Seaver

/Sigh....

There were many violent attacks against the Jews in Spain during and after the reconquest. The Inquisition was not aimed at non-Christians, believe it or not they were left primarily alone. It was aimed at Christians who did not adhear closely to dogmatic tradition.

People who had recently converted with the reconquest, old Muslims and Jews who threw thier hat in with the new conquerors and converted. The purpose was that they carried along with them too many "heretical" traditions and faiths.

The violence towards the Jews were by Muslims and Christians, however by different reasons. The Attacks in Cordoba were because the Muslims saw the Jews gaining too much power in a state that was crumbling. Therefore the Jews were responsible for the crumbling power and caused the weeks of attacks.

Christians had rumors that Jews would steal and crusify Christian babies, so these would erupt in riots that would kill the jews. But the institutionalized slaughter of jews by the Inquisition is a myth.

Nirvana

ok i was just watching an interview with thomas friedman, writer of From Beirut to Jeruslaem. Thomas Friedman, as you may or may not know, is a decorated New York Times columnist and he has great kowledge of the middle east, spending many years there since the 80s or so. he said that he was in syria talking to three journalists. one wanted the complete destruction of israel. the other, as he put it, got a "buzz" from watching hezbollah fight israel. the final journalist said that hezbollah and nasrallah is a menace. three verying opinions. then he commented that too many people in the arab world get the same buzz as the second reporter and have similar hopes as the first reporter and that they need to get over it. he said there will be no new middle east when people like Rafik Hariri, who in my opinion was one of the most progressive and hopeful minds in the middle east, get assassinated and "old-timers" liek nasrallah keep their shit up. he said that these people need to get over their hate and idea of destruction (both ideological and physical) destruction of israel and concentrate on building and moving forward. he also said that the cycle of violence needs to stop because all it does is continue this pattern.

then earlier in the day, i saw comments from the ambrassador of lebanon to the U.S. say that Nasrallah has his respect and the president of lebanon himself has said he holds nasrallah in high regards and that he upholds "arab honor" in the middle east. this is exactly what Friedman was saying. they need to let go of this hope of trying to regain arab honor and to bounce back from what many arabs se as humiliation after losing wars to israel and concentrate on building up. what has been going on in the middle east clearly doesn't work, so it's time for a change.

he then made a commentary on India, a country that has the second most muslims in the world. after the bombings in mumbai weeks ago, he showed how calm india was. why? because india concentrates on building up. they have a muslim president. their leading movie actress is muslim. the richest computer software developer in the country is muslim. in my opinion, thomas friedman knows his stuff.

Mobo123

Nirvana, I agree totally with what you said. But there is that question you and everybody have raised: How the hell do we stop this blind, institutional hatred? How do we stop the killing and bring about a lasting peace among people, neighbors and co-workers, actually, who learn in school to hate?

Has anything ever been done to rid the world of those schools, those Madrassa's (I hope i am spelling that correctly). Instistutional hatred starts very young with arabic children.

Seaver, you're facts are indeed correct. I didnt go into great detail about the inquisition. I could have because my family was orginially from spain but fled because of the inquisition. My family migrated first to greece for about 300 years and then settled in Bulgaria, which is where my father is from. My mother's family had been settled in Vienna for hundreds of years. Not a really healthy place to be a jew in the 1930's.


dlishsguy- send me your addy and i'll forward it to Oslo for consideration. But seriously, Israel's killing of the innocent children tears at me horribly. Why? first, it's tragic to the extreme. Second, that is NOT how jews think or wish to act. Killing is breaking one of the ten commandmants. Not a good thing. Remember what i said earlier; There is nothing more painful to a jewish parent than the loss of his/her child. Personally, I would choose my own death if it would protect my children if such a situation arose.

Why cant arab's feel the same way? Why cant hezbollah respect their own countrymen, their own people, their own neighbors? Why do they allow such brutalities to occur to their own people?

Ok, you say hizbollah is a rag tag army. Get them all together, get them away from all civilians and then have at it. That's one solution. But they will never do it. They prefer screaming headlines, "Israel bombs mosques', "Israel bombs house with children in it".

You talked about Israel trying to play the high road, using the past injustices as a means for this onslaught. But what do you call how hizbollah operates? They know they are going to be attacked but they choose to hide with the very youngest and oldest, the most vulnerable. So, who's the culpable party here? Who's is trying to play the media here?

God, i wish we had some answers.

But Israel explained what they did what they did last night. That area was filled with arms, militants, etc etc etc. I have no idea if this is true or if it just propoganda. I can only hope and pray that the latter is true. Otherwise, it's just state-sanctioned murder. Israel was NOT built to allow that.

