’ on one side of the equation while relieving poverty on the other side with prices often a mere fraction of retail). The Monetary Policy in both America and Europe defend a high level of unemployment, blithely pretending to suppose that all of these ‘unemployed’ people somehow don’t need to eat or pay rent, but if they were honest with themselves they would have to admit that the money that supports so many ‘unemployed’ people must be coming from somewhere. It is. Crime that hides in Privacy. Privacy now maintains up to about 30% of the Population. In an Honest and Open World, we would have to either provide alternatives to what is now nominally illegal, but goes on in Private, or we would have to revise the Laws. While I can never image that Theft or Burglary could ever be legalized, I could easily envision Prostitution becoming a main street service, and that Drug Traffic could easily be transferred to the domain of the ordinary Retail Stores. Perhaps even more importantly, if Privacy were to be largely suspended, we would need to review the Laws in the light of just how serious we are about insisting upon them. It is one matter to have Laws that we know are only enforced against certain target ethnic or class groups, but quite something else if we suppose all of us could be vulnerable to the certain enforcement of such laws. We know for a fact that many people do indeed engage in drug use and involve themselves in prostitution. We need to ask whether such universals should ever be illegal. We hear a great deal about Freedom while the prisons are full of people who stole nothing and hurt nobody, and who are behind bars only because their Freedom had not been respected. Where Laws are enacted only to uphold the Morals of certain select groups, remembering that Democracies are often nothing more than 51% of the people imposing tyrannical dictatorships over the other 49%, we may easily suspect that people are sent to jail not because they offended against their own personal moral standards but because they offended others, who should probably have been minding their own business. We would need to review Laws that while supporting certain Moral Judgments or uphold certain Ethic Principles impinge upon the Freedom to make neutral moral choices. In this light it becomes difficult to support laws that punish those who have not stolen anything, or hurt anybody who does not specifically complain about anything. In almost every case Households should be allowed to police themselves (“A man’s home is his Castle” is more than a quaint old saying, but is rather one of the first principles of English Law which we have gone a great distance in forgetting), and we should all realize that the small good that millions of social workers do does not offset the harm of their perpetual threats and interference or the expense of their hire and maintenance. We could cash in all those Social Workers – all those people dedicated to taking children from their families – and pay for Universal Health Care and have money left over.
Also, when we think about Laws that end in tossing people into prison, not the least consideration should be that it costs a great deal to keep people in Prison. Every Prison Guard costs Society the price of a Nurse, and every Prosecuting Lawyer could have been a Doctor. We need to ask ourselves what is really important. Our Society has more lawyers than Doctors and Engineers put together. Is it any wonder we live in a Sick Society?
Anyway, if Privacy were to be eliminated, even if there were a reform of the Laws, still, employment opportunities would have to be significantly increased. And here I have an idea. Now people are given a distribution of Society’s Wealth in exchange for their labor, that is, for their contribution to Production. But honestly, with modern automation and ‘labor saving’ devices we certainly do not need everybody to work… or not all week long as is now done. We can see that practically all the manufacturing for the entire World can be accomplished in just a few urban areas in China. If we were really to refuse a Distribution of the Wealth to everybody not strictly needed for their labor, then we are heading for trouble (I cite a book from almost a decade ago – “End of Work” by Jeremy Rifkin). The way I see it, People should now be paid for their compliance. If people follow all the rules, they should be paid for it. And the more enthusiastically they go along with the program, the more they should get. It would be the perfect means for achieving the ends of Social Engineering – people could be paid to be the Perfect Society. As it is now, people are paid haphazardly to advance the ends of the Wealthiest 1%.
Oh, and one last concern. Freedom of Speech had once been something of an Ideal. But now in our National Security Societies, people can be silenced by imposing Confidentiality Restrictions upon information. In America today upwards of 20% of the Population are working under Security Clearances of some kind or another and so have been stripped of the right to speaking about their Jobs, what they do, and what they know. Doesn’t this render meaningless the whole idea of Freedom of Speech? And it’s not just a few key areas where there are Secrets. Now EVERYTHING has been made secret. It simply suits them to work in the Dark, and so every potentially embarrassing facet of Truth is hit with the Big Red Stamp. Indeed, there can be made something of a Logical Aphorism that can be applied here, call it the Leo Principle, that anything the Government tells us must be a Lie, because if it were true, it would be classified. You can’t Classify something that never happened, or that is purely imaginary, and so any politician is free to talk endlessly on and on, as long as they keep it fictional. But if it crosses the line into any area of Reality, then some Government Office would have already classified it, cutting it off from permissible Public Discourse. So Lies are the only thing they can ever really give us. The Truth is Secret.
Now Corporations impose their own policies of Secrecy and Confidentiality. And the Courts and the Judicial System that should be protecting Freedom of Speech are often the worst transgressors – imposing hush orders, and severely restricting what can and cannot be said during a Public Trial. For instance, it is widely known that the Jury of the O. J. Simpson Trial would have voted for guilty if only the same information had been available to them as was going to everybody else – anybody with a TV set – the
restriction of Speech and Information came back to haunt Society with this regrettable verdict. Then the Courts uphold agreements predicated upon Corporations contracting for Secrecy – people are given money to NOT tell anybody else about poison ground water and such, and it is the Courts that are brokering such Deals with the Devil.
Anyway, just as Privacy provides a shielding darkness that can foster corruption in the general public, so also it must not be forgotten that in regards to Governments and Government Agencies, Corporations, public or private, and the Courts, that if they can hide information, then we can only anticipate the same kind of moral degeneracy and corruption. If People or Governments are allowed to act in secrecy, what else can we expect but that they will do exactly what they would be ashamed to do in the open? All facets of our Society should stand in the pure light of day.
Most Theological Philosophy attributes to God the quality of being All Knowing. Such All Knowingness would certainly make any kind of Privacy impossible. So it is that in Heaven, where God enforces His Moral Judgment, that the Blessed Souls maintain a moral perfection because they know they can keep no dark secrets from God, that they have no Privacy. While their Goodness is real enough, much Evil is probably avoided because there are no opportunities for private indulgence. Perhaps it can be compared to how anybody would behave if always in the presence of those whom one respects the most, with no slipping away to the dark side, ever.
Now, down here on Earth, we are presently going through the threshold of capabilities, in information technology, that could effectively eliminate Privacy, and with it put an end to most crimes and instances of corruption. Cash money could be made contraband and replaced exclusively by systems of monitored electronic transfer – allowing for only honest exchanges. Also, it would take relatively little to almost completely monitor, with video and audio, at least all of the Urban Areas, at least the public areas where most crimes being committed. Where all movements are tracked, no criminal could ever “get away”. If it would not quite be the same as God watching our every move, still there would be the moral comfort of knowing that we could all be watching each other, that is when in the public sphere. I suppose it would not hurt to still have our homes to ourselves… at least our bedrooms.
But the trends in this direction are not favorable. Now, especially in America, where the propaganda is so entirely relentless and pervasive, that people assume that they are quite certain of what they think, and that they are quite right to think it, it is thought that Privacy is the preferred thing. We hear endlessly of protecting our rights to Privacy. Yet, all crime and corruption relies first upon privacy. Where charity and honesty preen in the light of day, all of the worst aspects of humanity lurk in the shadows of privacy. But it is considered the first priority of Political Correctness to protect what can only lead to endless harm.
Politically, privacy is now making strange alliances. The Left is screaming for protections of Privacy, perhaps only to spite the Right. But they should consider that Socialism and the Left could very well thrive in a totally open and monitored Society, but we can only imagine what a blow it would be to the Wealthy and the Corrupt Classes if suddenly all information were to be reviewed for ethics and legality. Does it not become obvious why so much Propaganda, that only the Wealthy and Powerful Classes can so well arrange for, has gone into convincing one and all of the supposed Blessed Sacredness of ‘Privacy’. The Dark have the most to gain in this atmosphere of Darkness, and so it is odd that the Left, so charitable and enlightened in every other regard, should side with the Devil in this particular case. Yes, they may be afraid of Right Wing Governments overhearing their secret Left Wing Conspiracies, but they should well consider that the same Darkness that shields them also shields their enemies who thrive so much better in the dark than they could ever do. Complete Disclosure would be the better strategic weapon for the Left. Besides, who needs secret police when you have undercover reporters.
