THE POWER OF RELIGION
And what to do about it
As much as the destruction of religious institutions appears to me a desirable goal, the world has been mesmerized by religions into believing they are not the evil force they truly are. Wiping out religion and replacing it with ethical humanism is too formidable a task to accomplish in the next millennium. The more modest goal of separation of church and state throughout the world should be reasonably attainable.
This is a war for the hearts and minds of masses of people. This is a war of education, of propaganda, of enlightenment. At every turn and in every instance where religion is shown up for what it is, a supporter of power structures and an instigator of death by religicide, the course of action to be pointed out must lead to political separation. A constant din must be maintained to alert people to the dangers of religion and religious input and control of the political process.
Atheists, humanistic ethicists, and agnostics have been too reluctant to buck the strong tides of religious oceans. For the most part, they try to keep their heads down. After all, how far can they get in their own lives of work, school, love, family, friends, all of whom have what is called "respect" for religion. This ingrained respect is a huge deterrent to effective action. The first step must be to separate the attack on religion from its association with an attack on belief, humankind's fundamental need. Also, care must be taken to separate the charlatans of religious institutions from the poor deluded good religionists who will defend their institutions to the death. The point of attack must be to convert deluded ethical devout religious leaders to the awareness that they are involved with murderers and panderers of death through religicide.
The second point of attack must be in identifying and exposing the charlatans who have earned the respect of people as leaders of religious institutions. That has to be performed in both delicate and coarse ways. This is a war to be conducted over centuries. I do not suggest nor imply that this is the way to achieve peace in the Middle East in the near term. For now, it is sufficient to identify the mullahs and rabbis who preach death and hold them up for the anti-gods that they are.
A variety of perceptions have colored the reaction to my proposition that religion is evil. They range from, "Not my religion!" to "They are not ALL evil." What I posit is not really related to the nature of religion as a vehicle for worship per se. That is, I do not contest that what religion says it offers is not delivered. But religion has a superior goal to the mere structure in which believers can make obeisance to their gods. My claim is that religion is a creation of power elites to be used as a tool for controlling people; individuals, small groups and huge masses of people. The power elite may be the single witch doctor or Shaman, the chief of a tribe, the king who is himself the representative of god on earth, the combination of the Vatican and Nazi Germany, or the government of the United States with the varied and diverse religious establishments of the country. The need for people to believe in a higher power has made them susceptible to the lure of religion; they are told how to pray, when to pray, and where to pray - and they can do it with others to reinforce the rightness of their need and the righteousness of their belief. The fact that missionaries may have the purest of motives does not detract from the fact that control of their converts passes to the power elites that supported the missionary work in the first place. The fact that various religions and religionists have cultural and historic aspects unrelated to power but only concerned with the true well-being of their adherents does not detract from the fact that all religions enable evil to flourish by their affinity to power elites. All religions without exception are prostituted by power elites. Even the religions that claim "Peace" as an integral part of their very essence - like Judaism - are prostitutes because they sell their wares to pacify, to lure, to inveigle the masses into actions detrimental in cataclysmic ways to their well-being and the well-being of others.
Is there one piece of dirt or rock worth the life of a single individual? Not really! Yet religion religicizes dirt and rocks into holy entities so their believers will die for them. Young men die for god and country. Who benefits? God? Surely not! The martyr? No. The power elite does. The sellers of arms do. The oil companies do. The Sheiks and Shahs and Mullahs do. The country is said to benefit. Who is the country if not those who lay down their lives in the wars that religion and patriotism tout as good and necessary? Religion has religicized love of country and patriotism. Religion is evil incarnate. Religion is the actualization of harm to its believers. As to its murderous affect on non- religionists, non-believers and "other"-believers, no knowledgeable person will deny the religicide the inquisition inflicted on its victims nor the religicide of the Crusades nor the religicide of the poor Irish who need to die their Protestant deaths at the hands of the Catholics and vice-versa.
Rational enlightened self interest is the road out. But people must be willing to take that road.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Sunday, October 10, 2010
GOOD MORNING AMERICA
A leading economist has made the amazing discovery last week that money determines what the government - in all its forms, including The Supreme Court of the United States. decides is best for the country. How shocking this discovery must have been to his system. What follows here is the Foreword to a my work in progress, "Maximizing Power." It's a bit long for a blog session, but may open the door to understanding how major economist Richard Reich discovered America. Perhaps he discovered how the world works, also.
MAXIMIZING POWER
Understanding History
FOREWORD
George Santayana’s comment that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” makes an assumption that the “past” is not worthy of repetition. It is by remembering the past and learning its lessons well that those who have power and wish to defend, enhance, and pass that power on to designated heirs, will absolutely work to repeat it. Repeating history will reward them hugely. And only those with power are the ones in a position to repeat history.
The search for meaning in current events mandates an understanding of the forces at work that control whatever is controllable that triggers, manipulates, and creates the ever changing landscape of mankind’s history. Just as scientists search for natural forces that lead to earthquakes, floods, landslides and other such phenomena, so too, social scientists, historians, economists, political scientists, and philosophers, search for causation and meaning in the historical events that lead to beneficial change and to upheavals and disasters, whether caused by human good or evil intent, or by humans benignly or unknowingly setting in motion a train of events that spins out of control. The general search in nature and history is motivated ostensibly to understand events, in part to predict them, and in both contexts, to attempt to bring good or to mitigate the impact of disasters on the human condition. The specific goal of power holders in their search of history’s lessons is to contain forces at work to unseat them from their thrones.
Control of humongous historical forces demands humongous power. The creation, the accumulation, the aggrandizement and protection of such power, and the means by which it works its will on the world, is the focus of this book. From the outset, it appears that in every society, at all times in human history, power was a commodity always in demand and the more one had of it, the more one wanted of it. The drive to maximize power by individuals and cabals of individuals seems as prevalent in the psyche and as much a part of evolution as any other element in nature’s drive to assure “survival of the fittest.” And, “the fittest” means the most powerful. Through the ages, violent personalities became magnets to power elites, themselves violent in their drives to maximize power. Their violence, however, was and is now, rarely attributed to them. In their drives to acquire, retain, control, and maximize power, violence through surrogates is a tool well understood and well used by them.
Power, as used herein, is control over assets and lives. “Assets” means wealth of any kind; armies and armaments, cotton and cattle, ships and slaves, olives and oil, diamonds and diamond mines, and money, money, money. “Lives” means workers and soldiers, mothers and their wombs, children’s minds and mob mentalities, votes and vetoes, and the lives and deaths of any number of people – no matter if in the millions - at any time in any place. Slavery throughout history was and in some places today, is, a measure of power. Slavery means ownership of lives in “fee simple absolute,” a term usually applied to an estate in land limited absolutely to a person and his or her heirs and assigns forever and without limitation or condition. Slaves and control of lives translates to “wealth” and the more one has of wealth, the more powerful one is. Until the relatively modern development of substitutes for muscle power by machine power, slaves were an integral component of economic systems. Control over masses of humans with chains and whips has been replaced by AK 47’s and UZI’s, by wages and legal systems, by indoctrination through patriotism and religion, and often by intolerance and hatred of “others.” The doled out benefits by the powerful of the day often buy allegiance of the masses.
