They won't.

Post #30,658 by mmoffitt 3/4/02 1:25:43 PM Reply	They won't. Religion is the opiate of the people. Drunk with the "power of God" whatever flavor, people are capable of any number of atrocities. Thankfully in this case, we Americans can look to Mssrs. Falwell, Graham and my all time favorite intellectual Pat Robertson to help us figure out who the "evil" ones are.
Post #30,661 by boxley 3/4/02 1:31:04 PM Reply	yup watched Pat the other night Going thru the Koran on a line item basis reading kill the Jews kill the infidels then wondering why people were whining about him. thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #30,802 by mmoffitt 3/5/02 9:45:22 AM Reply	I don't have a dog in this fight, but, ... knowing that Israel didn't exist until the 1940's and that it was "created" then out of what had always been Palestine, I don't have too much trouble mustering sympathy for the Palestineans. I mean, if somebody decided that my house, my town, my country ought not to be mine as it had been for centuries, but should belong to this "new" country instead, so I'm told to just "leave", I think I'd be pissed enough to commit some horrors of my own. Just my 2, not flame baiting, Mikem
Post #30,822 by boxley 3/5/02 10:29:26 AM Reply	Definitions I know but who or what was palestine and who ran it/lived there? Who was asked to leave? thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #30,827 by mmoffitt 3/5/02 10:48:14 AM Reply	Huh? ... Within the decade of the 1930\ufffds, Palestine receives approximately 232,000 Jewish immigrants. The Jewish population in 1939 numbers over 445,000 out of a total population of about 1.5 million, nearly 30% as compared to the less than 10% twenty years earlier. Similarly, by 1939, Jewish land holdings had risen by four-times to almost 1.5 million dunums of the total area of 26 million dunums. ... 1945: Zionist pressure in the U.S. increases with the involvement of Congressmen, and President Harry Truman calls upon the British government to open up the gates of Palestine to an additional 100,000 homeless European Jews. ... 1948: On 22 September, Israel adopts the \ufffdArea of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance\ufffd, which absorbs, de facto, almost half of the land allocated to the Arab state which were occupied by Israeli forces. ... [link\|http://www.palestine-un.org/info/imp.html\|http://www.palestin...nfo/imp.html] And that's just for openers ;-)
Post #30,834 by boxley 3/5/02 11:09:54 AM Reply	lets start over (good points though) Prior to 1948 1. What was the borders of Palestine 2. Who was the non colonial rulers of Palestine(i know the brits ran it) 3. In 1948 who asked for non Jews to Leave? thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #30,842 by mmoffitt 3/5/02 11:42:20 AM Reply	Okay. 1. See [link\|http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/maps/M0082c.gif\|http://www.un.org/D...s/M0082c.gif] and picture all the green and red as "Palestine". (Also see: [link\|http://www.mideastweb.org/PalPop.htm\|http://www.mideastweb.org/PalPop.htm] for population studies) 2. Did anyone really "rule"? See: [link\|http://www.archiveeditions.co.uk/Leafcopy/557-0.htm\|http://www.archivee...py/557-0.htm] It was a very messy place. 3. From: [link\|http://www.pij.org/zarticle.htm?aid=4247\|http://www.pij.org/...htm?aid=4247] >>>SNIP First, as far back as the end of 1948, came the creation in the Ministry of Finance of a special "Custodian of Abandoned Property" mechanism. While in 1949 the name was changed to the "Custodian of Absentee Property," the mechanism did not deal only with property abandoned by refugees or with properties which had really been abandoned. Those Palestinians who had not left their homeland even for a moment, but were absent by choice or by free will from certain lands (perhaps in order to be on other lands which they owned)--- all lost the lands from which they had been "absent." One of the most famous examples of forced absence was seen in the large villages of what is called "the southern triangle" (in the eastern Sharon area of central Israel, abutting the Jordanian border). The Arab lands there became battlefields during the war and were divided. In 1949, in the framework of the armistice with Jordan, these villages were transferred to Israel and farmers found consolation in having their fields united again within the State of Israel. They were soon to find, however, that they had the status of "present absentees." The fact that they had not worked their fields in 1949 served as proof of the fact that they did not meet the requirements of Israel's "Law of Abandoned Property" of May 14, 1950. They were, accordingly, declared "absentees" and temporarily forfeited their ownership rights to the property. This "blow" was not restricted to farmers in the area of Tireh, Taibeh and Kufr Qassem, who were never to be able to return to the property and land from which they had been expelled during the fighting. The Law was applied generally to almost every Arab settlement in Israel. Thousands who had been in neighboring villages or at work in town, or even visiting relatives in areas which looked safer as they were further away from the fighting, became "present absentees." The Law of Abandoned Property made nearly 20 percent of the Arabs in Israel into absentees, regardless of their citizenship. >>>SNIP That about cover it? bcnu, Mikem
