Please try to add Caitlin Johnstone to the columnist roster.

never surrender

I want to challenge to what seems to be mainstream opinion on this site regarding land development in the United States.

Arguably the dissident right should approach land use policy with two goals: A) minimize diversity, and B) promote family formation among the historic American population. The problem, which some posters here don’t seem to fully appreciate, is that the current means used to achieve (A) detract from (B). In the current political climate, finding the best policy is therefore an optimization exercise which does not fully maximize either of the two individual variables.

Goal (A) is to minimize diversity. There are three main ways to achieve this:

1) Ethnostate. Diversity is minimized throughout the country. A number of countries have situations approaching this, but barring some dramatic change, it is not a viable option in the United States.

2) Apartheid. This can be acheived in a number of ways, including law, as in pre-1990 South Africa, and restrictive convenants, as in the United States of the past. This also is not viable in the present U.S. political climate.

3) Zoning. This is what is actually used. The idea is to restrict development by erecting onerous approval processes and mandating things like low density, large setbacks, and large minimum lot sizes. This decreases the local supply of housing which increases its cost. But if white people earn more than other groups, they will be disproportionately able to afford this expensive housing, which makes areas with restrictive zoning disproportionately white. “Our prices discriminate so we don’t have to.”

Some posters on this site seem to consider restrictive zoning an unqualifiedly good thing, and attack people who push for changes (like the growing “Yes In My Backyard” movement). The reality is more complicated. Even in a best-case scenario, restrictive zoning is a very crude tool that produces many unintended, negative consequences. And, from a diversity-minimizing standpoint, its effectiveness is declining steadily.

One obvious problem with restrictive zoning is that the bell curves for different groups overlap considerably. So expensive housing will price out a huge number of white people along with minority groups. And as Steve Sailer discussed in his classic Value Voters essay, whites appear to be more price-sensitive regarding family formation than other groups. So restrictive zoning does a lot of damage.

Another serious problem with restrictive zoning is that it weakens community ties by geographically isolating the generations. Detached, single-family homes are ideal for only certain periods of life. Young people without children and the elderly are better-suited for apartments, but if their towns contain only large (so as to be expensive) houses, they will have to move away. And momentum often takes over, making planned “temporary” moves permanent. The result is that towns are filled with transient people who lack deep community connections.

Finally, the restrictive zoning strategy is becoming outdated because it is ineffective in the face of high-skilled immigration. In fact, it actually makes the situation worse, since East and South Asians tend to pool their resources and live with multiple generations under the same roof, allowing them to outbid white suburbanites for expensive real estate. In my expensive Blue State region, a number of pricey suburban areas with good schools are rapidly changing from white to Chinese or Indian.

There are no really good solutions here, but ultimately we are going to shoot ourselves in the foot if we don’t permit a certain amount of additional housing. I fully concede that there are many pernicious policies out there; each situation needs be addressed on a case by case basis. I welcome the thoughts of others here.

When we get “free” college education, will we finally be able to keep the climate deniers and racists out of higher education?

My humble suggestion would be to even out the political balance. As things stand, the site publishes viewpoints which are overwhelmingly right-wing, often far-right. It is true that from a Western media PoV, these viewpoints are the most stigmatised (and thus those often most excluded).

Nevertheless, I strongly believe that censorship against the genuine left is an underappreciated issue. Many anti-war leftists got censored in the aftermath of the Soleimani attack, their posts deleted arbitrarily on major social media platforms. I’m pleased that Mr. Escobar has joined the roster but there is room for more. Not only foreign policy people but also domestic politics. Basically, left-wingers who move beyond petty ‘woke’ identity politics in favor of real left-wing policies.

There are some on the site like Michael Hudson but with all due respect, I believe that there are higher-caliber people out there. Someone like Branko Milanovic would be a dream, though someone of his stature would probably think twice before allowing himself to be published on a site where people with frankly neo-Nazi views are published.