There would be some problems and complications with implementing a totally Open Society. As it now stands, the Status Quo relies heavily on crime and corruption, indeed, there is a complete economic subculture that funds itself on drug sales, prostitution, car theft and warehouse pilferage (up to about 40% of the household goods found in poverty level households had ‘fallen off the truck’, that is, were pilfered from warehouses and sold at discount on the street. So this practice provides effective ‘employment’ on one side of the equation while relieving poverty on the other side with prices often a mere fraction of retail). The Monetary Policy in both America and Europe defend a high level of unemployment, blithely pretending to suppose that all of these ‘unemployed’ people somehow don’t need to eat or pay rent, but if they were honest with themselves they would have to admit that the money that supports so many ‘unemployed’ people must be coming from somewhere. It is. Crime that hides in Privacy. Privacy now maintains up to about 30% of the Population. In an Honest and Open World, we would have to either provide alternatives to what is now nominally illegal, but goes on in Private, or we would have to revise the Laws. While I can never image that Theft or Burglary could ever be legalized, I could easily envision Prostitution becoming a main street service, and that Drug Traffic could easily be transferred to the domain of the ordinary Retail Stores. Perhaps even more importantly, if Privacy were to be largely suspended, we would need to review the Laws in the light of just how serious we are about insisting upon them. It is one matter to have Laws that we know are only enforced against certain target ethnic or class groups, but quite something else if we suppose all of us could be vulnerable to the certain enforcement of such laws. We know for a fact that many people do indeed engage in drug use and involve themselves in prostitution. We need to ask whether such universals should ever be illegal. We hear a great deal about Freedom while the prisons are full of people who stole nothing and hurt nobody, and who are behind bars only because their Freedom had not been respected. Where Laws are enacted only to uphold the Morals of certain select groups, remembering that Democracies are often nothing more than 51% of the people imposing tyrannical dictatorships over the other 49%, we may easily suspect that people are sent to jail not because they offended against their own personal moral standards but because they offended others, who should probably have been minding their own business. We would need to review Laws that while supporting certain Moral Judgments or uphold certain Ethic Principles impinge upon the Freedom to make neutral moral choices. In this light it becomes difficult to support laws that punish those who have not stolen anything, or hurt anybody who does not specifically complain about anything. In almost every case Households should be allowed to police themselves (“A man’s home is his Castle” is more than a quaint old saying, but is rather one of the first principles of English Law which we have gone a great distance in forgetting), and we should all realize that the small good that millions of social workers do does not offset the harm of their perpetual threats and interference or the expense of their hire and maintenance. We could cash in all those Social Workers – all those people dedicated to taking children from their families – and pay for Universal Health Care and have money left over.
Also, when we think about Laws that end in tossing people into prison, not the least consideration should be that it costs a great deal to keep people in Prison. Every Prison Guard costs Society the price of a Nurse, and every Prosecuting Lawyer could have been a Doctor. We need to ask ourselves what is really important. Our Society has more lawyers than Doctors and Engineers put together. Is it any wonder we live in a Sick Society?
Anyway, if Privacy were to be eliminated, even if there were a reform of the Laws, still, employment opportunities would have to be significantly increased. And here I have an idea. Now people are given a distribution of Society’s Wealth in exchange for their labor, that is, for their contribution to Production. But honestly, with modern automation and ‘labor saving’ devices we certainly do not need everybody to work… or not all week long as is now done. We can see that practically all the manufacturing for the entire World can be accomplished in just a few urban areas in China. If we were really to refuse a Distribution of the Wealth to everybody not strictly needed for their labor, then we are heading for trouble (I cite a book from almost a decade ago – “End of Work” by Jeremy Rifkin). The way I see it, People should now be paid for their compliance. If people follow all the rules, they should be paid for it. And the more enthusiastically they go along with the program, the more they should get. It would be the perfect means for achieving the ends of Social Engineering – people could be paid to be the Perfect Society. As it is now, people are paid haphazardly to advance the ends of the Wealthiest 1%.
Oh, and one last concern. Freedom of Speech had once been something of an Ideal. But now in our National Security Societies, people can be silenced by imposing Confidentiality Restrictions upon information. In America today upwards of 20% of the Population are working under Security Clearances of some kind or another and so have been stripped of the right to speaking about their Jobs, what they do, and what they know. Doesn’t this render meaningless the whole idea of Freedom of Speech? And it’s not just a few key areas where there are Secrets. Now EVERYTHING has been made secret. It simply suits them to work in the Dark, and so every potentially embarrassing facet of Truth is hit with the Big Red Stamp. Indeed, there can be made something of a Logical Aphorism that can be applied here, call it the Leo Principle, that anything the Government tells us must be a Lie, because if it were true, it would be classified. You can’t Classify something that never happened, or that is purely imaginary, and so any politician is free to talk endlessly on and on, as long as they keep it fictional. But if it crosses the line into any area of Reality, then some Government Office would have already classified it, cutting it off from permissible Public Discourse. So Lies are the only thing they can ever really give us. The Truth is Secret.
Now Corporations impose their own policies of Secrecy and Confidentiality. And the Courts and the Judicial System that should be protecting Freedom of Speech are often the worst transgressors – imposing hush orders, and severely restricting what can and cannot be said during a Public Trial. For instance, it is widely known that the Jury of the O. J. Simpson Trial would have voted for guilty if only the same information had been available to them as was going to everybody else – anybody with a TV set – the
restriction of Speech and Information came back to haunt Society with this regrettable verdict. Then the Courts uphold agreements predicated upon Corporations contracting for Secrecy – people are given money to NOT tell anybody else about poison ground water and such, and it is the Courts that are brokering such Deals with the Devil.
Anyway, just as Privacy provides a shielding darkness that can foster corruption in the general public, so also it must not be forgotten that in regards to Governments and Government Agencies, Corporations, public or private, and the Courts, that if they can hide information, then we can only anticipate the same kind of moral degeneracy and corruption. If People or Governments are allowed to act in secrecy, what else can we expect but that they will do exactly what they would be ashamed to do in the open? All facets of our Society should stand in the pure light of day.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
What Iraq? Biggest Lie of the Iraq War
What Iraq? Biggest Lie of the Iraq War
The most pointed indication that all of the Western News Groups are simply propaganda outlets for Western Multi-National Corporation Government is that all of the reports persist in talking about ‘Iraqi Forces’, such as in “When will Iraqi Forces be ready to maintain their own Security”.
Honestly, even the profoundest stupidity could no longer be a cover after all these years of on the ground experience. They must know that there is no longer such a thing as an ‘Iraqi’. Now we have Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds. It is a Civil War. There had once been an Iraq, but that ended with Saddam Hussein, or, more exactly when the ONLY Fully Integrated Nationalist Party was outlawed. You see, Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athist Party were dedicated to securing Iraq as a single unified political entity. Yes, it was primarily Sunni, but this was because traditionally the Sunnis are more politically inclined toward Secular Government, while traditionally the Shia and the Kurds are more prone toward cutting throats and causing mayhem. We can loosely compare it to America where the Catholics are liberal and peaceful and the Protestants are war-mongering exploiters who are still upset that they had to give up their Slaves (voting exactly as though they were White Supremacists while being too discrete to admit it).
But if one examined the composition of the Ba’athist Regime’s Civil Government, it was integrated. Far more integrated than anything they have now. Now, EVERY single Political Party and every single Politician, along with the Civil Servants whom they appoint, are specifically dedicated to a particular Ethnic/Religious Faction. Everybody is taking a side, or has already been killed for not taking a side. The President or Prime Minister, whatever they call that Traitor to the Old Iraq, is an unabashed Shia. The Kurds in the North couldn’t be more clear in demanded their own Nation as a reward for having Betrayed the Old Iraq. And the Sunnis, because the Americans had outlawed all of their Career Positions, are, well, outlaws.
Now, if the News Reporters were actually very concerned with informing us about what is going on, then they would tell us of the Ethnic or Religious Composition of those on whom they are reporting. Are the bombs blowing up in the Sunni Areas, or the Shia. When ‘Iraqi’ Forces take charge in certain districts, well, what are their composition, or the composition of their Officers Corps. I would guess we are seeing Shia invasions of Sunni territories, but the News Media simply is not telling us.
What I find interesting is that the American Army, now so worried of Iran’s spreading influence in the area, Iran being Shia, are now supporting the Sunni Tribes in the midst of this Civil War. It is fascinating to find that apparently Al Qaeda is fighting in support of the Shia. Hmmmm. I thought America was in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda, but now, while the American Army has woke up and is backtracking to the Old Ba’athists (wishing, no doubt they could resurrect Old Saddam), the American State Department are allowing a Government to sit that apparently is in alliance with Al Qaeda. Yes, this all may be quite doubtful, supposing that the Al Qaeda may simply be fighting everybody, as loose secret cell organizations are typically not expected to be too well disciplined as to regards to finer points of strategic policy. But we know for a certainty that Iraq’s Shia Government is in bed with Iran. And the American State Department is too embarrassed to forbid it. These Shia Traitors only got Iraq because America handed it to them, and so they should realize that there had been some tacit conditions. But now the American State Department has found out apparently that Traitors have no honor anywhere. But we should not conclude that Ms. Rice is stupid. I hear she plays piano quite well.
And we can’t blame anything on any intentional policy from George Bush, he being so completely lazy on one hand, and stupid on the other. What is most likely is that things were simply allowed to proceed, and if anybody was smart enough to know what was happening, they had not the political clout to do a thing about it. And both Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush keep closed offices and carefully screen their briefings so that they are never told anything they do not explicitly wish to hear.
Anyway, regarding an Exit Strategy. America persists in arguing that they need to stay or there will certainly be Chaos. Well, that is silly. All that needs to be done is to hold a Conference, inviting Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and, yes, even Iran. At this point the Shia and Iran will have to be given something, but the truth is that Iraq is on the Sunni Arab side of the old Traditional Line of separation between Shia Persia and Sunni Arabia. If it is important enough to them, then the Turks, Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians and especially the Rich and Powerful Saudis will jump in and hold the breach themselves. And if they should have a huge regional War…. Well, so what? At least it could be said that they were minding their own business.