Post #30,849 by boxley 3/5/02 12:00:01 PM Reply	Good, getting somewhere Did the jews appropriate property? Of course. Did the Arabs accumulate property? Of course. The map of course refers to one of the 3 British Mandates a political division under which the arabs were part of the hashemite kingdom. Yup that about covers it. thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #30,836 by boxley 3/5/02 11:15:37 AM Reply	ROFL! Not even a mention of the hashemite king whos land it was!!! just a tad one sided web site I think. thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #30,839 by boxley 3/5/02 11:25:04 AM Reply	lets use a more unbiased link [link\|http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/his_arabrevolt.html\|rulers of palestine] "Consequently, in June 1916, as head of the Arab nationalists and in alliance with Britain and France, Sharif Hussein initiated the Great Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule. His sons, the emirs Abdullah and Faisal, led the Arab forces, with Emir Faisal\ufffds forces liberating Damascus from Ottoman rule in 1918. At the end of the war, Arab forces controlled all of modern Jordan, most of the Arabian peninsula and much of southern Syria. Sharif Hussein\ufffds objective in undertaking the Great Arab Revolt was to establish a single independent and unified Arab state stretching from Aleppo (Syria) to Aden (Yemen), based on the ancient traditions and culture of the Arab people, the upholding of Islamic ideals and the full protection and inclusion of ethnic and religious minorities. Arab nationalists in the Fertile Crescent and the Arabian Peninsula found in the Hashemite commanders of the Great Arab Revolt the leadership that could realize their aspirations, and thus coalesced around them." One Kingdom from Syria to Yemen under the rule of the hashemite King, now what percentage of that land mass is 1967 Israel? very tiny. the web site doesnt mention palestinians as a separate entity, they are refered to as Arabs subject to the King in Jordan(who doesnt want them either) thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #30,840 by boxley 3/5/02 11:33:41 AM Reply	more stuff on who "rules" the west bank "On April 11, 1950, elections were held for a new Jordanian parliament in which the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank were equally represented. Thirteen days later, Parliament unanimously approved a motion to unite the two banks of the Jordan River, constitutionally expanding the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in order to safeguard what was left of the Arab territory of Palestine from further Zionist expansion." linked in my earlier post. Jordan is the recognised government of the west bank, not the PLO. Do the Palestinian Arabs need a state of their own? At this point in History, yes. They should work with the current ruler, Jordan a little more peacefully. thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #30,844 by mmoffitt 3/5/02 11:46:47 AM Reply	That's NOT the question. >>Do the Palestinian Arabs need a state of their own? Wrong question. The question is "Did Israel ever need to be created?" The answer, I think, is "no" given that Palestine existed for more than 2,000 years with Jews and Arabs living together.
Post #30,850 by boxley 3/5/02 12:02:07 PM Reply	So the question remains Is there anyplace on this earth that Only Jews can consider who controls Jews, once again, apparently not. thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #30,867 by mmoffitt 3/5/02 12:47:30 PM Reply	That's an interesting position. Somebody needs to give me a country because I don't want to have to share power with the people how had the bad taste to be in power where I was born. Is that it? I know, let's divy up the US so that the German-Americans, Polish-Americans, Black-Americans, Latino-Americans, Russian-Americans, Laotian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Scottish-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc., can all have their own countries and can all be ruled by their own race. Oops, I have that wrong. This is a religion thing, isn't it? We need a United State of Catholics, United State of Atheists, United State of Baptists, United State of Semites, United State of Muslims, United State of Amish, United State of Lutherans, etc., right? And here I thought that our problem was religion creeping into our government when the real problem was that we weren't a theocracy.
