This morning Vancouver saw a different kind of Peace Protest than it's been accustomed to: a modest stand for realistic peace, protesting the standard Utopian "peace" protestors.
Utopia–seeking delegates attending the morning presentations of the World Peace Forum at Vancouver’s prestigious Orpheum Theater will hopefully have been tainted by second thoughts for their dogmatic belief system, courtesy of three simple souls daring to think differenly from them, and to say so in the street, in public, with signs.
Dag, frequent commentor Truepeers, and your humble correspondant planted ourselves outside the World Peace Forum’s venue this morning, carrying signs with various slogans, and had quite a memorable time engaging curious (and not so curious) delegates in dialogue that ranged from pleasant to antagonistic. The most offensive person we met was probably the guy who hit my sign. Then in descending order of negativity: slurs and insults, sneering condescension, sympathy for our pre-supposed mental retardation… the real dialogue ended up being with people who were genuinely curious about how we could be apostates to their utopian religion, and politely asked legitimate questions to which they patiently listened to our point of view. If any of you are reading this, thank you for your civil debate; we may agree to disagree, but I certainly respect the courtesy you granted my perspective, and I hope I matched it as I listened to yours.
The looks of amazement we got from so many of the delegates suggest how rarely they must actually encounter alternative points of view challenging their agenda. Growing up in Canada, we've had more than enough occasions to get used to hearing their view passed off as *the* view, but seemingly they've never heard ours, so we must come across as mysterious aliens from another planet. I can sympathize with their puzzlement, for I find myself as completely baffled by the world view that they painted for me, as they likely were by my recounting of current events as I see them.
Trying to encapsulate three hours of experiences like this morning's, into a tight little blog post is daunting. I'm going to tackle it in two posts, this one in more stream of consciousness fashion, then hopefully find the time to write a second one seeing the day from a more detached perspective.
First, meeting the various delegates. The three of us engaged in a series of dialogues with Israel-hating jews, business-hating wealthy suburbanites, anti-american americans, and a certain lady whom I shall always remember for sincerely describing to us how the New York Times is a terribly Right-Wing media outlet. She also went on to confess to having killed “one million Vietnamese”, and I-can’t-remember-how-many Iraqis. “America killed them, in my name, so I killed them”, was her heartfelt explanation.
When Dag offered her our blog address in order to read a differing point of view to hers, she stopped him in mid-sentence to honestly admit she wasn't interested in reading anything we might have to say. (Yet we are the ones who are "close-minded", you see.)
This was the first time I had ever done any protesting or picketing of any kind. Even during my (short-lived, thank goodness) rite of passage as an anti-American Canadian, I never did anything like I did this morning. No wonder the left do these things so frequently, it is definitely an exhilarating experience. In retrospect, I realize I wasn’t prepared to engage in such basic debate and dialogue as was required. I’m not in practice anymore at explaining why Bush isn’t evil, for instance; that caught me a bit off-guard, and so I regret I may have fluffed my response once or twice.
What made the morning so fascinating, however, was the number of average people just passing by on the street on their way about town, who read my “God Bless America” sign, stopped to thank me, and explained why they agreed with me. Their simple eloquence, mixed with gratitude for my sign's sincere statement, really made my day; and unlike the activist delegates quick to brandish their “peace studies” university degrees as their rationale for their point of view, the pro-US Canadians passing by on the street managed to briefly phrase the common sense of the common man in a way that has truly inspired me. What a thrill it can be to meet like-minded people sometimes. Just one of the approving smiles I got from these fellow citizens more than made up for having to wake up at 5:00 AM on a Saturday morning to talk to so many grumpy people wearing name tags.
Looking back, it was interesting how those talking to us expected us to be in absolute lock-step in our philosophy, chanting mono-syllabic verses just like in the usual left-wing protests nowadays, whereas in reality we were all there for somewhat different reasons. We are three distinct individuals, with sometimes radically different beliefs on certain issues, yet we can readily come together around a common idea and find a way to negociate through each other’s differing points of view, to act in united partnership towards shared objectives. (hm, kind of reminds me of a country I know...) We seemed to be encountering people who were more used to protestors incapable of holding a range of motivations and belief systems, and it probably led to quite a bit of unintentional confusion. (I noticed a particularly confused expression on one delegate’s face as he read my “God Bless America” sign while listening to Dag’s atheistic justification for intervention in the Middle East.)
It was genuine fun seeing how surprised the peace activists were by Truepeer's articulateness, I don' t think they were expecting that degree of intellectual firepower from "conservatives". Many would start off talking to us as if we were children; one sentence from Truepeers would usually put an end to that kind of tone.
Final thought for now... from the dozens of chats we had today, a comment echoing in my memory comes from the first half of our morning, as a loudly sarcastic peace activist established her math skills by revealing that there were only three of us, compared to "four thousand" of them, as if that in itself should disqualify our existence. So symbolic of the left: undisguised contempt for the value of the individual, despite all the rhetoric of valuing "diversity".
Madam, sometimes it only takes three people to make a difference.
Sometimes it just takes one person.
You should try it sometime.
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Saturday, June 24, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
Running to the Dhimmi Meet
New Dem Strategy: Everyone Cuts And Runs
By Red Square
6/23/2006, 3:05 pm
*****
A policeman's testimonal:
I was fully in support of writing parking tickets - but we didn't finish
that job. Instead we are fighting street crime, which is insane. Our government has placed the police in a situation where they can't possibly know who the criminal is. If we really want to bring to justice those who are guilty of crimes, how about charging those who endangered our police by sending them to unsafe neighborhoods?
From a fireman:
We sleep and play cards all day, the perks are awesome too - this could be a dream job if it weren't for the fires. Those fires are plain dangerous - the government should've done something about them long time ago. That's why I'm voting Democrat.
More at:
http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=765
****
We won't run, even if we do cut. We'll be out to protest the hippies and the terrorist suporters Saturday morning at 8.15 at the Waterfront skytrain/seabus station (Cordova and Seymour/Granville). We are aiming to be outside the Orpheum when the delegates arrive for the 9 o'clock opening.
6/23/2006, 3:05 pm
Encouraged by the media success of their "Bring the troops home before the job is done" campaign, Democrat leadership decided to expand this strategy to other groups of society. The new "Cut and Run For America" campaign to send everybody home before the job is done will first be tested on government employees - teachers, doctors, police, firefighters - and later cover the rest of the population. "Americans need to stop trying," explained the new compassionate strategy Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). "We deeply believe that most people in this country would like to stay low, stop thinking, stop fending for themselves, and just live off government handouts."