Of course, the puzzling aberration in all of this is that there are many
Shia in the Arab World. You would think that these silly Arabs would have the sense to know that Shia Islam is characteristically Persian… one of the first reactions to the Arab Invasion of Old Persia (yes before the Crusades when Christians invaded the Holy Land, the Muslims were invading the Holy Land… and everywhere else) was that the Persians tried to put their own Man on the Muslim Throne – Shia Islam has no deeper Religious Significance than a Power Grab. Well, perhaps this is how Shia Islam still has its Logic, that everybody who wishes to Unsettle Government can cry that Nothing has Ever been Right since the very first Shia plot to Assassinate the Ruling Sultan failed and the Shia’s were executed instead, just as Traitors and Assassins should be, I might add. But in Arabic I suppose they translate the word “traitor” as ‘martyr’.
Perhaps one resolution in all of this would be to transport all of these Shia, ethnically Arab or not, to Iran where they would have what they purportedly want – Theocratic Government. As it now stands the Shia Minorities in all of these Countries are as likely to be dangerous traitors and subversives as the Shia had been in Iraq.
Will Iraq end up divided up between all the contending parties? Probably. But if they were smart they would take this opportunity to create something of a United States of Arabia, and stop taking shit from the United States of America and its little snot puppet Allies (recently welcoming France). Oh, I get it. That’s why America wants to stay there forever. When you start conquering the World, it looks bad when you start giving anything back.
The most pointed indication that all of the Western News Groups are simply propaganda outlets for Western Multi-National Corporation Government is that all of the reports persist in talking about ‘Iraqi Forces’, such as in “When will Iraqi Forces be ready to maintain their own Security”.
Honestly, even the profoundest stupidity could no longer be a cover after all these years of on the ground experience. They must know that there is no longer such a thing as an ‘Iraqi’. Now we have Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds. It is a Civil War. There had once been an Iraq, but that ended with Saddam Hussein, or, more exactly when the ONLY Fully Integrated Nationalist Party was outlawed. You see, Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athist Party were dedicated to securing Iraq as a single unified political entity. Yes, it was primarily Sunni, but this was because traditionally the Sunnis are more politically inclined toward Secular Government, while traditionally the Shia and the Kurds are more prone toward cutting throats and causing mayhem. We can loosely compare it to America where the Catholics are liberal and peaceful and the Protestants are war-mongering exploiters who are still upset that they had to give up their Slaves (voting exactly as though they were White Supremacists while being too discrete to admit it).
But if one examined the composition of the Ba’athist Regime’s Civil Government, it was integrated. Far more integrated than anything they have now. Now, EVERY single Political Party and every single Politician, along with the Civil Servants whom they appoint, are specifically dedicated to a particular Ethnic/Religious Faction. Everybody is taking a side, or has already been killed for not taking a side. The President or Prime Minister, whatever they call that Traitor to the Old Iraq, is an unabashed Shia. The Kurds in the North couldn’t be more clear in demanded their own Nation as a reward for having Betrayed the Old Iraq. And the Sunnis, because the Americans had outlawed all of their Career Positions, are, well, outlaws.
Now, if the News Reporters were actually very concerned with informing us about what is going on, then they would tell us of the Ethnic or Religious Composition of those on whom they are reporting. Are the bombs blowing up in the Sunni Areas, or the Shia. When ‘Iraqi’ Forces take charge in certain districts, well, what are their composition, or the composition of their Officers Corps. I would guess we are seeing Shia invasions of Sunni territories, but the News Media simply is not telling us.
What I find interesting is that the American Army, now so worried of Iran’s spreading influence in the area, Iran being Shia, are now supporting the Sunni Tribes in the midst of this Civil War. It is fascinating to find that apparently Al Qaeda is fighting in support of the Shia. Hmmmm. I thought America was in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda, but now, while the American Army has woke up and is backtracking to the Old Ba’athists (wishing, no doubt they could resurrect Old Saddam), the American State Department are allowing a Government to sit that apparently is in alliance with Al Qaeda. Yes, this all may be quite doubtful, supposing that the Al Qaeda may simply be fighting everybody, as loose secret cell organizations are typically not expected to be too well disciplined as to regards to finer points of strategic policy. But we know for a certainty that Iraq’s Shia Government is in bed with Iran. And the American State Department is too embarrassed to forbid it. These Shia Traitors only got Iraq because America handed it to them, and so they should realize that there had been some tacit conditions. But now the American State Department has found out apparently that Traitors have no honor anywhere. But we should not conclude that Ms. Rice is stupid. I hear she plays piano quite well.
And we can’t blame anything on any intentional policy from George Bush, he being so completely lazy on one hand, and stupid on the other. What is most likely is that things were simply allowed to proceed, and if anybody was smart enough to know what was happening, they had not the political clout to do a thing about it. And both Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush keep closed offices and carefully screen their briefings so that they are never told anything they do not explicitly wish to hear.
Anyway, regarding an Exit Strategy. America persists in arguing that they need to stay or there will certainly be Chaos. Well, that is silly. All that needs to be done is to hold a Conference, inviting Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and, yes, even Iran. At this point the Shia and Iran will have to be given something, but the truth is that Iraq is on the Sunni Arab side of the old Traditional Line of separation between Shia Persia and Sunni Arabia. If it is important enough to them, then the Turks, Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians and especially the Rich and Powerful Saudis will jump in and hold the breach themselves. And if they should have a huge regional War…. Well, so what? At least it could be said that they were minding their own business.
Of course, the puzzling aberration in all of this is that there are many
Shia in the Arab World. You would think that these silly Arabs would have the sense to know that Shia Islam is characteristically Persian… one of the first reactions to the Arab Invasion of Old Persia (yes before the Crusades when Christians invaded the Holy Land, the Muslims were invading the Holy Land… and everywhere else) was that the Persians tried to put their own Man on the Muslim Throne – Shia Islam has no deeper Religious Significance than a Power Grab. Well, perhaps this is how Shia Islam still has its Logic, that everybody who wishes to Unsettle Government can cry that Nothing has Ever been Right since the very first Shia plot to Assassinate the Ruling Sultan failed and the Shia’s were executed instead, just as Traitors and Assassins should be, I might add. But in Arabic I suppose they translate the word “traitor” as ‘martyr’.
Perhaps one resolution in all of this would be to transport all of these Shia, ethnically Arab or not, to Iran where they would have what they purportedly want – Theocratic Government. As it now stands the Shia Minorities in all of these Countries are as likely to be dangerous traitors and subversives as the Shia had been in Iraq.
Will Iraq end up divided up between all the contending parties? Probably. But if they were smart they would take this opportunity to create something of a United States of Arabia, and stop taking shit from the United States of America and its little snot puppet Allies (recently welcoming France). Oh, I get it. That’s why America wants to stay there forever. When you start conquering the World, it looks bad when you start giving anything back.
Narco Terrorism
Narco Terrorism
America is stupid.
The way America sees it, the Drug Trade is funding Terrorism.
But the Truth is that America is always taking the side of those who would agree to wipe out the Number One Cash Crop. The problem is where America is always picking the wrong side, all else being politically neutral.
America would not have to worry about the Drug Traffic taking the side of their Enemies if they would simply befriend them in the first place. Take Afghanistan as a for instance. The people who only want to make a living for themselves find that the only Political Support they can get from anybody is from the Taliban, whom they have never particularly liked. People are forced to take their friends where they can find them. But America is really not giving them a choice.
Oh, well, there is the choice they can make regarding what they grow. They can grow heroin which sells for about a million dollars for every 2 kilos – it could fit into a briefcase; or they can grow cotton that sells for about 20 dollars for a bail that can weigh down a pickup truck. Some choice.
You would think that if it were really important to America to take the Narcotics off the Market, then they would simply buy the product and then destroy it. The Farmers would get their money, and America would intercept its Drugs. Win, Win. Or America could legalize Drugs. You know, the World did just fine until 1932 when America suddenly got a bug up its butt and decided to outlaw what had up to then always been legal.
But, no. America simply goes in and destroys people’s crops. Or, using the War as a convenient excuse, they label the Farmers ‘Taliban’ and shoot them down, calling their murders a Victory for Anti-Terrorism. Yeah, that will win Hearts and Minds.
If America has enemies it is because it seems to be their most heartfelt policy to make enemies.
America is stupid.
The way America sees it, the Drug Trade is funding Terrorism.
But the Truth is that America is always taking the side of those who would agree to wipe out the Number One Cash Crop. The problem is where America is always picking the wrong side, all else being politically neutral.
America would not have to worry about the Drug Traffic taking the side of their Enemies if they would simply befriend them in the first place. Take Afghanistan as a for instance. The people who only want to make a living for themselves find that the only Political Support they can get from anybody is from the Taliban, whom they have never particularly liked. People are forced to take their friends where they can find them. But America is really not giving them a choice.
Oh, well, there is the choice they can make regarding what they grow. They can grow heroin which sells for about a million dollars for every 2 kilos – it could fit into a briefcase; or they can grow cotton that sells for about 20 dollars for a bail that can weigh down a pickup truck. Some choice.
You would think that if it were really important to America to take the Narcotics off the Market, then they would simply buy the product and then destroy it. The Farmers would get their money, and America would intercept its Drugs. Win, Win. Or America could legalize Drugs. You know, the World did just fine until 1932 when America suddenly got a bug up its butt and decided to outlaw what had up to then always been legal.