I know that this is horrible. How can anyone deny it? On the surface, the wanton destruction of Lebanese infrastructure is insane. But when you look at it from a miliatary and political view, it makes sense. For thousands of years, armys/countries at war have always destroyed civilian's as a means to force their gov't to try to stop whatever conflict/war that was going on. Perfect example: Sherman's march to Atlanta. The union soldiers burned, stole, murdered, raped and pillaged their way through the south, leaving nothing left.

Israel is doing the same thing but, sadly, tragically, that strategy wont have the same effect. The intensity of the arabic hatred is only rising. Hatred of Israel is at an all time high, if that is even possible. So, current Israeli strategy is not even close to being in the best interests of Israel.

I just wish someone, anyone, knew and could implement a permanent, rationale, working solution. I just dont know if it could ever happen.

But what else can Israel do? How can they stop these militants from attacking Israel whenever and whereever they want? I dont mean to sound mean or vindictive but do YOU have an answer on how to stop these daily attacks?

Diishguy, you failed to answer one issue i raised. Prior to this war, the daily rocket attacks, the suicide bombers. How many countries on this planet have to deal with that every day? In your case, what would John Howard and the aussie govt. do if Australia was attacked every single day by a foreign country or foreign extremists? I doubt they would just throw another shrimp on the barbie.

host

Got a destabalized and still deteriorating M.E. region on our hands here, with no inclination to even call for a cease fire, or any influence to broker one, even if the will in the U.S. existed to do so????

It is telling, that.....on a politics forum with a primarily U.S. membership, there is no will to discuss the politics and policy failures that are the root cause of the descent into violence in the M.E.

Israel has so successfully achieved it's goal of unilateral U.S. support, that it's leadershp apparently saw no need to consult with the U.S. before destroying the runways at the Beirut airport, cutting off the possibility of a low risk and timely evacuation of any of the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon, at the time, who might decide to leave after hostilities commenced.

Thomas Friedman and most other posters are either "missing the boat", or are avoiding admitting what has actually happened in the M.E. In my last post, I demonstrated that at least one white house correspondent asked the right question, but got no coherent answer from the POTUS, so he asked again:
With a U.S. V.P. from "JINSA", a U.S. "recess appointed" ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, on record as believing that <b>"Israel should insist on Arab recognition of its claim to the biblical land of Israel,"</b>, and the POTUS himself, reported as <b>"Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy""</b>, for Israel, the current <b>"the loss of American influence in the region."</b>, is a:
I sense my own level of anger at this administration and horror over the obviously avoidable violence. If I was an M.E. Muslim or a person of any faith living now in Lebanon Gaza, or in Iraq, I would not be inclined to sit with and sip tea with the NY Time's Thomas Friedman!

Sun Tzu

In the many times I've been there I was treated politely by both Palestinians and Israelis. It was unusual seeing pretty 18 y/o girls with automatic weapons strap to their backs (Israeli settlers), but no one was rude. Most of the people around Bethlehem were Palestinian, and everyone was extremely polite. I Understand the Crusades happend because of the Fatimid prohibition of Christian pilgrimages, but is that the stance presently? I searched the net trying to find where more about what you stated referencing Palestinians would not allow others into Jerusalem. Could you provide a link from a neutral source? There are also Palestinians that are Christians as well.

Many of the times I went was spent helping an archeologist dig and do research. An unexpected conclusion I arrived at is the Israelis are looking for the Ark of the Convenant. Alot of where their primary attention for digging is below Dome of the Rock, whether the Arabs like it or not.

In my opinion one of the main areas of fury is the use of temporary fencing. The plastic make-shift material. An obvious problem lies ahead for Palestinians and Israelis living side by side; especially in the West Bank. Currently, when an Israeli settler that has immigrated from literally anywhere in the world decides they want to expand their property they move the fence over absorbing property that is Arab owned. The courts are obviously going to be biased. So if the Arab defends his land by any other means, they are considered a terrorist.

I know there are extremists on both sides. Each stating that the entire land is rightfully theirs. There was a time that Israel respected the UN; namely when it was recognizing it's statehood. At the same time the West Bank and Gaza was mandated to a majority of the indigenous population. Its from that period of time to the war that most seem to overlook. The terrorism and the motivation behind it happening then, fuels very much of what's happening now. Who is doing it has changed.

