Dead in Seattle

One person has been killed and at least five others have been injured in a shooting at the Jewish Federation at 2031 Third Ave. in downtown Seattle. One suspect has been taken into custody.

Police have taken one person into custody. Seattle police spokesman Rich Pruitt said police are confident that only one shooter was involved.

Sources told KING 5 the suspect is a Pakistani man with a criminal background. He is from the Tri-Cities but his citizenship is unknown. Officials are on the way to the Tri-Cities to interview his family.
http://timetolisten.blogspot.com/2006/07/jewish-backlash-in-seattle.html
****

One Dead, Five Wounded At Seattle Jewish Center

July 28, 2006

By KOMO Staff & News Services

SEATTLE - One person was killed and five others were wounded by gunshots Friday afternoon at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and one person was arrested, police said.

All five of the wounded are women and were taken to Harborview Medical Center, where three are listed in critical condition and in surgery, and two are listed in satisfactory condition. One victim was reportedly shot in the stomach, another was a 37-year-old woman who was 20 weeks pregnant and was shot in the arm. She is said to be one of the two in satisfactory condition.

A SWAT team searched the federation building, looking for any other victims or anyone hiding, Seattle police spokesman Rich Pruitt said, adding investigators were confident that the man they had in custody was the only shooting suspect.

http://www.komotv.com/stories



/44656.htm ****

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A woman was killed and five other women were wounded on Friday when a gunman opened fire at a Jewish organization in downtown Seattle that last weekend organized a rally in support of Israel.

Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle Vice President Amy Wasser-Simpson told the Seattle Times in a story on its Web site that a man got through security at the building and shouted, "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel," then began shooting.

[....]

The federation had organized a large rally last weekend to demonstrate support for Israel in its fight against Hizbollah in southern Lebanon.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-07-29T012129Z_01_N28203407_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-SHOOTING.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C3-domesticNews-3
****

The story is the same again today. People living their lives are suddenly dead or wounded because an Muslim killed or wounded them. Why? Because they offended the Muslim. There is no safe place for you either, whether you are Jewish or whether you are just a person riding a subway train to work or taking your children to school. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Your chances of being killed or wounded are random. Muslims kill at random. Anyone will do. Confront them and they run away. Sometimes they turn on women.

On One Niteen V Pradhan

The Hindu trial lawyer for 18 accused Muslim terrorists in India has quit. Below we see part of an interview in which he explains why and how he lost his faith in the Muslim community's ability to support Human decency at all.
****

Niteen V Pradhan is an angry man. One of India's leading criminal lawyers, he has mailed a letter to the 18 core accused in the March 12, 1993 bomb blasts case, telling them he will not fight the case for them any more.

In conversation with Sumit Bhattacharya, Pradhan says July 11, 2006 was a "day of reckoning" for him, and he felt he was "defending the wrong cause."

[....]

...18 persons, the core accused, I defended them as a matter of professional duty. I was told the money for my fees was being collected during the Friday sermons. After my appearance in 1994, when I came out of the matter in 1995, several bomb blasts took place in Bombay -- Ghatkopar, Vile Parle, Gateway of India, etc.

The biggest one was the recent one -- July 11. I was extremely perturbed because (despite) whatever I had been told by the so-called leaders, those leaders have not come out against these bomb blasts, or the carnage of tourists in Srinagar. They have not come out in support of the Kashmiri Pandits living in refugee camps.

At least one Muslim leader should come out and say, 'I don't stand by the so-called jihad, so-called pious duty they are talking about. That Islam they are talking, that Islam they are preaching, that Islam they are executing, that is not my Islam. I feel ashamed if they belong to my community, my religion.'

Nobody said this. Nobody came out. I am not talking just about the leaders who came to meet me. I am talking about community leaders from the film world, the industry, from the commercial establishments, from educational institutions, from politics. None of them came out saying that 'I want to collect money for Kashmiri Hindus. I want to come out in support of these victims.'

[....]

I am convinced now that all these terrorist activities, all these bomb blasts are aimed against Hindus. They want to kill Hindus at random and as many as possible.

This is the same impression I have mentioned in my letter to the accused. I said, 'My community and my country do not deserve this. My community and my country, despite being ruled by Muslims for a thousand years, despite the atrocities, have accepted them as brothers.'

http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/24inter.htm
****

There is no end to the jihad except in death.

