FOX NEWS, HOLY LAND, SUPERMAN

“Canon Fodder”

FOX NEWS IS PORNOGRAPHIC:

We don’t have to take pornographic mail, why should we have to take FOX?  I don’t want to pay for pornography.  All that phony-baloney religious programming and shopping channels are offensive, too.  I want the freedom to choose.  Why do I have to watch commercials when I pay for the satellite/cable?  I don’t want to pay to watch ads.  Give me “a la carte” television.    Let me pay only for the shows I want.  Why are television shows sold like blood diamonds?  They use the same scam DeBeers Diamonds invented – “take the crappy diamonds to get the one good one – no exceptions – this is a monopoly.”  I want a la carte television.   A useless boatload of shows will disappear from public notice if they aren’t packaged with the Top Ten and have to stand on their own merits – no more slopover prosyletizing, or monopoly broadcasting.  I want some person of legislative importance and influence to reform the broadcast rules and reinforce the fairness doctrine.  I want to turn off Fox Noise.

NOTHING IS HOLY IN THE “HOLY” LAND:

Any claim to “holiness” in ownership of the “Holy” Land, by any constituent of any side, is preposterous.  People of every persuasion have been killing each other over this crap hunk of real estate for thousands of years, to no apparent resolution, pretty much to malign purpose, and to the point of certifiable mental disease.

Their feuds are mindlessly generational, and they routinely dishonor their prophets and messiahs.  Peace is an illusion, reason is a poor orphan; “right” is confused with “rite;” and “hope” is just a word.

The people of the “Holy” Land are primarily useful to International Capitalists as trade route and pipeline handlers – since ancient times.  Their demographic division is a matter of greed supported by superstition.  Their migratory waves have pushed each other back and forth from Baghdad to Cairo for six thousand years.  Don’t let ‘em kid you, the protagonists have been a blood thirsty bunch for a mighty long time – no foolin’.  The “Holy” Land has always been incredibly harsh and savage; and its peoples have never been any different.  This is a piece of earth that people kill and die over repeatedly.

In practice, “god” – whatever Her, His, or Its name is – is a “get out of jail free” card for murder, and a justification for crimes against humanity and the planet.  Most cultures condone and/or pardon violence done to the “Alien Other.”  Fathers teach sons, who teach sons, who teach sons how to hate.  In that sense, the peoples of the “Holy” Land are not unique – just amazingly obsessive about that little crap hunk of real estate.

Who’d be so damned stupid as to stick his big old idiot foot into that “holy muck?”  Perhaps, a megalomaniac, a psychopath, a sectarian nut, or a greedy sucking oil baron.  In the “holy” land, believers sing about morality, peace and love in mind-numbing chorus.  In the Sixties, the Beatles sang, “Give peace a chance.”  In the Seventies, John Lennon added, “All you need is love.”  Of course, nobody listened to any of those do-gooders, and we now sing, “Waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the Big Fool says to Push On!”

It’s very hard to believe that any respectable or self-respecting god might have any interest and/or want to claim any responsibility for the disastrous generational holocaust in the so-called “Holy” Land.  Self-deception is, indeed, the fundamental core value of the human race.  It enables us to do so many terrible ungodly self-interested things that a conscience and compassion might prevent.

“RIGHTEOUS” SWORD?

“Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak?  It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword; they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword, than they did so, and the stake and fagot, too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner.  By the same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant (if the story be true), he would have cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able.  Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally on the Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it – not to terrify, but to extirpate.  The Jews made no converts; they butchered all.  The Bible is the sire of the Testament, and both are called the word of God.  The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both.  It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.” – Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, p180

PEOPLE LIKE GOD LIKE SUPERMAN:

People like god for the same reason they like Superman.  They’re looking for a he-man hero savior who will kill all the bad guys and make the world safe for puny mortals.  People like a quick fix and noble selfless gods and superheroes can, at least imaginatively, give them one.

A child may dream, “If I was god/superman, oh, the changes I would make!”  An adult knows this will never happen, and if it did, they probably couldn’t handle it.  However, adults can and do choose to believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing god/superhero who will (eventually) “make everything better.”  The child says, “Close your eyes real tight and make believe with all your might.”  Adults pray for deliverance.

Many people apparently don’t want to work for deliverance.  They want it delivered; in fact, expect to receive it by hand from their imagined, and of course invisible, giant god/superhero in the sky (by and by).  It requires determined ignorance and dogged superstition to resist reason and responsibility.  Science has to be suppressed and rejected so that it won’t threaten the house of cards.  Regular, preferably daily instruction in ignorance and superstition is mandatory; indoctrinate the youth early – always a good ideological strategy.

