"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
Devout Christian, Blaise Pascal
Dear Fred,
I agree wholeheartedly that Islam is structurally unsound.
I also think detect structural flaws in Judaism, Christianity... and The Human Condition itself.
My Dad said -- and I agree -- that Jerusalem should be made a transnational polity (akin to a "World Heritage Site") whose Jewish, Christian and Islamic roots would be recognized, preserved and memorialized.
The world's core problem is absolutism.
Remarkably, the three Abrahamic religions have cornered the market on this indispensable justification of terror.
Making Jerusalem a "world protectorate" could be the collaboration needed by Abrahamic religions to overcome their fundamental, non-viable, ultimately catastrophic error.
I am ever cognizant that, in our youth, Catholicism -- in the main -- still considered everyone outside the church an eternally lost soul.
A grammar school nun named Sister Ines taught my youngest sibling that "Jews are Christ killers."
A grammar school nun named Sister Ines taught my youngest sibling that "Jews are Christ killers."
The Thinking Housewife still considers this exclusivity - this dogma of extra ecclesiam nulla salus - not only laudable but a sine qua non of true participation in The Catholic Church. http://
***
As a young man, my Dad was stocking shelves at Mohican Market in Rochester, New York, when a chauffeured car discharged an elegantly dressed lady at curbside.
Upon entering the store, the grand dame engaged the manager in clamorous conversation, proudly denouncing "the damned papists"
Which brings to mind Emo Phillips succinct challenge to the theological insight of Aquinas' Summa:
"I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. "Well, there's so much to live for!" "Like what?" "Well... are you religious?" He said yes. I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?" "Christian." "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant ? "Protestant." "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?" "Baptist" "Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?" "Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?" "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of Go "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off."
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
***
On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.
And that Jerusalem is a Jewish place.Islam, the good kind, needs to recognize its Jewish roots, exemplified by the Temple.Islam is structurally unsound. Their third holiest shrine is smack dab on top of the Temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem.That Temple being an impressive claim to we wuz here first and we made it holy before you made it holy.
On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 8:29 AM, Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu
Dear Fred,Thanks for your email.
Your observation that "Israelis should fight like hell" suggests affiliation with the dark side that I do not dispute.Israel utilizes systematic, state-sponsored terrorism to dominate Palestinians.In saying this, I neither deny nor pardon Palestinian terrorism. It is real. And it is demonic.However, it is seldom stated that "re-drawing the map" at the end of World War II in order to create a Jewish state was as stupid -- and as harmful -- as re-drawing the entire map of the Middle East at the end of World War I. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-post- world-war-i-map-of-middle- east.html
The roots of the current flare-up are almost universally attributed to the horrific killing of three Israeli teenagers.
By my lights, the roots of the flare-up are grounded in the "legal" dispossession of Palestinians from their own land. The justification for this dispossession is that foreigners have the right to "buy countries." It's as absurd as suggesting the Chinese could buy up enough American land to justify elimination of U.S. sovereignty. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_ Palestine
In Pacem in Terris, John XXIII cites Saint Augustine: ""Take away justice, and what are kingdoms but mighty bands of robbers." http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/ encyclicals/documents/hf_j- xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en. html In any event, Israelis rule the roost and are determined to keep it that way.
They have no intention of letting Palestinians out of their walled-in ghetto.
Nor do they intend to remove West Bank settlements, an enduring flash point that renders other window dressing moot.Israeli war historian Martin von Cleveld (a supporter of the Israeli state) says Israel plans to nuke European capitals if that's what it takes to draw them into an existential battle with Islam.
I find Israel's pre-planned belligerence manifestly lunatic and will oppose Israel's oppression of the Palestinians they displaced until such time as they embark meaningful reconciliation, starting with the elimination of the God-damned settlements in the West Bank."One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing. . . The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared. What makes us so sure, after all, that the danger comes from a psychotic getting into a position to fire the first shot in a nuclear war? Psychotics will be suspect. The sane ones will keep them far from the button. No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come sanely down the chain of command. And because of their sanity they will have no qualms at all. When the missiles take off, then, it will be no mistake.""A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichmann" in Raids on the Unspeakable." Thomas Merton - New York: New Directions Publishing Co., 1964 http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/12/thomas- merton-quotations.html Consider this genocidal extortion by the Israeli terror state:
In a September 2003 interview in Elsevier, a Dutch weekly, on Israel and the dangers it faces from Iran, the Palestinians and world opinion van Creveld stated: "We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force…. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.".[9]Van Cleveld is the only non-American whose writings are required reading by the Officer Corps of the United States' military.