Niteen V Pradhan is an angry man. There are others-- in every nation and community on Earth-- who feel the same way he does and for the same reasons: Islam is a primitive fascism determined to destroy the world and turn it into a garbage heap of lunatics. Niteen V Pradhan gets it. So do others. The question is "What is to be done?"

On One Seva Brodsky

How long will it take for the public to openly admit that the jihadis are killers who will not stop-- ever!

No, that's not a question. It's an accusation.


Why do we find a man who could pass as an actor on The Seinfeld Show turning up alone to demonstrate at a Hizballah rally in Boston, where he was assaulted by Death Hippies and Muslims, and yet no one else came to his defence or to the defence of the nation? A short fat bald guy turned up alone to confront fascist Islam and the Red Nazis of our day, and not one of our friends and fellows in Boston did a thing to support him.
****

GLOBAL JIHAD
Muslims attack Jew at U.S. Islamic rally
Man says his life threatened at protest demonstrating support for Hezbollah
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

A Jewish activist was physically assaulted and his life was threatened during a planned "peaceful" rally held by the Muslim American Society in Boston, he told WorldNetDaily today.

"I have never been physically attacked before. I've had slurs thrown at me, got into heated debates, but what was amazing was that I was actually physically attacked," Seva Brodsky said. "Since they were the majority, and felt invincible, they threatened to kill me!"

Brodsky, who recently returned from nearly six months in Israel, captured some of the confrontation on video, available at the weblog Solomonia.com.

[....]

Brodsky reported to Solomonia he was bullied, pushed, shoved, cursed and abused after showing up in Boston where Muslims said they planned to rally to call for an end to the "indiscriminate" loss of life in Lebanon.

The event was held by the Boston branch of the Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation, where spokesman Mahdi Bray [see below] told WorldNetDaily his group's events always are peaceful.

Brodsky said he took out and turned on a video camera as he approached the assembled group, estimated by Boston police at about 500.

"As I approached the crowd I was confronted," Brodsky wrote. He said the man "tried to harass and intimidate me" and blocked his camera. When he tried to lift his camera overhead, to shoot over the top of the man confronting him, Brodsky said the man raised a large white banner to create a new barrier.

Then the crowd started threatening and verbally abusing him, he said, and a "short and skinny" woman screamed hysterically and grabbed his arm and his camera.

"At this point, indignant and even outraged, realizing that I was entirely on my own and no help was forthcoming, I yanked the camera and a scuffle ensued," Brodsky said.

But one man then told Brodsky he would be hunted down and killed.

The event was a big step among Muslims, said Caline Jarudi, of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Massachusetts, because Muslims frequently are concerned about vocalizing their views.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51214
****

I don't know Seva Brodsky. Will I stand with him and face down a mob of Muslims and Death Hippies? You bet. So would any decent and normal man. So what happened that no one in Boston came out to stand with him? Why did Madhi Bray get a crowd and Brodsky got shit?
****

Who is Madhi Bray? Look to the ever and all-knowing Hugh Fitzgerald:

A convert to Islam, Mahdi Bray is not one of those, like Ibrahim Hooper, who has attained national prominence. He is a tireless worker at the local level, however, and in his dual presentation of self, or presentation of dual selves, most instructive. Soft-spoken and smiling and all sweet reason, and with a comfortably American voice, when addressing Infidels, he becomes something quite different for Muslim audiences, where he has been known to chant-and-rant, as in his call of support for Hamas before a crowd in Washington, or whipping up a crowd to show up at a courtroom to mock the proceedings which involved charging a Muslim with plotting to kill the American President. He is also careful, at the local level, to carry out all those carefully-calibrated and well-publicized deeds of supposed charity – to earn Infidel goodwill – that are described as being so useful in the conduct of Da'wa at Muslim sites.

[....]