Maximizing power was, and is, the driving force of civilization. Power in this context came into being parallel to the time when assets could be accumulated and exchanged for land, the natural resources of the earth, air, and water, goods created and generated by labor expended on natural resources, and services. The concept of “maximizing power” explains the history of mankind as different geographical areas around the globe moved from the nomadic hunter-gatherer stage of human development to a more predictable and controllable settled existence. Sedentary life styles became common in towns and villages and then cities. Only with the development of planned agriculture and animal husbandry, excess production and storage capability made wealth accumulation possible. That in turn enabled the exchange of goods and services for other desirable assets. If the exchange was not fair or freely given, the powerful took by power – through legal chicanery, with lobbyists, by taxation and poll taxes, by imprisonment, by force, or by killing. Specialization and separation into castes, guilds, priesthoods, landholders, warriors, serfs, and myriad creators and producers in any layered landed society, enabled the accumulation of power, enabled control over the powerless by the powerful, enabled the establishment of tribes, fiefdoms, nations and nation states. Identifying the nature and methodologies of those driving forces of civilization at work is necessary to understand how power is obtained, maximized, or lost, and how societies and the mechanics of life were changed as a result of power-aggrandizing conflicts that erupted and were mollified.
Power began its career rooted in hunger, greed, brute strength and savage cunning, fraud and fakery. Early power creators and their minions sought benefit in stratified societies with themselves on top of the heap. The accumulation of power worked to the benefit of the wielders of power – the “stronger” - to the detriment of those subject to control by the wielders of power – the “weaker.” Not much has changed over the years. Might makes Right. The truism continues to this day. Power elites are strongly hereditary. Families, title-holders, old school ties and old-boy networks, military association, clubs and social registers, old wealth and extreme wealth, all produce members of the elite. The power elite is made up of people who grow into their roles, have doors opened for them, are aware of their power and know how, when, where and with whom to enjoy it and use it. Once in the club, they know it and do not easily allow new people into it.
Control of education systems, communications systems, and political systems, are the main ways that power stays in power. With the elite’s connivance, the overt wielders of power in today’s world work diligently to persuade populations that educated self interest is not beneficial but rather detrimental to themselves, their own interests, and to the societies in which they live.
Power functions like mercury in its liquid form. When relatively small globules of mercury stand alone on a flat level surface, their cohesive nature enables them to retain their shapes. However, when the globule becomes too big, it tends to split into two smaller globules. Or when another globule comes too close, the two globules may join together. Without carrying this analogy too far, power elites rely on each other to reinforce their power within the structures peculiar to that power elite except when one elite attempts to aggrandize its power by taking over the structure of another. As an example, religious power structures within national power structures rely on support from each other. Rarely will a national power structure attempt to subvert or overthrow the existing religious support structure. However, when a conflict arises between the two, as happened in the reign of Henry V in England, the king replaced the religious structure with one more to his liking. His power elite overcame the power hierarchy of England’s Roman Catholic Church. More common conflicts erupt between similar power structures than dissimilar ones. In a bland form, political parties in democratic countries vie for favor from an electorate. However, underpinning for both or all such parties flows from the economic power structures within those countries – often with both sides calling on God for support and claiming God as their supporter – and with both sides calling on all their churches to support their righteous paths. Yet religions do not equate their moralist cries against abortion and stem cell research with a need to cry out against the immorality of war or the monstrous money-producing armaments industries that foment wars to assure continued profits. Such religious moral teaching is inimical to the needs of their power elite back offices.
Communist China, in its march toward a capitalist economy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, has fought vigorously against the establishment of religions in that country. The leadership has recognized that religion, rather than being the opiate of the people as Karl Marx predicated, was an energizer of the people to create and support a competing power structure. Foundational elements of power structures include abhorrence to power sharing. Power, in all its shapes, sizes, and manifestations, jealously guards what it has and works assiduously to expand its borders. In the news of August 7, 2004, lower level officials of the government in some agricultural areas are simply taking away land from peasants for use by the state and imprisoning or shooting protestors. So much for the ideals of communism in what is essentially a fascist, by definition, Chinese state.
A paradigm of the tenet that religion energizes people to create competing power structures, can be derived from the war being conducted primarily by the United States in Iraq. After the initial invasion, all of the power structures of the country – tribal, religious, geographical, ethnic, economic, political – each with their adherents and their history, are now (2004) engaged in a massive power dance with and against each other and with the connivance, assistance, or goals of the mighty power of the United States, to retain, gain, or return to power. With the definition of power clearly in mind, the control over the assets, the goods and services of people, and this includes territorial control, one can understand the indoctrination by Imam’s of the various sects of relatively primitive and under-educated people to give their lives to martyrdom for the power elites’ causes. Land and buildings have been religicized by the Imams. Opposing sects have been demonized by Imams of different sects. The call has become common-place to cleanse the “holy” land of demons, devils, and foreigners, that brings forth the suicide zealots, the knife-wielding beheaders and Kalachnikov-wielding street fighters to commit religicide. This is immoral control by religious power over the minds of masses converted to the service of power elites.
The nature of power elites is varied. The power elite of New Orleans is a fascinating study of intertwining families, political dynasties, geographic heavyweight chunks, historical impediments, and combinations of local small power elites that magnify their power by cooperating with other local small power elites. New York City presents as complex a structure of a totally different nature. Analogies of the lone tree, the wild forest, the cultivated rows of Christmas trees planted yearly for November harvest, the giant redwoods of California, and the yucca trees of desert prominence, all have their hierarchies, their friends and enemies, their turf, and their history as they wield their power. This analogy may help explain the function of power entities. Using trees as an example, when a tree stands alone, it derives nourishment from the surrounding soil, provides shade, fruit, and soil replenishment to the surrounding ambiance, and grows old, fat, gnarled, and widespread over its domain. When other trees/power entities are in the neighborhood, they compete for nourishment, sunlight, and the very air itself, and in that struggle grow tall and lean, and grow faster than the stand-alones of the forest. The struggle leads to an early death for the weaker trees. The forest is not always a live-and-let-live environment. It can be cut-throat in the extreme. Kingdoms isolated by geography become old and fat, dynasties may suffer small scale power squabbles, but the powerful old king or emperor sits on his throne and is replaced by his designated heirs into perpetuity – it would seem to contemporaries. And then, a foreign power interrupts what seems like the natural order of things. Newness and change infect the power holders. Power elites chosen by god suffer transformation and are overthrown, guillotined, exterminated by disease or by technology, or simply by the superior force of a superior invading power elite.
