STRAIGHT OUTTA’ DENVER

As the title would suggest, this is mainly written to P. muse so as to bring comfort and understanding but also to clarify to the best of my ability what really is going on with Israel today. As soon as I read an e-mail sent out by P. muse that was nearly the same as his latest post I urged him to lay it all out here so that we as a community can see and understand what it is he’s been going through. As Paul tells in his first letter to the Corinthians “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.” (12:26) I see that your suffering here P. muse so I urged you to place it up here so that we could all bring comfort and prayers in his time of need. So please do bring prayers on behalf of P muse and also for peace in Israel. This is certainly proving to be trying times in that region and it has had me rethinking a lot of my believes towards Israel but I know that the Palestinians hold a special place in your heart as they should. But we all need to remember that we all need each other here and when a bother is suffering we need to lift him up. You all have done the some for me and now it’s my turn to lift up a brother in Christ. So I’m sure you’ll all be interested and I’m sure that Bear will get a kick out of it but here’s my letter to P. Muse:

My brother: your exactly right! Looking at the situation as it exists today, this is completely unacceptable! What did we immediately say when Russia started blowing the crap out of little Georgia (the country Georgia not the state south of Carolina)? We started condemning them immediately! Well I did, Invot still has his arguments but they don’t matter for the purpose of this letter :P. But just as you spelled out in your latest post, it looks like the oppressed have become the oppressors! Just looking at what they have been doing over the past few years, like building walls to hold in the Palestinians and such things, just are the sort of things that we’ll find unacceptable in these days from a devolved nation. Going through and shooting down aid ships trying to help the starving and hurting people in Gaza is something that we never do! Why would we allow Israel to do it? It’s starting to be a really strange set of circumstances where we are starting to support a state that just throws all caution to the wind and start to blow things away just because their angry. Now you’ll get the argument “well if we had rockets shot off over our border wouldn’t we get angry?” Well, of course we would! We’d go kick some butt! But unlike what Israel is doing, we also have the tendency to rebuild that country we destroy and leave it in a place of peace and prosperity so that we won’t have to deal with any more attacks from that country. We’ve rebuilt Germany and Japan, and depending on Obama, we’ll also be leaving Iraq and Afghanistan in places of peace and prosperity or at least that’s what we were trying to do. But on the other hand you have Israel, who’s walling up the people they don’t like rather than actually making peace for them, and they’re treating them like dogs! Can we really that it’s all right for the Israelis to go ahead and keep fighting this war of attrition and completely starve out the Palestinians from the land that they have lived in for generations? What would that be saying of us? Just because your granpa went though the Holocaust does not mean that you have a right to go shooting someone who had nothing to do with it. Didn’t Jeremiah say of his own people:

Jeremiah 3:19-20
“I thought to myself,
‘I would love to treat you as my own children!’
I wanted nothing more than to give you this beautiful land—
the finest possession in the world.
I looked forward to your calling me ‘Father,’
and I wanted you never to turn from me.
But you have been unfaithful to me, you people of Israel!
You have been like a faithless wife who leaves her husband.
I, the Lord, have spoken.”

So what really has changed with the Jews? They’re still acting this way! They’re still doing the same evil acts that they were back in the day of Jeremiah! Didn’t Isaiah tell us:

Isaiah 5:8
What sorrow for you who buy up house after house and field after field,
until everyone is evicted and you live alone in the land.

Humm, What are the Israelis doing today? Evicting the Palestinians so that no one else lives there! Yea, their still doing the same things that they always have been doing for thousands of years. And all their doing is just invoking more and more wraith upon themselves! What they are doing is for one, wrong and two, not working! So are we really to be supporting this? NO!

I remember going to Israel awareness day back in 2005 or so, down at that maga-church, and going to listen to Denis Pager speak about Israel, and it was a good speech. There where alternating Israeli and American flags hung up on the ceiling, and he just started out by taking about how these two flags belonged together. It was just an amazing sight to see, one of the men I looked up to as a mentor in my growing up and learning how to think rationally in this world, it just felt like the place for me to be! And I still do look up to and admire Pager a lot! He has certainly helped bring me out of a dark and dismal period of my life by his theories that he came up with on happiness. Something that I have tested and proven to be true in my own life, but now I have to part company with this line of thinking. Not out of anger at him or others that hold his positions, and I still very much look up to thous that still do hold these positions. But to sanction the mass killings without some sort of cause and vision to at least build up a society that is open and truly free, is just something that I can no longer do. I can’t say that it’s alright for the Israelis to go ahead and just imprison a large group of people without some sort of means to rebuild and make a new life for themselves. They’re not trying to make these people part of a greater society that holds equality as a value, but they are enslaving a group of people in certain towns. I can’t agree with that!

Now having said all that, your call “that the rouge state of Israel be brought to justice and swiftly dissolved for being the racist” is just not possible at this time nor do I support that idea ether. We also have to remember that there is an evil side to the Palestinian cause as well and to dissolve the state of Israel would just be switching roles. At this time there is no possible way for us to dissolve the state of Israel without massive blood shed of Israelis and displacement from their homes because there is a group of people in the Palestinian camp who also wish to kill off all of the Jew as well. And you can’t deny this fact as well. They are locked in mutual hatred of each other and they will continue to fight this war, unfortunately I think, until God decides to intercede here. We have two sides of different faiths fighting out a holy war here and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ are getting cut up in the middle. And just like you, I am very heart broken over these turn of events, as we should. We should not accept this situation as it is and there is plenty of blame to go around. But while there is a burning of hatred going on around this whole region, I beg you to please, don’t let your heart to get too hard. You were a big part of helping me to find my way and calling, please let me be that brother to you as well. I still think that this rouge state will have a part to play in the grand story that is being written. Paul tell us in Romans:

Romans 11:19-21
“Well,” you may say, “those branches were broken off to make room for me.” Yes, but remember—those branches were broken off because they didn’t believe in Christ, and you are there because you do believe. So don’t think highly of yourself, but fear what could happen. For if God did not spare the original branches, he won’t spare you either.

So while the Jews are broken and lost branches, we were also broken and lost branches. And God very much wants them to be grafted back into His tree of life as well as the rest of us. So don’t let your experiences start to also make you hard as well. That’s something that we all have to deal with and by the grace of God, He gave me such an amazing friend as you to help me along through my darkest periods in my life. Keep on loving the Lord your God with all your mind, your heart and your strength and He will bless you for it. He will bring you though your most difficult times so keep Him close and never let go. It might just be that the Palestinian Christians are just the first who are going to go through a suffering that we will all have to endure. So really the only bit of advice that I can give to them is:

Romans 13:1-3
Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you.

I know that’s easy for me to say when I’m not the one getting my home taken away and getting shot at, but if we support each other, I believe that we will also keep true to our principals when it’s our time of persecution. I’ll tell you to remember the words that God told me Himself when I started moving into my recent dark period: “Don’t worry my son, I AM still in control.” I know that it just doesn’t look possible right now but what Isaiah said will come to pass:

Isaiah 2:4
The Lord will mediate between nations
and will settle international disputes.
They will hammer their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will no longer fight against nation,
nor train for war anymore.

That day is still coming and we are still looking and working towards that day, and when it comes there will be much rejoicing for we will be vindicated by our faith in Jesus.

I love you
Your Brother and Fellow bondsmen in Christ
Bryan Federowicz

2 comments.

Intifada in the Gaza Ghetto

Posted on January 14th, 2009 by Pacifist Muse.
Categories: Ethics, War, Terrorism, Israel, Palestine.

Gentlemen, here’s my latest overly serious post on Palestine. One day I will start writing about something else. Someday.

On January 18th 1943 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, surrounded by walls, and living under crippling restrictions imposed by Nazi forces engaged themselves in an uprising that would last until May 16th in the same year. The poorly armed and ill-supplied Jewish forces staged heavy resistance against the modern war machines of the SS. While the Nazi SS claims to have suffered only 16 casualties; history has surmised that in reality SS casualties were much higher.

In the end the courageous Jewish resistance was deflated as the Nazi troops resorted to indiscriminate burning of houses. Of the nearly 13,000 Jews that were killed in just three months of fighting at least 6,000 died in the house fires or from smoke inhalation. Thus, over 40% percent of those killed in the Ghetto uprising were not killed because they were engaged in resistance but rather by nature of the fact that they happened to be in or around the houses that the Nazis were indiscriminately fire bombing in order to root out the “sub-human” Jewish resistance forces. Considering that the Nazis’ claim that they suffered just 16 casualties is suspected to be a heavily doctored number, it seems likely that, as it was published by the Polish Underground State, in fact their were at least 200 German casualties. Thus, the brutal Nazi Forces killed roughly 65 times more Jews then they suffered casualties. About half the Jews that were killed were engaged in active resistance, while the others were simply living in the Ghetto and found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Nazi justification for the ghettos in the first place and then the ensuing brutality against the already impoverished ghetto inhabitants was the idea of Jews as a dangerous and polluting people who were locked up in ghettos for the good of Germans and indeed the good of the world. Jewish resistance was twisted and contorted and reconstructed by the Nazis as sub-human terrorism while the Nazi brutality was constructed in the macabre logic of Nazism as defensive in spite of the heavy disproportionately in those killed and the reality that the Jews who rose up in rebellion were doing so in a ghetto!

When people are rounded up in ghettos and denied basic life-sustaining goods they will in time resist. And resist they should.

Aside from enormous power imbalance introduced by the Nazi’s heavily superior military weaponry the Warsaw Ghetto suppression was so successful related to the number of Jewish collaborators the Nazi’s had coerced into feeding them information about the Jewish resistance movement. As the massacres took place the Allied forces did little to nothing to stop the Nazis. Szmul Zygielbojm, who was the leader of the Jewish socialist party called the Bund wrote in suicide letter that:

“The latest news that has reached us from Poland makes it clear beyond any doubt that the Germans are now murdering the last remnants of the Jews in Poland with unbridled cruelty. Behind the walls of the ghetto the last act of this tragedy is now being played out.

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenseless millions, tortured children, women and men they have become partners to the responsibility …”
(Quote By Joseph Massad, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10110.shtml)

In the last 11 days of fighting in the Gaza Ghetto Uprising nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 3,000 have been wounded (many of which are expected to succumb to their wounds because of an acute lack of medical supplies and space in Gazan hospitals). Medical sources in Gaza are saying that the casualties are at least 50% civilians. As high as 30% of the casualties may be children under 10 years old. Today, a UN school was shelled twice by Israeli tanks causing over 40 deaths and dozens more wounded. In last few days whole families have been killed in their houses. In once case Israel bombed a mosque it said was a “stronghold” for Hamas. As it turned out five young girls, sisters, were in the mosque after having fled their home. The only video evidence Israel has released which they did as “proof” of their targeting Palestinian resistance fighters turned out to be a 14 year old boy and other men loading oxygen tanks onto a pickup.

Palestinian resistance has been twisted and contorted and reconstructed by the Israelis as sub-human terrorism while the Israeli brutality has been constructed in the macabre logic of Zionism as defensive in spite of the heavy disproportionality of those killed and the reality that the Palestinians who have risen up in resistance are doing so in a ghetto!

Since the beginning of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza ghetto, 4 Israeli civilians have been killed by rocket fire and at least 6 soldiers have been killed. Israel has been using phosphorous bombs in crowded civilian areas (bombs that explode in the air and shower thousands of bits of burning phosphorous that burns through flesh and bone in seconds and is considered a war crime if used in civilian areas). Israel has also been using radioactive Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME) bombs. “DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated “micro-shrapnel” of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA
(genotoxic).<4-11>” (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103×414058)
The weapon was developed by the US and sold to Israel. What is taking place in the Gaza ghetto is a massacre that equals and even so far exceeds the Nazis massacre of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

If Israel were to keep up her pace for as long as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising lasted–three months–roughly 6,300 Palestinians will be killed and over 27,000 wounded (many if not most of which will succumb to their wounds as a result of the fact that conditions in Gazan hospitals, if they are not bombed, look only to get more dire). This reality puts potential Palestinian casualties at well over the 13,000 that were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, if even a third of the potential Palestinian wounded succumb to their wounds, which seems tragically likely. If Israeli casualties remain at the same rate they have been at there will be about 90 dead at the end of the three months. Thus if things continue we are looking at over 15,000 Palestinian deaths and a Israeli disproportionality rate of 170-1, a rate that makes the Nazis 65-1 in the Warsaw ghetto look mild. Even now the Israeli massacre in Gaza is running at nearly 70-1, already proportionally worse than the Nazis’ suppression of the Jewish uprising in 1943.