But, no. America simply goes in and destroys people’s crops. Or, using the War as a convenient excuse, they label the Farmers ‘Taliban’ and shoot them down, calling their murders a Victory for Anti-Terrorism. Yeah, that will win Hearts and Minds.
If America has enemies it is because it seems to be their most heartfelt policy to make enemies.
An Alternative to Genocide
An Alternative to Genocide
Years ago I was acquainted with a particular strategy that the ancient Babylonians or Sumerians had used to tame their savage Minorities, that worked almost as well as simply slaughtering them. They would move these Peoples off of their traditional lands. It was plausible option available to a sizeable and powerful Empire, as they could deal with several troublesome minorities at once, by simply trading their locals.
You see, Land must be a powerful motivator… or, more essentially, a primary incentive to violence. People tell themselves that they can resort to any kind of behavior because “This is our Land”. The sense of ownership in Real Estate unleashes the worst of human monsters. Ask any Zionist.
But once people are moved and settled upon new territories, they apparently are no longer inclined to be so prone to violence. Given new land, they are grateful for it, and are not so ready to see their other neighbors as interlopers.
Of course, we are not speaking in absolutes here. While we can expect Peoples to be momentarily thrown off balance by a move of Territories, forgetting their ordinary violent impulses in the first shock of disorientation, History shows us that even after only a few generations, a new sense of Territorial Entitlement begins to sink in. We can remember that Ancient Babylon had been betrayed by the Jews whom they had moved to pacify them. Apparently it had only worked up to a point.
Therefore it is necessary to actively integrate a Minority People. Just moving them is not enough, and we can expect that their murderous aggressions can only be postponed. But the effective lull in hostilities does provide for a window of opportunity. Usually all that is required is indoctrination in a new Language and a New Religion. Language is a great Unifier. And maybe it is not so important that people have the same Religion as that they do not have a different one. It is important to minimize the ‘us versus them’ dynamics. We can see that the Roman Empire succeeded in Gaul because the Gauls were Latinized, but failed in Germany because the Germans where allowed to continue on as Germans (always a mistake as we have found).
But, anyway, if an Empire finds itself dealing with a murderous little people and is morally appalled to discover that they seem to have no alternative to Genocide, well, there is a way out. It may not be as easy as dropping poison gas-bombs on them, but if the Population can be moved, then it should be moved. It most certainly will offer an opportunity for pacifying the situation with a great deal less loss of Life.
But, again, such humane options are open only to the largest of Political Jurisdictions. We really need to think seriously about One World Government… and making all the Germans speak French before they start acting up again.
Years ago I was acquainted with a particular strategy that the ancient Babylonians or Sumerians had used to tame their savage Minorities, that worked almost as well as simply slaughtering them. They would move these Peoples off of their traditional lands. It was plausible option available to a sizeable and powerful Empire, as they could deal with several troublesome minorities at once, by simply trading their locals.
You see, Land must be a powerful motivator… or, more essentially, a primary incentive to violence. People tell themselves that they can resort to any kind of behavior because “This is our Land”. The sense of ownership in Real Estate unleashes the worst of human monsters. Ask any Zionist.
But once people are moved and settled upon new territories, they apparently are no longer inclined to be so prone to violence. Given new land, they are grateful for it, and are not so ready to see their other neighbors as interlopers.
Of course, we are not speaking in absolutes here. While we can expect Peoples to be momentarily thrown off balance by a move of Territories, forgetting their ordinary violent impulses in the first shock of disorientation, History shows us that even after only a few generations, a new sense of Territorial Entitlement begins to sink in. We can remember that Ancient Babylon had been betrayed by the Jews whom they had moved to pacify them. Apparently it had only worked up to a point.
Therefore it is necessary to actively integrate a Minority People. Just moving them is not enough, and we can expect that their murderous aggressions can only be postponed. But the effective lull in hostilities does provide for a window of opportunity. Usually all that is required is indoctrination in a new Language and a New Religion. Language is a great Unifier. And maybe it is not so important that people have the same Religion as that they do not have a different one. It is important to minimize the ‘us versus them’ dynamics. We can see that the Roman Empire succeeded in Gaul because the Gauls were Latinized, but failed in Germany because the Germans where allowed to continue on as Germans (always a mistake as we have found).
But, anyway, if an Empire finds itself dealing with a murderous little people and is morally appalled to discover that they seem to have no alternative to Genocide, well, there is a way out. It may not be as easy as dropping poison gas-bombs on them, but if the Population can be moved, then it should be moved. It most certainly will offer an opportunity for pacifying the situation with a great deal less loss of Life.
But, again, such humane options are open only to the largest of Political Jurisdictions. We really need to think seriously about One World Government… and making all the Germans speak French before they start acting up again.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Questions About Burma / Myanmar
Questions About Burma / Myanmar
Right now we are all hip deep in Propaganda being circulated by agents for the Multi-National Corporations and their Dupes who wish to take over old Burma, just the same as they have taken over everywhere else. There are some questions they are not asking.
Why do they call it a Pro-Democracy Movement when what triggered it were increases in fuel prices? It seems that the Monks, who live by begging, were caught in a crunch when most people, squeezed by doubled fuel costs, could no longer afford to give the Monks their accustomed hand-outs. If the Generals had dropped fuel prices back to normal, then it seems that the Monks would have been fine and dandy with the Junta. So why are they all suddenly “Pro-Democracy Demonstrators”?
The Junta is blamed for anti-ethnic crack-downs. Okay. Well, who started it? Since the Media is fixated on telling us everything BAD they can find out, it seems that the Junta may well have been the original victims of Ethnic Violence, since it has not been pointed out that they were the instigators. What I envision is that at the onset of Burmese Independence, after the Japanese were ejected out of Burma at the close of the War, some nasty little Ethnic Minority began a Terror Campaign so they could start up their own little Country, so a small select cadre of Bandits could milk this territory for its tax revenues and exploit the so many opportunities for corruption that a little Independent Political Jurisdiction could provide. Well, it may seem a good idea to allow for millions of individual little countries; however, History shows us that the most Peace and Prosperity result from the largest of possible consolidations of Political Jurisdiction – Empires tend to do better over all than little Countries that, just as we see, get caught up in War, and suffer from having stilted little inherently limited currencies and economies. So, it does no tiny little Ethnic Group any favor by allowing their Bandit Chieftains opportunities for corruption by declaring them their own Nation, as they would be better off in a more Collective Grouping. And if they should rise up murderously, the Bandits I mean, especially to reject the old established Political Groupings, why should we think it a bad thing for the Preferred Larger Organization to defend itself? Civilization should always be allowed to defend against Barbarian Aggression, even if it does pit Big against Little. Do we not all slap mosquitoes? So why is it not asked whether the Junta may be the good guys here?
Let us look a bit at what we know of the History here. Years ago the Generals allowed for an Election which they lost to some celebrated Woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is now acclaimed for being the Leader of the Pro-Democracy Movement. Well, it should be the first obvious question, but it is never asked, concerning what policies she would implement if she were actually given Executive Control of the Burmese Government. It would seem to me that the Generals had been dealing in good faith, to allow for Elections, but since they seem to know something that nobody is telling any of us, they saw that the Burmese People had been terribly unwise for electing this Woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, and were allowing for something of some Terrible Revolution which the Generals, in good conscience, could not allow. We might compare this to a situation that could even occur in America, if, lets say, the Anarchist Libertarian Party were to win General Elections on the explicit Platform of dismantling the Federal Government and effectively allowing for Chaos to Run Riot. Now, we need to confess that while we speak of Democracy in terms of Winners and Losers, still, it is not just some Game, and we have to allow that not all results can be in good conscience permitted. Even in America we saw the intervention of their Supreme Court to place a losing Republican in office over a winning Democrat, and this was not even over issues promising to destroy all law and order (indeed, isn’t it the Democrats who are FOR some degree of Regulation, and the Republicans rather closer to the philosophies of Anarchy?). Anyway, while they can only describe this Woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, as “Pro-Democracy”, while omitting to tell us what her actual political aims are, we should resent being asked to rally behind her. And we might consider that the Generals would know her better than we do.
You know, the American State Department had described the first embryonic clashes of China’s infamous Cultural Revolution as “Pro-Democracy”. When such Rebellions fail, they are forever classified as Martyred Pro-Democracy ‘Peaceful Demonstrations’. Of course, when such Rebellions succeed and we discover that they had only been vehicles for even worse forms Tyranny and Corruption, then History is swiftly revised. It seems that Propaganda, while being opportunistic, does not hold itself to being consistent.
It seems that any enemy to an American Enemy is their Friend. Any time anybody causes trouble and instability in the World, giving opportunity for the America’s Multi-National Corporations to come in to clean up the pieces, then it is labeled “Pro-Democracy”. Exxon Oil only wants us all to be free. Yeah, right.
Oh, and perhaps we should review exactly what is a Peaceful Demonstration? Is it really a Peaceful Demonstration when a Capital City is shut down and all Offices of Government are taken over? Again, the Chinese Cultural Revolution was ‘peaceful’ until the very moment when they captured every office of Government and then unleashed their Reign of Terror. 20 Million were murdered in the wake of that Peaceful Demonstration.
