The Pope and The Imam

Sultan Ahmet Camii - Blue mosque, İstanbul Originally uploaded by Chicaurbana.

I saw Pope Benedict standing next to an Imam within a mosque. Immediately I thought "Hagia Sophia!", but that is no longer a working mosque. So then I thought Blue or Sulaimaniya. My wife said she had heard "blue"...maybe.

Well, that's great. It is not great to everyone, however.

Many people think of Religion much like they think of the loose change in their pockets: it is mine, all mine - God-given and inalienable - and woo to he who changes any part of it!

So let's take a look, kids. I came across an unusual site which I shall go back to in the future. (I have developed an interest in Orson Scott Card's Ender stories and their use of Authoritarian imagery - there is a recent post on Mr. Card, or Scott Card as the case may be.)

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2006_11_26_alicublog_archive.html#116481609430550766

This is a site called Alicublog, and they say:

The whole Benedict Turkey trip, for all the feel-good man-of-peace rhetoric, is really just one powerful mobster cooking up a big takeover with another. I hope the ghost of Ataturk is knocking over their water glasses at least.

This is straight forward, good ol' American short term thinking. I think the Pope and the Imam are incomprehensible to a lot of people because they are quite capable of thinking of the outcome of their actions, not now, but 1,000 years from now.

Oh,no. Bono!

I supposed it had to happen. If one leaves one's mouth open too much, sooner or later an errant foot will enter it. So... in a post http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2006/11/more-on-free-markets.html I wrote," I mean, asking business people about free markets is a lot like asking a rock star about Darfur." Bono is not happy. I shall have to go on Letterman and eat humble pie.

Big Blue Blues

I have been upset recently, viewing the utter chaos in Iraq. As much as I have been opposed to the war, I have always hoped that our men would be safe and we could leave the country having done some lasting good. I wish the President could have spoken to someone like Colin Powell. The entire world was united behind our effort in Afghanistan in 2001. The President needed someone to tell him, to remind him that (1) war is hell, and (2) even the best laid plans do not always succeed, not to mention poorly laid plans. War is like that; one never knows what's going to happen, other than bloodshed. A long time ago I read a story in a magazine. It was this time of year, just before Christmas. I was sitting on a couch in my parents' frontroom, the empty boxes of Christmas preparations strewn about me like the aftermath of a joyous burst of enthusiasm. It was a story about world events just before Christmas. It scared me. This was the height of the Cold War. In the story, the nations of the world are at each others' throats and a war to end war - if not to end the world - is imminent. The leaders of all the nations of the world gather at the UN seeking one last time to find a way out of the deadly impasse short of nuclear war. In the story, there had been developed a super-computer, perhaps like Big Blue of IBM, and it was decided that, since every land in the world had chosen up sides, there was no impartial observer left to head negotitations and, thus, the delegates agreed to let "Big Blue" decided what course events should take to prevent war. All the nations agreed to abided by the decision of Big Blue. All pertinent data, present and past, was fed into Big Blue. There must have been some sort of extraordinary negotiating software to process the mountains of data. All this input took some time. Then Big Blue started processing the data. This took more time, perhaps a number of days. The delegates stood morosely about the UN waiting for some indication that an answer had been reached. The rest of the world went about their mundane tasks, looking forward to a Christmas with more fear than joy. At work, people ducked into the washrooms to cry. Some people bought nothing, not even food, and slowly starved from their depression. Some people went on an end of time buying spree, eating, drinking and being merry, since tomorrow we die. If not tomorrow, then soon. Everyone prayed and hoped that Big Blue would have an answer. Finally, the notification came that Big Blue had finished its deliberations over the state of the world and had a definite answer. The delegates of the nations of the world filed into the General Assembly of the UN and waited to hear. The Secretary General mounted the podium and addressed them, saying that the long awaited answer - and here he held aloft a sealed enveloped containing the printout from Big Blue - had come. The Secretary General lowered the envelope and opened it. Everyone tensely waited. The Secretary General read the paper and was quiet. He stood silent for a minute, then minutes. The delegates began to wonder when he would read it. The Secretary General let the paper fall to the podium and walked out of the assembly hall. After a momentary pause, the rest of the delegates rushed forward to see it. The US ambassador to the UN secured the paper and called for silence. Silence took a few minutes to regain control of the hall. Then he read the paper aloud: "Love One Another." He too let fall the paper and walked over to the window where the Secretary General stood. The sky was grey and it was beginning to snow.

Spooky Prayers

I have wondered in this blog exactly what Tucker Carlson is. He has no apparent knowledge of anything, so he's not a specialist. He is shallow, uninformed, pretentious, pontificating...hmmm. He should have his OWN BLOG! Anyway, I could not let this nonsense pass by; an excerpt from a TC ( the exact opposite of PC ...or any-kind-of-C, for that matter) interview about Muslims praying in an airline terminal: CARLSON: Oh, what a -- that's such a crock. I mean that is -- I fly -- you know, I fly more than anybody I know, practically. There are always people from south Asia and the Middle East on planes I fly. Nobody says anything. These guys were praying, standing up praying, and it freaked people out. I'm not defending that. I'm merely saying it's not just that they were brown or looked Muslim, they were doing something other people didn't understand, and it spooked the other people. I mean, don't you understand how that could happen? http://mediamatters.org/items/200611270010 Firstly, I admire Tucker's use of the concept "crock". I could never quite get it right. Secondly, it is well known that potential suicide bombers and airplane hijackers have a ritual which they go through to attract attention to themselves. It consists on standing up and speaking something incomprehensible and ensure that other people will call the cops. Thirdly, I guess I have to agree with TC that praying in public is spooky. If you live in a society that many of it citizens consider Christian, or Judaeo-Christian, or some other hyphenated combination of Greek and Latin words, to observe prayer is to be spooked! No doubt about it. In fact, I have written a screenplay for Eli Roth to direct called "Thanksgiving" ( soon to be followed by "Thanksgiving: the Sequel" ) wherein all sorts of spooky mayhem occurs centered around the public saying of grace at Thanksgiving. I shiver to think of it. Ooooh...what if those scary Muslims had prayed in public on Halloween? Brrrr...

The Virgin, The Pope, And The Amazons

 

Diana of Ephesus

I have been asked a question about my view of the blessed Virgin Mary and I am working on it. This will take a few days since I have just finished the outdoor lights, set up the tree, put the tree lights on it, went down to the vault to get the decorations and put them on.

It was a good Christmas so far; only two red faced arguments which is pretty much below the national average. Now I have to go and replicate everything at my parents. They have no computer, no internet access. My mother seems to have become a latter-day Luddite who takes pride in her firm stance anti-e. Two weeks ago I bought a printer/copier for them to be used as a copy machine. It cost $ 20 on sale and rebate and had to be purchased. My wife thought its copies were not good, but I insisted on giving it to them, because it only had 3 control buttons, one of which was on/off!
No bewildering array to befuddle them...or me, for that matter.

Sunday past my mother called me to beseech me to give them the clue to starting a DVD in the DVD player. We had had this discussion before. She said that when one put in the DVD there was sound, pix, blah-blah, then there were parts of the film, only they repeated over and over forever. I said that somewhere on the screen you would see the word "PLAY" and you were supposed to depress a control button labelled "play" somewhere in the immediate neighborhood of the DVD machine.
Well, she denied this.
She said she had never seen the word "play", it did not show up, and obviously my brother OR his son, my electronic nephew, Electro, (a different nephew...not one of the infamous gang of three) would have to be contacted. I called a huff and went off in it.
So I called back Sunday and she had indeed started the DVD by using the "play" button on the DVD itself. The Universal Remote/Translator she had purchased from an intinerant salesman from Andromeda did not work. Now as I prepare myself to go and do Xmas thingeys, I know she thinks she will divert me into programming universal remotes. However, in my opinion, remotes are meant to be remote. The remoter, the better.

By the way, the "X" in Xmas is the greek "chi" which is the first letter in "christos". There seems to be a bit of a mental lacunae among "cultural warriors" about that.
Now, having mentioned the Virgin somewhere in the above, we swing into Pope Benedict. Not literally, of course. We are not actually taking a poke at his nibs. It is a metaphor I use to indicate that I have come back off an exasperating tangent.
The Pope visits Turkey. On the papal schedule, as I read it on the BBC, I see: 29 November Goes to Ephesus to say mass at site where Virgin Mary believed to have died.
I was amazed, no, shocked. I mean...really. Ephesus was the site of the famous temple of Diana - Artemis in Greek - and was of enormous importance in the pagan day. (I seem to recall St. Paul was kicked out of the city, but I'm not sure. He was kicked out of so many.)

Well, well, well. Let me wonder about the connection between Ephesus and the Virgin Mary for awhile. Oh, and Amazon is a Greek word usually interpreted as "without (a) breast", meaning one was missing - an interpretation which is fairly ludicrous, although it seems to hold the field in the philology jousts. The root word is "mazon" meaning "breast" and "a-" a privative meaning "without".
 However, "a-" can also be an intensifier and mean "many-", "greatly-" and generally intensify the meaning of the root word to which it is affixed. Hence, "amazon" could mean "many breasted", "big breasted", and generally take the notion of breast and kick it up a notch. Now, if you have ever seen the ancient statue of Diana of Ephesus that has about twenty to thirty breasts, then you suddenly realize that Diana was "a - mazon" in this depiction; she was "great breasted" and a potent symbol of Nurture.

