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Hello Brian,
I guess the picture of the Iraqi father at the
caskets of his three children didn't go through the FW filter. Here
is the comment.
But before I append it, let me say I believe this
is all in line with the old Reagan/Stockman story to spend the nation bankrupt
in order to stop social programs they don't like and consider
immoral. Only a fool continues to believe that his enemies would
never be so audacious. Who would have believed this
war? Who would have believed that the American people
would stand still for it and even applaud its
success? But the worst fool of all is to believe
that his enemies are at heart "Americans just like him." They
aren't. Indian people learned those lessons again and again and will
never be fooled by these duplicitous criminals again. I don't
care what their ethnicity or religion is. Because they are simple
minded in their concept of evil and who their enemy is, including us, does not
mean that we are like them if we realize that they are both evil,
simpleminded and must be stopped. As Paul Harvey used to love
to say: "Their nose ends where my nose
begins!"
Such busybodied, pushy, bullying
intervention is a part of their religion and morality. Any
answer, or other side, to what they are doing is irrelevant to them since
they frankly don't care. Until the rest of the country, world,
etc. understands the breadth of their Social Darwinism, (not Scientific
since they are Creationist ignoramuses), nothing will be done and and
everyone will simply look on in disbelief.
Looking on in disbelief is what the regular
social liberals have done since the 1980s and the Democrats are doing in the
present. It is like the movie of Edgar
Allen Poe's "Casque of the Amontillado" when the protagonist had
chained his former friend and rival to the wall and was now slowly
bricking him up behind a new false wall. The friend says: "I
can't believe you are doing this to me" while the protagonist
says: "What must I do to convince you of my sincerity?"
At which point he puts the last brick into place.
The Neo-Conservatives are the new owners of the
system and are slowly "bricking" the old American coalition up. They hate
American tradition and aim for a rougher parlimentary
form. Meanwhile the old coalition
and government can't believe the audacity of this new political
faction that has taken over from the right. Deep down
inside they say such things as "This is just a phase that Christian
America goes through on a regular basis" or "they are just
growing into their power and when they do they will become more
sensible."
What is not realized is the history of the
group. Where they came from to arrive at their new power
both from the Cultural Cold War Left, where the intellectual
core had been and the Pentecostal Holiness groups that moved enmass
into the Baptist and Methodist Churches in the 1960s when Oral Roberts founded
his University to take its place next to Pepperdine in California, an
Assembly of God University. (Remember Ken Starr and
Pepperdine?) This reach upwards from the Charismatic
Christians has corresponded with a missionizing into the Hispanic and Asian
communities by the ones who never left the Pentecostal Churches along
with the Church of the Nazarene storefront churches.
A particular ploy of this group is to "Preach
the Gospel" in every other Christian Church, Synagogue, Mosque
or "other" religion, but should you challenge them in
theirs (or with their children) they cry "foul" and accuse you of
being prejudiced against their faith. The answer to that is
"well yes" but discrimination from experience does not equal
"prejudice." The "Politically Correct" myth is a variant
of that. They are allowed to be as hostile, aggressive and as rude
as they wish but if you protest you are being "P C."
I watched all this happen in Tulsa when I was in school and singing for these
yokels. They were as sincere as the local Auto salesman and
many of them WERE auto salesmen in Tulsa. They are also the
group, in the present, who claimed that Iraq would be painless and few
deaths. They can't count and their arithmetic is worse
than mine. The city of Tulsa is a world center of those
"Ministries" constituting a large portion of the city's industry since the city
of Tulsa, the "Oil Capital of the World" lost its Oil in the early sixties and
everything moved to Texas and the Middle East. The Oil
management for the Middle East was being trained at the University of Tulsa when
I was in school there in the early sixties and I knew many of them including a
man named Hafiz Asad. But he was from
Afghanistan. How would they
like a war of attrition against 500,000 in population Tulsa where there
"Temples" are located? Belief in one's righteousness is no
proof. You have to have significant righteous actions for all
of the world without profit or gain to get the credit. They fail on
all accounts since it was not so long ago that Oral Roberts threatened suicide
if the poor widows didn't send in enough dollars to save his University from
bankruptcy. Prayer wash rags were not enough to get them to continue
their contributions. It all reads like a movie script to bizarre to
be believed. But we had better believe it for they are not without
power as your economist Krugman never fails to scream as loud as his lungs will
bear.