The friends and associates of power elites change as they grow – out of everyone’s need to grow their power over their world. In an agrarian society, a successful farmer becomes a strong friend of the local banker, the mayor of the town, the business members of Rotary International and other so-called “service” clubs. His wife comes off the front porch of her early struggling years and joins the Ladies Auxiliaries, the tea clubs, and they both become golfers and members of the country club. In a capitalist society, a small business establishment grows into a mighty conglomerate and then into a multi-national company. In the initial stages, the entrepreneur who has discovered a process or product that fills a broad need, manufactures and grows and provides for that need while employing workers who in turn grow the economies of their particular locations. This is a generally positive evolution whose major negative may be the exploitation of employees whose share of the growing profit stream that results from their efforts is disproportionately small. That company exerts power commensurate to its size – first within the confines of the walls of the business, then within the town or locality, then within the county or State, and finally, within the country, and then internationally. All this while, the nature of the power changes from simple limited monetary control in a small geographic area, to political and economic control over larger populations and political forces that affect the lives of ever larger numbers of people. The friends and associates of the founding entrepreneur and his upper echelon employees and Board members tend to be similar in social, political, economic, and philosophical views and functions. They all need each other and support each other and keep tabs on each other. They may join forces when they deem it appropriate or cut each others’ throats when they deem it appropriate. Power aggrandizement is the determinant of what and when such changes are appropriate. Power elites are like chameleons. They freeze into position to blend in and disappear to an aggressor’s eye or they change their coloration from true blue to red, white, and blue, to green, or Nazi grey to protect their lives. They will adopt the dominant religion of the environment and wave the flag of their environment, no matter the change in national loyalty so long as they prosper and grow. They will go to war or sue for peace if they believe that move will enhance or protect their power no matter what other forces or isms are at work. They give up when they have lost the battle and then join the victor to grow again. And to refer to Karl Marx, it is important to understand the dynamics controlling these changes; that every power configuration contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Looking back, it is somewhat possible to see the future. The undulating history of conflict between materialist driven power elites and religiously driven power elites appears to be a human syndrome. And just as materialists use the tools of religion in their strategic and tactical planning, religionists will use the tools of materialism. The great equalizer in the future battles of the worlds will be weapons of mass destruction. Iran in 2004 seems to be in the forefront of melding fundamental religious power with the latest nuclear weapon technology. Will morality and ethics sway these battles? Will mutual assured destruction hold sway? Will martyrdom be so attractive to religionists as to become their secret weapon? Will science in the hands of the materialists give them the edge to survive?
Terrorism as a means of acquiring power seeks to achieve maximum impact on the affairs of society using minimum, narrowly focused destructive power. With murderous attacks on populations and institutions, terror-based power elites appear to believe they can effect major change in the way the world is run. The sad truth is that such attacks only benefit and strengthen existing power elites by providing cover for their own depredations on society’s resources. It is reasonable to assume that power elites support terror to accomplish just that. This kind of pact with the devil was made by the ruling family in Saudi Arabia to hold them safe and harmless from the extremism of Wahabism. However many decades this kept the family safe, the respite could have been predicted to come to an end with attempts to replace or destroy the power structure of that kingdom’s elites. Terrorism against the State of Israel, supported and condoned by ruling oligarchs, has kept the power elites of the twenty-two countries in the Arab world sitting on their thrones by inhibiting competing home-grown power elites from gaining traction through popular support. And, however simplistic it may appear, support for terror against that small nation garnered and continues to garner support among all but a few secure countries at the United Nations General Assembly – believably for the same underlying reason; stability at home, and of course, abroad in the Arab world through oil production stability. The cost of terrorism to the existing power elites is meaningless simply because any destruction, human and institutional, is profitable. The danger to existing elites lies in the potential loss or diminution of power. When terror organizations figure out how to take over power elites, as Hitler and his cadres did in Germany and Stalin and his supporters did in Russia, then the elites will maneuver to join them or embrace them and enter into profitable partnerships with them until the next seismic event occurs. Iran today, in control of religious power elites, is not sharing their goodies with outside power elites any more than Kim Il Sung of Korea is sharing his power cookies. Therefore, they have been ostracized and branded as part of the “Axis of Evil.” That portends poorly for the elites in those countries and explains political decisions taken by outside forces whenever exchanges occur with those two “pariahs” who don’t want to share. If this sounds like school-yard squabbling, it is. But it is high stakes squabbling and it often leads to heavy gunfire and loss of life and, more to the point, a shift in power.
The outstanding “pariah” entity through the ages is the Jewish People. The Jews and Jewish power elites have never wanted to share their power. Indeed, if Jews are true to their religion and to their identity, it would seem they cannot share power. This “stiff-necked” people has been used and abused by power elites from their earliest identifiable manifestation as believers in “One God.” This identification set them apart and at odds with every other tribe, kingdom, oligarchy, dynasty, political and economic grouping in existence at their date of birth on Mount Moriah and continuously and subsequently into modern times. Being “separate” became part of their core identity. The Ten Commandments, the “Laws of God,” handed down by their God on Mount Sinai made murderers, adulterers, thieves, and immoral creatures out of all the then existing rulers and their power elites. Is it any wonder they were delegated to be hated and reviled by every people in every place they sojourned. If they were “right,” about one God and the morality of the commandments, then everyone else was wrong. More important, if their God was all-powerful, what happens to the power of the power elites. As is the nature of power elites, they work at absorbing power wherever and however it exists. The creation of other monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam being the most successful, and the isolation of the Jews from all other power elites was the counter-attack. The Jews became the piñata of the world, being struck, pierced, and after raining intellectual, scientific, medical, artistic, and materialist goodies of many varieties down on ungrateful masses of people, ripped apart and destroyed. Power elites and their front rulers offered the Jews the choice of assimilation, expulsion, or death. The attractiveness of assimilation to the upper classes of the Jews, the power elites of the Jews, often believing and hoping their status would be improved by joining the dominant culture as much as they were allowed, led to significant cleavages among the Jews. Strong religionists became the torch bearers that maintained the group’s identity over millennia as richer more connected brethren divorced themselves from Judaism and its traditionalism and age-old ritual observances. So, while the Jews were a landless powerless identifiable scapegoat group, at the same time, the Jews were and are fully appreciated by the power elites for the benefits that their scapegoat status brings those ruling entities. Every misery known to mankind is attributed to the Jews by power elites to deflect the pain and outrage of oppressed and poor populations in even the most affluent and democratic countries regardless of whether a Jewish population even exists in that country. The Bible as history and subsequent reasonably verifiable accounts provide sufficient documentation to support the conclusion that the Jews have been subjected to the vilest forms of bestiality for the millennia of their existence because of their refusal to subjugate themselves to the power elites in the communities in which they lived and because they are readily identifiable. In the year 2004, the nations of the world appear about to embark on yet another monstrous anti-Semitic crusade against the State of Israel to create once again the landless uprooted indefensible Jewish condition that allows persecution and scapegoatism to rear its ugly head. While genocide of millions of blacks takes place in Africa, the 150 nations of the world led by Arab oligarchies condemn Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, for building a fence against terrorism to protect its population.
Power elites in democratic societies must function in surreptitious ways. A subset of this maxim is that when autocratic societies evolve or revolutionize into democratic societies, the elites take care to protect their power without appearing to be anti-democratic. Protective coloration, found in the animal world to provide cover for predators as well as victims, enables fascistic functioning to appear democratic. Hitler was voted into office.