America itself once had such a dilemma on their hands. After World War One, the veteran soldiers were upset that their pensions were so low at the same time as the Prohibition Laws forbade them the solace of getting Drunk about it, and so they marched upon Washington, the American Capitol. It was ‘peaceful’ but when it appeared that there were sufficient demonstrators available to overrun every Government Building and effectively pull-off a successful Coup, destroying the Federal Government if that had suddenly become their whim, then the Army was mobilized to defend the Nation against this likely seizure of their Government. America, who now shakes a finger at the Burmese Generals, and shakes a finger at the Chinese after Tiananmen Square, they had not been the least bit squeamish about charging the Cavalry into the Veterans Tent City. And I do not blame them for what they did then, but only for this later hypocrisy and convenient forgetfulness. One cannot allow the Fate of a Government to hang upon the whims of the Mob – and anytime you have a few hundred thousand people in the same room, I’m sorry, but that’s a ‘Mob’. We can count upon such Mobs to be ‘peaceful’ only until their violence becomes legendary. Again we can remember the Peaceful French Revolution, the Peaceful Russian Revolution, the Peaceful Chinese Revolution. Even the Peaceful American Revolution that murdered 3,000 British Peace Keepers at Bunker Hill.
Remember Gandhi who has been made something of the Modern Apostle for Peaceful Resistance. They led to the Wars of Partition. More people died in them than in the Nazi Holocaust. That’s how Peaceful these Demonstrations are.
Now, if the Generals of Myanmar are only trying to save their Nation from being one more instance of tragedy on this long list of Reigns of Popular Terror, then we need to ask why the Media is unreflectively casting them as the Bad Guys. We need to ask ourselves who the Media is taking their orders from?
Right now we are all hip deep in Propaganda being circulated by agents for the Multi-National Corporations and their Dupes who wish to take over old Burma, just the same as they have taken over everywhere else. There are some questions they are not asking.
Why do they call it a Pro-Democracy Movement when what triggered it were increases in fuel prices? It seems that the Monks, who live by begging, were caught in a crunch when most people, squeezed by doubled fuel costs, could no longer afford to give the Monks their accustomed hand-outs. If the Generals had dropped fuel prices back to normal, then it seems that the Monks would have been fine and dandy with the Junta. So why are they all suddenly “Pro-Democracy Demonstrators”?
The Junta is blamed for anti-ethnic crack-downs. Okay. Well, who started it? Since the Media is fixated on telling us everything BAD they can find out, it seems that the Junta may well have been the original victims of Ethnic Violence, since it has not been pointed out that they were the instigators. What I envision is that at the onset of Burmese Independence, after the Japanese were ejected out of Burma at the close of the War, some nasty little Ethnic Minority began a Terror Campaign so they could start up their own little Country, so a small select cadre of Bandits could milk this territory for its tax revenues and exploit the so many opportunities for corruption that a little Independent Political Jurisdiction could provide. Well, it may seem a good idea to allow for millions of individual little countries; however, History shows us that the most Peace and Prosperity result from the largest of possible consolidations of Political Jurisdiction – Empires tend to do better over all than little Countries that, just as we see, get caught up in War, and suffer from having stilted little inherently limited currencies and economies. So, it does no tiny little Ethnic Group any favor by allowing their Bandit Chieftains opportunities for corruption by declaring them their own Nation, as they would be better off in a more Collective Grouping. And if they should rise up murderously, the Bandits I mean, especially to reject the old established Political Groupings, why should we think it a bad thing for the Preferred Larger Organization to defend itself? Civilization should always be allowed to defend against Barbarian Aggression, even if it does pit Big against Little. Do we not all slap mosquitoes? So why is it not asked whether the Junta may be the good guys here?
Let us look a bit at what we know of the History here. Years ago the Generals allowed for an Election which they lost to some celebrated Woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is now acclaimed for being the Leader of the Pro-Democracy Movement. Well, it should be the first obvious question, but it is never asked, concerning what policies she would implement if she were actually given Executive Control of the Burmese Government. It would seem to me that the Generals had been dealing in good faith, to allow for Elections, but since they seem to know something that nobody is telling any of us, they saw that the Burmese People had been terribly unwise for electing this Woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, and were allowing for something of some Terrible Revolution which the Generals, in good conscience, could not allow. We might compare this to a situation that could even occur in America, if, lets say, the Anarchist Libertarian Party were to win General Elections on the explicit Platform of dismantling the Federal Government and effectively allowing for Chaos to Run Riot. Now, we need to confess that while we speak of Democracy in terms of Winners and Losers, still, it is not just some Game, and we have to allow that not all results can be in good conscience permitted. Even in America we saw the intervention of their Supreme Court to place a losing Republican in office over a winning Democrat, and this was not even over issues promising to destroy all law and order (indeed, isn’t it the Democrats who are FOR some degree of Regulation, and the Republicans rather closer to the philosophies of Anarchy?). Anyway, while they can only describe this Woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, as “Pro-Democracy”, while omitting to tell us what her actual political aims are, we should resent being asked to rally behind her. And we might consider that the Generals would know her better than we do.
You know, the American State Department had described the first embryonic clashes of China’s infamous Cultural Revolution as “Pro-Democracy”. When such Rebellions fail, they are forever classified as Martyred Pro-Democracy ‘Peaceful Demonstrations’. Of course, when such Rebellions succeed and we discover that they had only been vehicles for even worse forms Tyranny and Corruption, then History is swiftly revised. It seems that Propaganda, while being opportunistic, does not hold itself to being consistent.
It seems that any enemy to an American Enemy is their Friend. Any time anybody causes trouble and instability in the World, giving opportunity for the America’s Multi-National Corporations to come in to clean up the pieces, then it is labeled “Pro-Democracy”. Exxon Oil only wants us all to be free. Yeah, right.
Oh, and perhaps we should review exactly what is a Peaceful Demonstration? Is it really a Peaceful Demonstration when a Capital City is shut down and all Offices of Government are taken over? Again, the Chinese Cultural Revolution was ‘peaceful’ until the very moment when they captured every office of Government and then unleashed their Reign of Terror. 20 Million were murdered in the wake of that Peaceful Demonstration.
America itself once had such a dilemma on their hands. After World War One, the veteran soldiers were upset that their pensions were so low at the same time as the Prohibition Laws forbade them the solace of getting Drunk about it, and so they marched upon Washington, the American Capitol. It was ‘peaceful’ but when it appeared that there were sufficient demonstrators available to overrun every Government Building and effectively pull-off a successful Coup, destroying the Federal Government if that had suddenly become their whim, then the Army was mobilized to defend the Nation against this likely seizure of their Government. America, who now shakes a finger at the Burmese Generals, and shakes a finger at the Chinese after Tiananmen Square, they had not been the least bit squeamish about charging the Cavalry into the Veterans Tent City. And I do not blame them for what they did then, but only for this later hypocrisy and convenient forgetfulness. One cannot allow the Fate of a Government to hang upon the whims of the Mob – and anytime you have a few hundred thousand people in the same room, I’m sorry, but that’s a ‘Mob’. We can count upon such Mobs to be ‘peaceful’ only until their violence becomes legendary. Again we can remember the Peaceful French Revolution, the Peaceful Russian Revolution, the Peaceful Chinese Revolution. Even the Peaceful American Revolution that murdered 3,000 British Peace Keepers at Bunker Hill.
Remember Gandhi who has been made something of the Modern Apostle for Peaceful Resistance. They led to the Wars of Partition. More people died in them than in the Nazi Holocaust. That’s how Peaceful these Demonstrations are.
Now, if the Generals of Myanmar are only trying to save their Nation from being one more instance of tragedy on this long list of Reigns of Popular Terror, then we need to ask why the Media is unreflectively casting them as the Bad Guys. We need to ask ourselves who the Media is taking their orders from?
Where Religion Meets Materialism
Where Religion Meets Materialism
I had recently observed some arguments against Religious Phenomena, that none of it could be proven, and that it all could be reduced to hallucination or hysteria. They were saying that while it might have seemed real enough, it was actually just imaginary.
Well, this made me think of Shankara, the famous Hindu Sage, who had created an entire System upon one very famous example, about the Snake and the Rope. You see, at twilight a man saw a rope in his path and honestly thought it was a snake. His anxieties seemed quite real, but their cause was figmentary. Well, Shankara went on from there, deducing that the Senses had no direct connection to the Truth, and that Reality was at best inferential. The senses gave us Proof of nothing. But he went on from there in a dizzying string of positively reinforcing inferences, each somewhat zanier than the one before. We find eventually that our entire World is an Illusion. And so he concluded that Spirituality and Consciousness were our only Certainties.
Well, I think Shankara wound up his arguments a bit far too far. You see, there must be some difference between being able to Certainly Prove every article of our Perceptions, and simply surrendering it all to being of the same vague and nebulous Quality as pure delusions and Insubstantial Dreaminess.
You see, Shankara carelessly threw out the notion of Correspondance – that the Senses correspond to Reality. That the Rope, after all, does LOOK LIKE a Snake. That while the Senses cannot prove there is a Snake, they do a good job of telling us that there Might Be a Snake. This should count for something. Tell me, what harm is there, if one can’t be entirely certain whether a Snake is in our path or not, in tossing a stone at whatever it is there that lays in our Way. If we cannot be Certain, then we can at least Investigate with a clear Philosophical Conscience.