It may seem sick to engage in such theoretical projections (and God knows I pray each day that things will not carry on this long or with the ferocity that we have seen so far) but I believe it is important to put this mass killing in historical perspective.

The sick thing about what is happening now is Gaza, is that like in the case of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Israelis have enlisted their own judenrat collaborationist government–the PCA (Palestinian Collaborationist Authority)–in their program to root out Hamas. The PCA in the West Bank has actually been on the verge of violently breaking up Palestinian demonstrations in solidarity with the Gazans. I fully expect their to be a Fatah invasion of Gaza following the Israeli massacre. Indeed I wouldn’t be surprised if Mahmoud Abbas had foreknowledge of the invasion of Gaza and may already have plans for taking Gaza over after the mass killing.

Yet as Joseph Massad wrote recently in an Electronic Intifada article:

“The crushing of the Gaza Ghetto Uprising and the slaughter of its defenseless population will be relatively an easy task for the giant Israeli military machine and Israel’s sadistic political leadership. It is dealing with the aftermath of a strengthened Palestinian determination to continue to resist Israel that will prove much more difficult for Israel and its Arab allies to deal with. While the thousands of dead and injured Palestinians are the main victims of this latest Israeli terrorist war, the major political loser in all this will be Abbas and his clique of collaborators. The test for Palestinian resistance now is to continue to refuse to grant Israel the right to conquer populations, to steal their land, to destroy their livelihoods, to imprison them in ghettos, and to starve them without being resisted.

The only constant in Palestinian lives for the last century of Zionist atrocities has been resistance to the Zionist project of erasing them from the face of the earth. While Zionism sought and recruited Arab and Palestinian collaborators since its inception in the hope of crushing Palestinian resistance, neither Israel nor any of its collaborators has been able to stop it. The lesson that Zionism has refused to learn, and still refuses to learn, is that the Palestinian yearning for freedom from the Zionist yoke cannot be extinguished no matter how barbaric Israel’s crimes become. The Gaza Ghetto Uprising will mark both the latest chapter in Palestinian resistance to colonialism and the latest Israeli colonial brutality in a region whose peoples will never accept the legitimacy of a racist European colonial settlement in their midst.”

(Joseph Massad, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10110.shtml)

Please do what you can, in demonstration, in boycotts, in resistance in Palestine, and in prayer on behalf of the people of Gaza.

To see Massad’s article go here:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10110.shtml

Here are some links:
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/
http://www.bdsmovement.net/
http://www.vtjp.org/
http://electronicintifada.net/

Along with the vast majority of the world’s people and nearly none of the world’s governments: I look forward to and pray that the state of Israel is swiftly dissolved out of existence. I hope and pray that not one drop of Jewish-Israeli blood is spilled in the process and equally that not one Israeli-Jew be displaced from their homes but it is time that the rouge state of Israel be brought to justice and swiftly dissolved for being the racist, apartheid state that it is.

In mourning,

13 comments.

Things are blowing up in Israel, Again!

Posted on December 30th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Ethics, War, Terrorism, Islam, Judaism, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Religon, Palestine.

It’s actually quite strange that the American media had to take several days to analyze the situation but they eventually did. P. muse has been on top of the bombings Israel just committed and sent this article around form electronicintifada.net:

“I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing.” Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel’s latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

Hey Israel! When Al Jazeera is praising you, that’s not a good thing!

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel’s attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels “terrorists” were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

Shmerling’s joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is “self-defense” against “terrorists” and therefore justified. Israeli bombing — like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan — is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel’s massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in “retaliation” for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).

But today’s horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel’s method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel’s idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.

That article continues on painting an even grimmer picture of Israel’s bombing, and assuming that it’s true, then Israel is guilty of some serous war crimes here. Being a former conservative, I would have most certainly rationalized Israel’s attack as a necessary loss to get as the enemies that they face. And there is still some truth to that statement but with how much that Israel keeps everyone in the dark about what they’re trying to do, you really can’t know all of the truth of the situation. But it does seem that Israel tried to explain themselves here but were cut off. This from commentarymagazine.com:

Yesterday, the IDF did something innovative: it opened a channel on YouTube and posted videos to it that help explain why Israel is fighting Hamas. The site hosted about a dozen videos showing things like Israeli humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza and airstrikes that prevented terrorists from firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

This was apparently too much for YouTube, which moments ago removed several videos from the IDF’s channel, including the most-watched video, which showed a group of Hamas goons being blown up in an air strike as they loaded Katyusha missiles onto a truck. The point of such footage, as if it needed to be said, is not to revel in violence — it is to show the legitimacy of Israeli self-defense.

The rank double-standard that YouTube has applied to Israel is disturbing. YouTube hosts all manner of similar footage — much of it far more gory than the grainy infrared images posted by the IDF — of U.S. air strikes. Why is YouTube capitulating to those who do not wish for Israel to be able to tell its side of the story?

So this does get even more complicated just due to the fact that there are interests in hiding the truth in our media. There are many interest groups in portraying Israel in the worst light possible or in the best light possible. So it’s hard to really know what is accurate here but ironically enough here the New Republic actually does have the best analysis:

It was Israel at its best. In response to random attacks aimed at its civilians, Israel launched precise attacks aimed at terrorists. In place of political schism, Israel suspended election campaigning, and initiated coooperation between government and opposition. Instead of illusions about an imminent peace agreement with Bashar Assad or about half a negotiated peace agreement with half of the Palestinian leadership, we exhibited sobriety and a willingness to defend ourselves. And instead of military confusion and ineptitude, as we displayed in Lebanon two years ago, we showed the most impressive display of our intelligence, air power, and psychological warfare in decades.

But what’s next? Here are some of the possible consequences to watch for in the coming days and weeks.

So for a paper that been praising Obama like crazy, they just move in on supporting Israel. I thought Obama was suppose to keep them under control?

Israel’s Options: There are three possible scenarios for how this operation will evolve. The first is that the government will opt for a limited attack whose goal isn’t the overthrow of the Hamas regime but merely the attainment of better terms in the next round of ceasefire–such as supervision over tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt and through which Hamas has smuggled in missiles. The argument for a limited operation is that Mahmud Abbas’s men aren’t ready to secure the Strip from Hamas–and even if they were, they would bear the mark of collaborators if they took control of Gaza courtesy of Israel.

The second scenario is the overthrow of Hamas and turning the Strip over to a foreign power–ideally Egypt, as the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has suggested. It’s doubtful, though, that Egypt will agree to relieve Israel of its Gaza burden. And NATO is on record as refusing to commit peacekeeping troops in the Palestinian territories.

The third option is to begin with the first option of a limited operation but, as fighting intensifies, find ourselves reluctantly implementing the second option of all-out war against Hamas. That may well be the least desirable option of all, leaving Israel vulnerable to events beyond its control. But given previous Israeli experience, that could be the most likely scenario.

The Iranian Bomb: The countdown to a nuclear Iran is now being measured in months rather than years. Few here in Israel believe that President Obama’s diplomatic efforts will succeed; and if those efforts fail, there won’t be enough time to galvanize the international community to adopt effective sanctions. The danger of the current conflict in Gaza, then, is that Israel will be too preoccupied with fighting Hamas and perhaps Hezbollah to effectively respond to the Iranian threat.

The Gaza conflict, though, could also have the opposite effect, especially if the IDF loses focus and finds itself immersed yet again in a no-win battle. Israeli policymakers may begin asking themselves what the point is of fighting Iran’s proxies every few years rather than confronting Iran itself, especially given the urgency of stopping a nuclear Iran.

The Fate of a Two-State Solution: The future of the West Bank may well be resolved in Gaza. If the international community forces the IDF to end the operation before the missile threat against southern Israel is resolved, Israelis will inevitably conclude that, even when we withdraw to the 1967 borders, as we did on the Gaza front in 2005, the international community will not allow us to protect ourselves. And the likelihood then of convincing a majority of Israelis to withdraw from the West Bank–within easy rocket distance from our major population centers–will be close to non-existent. Ultimately, then, the creation of an independent Palestine depends on neutralizing Hamas.

The Moderate Arab Response: About six months ago, during a meeting with a senior Palestinian official, I was stunned when he asked me matter of factly, “So when are you Israelis going to invade Gaza already?” “You mean you want us to?” I asked. “If you want a peace agreement,” he replied, “you will have no choice.” I never expected that position to be made public. But some Arab leaders–including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and even the feckless Abbas–have both come as close as any Arab leader can dare go in expressing support for the Israeli attack by condemning Hamas for inviting it.

In the 1990s, there was hope that a “new Middle East” would emerge through peace talks. For Israel, that turned out to be a near-fatal illusion. Now, though, a new Middle East may actually be emerging–not through peace but conflict. And in this new Middle East, moderate Arabs are siding with Israel against Iran and its proxies. That is the reason why several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, condemned Hezbollah rather than Israel in the initial phase of the Second Lebanon War. And it’s the reason why most of the Arab world failed to condemn Israel’s air strike last year against the Syrian nuclear reactor–intended, according to one intelligence report, as an eventual nuclear bomb factory for Iran.

In the interest of not making this post way too long I’ll cut to the end of the article:

As I am writing this article, a ground operation appears imminent. That may be necessary to prevent Hamas from firing rockets at southern Israel, but it will also result in growing casualties in Gaza. And that will increase international pressure against Israel and undermine the Israeli domestic consensus on which the success of the operation depends. The Israeli Zionist left, which so far supports the government, has resricted its backing to a limited operation. We still don’t know what the government wants to achieve, and what the army believes is achievable. What constitutes victory? Will we know how to translate military success into political gain? Will the government be strong enough to resist world pressure, even in the event of a disastrous accident that results in Palestinian civilian casualties? Most of all, what’s required is patience, and the realization among Israelis and our friends abroad that this battle is part of the larger war against jihadism that shifts from one part of the world to the other, and whose outcome will define our generation.

But I find it really funny that this one comes out supporting Israel. While I do see Iran a major threat to us and the rest of the world, especially as they complete a nuclear bomb and can be a helpful as an ally in that region. However on the other hand, Israel is becoming exactly like the people that they hate! They’re starting to shoot down any aid that comes to Gaza and are starving them out. Is this indiscriminate killing really helping their cause? P. muse is calling for us to contact our congressmen to protest these chain of events. I’ll give you the link here, but I don’t have any faith that it will change anything. The real solution is to have Israel to cease all operations and allow us to take over the situation along with some sort of solution to Iran to get at the heart of the problem. But theirs no will left in the American people. So with Israels excessive force and the Palestinians desire to destroy Israel, were looking at a middle east that is just going to continue to get more and more bloody. I pray that Obama will have the wisdom to do what is right here.

6 comments.

The Sinking ship called the United States of America

Posted on November 16th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Environment, Ethics, Party System, War, Law, Philosophy, Creative Writing, Israel, Christianity, Economics.

I’m actually taking great pleasure in writing this! I can’t deny this any longer. Our country is dieing! Now if you have voted for Obama because you believe that he will have an epic presidency and he will bring us out of the dark ages that Bush has put us through, then I think that you should stop reading this post now. It’s your time now and you should live it up to the fullest! Celebrate this and remember this to your dieing day! Really! Don’t let this bigoted fool spoil all of your fun! God bless all of you and just keep on going because nothing I have to say here that is going to be helpful for you. It’s just going to make you upset and I don’t want that. However if you voted for Obama because you thought he was the best man for the job or if you voted for anyone else or didn’t vote then this post is for you. Believe it or not I am not saying this because Obama was elected. In fact, I really think that politics should just start becoming a sporting event for everyone! I’ll root for my team, the republicans! My great friend can root for the democrats (who will not be named in this post, but sorry, girl, what just happened between us is just too essential to the point of this post for me to pass up!) D. Bean can root libertarian, P Muse can root Nater while Bieren can root for the no vote. We can just have some fun at it all! But I say that when the voting is done we get back to the business of the real kingdom because this country started dieing a long time ago and we’re still in that process. Obama’s election really just acted as a conformation of the fact that this country is sinking. Or we could say that his election was a diagnosis of a disease that our country has and it’s a terminal one. Now if you have voted for Obama then you did exactly what God wanted you to but we have a caner growing in our country and eventually it will kill our country. We could try a surgery on it; a revolution per se. But that’s not going to work one bit! this caner is too big and will kill the patient if attempted. That would be a lot of bloodshed in a hopeless cause so don’t attempt it! No! There is no reasonable why to remove this caner at all! This country is doomed to death. And it’s really quite simple why it will die! Our country will die because of just two sins: greed and coveting. Now I must first warn you before you keep reading this: This post is intended to challenge you! It’s not meant to gain agreement with me in any way at all but rather it’s meant to confuse. It’s really meant to screw your thinking up! So if you keep on reading this then you’ll be entering the world of a ravening lunatic! However this lunatic is a bondsmen to Jesus and that Guy has more power than you can imagine to just mess with your mind! So read on if you dare and if you do then I pray that He will start screwing with your mind and conforming it to what He wants. If you stop here then I pray that He will bless you and give you great Joy. If you have any challenges of me if you really do dare to read this, then please bring it on. I could really use much more challenges! If you have any hate filled comments then please send them. I have a funny way of always starting to pray for people who hate me so you’re really asking to trouble yourself with God. And lastly if you have any praise for me, well I’ll accept them but they’re just going to end up in Gods hands so you might as well just throw them up to Him now. That’ll just be quicker. But then again all of it will end up with Him anyway!