"To cut and run is every American's right, entitlement, and a patriotic duty," demanded Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), adding that this plan is likely to become a central issue in the upcoming November elections. "If we grant every American the right to walk away from any task without completing it, they'll all vote for us. I would!"*****
A policeman's testimonal:
I was fully in support of writing parking tickets - but we didn't finish
that job. Instead we are fighting street crime, which is insane. Our government has placed the police in a situation where they can't possibly know who the criminal is. If we really want to bring to justice those who are guilty of crimes, how about charging those who endangered our police by sending them to unsafe neighborhoods?From a fireman:
We sleep and play cards all day, the perks are awesome too - this could be a dream job if it weren't for the fires. Those fires are plain dangerous - the government should've done something about them long time ago. That's why I'm voting Democrat.More at:
http://www.thepeoplescube.com
****
We won't run, even if we do cut. We'll be out to protest the hippies and the terrorist suporters Saturday morning at 8.15 at the Waterfront skytrain/seabus station (Cordova and Seymour/Granville). We are aiming to be outside the Orpheum when the delegates arrive for the 9 o'clock opening.
Rock For Peace.
If you are able to be in Vancouver, Canada on Saturday afternoon, please join us to mingle with the crowd and wish for peace, justice, and sustainability. While you're there, please also explain to me what the Hell is sustainablity. Also, if you will, explain why a child throwing a rock is a worthy image for a peace conference. Finally, give me one good reason why Cindy Sheehan is still finding an audience. I will pay one nickel to anyone who can do all three tasks or cleean the Augean Stables before sunset.
What? My hair is growing down to my shoulders. I'm wearing "love
beads"? What is this paisly shirt? What's happening to me? Oh no! Man, I'm havin' this flash-back to the 60s. I'm hearing Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, like, you know, man, Zappa doing that tune "The Torture Never Stops."Bum-mer, man. This ain't no flash-back from years of dropping bad acid in the 60s: this is reality! Oooh bummer, fer sher, man.
****
Vancouver Schedule of Events
*Get organized to join the big Peace Walk today!
On June 24, as part of the World Peace Forum in Vancouver, join a peace walk to say:
No War, No Where- Walk for Peace, Justice and Sustainability
Saturday, June 24
-Gather at 12 Noon at two starting points: Seaforth Peace Flame Park (south end of Burrard Bridge), or Waterfront Skytrain Station in front of Canada Place
-March at 1p.m.
-Rally and Festival 2p.m.-5p.m. at Sunset Beach on English Bay (at Bute and Beach Ave)
Featuring Cindy Sheehan and local and international speakers...
http://palsolidaritygrp.org/
****
Our Mission
Palestine Solidarity Group - Vancouver believes in the full political, economic, and national liberation for the Palestinian people in its entirety. Striving for a full and unconditional end to the Israeli occupation of the 1967 territories, including the unconditional right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and full political, legal, and economic equality within the 1948 territories.
PSG is opposed to all forms of racism, including Anti-Jewish racism and Anti-Semitism. Our solidarity is based on internationalism. With this in mind, PSG activities seek out alliances with like-minded groups and individuals.
PSG recognizes the full implication of imperialism and it's role in the oppression and degradation of the Palestinian people. We therefore focus our efforts not only on the entire state of Israel, but the Zionist material and ideological supporters in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. PSG works to promote greater education and action on the subject of Palestine within working-class and progressive circles in their own areas, as well as beyond.
http://palsolidaritygrp.org
****
June 9, 2006
Questions remain over involvement of Jewish community.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
The co-chair of the forthcoming World Peace Forum (WPF) in Vancouver believes the event will provide a balanced view of the Middle East conflict, one of the many topics under discussion when peace advocates from around the world gather in the city June 23-28.
The forum is organized through a central board, but topics for workshops have been decided via various working groups. In addition to working groups covering topics of particular interest to women, First Nations delegates and youth, as well as those addressing issues in Africa and Asia, there has been a Middle East working group. As of press time, its co-chair, Paul Tetrault, had not responded to requests from the Independent for more information on the Middle East-related workshops.
Though there has been concern in some quarters that the organized Jewish community would be underrepresented at the forum, WPF board co-chair Ruth Herman said, "I think there are going to be many people who are Jewish who are coming to the World Peace Forum. My understanding is that the program workshops that are being put on with respect to Israel do have people from both Palestine and Israel in them, so I'm not hugely concerened about the fact there will be no people representing a point of view from Israel - keeping in mind that there will be diverse points of view within Israel itself."
[....]
Vancouver's main organized Jewish community groups – Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, the Canada-Israel Committee, Pacific Region, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver – will not be participating in the WPF.
[....]
Michael Elterman, chair of CIC Pacific Region, said there was no communication between his organization and the Middle East working group until such time as he was informed the proposals had been rejected.
[....]
When asked if he felt there was any anti-Semitism at play, Elterman replied, "Well, it's anti-Semitism to the extent that [they] discriminate against one group and don't use the same treatment against all the other groups."
http://www.jewishindependent
****
The acid trip has worn off, and I'm now back to the real reality. True, sorry to relate, the fascists will be out in force on Saturday. But too cool to pass up, we'll be there to protest 'em, man. Dig it!
Oh yeah, before I forget, "Peace, Man."
****
The mis-named World Peace Forum—which Vancouver, to its shame, is hosting—is nothing but a platform for the most virulent anti-Israel speakers and organizers the loony socialist left has to offer.
Harvey Enchin, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Vancouver is hosting a major anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-globalization, anti-capitalist conference starting Friday that will draw apologists for terrorism and champions of failed states from all over the world.
The reason you haven't heard about it is that it goes by the misnomer, the World Peace Forum.
There is nothing peaceful about the message these deluded propagandists are preaching.
[...]
****
Thursday, June 22, 2006
VPL Meeting
|: I'm with you and
You're with me and
So we are all together,
So we are all together,
So we are all together. :|
You're with me and
So we are all together,
So we are all together,
So we are all together. :|
We are marching to Libraria,
Libraria, Libraria.
We are marching to Libraria,
Libraria rules the waves.
|: Sing with me, I'll
Sing with you and
So we will sing together,
So we will sing together,
So we will sing together. :|
We'll be at VPL in the atrium from 7-9:00 p.m this Thursday evening, tonight. Join us, please, for coffee and some conversation about our times and our nations.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
William Walker and the loss of Psyche.
An ocassion arose this morning that suggested I send an image by Burne-Jones to a friend. I was discussing the change that came over William Walker when his girlfriend died young, Walker Sr. becoming thereafter a killing machine.
I made the comparison between Walker and Jabotinski in light of a couple of emails I received privately last day. This being the real world of real men who live real lives we must consider that they do not all live as we all do, in peace and sweet reason, feasting on the milk of Human kindness. For some it's soured and there is no appetite for it. For some there is a thirst for blood. Some of them are us.
We who understand the lesson of Cupid and Psyche know the person is better off who loves the mind of others. As we can see from the life and times of Walker Sr. when the love is gone there is sometimes Hell to come.
To the best of my recollection this is the first of nearly 800 posts in which I have used the word love, at least in it's Platonic sense. I bring it up now to remind us that it is zepherous.When the relationship we have of Cupid and Psyche is missing, then we are as we are in the world of men alone, and our Muslim friends will meet us thus if we do not cling to Psyche tightly. I don't care to lose my relationship with Psyche for the sake of playing games with savages and fools. It's too high a price to pay.
The point then is to make reason prevail and order to rule. Tomorrow we meet again at the public library. Plaese join us.