It may appear odd and even antithetical, that power elites function at the highest levels of government in democracies. However, the very first democracy was founded by power elites. The United States was established by the new power elites of colonial America to replace those centuries-old elites of England. The wealthy colonists believed they could safeguard their status and impose their control over the territory and treasure of America. Those huge assets merited revolution and overthrow of the royal system of governance. A new untried system of governance was established by the power elites whereby the owners of property could exert their collective will over the wealth of the united colonies. The unique nature of this new system was that it enabled all free men to participate in governing the country. That freedom was an outgrowth of the suspicious nature of the Founders and their concern that the variety and number of new power elites extant in the late 1700’s somehow balance themselves so as not to enable one or a grouping of any of them, to wrest power from the others. Thus were born political parties, a new concept that allowed competing interests to present their interests to the voting public, to compete for power. Thus, “Democracy.” George Washington was concerned about how power was to be controlled by the people. He thought that political parties were “potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” Washington’s concerns were justified by the reality of the system. President Dwight. D. Eisenhower, chosen by the elite of his day, warned the American people of the dangerous power of “The Military-Industrial Complex.” It is reasonable to assume that he was removed from his pedestal by that same cabal and placed in a grey area of history books.
Looking forward without reference to past events – which is patently impossible but worthy of contemplation - one can conjure up a future completely different from what we see around us today. Futurists can project visions that appear to have no reference points in the present. Even predicting human evolution through the thousands of years of mutations creating the fittest forms to survive the depredations of time, can be an exercise worthy of effort regardless of believability.
If I were a futurist, I would predict the continued existence of viruses, cockroaches and power elites surrounded by a grey human existence.
Copyright by Norman/Nachum Meyers 2004
MAXIMIZING POWER
Understanding History
FOREWORD
George Santayana’s comment that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” makes an assumption that the “past” is not worthy of repetition. It is by remembering the past and learning its lessons well that those who have power and wish to defend, enhance, and pass that power on to designated heirs, will absolutely work to repeat it. Repeating history will reward them hugely. And only those with power are the ones in a position to repeat history.
The search for meaning in current events mandates an understanding of the forces at work that control whatever is controllable that triggers, manipulates, and creates the ever changing landscape of mankind’s history. Just as scientists search for natural forces that lead to earthquakes, floods, landslides and other such phenomena, so too, social scientists, historians, economists, political scientists, and philosophers, search for causation and meaning in the historical events that lead to beneficial change and to upheavals and disasters, whether caused by human good or evil intent, or by humans benignly or unknowingly setting in motion a train of events that spins out of control. The general search in nature and history is motivated ostensibly to understand events, in part to predict them, and in both contexts, to attempt to bring good or to mitigate the impact of disasters on the human condition. The specific goal of power holders in their search of history’s lessons is to contain forces at work to unseat them from their thrones.
Control of humongous historical forces demands humongous power. The creation, the accumulation, the aggrandizement and protection of such power, and the means by which it works its will on the world, is the focus of this book. From the outset, it appears that in every society, at all times in human history, power was a commodity always in demand and the more one had of it, the more one wanted of it. The drive to maximize power by individuals and cabals of individuals seems as prevalent in the psyche and as much a part of evolution as any other element in nature’s drive to assure “survival of the fittest.” And, “the fittest” means the most powerful. Through the ages, violent personalities became magnets to power elites, themselves violent in their drives to maximize power. Their violence, however, was and is now, rarely attributed to them. In their drives to acquire, retain, control, and maximize power, violence through surrogates is a tool well understood and well used by them.
Power, as used herein, is control over assets and lives. “Assets” means wealth of any kind; armies and armaments, cotton and cattle, ships and slaves, olives and oil, diamonds and diamond mines, and money, money, money. “Lives” means workers and soldiers, mothers and their wombs, children’s minds and mob mentalities, votes and vetoes, and the lives and deaths of any number of people – no matter if in the millions - at any time in any place. Slavery throughout history was and in some places today, is, a measure of power. Slavery means ownership of lives in “fee simple absolute,” a term usually applied to an estate in land limited absolutely to a person and his or her heirs and assigns forever and without limitation or condition. Slaves and control of lives translates to “wealth” and the more one has of wealth, the more powerful one is. Until the relatively modern development of substitutes for muscle power by machine power, slaves were an integral component of economic systems. Control over masses of humans with chains and whips has been replaced by AK 47’s and UZI’s, by wages and legal systems, by indoctrination through patriotism and religion, and often by intolerance and hatred of “others.” The doled out benefits by the powerful of the day often buy allegiance of the masses.
Maximizing power was, and is, the driving force of civilization. Power in this context came into being parallel to the time when assets could be accumulated and exchanged for land, the natural resources of the earth, air, and water, goods created and generated by labor expended on natural resources, and services. The concept of “maximizing power” explains the history of mankind as different geographical areas around the globe moved from the nomadic hunter-gatherer stage of human development to a more predictable and controllable settled existence. Sedentary life styles became common in towns and villages and then cities. Only with the development of planned agriculture and animal husbandry, excess production and storage capability made wealth accumulation possible. That in turn enabled the exchange of goods and services for other desirable assets. If the exchange was not fair or freely given, the powerful took by power – through legal chicanery, with lobbyists, by taxation and poll taxes, by imprisonment, by force, or by killing. Specialization and separation into castes, guilds, priesthoods, landholders, warriors, serfs, and myriad creators and producers in any layered landed society, enabled the accumulation of power, enabled control over the powerless by the powerful, enabled the establishment of tribes, fiefdoms, nations and nation states. Identifying the nature and methodologies of those driving forces of civilization at work is necessary to understand how power is obtained, maximized, or lost, and how societies and the mechanics of life were changed as a result of power-aggrandizing conflicts that erupted and were mollified.
Power began its career rooted in hunger, greed, brute strength and savage cunning, fraud and fakery. Early power creators and their minions sought benefit in stratified societies with themselves on top of the heap. The accumulation of power worked to the benefit of the wielders of power – the “stronger” - to the detriment of those subject to control by the wielders of power – the “weaker.” Not much has changed over the years. Might makes Right. The truism continues to this day. Power elites are strongly hereditary. Families, title-holders, old school ties and old-boy networks, military association, clubs and social registers, old wealth and extreme wealth, all produce members of the elite. The power elite is made up of people who grow into their roles, have doors opened for them, are aware of their power and know how, when, where and with whom to enjoy it and use it. Once in the club, they know it and do not easily allow new people into it.
Control of education systems, communications systems, and political systems, are the main ways that power stays in power. With the elite’s connivance, the overt wielders of power in today’s world work diligently to persuade populations that educated self interest is not beneficial but rather detrimental to themselves, their own interests, and to the societies in which they live.