__________________
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.- Stephen Hawking

Nirvana

in my opinion, the israeli army is not doing exactly what sherman was. if that was the case, lebanon would be in a much worse state. any military operation is going to be difficult when the enemy hides within civilian homes and territories. israel tried to limit casualties by dropping leaflets into areas that were going to be hit. how succesful that is, who knows. while i don;t beleive this military campaign will be too successful because to win you have to keep face and to be honest, it looks like no one wins here.

host, if you weren't able tot ell from my post, im rehashing what he said in an interview. i though you might be able to tell that it was based off one interview where he answered questions that he was asked. those were the answers and i posted them on here in a short summary. so i don't know what your post has to do with mine because they are adressing different things.

P.S. no one isn't arguing that JINSA isn't shit so a reference to JINSA doesnt address what I said.

Mobo123

Funny you should mention that. I would hope that most people would believe that Canadians are neutral observers of this situation and would tend towards believing this report rather than casting it aside.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...9-7f94d5fc6d50

Hezbollah was using UN post as 'shield'
Canadian wrote of militia's presence, 'necessity' of bombing

The words of a Canadian United Nations observer written just days before he was killed in an Israeli bombing of a UN post in Lebanon are evidence Hezbollah was using the post as a "shield" to fire rockets into Israel, says a former UN commander in Bosnia.

Those words, written in an e-mail dated just nine days ago, offer a possible explanation as to why the post -- which according to UN officials was clearly marked and known to Israeli forces -- was hit by Israel on Tuesday night, said retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie yesterday.

The strike hit the UN observation post in the southern Lebanese village of El Khiam, killing Canadian Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener and three others serving as unarmed UN military observers in the area.

Just last week, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener wrote an e-mail about his experiences after nine months in the area, words Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie said are an obvious allusion to Hezbollah tactics.

"What I can tell you is this," he wrote in an e-mail to CTV dated July 18. "We have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both (Israeli) artillery and aerial bombing.

"The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity."

Those words, particularly the last sentence, are not-so-veiled language indicating Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets near the post, said Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie.

"What that means is, in plain English, 'We've got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the (Israeli Defence Forces)," he said.

That would mean Hezbollah was purposely setting up near the UN post, he added. It's a tactic Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie, who was the first UN commander in Sarajevo during the Bosnia civil war, said he's seen in past international missions: Aside from UN posts, fighters would set up near hospitals, mosques and orphanages.

A Canadian Forces infantry officer with the Edmonton-based Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and the only Canadian serving as a UN military observer in Lebanon, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener was no stranger to fighting nearby.

The UN post, he wrote in the e-mail, afforded a view of the "Hezbollah static positions in and around our patrol Base."

"It appears that the lion's share of fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah has taken place in our area," he wrote, noting later it was too dangerous to venture out on patrols.

The e-mail appears to contradict the UN's claim there had been no Hezbollah activity in the vicinity of the strike.

The question of Hezbollah's infiltration of the area is significant because UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, speaking Tuesday just hours after the bombing, accused the Israelis of the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the base near Khiam in southern Lebanon.

A senior UN official, asked about the information contained in Maj. Hess-von Kruedener's e-mail concerning Hezbollah presence in the vicinity of the Khiam base, denied the world body had been caught in a contradiction.

"At the time, there had been no Hezbollah activity reported in the area," he said. "So it was quite clear they were not going after other targets; that, for whatever reason, our position was being fired upon.

"Whether or not they thought they were going after something else, we don't know. The fact was, we told them where we were. They knew where we were. The position was clearly marked, and they pounded the hell out of us."

Even if Hezbollah was not firing rockets at the time of the bombing, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener's e-mail indicates they were using a terrorist tactic of purposely drawing out enemy forces near a neutral site, said retired Capt. Peter Forsberg, who did two UN tours between 1993 and 1995 during the Bosnian war.

The UN's limited mandate, meaning that its observers are unarmed and have few options, put the observers in a poor position, he said.

If indeed Israel was attempting to hit Hezbollah fighters in the area, it hasn't yet used the excuse to explain its actions because it wouldn't make it any less guilty in the world's eyes, Capt. Forsberg said.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