E. Burne-Jones (1833-1898), Cupidon délivrant Psyché
Peinture commandée par George Howard, 9ième comte de Carlisle pour la salle à manger de Palace Green à Kensington.
I made the comparison between Walker and Jabotinski in light of a couple of emails I received privately last day. This being the real world of real men who live real lives we must consider that they do not all live as we all do, in peace and sweet reason, feasting on the milk of Human kindness. For some it's soured and there is no appetite for it. For some there is a thirst for blood. Some of them are us.
We who understand the lesson of Cupid and Psyche know the person is better off who loves the mind of others. As we can see from the life and times of Walker Sr. when the love is gone there is sometimes Hell to come.
To the best of my recollection this is the first of nearly 800 posts in which I have used the word love, at least in it's Platonic sense. I bring it up now to remind us that it is zepherous.When the relationship we have of Cupid and Psyche is missing, then we are as we are in the world of men alone, and our Muslim friends will meet us thus if we do not cling to Psyche tightly. I don't care to lose my relationship with Psyche for the sake of playing games with savages and fools. It's too high a price to pay.
The point then is to make reason prevail and order to rule. Tomorrow we meet again at the public library. Plaese join us.
E. Burne-Jones (1833-1898), Cupidon délivrant Psyché
Peinture commandée par George Howard, 9ième comte de Carlisle pour la salle à manger de Palace Green à Kensington.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
The Centre Cannot Hold....
It's time for a painful but needed divorce.
Some go right, some go left. We part company here and that's the end of it. Anglicans face a schism that wil destroy the Church forever.
Homosexuals are upset with the ethics of the world a it is, and they protest at a Canadian university as a woman is given an honorary degree.
Canada, too, is in this news as the UN decides its governement isn't doing enough to enable First! Nations! Native! Peoples! suffering from systemic racism, victims who require seperate but probably equal justice systems to manage their own affairs.
And the Anglicans are falling apart at the seams. But so is the whole of the Western world. the point we gain from these stories below is that we are at a stage of collapse of our cultures that will result in a new world. What's important to us? What is truly valuable to our lives? Is it Gay rights? Indian rights? Women's rights? The environment? Animal rights? Palestinian rights? Iran's right to have nuclear weapons? Or is it important that the vast conspiracy of Jooos and Right wing religious bigots takes over and installs concentration camps and imposes a theocracy after destroying the world for the sake of the multi-national oil companies?
We face a civil war. There is no turning back.
"Nobody wants a split, but if you have virtually two civilizations in a single civilization something has got to give sometime."
****
A woman was last night elected as the first female leader of the American branch of Anglicanism in a historic but divisive development that could hasten the break-up of the worldwide Church.
The Bishop of Nevada, the Rt Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is a leading liberal on homosexuality, is the first women primate in the history of Anglicanism.
Ryerson faculty turn backs on 'homophobic' degree
Professors, activists protest ethicist's opinions on same-sex marriage
SCOTT ROBERTS
TORONTO -- As Margaret Somerville stood to accept an honorary doctorate in science at Ryerson University yesterday, several faculty members on stage behind her turned their backs in protest.
Donning rainbow flags and necklaces, the professors lifted a banner that read "My Ryerson honours equal rights," a silent but strong message against the controversial ethicist for her opposition to same-sex marriage.
It was also condemnation of the downtown Toronto university for honouring her, one protester said.
"We were turning our backs on honouring homophobia," said image arts professor Lila Pine, one of two instructors holding the banner. "Nobody's opposed to her right to express her own views; we're opposed to honouring those views because they're really against the core values of Ryerson, which embraces human rights."
When Dr. Somerville took the stage, a lone voice yelled the only vocal condemnation heard at the convocation ceremony, "You should be ashamed of yourself."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060620.SOMERVILLE20/TPStory/National
****
Canada wants delay to key aboriginal UN treaty
By David LjunggrenReuters
Monday, June 19, 2006; 4:29 PM
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada said on Monday it wanted the United Nations to delay a vote on a key draft treaty enshrining the rights of indigenous peoples, a document which has already taken 20 years to put together.
Political opponents accused Canada's Conservative government of trying to sabotage the treaty, which is supposed to be adopted soon by the U.N's new Human Rights Council in Geneva.
[....]
By Jim Leckrone
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - The U.S. Episcopal Church chose Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on Sunday as its first woman leader, a move unprecedented in the Anglican church and one likely to produce more turmoil in a faith divided over the ordination of an openly gay bishop.
Her election came 30 years after the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion, approved the ordination of women to the priesthood.
The selection seemed likely to provoke controversy, since most other Anglican communities, including the Church of England, do not allow women bishops.
"It will be a great adventure," said Jefferts Schori, who holds degrees in biology and oceanography and taught religious studies at Oregon State University before her 1994 ordination.
Asked at a news briefing if her selection was designed to "send a message" to the wider Anglican community upset with the U.S. church, she said, "God welcomes all. Those who agree and disagree." She promised to "bend over backwards" to reconcile with those in the American church who are upset with its current direction.
But the Rev. David Anderson, president of the conservative American Anglican Council, criticized her selection saying she lacked experience. In terms of the divisions in the church, he added, "mom and pop are leaving" already.
[....]
A majority of U.S. bishops backed the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history, when the church last met in convention three years ago.
Jefferts Schori was narrowly elected from a field of several candidates after five ballots and was the front-runner from the start of voting, church officials said.
[....]
GAYS PRAISE ELECTION
Jefferts Schori, 52, is the bishop of the Diocese of Nevada. She will be installed at a ceremony in Washington's National Cathedral later this year.
Her selection won immediate praise from Integrity USA, an organisation representing Episcopalian gays.
"We look forward to continuing the process of working closely with the presiding bishop towards the full inclusion of the gay and lesbian faithful in the Body of Christ," said the Rev. Susan Russell, head of the group. "The historic election ... is something for us and the whole church to celebrate."
How to address fallout from the Robinson consecration has dominated the convention.
The gathering must still act on proposals that would answer concerns raised by a report commissioned by the archbishop of Canterbury. That report advised the church to apologise for the Robinson consecration, promise not to elevate any more gays in same-sex relationships to the episcopate and take a stand against the blessing of same-sex unions.
In the worldwide Anglican church women are bishops only in Canada, the United States and New Zealand. The Robinson issue has been particularly criticized in Africa where the church has a large and growing membership and where homosexuality is often taboo.
The 77-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion is a broad grouping of churches across 164 countries always run by consensus.
First woman chosen to lead Episcopal Church
****
Schism threat after failure of middle way
Commentary by Ruth Gledhill
THE rejection by The Episcopal Church of calls for moratoria on gay consecrations and same-sex blessings represents a failure to comply with the demands of the Windsor process. This process was set in train by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in an attempt to resolve the crisis after the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.
Whether the Anglican Communion now descends into a process of formal schism depends entirely on the response of Dr Williams.