Post #30,870 by boxley 3/5/02 12:56:00 PM Reply	dont think so The gentile world has a bad habit and history of killing Jews. In Europe and Russia it has been the national sport since about 400 ad. Folks get a tad tired of it. thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #30,894 by Ashton 3/5/02 2:13:50 PM Reply	Have to diverge form your otherwise logical and kinda reasonable progression.. As to your final question and illustration (by exaggeration - often a useful way of seeing). I'm with Bill at this stage. Jews are different! And yes, I recognize that such a claim is the frequent cop-out of the unarmed in a discussion. Thus one has to say 'why'. And I believe that the persecution of 'The Jew' is indeed as old as Bill's arbitrary date. I wouldn't even try to limn some 'why': the phenomenon may be as much about (what we call) 'Western' built-in xenophobia as anything else. And while neither 'side' can be rationalized as blameless: in most other contretemps since we started writig down history.. some respite has always been found. Not So re 'The Jews', I'd assert. But whatever it's 'about' - it is clear enough to me that Jews are indeed a Special-Case\ufffd, especially as viewed by the Western AND Arab worlds (dunno about the Orient - but you are surely more aware of the anti-Semitism in USSR, than anyone else here). The Holocaust, unique surely in scale and in so brief a time-span - underscores the universal ingrained, actively inculcated irrationality. No other cult, sect, tribe, group! can come close to the obloquy (and the sterotypes - even from Bill S. Shylock Lives! in the prejudices of masses). Are Gypsies / the Rom #2? They NEED a spot free from 'forced integration' with oppressors over millennia.. at least until all sides / the species: matures beyond its present perennial adolescence in all things. IMhO. (Maybe the replacement of Pop-theology with something less barbaric - will also have to occur, before any growth can be imagined? That can apply to Jew and non-Jew alike..) Ashton
Post #30,900 by mmoffitt 3/5/02 2:40:28 PM Reply	Different perhaps, but not unique. Usually, however, when a people has been subjected to the intensity of oppression the Jews have long suffered, they are simply wiped from the face of the earth. (We need look no further than the history of various tribes of native people on our own continent to see that this is so). That the Jews have been able to survive at all is indeed remarkable. However, I do not understand how their plight justifies allowing (even supporting) their forced occupation of a separate nation-state. Mildly OT: I've often wondered exactly how much of the US support for the creation of Israel was owed to anti-Semitism in this country. I think a case could be made that we only wanted the creation of a "Jew Country" so that the Jews displaced from Europe wouldn't land here. I don't claim to know what the best solution is. But I think that allowing a group to forceably remove another from its historical home on account of a sense of "collective guilt" is not the best course of action.
Post #30,938 by screamer 3/5/02 5:47:25 PM Reply	They are unique in another regard... Their (Jewish) history makes up our (any Christian or Muslim) religious history. To disregard this, as well as the history of the Jewish people starting from the Babylonian conquest (which, by the way, happened at a time when the joint was called Judea, Israel, Dan, etc... NOT PALESTINE) and including the holocaust, the Inquisition, et al... To disregard this may make your claim that they are not "unique" valid. The Indians did not have a "written" history which is preached throughout the European and American and Muslim world on a daily or weekly basis... If they did, perhaps they would have been a little more "unique" as well. Israel, the nation, was perhaps founded as you suggest, as a way for Judeo-Christian/Muslims to assuage their collective guilt and ensure the "not in my backyard"... The Palestinians, Jews who never left the region, were wronged when the British left (shades of India/Pakistan/Afghanistan anyone?) and when Israel was arbitrarily created. The problem they face now, is not solvable in a conventional sense. They lost a "real war" in the late '40's which sealed their fate. They have been allowed to stay, merely through the collective guilt of the "West" pressuring Israel to ease up and not do what they will do in the next two years with the excuse (justifiable?) that they are merely fighting a war on terrorism. The more "martyrs" that strap bombs on the backs and jump onto crowded buses, the quicker the Palestinian problem goes away... Right or wrong, Israel is armed to the teeth and the US and NATO will absolutely side with Israel should this war continue to escalate and especially if some other country gets involved. The Palestinians have a tough choice, stay and continue to count on the "goodwill" of the Israelis and the West or leave... or die. To answer your question about "I do not understand how their plight justifies allowing (even supporting) thier forced occupation of a separate nation-state"... I can explain that, we (the US) gave them money, the Russians (through their anti-semitism) gave them the educated numbers, and now... right or wrong from inception (just like the US), they are armed to the teeth and will fight anyone who tries to mess with them. The surrounding Arab nations rightfully fear them now. They have earned their right to stay, just like every other nation that survives... Militarily. Just a few thoughts, Screamer "I'll tip my hat to the new constitution, take a bow for the new revolution, smile and grin at the change all around, pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday..." P. Townshend "Nietzsche has an S in it" Celina Jones