Power functions like mercury in its liquid form. When relatively small globules of mercury stand alone on a flat level surface, their cohesive nature enables them to retain their shapes. However, when the globule becomes too big, it tends to split into two smaller globules. Or when another globule comes too close, the two globules may join together. Without carrying this analogy too far, power elites rely on each other to reinforce their power within the structures peculiar to that power elite except when one elite attempts to aggrandize its power by taking over the structure of another. As an example, religious power structures within national power structures rely on support from each other. Rarely will a national power structure attempt to subvert or overthrow the existing religious support structure. However, when a conflict arises between the two, as happened in the reign of Henry V in England, the king replaced the religious structure with one more to his liking. His power elite overcame the power hierarchy of England’s Roman Catholic Church. More common conflicts erupt between similar power structures than dissimilar ones. In a bland form, political parties in democratic countries vie for favor from an electorate. However, underpinning for both or all such parties flows from the economic power structures within those countries – often with both sides calling on God for support and claiming God as their supporter – and with both sides calling on all their churches to support their righteous paths. Yet religions do not equate their moralist cries against abortion and stem cell research with a need to cry out against the immorality of war or the monstrous money-producing armaments industries that foment wars to assure continued profits. Such religious moral teaching is inimical to the needs of their power elite back offices.
Communist China, in its march toward a capitalist economy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, has fought vigorously against the establishment of religions in that country. The leadership has recognized that religion, rather than being the opiate of the people as Karl Marx predicated, was an energizer of the people to create and support a competing power structure. Foundational elements of power structures include abhorrence to power sharing. Power, in all its shapes, sizes, and manifestations, jealously guards what it has and works assiduously to expand its borders. In the news of August 7, 2004, lower level officials of the government in some agricultural areas are simply taking away land from peasants for use by the state and imprisoning or shooting protestors. So much for the ideals of communism in what is essentially a fascist, by definition, Chinese state.
A paradigm of the tenet that religion energizes people to create competing power structures, can be derived from the war being conducted primarily by the United States in Iraq. After the initial invasion, all of the power structures of the country – tribal, religious, geographical, ethnic, economic, political – each with their adherents and their history, are now (2004) engaged in a massive power dance with and against each other and with the connivance, assistance, or goals of the mighty power of the United States, to retain, gain, or return to power. With the definition of power clearly in mind, the control over the assets, the goods and services of people, and this includes territorial control, one can understand the indoctrination by Imam’s of the various sects of relatively primitive and under-educated people to give their lives to martyrdom for the power elites’ causes. Land and buildings have been religicized by the Imams. Opposing sects have been demonized by Imams of different sects. The call has become common-place to cleanse the “holy” land of demons, devils, and foreigners, that brings forth the suicide zealots, the knife-wielding beheaders and Kalachnikov-wielding street fighters to commit religicide. This is immoral control by religious power over the minds of masses converted to the service of power elites.
The nature of power elites is varied. The power elite of New Orleans is a fascinating study of intertwining families, political dynasties, geographic heavyweight chunks, historical impediments, and combinations of local small power elites that magnify their power by cooperating with other local small power elites. New York City presents as complex a structure of a totally different nature. Analogies of the lone tree, the wild forest, the cultivated rows of Christmas trees planted yearly for November harvest, the giant redwoods of California, and the yucca trees of desert prominence, all have their hierarchies, their friends and enemies, their turf, and their history as they wield their power. This analogy may help explain the function of power entities. Using trees as an example, when a tree stands alone, it derives nourishment from the surrounding soil, provides shade, fruit, and soil replenishment to the surrounding ambiance, and grows old, fat, gnarled, and widespread over its domain. When other trees/power entities are in the neighborhood, they compete for nourishment, sunlight, and the very air itself, and in that struggle grow tall and lean, and grow faster than the stand-alones of the forest. The struggle leads to an early death for the weaker trees. The forest is not always a live-and-let-live environment. It can be cut-throat in the extreme. Kingdoms isolated by geography become old and fat, dynasties may suffer small scale power squabbles, but the powerful old king or emperor sits on his throne and is replaced by his designated heirs into perpetuity – it would seem to contemporaries. And then, a foreign power interrupts what seems like the natural order of things. Newness and change infect the power holders. Power elites chosen by god suffer transformation and are overthrown, guillotined, exterminated by disease or by technology, or simply by the superior force of a superior invading power elite.
The friends and associates of power elites change as they grow – out of everyone’s need to grow their power over their world. In an agrarian society, a successful farmer becomes a strong friend of the local banker, the mayor of the town, the business members of Rotary International and other so-called “service” clubs. His wife comes off the front porch of her early struggling years and joins the Ladies Auxiliaries, the tea clubs, and they both become golfers and members of the country club. In a capitalist society, a small business establishment grows into a mighty conglomerate and then into a multi-national company. In the initial stages, the entrepreneur who has discovered a process or product that fills a broad need, manufactures and grows and provides for that need while employing workers who in turn grow the economies of their particular locations. This is a generally positive evolution whose major negative may be the exploitation of employees whose share of the growing profit stream that results from their efforts is disproportionately small. That company exerts power commensurate to its size – first within the confines of the walls of the business, then within the town or locality, then within the county or State, and finally, within the country, and then internationally. All this while, the nature of the power changes from simple limited monetary control in a small geographic area, to political and economic control over larger populations and political forces that affect the lives of ever larger numbers of people. The friends and associates of the founding entrepreneur and his upper echelon employees and Board members tend to be similar in social, political, economic, and philosophical views and functions. They all need each other and support each other and keep tabs on each other. They may join forces when they deem it appropriate or cut each others’ throats when they deem it appropriate. Power aggrandizement is the determinant of what and when such changes are appropriate. Power elites are like chameleons. They freeze into position to blend in and disappear to an aggressor’s eye or they change their coloration from true blue to red, white, and blue, to green, or Nazi grey to protect their lives. They will adopt the dominant religion of the environment and wave the flag of their environment, no matter the change in national loyalty so long as they prosper and grow. They will go to war or sue for peace if they believe that move will enhance or protect their power no matter what other forces or isms are at work. They give up when they have lost the battle and then join the victor to grow again. And to refer to Karl Marx, it is important to understand the dynamics controlling these changes; that every power configuration contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Looking back, it is somewhat possible to see the future. The undulating history of conflict between materialist driven power elites and religiously driven power elites appears to be a human syndrome. And just as materialists use the tools of religion in their strategic and tactical planning, religionists will use the tools of materialism. The great equalizer in the future battles of the worlds will be weapons of mass destruction. Iran in 2004 seems to be in the forefront of melding fundamental religious power with the latest nuclear weapon technology. Will morality and ethics sway these battles? Will mutual assured destruction hold sway? Will martyrdom be so attractive to religionists as to become their secret weapon? Will science in the hands of the materialists give them the edge to survive?