host

First, as a follow up to my last post, former U.S. treasury secretary Paul O'Neill may not have realized the impact of what he revealed 2-1/2 years ago, in the book he published about the time he spent in the Bush cabinet. His description of Bush declaring, in the first national security meeting of his presidency, that the M.E. peace process would be abandoned, in favor of a "tilt back toward Israel". The repurcussions of this "tilt" in U.S. policy, described in Bush's rambling, disconnected answer to news reporter Gregory's question, detailed in my last post, have resulted in the irrelevancy of the U.S. in the current conflict between Israel and it's neighbors, and gradually, in Iraq, as well:
.....and Mobo123, please provide one link to a MSM report that supports what you claim Christian Zionism to be motivated by:
That description seems to be a poorly written cover story for the actual F.C. "madness", quite pervasive goals of "using" the Israelis to bring about the conditions the F.C. believe are necessary to "trigger" their own rapture, and the destruction of most everyone else in the world, including most of the Israelis who they are "using"!
All nuts....IMO, all very dangerous....and all are indistinguishable from the religious fanatic,
Iran's Ahmadinejad. "Our" fanatics now have many millions of followers who "vote", and they have the ear of the POTUS and half of congress. They intend to "side" with Israel, use the Israelis and rise to heaven to sit at the "right hand of god", and watch as all but 144,000 of the world
s Jews are incinerated. This is serious business. Pastor Hagee has made 23 visits to Israel, and Ted Haggard presides over the "National Association of Evangelicals", and recently built his own mega congregation, from scratch, into an 11,000 member, "worship center", in Colorado Springs, directly across from the U.S. Air Force Academy, which, not coincidentally, seems to have become a recent bastion, itself, of Christian Fundamentalist influence.

Mobo123

Rapture was the term i was searching for. I coudlnt remember it.

But i am lost by your message. 144,000 F.C's people will ascend to heaven while the rest of us die horribly? Is that what the Rapture says?

dlish

Has anything ever been done to rid the world of those schools, those Madrassa's (I hope i am spelling that correctly). Instistutional hatred starts very young with arabic children.


yes quite a lot has been done to moderate madrassas after 911. especially in pakistan where the taliban first emerged. i dont think that your comment about institutionalisation of 'arabic children' is acturate at all. all kids are impressionable and many teachers with agendas will teach their pupils what they believe is truth. be it muslim jew christian agnostic gay and lesbian leftist communist buddhist hindu animist...need i go on.

my point? its not just arabic kids being brainwashed. i was brainwashed as a kid when i went to school here in australia. they kept telling me how brave and righteous our soldiers were in gallipoli..yes they were brave. it was only later when i read into it that i realised that the world war wasnt righteous at all.. does that mean that aussie kids are institutionalised and hate all things foreign? sure, its one sided, but lets not generalise that arab kids are taught hate at a young age. the same could be said about every other race religion or creed.

dlishsguy- send me your addy and i'll forward it to Oslo for consideration.

ill send it in private msg... just dont pass it on to mossad

But seriously, Israel's killing of the innocent children tears at me horribly. Why? first, it's tragic to the extreme. Second, that is NOT how jews think or wish to act. Killing is breaking one of the ten commandmants. Not a good thing. Remember what i said earlier; There is nothing more painful to a jewish parent than the loss of his/her child. Personally, I would choose my own death if it would protect my children if such a situation arose.


killing innocent civilians isnt sanctioned by islam either contrary to what many may believe. theres a verse in the koran that states that if you kill someone, it is like you have killed all of humanity. that is the importance that islam puts on human life.
Why cant arab's feel the same way? Why cant hezbollah respect their own countrymen, their own people, their own neighbors? Why do they allow such brutalities to occur to their own people?

like i said in an earlier post.. they're nutcases. simple. they dont have the support of most of the lebanese, but with continued bombings, israel only strengthens the resolve of hezbollah. people dont see hezbollah as their champions, but they'd arther side with hezbollah rather than a neighbour thats bombing the crap out of them.
Ok, you say hizbollah is a rag tag army. Get them all together, get them away from all civilians and then have at it. That's one solution. But they will never do it. They prefer screaming headlines, "Israel bombs mosques', "Israel bombs house with children in it".

like i said..both sides are sensationalists. ive been reading both sides of the news. in israeli news only stoires of grief in haifa.. in arabic news only stories of grief in lebanon. get my drift? the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

You talked about Israel trying to play the high road, using the past injustices as a means for this onslaught. But what do you call how hizbollah operates? They know they are going to be attacked but they choose to hide with the very youngest and oldest, the most vulnerable. So, who's the culpable party here? Who's is trying to play the media here?

of course they are playing the media. but israel helps them achieve their goals when you kill 60 odd lebanese in a single bombing.
God, i wish we had some answers.

just a question..why didnt you say G_d? just curious...

But Israel explained what they did what they did last night. That area was filled with arms, militants, etc etc etc. I have no idea if this is true or if it just propoganda. I can only hope and pray that the latter is true. Otherwise, it's just state-sanctioned murder. Israel was NOT built to allow that.

ive heard a few stories now..israel is saying hizbollah may have bombed it themselves, and if hizbollah didnt bomb it themselves then they are to blame anyways cos they started this thing. barely logical.

Quote:
see..most lebanese are sick of war. as you'd know they are still recovering from war. so to 'rock the boat' so to speak and plummet the country back another 50 years is ok by some in the west. but we realllly dont need that now. within 3 weeks we have taken lebanon back 20 years now.



