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
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 4:39
PM
Subject: [Futurework] fwd: Casualties
at Home
Some feel that the Americans are failing in this test of their use
of power. I don't. I think the US is a beacon of light and a
grand experiment in the history of the world.
Were you joking Arthur?
Take care,
Brian
Casualties at Home
By Bob Herbert
WASHINGTON - On
Tuesday, as President Bush was asking Congress for the first
installment
of the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to finance the war
in Iraq
and its aftermath, the students and teachers at a high school
within
walking distance of the White House were struggling through their
daily
routine in a building that has no cafeteria, no gymnasium, no
student
lockers, not even a fully reliable source of
electricity.
A few weeks ago bricks were falling from the facade of
the building, which
is more than 100 years old.
As we continue the
relentless bombing of Baghdad, which the military tells
us is the
necessary prelude to saving it, it's fair to ask when the
rebuilding of
essential institutions like the public schools will begin here
at home.
(Don't hold your breath. The money for that sort of thing has
completely
evaporated.)
"We actually have rooms where the water comes in when it
rains," said Sheila
Mills Harris, the principal of the School Without
Walls, an academically
rigorous high school that routinely finishes first
or second in the District
of Columbia's rankings.
Laura Bush has
visited the school, which has won a series of national
honors. But
academic honors and a visit by the first lady are, frankly,
irrelevant in
an era in which social concerns - such as support for public
schools and
health care, and the need to assist the poor, the hungry and
the
unemployed - have been forced to the perimeter of public
consciousness.
Those issues, crucial to our conception of ourselves as a
just and humane
people, have been devalued and shunted aside by an
administration that is
committed to an ill-advised, budget-busting war
and a devastating parade of
tax cuts for the very wealthy.
With
our attention riveted on the death and destruction in Iraq, and
the
continued threat to Americans in the war zone, the other very
serious
problems facing the U.S. get short shrift. We knew last fall that
the
proportion of Americans living in poverty had risen, and that income
for
middle-class households had fallen.
We know that unemployment,
especially long-term unemployment, is a big
problem. And we've known that
the states are facing their worst budget
crisis since the Great
Depression, a development that has led, among other
things, to drastic cuts in education aid that are crushing the budgets
of
local public school districts.
These issues aren't even being
properly discussed. The Bush administration
sounds the alarm for war and
blows the trumpet for tax cuts, and Congress
plunges ahead with the cuts
in domestic programs that must inevitably
follow. The voices of those who
object are effectively silenced by the war
propaganda and the fear of
seeming unpatriotic.
With attention thus deflected, the
administration and its allies in Congress
have come up with one proposal
after another to weaken programs that were
designed to help struggling
Americans.
In his budget last month the president offered a plan to
make it more
difficult for low-income families to obtain government
benefits, including
tax credits and school lunch assistance. This month,
as The Times' Robert
Pear reported, the administration proposed changes
in the Medicare program
that would make it more difficult for elderly
people, many of them frail, to
appeal the denial of benefits like home
health care and skilled nursing
care.
The extent to which the most
vulnerable Americans are being targeted is
appalling. Billions of dollars
in cuts have been proposed for food stamp and
child nutrition programs,
and for health care for the poor.
Collectively, these are the largest
proposed cuts in history. Even cuts for
veterans' programs are on the table - in the midst of a war!
The
administration is actually fighting two wars - one against Iraq
and
another against the very idea of a humane and responsive government
here at
home.
At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later,
the war against Iraq will
end. Americans will then have the opportunity
to look around and be stunned
by the fix we'll be in. We'll look at the
enormous costs of the postwar
occupation in Iraq, and at the social and
economic dislocation that's
occurring here. And we'll look at the
disaster that the federal budget has
become. We'll be broke, and we'll
ask ourselves, again and again, "What have
we done?"
--
**************************************************
* Brian
McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator
*
* Faculty of Education, Queen's
University *
* Kingston, Ontario K7L
3N6
*
* FAX:(613) 533-6596 Phone (613) 533-6000x74937*
*
e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*
* "Education is not the filling of a
pail, *
* but the lighting of a
fire.
*
*
W.B.Yeats
*
*
*
**************************************************