As for this war and the torture
chambers? You can read Pete Vincent and skip the rest of just
continue.
"Let him who is without sin cast the first
stone." A saying that the Christian guru said when there
were men who would judge a woman for her sins according to their Manual of
Behavior. I realize that Islam and their
guru, requires that she be stoned but that is not the way of the people
here. Did 9/11 and the Israeli conflict make these two religions
conveniently forget the words of their own book? They
should forget some of them for they are hopelessly out of date and
downright wrong in some instances. In some cases its so bad
that even they ignore those while denying that they do. (usury, slavery,
fratricide, etc.)
Arthur,
I disagree with the Australian Dentist that I
posted (although I felt that it needed to be said). I understood
that to be what you were saying as well. Where I disagreed is this:
America is a world and a culture and does not belong to the world but is
of the world.e.g. I can, when I sing an English or a French song,
inhabit their house and garden for a moment but then reality sets
in. I am the owner of my own house and not theirs.
We each have slightly to vastly different rules in our houses.
America has committed an atrocity against her
own rules and principles here. I suspect those "new"
rules are the unconscious amoral rules, in the House of the former head of
the CIA who is the current President's first teacher. It was the son
who had to drink to "stop the world" of the father for a time. It was the
mother and the Preacher of the "Born Again" who brought the son back to the
amorality of the Father but with all of the trappings of Charismatic
Religion. It is interesting that daughters, as
their father did, are trying the same
alcoholic device. (We can all go now to the
local 12 step program or skip it and continue.)
Soap operas do not equal modern warfare except in the mind of the hopeless.
It is not appropriate for us to meet one atrocity
against the Iraqi civilians, by their own government, with another.
As Pete pointed out we are so complicit in this that we sound like Adam
blaming it on Eve or more to the point like the fictitious Mafia
Soprano family making excuses for murder.
The NYTimes published a picture I tried to send to
this list but didn't get through, of a man with arms outstretched talking to his
three dead children in rude wooden boxes covered by bloody blankets.
If this man wanted to lose his children to get rid of Sadaam then I'm sure
he would have. Especially considering the religious rules
concerning suicide. What we did was to take away their choice in an
act of vendetta, revenge for 9/11.
I have no trouble with revenge but I then do not
clothe it in the clean white clothes of purity and
goodness. War can be "balancing the books" but it
is always "bad medicine" purely and simply. The ancient
code of both the Cherokees "Law of Blood", and the Code of
Hammerabi. Only the power of family and a thousand year
old memory will make such rules work in reality. We gave that
up when we accepted the laws of America but America in its times of stress seems
to have lied about giving it up themselves.
Civilized War (if we could imagine such a thing)
should be declared by the women for they are the ones who bring life into
the world. Men who declare it are emotional cowards and
simpletons although they often have physical
endurance. But it is a rare one who could deal
with the emotional and physical monthly pain vulnerability of the
female. It seems that only a war wound (vulnerability, vulva =
wound) will assuage their emotional guilt for what our wives bear to
bring their beloved heirs into the world.
Have you ever noticed how often it is the men who
turn food into "taste" or "commerce." Men
turn dead animals and plants into things that can then be disrespected and
turned into food commerce. A friend of mine who is a world famous
chef and a woman will never allow food preparation to be described as
Art. Traditionally women don't turn life
into "things", "objects." Women, who have
not forgotten their lessons, who have handled death monthly in life and daily in
the transformation into food, are well aware of how sacred the act of "eating
the dead" is and that it is not to be squandered in stupid war
games. Notice your reaction to that description. But
that is what eating happens to be. My friend, the chef, once
transformed shell fish that I am severely allergic to into food that I
could eat. I was impressed.