Terrorism as a means of acquiring power seeks to achieve maximum impact on the affairs of society using minimum, narrowly focused destructive power. With murderous attacks on populations and institutions, terror-based power elites appear to believe they can effect major change in the way the world is run. The sad truth is that such attacks only benefit and strengthen existing power elites by providing cover for their own depredations on society’s resources. It is reasonable to assume that power elites support terror to accomplish just that. This kind of pact with the devil was made by the ruling family in Saudi Arabia to hold them safe and harmless from the extremism of Wahabism. However many decades this kept the family safe, the respite could have been predicted to come to an end with attempts to replace or destroy the power structure of that kingdom’s elites. Terrorism against the State of Israel, supported and condoned by ruling oligarchs, has kept the power elites of the twenty-two countries in the Arab world sitting on their thrones by inhibiting competing home-grown power elites from gaining traction through popular support. And, however simplistic it may appear, support for terror against that small nation garnered and continues to garner support among all but a few secure countries at the United Nations General Assembly – believably for the same underlying reason; stability at home, and of course, abroad in the Arab world through oil production stability. The cost of terrorism to the existing power elites is meaningless simply because any destruction, human and institutional, is profitable. The danger to existing elites lies in the potential loss or diminution of power. When terror organizations figure out how to take over power elites, as Hitler and his cadres did in Germany and Stalin and his supporters did in Russia, then the elites will maneuver to join them or embrace them and enter into profitable partnerships with them until the next seismic event occurs. Iran today, in control of religious power elites, is not sharing their goodies with outside power elites any more than Kim Il Sung of Korea is sharing his power cookies. Therefore, they have been ostracized and branded as part of the “Axis of Evil.” That portends poorly for the elites in those countries and explains political decisions taken by outside forces whenever exchanges occur with those two “pariahs” who don’t want to share. If this sounds like school-yard squabbling, it is. But it is high stakes squabbling and it often leads to heavy gunfire and loss of life and, more to the point, a shift in power.
The outstanding “pariah” entity through the ages is the Jewish People. The Jews and Jewish power elites have never wanted to share their power. Indeed, if Jews are true to their religion and to their identity, it would seem they cannot share power. This “stiff-necked” people has been used and abused by power elites from their earliest identifiable manifestation as believers in “One God.” This identification set them apart and at odds with every other tribe, kingdom, oligarchy, dynasty, political and economic grouping in existence at their date of birth on Mount Moriah and continuously and subsequently into modern times. Being “separate” became part of their core identity. The Ten Commandments, the “Laws of God,” handed down by their God on Mount Sinai made murderers, adulterers, thieves, and immoral creatures out of all the then existing rulers and their power elites. Is it any wonder they were delegated to be hated and reviled by every people in every place they sojourned. If they were “right,” about one God and the morality of the commandments, then everyone else was wrong. More important, if their God was all-powerful, what happens to the power of the power elites. As is the nature of power elites, they work at absorbing power wherever and however it exists. The creation of other monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam being the most successful, and the isolation of the Jews from all other power elites was the counter-attack. The Jews became the piñata of the world, being struck, pierced, and after raining intellectual, scientific, medical, artistic, and materialist goodies of many varieties down on ungrateful masses of people, ripped apart and destroyed. Power elites and their front rulers offered the Jews the choice of assimilation, expulsion, or death. The attractiveness of assimilation to the upper classes of the Jews, the power elites of the Jews, often believing and hoping their status would be improved by joining the dominant culture as much as they were allowed, led to significant cleavages among the Jews. Strong religionists became the torch bearers that maintained the group’s identity over millennia as richer more connected brethren divorced themselves from Judaism and its traditionalism and age-old ritual observances. So, while the Jews were a landless powerless identifiable scapegoat group, at the same time, the Jews were and are fully appreciated by the power elites for the benefits that their scapegoat status brings those ruling entities. Every misery known to mankind is attributed to the Jews by power elites to deflect the pain and outrage of oppressed and poor populations in even the most affluent and democratic countries regardless of whether a Jewish population even exists in that country. The Bible as history and subsequent reasonably verifiable accounts provide sufficient documentation to support the conclusion that the Jews have been subjected to the vilest forms of bestiality for the millennia of their existence because of their refusal to subjugate themselves to the power elites in the communities in which they lived and because they are readily identifiable. In the year 2004, the nations of the world appear about to embark on yet another monstrous anti-Semitic crusade against the State of Israel to create once again the landless uprooted indefensible Jewish condition that allows persecution and scapegoatism to rear its ugly head. While genocide of millions of blacks takes place in Africa, the 150 nations of the world led by Arab oligarchies condemn Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, for building a fence against terrorism to protect its population.
Power elites in democratic societies must function in surreptitious ways. A subset of this maxim is that when autocratic societies evolve or revolutionize into democratic societies, the elites take care to protect their power without appearing to be anti-democratic. Protective coloration, found in the animal world to provide cover for predators as well as victims, enables fascistic functioning to appear democratic. Hitler was voted into office.
It may appear odd and even antithetical, that power elites function at the highest levels of government in democracies. However, the very first democracy was founded by power elites. The United States was established by the new power elites of colonial America to replace those centuries-old elites of England. The wealthy colonists believed they could safeguard their status and impose their control over the territory and treasure of America. Those huge assets merited revolution and overthrow of the royal system of governance. A new untried system of governance was established by the power elites whereby the owners of property could exert their collective will over the wealth of the united colonies. The unique nature of this new system was that it enabled all free men to participate in governing the country. That freedom was an outgrowth of the suspicious nature of the Founders and their concern that the variety and number of new power elites extant in the late 1700’s somehow balance themselves so as not to enable one or a grouping of any of them, to wrest power from the others. Thus were born political parties, a new concept that allowed competing interests to present their interests to the voting public, to compete for power. Thus, “Democracy.” George Washington was concerned about how power was to be controlled by the people. He thought that political parties were “potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” Washington’s concerns were justified by the reality of the system. President Dwight. D. Eisenhower, chosen by the elite of his day, warned the American people of the dangerous power of “The Military-Industrial Complex.” It is reasonable to assume that he was removed from his pedestal by that same cabal and placed in a grey area of history books.
Looking forward without reference to past events – which is patently impossible but worthy of contemplation - one can conjure up a future completely different from what we see around us today. Futurists can project visions that appear to have no reference points in the present. Even predicting human evolution through the thousands of years of mutations creating the fittest forms to survive the depredations of time, can be an exercise worthy of effort regardless of believability.
If I were a futurist, I would predict the continued existence of viruses, cockroaches and power elites surrounded by a grey human existence.
Copyright by Norman/Nachum Meyers 2004
Sunday, September 12, 2010
PEACE FAILURES - PAST AND FUTURE
PEACE FAILURES - PAST AND FUTURE
September 9, 2010
The outstanding, continuous basis for Palestinian/Israeli peace-initiative failures in the past, and the obvious presence of those reasons for the much anticipated failure of the current peace initiative, is the intransigence of the on-looking Arab states. The vast majority of those states benefit in various ways from the continuation of the conflict. Only two of the twenty-one neighboring states have peace treaties with Israel – Egypt and Jordan, and only one other, Morocco, has formal relations with Israel.