But that isn’t my point. You see Shankara created a Religious Premise from Arguments for Uncertainty in the World. That the World could not be Proved was the first building block for his Religion. Isn’t it odd that he was using the same arguments FOR Religion that are now being used AGAINST Religion.
Well, modern Atheists focus almost exclusively on maintaining that first one aspect of Religious Revelation cannot be certainly proven, and then the next and the next. There arguments against the anecdotal testimony for Miracles is quite enough to toss out ALL Historical Testimony. As the nit-picking is multiplied to curtail anything and everything, what they soon must arrive at is that nothing is certain. It is a shame that most Atheists resist much reading or they would have found that over the last few centuries in Western Philosophy, that most positives have been completely discredited. Hume critiqued Reason, and then a parade of Germans went on to pull the rug of certainty out from under everything else. We come to the Existentialists who can only agree upon the Will, and that the only Free Choice is in Suicide. We only wish they would stay alive long enough to tell us what that was really supposed to mean. Existentialism is so difficult to understand because once anybody begins to get the knack for it, they kill themselves before they explain it to anybody.
Anyway, if the Materialists are arguing that we cannot be Spiritual because of lack of proof, well, the Materialist Philosophers have already come to the same conclusion regarding Materialism.
While Materialism depends upon its Material actually Existing, requiring proofs and all of that, Spirituality is probably satisfied with its Subjective Experience, or rather, Consciousness. Spiritualism sees the Objects of Consciousness as being somewhat secondary in importance.
Now, of course the Spiritual Systems that focus so completely upon the Wonders of Pure Consciousness are very far removed from the coarser Religions that are so very rich in the sometimes controversial areas of Social and Moral Doctrines and Imperatives. While the Materialist Atheist may not begrudge the Meditater for his contemplation of Pure Being, he does begin to object when the Spiritualist begins to rattle off his inferences when he suspects that it all might lead to his Taxes to be raised.
Well, what does the Spiritualist Perceive, and to what is the Materialist Objecting? The Spiritualist sees Suffering in the World and is prompted by his inner compassion to provide some Plan for its mitigation.
Now, at worst the Materialist sees such Moral Schemes as invidious to his own Evil and Selfish Plans. At best the Materialist sees Moral Schemes as likely to do as much harm as good. While plans for doing Good for others may be tentative, his own benefits and interests are in his own mind quite certain, and he would not sacrifice the one thing for the other. So even in the best of cases, it is difficult for the Materialist not to admit to a basic motive of selfishness. And while the Spiritualist’s Experience of Unmodified Bliss may go without question, still we might reasonably wonder regarding their Worldly Deliberations once they are back in the Worldly Dimension. And we can certainly use our common sense in making any such evaluation. For instance, how often is any particular Saint correct about anything. In any active Life we can certainly begin to notice if anybody is particularly discerning and wise. In reading extensively about the Saints of many of the World’s Religions, it is not so remarkable that a great many of the stories veer away from the Miraculous simply to elaborate upon how such and such a Saint gave consistently good advise.
Anyway, we should encourage such Moral Debates in order to find the most probable and viable of Moral Solutions to our problems. But to only object that nothing can be proven is not likely to ever be helpful with anything. Does it not echo the Current American President’s stance on Global Warming… that as nothing can be absolutely proven before it happens, that his Rich Core of Contributors might as well be allowed to continue destroying the planet for the sake of all their most certain and dependable profits. Perhaps the Atheists might enjoy the irony of it, that the Religious Right has taken over the “Prove it, Prove it, Prove it” Argument, seeing that it can do more than just stifle Religious Debate. The demand for absolute proofs can stifle any kind of inquiry, for as we all know, in the actual material Universe, absolutes do not exist. Where there is always some percentage of Uncertainty or one loose variable, demands for perfect proofs only amount to obstructionism… which seems to be fine if you are of the party that benefits by the Obstruction.
If all of Philosophy has long ago agreed that we can be certain of Nothing, then we must realize that we must now move beyond these imperatives for Proof, and settle for plausible generalities.
People need to stop thinking they are so clever simply because they insist upon shutting down debate for lack of absolute certainty.
We must become Enlightened to the Great Truth Of Our Time, that Good Enough is Good Enough.
I had recently observed some arguments against Religious Phenomena, that none of it could be proven, and that it all could be reduced to hallucination or hysteria. They were saying that while it might have seemed real enough, it was actually just imaginary.
Well, this made me think of Shankara, the famous Hindu Sage, who had created an entire System upon one very famous example, about the Snake and the Rope. You see, at twilight a man saw a rope in his path and honestly thought it was a snake. His anxieties seemed quite real, but their cause was figmentary. Well, Shankara went on from there, deducing that the Senses had no direct connection to the Truth, and that Reality was at best inferential. The senses gave us Proof of nothing. But he went on from there in a dizzying string of positively reinforcing inferences, each somewhat zanier than the one before. We find eventually that our entire World is an Illusion. And so he concluded that Spirituality and Consciousness were our only Certainties.
Well, I think Shankara wound up his arguments a bit far too far. You see, there must be some difference between being able to Certainly Prove every article of our Perceptions, and simply surrendering it all to being of the same vague and nebulous Quality as pure delusions and Insubstantial Dreaminess.
You see, Shankara carelessly threw out the notion of Correspondance – that the Senses correspond to Reality. That the Rope, after all, does LOOK LIKE a Snake. That while the Senses cannot prove there is a Snake, they do a good job of telling us that there Might Be a Snake. This should count for something. Tell me, what harm is there, if one can’t be entirely certain whether a Snake is in our path or not, in tossing a stone at whatever it is there that lays in our Way. If we cannot be Certain, then we can at least Investigate with a clear Philosophical Conscience.
But that isn’t my point. You see Shankara created a Religious Premise from Arguments for Uncertainty in the World. That the World could not be Proved was the first building block for his Religion. Isn’t it odd that he was using the same arguments FOR Religion that are now being used AGAINST Religion.
Well, modern Atheists focus almost exclusively on maintaining that first one aspect of Religious Revelation cannot be certainly proven, and then the next and the next. There arguments against the anecdotal testimony for Miracles is quite enough to toss out ALL Historical Testimony. As the nit-picking is multiplied to curtail anything and everything, what they soon must arrive at is that nothing is certain. It is a shame that most Atheists resist much reading or they would have found that over the last few centuries in Western Philosophy, that most positives have been completely discredited. Hume critiqued Reason, and then a parade of Germans went on to pull the rug of certainty out from under everything else. We come to the Existentialists who can only agree upon the Will, and that the only Free Choice is in Suicide. We only wish they would stay alive long enough to tell us what that was really supposed to mean. Existentialism is so difficult to understand because once anybody begins to get the knack for it, they kill themselves before they explain it to anybody.
Anyway, if the Materialists are arguing that we cannot be Spiritual because of lack of proof, well, the Materialist Philosophers have already come to the same conclusion regarding Materialism.
While Materialism depends upon its Material actually Existing, requiring proofs and all of that, Spirituality is probably satisfied with its Subjective Experience, or rather, Consciousness. Spiritualism sees the Objects of Consciousness as being somewhat secondary in importance.
Now, of course the Spiritual Systems that focus so completely upon the Wonders of Pure Consciousness are very far removed from the coarser Religions that are so very rich in the sometimes controversial areas of Social and Moral Doctrines and Imperatives. While the Materialist Atheist may not begrudge the Meditater for his contemplation of Pure Being, he does begin to object when the Spiritualist begins to rattle off his inferences when he suspects that it all might lead to his Taxes to be raised.
Well, what does the Spiritualist Perceive, and to what is the Materialist Objecting? The Spiritualist sees Suffering in the World and is prompted by his inner compassion to provide some Plan for its mitigation.
Now, at worst the Materialist sees such Moral Schemes as invidious to his own Evil and Selfish Plans. At best the Materialist sees Moral Schemes as likely to do as much harm as good. While plans for doing Good for others may be tentative, his own benefits and interests are in his own mind quite certain, and he would not sacrifice the one thing for the other. So even in the best of cases, it is difficult for the Materialist not to admit to a basic motive of selfishness. And while the Spiritualist’s Experience of Unmodified Bliss may go without question, still we might reasonably wonder regarding their Worldly Deliberations once they are back in the Worldly Dimension. And we can certainly use our common sense in making any such evaluation. For instance, how often is any particular Saint correct about anything. In any active Life we can certainly begin to notice if anybody is particularly discerning and wise. In reading extensively about the Saints of many of the World’s Religions, it is not so remarkable that a great many of the stories veer away from the Miraculous simply to elaborate upon how such and such a Saint gave consistently good advise.
Anyway, we should encourage such Moral Debates in order to find the most probable and viable of Moral Solutions to our problems. But to only object that nothing can be proven is not likely to ever be helpful with anything. Does it not echo the Current American President’s stance on Global Warming… that as nothing can be absolutely proven before it happens, that his Rich Core of Contributors might as well be allowed to continue destroying the planet for the sake of all their most certain and dependable profits. Perhaps the Atheists might enjoy the irony of it, that the Religious Right has taken over the “Prove it, Prove it, Prove it” Argument, seeing that it can do more than just stifle Religious Debate. The demand for absolute proofs can stifle any kind of inquiry, for as we all know, in the actual material Universe, absolutes do not exist. Where there is always some percentage of Uncertainty or one loose variable, demands for perfect proofs only amount to obstructionism… which seems to be fine if you are of the party that benefits by the Obstruction.