Well, well, well. Sorry, Got to go.

--

A Sense Of The Macabre

What is macabre - or ghastly - in this post is the fact that I am going to start it off by saying, "I do not usually like to beat a dead horse, but...". So, here goes: IRAQ I do not usually like to beat a dead horse, but it seems to me that armed militias that kill civilians are the same thing as death squads. Armed militias are a large problem right now. Vice President Richard Cheney suggested the use of just such Death Squads - in the same manner in which they were used in El Salvador in the past - in 2004. What do you want to bet that the administration aided in the setting up some of these groups? Land o' Goshen! 2008 So much for Condoleeza Rice as Pres. in 2008. The Second Bush Inauguration I had a sudden memory image of the Bush 40 million dollar second inauguration party. At first, it was all BU$H. Then it transformed and took on a macabre resemblance to Beetlejuice.

Borat Shmorat

The film Borat was troubling. I like things that make other people look ridiculous. In fact, my opinions of other people - if my opinions could be viewed by you - would resemble pictures from the fun house mirrors: a great panoply of grotesqueries. However, I found Borat troubling. It sort of limped along in parts. Even now, as I view trailers on TV, I notice there are scenes which I do not remember at all from the film. I must have been asleep. The overt anti-semitism surprised me. Anti-semitism is still anti-semitism even if the author or director be Jewish. It was pointed out to me that Mr. Cohen was concerned about the rise of anti-semitism in Europe and wished to make some point or other. Make the film in Europe, then. The early Nazis had a favorite philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg by name. If it be found that the Protocols of the Elders had been written by an old Jew, it would not become a suitable gift at a Bar Mitzvah.

Now For Palestinians

After the episode of the Palestinian Grandmother suicide-bomber it became apparent that I should now say something about the Palestinian side of the dispute. Well, what is there to say anymore? I mean, I had a post about Palestinian olives before and if olives are the best I can do, I should be silent. It has been almost 60 years. Israel and Palestine will find a way. Ir kent undz dermordn, tiranen. Naye kemfer vet brengen di tsayt; Un mir kemfn, mir kemfn biz vanen Di gantse velt vet vern bafrayt.

Coming Apart

While we were having the Thanksgiving feast, 202 Iraqis were killed in bomb blasts in Sadr City. There were other blasts in other cities.
The neo-conservative dream of the mighty American Empire is a whirlpool of death and violence spun out of control. What is our goal?

I happened to see Chris Matthews interviewing a retired general Batiste. The general said this Iraq thing was the first step in a long, expensive war against jihadists. Mr. Matthews tried to pin the general down on which factions within Iraq were jihadists.
There was some twisting and squirming, but it became apparent that the general had no idea what he was saying. He had been put on the TV and his mouth was moving and that was enough, thank you. The days of empty rhetoric lay strewn behind us on this particular road to ruin.

I don't think anyone knows what they are doing, other than waiting for James Baker to make a report. Then, the report having been made, we can watch more talking heads talk about Iraq while thousands die. Is there anybody in charge anymore? Are we actually adrift as badly as it seems to me? What Congress may do is limited. The President and the Vice President indicate they will resist anything from Congress, then point their fingers at the Democrats saying, "See! They are are witless and empty-headed as we are!"

We retreat into the insularity of our twin feasts of consumerism: Thanksgiving and Christmas. We stuff more food into our faces and spend more and more on useless gee-gaws. The PlayStation 3 garners more interest than the disasters accumulating on our doorstep. There were some retailers open on Thanksgiving day! That must have been great for the employees. They were paid triple time and no doubt hired a caterer to do their own Thanksgiving dinners. We have all been exhausted by the elections and the failure of our government in Iraq. We choose not to see anything but turkey and mistletoe, bright lights and glitter. Who could blame us?

Memes

I see people using the concept of "Meme" all the time. I do not like the concept "Meme". It is based on analogies with genetic behavior. Ever heard of the "selfish" gene? Mind is the history of God's creation to grow above the selfish gene level. "Meme" attempts to explicate the greater by the lower, and lower Mind to the level of the selfish gene.

More On Free Markets

In the post http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2006/11/lies-economists-told-us.html I made some comments about free markets. There is a large segment of the population which has childish notions of free markets and this segment is not at all used to being talked to and told to stand in the corner. Free markets are emergent behaviors. It is a complex resulting from the activities of the participants, one of those activities being Ethical acts or beliefs. The notion that free markets are beyond morality is nonsense. They are based upon morality - or the lack thereof - of the market participants. I have heard utter balderdash. Business people should remain business people, not economists or philosophers. I mean, asking business people about free markets is a lot like asking a rock star about Darfur.

Thanksgiving Faith and Thanksgiving Reason

Thanksgiving Faith reminds me to get up at 5:00 a.m. and start doing the things I need to do, even though today is a holiday. Thanksgiving Reason tells me I can accomplish the same things by getting up a little later and leaving out that second cup of morning tea. I get up. Reason has led me through the planning of the previous 2 weeks; who is in and who is out? how many pounds per person? we need a 16 pound turkey. do you people know what you are doing? that is not my turkey. if we have 2 kinds of stuffing, then there will be no room in the oven… Faith leads me through the execution of it all with a devotion to the cause and a sense of service and humility ( why should I have to do all the work?!). Reason leads us to the feast of thanks and love. Faith puts it all together and is the culmination. Footnote I could go on about this, but I think this is just enough. I have mentioned how unsatisfactory is the experience of reading about religion these days. I intend to write more here on the topic. My thrust is Reason and Faith are different. Bad men may abuse either and we see terrible things done by Science or Religion. Furthermore, they need not be reconciled, for they are never apart, appearances to the contrary. They could only be called "apart" if they were supposed to have been "conjoined" in the first place. They are in us like Taste and Smell, different yet dependent on each other.

News From Radio Free Europe

"Les sanglots longues...blessent mon coeur d'un langueur monotone." Je repete, "Les sanglots longues..." I am sending you news from outside your borders. You are Heurtebise listening to your radio in Cocteau's "Orphee". These news items have not yet been cleared by official American News companies for domestic consumption. The American News Media are complying with the Ministry of Information, or Mini-Truth as we call it in OrwellVille. 1 The Israeli group Peace Now has issued a report stating that more than a third of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are built on privately owned Palestinian land. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6168752.stm Of course, such settlements would be illegal under the Geneva Convention. The official argument against this is an embarrassment since it is learned pleading in the support of theft. I checked the NY Times and all I could find today was: Israeli Map Says West Bank Posts Sit on Arab Land which does not appear to be quite the same. However, it is the same story. My entire intro is a bit, shall we say, nonsensical. (Now it is time to write about DeQuincey's Nonsense Considered As A Fine Art.) 2 There was a BBC TV special yesterday on the presence of the CIA at Robert Kennedy's assassination. I wonder when we will see that. I remember some years ago, many years actually, seeing a special on JFK and his brothers while I was in Canada. I was stunned. It was the first mention ever of the Marilyn Monroe connection. I stared at the screen, wondering who had produced this documentary and from where had it come. I knew it could not be American. At the time, American news did not report on the sexual mores of the political elite from the eastern seaboard. Congressmen from Ohio were fair game, however. I had never seen this type of reporting. It was a BBC documentary. I had to be in Canada to see it.

Eerie Synchronicity Or...Not

Posted today in http://www.jewschool.com/ First they came for the Mashichists, but I wasn’t a Mashicist so I didn’t speak up… Eeriely (eerieielly??...how does one spell the adverb of "eerie"?) like my own post last week... I guess given the same situation, the probability is high that many will use the same conceptual structure. Why are there so many similar situations, then? That is, situations of governments wreaking violence? In the same Blog there is a section entitled Mishegaas. I have not read nor spoken Yiddish in a long time -" long time" being 35 years of more for me, "middle term" being 15 to 34 years and "just yesterday" being anything up to 15 years. However, since I live in Michigan, the home of the US Automotive geniuses, I am tempted to state that the name "michigan" does not come from the Native American for "big water" or "makes big water", but from mishegaas. It would explain a lot.

Credit Problems

A good deal of coverage nowadays on the credit problems of young people. Hee-hee! Wait 'til the Bush National Debt catches up to them! My nephews were wondering the other day that if you put, oh, say, about 300 Republican Representatives and Senators in room with a like number of typewriters, and then went away for, say, 100 years, what is the probability that they would have written the works of Charles Bukowski AND the recent revisions on the law of personal bankruptcy. Chance were pretty good for the second alternative. Refresh your memories now. The revisions in personal bankruptcy were bought and paid for by the Credit Card Companies. Oh, yes they were. There is no doubt about that. Even Rush Limbaugh would not argue the contra side on this moot. I will not go on about the atrocious law. I will observe that it treats those least able to pay enormous interest in a distinctly non-Judaeo-Christian way. Judaeism and Christianity and Islam all have obligations to the poor and those burdened by debts. WE do not. We do not, because we are not Christian, Jewish, nor Muslim. At best, we are fellow travellers of the above mentioned faiths. I was sitting with some frien ... acquaintances a while back. (Almost said "friends". Don't do the "friendship" thing. Yuuuck!) I said that our society was populated with monsters. I was talking in re: killing middle easterners. He, my acquaintance, corrected me and said that I could not really say that most of the populace were monsters. Most were good people. Surely. I was abashed and said yeah, I guess. Shucks. Nonsense. We are monsters of complicity and acquiescence. If you think that it is quite enough to go to church and pray before dinner and feel a pang of remorse when some broken Iraqi kid is hoisted up to a prying camera on the TV, you are crazy. Crazy Monsters! Now you see why I do not do the friendship thing. Imagine sitting with me at a restaurant and have me go into this type of rant. Imagine me contradicting everything you say. You'd run, too. So, it's monsters...check the friendship thing at the door...and try to remember to pray to God, not the credit card company. It's hard. It may take awhile, but it will be better in the end.