The primary benefit is the continued rule of the oligarchies in those states. By pointing at Israel and pointing to the continuing Palestinian/Israeli conflict as the source of all woes and the sad economic condition of their masses, the oligarchs are freed from responsibility for that miserable impoverished condition. Reading local newspapers, seeing state-controlled television, and driving through the countries from city to city, it becomes apparent that every negative in their citizens’ lives that can be found, is exploited loudly and vigorously against Israel. Poor health care, low level schools, retarded economic growth, even the rutted condition of the roads and the shortages of foods and goods caused by control of the wealth and power of the oligarchs, is levied against Israel. “How can one make peace with such an enemy?” “Allah willing, the Jews will all be murdered.”
The condition of unemployed hordes of men, sitting and smoking and sipping at their little coffee-cups in the cafes that line the roads in all the towns in the Arab world, is blamed on Israel. Yet calls to protest peace with Israel brings those hordes to march, raising banners and weapons by young and old men, - but not the burdened women - screaming imprecations against the avowed enemy of their world of deadly backwardness. All this rabble-rousing noise is applauded by the wealthy in their walled villas and government offices.
The Western World wants Israel to make concessions to these rulers so their oil may flow westward; to become the sacrificial lamb. Israel does not cooperate. Israel cannot cooperate and live.
No Palestinian leader can ever make peace with Israel without fear of assassination by the military servants of the Arab power elites for taking away their goodies. No compromise can ever be made without the acquiescence of those power elites.
Notwithstanding United States pressure on Israel to make concessions that appear to lead to peace, will peace ever be achieved without democratic rule in Arab countries. This is the curse in all the conflicts with the Muslim world and within the Muslim world. This is the curse of Iran and Saudi Arabia, of Syria and Lebanon, of Iraq and Afghanistan. Guns are votes.
No democracy, no peace; not past and not future.
September 9, 2010
The outstanding, continuous basis for Palestinian/Israeli peace-initiative failures in the past, and the obvious presence of those reasons for the much anticipated failure of the current peace initiative, is the intransigence of the on-looking Arab states. The vast majority of those states benefit in various ways from the continuation of the conflict. Only two of the twenty-one neighboring states have peace treaties with Israel – Egypt and Jordan, and only one other, Morocco, has formal relations with Israel.
The primary benefit is the continued rule of the oligarchies in those states. By pointing at Israel and pointing to the continuing Palestinian/Israeli conflict as the source of all woes and the sad economic condition of their masses, the oligarchs are freed from responsibility for that miserable impoverished condition. Reading local newspapers, seeing state-controlled television, and driving through the countries from city to city, it becomes apparent that every negative in their citizens’ lives that can be found, is exploited loudly and vigorously against Israel. Poor health care, low level schools, retarded economic growth, even the rutted condition of the roads and the shortages of foods and goods caused by control of the wealth and power of the oligarchs, is levied against Israel. “How can one make peace with such an enemy?” “Allah willing, the Jews will all be murdered.”
The condition of unemployed hordes of men, sitting and smoking and sipping at their little coffee-cups in the cafes that line the roads in all the towns in the Arab world, is blamed on Israel. Yet calls to protest peace with Israel brings those hordes to march, raising banners and weapons by young and old men, - but not the burdened women - screaming imprecations against the avowed enemy of their world of deadly backwardness. All this rabble-rousing noise is applauded by the wealthy in their walled villas and government offices.
The Western World wants Israel to make concessions to these rulers so their oil may flow westward; to become the sacrificial lamb. Israel does not cooperate. Israel cannot cooperate and live.
No Palestinian leader can ever make peace with Israel without fear of assassination by the military servants of the Arab power elites for taking away their goodies. No compromise can ever be made without the acquiescence of those power elites.
Notwithstanding United States pressure on Israel to make concessions that appear to lead to peace, will peace ever be achieved without democratic rule in Arab countries. This is the curse in all the conflicts with the Muslim world and within the Muslim world. This is the curse of Iran and Saudi Arabia, of Syria and Lebanon, of Iraq and Afghanistan. Guns are votes.
No democracy, no peace; not past and not future.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
WHY NO PEACE - YET?
The advocacy of b'tselem's solutions, and those of similar advocate groups, to the Israeli Palestinian/Arab-World conflict that began in 1948 when five Arab states attacked the Jewish community in Palestine to overthrow the United Nations' decision to divide the lands of the British Mandate between indigenous Jews and Arabs, is a cancer on the body of any peace agreement.
Any "solution" that leads to the destruction of the State of Israel is, on its face, not viable. From the first Armistice that ended the conflict in 1949 and through the years of "peace" negotiations, the Arab world has required - and continues to demand - that a stick of dynamite be inserted into any "peace" agreement that would ensure the destruction of the State of Israel. That stick of dynamite is called, "The Right of Return."
The establishment of a democratic state with political equality for all its inhabitants would immediately wipe out the State of Israel with the admission into the country of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. The very existence of this down-trodden group of people is the result of the Arab World's intent to destroy Israel by holding those refugees hostage rather than absorbing them into the societies of the countries that placed them and has held them for sixty years in "refugee" camps (including the Gaza Strip.)
The balancing act required to enable the continued existence of Israel and finding a future for the refugees of 1948 requires a willingness on the part of the host countries to absorb those millions of exploited people. Absent that, there is no hope for peace in the region.
The land can be divided. Jerusalem can be divided. The water and natural resouces can be shared. Health care, education, economic growth, and political equality can come into fruition with a peace agreement. But not with the "Law of Return" that would lead to the destruction of the State of Israel by vote.
Any "solution" that leads to the destruction of the State of Israel is, on its face, not viable. From the first Armistice that ended the conflict in 1949 and through the years of "peace" negotiations, the Arab world has required - and continues to demand - that a stick of dynamite be inserted into any "peace" agreement that would ensure the destruction of the State of Israel. That stick of dynamite is called, "The Right of Return."
The establishment of a democratic state with political equality for all its inhabitants would immediately wipe out the State of Israel with the admission into the country of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. The very existence of this down-trodden group of people is the result of the Arab World's intent to destroy Israel by holding those refugees hostage rather than absorbing them into the societies of the countries that placed them and has held them for sixty years in "refugee" camps (including the Gaza Strip.)
The balancing act required to enable the continued existence of Israel and finding a future for the refugees of 1948 requires a willingness on the part of the host countries to absorb those millions of exploited people. Absent that, there is no hope for peace in the region.
The land can be divided. Jerusalem can be divided. The water and natural resouces can be shared. Health care, education, economic growth, and political equality can come into fruition with a peace agreement. But not with the "Law of Return" that would lead to the destruction of the State of Israel by vote.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
WHITHER IRAN
Iran's ruling classes are part and parcel of Islamic terrorist anti-Western networks. Their support of these networks is part of the united enterprises designed to undermine western civilization. Iran, through it's fascist/religious leadershp, sees itself as the leader of a new world order.
The proof of this analysis lies in Iran's manipulation of the United Nations and the major Western powers in protecting its acquisition of a nuclear capability in a way that is remeniscent of Hitler's conning and bluffing the West in his rise to militaru power. That war, World War II, until the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, will seem like a child's playground
Israel's conflict with the billion-strong oligarchic Arab world is evidence of the unity achieved thus far by this huge cabal. The whole world seems to be moving in the direction of delegitimizing and destroying Israel. The missionary goal of Islam through atomic destruction of Israel first, pro-Western backward societies next, and finally, Weatern nations and civilizations, is apparent, however sick and psychotic this thinking is. Suicide bombing will not then be limited to fanatic individuals. States will engsge in it. It will become the means whereby whole populations and nations will achieve martydom through atomic immolation of "The Other." whether they wish it or not.