A far fetched grasp to what God sees
That title to this section is just my way of saying that this is what I think God was thinking when he allowed our nation to be born. Not that I am saying that I know what God is thinking by any sense of the word. If I knew what God is thinking then I would be God. But no, I’m not. I’m just another fool trying to make sense of this world. But as we have had a look through the bible we see a nation, Israel, that is one that always had God directly involved in all of the inner working of it’s government. God brought them out of Egypt, showed them their path to follow, destroyed their enemies for them, showed them how they should march in battle, how they should conduct their daily lives and when they started to complain that they didn’t have a king like the rest of the nations, he also selected a king for them. If you trust the bible on all that, then you can’t deny that He was running the whole show there. He even told them ahead of time how they could fail and get Him to kick them out of the land He promised for them.

Deuteronomy 30:15-18
“Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.

“But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.

So in Israel of that time, anyone could look up in their book here and see why God is punishing them and why their doing badly. You’re not doing what God wants so you’re going to get disaster! You see it all throughout the old testament where Israel goes up and down. As soon as they start to forget God then they start doing badly and when they turn back then God blesses them and then they go back to forgetting Him again. That cycle kept on going on and on until they really upset God and he had Babylon come in and take them all away for 70 years. Just read through Jeremiah and you’ll get a sense of how upset God can really get! But as God had promised, He brought them all back again and it was back to the same as usual. However now this time God decided to really shake things up. He sent Jesus to turn everything up on it’s head. Jesus paid the price for the law so that now we’re not following the letter of the law but rather the spirit of the law. Now we’re to do what the law was always meant to do but because of sin everyone was unable to do it. The price of the law was paid in full and while it still applies, it serves as only as a mirror to show us our sins so that we may run to Christ and receive His free gift to pay the price for the law. That’s a concept coming directly from Paul where he says:

Romans 7:4
So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.

And here in verse 7:

Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.”

So now something takes the place of the law:

John 14:15-17
“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.

The Holy spirit takes the place of the law and acts as our guide. So that means that we no longer need direct laws and miracles from God in order for us to follow His will. That’s not to say that He doesn’t do miracles anymore, there have been many that people have experienced and I have seen these miracles for myself as well. However God always seems to make them much more settle lately and their not obvious for the whole world to see like He did for the Jews in early Israel. So God has never directly controlled our country. He in fact had allowed us to set up our government without any direct guidance from Him but rather our forefathers set this country up based upon the principles that we find in the bible. I think that God set up a second Israel like nation as the United States only this time He held back and instead of direct involvement in every inner working of our government, He instead granted the wisdom to us on how we should run this country according to His will and gave us the right people to run establish this nation. However just like the first test He had with Israel, we still had sin in our country from the very beginning that will, just as early Israel did, eventually lead to our death as a nation. The first one we have had entrench before we even became a nation: Greed.

The original sin of the United States
Greed is our original sin as a country! It’s the most obvious sin we have going around. We saw that all to clearly with our finical collapse we are going through. It’s all due to the fact that people we getting greedy and taking loans that was beyond their means. It’s a hard thing to control just due to the fact that we do have a finical system that is set up to encourage greed. Now a little bit if greed is actually not bad at all! It’s what keeps us driving to bigger and better things in this country. We need a little bit to keep our economy going because people want to make their money so that they can live out their life and reach for their dreams. The problem is when we get too excessive with that dream. A little greed is good but we have to realize that we use it only so that we can survive, enjoy life and to give to others! Where it gets us into trouble is where it starts to rule our lives so that the obtaining of wealth becomes most important aspect to our lives. That’s why we allowed our first horrid injustice form: slavery. We allowed the south to buy people as though they could be bought like a plow and use them to make money for our selfs. That’s a dark sin on our country that we have paid a horrible price for it through war. Our civil war left a massive scar on our nation. However, going overboard on greed is just something that cuts at out nation and if thous cuts don’t kill us on impact then we find a way to move forward in this country and repair the damage that was done. We have seen this all the time in out nation! We get a little bit overboard in our markets and then we get punished with recessions and then we go back up again. It’s quite a cyclical thing in our country and it’s happened many times before. So just like how people get an occasional bum and cut all the time and they heal back up, so too our country goes through these bums and cuts and also heals back up again. However just like how people can get an infection or a disease through a wound that is exposed, so too we have let a caner into our country through our exposed wound of greed. That’s a caner that is less obvious to see and feeds off of our nation; growing to eventually take the life of our nation. That caner is coveting.

The killer germ
Doesn’t that seem like the odd commandment out! Looking through all of the other commandments, their all ones that you should do something or not do something. You know, Don’t murder, or worship idols, or you should honor your parents and the sabbath. But then he throws in “You must not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:17) Isn’t that one a little strange? This is the only one that tells us not to want something, or one that tells us not to think something. So of all of the commandments this the one weird zinger at the end! Why would God do that? Well this is the interesting don’t think something commandment. What does it really mean? You’re not to want something that someone else has. It doesn’t say that you can’t want things. There are plunty of times where it’s good to want things. It’s alright to want a nice house but it’s bad to want your neighbor’s house. It’s alright for a man to want a wife but it’s bad for a man to want his neighbor’s wife. So why should you want anything that your neighbor has? Could it be because you think you’re more deserving of that than your neighbor? That’s the real problem! thinking that because your neighbor did something wrong means that you should get what your neighbor has! Does that sound familiar? That’s all that Obama talks about! Just because the poor have been crushed by the rich means that the poor should be given what the rich has. Now again I was just getting into how bad greed is. Letting that greed go wild can create this situation but it doesn’t make it right. Why can’t we just trust God to set things right? Why do we have to start getting envious of what these rich people have. They have far more problems to deal with than the rest of us who don’t have that much money.

Isaiah 3:14-15
The Lord comes forward to pronounce judgment
on the elders and rulers of his people:
“You have ruined Israel, my vineyard.
Your houses are filled with things stolen from the poor.
How dare you crush my people,
grinding the faces of the poor into the dust?”
demands the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

Why couldn’t we just trust in God like our coins say? But instead we have chosen to make coveting a governmental issue! Did you ever wonder why we have never prevailed in the war on poverty. We’ve been doing it for around 40 years and it’s never gotten better. In fact I would say that it’s gotten much more worse! When you eliminate the principal that if a man doesn’t work that he doesn’t eat then what happens? He just doesn’t work! So when everyone wants to just let others do the working for them then how’s going to do the work? The only people who work are like me who know there is a God in heaven that I am really serving. I don’t work hard at my job just so that I can live, I could just take it easy just like the rest of the people at my work and just do enough to get by the day. But I work harder than them because I want to give that up as an offering to my God! And I really asking for forgiveness right now because lately I’ve been loosing sight of that with all the things going on in my life. However when the weight of people that just want to be lazy gets greater than the weight of thous that are pulling them, then how is the cart of our economy going to get pulled? You can’t do it! So just by the sheer laws of economics that God has put in place, our country is just going to die. So when everyone thinks they’re owed a free ride then the economy will collapse, hence the commandment do not covet just so that they can just keep on going about their business and not worry about who has more or who has less. instead Jesus told us to be concerned with the least of these. I’ll tell you what, voting for someone else to be concerned with the least of these is not being concerned with the poor! Sitting down and taking to such people is and helping them get out of their situation is helping the poor! You’re just pushing it one someone else rather than dealing with the problem that you see. But we have all been raised in a now oriented culture and we just want to see the problem to go away right now! But these things don’t go away immediately, It takes a lot of time and effort. Just giving a hand out just makes the problem worse! Not only do you need to stop the problem but you need to fix what created it in the first place. So I can give you a problem of mine to illustrate this better. I have this Truck that I absolutely love! That thing can haul things really well. At the time that I have bought I, it seemed really reasonable to me! It was only 9 Grand and It had a V8! I love big engines! So it seemed that it was really well with in my means. However The gas prices went up and then I’ve had both axles brake on me and now just the rear axle just locked up on me. So now it’s become a whole lot more expensive for me! So is the solution to just keep on borrowing money from people so that I can say afloat? (and I am very grateful that I have amazing people in my life that have helped me out here). No! The real solution is for me to get rid of that truck so that I can live a little bit better in my means. So if I just keep on asking for money from the people around me pretty soon I am going to run them dry and also make them angry with me. However our whole country is not doing that! we just continue to borrow from others for something that we really don’t need. That’s all this welfare and social security. All of these thing made to make us feel better for not really caring for the poor our selfs like we should have. All of this to conceal the greed that we all have (and this is me much more than most).

The land of the slaves and the home of the timid
We are slaves to this country! Now in relative terms we’re quite free in this nation. Now, in comparison to North Kora we’re really free! But we’re still not actually free. To Illustrate my point further I just have to go to Joesph. Just a little refresher, he was the one that sold into slavery to Egypt and interpreted Pharaoh’s dream to him. Pharaoh then put him in charge of everything in Egypt and so when the famine came everyone came to Egypt because Joesph had plunty of food stored up. First he took all their cattle for the grain he gave them but the famine was still relentless. So all of the people sold their land and themselves as slaves to Pharaoh. So what was the consequence of that action?

Then when you harvest it, one-fifth of your crop will belong to Pharaoh. You may keep the remaining four-fifths as seed for your fields and as food for you, your households, and your little ones.”

Or that’s 20% of everything that they make goes to Pharaoh. So we get about 17% in income tax but you also have to add in state and sales taxes and not to mention that any tax on companies gets installed into the price of what they sell. We’re well beyond that 20%! Not to mention that now the government is going to be buying up the bad houses and while I did support that idea at the time, that’s just going to make us even more enslaved to this government. I still thought that McCain would win when I had supported the idea so I thought that it would eventually get sold back to the market, but with Obama I just think that it’s going to get a whole lot bigger! But we do have a freedom in the sense that we still can control our own lives to a certain extent. We can still decide for our selfs what line of work we want or who we want to marry and such things like that. But when all of our money goes to this system, does that really make us free? We can’t really do everything that we really want with all of our money because we have a demand on us from this government to give a good bit of it to what government wants to do! Why should we be saves to this government! It’s all because we have decided to make our selfs slaves to this government. By voting in policies that forcefully take from the rich and give to the poor, we have decided to enslave ourself to this government. And that’s just going to become more and more true as more and more welfare policies go up. Now I have been one of the biggest patriots this country has ever known! I very much grew up that why and I guess one of my biggest sins early in life has been one were I would put my trust in this nation rather than in God. I didn’t trust myself at all and at the time I though God hated me, so the only thing I had was this country! So I got very interested in politics, listened intently to talk radio all so that I could understand it all extremely well. But right now God is dealing a really harsh reality to me that I have been afraid of all my life. The reality is that any system ever conserved by man is doomed to failure just by the very fact that it has been made by sinful men. It doesn’t matter what system it is, it’s doomed to failure just by the fact that we are sinful, we’re human! Now in the past we have seen a perfectly controlled society that could not fail in early Israel. That system was one in which God Himself pronounced the judgments and rules to His people through His judges and He went ahead and won the battles for them. But what happed to that system? The people wanted a king to be like all of the rest of the nations.

1 Samuel 8:7
“Do everything they say to you,” the Lord replied, “for it is me they are rejecting, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer.