Martin van Cleveld, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_van_ Creveld
***Concerning your statement that Israel - and Israelis - have "nowhere else to go."Here's what I see...The United States would happily supply Israel with "a special territory" - perhaps in the western desert.
Southeast Nevada would be perfect. (This special territory might even be "incorporated." Shares could be sold. I would buy as many as I could afford.)A century ago, we carved out dozens of independent "Indian Nations."
Surely we can make room for another 12 tribes.
If Americans are too cantankerous to get "on board," I imagine Canada -- a civilized nation -- would fill the gap.
I can even imagine Mexico welcoming Israeli transplants just as Porfirio Diaz -- less than a 100 years ago -- welcomed Mennonite communities from Europe and Canada, giving them free land to start "model" agricultural communities that would (according to the plan) kick-start Mexico's peasantry into "progress." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_ immigration_to_Mexico)
Look.
We are talking about the re-settlement of 6,400,000 Israeli Jews - the population of Dallas. http://www.citypopulation.de/world/ Agglomerations.html
Ironically there are 6,500,000 Palestinian refugees in the world. They managed to relocate. http://www.auphr.org/index.php/resources/factsheets/ refugees/15-how-many- palestinian-refugees-are- there-today
In comparison to The Final World War, re-locating 6 and half million Israelis is small change. (One of my mini-missions in life is to remind people that "there is never enough time or money to do things right, but always enough time and money to do them over." Think Iraq.)
New Jersey is the 5th-smallest US state, covering about 7800 square miles or 20,000 square kilometers.As the comparison map above shows, the land currently controlled by the State of Israel (including disputed territories) is not much larger. Israel in its pre-1967 borders was 8,019 square miles or 20,770 square kilometers, just barely bigger than New Jersey. The upside of re-location?***Israeli Jews would be protected forever.
Israeli Jews would enjoy a fresh start surrounded by friends rather than enemies.
And the United States (or Canada/Mexico) would reap incalculable benefits from intimate relationship with All That Genius.
Oh...
And we would avert World War III.
"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?"Kibbutz Tirat ZviConsider.The Jews have departed Israel several times before - most recently opting to abandon their homeland during the 70 A.D. diaspora. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ diaspora If necessary, Israeli Jews can do it again.
Assuming, of course, that Israeli Jews actually believe Creation worth saving.But I get ahead of myself...
I am convinced real negotiation with Palestine would resolve the bone-headed stand-off currently in place but instead I see only madness -- diabolical madness -- in Israel's preference for flirting with World War III in lieu of a second diaspora.
Of course there is also the demographic time bomb which Ariel Sharon saw so clearly in his later years. No matter what Israel does - or doesn't do - Palestinian citizens of Israel are destined to become the majority... unless, of course, Israel enacts a "Final Solution."
Do you put it past them?
I don't.***
Elsewhere...
I predict ISIS will prove to be a tempest in a tea pot. Already, Saudi Arabia is stating its preference that fellow Sunnis in Iraq exterminate ISIS and -- in league with Iran which also opposes ISIS -- I think it's "just a matter of time." http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/ saudi-arabia-iraq-long- history-suspicion.html# ***If you did not see my first post today, I recommend it.This post also links to an extraordinary - and freely streamable - Frontline documentary."Frontline: Conservative Political Philosophy Executed An Innocent Man"Pax tecumAlanPS Speaking of Frontline, here are my four favorite episodes: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/ 2014/07/31-brilliant- frontline-episodes.html Kibbutz Lavi
(This correspondence is posted as "Should Israel Start World War III Or Embark A Second Diaspora?"
at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/should- israel-start-world-war-iii-or. html)
On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 2:02 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
As I said in Frog Hospital -- it's Israel or ISIS, and I'll take Israel.And do you think they depend on American aid? They would take aid from the Devil himself..... but go ahead and post your numbers -- fairly accurate I do not doubt.I think the Israelis should fight like hell. There is no exist strategy for them. They should pack up and leave -- to where? Nobody wants them.They also have impressive military capabilities -- don't you think?--
My writing blog is Frog Hospital
send mail to:
Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001
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