Mahdi Bray bemoans the treatment of Al-Timimi, the Muslim leader in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., who was just found guilty of urging followers to fight the Americans in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In October 2000 he appeared at a demonstration called in support of Hamas and Hizbullah: "In American Jihad, [Steve] Emerson notes that when Abdurrahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council, who is now serving a 23-year prison sentence for a terrorism financing conviction, encouraged the Muslim crowd at an October 2000 rally cosponsored by MPAC to declare their support of the jihad terror groups Hamas and Hizballah, "MPAC's Political Advisor, Mahdi Bray, stood directly behind Alamoudi and was seen jubilantly exclaiming his support for these two deadly terrorist organizations." This was just three weeks after Bray "coordinated and led a rally where approximately 2,000 people congregated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C." Emerson reports that "at one point during the rally, Mahdi Bray played the tambourine as one of the speakers sang, while the crowd repeated: 'Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is calling us, let's all go into jihad, and throw stones at the face of the Jews [sic].'

More: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/006028.php
****

Some of the monsters we face are out-right dangerous, there's no question of that. We do not expect our own to walk unprepared into murder and mayhem on principle. At our latest rally against the Death Hippies here in Vancouver we expected stereet-fighting from the losers who gathered at the suburb beach, and thus we brought back-up, a normal procedure for any situation like that. In any situation like that, only a very few of the attendees will be interested in fighting, the majority being idiots who are there for social reasons, not to be bothered with; and thus, only a small number of men able to defend the protesters need lurk in the bushes for the sake of the rest. Against a group of one thousand one needs no more than a dozen men to back up the counter-demonstrators. It's not that hard to organise. And yet in Boston not even one other man joined Seva Brodsy. What do you make of that?

Trotting out the Dhimmis

The Death Hippies were out again in force recently. Some of our old favorites, George Galloway, for example, the Trotskyite, posed and preened for the cameras. The usual suspects, the usual hate-mongering, the usual Trotskyite crap. And yes, dear reader, it passes in the mind of the average man as the norm, as the moral Golden Rulership, the way it should be if ony it weren't for the hated Americans and the even more hated Israelis.

Trotskyites? Do we think we agree with them on anything at all? Well, yes, the average man is clearly in the camp of the Trots. Does he have the slightest idea? Not likely. How can people be so ill-informed about the very security of their personal lives? I am stumped.

It's not a secret that the Death Hippies want to kill people en masse. And yet there is this whole movement sliming its way over our streets that people refuse to spot in spite of its disgusting presence. How can people not see this, or, being unable not to see, how can they stare straight ahead and ignore it?

Below we see the usual lot of terrorists and their cheerleaders, and we see the fools who weep and emote in public like this is a funeral for Princess Dianna. Yes, the same cynicism and the same sentimentality and the same sickening phoniness; but in this case, the adulation is of murderers, and the public remains silent and afraid to fight back or even stupidly joins in, thinking they are moral.


It actually gets worse: not all the Leftists are Trots. Some are Stalinists. How they manage to put aside their differences is even more confusing to me. Perhaps they don't even know anylonger their historical quarrles. Maybe they don't even care anymore, united only by hatrred of Modernity and love of death.

How much longer till the people rise up and hang these fascists from lamp posts?
****

British MP Supports Lebanese Resistance by Breaking Blair's Terror Law
By M Ghazali Khan

London, 24 July. The known British politician and anti-war Respect Party's MP George Galloway on Saturday attacked Prime Minister Tony Blair for his support to George Bush and broke his recently passed legislation that prohibits glorification of terrorism by praising Hizbullah.

"I am here to glorify Hizbullah. I am here to glorify Hamas." He told a gathering of 30,000 protesters in London amid loud clapping and cheers.

He reminded the audience that 60 years ago King David Hotel was bombed in which 92 people had died, 71 of whom were Jewish. He said that this act of terrorism was committed by Menachim Begin, who, after becoming Israel's Prime Minister, sent Ariel Sharon to slaughter Palestinians and in Sabra and Shaita camps. Galloway quoted Sharon as having said that there was a difference between an act of terror and act of resistance. Galloway emphasised that what was happening in Lebanon today had its routes in what happened decades ago and not what had happened few days ago.

Praising Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, Galloway said,"Hizbullah has never been a terrorist organisation, Hizbullah is a resistance movement of Lebanon."

In his speech Palestinian scholar and activist Azzam Tamimi, [ http://www.ii-pt.com/web/cv.htm ] whose mother had been displaced when she was 16, assured Galloway that if he was sent to prison, "We will all follow you."

The rally was addressed by 20 speakers including Muslims, Christians, Jews and governing Labour Party's vociferous anti-war MP Jermey Corbyn.