Doesn’t this sound a bit familiar? What is it that Obama is all about? Being liked by other nations! We just all need to get along. Well just getting along is not why we are here but to do God’s will is why we are here! So we are rejecting the same God that has blessed us so much just the same as early Israel. We didn’t trust God we he wanted us to help each other out and be a blessing to the rest of the nations just the same as early Israel did. God used two different methods to prove His point, that without Him we are meaningless. In early Israel he used the method of direct involvement in every aspect of the country and in our country he used the method of just giveing the principals, wisdom and His Holy Spirit to guide us. The results was and will be failure just because we are sinful humans and we always fail. So there’s really no hope here! The ship is sinking here and anything we do with this government will just be putting a little sock in the massive hole. There’s no hope to stopping this patent from dieing! If you try to remove the caner by revolution then you’ll just end up killing the patent. That’s a horrible bloody thing to be thinking about and just a lot of people would die for no reason. So you can count me out on any sort of idea like that. I just won’t have any part of that. So without some sort of miracle, then this patent is going to die sometime soon. I can’t say when, I’m not a prophet by any sense of the word and God has never talked to me directly but rather by implanting ideas in my head and I just struggle my hardest to make sense of it all. So what can we really do when someone is dieing from a caner? Pray for a miracle and be there as much as we can. But what can we do when a country is dieing from a caner? Become the miracle!

Finding a miracle in a broken country
That great friend of mine reminded me of a line from Shane Claiborne a few weeks back that said- “We need to find some way to teach people to live more simply…so that others may simply live.” I have to admit that it really did seem like a really simplistic line to me at first! Almost like the liberal version of the conservitive line “eat your food because there are kids starving in China.” Oh! So does that mean that if I just eat my food then some kid in China will have his stomach filled? I had a similar reaction to this line thinking, “Oh does that mean that money will just get shipped of to Africa if I don’t make that much.” No that doesn’t translate at all! If I just don’t make the money then someone will just do it. You just can’t force wealth to be spread you have to get others to make it for it to be spread. But as I had mentioned earlier the rear axle in my truck had just locked up on me a few weeks back. After I had gotten it back to the shop and heard how much it was going to cost me I just couldn’t help but think, “man I just need to live a little simply so that I can just live!” Then it just hit me, that’s exactly what the whole country needs right now! To get rid of the excess and just live simply for others! Which is exactly what my friend was getting at in the first place! Now I just have to admit that Shane was right, God just has a funny way of just slapping what you dismiss right back in your face (and that’s why I still say that He has a really sick sense of humor or maybe He just does that to me because I like it). But we just can’t go up to congress and demand that they just stop doing things, they don’t care! They’re just going to keep voting for what gets them elected and getting their bribes. And both parties do that! We can’t get a governmental fix here because of all this greed and coveting! So what’s the miracle?

John 17:13-19
“Now I am coming to you. I told them many things while I was with them in this world so they would be filled with my joy. I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth. Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. And I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them so they can be made holy by your truth.

Retuning to what Jesus told us! We were not called to be engulfed by this world but to be in the middle of it and not represent any part of it. The sneaky betrayal of this country is that it started off representing that but as the devil has gotten a hold of over this country then he twisted it to something completely different. From being in this world but not of it to taking thous who trust in it to slavery to the devil. This is something that I am just now realizing because I was so caught up in it! But now I must call that we turn this country off even though it has done so many great things in the world. However this county is not the same as the heavenly kingdom that we are apart of! This one will burn! But yet by the fires that will burn this country, there will be a purification of thous that are not part of this world. Like a crucible the burns off the trash and reveals the pure gold so to will this world be burned by fire. The hope is not that we leave this world but that God will come and burn off all of the evil that has infected this world and bring us to His special home. So it becomes, especial now, massively important that we become part of the gold that will remain when the fires start! For if the death of a smaller nation like early Israel lead to God giving us the gift of Jesus and His Holy Spirit then what would the death of this nation mean? It would mean the beginning of the fires that burns off the trash and the return of Jesus. And that’s all that our hope is warped up in! But how do we make our selfs pure when we have a nation that makes us slaves to the devil by giving us what we desire most. We start a revolution! One not of bloodshed or even one that has any violence at all to it. One that’s just really Irresistible!

The Irresistible Revelation
Now that’s not an original line! That’s a title to a book that I have reviewed here on this blog. That was written by Shane Claiborne and he has a funny little disclaimer at the beginning of it. Something similar to the disclaimer that I made a the beginning of this post. That’s a disclaimer that you should pay attention to because it does mess with your mind! You just can’t get it out of your head until God just makes you pay attention! Because it is just so irresistible to just absolutely not care for the things of this world and just care about the smaller things of life. And that’s what we need to do! Start giveing into God and start releasing our selfs from the slavery of this country and enslaving our selfs to Jesus and we can do that right now in a piratical way! All we have to do is just stop depending on government as much as possible and start depending on each other as much as possible! Not that we don’t pay our taxes or anything like that but just that we should just make it harder for them to tax us. May I be so bold as to say that we should just give unto Obama what’s Obama’s and give unto God what’s God’s. And when you count for the fact that God wants every part of us then you just have to say that Obama really doesn’t get all that much (that’s just to give a little twist on what Shane had said). However as Paul had told us:

Romans 13:1-3
Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you.

This is not a rebellion in any sense of the word but yet it’s one rebellion that will absolutely drive everyone mad (just like how I am just going crazy!) The one thing that going to get everyone ticked of the most is just the fact that we just will not conform to their thinking like they want us to. The battle is in being surrounded by this world but not being in it so then we must not live anything like everyone else. We should go into every place with a smile so big that no one can figure out why the heck we can even smile. I can tell you what: I have that key! It’s really very simple yet really hard to do! But it only has two steps to it. The first step is pretty hard, you have to realize that all of your suffering is your own fault! (I really messed up on that line, I explain here.) After that the next one is really easy. All you have to do is just love everyone around you intensely just as if they we’re your own child. Once you do that then you’ll find out that you haven’t suffered at all! I’m telling you that it’s really a great feeling that you just can’t help but smile! I’m telling you that once you start doing that then you’ll find that you just never fit! Could we say that it’s just like repenting and serving? Now why does that sound familiar? Could that just be exactly what Jesus called us to do? Isn’t that “three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) We are called to do everything that we do in this life for God with great love for others! That’s what just makes this so Irresistible! It’s because God himself just keeps throwing zingers at us all the time! However the zingers are just too small for our humanly eyes to see! We just have to trust him to let us see them and you’ll just be amazed at how much the smallest things can make the biggest impacts of all. So to borrow another line from Shane that we are “committed to doing small things with great love.” And when we do that for each other and everyone else then the world view then start to crumble around us. But yet we have to keep on making that commitment over and over again because the eyes God gives us are small and need constant maintenance to keep us focused on the little things that God has. When you let an engine run without oil for a long time the thing just breaks down! Then you have to rebuild it that engine to get it working again. So to when we let our selfs loose the sight of the little things that God does for us then God needs to take apart our brains and just rebuild it so that it can function properly again. Hence: my prayer that this is screwing up your thinking. Well Shane just did it to me, can’t I just start throwing it on you now!

I have come here a sinner but I will leave you a saint
I am really ashamed to admit it, but just this week the thought of some sort of suicide for me was quite temping the other day. That was the first time I even had ever though that I could do such a thing. Just in the past few months everything I have though and believed in was coming crashing down before my very eye’s and there was nothing I could do about it. That’s the hardest thing for me to deal with because understanding is one of my most valued assets. But yet being a bondsmen to Christ means that he owns everything even my flawed way of thinking. So when God had planted the idea in my head that there’s this girl who’s going to love you sitting right there (and now I am really putting you on the spot here girl! Sorry if you still reading this). God told me that he had something for me to do first before I could get it. So being a raving fool that I am, I just start looking for every little thing about her to find out what it is I have to do! That’s been causing a wreaking ball in my head trying to figure it out! God’s just used this whole situation to completely blow up my mind! Till finally I just had the wild idea that I should just tell her the whole thing! A very frighting prospect to me because I just felt so ragingly mad over everything. And in the end I didn’t get that girl of my dreams here but yet she still really did love me. Not in the way that I wanted her to but, yet, in the why that I needed her to. That’s doing a simple thing with great love! For though it all I was able to find myself once more. For God’s grace is sufficient. He always does what he promises to do but its our own flawed thinking that makes us wrong with Him and we need Him to rebuild our minds every now and then. Through it all I just had to keep my hope in God and while He didn’t do anything that I wanted, He did what I needed. That’s the most valuable thing we can take from this right now! Through every shattered thought and dream the words God had told me have never left: “Don’t worry my son, I AM still in control.” God wants us to have great joy in our lives but He will do what we need first. So even if all of the doom and gloom happens then God is still in control! If all of the doom and gloom doesn’t happen then God is in control! If everything that I strive to try to achieve doesn’t fall through THEN GOD IS IN CONTROL! I would have been dead so long ago if it wasn’t for God being in control and well for that matter there’s nothing. For what does one gain when he sells his soul to get what he wants? I’ll tell you! A world full of greed and coveting! Let’s let God have our greed and coveting (and we all do it!) and give all of our work up to Him in everything that we do. That’s being a bondsman to Christ.

7 comments.

Palin, Clinton, Ahmadinejad, The Financial Collapse and God

Posted on September 27th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Ethics, Party System, War, Terrorism, Philosophy, Media, Republicans, Democrats, Iran, Israel, Religon, Christianity, Economics.

As the title and the number of categories suggest, this is going to be a lengthy post for me pulling a lot of subjects together. But bare with me here I’ll wrap it all together here to one good point and I’ll even slap on a really nice pretty bow on top of it! However I first have to start with the bad news here (and there never seems to be any end to bad news this year!) Our country is going into a state of chaos. It’s becoming more and more apparent as the days go by and there seems to be no way to reverse the irrational thinking that is going all across the board. We’re getting griped with fear here and it’s starting to create a real panic in our country. As I have been on the charge against for two years (more or less) here on this blog this panic and fear is being created by a Victimhood mentality thats sinking it’s teeth deep within our culture even in our very souls. We’ve grown too accustomed to quick dismissals of people and their ideas and hold too tightly to our doomsday scenarios that it’s starting to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we continue on this course then we will deserve the chaos that will follow. We have three primary causes to this downward spiral that we’re entering into: extreme partisanship, foolish finical decision making and lack of trust in God.

Extreme Partisanship
I’m pro partisan! I want people to take their convictions seriously and stand up on them to pronounce them to the best of their ability to as many people as possible. I love debate and intellectualism of any side! But at a certain point too much partisanship turns things sour. That happens when winning the election becomes more important than standing on your convictions. Haaretz has a great piece illustrating this point perfectly:

In the speech which Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was to have delivered at a Monday rally protesting the UN appearance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, she was to have said that the Iranian president “dreams of being an agent in a ‘Final Solution’ - the elimination of the Jewish people.”

Her appearance in the rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza was cancelled in a flap between protest organizers and Hillary Clinton, who had also been scheduled to speak. Clinton aides were quoted as saying that they had been “blindsided” by the decision to invite Palin, which they called a partisan move. In the ensuing controversy, Clinton withdrew her participation, and Palin’s invitation was rescinded.

How often dose a paper publish a speech that a candidate would have made? Hillary was invited to this rally to stand firm on the principal that women are of equal value to men. Iran is the leading country in violation of that principal because that country has their secret police always out on the patrol and any woman who does not hold to their strict code of dress is wiped. Even more than that, they have every woman who is suspected of any promiscuous activity stoned. Sarah shares Hillary’s principal that we should fight this injustice and deal with the threat posed of Iran. So why did Hillary back out? Because for her, it’s more important to defeat conservatives like Sarah than it is to stand up for women’s rights. Why Would Haaretz publish Sarah’s would be speech at the rally? Because they know that Iran threatens them and while they are a liberal paper in Israel much more in line with Hillary than Sarah, they don’t want to be killed. Sarah made one serious mistake in her speech that she did not give:

Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that “Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that” effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.

Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans. Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!
Only by working together, across national, religious, and political differences, can we alter this regime’s dangerous behavior. Iran has many vulnerabilities, including a regime weakened by sanctions and a population eager to embrace opportunities with the West. We must increase economic pressure to change Iran’s behavior.

Hillary’s real threat is not Iran but rather Sarah. The left hates conservatism not evil. We’re starting to see much more of this as this year rolls on. The accusations being thrown at Sarah are quite astonishing! A speech Hillary did attend, Alcee Hastings had this to say:

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

That was brilliant! So you’re telling me that if you tote guns and go hunting for moose that automatically makes you anti-semitic and racist? And the race card keeps getting played all over the place! Dennis Prager has a great piece up where he chronicled many good examples of this:

Andrew Sullivan of (set ital) The Atlantic: (end ital) “White racism means that Obama needs more than a small but clear lead to win.”