The problem at the General Convention was that radical liberals felt that anything seen as a step backwards in their embrace of the gay agenda would be to sacrifice gays and lesbians on the altar of the Anglican Communion. This they were not prepared to do.Some new administrative structure, free of the bounds of diocese, parish and province, will have to be found to retain even a semblance of unity in the Anglican world. The most likely structure to emerge will be a form of federation, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as the focus of unity.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2235749,00.html
****
There is a good chance that the coming years will show an increasing division between the Left and the normal in the West. Hostilities will increase, and the whole of our civilization will change from the muck of it today to something different, perhaps one large ghetto run by street gangs and Muslims.
Liberalism is a failure, and it continues to gain ground. When the whole of it falls like a rotten pumkin the question will be: What is to be done?
Some go right, some go left. We part company here and that's the end of it. Anglicans face a schism that wil destroy the Church forever.
Homosexuals are upset with the ethics of the world a it is, and they protest at a Canadian university as a woman is given an honorary degree.
Canada, too, is in this news as the UN decides its governement isn't doing enough to enable First! Nations! Native! Peoples! suffering from systemic racism, victims who require seperate but probably equal justice systems to manage their own affairs.
And the Anglicans are falling apart at the seams. But so is the whole of the Western world. the point we gain from these stories below is that we are at a stage of collapse of our cultures that will result in a new world. What's important to us? What is truly valuable to our lives? Is it Gay rights? Indian rights? Women's rights? The environment? Animal rights? Palestinian rights? Iran's right to have nuclear weapons? Or is it important that the vast conspiracy of Jooos and Right wing religious bigots takes over and installs concentration camps and imposes a theocracy after destroying the world for the sake of the multi-national oil companies?
We face a civil war. There is no turning back.
"Nobody wants a split, but if you have virtually two civilizations in a single civilization something has got to give sometime."
****
A woman was last night elected as the first female leader of the American branch of Anglicanism in a historic but divisive development that could hasten the break-up of the worldwide Church.
The Bishop of Nevada, the Rt Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is a leading liberal on homosexuality, is the first women primate in the history of Anglicanism.
Her election followed a warning by one of the Church of England's senior bishops yesterday that efforts to prevent a schism in worldwide Anglicanism were now futile as it had become "two religions".
In an outspoken interview with The Daily Telegraph, the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, said that divisions between liberals and conservatives were so profound that a compromise was no longer possible.
He increased the pressure on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to take firm action against the liberal American leadership.
"Anglicans are used to fudging things sometimes, but I think this is a matter of such seriousness that fudge won't do," said Bishop Nazir-Ali.
"Sometimes you have to recognise that there are two irreconcilable positions and you have to choose between them.
"The right choice is in line with the Bible and the Church's teaching down the ages, not some new-fangled religion we have invented to respond to the 21st century.
"My fear is that the Church of England has made a number of moves in the liberal, Protestant direction. That gives me concerns that the Bible will become less important and that the Church is moving away from its traditional Catholic order.
"If you move in that direction you become a kind of options Church, where you live by preferences."
Bishop Nazir-Ali said that, whatever the outcome, the Americans had already become detached from the roots of Anglicanism.
"Nobody wants a split, but if you think you have virtually two religions in a single Church something has got to give sometime," he said.
He suggested the point of no return had been passed, and effectively challenged Dr Williams to recognise the fact.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
****
Ryerson faculty turn backs on 'homophobic' degree
Professors, activists protest ethicist's opinions on same-sex marriage
SCOTT ROBERTS
TORONTO -- As Margaret Somerville stood to accept an honorary doctorate in science at Ryerson University yesterday, several faculty members on stage behind her turned their backs in protest.
Donning rainbow flags and necklaces, the professors lifted a banner that read "My Ryerson honours equal rights," a silent but strong message against the controversial ethicist for her opposition to same-sex marriage.
It was also condemnation of the downtown Toronto university for honouring her, one protester said.
"We were turning our backs on honouring homophobia," said image arts professor Lila Pine, one of two instructors holding the banner. "Nobody's opposed to her right to express her own views; we're opposed to honouring those views because they're really against the core values of Ryerson, which embraces human rights."
When Dr. Somerville took the stage, a lone voice yelled the only vocal condemnation heard at the convocation ceremony, "You should be ashamed of yourself."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com
****
Canada wants delay to key aboriginal UN treaty
By David LjunggrenReuters
Monday, June 19, 2006; 4:29 PM
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada said on Monday it wanted the United Nations to delay a vote on a key draft treaty enshrining the rights of indigenous peoples, a document which has already taken 20 years to put together.
Political opponents accused Canada's Conservative government of trying to sabotage the treaty, which is supposed to be adopted soon by the U.N's new Human Rights Council in Geneva.
[....]
Separately, officials said Canada would vote against the document unless major changes were made. The draft treaty is opposed by the United States, Australia and New Zealand, which like Canada have significant aboriginal populations.
Canada has about 1.3 million native Indians, or about 4.4 percent of the overall population. Many live in poverty and suffer from ill health and high levels of unemployment.
Some aboriginal activists complain about what they say is centuries of ill-treatment and racism at the hands of the majority population and want more control over the resources on their lands, some of which are home to rich mineral deposits.
http://www.washingtonpost.com
****
By Jim Leckrone
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - The U.S. Episcopal Church chose Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on Sunday as its first woman leader, a move unprecedented in the Anglican church and one likely to produce more turmoil in a faith divided over the ordination of an openly gay bishop.
Her election came 30 years after the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion, approved the ordination of women to the priesthood.
The selection seemed likely to provoke controversy, since most other Anglican communities, including the Church of England, do not allow women bishops.
"It will be a great adventure," said Jefferts Schori, who holds degrees in biology and oceanography and taught religious studies at Oregon State University before her 1994 ordination.
Asked at a news briefing if her selection was designed to "send a message" to the wider Anglican community upset with the U.S. church, she said, "God welcomes all. Those who agree and disagree." She promised to "bend over backwards" to reconcile with those in the American church who are upset with its current direction.
But the Rev. David Anderson, president of the conservative American Anglican Council, criticized her selection saying she lacked experience. In terms of the divisions in the church, he added, "mom and pop are leaving" already.
[....]
A majority of U.S. bishops backed the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history, when the church last met in convention three years ago.
Jefferts Schori was narrowly elected from a field of several candidates after five ballots and was the front-runner from the start of voting, church officials said.
[....]
GAYS PRAISE ELECTION
Jefferts Schori, 52, is the bishop of the Diocese of Nevada. She will be installed at a ceremony in Washington's National Cathedral later this year.
Her selection won immediate praise from Integrity USA, an organisation representing Episcopalian gays.
"We look forward to continuing the process of working closely with the presiding bishop towards the full inclusion of the gay and lesbian faithful in the Body of Christ," said the Rev. Susan Russell, head of the group. "The historic election ... is something for us and the whole church to celebrate."
How to address fallout from the Robinson consecration has dominated the convention.
The gathering must still act on proposals that would answer concerns raised by a report commissioned by the archbishop of Canterbury. That report advised the church to apologise for the Robinson consecration, promise not to elevate any more gays in same-sex relationships to the episcopate and take a stand against the blessing of same-sex unions.