I for one have been distressed that very few mainstream liberal publications have covered the escalating attacks on Glenn Greenwald in Brazil with any empathy, partly because he has criticised them so harshly. A much bigger scandal is the ongoing blackout on the unconscionable and arbitrary arrest (and frankly torture) of Julian Assange. Many of these issues deserve more attention. There is a wealth of left-wing perspectives that many on the right are unable to differentiate. They incorrectly believe the ruling class is “cultural marxist” and other tripe. The ruling class is neoliberal imperialist.

It’s obvious that Trump had Kobe killed to take the focus off of impeachment. Is there no end to what the Orange Monster will do?

My humble suggestion would be to even out the political balance

My not so humble suggestion is to ignore those who force car-salesman false binary choices on people.

“Will you be paying with Visa or Mastercard?”

“…Fuck you, I’m paying cash, and I’m paying somewhere else.”

A lot of people seem to be directing their comments towards Mr. Unz himself. I’m not so certain he’s actually going to read any of this. I thought it was just for entertainment.

I went to InfoWars for the latest theorizing on Who Killed Kobe; they didn’t disappoint, but the theorizing is still in the process of formation.

Current InfoWars headline:

STAR-KILLING IS A REAL PHENOMENON & KOBE BRYANT’S TRAGIC HELICOPTER CRASH SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED

As if the normal procedure is to not investigate, to ask no questions, to close book ASAP.

Alex Jones explains how Kobe Bryant’s tragic death warrants an investigation given the establishment has a track record of killing stars who buck the system.

Millionaire, celebrity, ultimate insider, Obama crony, Kobe Bryant “bucked the system”?

“Millionaire, celebrity, ultimate insider, Obama crony, Kobe Bryant “bucked the system”?”

Well the people on TV are telling me that he was a HERO, and the world will now go into mourning. You’ve got to admit there aren’t that many rapist heroes, so he’s kind of bucking the system.

“Tears in rain”…

Video Link
Bartenders always seem to know the truth.

RIP Rutger.

Now, if he killed them as well, then he would be Ed Bucking the system.

It’s hard to pigeonhole many UR contributors. Gilad Atzmon has some sympathies with the Left, but some other views which would put him somewhere on the Alt Right. The true distinguishing ideological feature of UR writers is that of the Dissident, which of course applies to Ron Unz himself.

One person who no longer belongs in the Dissident category is Pat Buchanan. I used to read Buchanan’s work at Antiwar, and he is one of the more bearable conservative writers; but his apologetics for the current occupant of the White House make him very much an Establishment figure these days.

Where the US/”israel goes, the UK follows.
And whist we quarrel and fight over immigration, skin colour and IQ test scores, “our” “israeli” governments are destroying all that is beautiful and sacred, and doing so in the name of “democracy” and “freedom”

Just one example out of possibly hundreds:

Guantanamo’s indelible legacy

Buying into a binary, Left/Right characterization can lead to rationalizing cutout Progressive(tm) lightweights like Mr. Rall, the apparent replacement for Mr. Engelhardt.* Their views are largely orthodox, boxed into Red/Blue Washington politics and issues du jour like the ClimApocalypse. While on the “Right” you seem to have a soft spot of loyalty for the 100% Beltway Mr. Buchanan, and others such as Mr. Derbyshire who keep people thinking that the Establishment will be cured of its self-serving nature if enough of its political puppets are GOP.

A more important distinction than Left/Right is whether the ideas being expressed are condoned elsewhere. The writers and their readers who need TUR and who I learn the most from include Linh Dinh, Philip Giraldi, C. J. Hopkins, Michael Hudson, Paul Craig Roberts, and Mike Whitney. Not merely coincidentally, they are among those who you probably struggled to categorize.

Please focus on quality and true dissidence.

———

* It would be interesting to learn for certain why Engelhardt, Lang, and Napolitano left the roster. I suspect that each was receiving more sound, negative comments than he had bargained for, but proffered the excuse that he no longer wanted to appear alongside those crimethinkers too heterodox for mainstream publication.

A big win for Unz would be publishing G Maxwell’s emails.

Wrong. Again.

I love the idea of an open, free speech thread. (thank you Mr. Unz).