Thanksgiving

I have a lot to be thankful for. 1) there are health problems, but so far so good. 2) we do not live in Anbar province 3) we do not have any debt 4) the country may get its head out of its...sand after the recent election 5) we do not live in Falluja ... and so on. I could probably go on for quite a while. It's hard to gauge the Thanksgiving crowd sometimes. My mother has reports of nieces and nephews being spotted coming in on NORAD with great, hungry appetites. Then the radar blips just disappear in a haze of "other plans" or "a better offer". My elder brother was in, then out. This means I need not replenish the stock of products distilled from potatoes in Poland. My younger brother may receive an offer from the County today to kindly accept its hospitality for the Thanksgiving feast, as well as a few more months of dinners. It's hard to tell how many will be there. The number doesn't matter. Just be somewhere where there's love.

Trial And Verdict

I suppose now I must look forward to hearing such monumentally profound observations on the order of "The death sentence against Saddam Hussein is right. He was a really, really bad guy." and "The world's a better place now that he's gone." Perhaps. However, even Saddam Hussein in his most megalomaniacal never caused the deaths of 600,000 of his fellows. (Lancet estimate.) Where am I going with this line of thinking, you say? No where. I know where I live and the age in which I live. 600,000 lives of some Middle Easterners is chump change for us. Like General Dyer at Jallian Walla Bagh, we have a point to make and we will bloody well make it. Human Rights Watch ( www.hrw.org) has stated: Iraq: Dujail Trial Fundamentally Flawed Court Should Overturn Verdict and Death Penalty The trial of Saddam Hussein and seven other defendants before the Iraqi High Tribunal for crimes against humanity was marred by so many procedural and substantive flaws that the verdict is unsound. So now the "Really, really bad guy" group will argue against the "Fundamentally flawed" group. It is not my responsibility to try Saddam Hussein nor to condemn him to death nor to carry out the sentence. My government has tried to distance itself from the process by turning the trial over to Iraqi lawyers who have been out of the international circuit, particularly out of the international crimes against human rights circuit, for a number of years. So we provide ...advice to them. And we have the sentence read...just before the November elections. This trial, given its importance, should have been a perfect example of the use of international law. Instead it was a jimmy-legged, jerry-rigged mess. But what does one expect nowadays? I refuse to have this man's blood on my hands. I have acquiesced in enough killing in the Middle East. What answer will I have for St. Peter at heaven's gate? St. Pete:"What about this slaughter in Iraq...and, for that matter, Palestine?" Me: "I didn't do any killing. I wuz following orders, anywho." St. Pete: "......Riiiiight. "

Death

The title pretty well sums it up. I do not wish to lose my father. He has an abdominal aneurysm and the medics are debating whether to operate based on the strength of his heart. Based on the size of the aneurysm, there should be an operation. It has been a long two years. Last year he was so sick from pneumonia he could not walk to my car to be driven to the hospital. Well, he recovered well and we were soon laughing about jet-age diuretics and how fast they work. My mother had an angioplasty and a stent procedure. Afterwards I told her that she had too much food around with trans fats. She laughed and said, "It's his lungs, not his heart, that's the problem." "It's not dad I'm talking about." I said. So Thanksgiving approaches. There's a jar of gravy with partially hydrogenated molecules waiting for me. I'm picking up the turkey on Wednesday, taking it to their place 60 miles north and going to the doctor's with my father. Will return Thursday early to pop turkey into oven. And I will worry. I will have to rely on my mother until I return on Thursday. Last year when cleaning the recessed lighting in the kitchen I discovered what looked like minute pieces of beef jerky on the ceiling. Well, they were indeed beef. My mother's pressure cooker exploded some months before. She no longer uses it. I do not wish to lose them. We have faced death before. They have been ill. I have been ill. My daughter had been ill many times in the past, God willing, not so in the present and future. When we first brushed up against Death, he cut us to the quick with a scowl and we huddled in bed, grasping each other like we'd never let go again and crying ourselves to exhaustion. I guess one never gets used to it, but you become bolder and less fearful. I do not wish to lose them. We've only gotten to like each other the last few weeks. We are more like old friends. (Old crotchety friends, true.) Death has no dominion in the kingdom of Faith.

Amerabia

I have been reading some stuff about Eurabia. This is the notion of some dark, future dystopia where Muslims have become the majority in Europe. Back in the day we had the yellow peril. That seems to have disappeared into a more gentlemanly fear of China, Inc. The hordes of Asia have always instilled fear into certain intellectuals of Europe. It is probably some memory that stretches back to Genghis Khan. It dawns on me that I have a beard. I see many with beards. I heard from my daughter that a friend of hers is growing a beard. Pretty soon we will look like a bunch of mullahs sitting around a internet hookah. I do say things like, "God willing." Hmmm. I have dreamed about the nightmares of Marcus Aurelius. For many years, this philosopher emperor could not sleep through the night for fear of nocturnal images of slaves and Orientals and peoples from the Levant overwhelming the Roman Empire with their reies novae of outlandish Middle Eastern religious mumbo-jumbo. Christianity was the religion of the outcasts. They met in underground caverns for their services. Repressed into the darkness. They were metaphorically Monsters from the Id for old Marcus A. Same thing happened to the Krell on Altair IV. From the Id come forth Monsters or Saints. It is up to us to choose. Scary stuff.

Links

There are some good blogs I like and to which I do not link because...I do not know how to do it! So there. Like the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) and Butch Cassidy(Paul Newman). Sundance Kid "I can't link !" Butch Cassidy ( laughing ) "Are you crazy? The Blog Help section'll probably kill ya!"

Our Stories 2

I heard from a gent who could not believe that I was not a fan of the Left Behind series.

Furthermore, although I might not be a fan, surely I could realize the value of the books.

I had to tell him that I do not.
Our stories are what we are and we are our stories. Our lives are history; a narrative of a being whose cognitive system allowed him to experience the Holy. If I choose to allow violence, death, and disaster, then my story will reflect this fact.

I once spoke of Defoe's pamphlet On Murder Being Considered As A Fine Art. Even murder may be an art form if enough people say it is.
Murder is an art form now, in fact.
We have an entire genre of literature and cinema devoted to artful depictions of violent degradations of humanity. Martin Scorsese is a master of the form. He has a new film called The Departed and people flock to see it. These same people will probably discuss its merits afterwards.

I was recently asked if I had seen it. I replied that Martin Scorsese and I have...issues, issues going all the way back to Taxi Driver.

Our stories are built upon these choices. In the realm of Faith, the common sense distinction between the world of Image and Reality disappears, for we experience the Holy in fear and trembling, but when we return to the everyday world, we must tell of our experience using words and figures of speech with which we are familiar. If we are familiar with the glorification of violent disaster, we shall use the language of Left Behind. We are limited beings.
We cannot comprehend the Holy. We can feel it, taste it. Then we try to describe it. If our vocabulary is that of Violence and Discord, so shall our picture of the Holy be. If our words are formed by the Sermon on the Mount, so shall our story of God.

--

Our Stories

"These are our stories. They tell us who we are." Lieutenant Whorf

I have no stories that tell me who I am.

I used to have them when I was a child, but we have put away the things of children. I have never felt so estranged from the country of my birth as I have for the past 3 years. Now we hope that it will begin to mend. I do not think we will always agree. I do not think that one bit. And we will still act like swine to each other.

But I hope the strange gods have been put away; the dark gods of passion akin to madness that speak in whispers and goad men on to acts of unjust war. Remember I said once that I considered that the United States and the Soviet Union together had effected one of the greatest moral victories in the history of mankind: the avoidance of Nuclear War. Men are still capable of great things.

I have heard it said that modern man has no myths; that he needs myths - stories - to help him understand his place in the universe. We do have stories that tell us what we are. We have the stories of Jesus, the stories of Muhammad, the stories of Moses, the stories of the Buddha... Each of these stories says it will tell us what we are and what we may become.

We have all the myths and stories we need. We choose to ignore them.

One of the biggest selling novels has been the Left Behind series. I have said that I consider stories of death and destruction - even those wrapped in biblical parchments - to be diseased myths of a age of man that is sick unto death and fascinated by the image of its own destruction; an age of mankind so self-centered that it must grasp for everything, even disaster. The Sermon on the Mount is a story that tells us who we are and what we should be and what we may become.