Post #30,939 by Ashton 3/5/02 5:47:46 PM Reply	Lots has been written, even right chere re the 'status' of the nearby territory between 1900 and '48. The Brits have parcelled out land in many other areas of the world too, when the Raj was rampant. There's a precedent for these (ever arbitrary) divisions eventually being accepted. Note how artificial are our own boundaries. Exception: people living on an island; but - there's Haiti and Santo Domingo! so.. no exceptions. It's too late to erase '48 - and that was just THREE years after.. people walked into Belsen and Auschwitz and Maidanek and Dachau, Treblinka, etc. Undoubtedly a major factor in deciding: I mean, what MORE impetus than a holocaust (??) might suggest either, 1) (Our usual) Flush the problem down the toilet: finish the genocide, OR 2) Give these people a place where they might be somewhat safe from 'us'. I'd prefer to believe that #1 was never seriously contemplated, even if it WAS 'contemplation' by homo-sap. Ashton
Post #31,020 by bluke 3/6/02 11:14:19 AM Reply	Anti-semitism today There is alot of racism, human rights violations etc. in the world today. If I had to list problem countries my list off the top of my head would be (in no particluar order) Sudan where slavery still exists, China, Syria, the Taliban (until they lost power), North Korea, Iraq, Somalia, Saudia Arabia etc. Yet when the world met to dicsuss racism and human rights in Durban, most of the condemnation was directed at Israel. It is laughable for countries like Saudia Arabia to call Israel racist, when in Saudia Arabia, women have no rights, non-Muslims are prohibited by law from being citizens, it is illegal to bring in any no Muslim religious articles, Christian prayer gatherings are banned etc. For all its flaws Israel is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial society and is probably the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can truly exercise the right to vote. The only conclusion that I can draw, from what happened at Durban, is anti-semitism. Likewise the Arab press today is viciously anti-semitic, here are some links: [link\|http://www.memri.org/sr/SR00602.html\|A New Antisemitic Myth in the Arab Press: The September 11 Attacks Were Perpetrated by the Jews] [link\|http://www.memri.org/sd/SP33902.html\|Egyptian Government Weekly Reproduces Nazi Propaganda Forgery] [link\|http://www.memri.org/sd/SP32201.html\|Egyptian Government-Sponsored Scientific Journal: On American and Israeli Bio-Warfare and Jews Spreading AIDS to Asia and Africa] [link\|http://www.memri.org/sd/SP32101.html\|Saudi Government Daily: The Jews are Taking Over the World] [link\|http://www.memri.org/sd/SP27601.html\|Friday Sermon on Palestinian Television] These are just the tip of the iceberg, so yes, I believe that anti-semitism is unique.
Post #31,223 by mmoffitt 3/7/02 1:36:05 PM Reply	Just remember that you don't overcome an adversary by becoming just like him.
Post #30,963 by a6l6e6x 3/5/02 11:53:45 PM Reply	Re: "The Holocaust, unique surely in scale and in so brief a time-span." Really? Then you never heard [link\|http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/ukra.html\|Ukraine famine of 1932-33.] The reference says 6-7 million people starved. I've read 8 million in other places. This is not fiction. My father literally walked around bodies in the street. Your buddy (Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili) Stalin did this while there was actually a good wheat harvest in the Ukraine. The method was different, the motivation was different, but not the results. More people killed in less time. Communism can be so efficient. But, nobody seems to know about it! Bad PR? Definitely no museum in Washington, D. C. I do not for a moment want to take anything away from what has been said about the Holocaust. While luckily not destined for extermination, just slave labor, my parents and I and one of two younger brothers survived a Nazi concentration camp and then a German work farm. But, the Holocaust was not exclusive to Jews you know. And, no one better deny the Holocaust in my presence. The skeletal faces of my parents on their Nazi issued ID cards are still fresh in my mind. No Hollywood movie about the subject you have ever seen have comes close to depicting the walking skeletons of the camps. It sucks big time to be oppressed, for whatever reason. What is my point? The Jews are not different. On the flip side, do you think "incursions" into "Arab-controlled areas" using F-16s, helicopter gunships, and tanks against the Palestinian Arabs who have no such weapons is different from the Nazi's invasion of say Poland which still had a cavalry? So you can have and keep their land? So you can brutalize and humiliate them because you are the master race? Give me a break. With the current government, Israel is morally bankrupt. I would be ashamed to be an Israeli. This is not to say there are none working for peace. But, they are a small minority. Alex "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Post #30,979 by Ashton 3/6/02 6:12:15 AM Reply	You are right.. And there's no point in quibbling about +/- millions. Watcha you mouth though - Iosip no buddy of mine, nor do I imagine that what he wrought .. bore any slight resemblance to that 'communal' idea(l) - for which the species was and is: thus far emotionally incapable. 