The long history of wars is the story of ever-increasing destructive and killing capacity. We are now in the atomic age of war. Wake up or die, World.
The proof of this analysis lies in Iran's manipulation of the United Nations and the major Western powers in protecting its acquisition of a nuclear capability in a way that is remeniscent of Hitler's conning and bluffing the West in his rise to militaru power. That war, World War II, until the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, will seem like a child's playground
Israel's conflict with the billion-strong oligarchic Arab world is evidence of the unity achieved thus far by this huge cabal. The whole world seems to be moving in the direction of delegitimizing and destroying Israel. The missionary goal of Islam through atomic destruction of Israel first, pro-Western backward societies next, and finally, Weatern nations and civilizations, is apparent, however sick and psychotic this thinking is. Suicide bombing will not then be limited to fanatic individuals. States will engsge in it. It will become the means whereby whole populations and nations will achieve martydom through atomic immolation of "The Other." whether they wish it or not.
The long history of wars is the story of ever-increasing destructive and killing capacity. We are now in the atomic age of war. Wake up or die, World.
Friday, July 16, 2010
PATRIOTIC FERVOR
How many people on earth die for their country and their love for their country every day? How many of them die for the benefit of their country? How many of them die for the benefit of arms makers, politicians, dictators, oil companies, religious belief and religious leaders? How many die for the pay of a soldier? How many die for their love of the military? How many die for their love and excitement of war and killing?
How are those who die taught to die? Was it the flag and the national anthem? Was it the father or older brother who taught them the glories of war, patriotism, and obedience to authority? Was it the clergymen, priests, rabbis, ayatollahs, voodoo-men, who taught that a rock or place where long-dead bones lie merits their deaths to protect those inanimate shrines. Moses, who died on Mount Nebo, buried himself in an unmarked and unknown grave for the just purpose of preventing the deaths of those who are taught that his grave was worth dying for because he was a "holy man."
Friends, Romans, Countrymen,
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind…And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.
How do I know? For this is what I have done.
And I am Caesar. (Or Mao, or Arafat, or MacArthur, or the pope, or deGaulle, or Komeini - or Genral Motors, Boeing, or Krupp?)
William Shakespeare
The true sorrow of humanity lies in this; not that the mind of man fails, but that the course and demands of action and of life so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of human desire.
How are those who die taught to die? Was it the flag and the national anthem? Was it the father or older brother who taught them the glories of war, patriotism, and obedience to authority? Was it the clergymen, priests, rabbis, ayatollahs, voodoo-men, who taught that a rock or place where long-dead bones lie merits their deaths to protect those inanimate shrines. Moses, who died on Mount Nebo, buried himself in an unmarked and unknown grave for the just purpose of preventing the deaths of those who are taught that his grave was worth dying for because he was a "holy man."
Friends, Romans, Countrymen,
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind…And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.
How do I know? For this is what I have done.
And I am Caesar. (Or Mao, or Arafat, or MacArthur, or the pope, or deGaulle, or Komeini - or Genral Motors, Boeing, or Krupp?)
William Shakespeare
The true sorrow of humanity lies in this; not that the mind of man fails, but that the course and demands of action and of life so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of human desire.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
TURKEY IS NOT THANKSGIVING
YEAST IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Ferment is being fomented in the Middle East. Yeast creates gasses that enlarge dough and, what is fermenting in the Middle East bodes ill for Israel. Turkey is leading the latest charge. It wasn’t enough to have a billion Arabs and Muslims in over twenty countries bent on destroying Israel, Turkey now sees its bright path in alignment with those forces. After all, where’s the market?
Turkey is edging away from the democracy introduced by Attaturk and rolling over to join the world of Islam. The Turkish citizens killed by Israeli forces on board a blockade-running vessel were unwisely attacking Israeli commandos. However unwise the Israeli attempt to halt the ship by boarding it, not knowing what awaited them, the attack by Turkish activists intent on killing the Israelis was equally unwise.
It is interesting to watch the world pile-up of condemnation of Israel for engaging in defensive measures for the safety of its citizenry. It seems unlikely that any sovereign state would act otherwise. The pile-up is more than moral outrage if one looks at the immorality of many of the accusers. To an older segment of the Israeli population it sounds remarkably similar to the screams of truncheon-bearing anti-Semites in myriad countries in the 1930s and ‘40s.
No doubt that Israel is in danger. No doubt that whatever is offered to the Palestinians in exchange for real peace will be insufficient in the eyes of the Arab world and thus of the Palestinians. Without the “Return” of refugees from the Arab initiated 1948 war, there will be no peace. Such a return would be the end of Israel. And if half the Palestinians agree to some sort of settlement, the terrorist groups in Gaza and Lebanon will see to it that it will not last. Israel’s mild response or major attacks will lead to the same result; it will be found guilty of over-protecting its people.
Perhaps a century from now, when and if the Arab world catches up to civilization, there may be hope for peace - unless Israel lies in shattered ruins on boundless and bare desert sands, like Ozymandias..
Ferment is being fomented in the Middle East. Yeast creates gasses that enlarge dough and, what is fermenting in the Middle East bodes ill for Israel. Turkey is leading the latest charge. It wasn’t enough to have a billion Arabs and Muslims in over twenty countries bent on destroying Israel, Turkey now sees its bright path in alignment with those forces. After all, where’s the market?
Turkey is edging away from the democracy introduced by Attaturk and rolling over to join the world of Islam. The Turkish citizens killed by Israeli forces on board a blockade-running vessel were unwisely attacking Israeli commandos. However unwise the Israeli attempt to halt the ship by boarding it, not knowing what awaited them, the attack by Turkish activists intent on killing the Israelis was equally unwise.
It is interesting to watch the world pile-up of condemnation of Israel for engaging in defensive measures for the safety of its citizenry. It seems unlikely that any sovereign state would act otherwise. The pile-up is more than moral outrage if one looks at the immorality of many of the accusers. To an older segment of the Israeli population it sounds remarkably similar to the screams of truncheon-bearing anti-Semites in myriad countries in the 1930s and ‘40s.
No doubt that Israel is in danger. No doubt that whatever is offered to the Palestinians in exchange for real peace will be insufficient in the eyes of the Arab world and thus of the Palestinians. Without the “Return” of refugees from the Arab initiated 1948 war, there will be no peace. Such a return would be the end of Israel. And if half the Palestinians agree to some sort of settlement, the terrorist groups in Gaza and Lebanon will see to it that it will not last. Israel’s mild response or major attacks will lead to the same result; it will be found guilty of over-protecting its people.
Perhaps a century from now, when and if the Arab world catches up to civilization, there may be hope for peace - unless Israel lies in shattered ruins on boundless and bare desert sands, like Ozymandias..
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