The greatest power is the ability to enter the
house of your enemy and touch him leaving him to live knowing that he could do
nothing. That is the "war path." This thing
in Iraq is not war, it is murder. Mass murder turning human
beings into products, things to be ignored, degraded and discarded as
"collateral". Women are more subtle, they simply
walk up to a complaining enemy, put their hand under the woman's elbow and lift
gently saying: "yes dear, I know life is difficult and things are very
hard for you," and then walk away with the power of the other woman in their
hands. I've seen Italian men do it with a pat on an enemy's
back or the "kiss on the cheek." Our people put it this
way:
"So why is it I cannot come to know these men
who come against us?
Why is it that we cannot see with the same
eyes?
Do they come to avenge their family?
Their friends?
Do they come for money?
These things we could understand.
What can become of men who only come to
destroy?
Men who come to kill our fathers, our mothers,
our children?
What manner of man fights only to
kill?
To throw caution to the ground and meet you
enemy eye to eye...
to take his weapons,
and to leave him his life...
these acts are brave.
This is our
way." Who are these people who wage war in America's
name? They are not my people. They are stupid
and banal. They have the affect of cattle and the pride of the
bull who will be "played with" in the ring of eternity for a time
and then slaughtered. Rumsfeld and Cheney are
Brahma cattle while the Generals resemble Texas Longhorns who are
uninterested in games. The POW that we just found joined because she
wanted to earn the money to become a teacher.
Supporting or not supporting the troops has nothing
to do with it. Neither does, whether America is "Jerusalem" to the
rest of the world or not. Along time ago we had our
own. We called it Chota and it was our city of
peace. America destroyed it and buried it under a lake in
Tennessee. Their ideas of justice and compassion are just as water
logged as our city. I find it symbolic that they are making the
Iraqi civilians beg for water and food from their
"liberators." In my opinion, this war is a disgrace and we
have sent the poor and the children of those, like the the young women POW from
West Virginia who joined the military in order to go college and become a
teacher, to become the cannon fodder for religious
fanaticism.
Arthur,
I believe those of us who have been lucky enough to
get our education and work in the world now have a responsibility to speak
out against the deliberate propagation of ignorance, insensitivity and
cultural chauvinism. I experienced it once more these last
three days in the jury system and these legal people, while courteous enough,
are just as insensitive and socially prejudiced as the rest.
Their idea of the "rule of law" is culture bound and Just only to those
who accept their myths. In this world that is no longer
acceptable.
Ray Evans Harrell
PS I would remind America that she slew 4,000 old
people, women and children taken from their farms and homes because the Rule of
Law dictated it and we had no power to stop it. 3,000 out of
50,000 people died at the WTC while 4,000 out of 18,000 died on the Death March
to Oklahoma. I don't write this as a complaint but as a
principle. "Let he who is without sin cast the first
stone." What if England had invaded America to take
Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren hostage for war crimes?
Would America not have fought to the last man even though a large contingent,
including Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Crockett, Samuel Houston and John Howard
Payne, had protested the genocide? Would America, the Union
have survived if my great Grandfather and his ten siblings had not been
orphaned? Was that the question that Stalin asked
when he sent the troops for the Kulaks or when Sadaam gassed the Kurds?
REH
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Title: fwd: Casualties at Home
- [Futurework] fwd: Casualties at Home Brian McAndrews
- RE: [Futurework] fwd: Casualties at Home Ray Evans Harrell
- RE: [Futurework] fwd: Casualties at Home Cordell . Arthur
- RE: [Futurework] fwd: Casualties at Home Cordell . Arthur
- Re: [Futurework] fwd: Casualties at Home Ray Evans Harrell