One may wean from Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy to embrace an even grander imaginary friend and benefactor with whom one may never share a single real word or thought, either.  Too many accept the secondhand word of a person declaring him/herself to be expert in a book of largely anonymous secondhand anecdotes written by largely superstitious ignorant men.  The book was gathered from a multitude of completely unverified sources over several thousand years of political, social and philosophic revolution, weeded, edited, and reissued as a certified collection of largely anonymous secondhand anecdotes now purported to be directly inspired by an imagined invisible cloud being, god, superhero by a secular monarch who wanted to use it for political control of his polyglot fractious empire. Believe it, or not.  Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews — A History by James Carroll

Ignorance and superstition are encouraged by the bland, if fanatic, reassurance that “all’s right in god’s world, or will be made so” (sometime).  The self-interested and often greedy people who deliver this message may actually believe the claptrap that they preach.  However, they cannot deny their venal interest in resisting any and all freethinking, diversity, or dissent.

A venal leadership inevitably yields vengeance and oppression.  Throughout history, such leaders have been the instigators of hatred, prejudice, bigotry and violence on a worldwide scale.  As for dead, dead’s dead – even a dog knows it when it sees it – and you can’t get much more empirical than that.

Thomas Paine taught us that reason, no matter how resisted or reviled, is the only path to truth.

RINGADINGDING:

Okay, I don’t like Star Wars.  I can’t accept George Lucas as my personal lord and savior, and parts I-III, and V-VI suck.  Retitle the series: Cliché Bores.  I do like Lord of the Rings, Tolkein didn’t pretend to wisdom.  However, I take issue with Peter Jackson’s film version: it didn’t matter in the books, but on gigantic screen, the military ineptness of all the principals is strikingly awful.  Consider:

•  No moats, and obviously no drawbridges, on any of the castle-fortresses!  Attackers walk right up to the walls and the front door without effort.
• The major fortresses back against cliffs, inviting attack from above.  The attackers display their ineptitude by not discovering and using such major weakness; the defenders by not noticing when they built the stupid joints.
• No gauntlet or enfilade towers.  Attackers rush to the front door, bust it open and they’re in.  Very stupid.  Even primitive motte and bailey castle approaches were through narrow gate passages with arrow loops to shoot invaders in them, and flanked by towers to fire at enemies from all sides.
• No horse or anti-personnel traps in the perimeter, not even sharpened stakes or concealed pits with spikes in the bottom.  The whole horde is on your doorstep at once.  “Oh, god, we only have stew for five!”
• No ship obstacles or defense nets in the harbors – landing parties always welcome, bring your own beverages.
• No dock defenses, not even a guy with a hammer; just hop off the boat and waltz right in, without so much as a teamster organizer in your way.
• No battle formations!  The armies line up in impressive scowling mobs and then run at one another, crashing into an every man-woman-thing for him-her-itself melee.  Subtlety, thy other name is idiot chaos.
• No security screens, no spies out gathering information of any kind – not even, “How’s the weather down there, Gimli?” when Gimli the Dwarf complains of not being able to see the enemy; he should be so special?
• No guerilla sorties – no harassment tactics.  No attacks on supply lines.  No need for supplies?   Orcs carry everything needed for one big overwhelming it’s a done deal battle?  That’s self-confidence, or more evidence of how militarily (at least) dumb they are; echoes of George W. Bush, Halliburton and the Republicans in Iraq.
• No boiling oil/water/Greek fire.  I’ll give them the Greek fire since Middle Earth is theoretically before that, but it’s clear to see why M.E. didn’t survive long enough to benefit from Greek inventiveness.  No one exercises much imagination in stopping the bad guys, not even starting an avalanche when the baddies are walking at the bottom of a big honking mountain talus slope that’s ready to slide at a wisp of wind or the touch of a hairy little Hobbit foot.

Well, I could think of more, but this appeared the most obvious, so there it is.  A friend once said, “If the communist menace [so-called] was as monolithic and efficient as described by our leaders, we’d be dead; fortunately they turned out to be as screwed up as we are.”  So, root for Frodo, and pray his fellowship survives its own ineptitude.  Given the collapse of communism and Bush’s record in Iraq, I guess it’s realistic after all. – 6-22-05 

   

Off the Banks of Goldman Sachs.

LAST WORDS: 

Whenever we come to the Book of Revelations we must always ask the same question, “Who wrote this crap?”

Resurrection Machines

NOTHING HOLY in HOLY LAND

Last Sun

Living By the Sword

Helen Thomas

Amidst all the outrage about veteran journalist Helen Thomas intemperately saying what so many on the left, including many Jews, feel but more politely say – “The Jews should get the hell out of Palestine” – some are defending her for what she likely meant, adding meaningful context to the trap of sound bites. Three activist Jews speak out here, and Al Jazeera offers thoughtful analysis here on the sea change in public opinion that Thomas represents.