In the worldwide Anglican church women are bishops only in Canada, the United States and New Zealand. The Robinson issue has been particularly criticized in Africa where the church has a large and growing membership and where homosexuality is often taboo.
The 77-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion is a broad grouping of churches across 164 countries always run by consensus.
First woman chosen to lead Episcopal Church
****
Schism threat after failure of middle way
Commentary by Ruth Gledhill
THE rejection by The Episcopal Church of calls for moratoria on gay consecrations and same-sex blessings represents a failure to comply with the demands of the Windsor process. This process was set in train by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in an attempt to resolve the crisis after the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.
Whether the Anglican Communion now descends into a process of formal schism depends entirely on the response of Dr Williams.
The problem at the General Convention was that radical liberals felt that anything seen as a step backwards in their embrace of the gay agenda would be to sacrifice gays and lesbians on the altar of the Anglican Communion. This they were not prepared to do.Some new administrative structure, free of the bounds of diocese, parish and province, will have to be found to retain even a semblance of unity in the Anglican world. The most likely structure to emerge will be a form of federation, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as the focus of unity.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk
****
There is a good chance that the coming years will show an increasing division between the Left and the normal in the West. Hostilities will increase, and the whole of our civilization will change from the muck of it today to something different, perhaps one large ghetto run by street gangs and Muslims.
Liberalism is a failure, and it continues to gain ground. When the whole of it falls like a rotten pumkin the question will be: What is to be done?
Beer and Law Suits for the Homeless
Two pieces below both featuring Human rights.
I have opinions but I think reality overwhelms anything I might write.
****
Homeless Depot: A Moral Alternative
By Red Square
6/20/2006, 12:28 pm
Home Depot, the nation's largest home-improvement chain, was accused in a Federal lawsuit today of discriminating against the homeless. "The very existence of Home Depot is offensive to the sensitivities of people without homes," says Nadine Strossen, head of the ACLU who filed the case, adding that the word "home" itself smacks of racism, bigotry, and intolerance and thus should be treated as hate speech. The suit seeks unspecified damages on behalf of seven homeless people, some of them of color, squatting in an abandoned building next to the Home Depot parking lot in the Coney Island area of New York.
"We hope to win a ruling that would make it a class-action suit on behalf of all homeless who ever laid their eyes on the insensitive Home Depot sign and felt offended and/or excluded as a result."
[more:]
http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=763
****
'Beer for homeless' blasted
/2003/07/02/1056825441944.html
****
Both pieces above deal in satire, but only the first is made up. The second is real. The top piece is more believable. That tells me something, though I'm not sure what yet.
I have opinions but I think reality overwhelms anything I might write.
****
Homeless Depot: A Moral Alternative
By Red Square
6/20/2006, 12:28 pm
Home Depot, the nation's largest home-improvement chain, was accused in a Federal lawsuit today of discriminating against the homeless. "The very existence of Home Depot is offensive to the sensitivities of people without homes," says Nadine Strossen, head of the ACLU who filed the case, adding that the word "home" itself smacks of racism, bigotry, and intolerance and thus should be treated as hate speech. The suit seeks unspecified damages on behalf of seven homeless people, some of them of color, squatting in an abandoned building next to the Home Depot parking lot in the Coney Island area of New York.
"We hope to win a ruling that would make it a class-action suit on behalf of all homeless who ever laid their eyes on the insensitive Home Depot sign and felt offended and/or excluded as a result."
[more:]
http://www.thepeoplescube.com
****
'Beer for homeless' blasted
By Ben Davey
July 2 2003
A US "charity" that raises money to buy alcohol for homeless people was today attacked by the Salvation Army for adding "fuel to the fire".
Gerard Byrne, social program secretary of recovery services with the Salvation Army in Sydney, said the idea was a dangerous stunt.
Promoting themselves as a legitimate charity, Beer for the Homeless is the brainchild of talk radio personalities from WGOW-FM Chattanooga, Tennessee, who believe it will reduce begging by treating the homeless more equitably.
On their website, the group writes: "Merely because one has no home does not mean that one is somehow a second-class citizen and is no longer allowed the simple pleasures that society allows to those lucky enough to put a roof over their head.
"Beer For The Homeless steps up and strikes a blow for equality and human rights. Through this website, we will raise money to purchase and distribute beer to those who want it. Good old fashioned 100% American beer."
In response to criticism that their unique philosophy is socially irresponsible, the liquor dispensers defended their brand of charity as being a beneficial, even dignified cause.
"We feel that by our actions we are actually helping the homeless. No longer will they have to panhandle and annoy citizens in public asking for money, nor will they take government aid money to use on beer.
But Mr Byrne said: "If something like that was introduced here there would certainly be serious concerns from community groups and the government alike."
Byrne said that he initially thought the idea was a joke but was shocked when he saw pictures of the group distributing alcohol to homeless people.
"It looks like a cynical publicity stunt by the radio station with beer 'babes' employed to hand out the beer," he said.
"Since drugs and alcohol are a prominent factor in homelessness, providing them with alcohol is morally and ethically questionable."
"It just adds fuel to the fire."
The organisation asks for donations via credit card and claims that 70 per cent of all monies raised are used to buy beer, with the remaining 30 per cent spent on transport and website maintenance costs.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles****
Both pieces above deal in satire, but only the first is made up. The second is real. The top piece is more believable. That tells me something, though I'm not sure what yet.
On the origins of culture
Truepeers introduces Adam at a new blog. Below is the first bit of Peer's welcome, the whole of which you will find linked at the bottom of this piece:
http://covenantzone.blogspot.com/
****
Covenant Zone Welcomes the new GABlog
Much of the inspiration for my approach to the Covenant Zone comes from a now sadly discontinued blog. I am very glad to hear that the blogger in question has found a new home at the GABlog. He has taken the name "Scenic Politics" (until he can think of something better he writes - which is what I thought when, attempting paradox, I became "truepeers"... and now I feel a little prim and stuck). Scenic's first post (he is "adam" in comments) appears here. Let me say a word or two about our common interest - originary thinking - hopefully better to introduce what Scenic/adam is saying about politics today.http://covenantzone.blogspot
****
Down-time
Honest, I paid the Internet service provider bill! Still, I was cut off for the day. Please stay tuned till I get the next piece up as soon as I get in on Tuesday morning. Sorry about the delay.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
City Knights: Why do They hate Us?
The question is something of a national obsession. The answers are mostly so regpugnant I can't stand listening to them. Why do they hate us? It's not the right question. "Why do They hate Us?" Let's ask ourselves who are They and who are We. Once we do that and find answers we might find the question easier to follow. We can start to find the answers in France in 1789 and continue to our present day to look for those who are Them and they whom We are. Forget about this invasion, that evasion, the other avoision. Let's look at some reality. Who are they? Who are we?
They are the non-Modernists, in most cases the primitives of the world, joined now by the post-modernists, the radical hippies and Left dhimmi fascists. "They" are the people of the world as it has been forever everywhere till the 18th century. They are the rich, the poor, the people, the masses. To this day They are nearly everyone. "They" hate us.