The Demonstration was organised by Stop the War coalition and Muslim Association of Britain and newly formed Muslim Initiative.

[....]

One of the most bizarre scenes in today's demonstration was uniformed police officers making video film of the marchers. Some protesters saw this act as provocative. http://www.indianmuslims.info/book/print/3522
****

Azzam Tamimi writes of old colonial powers and the newly formed government rulers of the early 20th century: [T]he US took over, maintaining systems of governance in these newly emerging entities - providing ruling elites with moral, material and military support. Little has changed since then, apart from the imperialist master and the fact that the advance in technological warfare has enabled this master, so far, to maintain the status quo with ever greater vigour.

Unlike other parts of the world, and in contrast even to the norm in some neighbouring states, the Arab peoples ruled by these regimes have had very little say, if any, in the manner in which their affairs are run. While some analysts find it convenient to blame Arab or Muslim culture for this lack of democracy, I would argue that it is only the stringent control imposed from outside that denies to the peoples of this region what has readily been recognised as a basic human right elsewhere in the world.

[....]

[I]t did not matter what any of those despots did to their own people, so long as their regimes posed no threat to what were seen as western interests - namely oil and Israel - and still better so long as these regimes were loyal allies.

[....]

And who is the real victim in all of this? It is none other than democracy itself, whose name has been tarnished and whose values are increasingly associated in the minds of many Arabs and Muslims with military invasion to replace one corrupt despotic secular regime with another more willing to bend the knee to US and western diktat.

Azzam Tamimi is spokesman of the Muslim Association of Britain and director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1385058,00.html
****

The Stop the War Coalition (StWC) (informally just Stop the War) is a UK anti-war group set up on 21 September 2001.

The "war" in the Coalition's title refers to the various wars that are claimed to be part of the war on terrorism. The Coalition has been the most prominent group in Britain campaigning against the war in Afghanistan which deposed the Taliban government, and the invasion of Iraq which deposed Saddam Hussein. The demonstration against the latter on February 15, 2003, which it organised in association with CND and the Muslim Association of Britain, is generally accepted as the largest public demonstration in British history. The StWC has been subject to controversy over the level of control of the Socialist Workers Party and its relationship with Muslim organisations.

[....]

The impetus to form the Stop the War Coalition came following the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks in the USA. The Coalition was launched at a public meeting of over 2,000 people in the Friend's Meeting House in London [1] , which was chaired by Lindsey German, then editor of the Socialist Workers Party's magazine Socialist Review. German argued that the action in Afghanistan, then under contemplation unless the Taliban government gave up Usama bin Laden, would lead to that country's "destruction", and "possibly a wider conflagration in the Indian subcontinent, Iran and the Middle East." Other speakers at the meeting included Jeremy Corbyn (Labour MP for Islington North, Bruce Kent (of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), and John Rees (of the Socialist Workers Party).

Lindsey German became Convenor of the Coalition and a meeting on October 28 settled the Coalition's official aims. This meeting also elected a Steering Committee which consisted of a spectrum of left-wingers including representatives of Labour Left Briefing and the Communist Party of Britain. The Communist Party of Great Britain and Alliance for Workers Liberty [2] failed to get elected, although both became members of the Coalition and participated in its activities.

During the build-up to the Iraq war the Coalition adopted the slogan 'No to a racist backlash', asserting that a war against Iraq would be perceived as an attack on Islam and that Muslims, or those perceived as Muslim, would face racist attacks in Britain if the government joined the war. The Coalition worked closely with the Muslim Association of Britain in organising its demonstrations.

[....]

Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, STWC in association with Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain held a Vigil for the Victims [4] at Peace Garden in Euston, London on Saturday 9 July 2005 and a further solidarity gathering at Russell Square, close to one of the Underground stations targeted, on Sunday 17 July 2005. At the later StWC national convenor Lindsey German condemned the bombings--

but added that "The only way to end the bombings is to withdraw from Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. When we have justice around the world we will have peace as well." [5] .

[....]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_the_War_Coalition
****

For the "Canadian" version, see link below:

http://www.stopwar.ca/
****

We meet weekly to protest against these people. They are a danger, and they kill people. What is to be done?

The Sun has always risen.