If all of Philosophy has long ago agreed that we can be certain of Nothing, then we must realize that we must now move beyond these imperatives for Proof, and settle for plausible generalities.
People need to stop thinking they are so clever simply because they insist upon shutting down debate for lack of absolute certainty.
We must become Enlightened to the Great Truth Of Our Time, that Good Enough is Good Enough.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Why Islam Will (has) Failed
Why Islam Will (has) Failed
I had heard it expressed time and time again that these current problems with Islam represent a clash between Civilizations. But I wonder whether somebody is trying to be funny…. “What Civilizations”, I think. You see, Islam arose up out of a Pastoral Nomadic Culture – herders at best, but largely a bunch of predatory bandits. Mohamed himself was honest only when it was easy, but as soon as he was the least bit pressed, resorted to traditional banditry and most of the respect rendered to him was all that would have been due to any successful Bandit Chieftain, or as they could only say in Islam, to a “Prophet”. But from their limited and uncivilized point of view, he seemed enough like a nice guy, indeed, the nicest guy they could ever imagine. How sad.
Well, yes, there had been a Golden Age of Islam, where, for a few centuries, the Educated Classes used their Schools to steer Primitive Islam back to the Ideals of Old Civilized Zoroastrianism. But that couldn’t last as long as the Koran was still ‘in print’ so to speak. You see, Islam suffered then, and suffers now from the widespread availability of the Koran, the writings of Mohamed. No matter how much the Schools go toward establishing Civilized Interpretations of the Koran’s Teachings, there will always be people who will actually read what the Koran actually says, and believe it to be true, and this leads to the never ending waves of Islamic Fundamentalism that reassert the intrinsic Barbarism of Islam’s Founder Mohamed.
Not that Judaism is any better. Judaism also sprung from Pastoral Nomadic Barbarism. Their God had been a Tribal War God. They were probably still painting their asses blue and howling at the moon. And, as with Islam, any respectability that Judaism had attained came from Zoroastrian influences… remember the Babylonian Captivity. Well, many a scholar thinks that the Hebrews had no history of Abraham, Moses and all of that prior to their Babylonian experience. In Babylon, they watched the Movies and read the Books and into their Cultural Vacuum leapt a new Vision of what they wanted to say they were. They stole a History. Indeed, we can read in the books of the later prophets that after the Captivity, a certain high priest ‘found’ a copy of the ‘lost’ scriptures. Only after this date do the scholars find any references to the Hebrews prior to the Barbarian raids on the Philistines and the Canaanite Valleys. Isn’t it odd that there are no references to Moses until AFTER the Babylonian Captivity? What we can suppose is that the Jews discovered a rich fund of legendary material in Babylon and decided to coop it for themselves. Indeed, Egypt, with all of its written History, tells us nothing of any catastrophic Slave Revolt in which all their first born were slaughtered and all the gold and silver stolen and then the Army destroyed (what the Exodus was if we de-mystify it). Such would have certainly made the news… at least one wall in Egypt somewhere would have had it all recorded in hieroglyphics. But it never happened, not in Egypt. But it may have described the collapse of some previous Sumerian Civilization which had been the topic of certain legendary materials current then in Babylon and Persia. Well, while the Hebrews could not plausibly claim to have come out of … Samaria, they could lie about Egypt and nobody would know, or care, just as we have seen.
Oh, some close Historian may wonder that I shuffle in Zoroastrianism with Babylon, when Zoroastrianism is mostly considered to be sourced from Ancient Persian Culture. Well, Civilizations at their best are rather Cosmopolitan, where we have a sharing of the most successful and popular cultural fads and phenomena. And Zoroastrianism was popular. It was the first expression, ever, of Right and Wrong, Good and Evil. Until Zoroastrianism, there really was no such thing as Morality. Higher Religion, as we now know it, was born with Zoroastrianism.
While the Jews had resided in Babylon, they had very close relations with Persia, and Persian Culture, since they had been willing to open the Gates of Babylon to the invading Persian Armies, who subsequently supported their return to Judah (four generations who had remained in Judah had re-established ownership of land and set up political institutions, but all of that was over when the Persian Army came back with a few Hebrew Families that had helped them with Treason. 4 Generations of marriages were officially annulled, making all of the natives into effective ‘bastards’, so that the few Families from Babylon could assert ownership over all the land. And this is where we find the Hebrew’s rejection of Pork… you see, the Persians paid the Jewish Traitors with herds of hundreds of thousands of goats and sheep. To increase their value, the Returned Hebrew Dictators from Babylon, supported by the Persian Armies, declared the local Pork Markets to be illegal. And to this day Jews still refrain from eating pork for ‘religious’ reasons).
But, anyway, all the hints that we find in the Jewish Torah regarding any trace of a Higher Morality or any well thought out indication of actual Religious Theology had been borrowed from Zoroastrianism. And, as we can clearly see from today’s current events, it is very easy to set aside so that the Modern Zionists may return to their Religion of Tribal War and Divinely Allocated Real Estate.
If you don’t think that entire Peoples can be easily fooled regarding their historical past, even their relatively recent historical past, then take this example from America, where we know that the Horse was introduced only after the Spanish Conquest. Despite that, only a few Centuries later the American Plains Indians were teaching their children that for thousands of years they had been master horsemen, and the Horse was prominent in all of their legends, going back to their very Creation Mythologies. You see, apparently, among mostly illiterate peoples, each Generation is freshly vulnerable for any new turn of Propaganda. I suppose this is the reason why Republicans in America go to such lengths to encourage illiteracy and to destroy the institutions of Higher Education, or in fact any Education. Stupid people vote Conservatively, that is, they vote as they are directed by their ‘betters’ to vote. Anyway, if the Returning Jews from Babylon wished to superimpose an entirely different History upon the Jews, there would have been little opposition from a largely illiterate people. We can see in America today that it is being taught that their Founding Fathers were Christian Nazis, and it is all being received as Gospel Truth, when a cursory look at the actual primary sources show the American Founders to have been a slew of either Masonic Deists, or Enlightened Atheists. Most of America’s Founding Fathers were absolutely delighted with the French Revolution, including its antipathy to Christianity. How else can we regard America’s stance on Separation of Church and State except that they wished to distance themselves from Christianity? But none of that is at all considered today. Today the current Truth is that America was founded upon notions Christian Supremacy. Actually they just murdered people to grab property and power. Today we would call the Founding Fathers ‘terrorists’, and there was not a single American Hero that should not have been hanged, if justice or decency had anything at all to do with it.
And this brings us to how we regard modern American Right Wing Protestantism. Is it Civilized? Well, where did it come from, we might ask. Europe had been Civilized, under the Marian Christianity of the Catholic Religious Orders, that is, all of those Christian Ideals that had been stripped of the Paulist Influences of Free Sin and Bishop Corruption (today people see Catholicism as only being that which was only defined by the Bishops at the Council of Trent in the 17th Century, which was effectively a surrender to Protestant Paulism, and largely set aside the Values and Influences of the Religious Orders. The Catholicism of the Bishops was NOT the Catholicism of Civilized Christendom, the Religion that had infused the Civilization of Europe for a thousand years, but if one refers to actual History, one finds that it was the Religious Orders and not the Corrupt Bishops who had established the Institutions that had Civilized the West), The Protestants, fought AGAINST Civilization. Where the Religious Orders had rejected Paulism, the Protestants created the Doctrine of ‘Word of God’ in order to effectively Deify the Words of Paul. And Paul had been a Mouth Piece for the Barbarian Greeks. The Greeks, for all their talk, had never been a Civilization. They came to fame for being the Barbarians who swept over the decayed Civilization of Persia. Their own infighting, and class struggles, even their Democracy show that they had no Civilized Institutions. They focused on the Barbarian Ideals of Selfish Power and Grab for Greed. Paul appealed to this Barbarism with his Doctrine of Forgiveness for Sin, that is, license to Sin, Freedom to Sin. Paul created a Religion which promoted Sin, which certainly does nothing for any Society that has any wish at all to be Civilized. History shows us that viable Civilizations must rather be against sin then for it. Barbarism, on the other hand, requires it. Rape and pillage, and the Wars to which Protestantism is addicted to, are difficult to pull off without some allowances for Evil.
So, today, in the War of America against Islam, we certainly do not have any Clash between Civilizations. We have two tribes of Barbarians doing what Barbarians do.
Well, often History has found that Barbarian Cultures had managed to civilize themselves when pressed by necessity to either establish effective Collective Institutions or to perish. Most tribes perished, but those managing to establish Civilized Institutions prevailed, grew and thrived, at least in relation to those that were more purely Barbarian. But Islam will always be held back by the Writings of their Prophet. Any Generation that manages to Civilize itself is undone by the next Generation that, once again, re-reads the Koran. Equally, while the Letters of Paul are still published in the Bible, giving them some assumed equality with the Words of Christ, all that is good in Christianity also will be swept away by its own waves of Fundamentalist Barbarism.
If one is to optimistic regarding the World’s prospects for Civilization, then we might imagine Christianity and Islam destroying each other – that both the Bible, irreparably stained with Paul, and the Koran would be discredited into going permanently out of print. And then we would hope that Necessity should force some Civilized Institutions upon Secular Materialism, which, again, is mostly Barbaric. There really are enough Truly Religious notions floating around. If both Paul and Mohamed are cast into their proper Hells, then there is no reason not to suppose that some Truly Religious Ideals might not finally be appreciated and rise up to have some general influence. It would not be the first time there was a Civilization.