I know that this is horrible. How can anyone deny it? On the surface, the wanton destruction of Lebanese infrastructure is insane. But when you look at it from a miliatary and political view, it makes sense. For thousands of years, armys/countries at war have always destroyed civilian's as a means to force their gov't to try to stop whatever conflict/war that was going on. Perfect example: Sherman's march to Atlanta. The union soldiers burned, stole, murdered, raped and pillaged their way through the south, leaving nothing left.

Israel is doing the same thing but, sadly, tragically, that strategy wont have the same effect. The intensity of the arabic hatred is only rising. Hatred of Israel is at an all time high, if that is even possible. So, current Israeli strategy is not even close to being in the best interests of Israel.


couldnt have said it any better myself. pillaging is definately not the way to go when the worlds media is watching. israel and the USA has lost a lot of supporters in the last 3 weeks i must say. especially crucial arab support among allied arab nations.


I just wish someone, anyone, knew and could implement a permanent, rationale, working solution. I just dont know if it could ever happen.

are you questioning my nobel prize?
But what else can Israel do? How can they stop these militants from attacking Israel whenever and whereever they want? I dont mean to sound mean or vindictive but do YOU have an answer on how to stop these daily attacks?

yeah..its called an immediate ceasefire. israel is by far more superior in every sense of the word. does that firepower scare hizbollah fighters in taking up arms? or alqaeda fighters taking up arms against the coalition forces? or why palestinian youths throw stones at israeli armoured tank? no. you ask why? most of these fighters have nothing to lose. so if a condition was created where these people had something to live for, im more than certain that they would come to the party. i read a book by karen armstrong called 'the battle for god' which looks at religious fundamentalism. im sure most of you should know who she is. it'd recommend it to anyone.

Diishguy, you failed to answer one issue i raised. Prior to this war, the daily rocket attacks, the suicide bombers. How many countries on this planet have to deal with that every day? In your case, what would John Howard and the aussie govt. do if Australia was attacked every single day by a foreign country or foreign extremists? I doubt they would just throw another shrimp on the barbie.


well.. i thank god that i live in a country that shares no borders. though i think aussies are scared shitless that if one day indonesia decided to attack, we'd be finished, hence our strong alliance and unquestionable allegiancy with the USA. indonesia being a muslim country..and myself being a muslim. if they attacked, i know i'd be fighting for my country...after we're done with indonesia, we'd throw a shrimp on the barbie


just a question though..how do arabs living in haifa feel about being bombed?



Quote:
Originally Posted by Nirvana
ok i was just watching an interview with thomas friedman, writer of From Beirut to Jeruslaem. Thomas Friedman, as you may or may not know, is a decorated New York Times columnist and he has great kowledge of the middle east, spending many years there since the 80s or so. he said that he was in syria talking to three journalists. one wanted the complete destruction of israel. the other, as he put it, got a "buzz" from watching hezbollah fight israel. the final journalist said that hezbollah and nasrallah is a menace. three verying opinions. then he commented that too many people in the arab world get the same buzz as the second reporter and have similar hopes as the first reporter and that they need to get over it. he said there will be no new middle east when people like Rafik Hariri, who in my opinion was one of the most progressive and hopeful minds in the middle east, get assassinated and "old-timers" liek nasrallah keep their shit up. he said that these people need to get over their hate and idea of destruction (both ideological and physical) destruction of israel and concentrate on building and moving forward. he also said that the cycle of violence needs to stop because all it does is continue this pattern.

then earlier in the day, i saw comments from the ambrassador of lebanon to the U.S. say that Nasrallah has his respect and the president of lebanon himself has said he holds nasrallah in high regards and that he upholds "arab honor" in the middle east. this is exactly what Friedman was saying. they need to let go of this hope of trying to regain arab honor and to bounce back from what many arabs se as humiliation after losing wars to israel and concentrate on building up. what has been going on in the middle east clearly doesn't work, so it's time for a change.


this whole shit is too detailed to go into, but the crux of it is this..british colonialism in the arab world fucked everything up. double dealing and installing puppet regimes that could fall over any minute without the help of the USA. the lebanese system is no different.

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

Mobo123

Right now i'm too tired to write a lucid reply. It's almost 2:00am for me and i have to be up and at work by 8:00am.