Faith and fatalism are opposites, the one being an act of courage, the other a practice of cowardice. I don't know faith. I'm not the man to turn to for anything about it. I know Tertullian, Kierkegaard, Frankl, and Primo Levi. No, I don't know faith. Neither am I coward.

Reading David Hume makes me laugh out loud. Even skepticism dies at the point of his quill. There is little left but a hollowness where there could be faith if only there were authority. And where, we ask, is the authority of the moral? To stand upright amid the wreckage is not courage.

Idiots, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and an awful assortment of flakes and Death Hippies flock like geese to any soulful slough for forage. They flap for death cults, the squawk for crumbles of the Moral. What to do?

We are leaving behind the world of Man as we have known it, and we move into a future we cannot yet grasp the meaning of. Things left behind are lost to us forever, and we must find new reality in the wreckage and the wastelands we will improve as we carry on into the world next. Not everyone is coming with us. Many, in fact, would rather see us dead, even if they too must die to prevent us from our journey. Ours is a path that leads from the life of man as farm animal to that of man as Man. One cannot go without faith.

The introductory paragraph from Pew Forum below echoes nicely the work of Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom.
****

In an agrarian society you're living in a world dominated by nature; you are at the mercy of inscrutable forces beyond your control. You pray, you submit; you don't control whether it rains or not, whether a plague of locusts come, whether the crops fail. You need a sense that the world is in the hands of a benevolent higher power. This is psychologically highly functional. Without it you tend to despair, to give up, not knowing how to cope with a world beyond your control. I would say religion, among other things, has a tremendous function in giving people a sense that somehow it will work out; it will continue in the face of this uncertainty.

Industrial society is a very different world where production moves indoors. Instead of being at the mercy of these forces of nature, when it gets cold you turn up the heat, when it gets dark you turn up the lights. When you want to produce more, you invent a better machine, and it may double or triple productivity. It's in your hands and it gives rise to a rather different worldview that it can all be solved by human ingenuity, by scientific rationality. This was the dominant spirit of Marxism and of all kinds of social analysis that, among other things, held that religion was dying off. I would say it is quite clear that in the industrialization phase there was a decline in the hold and salience of religion. It once had a dominant position, culturally, intellectually and philosophically. It lost ground to social science and ideology, and to many kinds of materialistic ideologies that proclaimed the way out was through human ingenuity. And Marx's plan for scientific socialism seemed to be the end state. The logical end state would ultimately be an economy run by experts, not left to market forces, and a world run by rational, scientific socialism.

...The world is changing in a way that is clearly not going back to the old-time religion in which a priest tells you how to live your life. But it is a world in which spiritual concerns are becoming more important. So, where we find, in the World Values Survey, declining emphasis in the rich countries on traditional religious beliefs, we find growing concern for the meaning and purpose of life. In this broader sense, spiritual concerns are growing, not shrinking, and a different kind of religion may be playing a bigger role. A simplified view would be that religion is resurging all over the world. It's simply not true. But the politics, even of advanced industrial societies, is shifting to one in which religions issues are more relevant and value questions are much more central.

http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=116
****

There is courage, and there is recklessness. There is bravery and there is rashness. There is calm regard and there is cold apathy. There is faith, and there is plain old stupid.

Blaise Pascal writes: "The heart has its reasons Reason knows nothing of."

We are at one step along the path to profound Humanness, and we could stumble. I recall another French writer, Dumas, who writes that Porthos has set a bomb to breach a wall, has lit the fuse, and in the running away has a thought that to run is to lift ones foot into the air and to fall. Captivated by the thought, he dies in the explosion.

Bring me my chariot of fire

I've known pain so fierce that I would have leapt gratefully into Death's embrace if only He'd come for me. I don't recommend it to anyone. Nor need I remind others of pain's horror. But there are worse things to happen to a man. Do we need reminding? No, we know well already and as plainly.

I was thinking of Dalton Trumbo recently. I don't like his writing much. So I changed it a bit to make it somewhat better.
****

"Jerusalem fell, and you were not there, and I was not there, and perhaps if we had been, the city would have stood and the world would have been changed and better. But we were here, and here together we remain, and Jerusalem won't fall, and if it should, better that we lie buried in its ruins than be found absent a second time."