'Communism' - that it never was! Pure BS, that.. Fascism under rubric of 'social-ism'. What I don't recall (if I knew) was - whether the starvation was simply an "acceptable overhead" (to Stalin's vicious mind) for obtaining the grain - or his intent was overtly: to kill off a group he deemed undesirable. Nothing was beyond his warped mind. Whatever was that black motive, I'd still assert that the Jews are and ever were the Universal Pariah - as no Kulak or other ethnic from the Steppes could ever be (in the eyes of the world, generally). They appear to fulfill the need, from some defective gene in homo-sap - for a whipping boy for every current folly a group has created for itself (say, by the sort of Jingoistic rhetoric we are hearing daily - right now?) Note, as mmoffitt's post linked, in War forum (!) how we are daily told that ~"these guys mean to destroy us" [as if that were remotely possible!] and: it sells so far; excuses any next excess from the massive intellect of Dubya/Cheney, the [oil pipeline] twin entrepreneurs. And yes: the disparity in weaponry re Israel / Palestinians is quite like.. that in Afghanistan, no? In fact: no one in the world can come close to US armaments - by orders of magnitude. So.. Which of us is er least-immoral, then? Might is close enough to Right, if it's Our Might? Rationalizations. Endless hypocrisy to gain power and KEEP it. Not merely his-story but Our-story. Possible only after great damage has been done to language itself, via endless repetition of slogans and patent lies. Infotainment + circuses. Ashton who always wonders if we all Can survive the Mercantile mind, drugged into full-greed mode.
Post #31,007 by boxley 3/6/02 9:58:03 AM Reply	The Famine was to destroy the Kulaks Stalin wanted no part of small independant farmers with the history of fierce adherence to their land. The grain was shipped east in an effort to depopulate the Ukraine. I met with folks as a child that survived in the woods as partisans against the nazis and later the communists until escaping to the west. The Germans treated slavs as brutally as jews in a careless manner but the extermination of slavs by the nazis was not considered as paramount as the extermination of the jews. It is my heretical view that in order for the State of Israel to be created a Hitler was needed to provide the impetus for our home. Without Hitler the "independent" state of Israel would not exist. He does move in mysterious ways. thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #31,012 by bluke 3/6/02 10:30:59 AM Reply	Always had been Palestine???? Tell me, why when Mark Twain and every other traveler came to the region in the late 1800's they ALL described the land as desolate, backwards and void of people. Where were those millions of Palestinians that were there forever? The fact is that as the Jews started to develop the land Arabs migrated in. National Geographic in 1914 reported that Jews outnumbered Arabs in Jerusalem (what is now called Arab East Jerusalem) by a wide margin. How could that be, after all where were all those Palestinians who had lived there forever? The Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post was called in the 1930's the Palestine post, today that sounds shocking but in the 1930's Palestinian was not a term used by Arabs at all. Why makes Yasir Arafat born in Cairo Egypt a Palestinian? The fact is that there exists a Palestinian state today, Jordan. The British in 1922 divided up Palestine and gave %80+ to the Arabs.
Post #31,015 by bluke 3/6/02 10:52:05 AM Reply	Let us think about what you said... The Indians lived in the US for centuries before the European settlers got here, teh European settlers then exterminated them and herded them onto reservations. Let's give back the US to the Indians. While we are at it lets look at the American Southwest which the US stole in a war of agression with Mexico, give it back to Mexico. The fact is that the map of the Middle East and Africa was completely redrawn by the European colonial powers in the early 1900's, most of the Arab countries did not exist before the either. The fact is that the Arabs control 98% of all the land in the Middle East, the issue is not land but as Thomas Friedman writes: "As a U.S. diplomat in the Middle East said to me, Israel \ufffd not Iraq, not India \ufffd is "a constant reminder to Muslims of their own powerlessness." How could a tiny Jewish state amass so much military and economic power if the Islamic way of life \ufffd not Christianity or Judaism \ufffd is God's most ideal religious path?" Between 1948 and 1953 Israel absorbed 800,000+ refugees who were forced to leave Arab countries where they had lived for centuries. Those refugees children are now productive citizens. If the Arab world had shown a similar concern they would have absorbed the 800,000 or so Palestinian refugees into their societies. Why is it that the Palestinians are in refugee camps 50 years, where are their Arab brothers?