Fuseli Dreams of Richard Perle

Fuseli painted "The Nightmare". The title is an apt description of the neo-conservative nightmare through which we have come. I was listening to an interview with Richard Perle on NPR two days ago. Mr. Perle still believes Saddam Hussein's Iraq was hand-in-glove with Al Qaida. This is eminently taking a page from the Cheney handbook or the Karl Rove handbook. Mr. Rove in an NPR interview before the election said he saw many, many more polls than did his interlocutor. Thus he, Mr. Rove, was more well informed regarding the coming Republican victory. Mr. Perle has seen more documentation regarding Saddam Hussein's relationship with Al Qaida and so it goes in the neo-conservative cloud-cuckoo-land where they have so much more knowledge than we do. I find it totally beyond my understanding why - if the neo-cons use the faulty intelligence alibi to excuse their horrendous blunder into Iraq - the same neo-cons are sold on the infallibility of their mystery documents. The most outstanding stupidity of Mr. Perle and company is their naive assumption that a total authoritarian dictator like Saddam Hussein would ever have tolerated the presence of another power base in Iraq. To think that Hussein would allow Al Qaida to set up even a meager shop within the borders of Iraq flies in the face of dictatorial reason. Good riddance to those fools.

Deja Vu

Massacre in Gaza Then they came for the Palestinians, but I did not say anything for I was not a Palestinian. And then they came for me.

The Holocaust

So I am reading Elie Wiesel. And I agree with him. (I have been criticized (attacked?) for things I have said about Israel. That is too bad. Never again will I describe myself as a friend of so-and-so or such-and-such. All Humanity will eventually fail your inflated vision of them. In my youth, I received only one side of the Middle East conflict, resulting in a vision of Israel as the Land of Milk and Honey and a paradise on earth. So I find it isn't. Then I say it isn't. Criticize away, fellows!) Anyway, I'm reading Elie Wiesel about the Holocaust. Mr. Wiesel states that Auschwitz is as important as Sinai. He see the Holocaust as a theological event. I would agree, since I see many things as theological events. The point about the Holocaust is that it leads directly to the state of Israel and this leads to the present state of affairs. The theological event may not have come to a close. Or, if the Holocaust is to be defined as having come to a close in the 1940's, then what theological occurence do we view today? God is not sleeping. What is it we see today? What is the theology behind the present day's actions? What theological event shall we call the Diaspora of the Palestinians from their homelands? The historian Amos Funkelstein once wrote, "...that the extermination of the Jews of Europe ought to arrest the attention of theologians seems obvious. " The extermination of any and all peoples arrests the attention, whether they be Jews or Palestinians. This seems obvious.

The Muses Take a Dive

We saw Borat Saturday past. Very sketchy. It was like being in a part of town where there's a lot of junk clogging the side streets, so that it looks weird and funny, but you look for an escape route. The local Opera had their last performance of Porgy and Bess, so we went and got mixed in with the football traffic. High five, George G! ( ......sort of like Ali G....who was Sascha Cohen...of Borat.) I guess I never read the story before, nor saw the opera, nor saw the films. I did not like the opera one bit. I found the story thin and the characters one dimensional. Even so, this one dimension seemed suspiciously too close to racial stereotypes to be comfortable. I mean, what in the world motivates Bess? Other than the obvious which I will not mention here. If nothing other than the obvious is in Bess, I could stay at home and watch commercials about crack cocaine laboratories being bad for your health. The performers were very good, but the music -other than the famous songs-was uninteresting. Even the well known songs seemed to flash by too quickly to inspire a feeling of reverence. The characters were also so uninteresting that I finally came to admire Crown, the bad guy of the piece, for at least seeming to have some sort of personality. When Crown goes to save Clara, he takes on more meaning than Porgy ever comes close to. It became so bad that I dreaded the inception of another scene. I was in such pain that I didn't know whether to cry or yell or run screaming from the theater. I considered talking back at the stage, something like "Have mercy, Porgy. Cut it short!" Then the audience would either applaud me with enormous relief, or they would turn against me like lions. Either way, it would be a relief. What happened is not clear to me. If this piece of music and drama is as bad as it appeared to me, what could possibly explain its endurance?

Lies Economists Told Us

It does one good to get up early on an autumn morning, have a good breakfast, then go sit in the shooting blind with a thermos filled with hot coffee and bag a brace of nonsensical ideas. I consider myself conservative. However, this does not mean stupid or credulous. I wuz reading (sorry about that slip.) the Ludwig von Mieses Institute site and came across an article http://www.mises.org/story/2358 which is entitled Congress Forces Gambling Off Line. Why? This article references a book that can sum this all up: Power and Market author: Rothbard The book is sold on site and is introduced by: What can government do to enhance social and economic well being? Nothing, says Murray N. Rothbard. Power and Market contains the proof. It will inoculate the reader against the even the slightest temptation to invoke the state as a solution to any social or economic problem. Now as a Conservative I should be taking this bait hook, line, and sinker. Right? Well, my initial problem with the arguments about "intervention" is that the same arguments which apply to on-line gambling apply to child pornography. If one truly believed these notions, one should argue for the restoration of child pornography on the internet using the exact same arguments. Perhaps it is a quaint Victorian reticence that holds them back. All societies establish norms for right and wrong. If your take an immediate confrontational view of government ( and - in truth - the government is very confrontational ) then we feel we must resist its intrusion. However, if we conceive of government as the will of the governed, we have a slightly different outlook. If the common good is administered to by our government which we have freely elected and if that government has expressed our will in the form of laws banning on-line gambling and child pornography, then the fact that a group of low-lives will have recourse to a black-market in such items does not constitute an intelligent reason for us to re-consider our actions. And stop talking about Prohibition. The problem with Prohibition is that we were a society in which a majority of people abused alcohol. If - at some point in the future - the majority of society were to clamor for the legitimization of child pornography, would that mean we should restore free market kiddy porn - just as we restored booze to the households of America? Consider this quote: A government measure that might induce more saving and less consumption is then no less subject to criticism than one that would lead to more consumption and less saving. To say differently is to criticize free-market choices and implicitly to advocate governmental measures to force more savings upon the public. This type of analysis commingles moral acts with acts which are not subject to morality per se. Believe it or not, I consider gambling to be immoral and do not see why I would mix it up in a discussion about household savings and consumption. This analysis sets up a criterion of value which supersedes all other criteria, including your precious religious beliefs. Those religious trinkets will hold only so long as the free market allows. To bring this to its utterly stupid conclusion, if the free market were to choose illegal immigrants, slave labor, indenture, etc. then who are we to quibble? If free markets were to choose goods and services outrageous to social mores, shall we accept them? I do not believe the proponents of such arguments are stupid. Therefore, they must be pernicious and desirous of destroying morality. By their very nature, these arguments deny the existence of anything beyond the free market structure; morality is some vague, never-never-land idea that is the stuff of children. Free Markets are mindless automata which function as the servants of the society in which they exist. The men and women of that society set the standards and ethics and morality by which those markets must function, not the other way round. To believe otherwise is to deny our political and religious heritage going back thousands of years.

Tech Bubble Heads

Seen at Longtail http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/ Venture capitalist David Hornik does a great job in summarizing... The basic idea is that incredible advances in technology have driven the cost of things like transistors, storage, bandwidth, to zero. And when the elements that make up a business are sufficiently abundant as to approach free, companies appropriately should view their businesses differently than when resources were scarce (the Economy of Scarcity). They should use those resources with abandon, without concern for waste. That is the overriding attitude of the Economy of Abundance -- don't do one thing, do it all; don't sell one piece of content, sell it all; don't store one piece of data, store it all. The Economy of Abundance is about doing everything and throwing away the stuff that doesn't work. In the Economy of Abundance you can have it all . All I can say is Hallelujah! Away with all that eco-friendly, recycle nonsense; just exploit the world and let the chips fall where they may ! Possible Irrational Exuberance Ahead. addendum: There is the problem of hazardous elements in e-waste. It will become a huge problem, like everything becomes when you have the above attitude towards the world. If you incorporate the husbandry of taking care of the stuff you are throwing away - recycling, for example- you are no longer within the joyous abandon of the Economy of Abundance. You are in the Economy of Good Stewardship. link to e-waste article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6187358.stm

Moral Monsters

To my daughter: Never support Moral Monsters who exploit and kill. Most of my life I have listened to the lies told by some of our leaders, lobbyists, and interest groups. I have become a monster of complicity myself. There is no difference between me and a dutiful German citizen during World War II who closed their eyes to atrocity. There is a component of the morally monstrous in our support of Israel. It derives from a component of the Israeli body itself which is a monster. The people of Israel are a brave and good people. It seems that now the monsters have come to power. This has paralleled the rise to power of the monstrous within our own country. They have fired upon the women of Bait Hanoun. We have destroyed Iraq in the name of our Democracy. Now Avigdor Lieberman, the deputy prime minister, proposes a Cyprus model for the partition of the land into a Palestinian state and Israel. He states that minorities are the biggest problem in the world. I do not need to draw parallels with monsters from the past. It is too obvious. These statements - if they are accepted - go back to the founding of the State of Israel and what was said and what was done at that time. If you cannot live in harmony with others, they must be destroyed...unless we may build a wall...unless we may divide the land... Our god is not big enough. The God of Abraham worshipped by Jews and Muslims and Christians is not big enough. If Jacob were to wrestle with God, the God, that is, that we believe in, God would give up. God would back off. Let the man do whatever the man wants. The terrorism of today is but a little terror compared to the Big Terror being dreamed up by the Monsters in power.