Dalton Trumbo, "Letters"
****

I'd like to think that I am special. Sometimes I do. But then reality returns and I find that I'm one guy like most others, a guy who is as vulnerable to pain as anyone else, and as likely to die. I look on it as salt at the banquet of life. A pinch but not too much. I see our friends in need, not of us but in need, and I see that we should avail ourselves to our friends in our best manners. My friend does not need me. I'm not special. Somehow I find that I do not care.

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.

William Blake, "Jerusalem"
****

When I walk through the shadows I grasp the hand of Moira, and I laugh!

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, 5
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, 10
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

John Donne, "Death be not proud, though some have called thee"
****

I wish I were special, so fuckin' special. I wish I were special like some Presbyterian pastor in Pennsylvania. I'm just me, and I hurt. But I don't hurt that badly that the world stops for me.

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

3 What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?

4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

8 All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

11 There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

Ecclesiastes. "All Is Vanity"
****

There is a painting by El Greco, the sight of which is so painful to me that it drives me to my knees. I don't think I'm special, but I know I am blessed. You too.

"Yet," said Crito, "the sun is still upon the hilltops, and I know that many a one has taken the draught late, and after the announcement has been made to him, he has eaten and drunk, and enjoyed the society of his beloved; do not hurry--there is time enough."

Socrates said: "Yes, Crito, and they of whom you speak are right in so acting, for they think that they will be gainers by the delay; But I am right in not following their example, for I do not think that I should gain anything by drinking the poison a little later; I should only be ridiculous in my own eyes for sparing and saving a life which is already forfeit. Please then to do as I say, and not to refuse me."

Plato, The Death of Socrates
****

I would live for a thousand years if only.

My mind is awhirl with the words and deeds of the dead, and so because I live and they lived. What a happy life.

We are blessed to live in this time with this great chance to live right lives.

I would live for a thousand years if only.

Cause I'm a Socialist, H'yuk.

H'yuk, h'yuk, h'yuk.

Cause I'm a socialist worker, h'yuk.

Uh, one of the people, h'yuk.

I have a car, h'yuk. But it's broken, h'yuk. So I ride on the little bus, h'yuk, with all my buddies to school, h'yuk, h'yuk, h'yuk.

Cause I'm a socialist worker, h'yuk.

The Sorrow and the Self-Pity

When we lie to ourselves, how can we tell others the truth?

There is a common misunderstanding of the word "sentimentality," most people assuming wrongly that it's some semantic improvement on the word "sentiment." If one has a longer word it must mean a better word. For some there is no distinction in the mind between sentiment and sentimentality, both being the same only differently put. But such is not the case. And the distinction is essential for us to make if we are to survive as a culture. It will determine how we think in the public world, and it will determine how we act and react to events beyond our control. We might not be able to control public events ourselves but we can determine our own lives in reaction to the uncontrollable if we can think straight. Knowing the meaning of words is a start. We can know that we are people who have sentiments, and that we are not sentimentalists. That might save the world. At the very least it might save Christianity.

Sentiment is emotion; sentimentality is fake emotion; and the difference is sometimes hard to distinguish. Liking a person who is also Black because one likes the person is genuine friendship that has nothing to do with "some of my best friends are Black," a multi-culti cliche that demeans us all, a line of thoughtlessness and falsity that should shame us rather than elevate us in the eyes of our fellows. But such is the case in the West these recent years that to have the right lines and the right looks is better than being a real person with real emotions. Being tolerant of Others is more important in social life than not putting up with lies and criminality. Parading in public a false guilt is seen as noble rather than as repulsive. The heart and soul of the West is phony. It's embarrassing. It has to end. Sentimentality has to end because it is so destructive of Human life that no one can sustain it over a course of years without becoming inhuman, without becoming a parody of Man whom no one will accept other than other phonies; and the lot are too unattractive to reproduce themselves, finding themselves shunned by normal people, put away and not invited out, left to dry up and die out.

Below we will see the Sadean phantasies of the religious Left, in this case the morons of the Episcopalian Church, those who "feel" that they should or they shouldn't or they mustn't. We witness below the death of a lot of phonies. I'm not going to miss them when they're gone. In fact, I don't notice their absence from my life even now.
****

Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins

Out-of-the-mainstream beliefs about gay marriage and supposedly sexist doctrines are gutting old-line faiths.