And in that vein, this is one of several comments that Steve Sailer finds too ‘whatever’ to publish on his blog. Specifically, this thread:

https://www.unz.com/isteve/profiles-in-courage/

I responded to another commenter

https://www.unz.com/isteve/profiles-in-courage/#comment-3682479

The rape case is actually quite compelling.

And the following is my censored comment:

I remember it. An accusation of rape, and then a tsunami of outraged basketball fans howling that she should keep her mouth shut! This was Kobe! Who the f’ did this little bitch think she was?! She should feel honored that Kobe! raped her. How many other little no-body girls get raped by Kobe?!

It was sickening to listen to all these white men I know, basketball fans, defending Kobe and calling her a lying gold-digger- without a shred of evidence. ‘She went to his room’, ‘what the f’ did she expect?! Blah, blah..

The evidence indicated that she was brutally raped, as you mention. And that she went to the authorities.

And then the pile-on. It wasn’t enough that she was raped by a basketball player, then she got raped by the media and sport fans of America.

From what I remember about the case, she finally said she wouldn’t press charges (either criminal or civil), so long as he admitted what he did, so that the media and sports fans would st0p demonizing her. So Kobe admitted publically that ‘It wasn’t consensual”, and they both moved on.

But I’ll never forget the way sports fans (black and white men) reacted to a young woman being brutally raped, so long as it was a (black) sports ‘hero’ that did it.

‘F that bitch’ was their attitude, and I remember remembering why I was never a sports fan.

If they could teach a gorilla play football, and to be gentle with the other players, and not break their bones and rip their arms from their sockets, the gorilla could make a touchdown almost every time you gave him the ball.

‘Toby’ the gorilla would soon become a sensation, and male sports fans would be dressing their daughters in jungle attire to try to get Toby’s attention.

Now, is that too hurtful for the ears or eyes of Steve’s readers?

Will their tender sensibilities suffer irreparable damage by that opinion?

Or, does my shiv ~ aimed at a certain type of (white, male) sports fan;

Steve: [with comment by Rurik]

Kobe was a 3-digit IQ [Wow!] guy from the nice suburbs of Philadelphia and who’d lived in Italy when his dad was wrapping up his pro career there, who would have gone to Duke if he hadn’t gone straight to the NBA out of high school.
…
Oddly, though, I once made up a list of the best centers in basketball history up through about 2008 and only Moses Malone came up as low IQ

~ cut a little too deep?

Is there any irony at all, at Steve censoring my (innocuous and gentle by Unz standards) comment, on a thread about:

Profiles in Courage: Washington Post Suspends Reporter for Tweeting Link to a #MeToo Story About Kobe Bryant

?

Whoa!!! The Saudis are letting non-Muslims into Madina al-Munawarra! This is potentially huge and overturns centuries of local practice. Yes, the guy was not allowed in the mosque itself, but that may change (since the Hanafi school is OK with that also):

Video Link

I did not expect to see this within my lifetime.

Peace.

Bertrand Russell: the best laid plans…

Video Link

Amazing good news.

May East, Middle East, and West finally talk with one another in love.

Be well.

Your comment was not censored and was published, eventually:

https://www.unz.com/isteve/profiles-in-courage/#comment-3682768

I think what happens is this:

Any time a comment has one or more of a list of certain trigger words, it is put on the backburner into a low-priority, “spam”-like folder, and approved only hours later. Yours has a word that rhymes with ‘witch,’ which I think did it. Other ways to trigger it: use of any ethnic slurs or posting more than one link at a time, maybe some other things too.

Amen! You as well!

Peace.

Many thanks for that.

There’s a growing number of us that simply don’t do the left/right dichotomy much anymore. It’s more often the ruling elite “them” vs the rest of the population “us”.

It’s the rubes and dupes think they are on some sort of winning high ground in their diametric opposition to “the left” “the right”.