Jack Cafferty of CNN: “The polls remain close. Doesn’t make sense … unless it’s race.”

Jacob Weisberg of (set ital) Newsweek and Slate: (end ital) “The reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is … the color of his skin. … If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth.”

Nicholas D. Kristof of (set ital) New York Times: (end ital) “Religious prejudice (against Obama) is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice.”

Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in a speech to union workers: “Are you going to give up your house and your job and your children’s futures because he’s black?”

Similar comments have been made by Kansas’s Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, and by writers in (set ital) Time (end ital) magazine. And according to The Associated Press: “A poll conducted by The Associated Press and Yahoo News, in conjunction with Stanford University, revealed that a fairly significant percentage of Democrats and independents may not vote for Sen. Barack Obama because of his race.” If you read the poll, it does not in fact suggest this conclusion. The pollsters assert that any person with any negative view of black life means that the person is racist and means that he would not vote for Obama. Both conclusions are unwarranted. But “Obama will lose because of racism” is how the poll takers and the media spin it.

Can you give me just one example of one mainstream conservitive that has said that he or she will not vote for Obama because he is black. Usually you’re much more loose with your words when you’re talking to someone who shares your politics but yet Prager has stated that he hasn’t received one e-mail saying “I just can’t vote for him because he’s black!” But it doesn’t matter, that charge will keep on getting thrown at us conservatives and it’s not going to stop no matter who gets elected. Funny to think that these people will charge us with racism if Obama looses but would they charge us with sexism if Sarah looses?

Why do liberals believe that if Obama loses it will be due to white racism?

One reason is the liberal elite’s contempt for white Americans with less education — even if they are Democrats.

A second reason is that it is inconceivable to most liberals that an Obama loss — especially a narrow one — will be due to Obama’s liberal views or inexperience or to admiration for John McCain.

The third reason is that the further left you go, the more insular you get. Americans on the left tend to talk only to one another; study only under left-wing teachers; and read only fellow leftists. That is why it is a shock to so many liberals when a Republican wins a national election — where do all these Republican voters come from? And that in turn explains why liberals ascribe Republican presidential victories to unfair election tactics (“Swift-boating” is the liberals’ reason for the 2004 Republican victory). In any fair election, Americans will see the left’s light.

If Obama loses, it will not be deemed plausible that Americans have again rejected a liberal candidate, indeed the one with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. Liberals will explain an Obama defeat as another nefarious Republican victory. Combining contempt for many rural and middle-class white Americans with a longstanding belief in the inevitability of a Democratic victory in 2008 (after all, everyone they talk to despises the Republicans and believes Republicans have led the country to ruin), there will be only one reason Obama did not win — white racism.

Conservatives keep on having lies thrown at us but the right is not immune to being so petty. Michel Savage is another talk show host on the fringes who regularly produces disgusting and hateful things towards the left. I haven’t listened to him in over 4 years but I bet he’s still out there and probably is worse than ever. Rush Limbaugh, a man I have listened to and respected since I was 5 or 6, is now becoming much more short tempered. He used to regularly have disagreeing calls first and try to work with them taking up a good portion of his hour trying to reason with them. but lately he’s starting to cut them off and shout them down. It’s gotten to the point that I just can’t listen to him anymore and his arrogance is just starting to drive him over the edge. The pig comment for Obama is another example where he said “if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.” Hugh Hewitt came on and (paraphrasing) “You know what he meant there America. He’s calling Sarah a pig!” But come on now Hugh! We know the Obama’s not that stupid! You should have been going after the more truthful approach of saying that he’s out of touch with his audience because they started laughing before he finished the comment. But that’s my only complaint to Hugh he’s still doing an amazing doing the great work of political analysis but he’s still flirts with the line here and there. I’ve been impressed that Hugh as been sticking to his commitment that he’s only going to take first time female callers until they’re done talking to him due to Sarah’s nomination. Some of the women that he’s had calling has been very interesting. It seems that only Prager is really trying to keep things straight but just his voice is not enough. How did it ever get to the point that beating the other side is more important than doing what’s right for the country? It’s no wonder why people keep on tuning out of the politics and going to third parties because we’re getting into a real bitter constant nail bitting race where every single little bit of mud and every statement is analyzed to death. And you wonder why politicians seem so fake lately? It’s because everything they say is under the microscope for any little tiny defect. Both sides do it but I hear is far more often from the left then the right. This extreme partisanship has us disabled with all of the politicians on both sides trying not to let the other get the points for anything good or trying to shove down the bad stuff down the others troughs. That brings me to my next point.

Foolish Finical Decision Making
I’m a conservitive. So when a company makes a bad decisions and finds them selfs in over their heads they should go out of business and let others get into the market who will make good decisions. It’s simple stuff but it is all based around trust. The trust that when you take out a loan you’ll pay it back. This is how it’s worked for centuries and it’s worked the best out of any system that’s ever been introduced. However we’ve had a surge of people taking out loans that have no business getting them. Because congress didn’t like the fact that there were all these people who’ve never owned a home they started putting requirements on lenders to get these people in homes (of coure that was all in the name of compassion). That had the unintended consequence of lenders giveing out risky loans. But of course the housing market was in a boom! Prices were going up and while people were buying a lot of houses for much more than they could afford they just assumed that the price will continue to go up and they could just sell it, repay the loan and make a little money. Builders were seeing all of this money getting poured in, so hey, we need to get some houses built! But they built more houses than wee needed and as the law of supply and demand goes, when you have more supply than demand then the price goes down. So all the people who took out loans with the assumption that the price will just keep going up now can’t afford the loan and can’t sell the house (becuse no one wants it) so they end up foreclosing. Now the builders can’t make a buck because theirs already too many houses and banks don’t want to give loans out because they already loosing all their money to all these people who couldn’t pay. Thus we are looking at a depression. The only possibility to prevent this is for a big institution to go and buy the bad deals, get them off of the market and restore the trust to loan making. The only institution that can do that is the US government. Steven Pearlstein in the Washington post has a good piece on this:

You’re angry. I’m angry. House Republicans are angry. We’re all angry at having to put up huge amounts of cash to rescue a financial system because a lot of very rich people rolled the dice with other people’s money and lost.

Now let me tell you something very simple and very important: You can try to prevent a financial meltdown or you can teach Wall Street a lesson, but you can’t do both at the same time.

So which will it be?

You say you want straight talk — no spin, no bull, no sugar-coating. Okay, here goes.

First, stop fixating on Wall Street executives — there will be time to deal with them later. Even if you clawed back every dime they made over the past decade, it would come to several billions of dollars. That’s a rounding error compared with the size of the financial problem we’re facing here.

Second, we need to act quickly. The financial situation is now downright scary. Don’t look at the stock market — that’s not where the problem is. The problem is in the credit markets, which are quickly freezing. I won’t bore you with technical indicators like Libor and Treasury swap spreads, but if you talk to people who work these markets every day, as I have, they report that the money markets are in worse shape than they were last August, or even during the currency crises of 1998.

Banks and big corporations and even money-market funds are hoarding cash, refusing to lend it out for a day or a week or a month. Even the best companies are having trouble floating bonds at reasonable rates. And the shadow banking system — the market in asset-backed securities that ultimately supplies the capital for most home loans, car loans, college loans — is almost completely shut down.

People are so nervous, and there is so much distrust, that all it would take is one more hit to trigger the modern-day equivalent of a nationwide bank run. Financial institutions would fail, part of your savings would be wiped out, jobs would be lost and a lot of economic activity would grind to a halt. Such a debacle would cost us a lot more than $700 billion.

Third, the latest proposal hammered out between the Treasury and Democratic leaders won’t cost anywhere near $700 billion unless we get a 1930s-like Depression, in which case we’ll have much bigger problems to worry about. Depending on how the program is managed, and how things turn out with the economy and the housing market, the best guess is that the government could wind up either losing or making a couple of hundred billion dollars. The final tab is simply unknowable — it depends on how much the government winds up paying for the securities it buys from banks and other financial institutions, and what price it resells them at after the market and the economy recover.

Fourth, this isn’t primarily a bailout for Wall Street — it’s an attempt to jump-start certain credit markets that have broken to the point that nobody is buying, driving down prices to the point where they are well below any reasonable estimate of their long-term economic value.

The basic idea is to use special auctions to recreate a market for these securities with many competing sellers and one buyer (the Treasury), so that a credible “market” price can be established. If that price turns out to be below what those securities are now valued at on the banks’ balance sheets, then banks will have to take the loss. If the price turns out to be higher, then banks may be able to record gains. The point isn’t to bail out institutions that have made bad bets and suffered credit losses, but to provide a buyer of last resort so the market can begin pricing again.

Are there other ways to structure this market rescue? Sure. You could try to deal with the underlying problem by taking additional measures to prevent foreclosures. Or you could create a mechanism for the government to invest fresh capital in troubled banks, in exchange for stock. In fact, both approaches are possible and envisioned under the administration proposal now under discussion. But neither, by itself, is likely to quickly restore confidence in the financial system and relieve the current crisis.

My own suggestion would be to structure the rescue around a new government-owned corporation that would be capitalized, initially, with $100 billion in taxpayer funds. The company would use auctions or other mechanisms to buy the troubled securities from banks and other regulated institutions, but instead of paying for them in cash, the government would swap them for an equal number of preferred shares in the new company. (Preferred shares are something of a cross between a bond and common stock.) Those preferred shares would pay a government-guaranteed dividend and could be redeemed by the government at any time. But they could also be used by banks to augment the capital they are required to maintain by regulators.

The beauty of this arrangement is that, rather than protecting taxpayers by having the government take an ownership stake in hundreds of privately owned banks, it would be the banks that would own a stake of the government’s rescue vehicle. The government would suffer the first $100 billion in losses from buying and selling the asset-backed securities, but any further losses would be borne by the other shareholders. And should the rescue effort actually wind up making a profit, then the banks would share in that as well.

I mention this idea to make a final point — namely that it is important to give the Treasury secretary and the people he hires a good deal of flexibility in designing and experimenting with the mechanics of this rescue. The reality is that these guys will be operating in uncharted territory, making things up as they go along. That means there are no assurances that any particular approach will work and no assurances that this will be the final solution. It also means that, just as we entrust generals to fight a war, we are going to have to trust the Treasury to find a way out of this crisis.

We are doing this deal to restore the trust involved in giving out loans. But of course as I said in the prevous part congress doesn’t want to do anything because they want to blame the other side with the failure. Democrats are looking to push this off on the republicans despite the fact that they are at fault here. Want proof? Then check this out from the New York times dated September 11, 2003:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

So the president was trying to stop this sour Fannie and Freddie deal way back in 2003! But would congress let him? NO!

Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

So in the name of compassion the democrats let Fannie and Freddie continue to make bad loan after bad loan thinking that nothing bad could possibly happen. Well now something bad has happened and now their trying to put the blame on Bush as they always do. Compassion is something you must hold dearly to in your personal life but when you let it make policy then you have disaster. Thus we continue to see panic in the markets and stocks continue to fall every day that congress doesn’t act. So now you get depression. Now this brings me to this last point here in my piece, we are now getting griped with fear.

Lack of Trust in God
“Come on now B’Strad! Now you’re really BSing us here!” I know, I know this may seem to be getting ridiculous here but again bare with me here. Think with me here! Are we really afraid of the right things? Have a look at this Psalm:

Psalm 112:1-8
How joyful are those who fear the Lord
and delight in obeying his commands.
Their children will be successful everywhere;
an entire generation of godly people will be blessed.
They themselves will be wealthy,
and their good deeds will last forever.
Light shines in the darkness for the godly.
They are generous, compassionate, and righteous.
Good comes to those who lend money generously
and conduct their business fairly.
Such people will not be overcome by evil.
Those who are righteous will be long remembered.
They do not fear bad news;
they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.
They are confident and fearless
and can face their foes triumphantly.

Dose it really gain you anything to have a state of fear over all of these little things in life? In the end it really doesn’t matter who wins and looses, if the economy booms or fails, or if wars and terrorism starts to take a grip of everything that we hold dear. That’s not to say that their unimportant and that we shouldn’t be engaged in such things. But if we allow it to grip us with fear so that we throw away everything that’s really important to us then what did we gain? What’s really important is how we spend our short time here on this crazy world. Are you going to spend it griped with fear over all the thing that might happen or are we going to say “Well I’ll deal with that when I get their but now I’m going to spend this time with the people I love and try to bring joy to others.” We’re not fearing the right things here! We keep on talking about all of these hard things but how often to we just sit down and just try to find what God wants from us? Have a look at this in Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 8:6-8
for there is a time and a way for everything, even when a person is in trouble.