–Abby Zimet

Discuss…http://www.commondreams.org/further/2010/06/09-1

NOTHING IS HOLY IN THE “HOLY” LAND:

Any claim to “holiness” in ownership of the “Holy” Land, by any constituent of any side, is preposterous.  People of every persuasion have been killing each other over this crap hunk of real estate for thousands of years, to no apparent resolution, pretty much to malign purpose, and to the point of certifiable mental disease.

Their feuds are mindlessly generational, and they routinely dishonor their prophets and messiahs.  Peace is an illusion, reason is a poor orphan; “right” is confused with “rite;” and “hope” is just a word.

The people of the “Holy” Land are primarily useful to International Capitalists as trade route and pipeline handlers – since ancient times.  Their demographic division is a matter of greed supported by superstition.  Their migratory waves have pushed each other back and forth from Baghdad to Cairo for six thousand years.  Don’t let ‘em kid you, the protagonists have been a blood thirsty bunch for a mighty long time – no foolin’.  The “Holy” Land has always been incredibly harsh and savage; and its peoples have never been any different.  This is a piece of earth that people kill and die over repeatedly.

In practice, “god” – whatever Her, His, or Its name is – is a “get out of jail free” card for murder, and a justification for crimes against humanity and the planet.  Most cultures condone and/or pardon violence done to the “Alien Other.”  Fathers teach sons, who teach sons, who teach sons how to hate.  In that sense, the peoples of the “Holy” Land are not unique – just amazingly obsessive about that little crap hunk of real estate.

Who’d be so damned stupid as to stick his big old idiot foot into that “holy muck?”  Perhaps, a megalomaniac, a psychopath,  sectarian nut, or an oilman.  In the “holy” land, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed sang about morality, peace and love in mind-numbing chorus.  In the Sixties, the Beatles sang, “Give peace a chance.”  In the Seventies, John Lennon added, “All you need is love.”  Of course, nobody listened to any of those do-gooders, and we now sing, “Waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the Big Fool says to Push On!”

It’s very hard to believe that any respectable or self-respecting god might have any interest and/or want to claim any responsibility for the disastrous generational holocaust in the so-called “Holy” Land.  Self-deception is, indeed, the fundamental core value of the human race.  It enables us to do so many terrible ungodly things that a conscience and compassion might prevent.

“The Israel of the Bible was established altogether by the sword,” Thomas Paine American founding father wrote, “and that in the worst use of it – not to terrify, but to extirpate.  The Jews made no converts; they butchered all.”  What are they doing differently today?

Related article:  MY STORY BEGINS  Religion is Bunk.

What George W. Bush and Ramses the Great Have in Common.

G.W. Bush’s recent efforts to rewrite his history remind me of Ramses the Great (pharaoh of the biblical exodus, if you believe).  He is called “great” because he managed to live longer than any other pharaoh and used the time to build more monuments to himself than all his predecessors and successors combined.  He had a factory that just turned out busts of his head so that he could knock the heads off other pharaohs’ statues and put his in their place.  Therefore, fifty percent of the monuments in the Nile Valley are his!  He advertised himself shamelessly: painting and carving the story of the Battle of Kadesh on every wall and pillar in sight.  Kadesh was not even a draw and Rameses quickly signed a peace treaty with the victorious Hittite King, and went back to Egypt with his tail between his legs (or maybe it was just his kilt).  He nearly got himself killed at Kadesh and almost lost the whole Egyptian army due to his egotistical rash decisions and actions as an inexperienced military leader (he was the Decider), but he declared near defeat as victory, and covered up the fact that he almost lost the farm – not just for himself, but for the entire kingdom of Egypt.  And that’s why G.W. Bush’s recent rewrite of his history reminds me of Ramses the Great, pharaoh of the biblical exodus, if you believe.  G.W. became president of the United States by the skin of his teeth and the lies on his lips: the same way Ramses II became “Great.”  – 11/04.

Related article:  ALICE and YUYA  Moses the Egyptian.

WAR and RUMORS of WAR

Not since Watergate and Nixon has so much been said about the bald lies and active criminality of our rulers.  There’s no hero or other path to save us.  We were already in a twilight phase of our greatness when befuddled Ronald Reagan declared “morning in America.”  Twenty years later, the “boy emperor” George W. Bush, took us fully into the Dark Ages, pursuing shortsighted goals accelerating our decline.  We see signs of the West after Rome’s fall: religion triumphant over reason; education and critical thinking decayed; religion, state, and the apparatus of torture integrated – the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment; and our culture politically and economically marginalized.  It’s a process no society can undergo and still remain free.  Yet the capitalists, Republicans, and neoconservative fundamentalist Christian American population are aggressively proud of it.