We’ll see how it plays after Mossad slips a suicide bomber inside.

was published, eventually:

yes, once it’s so far up the page as to be invisible.

a comment has one or more of a list of certain trigger words, it is put on the backburner into a low-priority, “spam”-like folder, and approved only hours later. Yours has a word that rhymes with ‘witch,’ which I think did it. Other ways to trigger it: use of any ethnic slurs

I don’t think so. I once replied to someone who wrote ‘England has been conquered’, and I simply replied ((conquered)), and it wasn’t published, at least that day.

I don’t go to Sailer’s blog often, but I’m so disgusted at how people gush over rapists like Polanski or Kobe, that I felt compelled to shove it in their faces. They seem to worship these animals like they’re demigods or something. (Kobe has a three digit IQ!)

How would they feel if it was their daughter being raped? And you know what? I don’t want to know. I’m afraid of the answer.

How courageous of you to speak out when you’ve nothing to lose.

PS: You may wish to explore the #new comments feature.

Mossad wants to play nice right now with Saudi so it’s likely not a concern, but yes; any non-Muslims applying to visit the city (and especially should the mosque be opened up for them for visitation – something I actually support) should be thoroughly vetted and have their background checked.

Peace.

You’re very welcome.

That viewpoint is too simplistic. Right and left does not go away just because both sides can be further subdivided into insiders and outsiders.

What you’re referring to is when ‘normal’ people being caught up in partisanship so they don’t realise that they cheer for two controlled sides. But I am saying that even among the non-controlled opposition, there is internal ideological diversity. That’s not a bad thing. Variety is the spice of life.

https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iranian-media-CIA-agent-behind-Soleimani-killing-shot-down-in-Afghanistan-615652

Andrew Peek, son of Liz Peek, and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs at the National Security Council, was escorted off of the White House compound the Friday before last. He was placed on administrative leave. Peek succeeded Fiona Hill and Tim Morrison, both of whom testified in the House Impeachment trial.

John Bolton, before his upcoming book release, was required to have that manuscript submitted to the NSC for review. Bolton claims that this is the only copy that was released. All the same, it was leaked to the New York Times to be strategically released while the Trump legal team was putting on its defense.

Peek is now under investigation. Am I the only one connecting the dots here?

An interesting article by Robert Bridge on RT:

Sanders storms ahead as Democrats confront their worst nightmare – and it’s not Donald Trump

“As Sanders gains in the polls, Democratic leaders are getting nervous, arguing the ‘democratic socialist’ has no chance against Trump. The reality, however, is that they are terrified of their radical fringe gaining power.”

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/479399-sanders-democrats-trump-polls/

I second that but I fear that she will be put off by the white nationalist side of it. Also she has never been outspoken on Israel probably fearing that that would make her less welcome in some other publications. But yes, she is great.

Your take sounds right, in light of the hasty vaporization of her one column that was published here months ago. OTOH, my several requests for an explanation – including this one – were moderated, then merely ignored.

I would have even higher regard for Mr. Unz if this were made clear, and for Ms. Johnstone if she would take the FREE speech position of C. J. Hopkins and allow her columns to be published anywhere.

Here’s an open thread comment. There’s a video of Job Biden saying some odd things (“go vote for someone else” while actually pushing the guy away) to a voter seeking a picture with him. The weirdest thing about it is that Biden, while talking, fiddles with the mans jacket zipper or buttons. If I were talking to an old man and he started adjusting my coat zipper, I would assume he was generally insane.

Carl Sagan on Humanity…

Video Link

Trump vs Biden would be amazingly funny so I definitely hope he gets the nomination.

That interview with Russell.(or rather his monologue) was quite interesting. When he spoke about the time before the First World War as a time of stability and settled verities about politics he was generalizing his British upper class point of view. I have just been reading the correspondence of the distinguished Swiss nineteenth century historian Jacob Burckhardt. His view of the world differed quite considerably from that of Russell. Even in the 1880’s he thought that a general European war was imminent and he wondered about the fact that they were alll continuing their daily lives as if there was nothing to worry about. He thought that the outbreak of the French Prussian war of 1870 confirmed the views of “the philosopher” (by whom he meant Schopenhauer) that the underlying principle of worldly affairs was a non-rational will rather than Reason (as that “charlatan” Hegel assumed – “charlatan” was Schopenhauer’s term for him, not Burckhardt’s).