Indeed, how can people avoid what they don’t know is going to happen? None of us can hold back our spirit from departing. None of us has the power to prevent the day of our death. There is no escaping that obligation, that dark battle. And in the face of death, wickedness will certainly not rescue the wicked.

Why throw away what we do have over the little things in this life? Even if all the disasters happen, the sun will still shine another day. You can still see all of the beautiful things that God has made on this earth. If the food prices get too expensive then I’ll start getting good at farming and hunting. If my house gets foreclosed then I’ll go build myself a new home. If gas becomes impossible to get then I’ll get a bike. If I die then I rejoice for I get to meet my maker. All of these things try to pull us away from the things that is most important in this life: what you leave behind in the minds of others. Religious or secular, that’s the only thing that you have left here on this planet when you finally do return to the dust that we have all came from. I know that it’s hard because I have to struggle with this all the time. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t be able to talk to you about it here. Several months back I was ready to come up here to this blog and say the nastiest things to the people that I cared about the most. And over what! Gas prices and the fact that congress wouldn’t do a thing about it! What a waste that would have been! And when I finally had my plans straight to tell everyone off then my self hatred started to creep in again. The one who stopped me was God. I prayed for Him to calm me down and He did. He told me while I was stressing at work “it’s alright, my son. I AM still in control.” I had to get a grip over myself to keep me from busting out crying in the middle of work when He said that. But He filled me with peace again and I finally had regained myself. Who I was always meant to be! You can let the things of this world tear you apart or you can fight hard for the ones that you love. There’s plenty of things to tear you apart in this world. The licker that I am enjoying now can kill you, but you can take it as a blessing from God and keep it from controlling you. The Snuff that I am enjoying now is addictive, but you can hold back from it if you trust in God. Everything in this world seeks your destruction if you let it! “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12) It’s within our own mind that the battle must be waged! The temptation to see our selfs as a victim to this world is strong and it’s deeply rooted in our culture but you must fight it if you wish to live a happy life. It’s hard! But we were not promised an easy life on this earth and everyone has a battle to fight. This I know this to be true: one can not bare the cross of another’s. So many times that I talk to others and I realize that if I had been given their circumstances I would be dead. However the vice versa is also true. God tailors our struggles for us and gives us a way out. “Enjoy prosperity while you can, but when hard times strike, realize that both come from God. Remember that nothing is certain in this life.” (Ecclesiastes 7:14)

I know that for you atheists out there I have not given you any good reason to trust in God. In fact it is Irrational of me to say that there is a God. I don’t have a single shred of proof for you that there is a God. However I do have a question for you. Has your fight against the existence of God made you a much happier and kinder person? If it has, then by all means keep on fighting! Make your case to the absolute best of your ability and never hold back! However if it has not, then I think you should ask yourself why that is. I’m am by no means the person that you will be accountable to but rather, yourself. If I am wrong and my faith profits me nothing I can at least say at the end of all things that my faith in God had given me a much more joyous life than I could have possibly have imagined. Will that be true of you my fellow and beloved atheists? We are all born and we all die but what does a life gain if it has no love? What does all the wealth of the earth matter if everyone hates you name for all of eternity? If it is too hard for you to love a God that allows for such a crazy and evil world to exist, then at least love thous around you. You can ether take joy or hate to the grave. I chose Joy!

1 comment.

Another Obama Post!

Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Immigration, Energy, Environment, Abortion, Party System, War, Law, Constitutional Law, Terrorism, Republicans, Democrats, Iraq, Israel, Economics.

Yes yes, that’s right! I’m posting on Obama again because this is just too important to pass up. Townhall.com has had two of my favorite talk show hosts: Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager. I’ll start with Prager’s article first:

My bottom line is this: The gulf between John McCain and conservatives is miniscule compared to the gulf between John McCain and Barack Obama. This is true regarding virtually every issue of significance to America. The America that a President Barack Obama would shape, with the help of a Democratic Congress and a liberal Supreme Court, would be very dissimilar from the America shaped by a President John McCain.

Conservatives who will not vote for McCain are well-intentioned utopians. They are comparing McCain to a consistently conservative candidate. The reality, however, is that McCain is not running against a consistently conservative candidate. He is running against a consistently left-wing candidate. And America cannot afford to have its first leftist president ever. It can afford liberal presidents — such as Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter (who governed as a liberal but became a leftist after leaving the White House), or John F. Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson, or Harry Truman — i.e., all the Democrats who have been president since World War II. But the Democratic Party has moved well to the left of liberalism. And Barack Obama is at the left of that left-wing party.

Furthermore, given the strong possibility of a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, and a liberal Supreme Court for decades to come, given the number of Supreme Court appointments a Democratic president will be able to make, an Obama victory will move America more radically leftward than ever in its history.

The Supreme court is good reason in it’s self! It’s taken a long to just to get it to a swing court. An Obama presidency will ensure that it stays a swing court and possibly reverse what we have wanted all along. The next president has the possibility of picking the next six supreme court justices.

That is why the argument that an Obama administration will be so destructive that Americans will reject the left and then elect a real conservative to undo the damage done in an Obama presidency is deeply flawed.

First of all, other than impeachment, there is no way to undo Supreme Court appointments, two or three of which a President Obama would likely make. And given how active most liberal judges are, it won’t matter much if the country has some conservative epiphany and then elects a Republican president and Congress. Because even if the Congress and the president will not pass liberal legislation, a liberal Supreme Court will. On almost any social issue that matters — the right to bear arms, late-term abortion, the definition of marriage, capital punishment, and many others — a liberal Supreme Court will rule on these issues, and there will be nothing that a post-Obama Republican president, even with a Republican congress, will be able to do about them.

Moreover, the argument that Americans will have a conservative epiphany after four years of an Obama presidency is predicated on America being greatly damaged by his policies. What kind of mindset welcomes such damage to the country it loves for the sake of potentially gaining politically after the damage is done? Is it, for example, really worth a considerably weakened economy (which Barack Obama’s tax and other economic policies would likely lead to), with its widespread suffering and unforeseeable social and political consequences, just to — hopefully — get a conservative into the White House four or eight years later?

And the damage won’t necessarily be undone. Even Ronald Reagan, the most popular conservative to ever serve as president, could not roll back most liberal creations. He never could get rid of the useless Department of Education, for example. Nor could a then-popular President George W. Bush do a thing about Social Security even when he had a Republican House and Senate. And how will Barack Obama’s successor undo the damage done to Iraq, the Middle East, the War on Islamic Terror, and the credibility of America’s assurances to allies once Iraq slides into chaos as a result of America’s precipitous withdrawal from Iraq?

Therefore, as well meaning and sincere as many conservatives are, this mode of thinking — let the country suffer under a left-wing president, Congress, and Supreme Court and then it will come to its conservative senses — will likely lead to a downward spiral from which it is hard to see the country escaping for a generation, if it is lucky.

There is one person who can prevent this unhappy future — John McCain.

He will not raise taxes, the last thing we should be doing in a weakened economy.

He will reduce government spending, and thereby prevent the state from controlling even more of American life.

He will ensure that America wins in Iraq. That will make one of the biggest and richest Arab states the freest of the Arab states. And it will hand Islamic terrorists the biggest defeat they have ever suffered. It will teach potential enemies not to attack America (whether Iraq did so directly is irrelevant to the point). And it will reassure America’s allies around the world, many of whom, as in Iraq, risk their lives for America and liberty, that America will never abandon them.

He will appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court and to federal benches, thereby depriving the left of its most powerful weapon in reshaping America in its image.

He may attract enough Hispanic votes (while securing the borders) to prevent that critical constituency from identifying with the Democratic Party, something that would ensure left-wing victories for decades to come.

He will develop nuclear power, environmentalist (read leftist) opposition to which has been morally indefensible. We would all love to have a solar powered or wind powered country. However, on planet earth at this time, nuclear power may be the cleanest source of energy we have. That is why France, not heretofore known as politically conservative, relies on nuclear power for nearly 80 percent of its electricity.

Now to Hugh Hewitt’s bit:

The key: McCain will pursue victory in the war, deter our enemies because of his reputation for strength and defend the country via aggressive pursuit of terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever they are, and get most of the judicial nominees right. He’ll keep taxes where they are if he can.

Obama, on the other hand, is just now coming into focus for other than the already committed Obamians. He had a stumbling, bumbling close to his primary campaign, and the opening weeks of his general campaign have been marked by flip flops and lurches left.

Here’s the core of Obama:

He’s hard left.

He wants the marginal rate on total federal taxes, including his social security tax hike, to immediately rise at least 57% on the highest earners. Obama wants to raise taxes even in a weak economy, though this is a recipe not just for recession but worse. Obama also wants to raise taxes on dividend income and to return the death tax to its highs of eight years ago.

Obama has proposed more than a trillion dollars in new spending.

Obama is going to absolutely destroy this economy even worse than it is.

Obama wants to cut and run from Iraq, with withdrawals of crucial forces beginning immediately upon his entry into office. Obama has never met one on one with General Petraeus and has not been to Iraq in more than 900 days. He is indifferent to the incredible progress made by our troops and the Iraqi Defense Forces and the Iraqi government in the last 18 months.

He supports the decision extending habeas rights to Gitmo detainees and he thinks the most liberal member of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a great model for future Supreme Court appointments.

Obama supports gay marriage, and opposes the California constitutional amendment to restore marriage to the definition overturned by a 4-3 vote of the California Supreme Court in May. He supports abortion on demand, including partial birth abortion.

If any of you care about abortion and gay marriage, Obama’s going to shove it down your through.

Obama has the slightest grasp on history, and routinely makes the sort of errors about basic facts that shock knowledgeable observers, like arguing the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna was an example of the benefits of one-on-one diplomacy.

Obama is not a strong friend of Israel. He spent 20 years in a church that was openly hostile to Israel, and he reversed himself on Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel after one day of criticism by Palestinians.

Obama is running a dirty campaign, and the serial assaults on John McCain’s service, most visibly by Wesley Clark but by many others closely associated with Obama, is repulsive. These are not hits by independent 527s but by close associates and advisors of Obama.

Michelle Obama’s campaign rhetoric has been very divisive, is full of anger and resentment about “moving the bar,” and not being proud of the country, and has led to her high negatives with the public.

Obama’s close friends, mentors and associates are deeply troubling: the radical pastor Jeremiah Wright, the unrepentant terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the convicted swindler Tony Rezko, and now a long line of “public housing developers” who took the money and failed to deliver on promises of safe and secure housing for Obama’s poorest constituents.

Obama’s judgment on key appointees is suspect, and he has had to fire the head of his vice presidential search team because of ties to the subprime mess and dump numerous “foreign policy advisors” for their hostility to Israel.

Obama’s deal with the Teamsters to end federal oversight of the union smells very bad indeed and telegraphs the sort of cronyism we could expect from an Obama Adminsitration. Obama’s mentor and real estate partner is Rezko, who helped the Obama’s buy their home, a home on which the Obamas received a mortgage that looks to many like a sweetheart deal.

Obama, like the other leaders of the Triple D Democrats –the Don’t Drill Democrats– doesn’t care about the price of gas, and refuses every initiative to increase supply and thus bring that price down.

Obama has broken his word on his commitment to public financing of the campaign and to meet John McCain in frequent debates. Obama can’t be trusted to keep even high-profile promises he made even only weeks ago.

Away from a teleprompter Obama stumbles and stutters and lapses into a closed circle of cliches that betrays almost no reading or curiosity about the world around him,and a massive ignorance of the war in which we find ourselves. Even when he works from a prompter he says nothing at great length with wonder phrasing but zero substance.

His crowds are enormous and his coffers overflowing, the products of a highly energized and vitriolic left that expects –believes it will be owed, in fact– the spoils of the election. If Obama wins, the sharpest lurch left in American history is ahead of us.

Barack Obama is not only the most radical nominee of a major American political party in history, he is also the least prepared and the least informed. He has spent less than four years inside of the United States Senate, and much of those years have been spent away from his job and away from the capital he wants to lead. But he is protected and his campaign nurtured by a MSM that swooned for him long ago. The prolonged and serious scrutiny of his background and his proposals will not be forthcoming in any consistent way between now and November.