But one last queston for tonight: What would australia do if indonesia was attacked daily by some fanatical group? Please answer that. I'll read your answer as well as your previous response in a more in-depth form from my office.

night, guys.

host

Thank you for asking, Mobo123. This ignorant, U.S. based, religious fundamentalism is the driving political influence behind the U.S. administration's policy shift that has facilitated Israel's "new dominance" in the U.S./Israeli M.E. "alliance", that has destroyed any ability for the U.S. to quickly bring about a cease fire.....to "muzzle" Israel, as it always quickly did, before the Bush administration changed everything. Note in my last post, that the "shift toward Israel", according to Paul O'Neill and others interviewed by author Ron Suskind, was not influenced by "9/11". Bush announced the new "no peace", "hands off" policy, on Jan. 30, 2001, more than 8 months before 9/11.

There is no way to know what the true influence on the Bush "shift", can be attributed to Cheney, Bolton, and Feith's involvement in JINSA, or the influence of the PNAC folks who were welcomed into the Bush administration in 2001.

Here is a briefing for you, Mobo123. I can't say that Bush believes this crap, but he responds to it, and he is advised how to mine these sentiments for votes and contributions. His M.E. foreign policies couldn't be more in synch with the "goals" of the "believers", than if they wrote the policies for him.
Scottish "promoter" John Darby, inspired by the 1830 "visions" of a 15 year old girl named Macdonald, influenced Scofield, the founder of the Dallas Theological Seminary. Many of the most prominent southern U.S. pastors were schooled there, and now this delusional belief system has a lock on southern baptists, and many other evangelical sects.......
...and for the record...I believe that a more plausible approach to all of this, is to embrace the traditional interpretation: (Jesus was speaking of these things circa 30 AD, and the second temple, rebuilt by King Herod, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, in the apostles' generation. It has never been rebuilt...)

Mobo123

Host, i read your reply with great interest. Do these F.C.'s REALLY believe in this religion crap? Are they truly serious? It is so far fetched, it sounds like L. Ron Hubbard wrote it.

Which brings me to this question: Who DID write this section of bible? From what i remember, the Bible wasnt 'faxed' down from heaven. What lunatic wrote this stuff?

Are people really so naive, or so desparate or just so plain dumb that they take this stuff as truth? Wow.

abaya

Mobo, I'll take this chance to answer your questions, since I spent a good part of my life as an evangelical Christian. ("Spent" is the key word... I don't run with that crowd any longer.)

Yes, FC's (as you call them) REALLY do believe in that religion crap (as you call it). I lived and breathed Revelation (the last book of the Bible, predicting Armageddon) and all of the other books as well... that's a requirement for being a card-carrying evangelical. And I wasn't a Southern Baptist or anything of the sort... I was a confirmed Lutheran, and spent my college years at a Free Methodist university.

As for who wrote that section of the Bible... well, Host quoted from Matthew, so that is one of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), written by the people they are named for. Revelation, which contains all the apocalyptic stuff, is accredited to John. He is supposed to have received a vision when he was on the island of Patmos, and hence the book of Revelation.

As for people being naive, desperate, and/or dumb... well, that's quite a jump to make. For myself, I had specific cultural, psychological, and other contextual reasons for being very religious, and none of them included being naive, desperate, or dumb. I wouldn't label any of my friends who are still "in the fold" with those adjectives. And yet, it does make you wonder. What IS this beast known as American Protestant (particularly evangelical) Christianity? What makes it interesting is that it occurs among one of the most highly educated and most wealthy populations in the world... and it simply won't go away.

I don't have an answer for you on the last one... that's for another thread's discussion. But I hope I have illuminated something of the movement from the inside out.

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

Willravel

Let me try to answer this delicately, if a bit oversimplified...
Would you call a vegitarian niave, desperate or dumb? It's a lifestyle choice you might not necessarily agree with, and you, personally, may think that it doesn't make sense from a scientific standpoint (we are designed to be omnivores, after all, deriving sustenence like protien from meat)....but who is it hurting? And before you answer with some political belief of group, bear in mind that there have always been conservatives and liberals, always people who are or aren't suceptible to influence.

/end threadjack

Mobo123

Who is it hurting? That's a tough question. I dont know. It doesnt hurt me or mine personally. It's just, for me, at least, way too bizarre and so based in fantasy, it's just hard to believe that normal, smart people could believe this stuff.

Willravel

Faith and spirituality are wonderful. Religion is a bane. This is all for another thread, though. Israel has agreed to a 48 hour cease fire. Let's hope it not only lasts the 48 hours, but maybe indefinitely.

Mobo123

Well, that was the fastest 48 hours i've ever seen. Both sides are at it again.

Seaver

It often amazes me that people honestly believe that we are simply a fluke, that everything we are and have made is simply a mistake when sludge somehow came alive. That normal, smart people could believe something in which no person in history has been able to describe how simple molecules become alive.

Ok, so I believe in evolution. But take the same microscope to yourself before you apply it to others.