Iz Dis Fer Real?

"You've got to be ..... kidding ! "
David Clennon as Palmer in The Thing ( dir. John Carpenter)  
I was reading the account of the old Iraqi nuclear research. The army had captured old documents from the days when Saddam Hussein did actually have atomic research. In order to defend the Republican Indefensible, GOP people asked that this out-of-date material be posted on the Internet, apparently to create some sort of illusion among the voters apparently too stupid to be able to distinguish what was important from what wasn't.

The problem was that the documents, being in Arabic and no one in our government being able to read them, provided a pretty good tutorial for building an atomic bomb. I believe the documents were up since March. It may have been March of 2005, I forget. They were removed this week past. Someone asked me whether I would look for work as a translator with the government since I am studying Arabic. I told them I do not think our government is serious about anything except lining their pockets. The sad part is I'm serious.

The Vice President was in Colorado: "It may not be popular with the public. It doesn't matter, in the sense that we have to continue what we think is right," Cheney said. "That's exactly what we're doing. We're not running for office. We're doing what we think is right."

My problem is I do not have the slightest idea what we are doing. We did invade and we won that war - mission accomplished. Now what are we doing? I think that after 3 years if an occupying force cannot even claim to have control over the capital city where their headquarters are located this is not a good sign. But what are we doing? What is the goal?
I do not want any long term high sounding crap like spreading Democracy. What are we doing this week to stop the deaths of Iraqis and our soldiers? What, Mr. Vice President?  

In closing, let me remind President Bush and Ehud Olmert that I think I have gotten my tax dollars worth many times over with dead Palestinians. The shooting of 2 women in Bait Hanoun was a topper.
Thank you, George and Ehud. Thank you for dipping your hands in the blood and wiping it on our faces.

The Bush Years

Interesting article on interrogations. Thank you, Mr. President. http://pandagon.net/2006/11/01/the-massacre-behind-the-curtain/

The Virgin Mary

Mary, the mother of Jesus, figures prominently in the second surah of the Quran, The Family of Imran, in case you did not know. I have always had a tender spot in my heart for Mary. I hope she feels likewise. However, the portrayals of Mary in literature and film is not the way I see her. In the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson, she is the usual wailing woman, full of ululations and despair. (The Passion was violence-pornography to me. Murder can be considered as a fine art, and as well can it be considered as religion. The loving depictions of the pain of Jesus do not lead us to share in his pain - that was not the intent of that sacrifice-but to indulge in our self-centered and sadistic narcissism. And as far as the accusations that the film was anti-Semitic, we know that was nonsense.) Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Virgin, Theotokos, fights for her beloved children with all the passion in the universe. If we believe in her role as intercessor with her son, then I know she pleads the case with all the vigor and tenacity of a well trained lawyer in the heavenly courts. She files motion after motion, she objects and argues, she wears down the legalists in defense of us, her clients. Mary is a vigorous champion of the down-trodden: " He casts the mighty from their thrones." Mary is a force for radical change for living the way we are supposed to be living. Mary is not the shy and demure pre-teen as we usually see her depicted. She is wise and canny and committed to the welfare of her children. Mary is a Force to be reckoned with. She is an icon made up of every strong mother keeping her family together in the face of despair. Mary is not demure in the cause of us, her family. She will fight with every bit of her great passion for rectitude. As a proponent for her children, Mary to me resembles the women warriors of the past more than certain females of today who write and speak the spite and ire of their perversity into the willing ears of dupes. In short, rather than seeing a painting of a pasty-faced woman wearing a tiara standing upon the globe, I'd much rather say that Mary rulz!

Election 2006

How will one vote? Well, I think the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to be a law which could have been written after the burning of the Reichstag in 1933. Show the film Red Dawn one more time.

Kicking the TV Habit

If Election Day were every month, I could totally kick the TV habit. What I mean is, my apprehension at turning on the tube of boobs and being inundated by a tsunami of fairly puerile political ads is so great that I will not watch TV until after the election; I won't watch until about 72 hours after the election. And do not political ads really remind you of some type of nasty footballers after practice snapping towels at each other in the locker room? I'll grab a few Everybody Loves Raymond and Cedric the Entertainer when he's on, but nothing else. When Cable TV began, there were no commercials. It was assumed that the cable fee was the revenue for the cable company. Revenues have increased and the programming is pretty awful. The economic theory is that quality should get better. So much for theory. The theory is get all you can. Then die. The commercials are everywhere and they are stupid. There are even commercials in movie theaters. The ones I've seen are for Stella Artois beer and these are so good they are frequently better than the film I've gone to view. I went to see The Aristocrats with a friend and walked out after 15 minutes. This was considered ...what? I mean, what was that film considered to be so that some reviewers said that people should actually debase themselves by viewing it? I heard yesterday from a friend in Toronto that he saw a commercial on a Buffalo, New York channel that showed a toilet bowl with excrement, said excrement being the focus of the advertisement, the product being -naturally enough-toilet bowl cleaner. Why? I asked. I mean, if I were to be in the market for bowl cleaner, one assumes that I already had a pretty good bird's eye view of the state of the porcelain, so to speak. I do not, repeat: DO NOT, require digital representations, thank you. After this, my friend waxed eloquent on the history of the representation of toilets in the cinema, he being an entity who views Reality at 24 frames per second. The first depiction of a toilet in modern cinema occurs in Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock. It is in the scenes of Janet Leigh in the motel. Before this, the Hayes code forbade such sights. Then I said that even though Hitch had broken the fetters of the code which had held us back from the brave new world of copro-propinquity, still Hitch had to shoot a toilet which was sparkling. It looked as if Mr. Sparkle himself had scoured it. Send dirt to land of ghosts. And the motel was a cheap motel. There is no way such a toilet exists or existed in a motel of that caliber. I have had the unfortunate experience to view porcelain which was cleaned with steel wool, or so it appeared. Then we drifted into TV again. He doesn't like CSI. Neither do I. I mean, I like the lab stuff. I do not like the Abu Ghraib touches, the Falluja-esque scenes, the H.P. Ashcroftian moments of eldritch sex. Switching to present day cinema, I told him that I had seen The Queen. She-who-must-be-obeyed had compiled a list of films to be viewed; Marie Antoinette was on the list as well as a number of others. I do not really subscribe to the list...not even the newletter. I mean, I do not really remember the films on the list...except, of course, around birthday time and anniversary time, at which times one should really scour the lists as well as any archives available. Otherwise, when we go to the movies, my opinion is not recorded. (I have had some bad moments - cinematically speaking- over the past few years. I have developed a rash and a phobia caused by films with Morgan Freeman doing voice over or playing a sort-of-as-it-were Greek chorus sidelines character who does commentary and voice over - the film with Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood and boxing comes to mind.) So I was told to direct the car to the sole movie house in the area which shows films other than Spiderman and was told were we going to see The Queen. Of course, I think we will see that Marie Antoinette period piece and my visual cortical taste buds are primed for Louis XVI, Versailles, and aristocratic romps in the hay or arbor or pergola or what-not. Imagine my surprise at seeing Queen Elizabeth in the opening scenes. For the next - oh - 20 seconds I have to wonder how we are setting the scene for Marie Antoinette. The connection between the ill-starred Austrian princess and the House of Windsor is not...shall we say...obvious. Since my wife is sitting next to me and not reacting to the opening scenes with consternation, I have to assume we are in the right theater and watching the correct film. It is a very good film, too, by the way.

The Universal Churches

In all the discussion about Religion I have seen, I have never seen a reference to Arnold Toynbee's concept of Universal Church. In Toynbee's A Study of History the thesis is presented that all civilizations we are familiar with have created Universal Empires ( e.g., Rome ) and the main use of these empires is create a fertile ground where a Universal Church comes into being.

When the empire falls, as must all things of man fall to ruin, it is the Universal Chruch which carries on the remnants of civilization into the new age. Quite a different view of Religion and Churches than what we are used to.

When the slaves were packed on board ships in West Africa they had nothing except their minds and hearts. The slaves in Haiti brought Vodou with them and this was the only link they had to the world they had left, other than oral traditions. In this instance, Religion preserved the spirit of a people.

I am so tired of reading nonsense about Religion. Our opinions are not history. Read The Religions of the Oppressed by Lanternari.

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Faith Bashing

I was reading Killing the Buddha site and came across a book review:
http://www.killingthebuddha.com/dogma/samharris.htm

This deals with a Mr. Sam Harris’ book Letter to a Christian Nation. The review writer starts by describing a situation where she and her Buddhist companions were opposed to a developer’s plans to clear-cut a mountain top for a resort; by implication there were grand designs of money and jobs for the other locals, so there were those for and those against the development. There was a lot of work in order to deal with the anger that will arise in heated discussions. Good little story.
When we get to the book review, we remember that not all Buddhists are smiling. Some of them have a not so hidden agenda.

First, about Mr. Harris himself we read:  

Harris does not consider himself a Buddhist because Buddhism is a religion. But he is, by his own account, someone who sits in meditation as taught in Buddhist centers, with other Buddhists.  