And that’s the argument against Obama. So what’s the argument for him? Oh, yea that’s right: he’s for change! Well if you are looking for big changes to where the government is in control of every aspect of your life then Obama is your man. I’ll pass on that! I’m voteing for McCain.

0 comments.

The President gives another great speech

Posted on May 19th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Crime, War, Law, Terrorism, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Economics.

This from The whitehouse.gov:

Laura and I are delighted to be in Egypt, and we bring the warm wishes of the American people. We’re proud of our long friendship with your citizens. We respect your remarkable history. And we’re humbled to walk in the ancient land of pharaohs, where a great civilization took root and wrote some of the first chapters in the epic story of humanity.

America is a much younger nation, but we’ve made our mark by advancing ideals as old as the pyramids. Those ideals of liberty and justice have sparked a revolution across much of the world. This hopeful movement made its way to places where dictators once reigned and peaceful democracies seemed unimaginable: places like Chile and Indonesia and Poland and the Philippines and South Korea. These nations have different histories and different traditions. Yet each made the same democratic transition, and they did it on their own terms. In these countries, millions every year are rising from poverty. Women are realizing overdue opportunities. And people of faith are finding the blessing of worshiping God in peace.

All these changes took place in the second half of the 20th century. I strongly believe that if leaders like those of you in this room act with vision and resolve, the first half of 21st century can be the time when similar advances reach the Middle East. This region is home to energetic people, a powerful spirit of enterprise, and tremendous resources. It is capable of a very bright future — a future in which the Middle East is a place of innovation and discovery, driven by free men and women.

In recent years, we’ve seen hopeful beginnings toward this vision. Turkey, a nation with a majority Muslim population, is a prosperous modern democracy. Afghanistan under the leadership of President Karzai is overcoming the Taliban and building a free society. Iraq under the leadership of Prime Minister Maliki is establishing a multi-ethnic democracy. We have seen the stirrings of reform from Morocco and Algeria to Jordan and the Gulf States. And isolation from the outside world is being overcome by the most democratic of innovations: the cell phone and the Internet. America appreciates the challenges facing the Middle East. Yet the light of liberty is beginning to shine.

There is much to do to build on this momentum. From diversifying your economies, to investing in your people, to extending the reach of freedom, nations across the region have an opportunity to move forward with bold and confident reforms — and lead the Middle East to its rightful place as a center of progress and achievement.

Taking your place as a center of progress and achievement requires economic reform. This is a time of strength for many of your nations’ economies. Since 2004, economic growth in the region has averaged more than 5 percent. Trade has expanded significantly. Technology has advanced rapidly. Foreign investment has increased dramatically. And unemployment rates have decreased in many nations. Egypt, for example, has posted strong economic growth, developed some of the world’s fastest growing telecommunications companies, and made major investments that will boost tourism and trade. In order for this economic progress to result in permanent prosperity and an Egypt that reaches its full potential, however, economic reform must be accompanied by political reform. And I continue to hope that Egypt can lead the region in political reform.

This is also a time to prepare for the economic changes ahead. Rising price of oil has brought great wealth to some in this region, but the supply of oil is limited, and nations like mine are aggressively developing alternatives to oil. Over time, as the world becomes less dependent on oil, nations in the Middle East will have to build more diverse and more dynamic economies.

Your greatest asset in this quest is the entrepreneurial spirit of your people. The best way to take advantage of that spirit is to make reforms that unleash individual creativity and innovation. Your economies will be more vibrant when citizens who dream of starting their own companies can do so quickly, without high regulatory and registration costs. Your economies will be more dynamic when property rights are protected and risk-taking is encouraged — not punished — by law. Your economies will be more resilient when you adopt modern agricultural techniques that make farmers more productive and the food supply more secure. And your economies will have greater long-term prosperity when taxes are low and all your citizens know that their innovation and hard work will be rewarded.

One of the most powerful drivers of economic growth is free trade. So nations in this region would benefit greatly from breaking down barriers to trade with each other. And America will continue working to open up trade at every level. In recent years, the United States has completed free trade agreements with Jordan, Oman, Morocco, and Bahrain. America will continue to negotiate bilateral free trade agreements in the region. We strongly supported Saudi Arabia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, and we will continue to support nations making the reforms necessary to join the institutions of a global economy. To break down trade barriers and ignite economic growth around the world, we will work tirelessly for a successful outcome to the Doha Round this year.

As we seek to open new markets abroad, America will keep our markets open at home. There are voices in my country that urge America to adopt measures that would isolate us from the global economy. I firmly reject these calls for protectionism. We will continue to welcome foreign investment and trade. And the United States of America will stay open for business.

Taking your place as a center of progress and achievement requires investing in your people. Some analysts believe the Middle East and North Africa will need to create up to 100 million new jobs over the next 10 to 15 years just to keep up with population growth. The key to realizing this goal is an educated workforce.

This starts early on, with primary schools that teach basic skills, such as reading and math, rather than indoctrinating children with ideologies of hatred. An educated workforce also requires good high schools and universities, where students are exposed to a variety of ideas, learn to think for themselves, and develop the capacity to innovate. Not long ago the region marked a hopeful milestone in higher education. In our meeting yesterday, President Karzai told me he recently handed out diplomas to university graduates, including 300 degrees in medicine, and a hundred degrees in engineering, and a lot of degrees to lawyers, and many of the recipients were women. (Applause.)

People of the Middle East can count on the United States to be a strong partner in improving your educational systems. We are sponsoring training programs for teachers and administrators in nations like Jordan and Morocco and Lebanon. We sponsored English language programs where students can go for intensive language instruction. We have translated more than 80 children’s books into Arabic. And we have developed new online curricula for students from kindergarten through high school.

It is also in America’s interest to continue welcoming aspiring young adults from this region for higher education to the United States. There were understandable concerns about student visas after 9/11. My administration has worked hard to improve the visa process. And I’m pleased to report that we are issuing a growing numbers of student visas to young people from the Middle East. And that’s the way it should be. And we’ll continue to work to expand educational exchanges, because we benefit from the contribution of foreign students who study in America because we’re proud to train the world’s leaders of tomorrow and because we know there is no better antidote to the propaganda of our enemies than firsthand experience with life in the United States of America.

Building powerful economies also requires expanding the role of women in society. This is a matter of morality and of basic math. No nation that cuts off half its population from opportunities will be as productive or prosperous as it could be. Women are a formidable force, as I have seen in my own family — (laughter and applause) — and my own administration. (Applause.) As the nations of the Middle East open up their laws and their societies to women, they are learning the same thing.

I applaud Egypt. Egypt is a model for the development of professional women. In Afghanistan, girls who were once denied even a basic education are now going to school, and a whole generation of Afghans will grow up with the intellectual tools to lead their nation toward prosperity. In Iraq and Kuwait, women are joining political parties and running campaigns and serving in public office. In some Gulf States, women entrepreneurs are making a living and a name for themselves in the business world.

This shows good economic understanding on the part of the president. Why do people keep on saying he’s stupid?

Taking your place as a center of progress and achievement requires extending the reach of freedom. Expanding freedom is vital to turning temporary wealth into lasting prosperity. Free societies stimulate competition in the marketplace. Free societies give people access to information they need to make informed and responsible decisions. And free societies give citizens the rule of law, which exposes corruption and builds confidence in the future.

Freedom is also the basis for a democratic system of government, which is the only fair and just ordering of society and the only way to guarantee the God-given rights of all people. Democracies do not take the same shape; they develop at different speeds and in different ways, and they reflect the unique cultures and traditions of their people. There are skeptics about democracy in this part of the world, I understand that. But as more people in the Middle East gain firsthand experience from freedom, many of the arguments against democracy are being discredited.

For example, some say that democracy is a Western value that America seeks to impose on unwilling citizens. This is a condescending form of moral relativism. The truth is that freedom is a universal right — the Almighty’s gift to every man, woman, and child on the face of Earth. And as we’ve seen time and time again, when people are allowed to make a choice between freedom and the alternative, they choose freedom. In Afghanistan, 8 million people defied the terrorist threats to vote for a democratic President. In Iraq, 12 million people waved ink-stained fingers to celebrate the first democratic election in decades. And in a recent survey of the Muslim world, there was overwhelming support for one of the central tenets of democracy, freedom of speech: 99 percent in Lebanon, 94 percent here in Egypt, and 92 percent in Iran.

There are people who claim that democracy is incompatible with Islam. But the truth is that democracies, by definition, make a place for people of religious belief. America is one of the most — is one of the world’s leading democracies, and we’re also one of the most religious nations in the world. More than three-quarters of our citizens believe in a higher power. Millions worship every week and pray every day. And they do so without fear of reprisal from the state. In our democracy, we would never punish a person for owning a Koran. We would never issue a death sentence to someone for converting to Islam. Democracy does not threaten Islam or any religion. Democracy is the only system of government that guarantees their protection.

Some say any state that holds an election is a democracy. But true democracy requires vigorous political parties allowed to engage in free and lively debate. True democracy requires the establishment of civic institutions that ensure an election’s legitimacy and hold leaders accountable. And true democracy requires competitive elections in which opposition candidates are allowed to campaign without fear or intimidation.

Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail. America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down, and dissidents whose voices are stifled. The time has come for nations across the Middle East to abandon these practices, and treat their people with dignity and the respect they deserve. I call on all nations to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate, and trust their people to chart their future. (Applause.)

The vision I have outlined today is shared by many in this region — but unfortunately, there are some spoilers who stand in the way. Terrorist organizations and their state sponsors know they cannot survive in a free society, so they create chaos and take innocent lives in an effort to stop democracy from taking root. They are on the wrong side in a great ideological struggle — and every nation committed to freedom and progress in the Middle East must stand together to defeat them.

We must stand with the Palestinian people, who have suffered for decades and earned the right to be a homeland of their own — have a homeland of their own. I strongly support a two-state solution — a democratic Palestine based on law and justice that will live with peace and security alongside a democrat Israel. I believe that the Palestinian people will build a thriving democracy in which entrepreneurs pursue their dreams, and families own their homes in lively communities, and young people grow up with hope in the future.

Last year at Annapolis, we made a hopeful beginning toward a peace negotiation that will outline what this nation of Palestine will look like — a contiguous state where Palestinians live in prosperity and dignity. A peace agreement is in the Palestinians’ interests, it is in Israel’s interests, it is in Arab states’ interests, and it is in the world’s interests. And I firmly believe that with leadership and courage, we can reach that peace agreement this year. (Applause.)

This is a demanding task. It requires action on all sides. Palestinians must fight terror and continue to build the institutions of a free and peaceful society. Israel must make tough sacrifices for peace and ease the restrictions on the Palestinians. Arab states, especially oil-rich nations, must seize this opportunity to invest aggressively in the Palestinian people and to move past their old resentments against Israel. And all nations in the region must stand together in confronting Hamas, which is attempting to undermine efforts at peace with acts of terror and violence.

We must stand with the people of Lebanon in their struggle to build a sovereign and independent democracy. This means opposing Hezbollah terrorists, funded by Iran, who recently revealed their true intentions by taking up arms against the Lebanese people. It is now clearer than ever that Hezbollah militias are the enemy of a free Lebanon — and all nations, especially neighbors in the region, have an interest to help the Lebanese people prevail. (Applause.)

We must stand with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and other nations in the region fighting against al Qaeda and other extremists. Bin Laden and his followers have made clear that anyone who does not share their extremist ideology is fit for murder. That means every government in the Middle East is a target of al Qaeda. And America is a target too. And together, we will confront and we will defeat this threat to civilization.

We must stand with the good and decent people of Iran and Syria, who deserve so much better than the life they have today. Every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in stopping these nations from supporting terrorism. And every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. To allow the world’s leading sponsor of terror to gain the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)

The changes I have discussed today will not come easily — change never does. But the reform movement in the Middle East has a powerful engine: demographics. Sixty percent of the population is under 30 years old. Many of these young people surf the web, own cell phones, have satellite televisions. They have access to unprecedented amounts of information. They see what freedom has brought to millions of others and contrast that to what they have at home.

Today, I have a message for these young people: Some tell — some will tell you change is impossible, but history has a way of surprising us, and change can happen more quickly than we expect. In the past century, one concept has transcended borders, cultures, and languages. In Arabic, “hurriyya” — in English, “freedom.” Across the world, the call for freedom lives in our hearts, endures in our prayers, and joins humanity as one.