Bush believed he was on a mission from god, and faith trumps fact.  Yet, if a nation can’t see reality correctly and persists in acting upon faith-based delusions, its ability to hold its own in the world is pretty much foreclosed.  We survey a cultural death valley: secondary schools with teachers afraid to teach evolution to un-evolved students; pervasive hostility toward science from benighted legislators; religion used to explain terror as a cosmic conflict between good and evil rather than in terms of political process.  In a New York Times poll, 59% of Americans believe that the faithful will be taken up into heaven in the ‘Rapture’ (perhaps, in blue jackets and tennis shoes?  I propose straitjackets).

Fundamentalism and democracy are foes.  The opposite of Enlightenment is tribalism, groupthink, and blind obedience.  Detention without trial, denial of attorneys, years of interrogation in isolation are now standard American practice, and many Americans don’t care.  The Bush administration discussed canceling the 2004 presidential election citing possible terrorist attack!  Since it wasn’t done, it was obviously safer and easier (for them) to rig electronic voting (see John Conyers’ D-Ohio report).  In the 2003 University of Connecticut “State of the First Amendment Survey,” 34% of Americans said the amendment went “too far;” 46% thought there was too much press freedom; 28% felt newspapers shouldn’t publish without government approval; 31% wanted public protest of war outlawed during war; and 50% thought government should infringe the freedom of “certain religious groups” in the name of the war on terror.

Advertisers and politicians assure us we’re the richest, most envied people on earth and that’s why rag-tag bombers want to blow us up.  We’re not actually people in the eyes of national ownership; we’re unreliable consumers comprising an overworked, underpaid work force not in the best of health (we’re 37^th behind Saudi Arabia, the former Texas Whitehouse’s Best Friend).  Despite Halliburton’s boom profits, Bush’s wars of aggression made us broke.  We borrow $4 billion per day to keep afloat.  Who finally pays this massive debt?

How eager we are to be slaves.  Bush said he was a “wartime president,” but there’s no war, despite all his murder and destruction, “terror” is an abstract noun like “liar”.  Bush’s illegal unilateral ravaging of Iraq isn’t moral or legal because he appeared to be elected twice.  He’s done things we’d impeach him for under the old republic, but corrupt Republicans at all levels of government, including the judiciary, protect him by not doing their duty to impeach him, let’s say, for his incompetence in Louisiana.  “Nice job, Brownie,” my ass.

Our founders thought two-year terms for congress was as much democracy as we’d need, so they didn’t provide recall legislation in the event a president wasn’t up to the job and lost the people’s confidence between elections.  Thus, since “all things come to pass,” as Ecclesiastes has it, we had to wait until most of our citizens were hurt before he left office to go hide in his second Eden in Crawford.  We’re paying interest on his awful debts, and the troops not killed or maimed have to settle for just being alive and in one piece.  Or, would, if Obama wasn’t now abusing them.

Related article:  WAR and TOXIC TEXAS TEXTBOOKS  Waging War from a Burning House.

BLAST FROM THE PAST:

“Inflammatory oratory and a radical catchall program, important as they were for a fledgling party out to attract attention and recruit mass support, were not enough, and Hitler turned his attention to providing more…  What the masses needed, he thought, were not only ideas – a few simple ideas, that is, that he could ceaselessly hammer through their skulls – but symbols that would win their faith, pageantry and color that would arouse them, and acts of violence and terror, which if successful, would attract adherents (were not most Germans drawn to the strong?) and give them a sense of power over the weak.

“In Vienna, …he was intrigued by what he called the ‘infamous spiritual and physical terror’ which he thought was employed by the Social Democrats against their opponents.  Now he turned it to good purpose in his own anti-Socialist party,  …Hitler organized a bunch of roughneck war veterans into ‘strong-arm’ squads…These uniformed rowdies… soon took to breaking up [meetings] of other parties.  Hitler boasted to police, ‘We got what we wanted.  Ballerstedt did not speak.’  As Hitler told an audience some months before, ‘The National Socialist Movement will in the future ruthlessly prevent – if necessary by force – all meetings or lectures that are likely to distract the minds of our fellow countrymen.’”

– William L. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Related article:  REPUBLICAN INSURANCE NAZIS

Last Words:

“I have no friends in the diamond trade.”  – bumpersticker.

Buddha Swirl

BUDDHA at JLegry’s Gallery