I suppose this somehow – magically, perhaps – establishes the bona fides of everyone on our side: Buddha, Buddha, Buddha…chanted like some mantra. There is a certain irony in that this review occurs in the site Killing the Buddha (KtB). The name of the site is based on the story that teaches the moral that the Buddha you see is NOT the Buddha.
Yet the writing is heavy with Buddhas.

There is an implication that Meditation Makes the Buddhist. Meditation is only one step of the Eight-fold Path. What happened to the other seven? Then Faith comes in for a good shellacking:  

For instance, he writes: "While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers.  

I believe one of the definitions of Faith is belief without absolute verification.
Believing without proof does not hold prestige. What holds prestige is the acts of those who fight in the big jihad of forcing one’s actions to conform with the will of the Holy. That holds prestige…in fact, it holds more prestige than sitting in meditation as taught in Buddhist centers.

We have already talked about statements that cannot be proven to be true or false; something as simple as “The Cure concert was great!” cannot be proven true or false. There is no means of verifying it since some will have liked the music and some will not have liked it. There is no characteristic of "being musically great" which may be measured with the same ease we use to measure the attendance figures.

We can generate an infinity of statements that cannot be proven and we deal with them constantly. We experience the reduction ad absurdsum of everything when we come to:  

Harris also makes strong cases against creationism, in support of atheism, and generally attempts to "demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms." And he uses the language of scientific certainty (he is himself a neuroscientist) to support his claims. It is easy to say, as many do, that Harris is prone to fall into the same fundamentalism that he so articulately dismantles. But this is simply the nature of an argument like his. He is trying to say that some things actually are intolerable, things like beliefs that inspire people to fly planes into buildings. But unlike the intolerance of religious absolutism, these things are intolerable for good reasons.  

Yes. It is too facile to say that Atheism is not susceptible of verification, just as is Faith. Yet what would be the point? I do not think it would add anything positive to this process. And Neuroscience as the effective means to establish atheism? Surely not.
If something cannot be proven nor disproven, it really does one not a bit of good to bring in "hard science" and have it strut its stuff. One gets the notion here that science may prove something that is not capable of proof.

It was quaint to see the entire history of Islam collapsed into a flight of airplanes. And it would be too facile again to point out that horrible things merely require horrible people. If religion is involved, however, it gets the bad rap. . If the Holy were responsible for every idiocy that comes forth from mankind, the universe would indeed be a strange countryside.
I am not really sure that the last two sentences quoted make a point of any kind. I mean, I sort of think I know where the author wants to go, but she does not really go there. The reviewer is extremely sympathetic to Mr. Harris. I am not clear why.
Why would a self-proclaimed Buddhist finds this so enchanting? It has all the earmarks of erudite, well written twaddle.

It reminds me of the story in
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2006/10/faith-and-its-manifestations.html
where an old Granny with a gangrenous leg refuses amputation for religious reasons:  

What life do these people mean to save this grandmother for? A life of poverty wherein she finds herself an object of scorn and ridicule? Perhaps Granny has born enough suffering and decided that it is time to leave suffering behind. That is one point that never dawns on thepeople of Reason who heap scorn upon her; maybe Granny has attained Nirvana. 

The problem of Religion is the attitudes of mankind that are made very clear in this review.

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Cheney: I Recommend Democracy With A Side Order Of Death Squad

A quote from a Z Magazine book review:  

With the U.S. occupation grinding into a quagmire in 2004, Vice President Richard Cheney called for the “Salvador option” in a nationally televised debate...

This remined me of the fact that there was a discussion within this administration about the use of "death squads" to keep the enemies of democaracy at bay, just as we supported such death squads in El Salvador. If I remember correctly, it was one of these squads that killed Archbishop Romero.

When Bremmer disbanded the army and the old police, there was nothing left to keep order. This is when the decision not to disarm the militias was made. This was a policy decision and there must have been discussions about it. Cheney's remark above was one instance when the discussions came to the light of day.  

To the Vice President of the most powerful country in recorded history, an acceptable instrument of policy was a DEATH SQUAD! And he reasoned about them as if they were pawns on a chess board. In short, our administration made a conscious and deliberate decision to allow the militias to remain armed in order to use them to maintain order AND to possibly play a role of death squads against the insurgents.

Now we are seeing the results of this insanity. Hammorabi estimates 100 people killed per day. This would seem to support the high kill figures of the Lancet study. There is something seriously wrong.

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Brennt Iraq?

Mit brennender Sorge schreibe Ich.
When I said that a previous post was my last on Iraq, I meant my last post in English.

If you want to read about Iraq, read Hammorabi, a blog written by a fellow who's an Iraqi and has been there continuously. It follows the whole trail from initial hope to present despair. http://hammorabi.blogspot.com/

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Putting Away The Things Of A Child

I read an article which I liked very much:  
We're all big babies
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/10/22/svbabies22.xml&site=6&page=0

If you read it, I will say up front that I am already aware that I transgress all his guideposts of measuring adulthood, so I do not require further e-mails or comments from you pointing it out.

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Catonic Thoughts

...ceterum censeo Creationem Consulto delendam esse.  
( "...furthermore, I believe that Intelligent Design must be destroyed." because it is disguised idolatry - or polytheism.)




I was originally going to title this "Catonic Love" - an absolutely horrible title. The reference is to good old Cato, the Roman Censor. And the creation of the adjective "catonic" was a play on "platonic".

However, catonic is too, too reminescent of catatonic, not to mention catamite. This source of confusion is immeasurably compounded by the fact that I never could keep clear the meanings of catamount and catamite. 
( You may think this odd, but I did spend one summer of my high school years swimming, sun-bathing, and reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I believe Caligula was termed a catamite or had some such rent-boys about the palace.)

I can look at the word catonic and see cat-o'-nine-tails by reading too fast. It is a short trip then to cat on a hot tin roof and any number of misleading notions.

Wacky Religions?

Often I come across articles and essays written by very learned people who wish to take Religion to task for being dangerous and inimical to human well-being. In fact, some wax so eloquently that - for all the world - you would think that they had tackled Old Man Religion McBug-a-Boo who was raving and flailing about and now these writers were sitting on his chest, calling for the EMS guys to come with a straight-waistcoat (or, straight-jacket) and deliver this insane old geezer to the local mental hospital.

However, I think humanity can act quite insane with or without Religion. If Religion seems beyond the fringe, I am quite sure that if you look around, you will find the tell-tale traces of human activity, full of sound and fury.

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What's Ahead Now That We've Destroyed Iraq

IRAQ

I think this will be my last post on Iraq.
I opposed the war from its inception.
The reason given for the war - the presence of WMDs- I believed to be false based on the fact that the UN weapons inspectors had been in the country for nine months and clearly stated they found no indication of them.

This assumes the UN weapons inspectors actually knew how to inspect for weapons. I guess we did not think they knew how to do it.

I wondered at the so-called intelligence. The clear and unambiguous intelligence we had we chose to ignore. If it was difficult to get intelligence, as has been stated, this meant that we had no intelligence, we ignored the excellent intelligence we did have, and listened to Chalabi who was in D.C. I did not believe in the purported connection between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein.
The religious fundamentalism of Osama did not set well with the secularity of Hussein. There was never a report of any connection before our government decided it needed to establish one. Before the war started in 2003, Bin Laden put out a video that was widely shown on the US media. In this video he stated that Saddam Hussein was Hallaal. This is not really like slapping him on the back and saying he is kosher. Hallaal meant that Saddam Hussein's neck could be put under the butcher's knife. Hallaal meant that it was O.K. to slaughter Hussein.

And the interpretation put on this video was that Bin Laden and Hussein were friends! You had better hope the mortality figures of over 600,000 are not correct. You heard correctly: YOU had better hope. The ultimate responsibility falls on our shoulders. We allowed this to be done in our names. We cannot wash the blood from our hands. I remember Christmas of 2004 arguing the war with a friend from Cleveland. It ended up by him saying: "Oh, heck! You read everything about it!"

So we looked at each other and laughed. No more war discussion. I read the BBC every morning. I probably always will. I learned in the 21st century to not trust the media of my own country. Phil Donohue and Bill Maher lost their shows over inappropriate criticism and lack of idealogical correctness. It was just like being back in the USSR. There is talk of impeachment of the President. I do not want this. I wish he would resign. That would give us Cheney. He'd last for a month then he'd resign and go sit on the boards of numerous corporations. We have utterly wasted 5 years. We have not even learned anything from our disaster.  

HOPE and CAPITALISM
Muhammad Yunus and his creation of the Grameen Bank received the Nobel Prize recently. Please read about it if you wish. This is the type of Capitalism which works to alleviate the rural poverty and years of neglect which exist all over southern Asia. There is a clear difference between Bhopal - where local people are seen as inconsequential, so much so that we may establish toxic factories without safety measures standard in the world of the rich - and the Grameen Bank.  

SPACE
Check out the new National Space Policy signed by the President on October 18. If the President were Eisenhower, this policy would seem reasonable and innocuous. When the President is someone of a far different caliber and outlook, this policy takes on a more sinister tone. The main player in space will probably be China. China has just recently had the surprising yet edifying spectacle of a neighbor who has planned and worked and waited 50 years to develop an atomic bomb in order to deal with the USA. We must not allow yet another area of the universe be opened up to mindless aggression.