I know these are trying times, but the future is in your hands — and freedom and peace are within your grasp. Just imagine what this region could look like in 60 years. The Palestinian people will have the homeland they have long dreamed of and deserve — a democratic state that is governed by law, respects human rights, and rejects terror. Israel will be celebrating its 120 anniversary as one of the world’s great democracies — a secure and flourishing homeland for the Jewish people.

Again he outlines that freedom is the way to defeat the Jihadist.

From Cairo, Riyadh, Baghdad to Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies, where a desire for peace is reinforced by ties of diplomacy and tourism and trade. Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations, where today’s oppression is a distant memory and people are free to speak their minds and develop their talents. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists’ vision and the injustice of their cause.

This vision is the same one I outlined in my address to the Israeli Knesset. Yet it’s not a Jewish vision or a Muslim vision, not an American vision or an Arab vision. It is a universal vision, based on the timeless principles of dignity and tolerance and justice — and it unites all who yearn for freedom and peace in this ancient land.

Realizing this vision will not be easy. It will take time, and sacrifice, and resolve. Yet there is no doubt in my mind that you are up to the challenge — and with your ingenuity and your enterprise and your courage, this historic vision for the Middle East will be realized. May God be with you on the journey, and the United States of America always will be at your side.

Despite the fact that many people hate him, I still believe that President Gorge W. Bush will later be regarded as one of the best presidents we have had in some time. He has made some massively bad decisions in his presidency but he has made the right decisions that have keep us safe for the last 7 years. This speech shows that he is a visionary president who see a time that there will be peace in the middle east but it is a peace that will take time to come to pass. Now that a new generation is starting to take hold of this county, it’s time that we start to work hard and fight hard to keep this great nation intact. Given enough time and had work we can make the Jihadist movement in this world a thing of the past. It will be hard but for the sake of our children, we must do it.

2 comments.

Here’s a post for the Pacifist Muse

Posted on April 22nd, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, War, Terrorism, Islam, Judaism, Israel, Christianity, Palestine.

Just Read up here P Muse, I have an article from the New York Times just for you:

The Islamist Hamas group said on Monday it would accept the establishment of a Palestinian state on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, but it was not prepared to recognize the Jewish state.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, in an apparent softening of the group’s position, was confirming an account of his remarks given by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter after two meetings in Damascus over the weekend.

“We accept a state on the June 4 line with Jerusalem as capital, real sovereignty and full right of return for refugees but without recognizing Israel,” Meshaal told reporters, referring to the borders as they stood before the 1967 war

Sounds great doesn’t it! All they need to do is go back to pre-67 borders and you have peace! Well actually NO! here is the real key to the entire article:

Carter said his understandings with Hamas called for a referendum to be preceded by reconciliation between the group and Abbas’s Fatah faction. Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah in June and Abbas has demanded the territory’s return.

Gaza-based Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Palestinian refugees living in exile must take part in a referendum — a condition that could dim the chances of approval since Israel opposes their mass return to what is now the Jewish state.

“TRANSITIONAL”

Abu Zuhri also noted Hamas would see any future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as “transitional.”

Speaking later to reporters, Carter said Hamas leaders whom he met “didn’t say anything about transitional.”

Translation: we start with the west bank and then start a “transitional” move into Israel. Once they move into Israel then you no longer have a Jewish state there but another Palestinian one that will just oppress the Jews just like the others do. Quite a grate deal that good OL’ Jimmy has cooked up for the Israelis, ay. And he still doesn’t get it even when people inform him of it. “Well they never said anything about that?” That doesn’t really invoke confidence now does it? Not to mention that in Hamas’es charter is the destruction of Israel (another words the reason that this terrorist group exists is to destroy Israel). Mass moving Palestinians into Israel and taking control of the government is an easy way to do that. We have also seen them do the same thing to other countries in the past, for example Lebanon. Lebanon was a majority Christan country for a long time until Palestinians started moving into their country and slowly started to take over and anyone who was not one of them was pulled out of their car and shot on the spot. Don’t believe me? How about you try reading Because they Hate by Brigitte Gabriel a woman who was there when the Jihadist took over her country. So if you are “open minded” then why don’t you try and read the other side and go ahead and let your emotions get wrapped around that one too! Since you make no distinction will your emotions still lead you to the Palestinians side or thous who lives they destroy. Most of the time I just want clarity but this is a subject that I do want to change your mind because it threatens us as well. The Jihadist calls the Israelis the “little satin” but they call us the “big satin” and we are just as much in their cross hairs as the Israelis are. I don’t even agree with Brigitte Gabriel on everything but she does have life experiences with the enemy that we face and it is critical that we defeat them. This is war and a hard one at that because not only do we need to kill the Jihadist but also we need to somehow train up their children not to follow the ways of their fathers but to work for real peace and not the fake kind that you want. Introducing liberty in these cultures will not be easy and may even take many generations to accomplish be we need to do it because we can’t fight a billion Muslims. And we’re not going to nuke them because we just don’t do that sort of thing and also there are many peace loving Palestinians and they do deserve a chance at life! The peace you want is not realistic because every time the Israelis give up something to the Palestinians they turn around and use to to attack the Israelis and any peace agreement just gives them time to rebuild for the next attack as the article puts simply here:

“Israel is targeted on a daily basis by rocket barrages from Hamas controlled territory in the Gaza Strip. Israel sees no change in Hamas’s extremist positions,” said David Baker, a spokesman in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office.

Not to mention that the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, will take the deal and then continue to kill Jews as he had said here:

“We accept a state on the June 4 line with Jerusalem as capital, real sovereignty and full right of return for refugees but without recognizing Israel,” Meshaal told reporters, referring to the borders as they stood before the 1967 war.

Translation: they will just use the west bank as another platform to attack Israel. There will be no peace without victory and Israel is an ally of ours and we need to help them out. If we sit around and wait to see Jerusalem go up in a cloud of smoke then the entire middle east will also go up in a cloud of smoke because by that time Israel will not care anymore. Sorry bro, but we are at war here and while it is true that the Israelis can do some appalling things but it still fails in comparison to the Russians who we had to ally our selfs with in order to win the second world war. First we need victory then we can work on changing them. We just need to do what America does best; free enslaved people and teach them about liberty. We did it for Germany, Japan, South Korea, Afghanistan and we are still in progress with Iraq. This is The United States of America and if we set our minds to and and work hard for it we can get it done!

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The entanglement called Palestine: Identity and Narrative

Posted on April 15th, 2008 by Pacifist Muse.
Categories: Political, Creative Writing, Islam, Judaism, Religon, Christianity, Palestine.

Occupied East Jerusalem, The Old City, Summer 2007.

The warm light of a slow solar setting casts its animating rays over the signs of too much in too little a space. The competing symbols of multiple multi-faced traditions collide and tensely co-inside in a space that necessarily implies an opposed overlap. Seemingly so.

The confusion of talking tongues narrating too many tales makes faithful repetition far too complex for politicians and outsiders and insiders alike. The babel of rhetoric is deafening. And yet the narratives stand up and demand rightful recognition like the symbols, edifices, and persons to which they give situation and meaning.

The day’s old rays cast the red-orange light of gold off the muezzin’s minaret onto the faint white blue landscape of the Zionist’s national symbol. The whole scene casts a long dark shadow over the last wailing prayers of an Ashkenazic Jew at the walls of Kotel remembering deliverance from the persecution of Christian eugenic madness. As the last evening prayers at the gates of heaven called Kotel fade the sound of the muezzin’s call to prayer rings out and is echoed back by other muezzins in other minarets. Three birds christen the moment, fleeing like prayers into the sun’s eclipsing crescent as it falls belows the earth’s horizon.

The architectural entanglement that is Old City Jerusalem is a stone and metal symbol of the competition of national narratives in Israel and Palestine. In Palestine. In Israel.

The wanton demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem: a destructive symbol of a wider disentanglement of allegedly opposed narratives and identities, in which one people’s remains and the other’s is at best repressed and at worst cleansed from existence.

“They” say that the ensuing violence is a causal inevitability of such an entanglement and certainly such a disentanglement. I wonder. Wonder if such an entanglement could not be interpreted differently? Could it be that in the interpretation of entangled difference, as the possibility of coexistence, there is beauty and truth far more poignant than any sterilized uniformity or deterministic assumption of violence? Could it be that the assumption of perpetual conflict is as racist as it sounds? Could it be that it is the misuse of power and weaponry and not the difference itself that necessitates violent conflict?

The birds over this picture of entangled identities are doves. A Judaic, Christian, and Muslim symbol of peace.

12 comments.

Hassan: Identity and Dispossession

Posted on April 4th, 2008 by Pacifist Muse.
Categories: Political, Creative Writing, Palestine.

“Hassan: Identity and Dispossession”

There is, here, a timeless present, and here no one can find anyone.

No one remembers how we went out the door like a gust of wind,

and at what hour we fell from yesterday, and then

yesterday shattered on the tiles

in shards for others to reassemble into mirrors

reflecting their images over ours.

~Mahmoud Darwish (From “The Owl’s Night”)

Hassan’s ivy green eyes flashed in the sunlight as he peered out into the street and said: “hello!” In Deheisheh refugee camp streets are more like alleyways and running water is a luxury left to the whim of the Israeli gods who occupy this land. I responded in Arabic, marhaba! Hello. His curious face brightened, ivy greens squinted in my direction and he smiled as he reached for my hand.

The door to Hassan’s home was a deep emerald green; the calligraphic flow of red Arabic graffiti danced across its steel surface between speckles of red rust like maroon stars in a sky of bright jade—the literature of the dispossessed. Deheisheh camp is a paradox of beauty and depravity. Like a white orchid in the desert, a red rose in a vast rock bed, glints of splendor haunt the otherwise impoverished camp.

The people and their uninhibited hospitality. The rich color-filled labyrinth of homes with doors that serve as canvas and paper for the voiceless refugee. The grainy smell of frying falafel. The warm scent of fresh pita. All amidst the extreme poverty and oppression that grows out of military occupation.

Perhaps it should have surprised me when Hassan, not more than ten years old, took my hand and said ahalan wu’sahhalan “welcome.” But it didn’t. And perhaps it should have surprised me that within minutes Meg and I were seated in Hassan’s family’s courtyard outside his house sipping steaming “chai”. Tea. But it didn’t.

Hassan’s English was broken. Each time he couldn’t recall a word or a phrase he put his head down and apologized. Hassan and his younger siblings and friends squealed with excitement as they asked us questions about Amriica and Filistin. About our homes; and what did we think of theirs?

Why were we here in “Filistin”? To find hope and beauty in the midst of ethnic cleansing. Did we like it here? Yes we do, very much. But sometimes it makes us weep.

They giggled when we cursed Bush. Do we think Palestinians are terrorists? I don’t watch Fox News. Welcome: aha’lan wu’sahhalan. Sipping tea with fourth-generation Palestinian refugees we rested in the shady courtyard of the dispossessed and listened to children who have known more death in their short lives than I will probably ever know.

Among the families of Deheisheh, there are 45 former Palestinian villages represented. Each village they came from was destroyed before the state of Israel was established in 1948 by Jewish Hagana and militia forces; each villages’ inhabitants systematically cleansed from their historic homeland.

I couldn’t help but look into Hassan’s eyes and see a boy whose daily reality and familial narrative makes all the compounded suffering in my life and my family’s life seem insignificant. And I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of guilt. Guilt for my wealth. Guilt for my nation’s role in sustaining Hassan’s suffering.

The tea was sweet, fresh mint leaves gave it spice. As Hassan’s younger brother, not older than 5, smiled at me the last cup of tea slipped off the tray he carried. It shattered on the concrete floor.

It fell from yesterday and shattered on the tiles in shards for another people to reassemble into mirrors reflecting their images over Hassan’s. Identity hijacked and recast in a new image. Land stolen. Homeland occupied.

In the hour or so that we spent with Hassan, his parents were nowhere to be found.

Refugees in their own land, Hassan is like many children forced to act like adults in order to cope with the strains of life under occupation. Under apartheid. I want so badly to scream about Hassan’s pain and romanticize his plight. But I know I shouldn’t.

As we finished our tea and said our goodbyes to our new friends, I saw it in their eyes as clear as crystal: a message for me and for the world…

Understand my suffering. Enjoy my hospitality. Recognize my powerlessness. Tell my story. Enjoy my homeland for its broken beauty, its wild potential. Drink “chai” with me and don’t forget what you have seen and heard but whatever you do don’t fall in love with my suffering. There is nothing lovely about it.

5 comments.

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