By Charlotte Allen,

CHARLOTTE ALLEN is Catholicism editor for Beliefnet and the author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus."
July 9, 2006


The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, in which several parishes and even a few dioceses are opting out of the church, isn't simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It also is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity.

Embraced by the leadership of all the mainline Protestant denominations, as well as large segments of American Catholicism, liberal Christianity has been hailed by its boosters for 40 years as the future of the Christian church.

Instead, as all but a few die-hards now admit, all the mainline churches and movements within churches that have blurred doctrine and softened moral precepts are demographically declining and, in the case of the Episcopal Church, disintegrating.

It is not entirely coincidental that at about the same time that Episcopalians, at their general convention in Columbus, Ohio, were thumbing their noses at a directive from the worldwide Anglican Communion that they "repent" of confirming the openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire three years ago, the Presbyterian Church USA, at its general assembly in Birmingham, Ala., was turning itself into the laughingstock of the blogosphere by tacitly approving alternative designations for the supposedly sexist Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Among the suggested names were "Mother, Child and Womb" and "Rock, Redeemer and Friend." Moved by the spirit of the Presbyterian revisionists, Beliefnet blogger Rod Dreher held a "Name That Trinity" contest. Entries included "Rock, Scissors and Paper" and "Larry, Curly and Moe."

Following the Episcopalian lead, the Presbyterians also voted to give local congregations the freedom to ordain openly cohabiting gay and lesbian ministers and endorsed the legalization of medical marijuana. (The latter may be a good idea, but it is hard to see how it falls under the theological purview of a Christian denomination.)

The Presbyterian Church USA is famous for its 1993 conference, cosponsored with the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and other mainline churches, in which participants "reimagined" God as "Our Maker Sophia" and held a feminist-inspired "milk and honey" ritual designed to replace traditional bread-and-wine Communion.

As if to one-up the Presbyterians in jettisoning age-old elements of Christian belief, the Episcopalians at Columbus overwhelmingly refused even to consider a resolution affirming that Jesus Christ is Lord. When a Christian church cannot bring itself to endorse a bedrock Christian theological statement repeatedly found in the New Testament, it is not a serious Christian church. It's a Church of What's Happening Now, conferring a feel-good imprimatur on whatever the liberal elements of secular society deem permissible or politically correct.

You want to have gay sex? Be a female bishop? Change God's name to Sophia? Go ahead. The just-elected Episcopal presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is a one-woman combination of all these things, having voted for Robinson, blessed same-sex couples in her Nevada diocese, prayed to a female Jesus at the Columbus convention and invited former Newark, N.J., bishop John Shelby Spong, famous for denying Christ's divinity, to address her priests.

When a church doesn't take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like — accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it's more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million). Some of the precipitous decline is due to lower birthrates among the generally blue-state mainliners, but it also is clear that millions of mainline adherents (and especially their children) have simply walked out of the pews never to return. According to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, in 1965, there were 3.4 million Episcopalians; now, there are 2.3 million. The number of Presbyterians fell from 4.3 million in 1965 to 2.5 million today. Compare that with 16 million members reported by the Southern Baptists.

When your religion says "whatever" on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church.

It doesn't help matters that the mainline churches were pioneers in ordaining women to the clergy, to the point that 25% of all Episcopal priests these days are female, as are 29% of all Presbyterian pastors, according to the two churches. A causal connection between a critical mass of female clergy and a mass exodus from the churches, especially among men, would be difficult to establish, but is it entirely a coincidence? Sociologist Rodney Stark ("The Rise of Christianity") and historian Philip Jenkins ("The Next Christendom") contend that the more demands, ethical and doctrinal, that a faith places upon its adherents, the deeper the adherents' commitment to that faith. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which preach biblical morality, have no trouble saying that Jesus is Lord, and they generally eschew women's ordination. The churches are growing robustly, both in the United States and around the world.

Despite the fact that median Sunday attendance at Episcopal churches is 80 worshipers, the Episcopal Church, as a whole, is financially equipped to carry on for some time, thanks to its inventory of vintage real estate and huge endowments left over from the days (no more!) when it was the Republican Party at prayer. Furthermore, it has offset some of its demographic losses by attracting disaffected liberal Catholics and gays and lesbians. The less endowed Presbyterian Church USA is in deeper trouble. Just before its general assembly in Birmingham, it announced that it would eliminate 75 jobs to meet a $9.15-million budget cut at its headquarters, the third such round of job cuts in four years.