Whether They are the Palestinians, the Muslims, the Left, the Right, the lot of them, They are not Us. We are recent and we are the Modenist minority, under threat of death, under threat of extinction. We are the hated bourgeoisie, the evil Middle Class. They are Us. We're the bad guys!
We are people who live in a Modern World. They are people who live as Man has lived forever. We are revolutionaries, rebels, those who are not as others. Among ourselves we are the majority, and we, too close to ourselves, do not see ourselves as different from the majority of the greater world. If we fail to recognise our stunning difference we will not understand the nature of the hatred that drives the primitives to murder us at random from motives of frenzy and despair. Not just us do they murder, the primitives are also murdering themselves, their children, and their possiblities of the future. This cannot go on as it has so poorly. We must recognise our states of difference and learn how to deal with them as well as we may. We have to see ourselves as the threat to Humanity that we are. They hate us, and that's a fact. Who are we that they should hate us?
We are the burghers. We came up from the middle and scored unexpectedly. The shock of the win and the shock of the loss is maddening to those who now see us holding the trophies of our victories. They hate us, and they will always hate us. Such is life.
In the history of Man there is a slow development of economics. 5,000 years ago Man began the Agricultural Revolution, and it drove the hunter/gatherers into frenzies of hatred against it. Where settled men planted, nomads wrecked, raped, and killed. They do so today. Where settled men planted and gathered surplus, nomads raided and stole and burned. They do so today. Where settled men built, nomads destroyed what they built. Us and Them. We build and create and store up goods. They destroy and murder. We develop, they regress. The root cause is development. The root cause of the hatred they feel toward us is our growth.
For every advance in Human life there is a reaction by the static people who demand a halt and a turning back to the way it was before, and Man will not stop his advance. Man moves on, slowly and painfully, and the primitives, wandering around wrecking and killing, they find themselves at a loss worse than the time before each time there is an advance. Now the advances of Man have left the primitives so far behind they cannot even rightly attack us with much hope of harm to us. They survive by our sympathy and our pity. We can kill them all in an instant, and yet we have advanced beyond that too. But the time is approaching when we will reexamine that moralistic stance and perhaps decide the tensions between the Modern and the primitive are so great that there is now a need to cut us loose from each other for permanent. Like the Israelis, we have won war after war against the primitive invasions, and like the Israelis, we give back what we have won from the aggressors because we have pity. That might change. We might not be so nice in the coming times. We might kick loose the primitives at our feet and advance into the future without any of them.
We? We are not as one. We are two.
How do we see the nature of Man? What is the purpose of life of Man and the world he lives in? For the primitive it is an endless round of survival and death and rebirth. It is an acting out of the state of nature. It is unchanging and static. Change is catastophe. Life is an animal existence perpetually in a state of nature. And now we who are Modernists are cut off from that cycle of idiocy and nature. That's the root cause of the hatred the primitives feel toward us. We left them in the muck and mire of nature. We build. We are burghers.
****
Burgher:
A title. In the European Middle Ages, a burgher was any freeman of a burgh or borough; or any inhabitant of a borough, a person who lives in town. (Even in modern German the word for citizen is Bürger, and in Dutch the word for citizen is burger) Also a member of the middle class such as in bourgeois, not, for example, of the upper (manor lord) or lower (serf farmer) class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgher
****
Modernity didn't really begin in England in 1750; didn't happen in America in 1776; didn't start in Europe in 1789. Modernity didn't start then but it became obvious in its reality then. Those years presented the primitive world with the obvious triumph of the bourgeoisie.
****
Bourgeois:
In the early Middle Ages, as cities were forming, growing and emerging, artisans and tradesmen began to emerge as an economic force. They formed guilds, associations and companies to conduct business and promote their own interests. These people were the original bourgeoisie. In the late Middle Ages, they allied with the kings in uprooting the feudalist system, gradually becoming the ruling class in industrialised nation-states. In the 17th and 18th century, they generally supported the American revolution and French revolution in overthrowing the laws and privileges of the absolutist feudal order, clearing the way for the rapid expansion of commerce.
Concepts such as personal liberties, religious and civil rights, and free trade all derive from bourgeois philosophies. But the bourgeoisie was never without its critics; it was first accused of narrow-mindedness, materialism, hypocrisy, opposition to change, and lack of culture, among other things, by persons such as the playwright Molière. The earliest recorded pejorative uses of the term "bourgeois" are associated with aristocratic contempt for the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. Successful embourgeoisement typically meant being able to retire and live on invested income. With the expansion of commerce, trade and the market economy, the bourgeoisie grew in size, influence and power. In all industrialized countries, the aristocracy either faded away slowly or found itself overthrown by a bourgeois revolution. Thus the bourgeoisie rose to the top of the social hierarchy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois
****
Marx writes that history is class struggle. Good for him. He's probably right. Where he goes wrong is in the emphases, the details, and in his conclusions. Briefly, Marx writes that after the triumph of the bourgeios in the revolution to gain power from the feudalsits, thn will come another revolution in which the masses of workers and peasants will revolt and rule the world like farm animals without farmers. Somehow Marx missed the entire point of existence and still comes across as an important thinker. Marx is a counter-revolutionary, a reactionary, a renegade. His eschatological vision is of the pre-lapsarian utopia. That's not progressive. That is fascistic.
Marx and his lot today, the Left dhimmi fascists of "post-modernity," are our bane. Our own are our enemies. They are the enemies of progress and Humanity. Their goal is the restoration of Eden.
Death to them!
History is a gradual mastery of Man over nature. We Modernists have begun to master it successfully in these past few hundred years, and because of it we are freer men than any before us in history. There are those who hate our freedom. We are rebels. We do not love Mother Nature.
Beat that bitch with a chainsaw.
Free individuals do not live in communes like farm animals. Free men are not at the mercy of nature. Free men are individuals who win their own by their own efforts and are in possession of the title to their own lives. All of this offends the primitive to the point that he would and does kill us for our rebellion against nature as he lives it and as he would have everyone live it hereafter as before.
We Modernists own our own lives as private property. We are not part of the game of the primitives. Our rebellion and our success because of it drives them insane and to suicide and murder. We are settled, and we are prosperous, and they hate us because we are outside them. We don't live in a state of primitive nature. We live in cities.
****
City:
[O]pinions vary on whether any particular ancient settlement can be considered to be a city. The first true towns are sometimes considered to be large settlements where the inhabitants were no longer simply farmers of the surrounding area, but began to take on specialized occupations, and where trade, food storage and power was centralized. Societies that live in cities are often called civilizations.
By this definition, the first towns we know of were located in Mesopotamia, such as Ur, and along the Nile, the Indus Valley Civilization and China. Before this time it was rare for settlements to reach significant size, although there were exceptions such as Jericho, Çatalhöyük and Mehrgarh. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (in the Indus Valley Civilization) were the largest of these early cities, with a combined population of up to about 100,000.