Post #31,016 by mmoffitt 3/6/02 10:57:21 AM Reply	Disturbing. >>How could a tiny Jewish state amass so much military and economic power if >>the Islamic way of life \ufffd not Christianity or Judaism \ufffd is God's most ideal >>religious path? "God's most ideal religious path" leads to military might? The argument that "By following God's will, we will have more missles, tanks, F-16's, guns, etc." is completely lost on me.
Post #31,148 by Ashton 3/7/02 4:02:52 AM Reply	Hardly surprising - why disturbing? Following a Holocaust in which - the mere fact of being 'Semitic' or especially 'Jewish' produced an actual (not attitudinal) death warrant: WHO, having survived that.. and finally having a place to live: would NOT create the means for self-defense against a KNOWN and large group of enemies - pledged to your extermination, and wanting not most, but ALL of your land? (That this group of opponents already inhabited (bluke says 98% - close enough) of the surrounding land.. would only ensure that your defense was both competent and - of large capability) Clearer now? Ashton Supposing that instead, they had adopted the (merely preached; never actually practised) Christian ideal of, turn the other cheek - would you estimate Israel's chances of survival as, A) equal to B) greater than C) less than, that of A homosexual getting out of a 700 Club meeting alive? (After the Tee Vee lights were turned off and they donned their cloaks, natch)
Post #31,221 by mmoffitt 3/7/02 1:32:58 PM Reply	I said disturbing, not incomprehensible. On a micro-cosmic scale, similar reasoning might justify the father of a child raped and murdered committing the murder of the perpetrator. That, like your post, is an understandable reaction. Disturbing that some would call this reaction "God's Will". If one supposes the existence of a deity, I doubt that deity would be on the side of any murder, however humanly justifiable. And "military power" is merely a euphemism for "mass murder capability".
Post #31,250 by Ashton 3/7/02 5:12:04 PM Reply	That may be precisely, "the rub" ! Disturbing that some would call this reaction "God's Will". If one supposes the existence of a deity, I doubt that deity would be on the side of any murder, however humanly justifiable. And "military power" is merely a euphemism for "mass murder capability". How could I not agree with such a sentiment? Fact is (I think this is a proper use for that word) - quite many.. 'believe' / act as if they believe that, ANY ACT committed in the name of [My version of] 'God' is not merely permitted but, mandatory: whether it's offing your own kid (to show that you 'love'/Fear Your-version of God' !!) or.. just review all the massacres in history, In Her Name. Logic, never mind any pretense at sweet Reason, is not enough! where perhaps genetic [??] predispositions to idiocy - produce this recurrent, predictable, worse-than 'bestial' behavior. I tend to call this defect, 'adolescence of our species' - because there is some hope within that assessment. But what if... 'we' CANNOT overcome this God-drunkenness [Gott-trunken?] EVER ??? {sigh} Ashton
Post #31,347 by mmoffitt 3/8/02 9:47:20 AM 3/8/02 9:56:53 AM Reply	Marx thought we couldn't overcome the drunkeness. And I do not believe that any of the anthropomorphic religions yield themselves to an abandonment of "the rapture". Even among non-violent, non-supremisist "believers" religion remains a self-serving endeavor (we do good because we want a reward after death, or we fear retribution if we don't do good). No one can dispute that more harm has been done "in the name of God" (whoever she is) than for any other motivation. But, if she's out there (and to concede my own bias, I believe she is) any violence done in her name is the worst form of corruption. Will religion ever cease to be "an opiate of the People"? I believe it can be, but only if all the medieval, superstitious, anthropomorphic religions of fear have been irradicated from all cultures worldwide. I have doubts as to whether the planet will last long enough for that to happen. Edited by mmoffitt March 8, 2002, 09:56:53 AM EST Expand All History
Post #32,676 by Ashton 3/18/02 8:45:10 PM Reply	Then we are agreed on the odds. :(
Post #32,547 by bluke 3/18/02 5:12:43 AM Reply	Why?? They (Muslims according to Freidman) believe that since they are following God's will God will reward them with success. That is not hard to believe, after all Christians believed that for centuries. The fact that they haven't had much success and Israel has confounds them.
Post #32,636 by a6l6e6x 3/18/02 4:49:51 PM Reply	Re: confounds them? It pisses them off! :) Alex "Never express yourself more clearly than you think." -- Neils Bohr (1885-1962)

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