I had heard it expressed time and time again that these current problems with Islam represent a clash between Civilizations. But I wonder whether somebody is trying to be funny…. “What Civilizations”, I think. You see, Islam arose up out of a Pastoral Nomadic Culture – herders at best, but largely a bunch of predatory bandits. Mohamed himself was honest only when it was easy, but as soon as he was the least bit pressed, resorted to traditional banditry and most of the respect rendered to him was all that would have been due to any successful Bandit Chieftain, or as they could only say in Islam, to a “Prophet”. But from their limited and uncivilized point of view, he seemed enough like a nice guy, indeed, the nicest guy they could ever imagine. How sad.
Well, yes, there had been a Golden Age of Islam, where, for a few centuries, the Educated Classes used their Schools to steer Primitive Islam back to the Ideals of Old Civilized Zoroastrianism. But that couldn’t last as long as the Koran was still ‘in print’ so to speak. You see, Islam suffered then, and suffers now from the widespread availability of the Koran, the writings of Mohamed. No matter how much the Schools go toward establishing Civilized Interpretations of the Koran’s Teachings, there will always be people who will actually read what the Koran actually says, and believe it to be true, and this leads to the never ending waves of Islamic Fundamentalism that reassert the intrinsic Barbarism of Islam’s Founder Mohamed.
Not that Judaism is any better. Judaism also sprung from Pastoral Nomadic Barbarism. Their God had been a Tribal War God. They were probably still painting their asses blue and howling at the moon. And, as with Islam, any respectability that Judaism had attained came from Zoroastrian influences… remember the Babylonian Captivity. Well, many a scholar thinks that the Hebrews had no history of Abraham, Moses and all of that prior to their Babylonian experience. In Babylon, they watched the Movies and read the Books and into their Cultural Vacuum leapt a new Vision of what they wanted to say they were. They stole a History. Indeed, we can read in the books of the later prophets that after the Captivity, a certain high priest ‘found’ a copy of the ‘lost’ scriptures. Only after this date do the scholars find any references to the Hebrews prior to the Barbarian raids on the Philistines and the Canaanite Valleys. Isn’t it odd that there are no references to Moses until AFTER the Babylonian Captivity? What we can suppose is that the Jews discovered a rich fund of legendary material in Babylon and decided to coop it for themselves. Indeed, Egypt, with all of its written History, tells us nothing of any catastrophic Slave Revolt in which all their first born were slaughtered and all the gold and silver stolen and then the Army destroyed (what the Exodus was if we de-mystify it). Such would have certainly made the news… at least one wall in Egypt somewhere would have had it all recorded in hieroglyphics. But it never happened, not in Egypt. But it may have described the collapse of some previous Sumerian Civilization which had been the topic of certain legendary materials current then in Babylon and Persia. Well, while the Hebrews could not plausibly claim to have come out of … Samaria, they could lie about Egypt and nobody would know, or care, just as we have seen.
Oh, some close Historian may wonder that I shuffle in Zoroastrianism with Babylon, when Zoroastrianism is mostly considered to be sourced from Ancient Persian Culture. Well, Civilizations at their best are rather Cosmopolitan, where we have a sharing of the most successful and popular cultural fads and phenomena. And Zoroastrianism was popular. It was the first expression, ever, of Right and Wrong, Good and Evil. Until Zoroastrianism, there really was no such thing as Morality. Higher Religion, as we now know it, was born with Zoroastrianism.
While the Jews had resided in Babylon, they had very close relations with Persia, and Persian Culture, since they had been willing to open the Gates of Babylon to the invading Persian Armies, who subsequently supported their return to Judah (four generations who had remained in Judah had re-established ownership of land and set up political institutions, but all of that was over when the Persian Army came back with a few Hebrew Families that had helped them with Treason. 4 Generations of marriages were officially annulled, making all of the natives into effective ‘bastards’, so that the few Families from Babylon could assert ownership over all the land. And this is where we find the Hebrew’s rejection of Pork… you see, the Persians paid the Jewish Traitors with herds of hundreds of thousands of goats and sheep. To increase their value, the Returned Hebrew Dictators from Babylon, supported by the Persian Armies, declared the local Pork Markets to be illegal. And to this day Jews still refrain from eating pork for ‘religious’ reasons).
But, anyway, all the hints that we find in the Jewish Torah regarding any trace of a Higher Morality or any well thought out indication of actual Religious Theology had been borrowed from Zoroastrianism. And, as we can clearly see from today’s current events, it is very easy to set aside so that the Modern Zionists may return to their Religion of Tribal War and Divinely Allocated Real Estate.
If you don’t think that entire Peoples can be easily fooled regarding their historical past, even their relatively recent historical past, then take this example from America, where we know that the Horse was introduced only after the Spanish Conquest. Despite that, only a few Centuries later the American Plains Indians were teaching their children that for thousands of years they had been master horsemen, and the Horse was prominent in all of their legends, going back to their very Creation Mythologies. You see, apparently, among mostly illiterate peoples, each Generation is freshly vulnerable for any new turn of Propaganda. I suppose this is the reason why Republicans in America go to such lengths to encourage illiteracy and to destroy the institutions of Higher Education, or in fact any Education. Stupid people vote Conservatively, that is, they vote as they are directed by their ‘betters’ to vote. Anyway, if the Returning Jews from Babylon wished to superimpose an entirely different History upon the Jews, there would have been little opposition from a largely illiterate people. We can see in America today that it is being taught that their Founding Fathers were Christian Nazis, and it is all being received as Gospel Truth, when a cursory look at the actual primary sources show the American Founders to have been a slew of either Masonic Deists, or Enlightened Atheists. Most of America’s Founding Fathers were absolutely delighted with the French Revolution, including its antipathy to Christianity. How else can we regard America’s stance on Separation of Church and State except that they wished to distance themselves from Christianity? But none of that is at all considered today. Today the current Truth is that America was founded upon notions Christian Supremacy. Actually they just murdered people to grab property and power. Today we would call the Founding Fathers ‘terrorists’, and there was not a single American Hero that should not have been hanged, if justice or decency had anything at all to do with it.
And this brings us to how we regard modern American Right Wing Protestantism. Is it Civilized? Well, where did it come from, we might ask. Europe had been Civilized, under the Marian Christianity of the Catholic Religious Orders, that is, all of those Christian Ideals that had been stripped of the Paulist Influences of Free Sin and Bishop Corruption (today people see Catholicism as only being that which was only defined by the Bishops at the Council of Trent in the 17th Century, which was effectively a surrender to Protestant Paulism, and largely set aside the Values and Influences of the Religious Orders. The Catholicism of the Bishops was NOT the Catholicism of Civilized Christendom, the Religion that had infused the Civilization of Europe for a thousand years, but if one refers to actual History, one finds that it was the Religious Orders and not the Corrupt Bishops who had established the Institutions that had Civilized the West), The Protestants, fought AGAINST Civilization. Where the Religious Orders had rejected Paulism, the Protestants created the Doctrine of ‘Word of God’ in order to effectively Deify the Words of Paul. And Paul had been a Mouth Piece for the Barbarian Greeks. The Greeks, for all their talk, had never been a Civilization. They came to fame for being the Barbarians who swept over the decayed Civilization of Persia. Their own infighting, and class struggles, even their Democracy show that they had no Civilized Institutions. They focused on the Barbarian Ideals of Selfish Power and Grab for Greed. Paul appealed to this Barbarism with his Doctrine of Forgiveness for Sin, that is, license to Sin, Freedom to Sin. Paul created a Religion which promoted Sin, which certainly does nothing for any Society that has any wish at all to be Civilized. History shows us that viable Civilizations must rather be against sin then for it. Barbarism, on the other hand, requires it. Rape and pillage, and the Wars to which Protestantism is addicted to, are difficult to pull off without some allowances for Evil.
So, today, in the War of America against Islam, we certainly do not have any Clash between Civilizations. We have two tribes of Barbarians doing what Barbarians do.
Well, often History has found that Barbarian Cultures had managed to civilize themselves when pressed by necessity to either establish effective Collective Institutions or to perish. Most tribes perished, but those managing to establish Civilized Institutions prevailed, grew and thrived, at least in relation to those that were more purely Barbarian. But Islam will always be held back by the Writings of their Prophet. Any Generation that manages to Civilize itself is undone by the next Generation that, once again, re-reads the Koran. Equally, while the Letters of Paul are still published in the Bible, giving them some assumed equality with the Words of Christ, all that is good in Christianity also will be swept away by its own waves of Fundamentalist Barbarism.
If one is to optimistic regarding the World’s prospects for Civilization, then we might imagine Christianity and Islam destroying each other – that both the Bible, irreparably stained with Paul, and the Koran would be discredited into going permanently out of print. And then we would hope that Necessity should force some Civilized Institutions upon Secular Materialism, which, again, is mostly Barbaric. There really are enough Truly Religious notions floating around. If both Paul and Mohamed are cast into their proper Hells, then there is no reason not to suppose that some Truly Religious Ideals might not finally be appreciated and rise up to have some general influence. It would not be the first time there was a Civilization.
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