During the European Middle Ages, a town was as much a political entity as a collection of houses. City residence brought freedom from customary rural obligations to lord and community: "Stadtluft macht frei" ("City air makes you free") was a saying in Germany. In Continental Europe cities with a legislature of their own weren't unheard of, the laws for towns as a rule other than for the countryside, the lord of a town often being another than for surrounding land. In the Holy Roman Empire some cities had no other lord than the emperor.
[....]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City
****
The division between the primitive in a state of nature and the Modernist in a state of civility has something to do with cities. We'll look at it again in another post soon. We'll see Them abandoning their old ways for new, and bringing with them their hatreds and despair and their murders. In the heart of the city we will begin to see the root cause of why they hate us.
They are the non-Modernists, in most cases the primitives of the world, joined now by the post-modernists, the radical hippies and Left dhimmi fascists. "They" are the people of the world as it has been forever everywhere till the 18th century. They are the rich, the poor, the people, the masses. To this day They are nearly everyone. "They" hate us.
Whether They are the Palestinians, the Muslims, the Left, the Right, the lot of them, They are not Us. We are recent and we are the Modenist minority, under threat of death, under threat of extinction. We are the hated bourgeoisie, the evil Middle Class. They are Us. We're the bad guys!
We are people who live in a Modern World. They are people who live as Man has lived forever. We are revolutionaries, rebels, those who are not as others. Among ourselves we are the majority, and we, too close to ourselves, do not see ourselves as different from the majority of the greater world. If we fail to recognise our stunning difference we will not understand the nature of the hatred that drives the primitives to murder us at random from motives of frenzy and despair. Not just us do they murder, the primitives are also murdering themselves, their children, and their possiblities of the future. This cannot go on as it has so poorly. We must recognise our states of difference and learn how to deal with them as well as we may. We have to see ourselves as the threat to Humanity that we are. They hate us, and that's a fact. Who are we that they should hate us?
We are the burghers. We came up from the middle and scored unexpectedly. The shock of the win and the shock of the loss is maddening to those who now see us holding the trophies of our victories. They hate us, and they will always hate us. Such is life.
In the history of Man there is a slow development of economics. 5,000 years ago Man began the Agricultural Revolution, and it drove the hunter/gatherers into frenzies of hatred against it. Where settled men planted, nomads wrecked, raped, and killed. They do so today. Where settled men planted and gathered surplus, nomads raided and stole and burned. They do so today. Where settled men built, nomads destroyed what they built. Us and Them. We build and create and store up goods. They destroy and murder. We develop, they regress. The root cause is development. The root cause of the hatred they feel toward us is our growth.
For every advance in Human life there is a reaction by the static people who demand a halt and a turning back to the way it was before, and Man will not stop his advance. Man moves on, slowly and painfully, and the primitives, wandering around wrecking and killing, they find themselves at a loss worse than the time before each time there is an advance. Now the advances of Man have left the primitives so far behind they cannot even rightly attack us with much hope of harm to us. They survive by our sympathy and our pity. We can kill them all in an instant, and yet we have advanced beyond that too. But the time is approaching when we will reexamine that moralistic stance and perhaps decide the tensions between the Modern and the primitive are so great that there is now a need to cut us loose from each other for permanent. Like the Israelis, we have won war after war against the primitive invasions, and like the Israelis, we give back what we have won from the aggressors because we have pity. That might change. We might not be so nice in the coming times. We might kick loose the primitives at our feet and advance into the future without any of them.
We? We are not as one. We are two.
How do we see the nature of Man? What is the purpose of life of Man and the world he lives in? For the primitive it is an endless round of survival and death and rebirth. It is an acting out of the state of nature. It is unchanging and static. Change is catastophe. Life is an animal existence perpetually in a state of nature. And now we who are Modernists are cut off from that cycle of idiocy and nature. That's the root cause of the hatred the primitives feel toward us. We left them in the muck and mire of nature. We build. We are burghers.
****Burgher:
A title. In the European Middle Ages, a burgher was any freeman of a burgh or borough; or any inhabitant of a borough, a person who lives in town. (Even in modern German the word for citizen is Bürger, and in Dutch the word for citizen is burger) Also a member of the middle class such as in bourgeois, not, for example, of the upper (manor lord) or lower (serf farmer) class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
****
Modernity didn't really begin in England in 1750; didn't happen in America in 1776; didn't start in Europe in 1789. Modernity didn't start then but it became obvious in its reality then. Those years presented the primitive world with the obvious triumph of the bourgeoisie.
****
Bourgeois:
In the early Middle Ages, as cities were forming, growing and emerging, artisans and tradesmen began to emerge as an economic force. They formed guilds, associations and companies to conduct business and promote their own interests. These people were the original bourgeoisie. In the late Middle Ages, they allied with the kings in uprooting the feudalist system, gradually becoming the ruling class in industrialised nation-states. In the 17th and 18th century, they generally supported the American revolution and French revolution in overthrowing the laws and privileges of the absolutist feudal order, clearing the way for the rapid expansion of commerce.
Concepts such as personal liberties, religious and civil rights, and free trade all derive from bourgeois philosophies. But the bourgeoisie was never without its critics; it was first accused of narrow-mindedness, materialism, hypocrisy, opposition to change, and lack of culture, among other things, by persons such as the playwright Molière. The earliest recorded pejorative uses of the term "bourgeois" are associated with aristocratic contempt for the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. Successful embourgeoisement typically meant being able to retire and live on invested income. With the expansion of commerce, trade and the market economy, the bourgeoisie grew in size, influence and power. In all industrialized countries, the aristocracy either faded away slowly or found itself overthrown by a bourgeois revolution. Thus the bourgeoisie rose to the top of the social hierarchy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
****
Marx writes that history is class struggle. Good for him. He's probably right. Where he goes wrong is in the emphases, the details, and in his conclusions. Briefly, Marx writes that after the triumph of the bourgeios in the revolution to gain power from the feudalsits, thn will come another revolution in which the masses of workers and peasants will revolt and rule the world like farm animals without farmers. Somehow Marx missed the entire point of existence and still comes across as an important thinker. Marx is a counter-revolutionary, a reactionary, a renegade. His eschatological vision is of the pre-lapsarian utopia. That's not progressive. That is fascistic.
Marx and his lot today, the Left dhimmi fascists of "post-modernity," are our bane. Our own are our enemies. They are the enemies of progress and Humanity. Their goal is the restoration of Eden.
Death to them!
History is a gradual mastery of Man over nature. We Modernists have begun to master it successfully in these past few hundred years, and because of it we are freer men than any before us in history. There are those who hate our freedom. We are rebels. We do not love Mother Nature.
Beat that bitch with a chainsaw.
Free individuals do not live in communes like farm animals. Free men are not at the mercy of nature. Free men are individuals who win their own by their own efforts and are in possession of the title to their own lives. All of this offends the primitive to the point that he would and does kill us for our rebellion against nature as he lives it and as he would have everyone live it hereafter as before.
