OK, we all know that I rarely go political on this blog and I’d like to think that I’m really not in this case. I read the ‘paper’ in the morning every day like everybody else and lately I’ve been following the war between Israel and the Hamas in the Gaza strip. So, the Palestinians launch rockets into Israel over several days. What did they think was going to happen? Of course Israel retaliates ten fold like they always do. Don’t they teach history over there? Well there you are. Nothing is probably being taught over there except hatred.
Now I read that there are world wide protests going on over Israel’s actions. (Oh and a lot of "down with the USA". What did WE do?) I’m not condoning them. I think it’s mean to drop bombs on people but where were the protests when the rockets were landing in Israel? Interestingly some of the protesters in the mid east and in Greece were throwing rocks. . .
Throwing rocks. Who was the first proto-human to throw a rock at another? Since then we haven’t really gotten past that. You throw a rock. I retaliate with a sling shot. You invent gun powder so your rock goes even faster and is more deadly. I invent a rock that explodes upon impact. Then I can shoot them out of even bigger guns or drop them from planes. You make a rock that wipes out an entire civilization.
Bottom line: We’re still throwing rocks at each other. This ‘civilization’ has not progressed one inch past that and until we do I have a dim view of our future as a planet-wide species.
When people were first roaming around the plains of Africa we were a small percentage of the total animal species on the planet. Not only are there a lot more of us now, we are the only species that via our industrialization we have world-wide effects on our own environment. Now we can’t stop throwing rocks at each other and therefore at some point we’re going to run out of food and water because we never learned to share. Then the rock throwing will really get nasty.
How in the hell do we put a stop to this madness?
Oh yeah....happy new year
7 comments:
Don't worry. Obama will fix it all.
ONly way the madness will ever end is to get rid of RELIGION!!!!! Really, it's at the root of all of this shit!
For the new year, I recommend everybody read Sam Smith's THE END OF FAITH!
Happy New Year!
Rich P
Maybe everybody should just go sailing
Hey Mr. Science-
Let's get our priorities straight. We don't care about rock throwers unless they are engaged simultaneously in acts of oral sex. When this occurs, the Supreme Court has said we have the right - no, duty - to wash their mouths out with soap in a dank basement of an unnamed third country. This will make our world better.
Peace through hygene in 2009.
Chairman Meow
The GLF
Amen Scott.
I can't seem to find a place without "down with Israel" signs and chants. Have we all forgotten why Israel exists or do was all believe the fearless leader of Iran in that the Holocaust never happened?
I find it hard to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. I know I will not forget the images that BBC and all of the other news agencies played on and after September 11th of Palestinians celebrating in the streets.
I do not see a need to protect any country that harbors or aids terrorists. The terrorists you people are protesting to protect wouldn't think twice about killing you or your family simply for the reason that your country has a diplomatic relationship with Israel.
Kevin - remember one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.
The entire middle east mess is an outgrowth of colonialism prior to the 20th century.
Jews were integrated in much of the middle east (there are still 25,000 in Iran) for thousands of years - granted, without a homeland.
The zionist dream of a homeland for the jews is laudable and understandable - but, it comes at the cost of others' homes.
It would be similair to American Indians pushing "good Americans" out of their homes today.
I am Jewish (by ancestry). I support Isreal for reasons other than zionism. But, I understand that the tangle of the middle east is not black and white.
I am not attacking you - just pointing out that we only get part of the story in the west. This is a mess because of the complexities of history and ideologies (on both sides) that permit little room for compromise.
Chairman Meow
The GLF
Gandhi on Jews & Middle-East
A Non-Violent Look at Conflict & Violence
Article Written on November 20, 1938
Published in Harijan on November 26, 1938
This Web Page Last Updated: September 07,2008
It is of utmost importance to remember the time of this writing. It is 1938, Hitler is ruling Germany, and the clouds of a terrible conflict have begun to form. Gandhi's article shows his incredible sense of right and wrong, his blind faith in his methodology, and his profound vision of things to come. -Ed.
by Mohandas K. Gandhi
Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew question in Palestine and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question.
My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews.
But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?
Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.
The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.
But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of which many inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter. The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province.
But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is being committed against the Jews, surely there can be no alliance with Germany. How can there be alliance between a nation which claims to stand for justice and democracy and one which is the declared enemy of both? Or is England drifting towards armed dictatorship and all it means?
Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.
Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the Musalmans or the Hindus, though, as a matter of fact in essence, He is common to all the one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment . And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the god fearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.
It is hardly necessary for me to point out that it is easier for the Jews than for the Czechs to follow my prescription. And they have in the Indian satyagraha campaign in South Africa an exact parallel. There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that the Jews occupy in Germany. The persecution had also a religious tinge. President Kruger used to say that the white Christians were the chosen of God and Indians were inferior beings created to serve the whites. A fundamental clause in the Transvaal constitution was that there should be no equality between the whites and colored races including Asia tics. There too the Indians were consigned to ghettos described as locations. The other disabilities were almost of the same type as those of the Jews in Germany. The Indians, a mere handful, resorted to satyagraha without any backing from the world outside or the Indian Government. Indeed the British officials tried to dissuade the satyagrahis (soldiers of non-violence) from their contemplated step. World opinion and the Indian Government came to their aid after eight years of fighting. And that too was by way of diplomatic pressure not of a threat of war.
But the Jews of Germany can offer satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than Indians of South Africa. The Jews are a compact, homogeneous community in Germany. they are far more gifted than the Indians of South Africa. And they have organized world opinion behind them. I am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can arise among them to lead them in nonviolent action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer of hope. And what has today become a degrading man-hunt can be turned in to a calm and determined stand offered by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given to them by Jehovah. It will be then a truly religious resistance offered against the godless fury of dehumanized man. The German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have converted that latter to an appreciation of human dignity. They will have rendered service to fellow-Germans and proved their title to be the real Germans as against those who are today dragging, however unknowingly, the German name into the mire.
And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart, who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown in to the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in the their favor in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.
I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.
Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Every country is their home including Palestine, not by aggression but by loving service. A Jewish friend has sent me a book called The Jewish Contribution to Civilization by Cecil Roth. It gives a record of what the Jews have done to enrich the word's Literature, art, music, drama, science, medicine, agriculture, etc. Given the will, the Jews can refuse to be treated as the outcaste of the West, to be despised or patronized. He can command the attention and respect of the world by being man, the chosen creation of God, instead of being man who is fast sinking to the brute and forsaken by God. They can add to their many contributions the surpassing contribution of non-violent action.
Offered by
Chairman Meow
The GLF
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