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Celebration

Kattbanjo ( aka. Little Catacuracha ) is back. Hooray and Yippee Skippee! You may visit her site yourselves. I assume you can find the way. I would link you to it...I would, that is, if I actually wanted to share.

Buddhist Expectations

I was talking to a friend about Buddhism. He is an associate, actually, though not really an associate. More like like an acquaintance from the dawn of history. (Not a friend, surely. What I mean to say is that I tried friendship once. It didn't work!)

So I said something about meditation as being one part of the eightfold path. So he brightens up and says that he has been meaning to pay a return visit to some monastery in upstate New York where he once spent a week or so. He still has his begging bowl as a memento. In fact, he wished to go strongly and would soon make plans. I asked him what it is that is doing the wishing.

There is a lot of paradox here based more on the metaphysics rather than ethical or religious notions. However, this one had never, ever, ever uttered a word more profund in his long life. Nor did the one who heard it understand it. THIS I will meditate on.

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MBA and MOB

The USA has banned on-line gaming from the Internet. Online gaming group Partygaming has to restructure its business. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6068834.stm

"Gibraltar-based Partygaming has focused on expanding outside the US, as the threat of a crackdown loomed. "Whilst the US has historically represented the majority of the group's revenues and profits, I am pleased to report that our non-US business continued to deliver strong growth," chief executive Mitch Garber said. "

Notice how little difference there is in Business whether one is describing automobiles or revenues from gambling addicted teenagers.

I have remarked previously on the often stated proposition that the Mob or Cosa Nostra in the USA is believed to have moved into legitimate businesses over time and furthermore, that as the Mob became more like Business, so did Business become more like the Mob.

Enron.

Business without a proper Ethics is the Mob.

Kevin and Pat Tillman

I read Kevin Tillman's article this morning. http://right-thinking.com/index.php/weblog/comments/12088/ I'm sure most of you already have read it. It took way too long for us to see through the "illusions" created by our government. The next time, living a lie may be even more deadly.

note: the link is no longer valid and leads to a search page. I do not care for the site, but there it is.
May 4, 2011.

The Work of Philosophy

"This [the U.S. Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other." Benjamin Franklin What is the process by which the people become so corrupted? I believe it is a matter of not paying attention to the great needs of life: loyalty, fidelity, bravery, faith. Franklin spoke during a period of turmoil and war during which all these virtues were demanded of the citizenry. It is not war we require, rather the focus on the great virtues called forth by our noblest passions. It is the work of Philosophy to keep our focus on the Good and to keep our understanding of what is Good clear and elevated, not permitting it to be degraded. There is so much that degrades us in our civilization. Politicians seek power. They do not have good ideas. The best of them find good men and women with good ideas and build upon them. It is the work of Philosophy to provide these ideas; good ideas, not the tripe Alfred Rosenberg supplied to Hitler, but the inspiration to godliness and nobility. We have come through a period during which our nobility has been brought low, our faith has left the church and entered into public fray, our loyalty has been betrayed by those who should have been our leaders. Let us leave it behind with a sign of relief. Let us turn to good women and men who may assist us to retrieve our stature.

Palestinian Olives

When I buy olives, I always ask if they are from Palestine. I guess this is the only way I can show support. Besides, all those Palestinian olive groves will be stolen, burnt, or bulldozed soon. A message to the USA and Israel: I think you've killed enough Palestinians by now. I can assure you that I have gotten my tax dollars' worth many times over! And Hamas was elected. Deal with it. Or deny Democracy. We would rather deal with Mahmoud Abbas. He wrote a thesis in University denying the Holocaust. Figure that one out if you can.

Faith and its Manifestations

Read today: http://www.somareview.com/ which is a site I often read. It is the Society for Mutual Autopsy, autopsy meaning "to see with one's own eyes" literally. Found an article which I will quote and try to briefly summarize: http://www.somareview.com/noprosthesis.cfm

No Prosthesis for Jesus To avoid hell, a Christian chose death over the amputation of a gangrenous limb. Gotta love that old-time, fear-based religion! By John Sparks and Mary Beth Crain

A few days ago, I posted a blog describing journalist turned author Jennifer Skiff’s request for “God Stories” for a book she’s working on. And it struck me that just as there must be millions of people who’ve had experiences that convinced them of the existence of God—that’s the subject of Skiff’s book—there must be just as many who’ve faced trials or witnessed events in life that led them to seriously doubt, even reject, God... Yet another kind of reply came from Kentucky author John Sparks. He told the tale of an old Appalachian lady who, clinging to her brand of fundamentalist beliefs about salvation, chose to die a terrible, painful death rather lose a gangrenous limb and thus her place in heaven...—J. Spalding * * *

John Sparks: Some years ago I worked in the laboratory of a mid-sized rural hospital, which meant that I occasionally had to serve as a jack-of-all-trades for the pathologist if his own technician didn't happen to be available. One night I had to draw blood from an elderly patient suffering from developing gangrene in one limb. My father was an amputee and, thinking that the patient had been admitted for an amputation, I mentioned Dad's operation to the patient's sons and daughters who were present. They immediately corrected my mistake: this patient was not going to have an amputation, because her Christian faith was such that she felt she had to keep her body entirely intact for the Resurrection...

The old patient suffered for two or three weeks and finally died, to the last refusing amputation of that gangrenous limb because her faith simply demanded that her body be intact to be raised in the power of the Lord..

It's a hard thing to think that people can, and do, die for extremely deeply felt religious beliefs that in the long run turn out to be worth [very little].

Mary Beth Crain: John Sparks’ story made me ponder the irrational, perverted, and thoroughly self-destructive lengths to which human beings will go in affirming their faith in God...

Sparks’ tale of the old Appalachian lady who suffered a terrible, needless death rather than lose a gangrenous limb and her place in line for the Rapture is a wonderful, if distressing, example of religion gone berserk. Had someone invited this poor woman to follow her logic to its ridiculous conclusion, I wonder if she would have been forced to rethink her position...

Our old Appalachian woman was obviously controlled by a fear-based religion so insidiously lethal that it overrode her very instinct for self-preservation.

Even as we realize the need to talk between faiths to increase our understanding, we may still find ourselves condemning our own co-religionists.The same standards of what is acceptable religious belief as described above would, if applied to the Lord Buddha, condemn him as a wild man seeking suicide.These standards would decry Gandhi's fasts as the work of a mindless terrorist.

What life do these people mean to save this grandmother for?

A life of poverty wherein she finds herself an object of scorn and ridicule?

Perhaps Granny has borne enough suffering and decided that it is time to leave suffering behind.

That is one point that never dawns on the People of Reason who heap scorn upon her: maybe Granny is attaining Nirvana!

Language

I received an email from Nicole E. Billionaire today. She wants me to handle some of her stateside investments while she is still taking care of things in Nigeria. Poor soul! I shall, of course, steal her millions and leave her penniless. Sometimes I actually feel sorry for these simple folks. On another topic - the main topic actually - there was another email that startled me briefly. It stated: End Time Share Maintenance Fees. Of course, I read this as something to do with End (of) Time. (or EOT as we call it.) Then, I realized that it wasn't enough that EOT presaged the end of everything as we know it, but we had to pay upkeep for the catastrophe.
Add Maintenance Fee to that old maxim about Death and Taxes. I peaked at the contents without opening the virus-ridden IED and suddenly all was clear. It had something to do with Time Sharing of condos and nothing at all with EOT and Death, unless you time-share with the Grim Reaper.

For the longest time I would see crude signs posted by the side of the road saying: Camp Fire Wood. I naturally assumed that there was a chain of camps for RVs and such and that "Fire Wood" was the name of the campgrounds. I assumed that the rustic and crude nature of the signs was part of their genius marketing which was intended to give a subliminal impression of Nature untrammelled by the works of civilization. This interpretation lasted for a couple years, believe it or not, until I finally saw a sign by the road that said: Campfire Wood for Free. Oh, I thought, wood for campfires. That makes more sense.
Then very recently I came across: Invisible Fence Dog in Training. I think I had recently been reading about Japanese robo-canines, so I was ready for a major change in how the Species Canis Domesticus was defined. I read the notice as saying that the breed of dog called "Fence Dog" ( which obviously was bred to work in concentration camps and prisons) lived nearby and the breed had been improved by adding the characteristic of "Invisibility" to it-not a bad improvement for a guard dog, and this dog was in training. So as I passed I scanned the area with my peripheral vision, hoping thereby that I would get a fuzzy glimpse - like the Predator in the film of the same name - of the so-called invisible dog that guarded the fenced perimeter. This nonsense only lasted for 20 seconds until I recalled what "Invisible Fences" were and knew that the sign meant that dog A is being trained for an invisible fence B and numbskull C driving by best keep his eyes on the road.

The Rabbi of Goray and Justice Scalia

I was reading about Justice Scalia in KeepMedia this morning.
http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/USATODAY/2006/10/16/1903375?ba=a&bi=16&bp=64

A feisty Justice Antonin Scalia defended his conservative view of a rigid interpretation of the Constitution at an unusual forum Sunday, the American Civil Liberties Union's annual meeting... Scalia, whose "originalist" theory asserts that the Constitution should be interpreted in its 18th-century context, believes in a limited right of privacy. He is against the right to abortion, which was first declared by the Supreme Court in 1973. Such a question, he says, should be up to the people and their elected legislators. "I apply the limitations on American democracy that the American people have adopted," he said. The rights of homosexual people, too, he said, should be left to the people rather than courts.