Can you mathematically explain why a lightswitch works instantaniously while electrons go only inches per second? I can, but most people only know that when they hit the switch the light turns on. Can you mathematically explain how your computer turns electrisity into pulses and then into the information that allows you to communicate with the rest of us? Or do you just believe that if everything is right that you will be able to do it?

Religion is simply this on a universal level. That there are things we will never understand exactly how it works, but our belief is that there is good out there. And that good out there is stronger than evil, and we will be rewarded for being good.

I dont understand how normal, smart people would want to believe that stuff.

roachboy

how strange that a thread on the ongoing israeli massacre of civilians in lebanon gets diverted onto a debate about religion. seems to mirror the general nature of the idiotic "debates" that attempt to reduce the conflict to yet another instance of some imaginary eternal conflict between jews and muslims...blah blah blah, explaining nothing, contextualizing nothing, throwing up your hands rather than trying to understand, its always the same, nothing to be done kill them all let god sort em out.

i am also not convinced of the utility of linking the bush administration's loathesome actions relative to this conflict to any set of far right protestant millenarian ideologies--you could also link it to incomptence--you could link it to the ongoing refusal of the neocon cadre within the administration to face reality (demonstrated by their having used the SAME LOGIC to rationalize standing by and watching a mssacre as that used to rationalize triggering a civil war in iraq)--you could link it to good old fashioned american racism deployed in a western film mode--the function of arab women and children is to die in great anonymous numbers--the heroic American Destiny unfolds across piles of anonymous bodies, less than human, less than us--History Will Absolve Us--see we pay for films that absolve us---we pay for press that absolves us----we are absolution itself----we forgive us...

what seems to me to emerge through the exercize in sustained foulness that is the bush administration is a requirement for some type of systemic reform that would enable votes of no confidence that would bring down a government as a function of ongoing ineptness rather than waiting for freedom to burst out one day every four years.

if there was a god who watched over the united states in particular, she is apparently on vacation. perhaps she is embarrassed by the idiocy of those who speak in her name. who knows. maybe she doesnt exist.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

abaya

To address this briefly: please see my previous post. I was a hard-core evangelical for a long time. I walked away, consciously but with great sorrow. I am no less of a person for doing so, and I do not believe those who remain evangelical are any less of people for staying there. That was my point.

In any case, this is not the thread to start talking about the miracles of nature; we're talking about effing Hezbollah and Israel bombing each other to shit, for crying out loud. If you want to translate that into good vs. evil, so be it. But take it to Philosophy or something. This is not the forum to haul out personal moralities based on religious interpretation.

/threadjack.

Well roachboy, I'd have to say that I pretty much agree 100% with you here. You said it beautifully. And yet... has any country been able to avoid getting blood on its hands, at some point in history? Are there completely "innocent" countries anywhere on earth? Every nation takes part in a kind of collective 1984... and yet, we Americans seem especially skilled at doing so.

Sometimes I think it would be better if we weren't so good at forgiving ourselves... look at Germany, how 60 years after their own collective sins against humanity, they still labor to forgive themselves. They never destroyed Dachau, never tried to lift the burden of that sin on their land and history... to me, that is the responsible thing to do. It doesn't change the past, but at least the responsible parties own up and admit they were wrong. They keep a long memory of their own guilt... quite the opposite from American consciousness of our actions, both domestic and international. The sad thing is, most Americans are not even aware of our guilt, our complicity. I don't know if that will ever change.

/another threadjack?

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

Seaver

Abaya my post was never directed at you. Sorry for the confusion.

magictoy

Yes.

If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.

If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.

host

Here is the quote that I posted the challenge about, magictoy, please highlight the lines in Bush's answer to Gregory's question that support what you posted. I don't see anything that could be interpreted as "If.....put down their weapons today.... My point was that Bush gave an incoherent answer to Gregory's simple question.....Gregory asked it again, after receiving a rambling and incoherent reply, and, if you click on the link and read the whole text.....Bush failed in the second opportunity to answer the question:
magictoy, reporter David Gregory and I are not the only ones who had difficulty deciphering what the goals and the policies of the Bush admin. are now, in the M.E., Here's an excerpt from an attempt by one of only two republican moderates in the senate, to find out what U.S. policy is concerning Israel and it's neighbors. The argumentative and controversial UN ambassador, John Bolton, uses the same <b>"root cause"</b> talking points that Bush used in his "answer" to David Gregory, and IMO, Bolton's answer is similarly incoherent.......
When you consider the following "background", it seems to explain how decisions that the Bush admin. made in 2001, to "shift toward Israel" along with the opinions of Bolton, Feith, and Rumsfeld that Israel should retain "biblical lands" and land Israel occupied because it "won the war", have resulted in the current lack of U.S. influence....or will.....to broker a cease fire:
Consider that the new Bush admin., more than nine months before 9/11, according to Paul O'Neill and others present at the first Bush national security meeting, abandoned pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict, and shifted to a focus on toppling Saddam and an Israel bias:
Consider that this article documents the Bush appointments to the DOD and State Dept. of several folks, including Perle, Feith and Bolton, who advocated, back in 1996, removing Saddam, and supporting the retention by Israel, of the "biblical lands", and Rumsfeld's officially distributed opinion that Israel won the "so called occupied" territory, in war.....a seemingly counterproductive opinion, compared to longstanding U.S., M.E. policy.
magictoy, it seems that the Bush M.E. policy has much more to do with a neo-con, christian right, influenced goal to "shift toward Israel", "take out Saddam", and inflict as much pain, militarily, on anyone who stand in opposition to these goals, on the ground in the M.E.