The Episcopalians have smells, bells, needlework cushions and colorfully garbed, Catholic-looking bishops as draws, but who, under the present circumstances, wants to become a Presbyterian?

Still, it must be galling to Episcopal liberals that many of the parishes and dioceses (including that of San Joaquin, Calif.) that want to pull out of the Episcopal Church USA are growing instead of shrinking, have live people in the pews who pay for the upkeep of their churches and don't have to rely on dead rich people. The 21-year-old Christ Church Episcopal in Plano, Texas, for example, is one of the largest Episcopal churches in the country. Its 2,200 worshipers on any given Sunday are about equal to the number of active Episcopalians in Jefferts Schori's entire Nevada diocese.

It's no surprise that Christ Church, like the other dissident parishes, preaches a very conservative theology. Its break from the national church came after Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion, proposed a two-tier membership in which the Episcopal Church USA and other churches that decline to adhere to traditional biblical standards would have "associate" status in the communion. The dissidents hope to retain full communication with Canterbury by establishing oversight by non-U.S. Anglican bishops.

As for the rest of the Episcopalians, the phrase "deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind. A number of liberal Episcopal websites are devoted these days to dissing Peter Akinola, outspoken primate of the Anglican diocese of Nigeria, who, like the vast majority of the world's 77 million Anglicans reported by the Anglican Communion, believes that "homosexual practice" is "incompatible with Scripture" (those words are from the communion's 1998 resolution at the Lambeth conference of bishops). Akinola might have the numbers on his side, but he is now the Voldemort — no, make that the Karl Rove — of the U.S. Episcopal world. Other liberals fume over a feeble last-minute resolution in Columbus calling for "restraint" in consecrating bishops whose lifestyle might offend "the wider church" — a resolution immediately ignored when a second openly cohabitating gay man was nominated for bishop of Newark.

So this is the liberal Christianity that was supposed to be the Christianity of the future: disarray, schism, rapidly falling numbers of adherents, a collapse of Christology and national meetings that rival those of the Modern Language Assn. for their potential for cheap laughs. And they keep telling the Catholic Church that it had better get with the liberal program — ordain women, bless gay unions and so forth — or die. Sure.

Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins - Los Angeles Times
****

For more on this topic, see: http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2003/08/episcopal-church-plays-russian.html.
****

In a long life of restless roaming I have come to meet and to live with people around the world, and in all these years that have slipped by so slowly in a rush, I have come to the conclusion that I don't have a clue about them. People endllessly surprise me with greatness and terror that I would never have imagined them capable of. Even the ordinary daily lives of normal people confuse me and leave me wonderful. I don't know. I don't know much at all. I think I know that I don't get much of value from knowing phony people who lie to themselves and think me strange for not taking them seriously. I think life is very short in years and days, and that to waste time with fluff when I could have gold is a crime against my own life. I think I would avoid a phony church were I inclined to Christianity. Why people would indulge in drug abuse or Episcopalianism as it is, those are things that leave me baffled and bewildered. Better to be in awe of Machu Pichu or the Ring of Brodgar.

Some things do have a power that is real, and sometimes those things hurt to the point of bringing me to my knees, those things often being my own memories. I cannot rememeber "Jazz Vespers." I remember El Greco.

There are two lines I like very much that concern this topic, lines from very different kinds of writers, neither of whom I have any likeing for. The first line comes from the worthless ideologue Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: " A wrong life cannot be lived rightly." The other comes from the petit-fascist T.S. Eliot, "The Rock": "Where is the Life we have lost in living?"

For those who will not confront reality but instead wish to live in a pornographic phantasy there is only one lie compouned to support the one below till there is nothing but lies, and that phantasy must come to an end at some point. For some many among us, the lives of our intelligentsia, for example, the years invested in The Lie are so many that the investment cannot go broke without devastating them whole. Too bad for them. The rest will survive and perhaps prosper in truth and reality as it is. If we cannot tell ourselves that truth, then we are doomed for no reason at all and we will wallow in sentimental self-pity looking anxiously for an audience to play too as we emote to death on an empty stage crumbling around us.