I wrote a comment:

If I remember correctly, many Jewish women from all over the East made the trek to Goray in Poland because the rabbi of Goray was known far and wide to be more inclined to bend when dealing with divorce.Some rabbis were strict, some were lenient. If you wanted strict construction, you went to Lublin where the strict rabbi resided. Else, to Goray.There is a difference in the hearts, not in the Torah.

I have exactly 3 concerns here:
First, the business of putting oneself in a context that existed 300 years ago is an extremely iffy proposition. Why should things - which today in the present are not clear - suddenly become clear by putting them back 300 years? (Actually, this does work and it is effected by being ignorant of 99% of the details that existed in a particular situation 300 years ago. Thus, we are kept from a swamp of details and have clarity, but not informed clarity.)
Furthermore, whose definition of the context does one use? Which historian do we invoke?
I suppose I mean to say: If I can not believe my own eyes (and heart), what makes me think I can do better with John Adams' eyes and heart? Thus, I cannot use my own writing, but somebody else's writings, preferably someone who lived 300 years ago. I may use his writings, but writings do not make me totally privy to the context in which he lived. They DO NOT make me totally in context since -as mentioned above - I cannot know the vast majority of the detail 300 years ago.
How do you deal with totally new situations which not only did not exist 300 years ago, but were not even conceptualized 300 years ago? Obviously, there must be a further system of analogical reasoning or some other scheme by which we put ourselves into context ( which does not even exist for the new situation ) and reason by analogy and metaphor and parallelisms to what actially did exist. And it is right here that the pretense to Historical Context falls totally apart.
Second, I assume the learned Justice is opposed to slavery and other forms of indenture.Why, then, are the rights of homosexual people asserted to be best left to the people, not the courts?
Slavery was left to the people. The highest court in the land upheld the institution. There was a radical cure effected by President Lincoln. At present, homosexuals are second-class citizens and find themselves bereft of basic right the rest of the population takes for granted. AND it is the ancient context of the slavery clauses in the Constitution that led our country to endure slavery and a similar context takes Justice Scalia down the same type of road.
Third, Justice Scalia is quoted as saying:

"If you fall in love with an evolving Constitution," he said, "do not think that it will evolve in only one direction." 
 
Is this a threat? I mean, is he saying that if I embrace a Constitution evolving liberally, beware! for it may also evolve conservatively and mothers get your kids off the streets then!
I never thought that evolution is only in one direction. It is just like going to Goray. Is the Torah strict or is it lenient? The people who journeyed to Goray to speak to the Rabbi did not ask the question. For them, the Torah was the Torah. But how does the Torah reflect itself in the world of men? In their hearts. If their hearts are merciful, the Torah is merciful. If their hearts are hard, the Torah is hard.
Justice Scalia has no faith in the hearts of his fellow citizens. He must flee back to a paradigm of a land that existed 300 years ago, a land which cannot be but an image devoid of the greatest part of its almost infinite detail.
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What I Believe

I was born Roman Catholic and went to Catholic schools through high school.
I go to mosque to study Arabic.
My favorites authors are Avivah Zornberg and Gershom Scholem, both outstanding students of Mishnah.
I am currently studying Buddhist Logic and Metaphysics. (Meditation is only part of the eight-fold path.)

I still think America is the greatest place in the world. We do not need leaders who lie and deny. We do not need leaders who strive to deprive.
We need a commitment to blood, sweat, and tears in pursuit of our Faith. We need to know what our Faith is and we have to commit ourselves to the struggle to support it: the big Jihad to win control over ourselves. We do not need torture. We do not need a state of constant war to last for generations. We have to be resolved and strong, for sure, but we must deny the hideous scenario created by the present government which creates a shadowy Islamo-fascisist conspiracy which will last for generations.

WE DO NOT NEED LEADERS WHO REDACT THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS to assure the supremacy of the military-industrial complex. We are now following the Romans: Empire - decline and fall. The Romans at least had the excuse that they were morally witless, not having Faith to guide them. We have no excuse.

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The Iceman Cometh

There is a cute story for the season. It's about paranoia, but of the best type: paranoia as comfy slippers or sitting before a warm fire on a cold autumn day.  

Read the Tomgram, 
Mike Davis on Manifest Destiny, the Sequel
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?mm=9&yr=2006

Herein we see the Saudi government has plans to build a 560 mile long fence on the Iraq border. Add this to Israel's new ghetto wall and the USA's new gated-community-wall along the Mexican border and with a little ingenuity, we could have a globe girdling wall and have it hook up with China's Great Wall just in time for the 2008 Olympics (tm).
What will we do when the Iceman gets here?
Will we continue to sit around in drunken Consumerism in the Bottom-of-the-Sea Rathskeller? Where all tomorrows have become today...and quickly vanish in intoxication.

David Kuo was on 60 Minutes yesterday. Talking about the Faith Based Initiative, I have a quote of his:  

At the end of the day, both parties played to stereotype -- Republicans were indifferent to the poor and the Democrats were allergic to faith.

He told of being at an Evangelical Convention where there were information and publications on everything - except the poor.

Yesterday being Sunday, I watched the televised goings-on of Pastor John Hagee, the foremost Christiano-wiseguy. There was all politics, all Iran, all nukes in Korea, all advice to Caesar. There was no humility or charity nor any other pesky virtue.
There were quotes about total victory, however. In the world of Pastor Hagee, Jesus is a political subordinate to Big John.
To blaspheme in this manner is equivalent to tearing out your own heart and replacing it with iron. It is Lady Macbeth seeking to change her own nurturing gender to that of a blood-maddened soldier in order to kill without compunction.

Those of little wit speak of World War III or World War IV.

When the War comes which is the result of our sojourn here in Harry Hope's Bar, the place where we have withdrawn from the rest of the world to live in our drunken dreams, it will come on as a whirlwind.  

As we sit in the semi-darkness, our cheap booze in jam jars on the dirty tables, we squint through the street facing windows of Harry's Bar. They haven't been cleaned since his wife died years ago, and they are almost as opaque as etched crystal. The people on the street become figures of dream, wispy and indeterminant figures with unsure outlines, blurs that come into view, come closer to each other, binding themselves in an amorphous shadow, part into smaller sections and go their ways up or down the street. It's so hard to see. Fashions must have changed. It's hard to tell. Maybe someday we'll go outside and take a walk around the ward. Until then, we'll wait for the Iceman. We'll wait for the wife-murdering Hickey.  
Wait! 
Didn't we see Hickey's trial on television? 
Didn't we see Hickey in his white Ford SUV being chased on the highway?  

Damn! This booze ain't got no kick to it! Just then, an infernal explosion blew in the front window and Harry's head ended up by the cash register while his body still sat at the table, jar of booze in its hand, puzzled and searching for its lips.
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Le Creuset

We have just purchased a Cocotte Ronde or Dutch Oven or French Oven made in France by Le Creuset. I am glad that it is made in France. Many people have things they bought at Wal-Mart and are made in China. That’s O.K. for them, I guess. By the way, 8,000 to 10,000 executions per year are carried out in China. What a power house! What a great combo of Capitalism and Capital Punishment! (Maybe we could outsource?)

The Compact of Medina and Other Things

Compact of Medina
There is an good account of the Compact of Medina established between the first Muslim community in Medina and the non-Muslims of the city. This will be instuctive for people who judge the political theory of Islam to be based solely upon dhimmitude and second class citizen status.

This is true whether these who judge are non-Muslims or Muslims, for both are prone to error. It would be rather unfair to judge the political acumen of Muhammad by the actions of subsequent leaders. It would be rather like judging the abilities of George Washington based upon the acts of the current President.

http://www.ijtihad.org/compact.htm  

Religion and Politics I was talking to my psychiatrist recently ( finally!, I hear a gasp of relief.) Actually he is not my psychiatrist in a professional role; he is an old friend who happens to be a trick-cyclist (as I call him. Most people call him a shrink, so trick-cyclist is a welcome change.) Anyway, the upshot of it was that the rise of political Islam has tracked and been tracked by the rise of political Christianity. The tenor of both movements is aggressive. They are Paganism on the one hand and Jahaliyya on the other. Jesus once said to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God's. This statement establishes the basic conceptual difference between the realm of Caesar and God. They are different in understanding and they are different in reality.
The divide bewteen them is illustrated by the nature of people who pursue power. Consider the people you know who have pursued power. Look at the Congress and Administration of the USA. The appetite for Power overwhelms the taste for morality.
Desire for Power does not even guarantee that these people can perform their basic functions. Once they have been elected, they face the great void of their own being: there's nothing there except that Lust for Power, and then they indulge themselves in their tawdry vices of degradation, greed, and corruption.

Asking One's Higher Father The President said that when he was considering the Iraq War, he consulted not his father, but his Higher Father. If this was a political ploy, it was shameful. If it was true, it was a thing whose name I will not mention, for I still believe we should talk respectfully of the President.