These policy goals were put on paper, by the people in the Bush admin.,who are now carrying them out, as far back as in 1996. There is reliable evidence from former U.S. treasury sec'ty Paul O'Neill, and from other attendees to the first., Jan. 30, 2001 Nat'l Security Council meeting of the new Bush admin., to support the notion that abandoning of the Israel/M.E. peace policy goals of all post 1952, U.S. presidents, was announced as the new policy, along with a "shift toward Israel", and Bush pronouncing that <b>"Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things"</b>, and then the meeting shifted to Iraq policy, which has dominated the agenda, ever since.

9/11 was still over nine months away, and there was and is, nothing happening that would contradict the present results of a pre-9/11 policy shift that replaced diplomacy with the use of U.S., and now IDF, military force.

Democratic elections have been held in Lebanon, in Iraq, and in the Palestinian state, and the problem is that the U.S. and Israel do not approve or accept the will of the voters who live in those "newly democratic" states.
There seems to be no acceptance by the U.S. or Israel, of the possibility that the voters in all three jurisdictions were influenced to vote for candidates that offered a militant opposition to the armed forces of both the U.S. and Israel.

It seems that the policy of the new, closer U.S./Israeli alliance is to try to kill the entire armed opposition. It isn't working out too well in Iraq, and it won't work in Gaza or in Lebanon, either.

magictoy, if you were an Arab, especially a male in young/middle adulthood, living in Iraq, Gaza or in Lebanon, how would you have reacted to the elections of Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush and the policies that they pursued together? How would you react if you were living in one of those places, now? Would it make a difference if you were a sunni muslim, experiencing the effect of the rise of shia influence, unleashed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq?

<b>Since the policy pre-dates 9/11, it follows that the Bush mantra that "9/11 changed everything".....is bullshit propaganda.....</b>

Willravel

I've just received word that a very good friend of mine lost his life on Tuesday in Lebanon during a bombing campaign. He lost his legs and part of his torso when a bomb hit while he and his family were hiding in a building, and died while en route to a hospital. He was on vacation with his family from Turkey about a month ago, but was apparently pinned down for a few weeks after the initial attacks. His parents and sister survived. His mother called me just before I went to work this morning and told me all she could. He was only my age (about 24).

I have to admit that until today, this whole thing in Lebanon has seemed like a history lesson to me. It was like reading about WWII or the Korean War in a text book. It's easy to stay disconnected, somewhat, from something if you are thousands of miles away and don't have any personal connections to it. I don't really have that feeling any more. I didn't lose anyone on 9/11. I did have a friend have his leg shot off in Iraq, but I've spoken with him since so it never really hit me.

To anyone who's lost someone in war or conflict, I'm very sorry. I know how it feels now. I don't know if this has anything to do with Politics, but this seemed like the right place to put it.

dlish

my sincere condolences to you willravel my friend and to your friends family.

losing someone in war or conflict is never easy. while the US and most western nations remain unscathed because most wars are fought in other peoples backyards, its going to be hard for the west to understand what loss of life and destruction actually means.

although ive lost extended family in war, i have not lost a very close family member. as you guys know my wife was in lebanon during this conflict..she's due back in sydney monday morning.. but i guess she'll be back and the shock of it will slowly wear away..for you my friend, living with the memories forever is the hardest thing.

p.s. i never knew how old you are... i was surprised to hear that your a spritely 24?? you come across as much wiser than 24! i would have put at least another 10 years on for you!

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

Ace_O_Spades

Not to make light of the situation, but my favourite webcomic has provided his views on the current conflict... in his classic way of doling out meaningless destruction, I give you this week's Bob the Angry Flower:

__________________
Feh.

Willravel

Graphic, but telling.