We Modernists own our own lives as private property. We are not part of the game of the primitives. Our rebellion and our success because of it drives them insane and to suicide and murder. We are settled, and we are prosperous, and they hate us because we are outside them. We don't live in a state of primitive nature. We live in cities.
****
City:
[O]pinions vary on whether any particular ancient settlement can be considered to be a city. The first true towns are sometimes considered to be large settlements where the inhabitants were no longer simply farmers of the surrounding area, but began to take on specialized occupations, and where trade, food storage and power was centralized. Societies that live in cities are often called civilizations.
By this definition, the first towns we know of were located in Mesopotamia, such as Ur, and along the Nile, the Indus Valley Civilization and China. Before this time it was rare for settlements to reach significant size, although there were exceptions such as Jericho, Çatalhöyük and Mehrgarh. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (in the Indus Valley Civilization) were the largest of these early cities, with a combined population of up to about 100,000.
During the European Middle Ages, a town was as much a political entity as a collection of houses. City residence brought freedom from customary rural obligations to lord and community: "Stadtluft macht frei" ("City air makes you free") was a saying in Germany. In Continental Europe cities with a legislature of their own weren't unheard of, the laws for towns as a rule other than for the countryside, the lord of a town often being another than for surrounding land. In the Holy Roman Empire some cities had no other lord than the emperor.
[....]
Most towns remained far smaller places, so that in 1500 only some two dozen places in the world contained more than 100,000 inhabitants: as late as 1700 there were fewer than forty, a figure which would rise thereafter to 300 in 1900. A small city of the early modern period might contain as few as 10,000 inhabitants, a town far fewer still.
The growth of modern industry from the late 18th century onward led to massive urbanization and the rise of new great cities, first in Europe and then in other regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers of migrants from rural communities into urban areas.... Today the world's population is about half urban, with millions still streaming annually into the growing cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
****
The division between the primitive in a state of nature and the Modernist in a state of civility has something to do with cities. We'll look at it again in another post soon. We'll see Them abandoning their old ways for new, and bringing with them their hatreds and despair and their murders. In the heart of the city we will begin to see the root cause of why they hate us.
Caucasus Belli
War's purpose is not to kill people. Killing is incidental. We killed one a few days ago, today the Russians got another Muslim terrorist. The point of war is to resolve a conflict so it doesn't disrupt our lives any further. Muslims are a problem for our world. We kill some of them incidentally.
****
In the Russians' war against Shamil in the 1820s Karl E. Meyer writes that:
"... chivalric episodes are anomalies in the Caucasus. Excess on all sides is the common curse of this lofty isthmus. Its mountains have harboured clerical extremists and mass killers, audacious patriots and Mafia thugs, desperate outsiders and romantic rebels of every description, real of mythical....
When the war broke out, the Russian garrison numbered roughly 50,000 men. But when Shamil assumed command and united the mountaineers of Daghestan and Chechnya in a sustained guerrilla war, Russia needed 200,000 troops to replenish losses....
Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich's troops systematically combed the mountains, valleys, and forests of Circassia, flushing out Cherkes tribesmen, driving them into the plains and to the seashore, or killing masses of them....
...As the grand duke laconically phrased it, 'It was necessary to exterminate half of the Mountaineers to compel the other half to lay down its arms.' "
Meyer, The Dust of Empire. New York: Public Affairs; 2004, p.147.
But there's more:
We read that in 1864 Prince Alexander Gorkachov, the tsar's long-serving foreign minister:
"Russia's position was the same as that of all civilized societies 'brought into contact with half-savage, nomad populations.' In such cases, he maintained, ' it always happens that the more civilized State is forced, in the interest of the security of its frontiers and its commercial relations, to exercise a certain ascendancy' over our neighbors of a turbulent and unsettled character. 'First there are raids and act of pillage to put down,' he went on. 'To put a stop to them, the tribes on the frontier have to be reduced to a state of more or less perfect submission... It is a peculiarity of Asiatics to respect nothing but visible and palpable force.' " (Meyer: p. 148.)
So how's this for a view of the people the Russians are up against:
A Caucasian nomad finds a genie who grants him one wish. The catch is that the nomad gets, but his neighbors get twice what he wishes for. The nomad says: "Poke out one of my eyes."
****
Terror leader sold out for $74
KAZBEK VAKHAYEV
19jun06 POLICE have shot dead Chechen rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev during a raid on a hideout in his home town of Argun, 14km east of Grozny.
It came as a result of an informant within his network - reportedly paid the equivalent of $74 for his information - in a blow to efforts to spread the increasingly Islam-inspired insurgency throughout southern Russia.
In the Russians' war against Shamil in the 1820s Karl E. Meyer writes that:
"... chivalric episodes are anomalies in the Caucasus. Excess on all sides is the common curse of this lofty isthmus. Its mountains have harboured clerical extremists and mass killers, audacious patriots and Mafia thugs, desperate outsiders and romantic rebels of every description, real of mythical....
When the war broke out, the Russian garrison numbered roughly 50,000 men. But when Shamil assumed command and united the mountaineers of Daghestan and Chechnya in a sustained guerrilla war, Russia needed 200,000 troops to replenish losses....
Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich's troops systematically combed the mountains, valleys, and forests of Circassia, flushing out Cherkes tribesmen, driving them into the plains and to the seashore, or killing masses of them....
...As the grand duke laconically phrased it, 'It was necessary to exterminate half of the Mountaineers to compel the other half to lay down its arms.' "
Meyer, The Dust of Empire. New York: Public Affairs; 2004, p.147.
But there's more:
We read that in 1864 Prince Alexander Gorkachov, the tsar's long-serving foreign minister:
"Russia's position was the same as that of all civilized societies 'brought into contact with half-savage, nomad populations.' In such cases, he maintained, ' it always happens that the more civilized State is forced, in the interest of the security of its frontiers and its commercial relations, to exercise a certain ascendancy' over our neighbors of a turbulent and unsettled character. 'First there are raids and act of pillage to put down,' he went on. 'To put a stop to them, the tribes on the frontier have to be reduced to a state of more or less perfect submission... It is a peculiarity of Asiatics to respect nothing but visible and palpable force.' " (Meyer: p. 148.)
So how's this for a view of the people the Russians are up against:
A Caucasian nomad finds a genie who grants him one wish. The catch is that the nomad gets, but his neighbors get twice what he wishes for. The nomad says: "Poke out one of my eyes."
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Terror leader sold out for $74
KAZBEK VAKHAYEV
19jun06 POLICE have shot dead Chechen rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev during a raid on a hideout in his home town of Argun, 14km east of Grozny.
It came as a result of an informant within his network - reportedly paid the equivalent of $74 for his information - in a blow to efforts to spread the increasingly Islam-inspired insurgency throughout southern Russia.
Sadulayev had been planning a terrorist attack in Argun to coincide with the Group of Eight summit of leading industrialised nations in Russia's second city, St Petersburg, in mid-July, Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov said. In combat fatigues, Mr Kadyrov posed for TV cameras next to a half-naked body identified as that of the rebel.
He said a close associate of Sadulayev's tipped off police about his whereabouts for the equivalent of $74.