Another surprising thing in this correspondence was B’s obvious animus against the Jews – surprising in so moderate a man whom Nietzsche called the ‘wise and knowing’ one. He must have had his reasons but that is for another letter.

I’m a big fan of the article here – https://www.unz.com/article/coronavirus-the-dark-side/

Please ask Mr Robets to look into the Attention Grabbing Social Media Professor who is behind most of the hype and panic over this Corona Virus.

Some interesting highlights of his apparent career in this article here (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wors-panicdemic-part-2-r0-r-naught-charlie-%E5%A9%B5%E5%A9%B5-liu-%E5%88%98-/) and also interesting to note the patterns of the development of his Wikipedia Page. Aside from most of the “content” coming from accounts that don’t exist, there was an explosion by “bots” in many subtle changes over the last few months – see for yourself, check the edit history on the Wikipedia Page. His Linked In page has so few connections for such a massive figure in his apparent fields of expertise….and not a single recommendation made to him. Hmmmmm.

Something isn’t quite right………

Categories and labels are just that.

As to this site, the main lump, right and left, is the blame America first group. The 2nd biggest lump is blame America first because the “wrong” people are calling the shots. The remaining lump is tiny.

The Jews are making their move – it is 99% certain that Bloomberg will be the Dem nominee.

DNC overhauls debate requirements, opening door for Bloomberg

The committee is eliminating the donor threshold, which had functionally barred Bloomberg from the stage.

The Democratic National Committee is drastically revising its criteria to participate in primary debates after New Hampshire, doubling the polling threshold and eliminating the individual donor requirement, which could pave the way for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg to make the stage beginning in mid-February.

Candidates will need to earn at least 10 percent in four polls released from Jan. 15 to Feb. 18, or 12 percent in two polls conducted in Nevada or South Carolina, in order to participate in the Feb. 19 debate in Las Vegas. Any candidate who earns at least one delegate to the national convention in either the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primary will also qualify for the Nevada debate.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/31/dnc-shifts-debate-requirements-opening-door-for-bloomberg-110017

You can be sure – it is Trump vs. Bloomberg – in 2020

Talha — could not help but see the overwhelming wave of Arab Sunni humanity, condemning Kushner’s “deal of the century” – that is being forced on Palestine — Art

The Jews are making their move

But Sanders is … and Kushner is …, oh, never mind.

Klaatu on 100 Seconds till Midnight…

Video Link

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” 1951

Gandhi (love him or hate him) said, “No-violent, non-cooperation becomes every mans sacred duty when the state is lawless and corrupt.”

Given that all government is by concent, and that, as the old saying goes, we get the government we deserve, I feel it’s time to stop cooperating and stop consenting to globalised tyranny in the name of “democracy”, “freedom” and “zion”.

That said, I guess it’s more than a little ironic that I publish the above (Unz willing) on a website where so much outstanding argument, information, opinion is posted anonymously for fear of reprisals and retribution from said lawless and corrupt state(s).

Kali.

That viewpoint is too simplistic. Right and left does not go away just because both sides can be further subdivided into insiders and outsiders.

I agree with you that right and left are, when taken in their appropriate meanings, permanent concepts. But I also agree that there is a problem because those words have ceased to be understood by the people, partly because the institutions which claim those concepts have not been proper embodiments of them. So, those who say that left and right are no longer valid concepts may have the practical upper hand, as long as they can push new concepts that function better and achieve satisfactory results.

If one were discussing abstract philosophy, one could make a solid case for the concepts of left and right. But in politics, theory cannot exist without praxis. So, you have to use words that work. What those words are is still open to debate, and it is possible that they are not going to be sweeping generalizations as right and left were. Maybe one will have to deal with a multiplicity of concepts and combinations thereof to make sense of new political realities.

The case of this website provides ample exemplification of what I have just said, beginning with its owner Ron Unz, who has at least in one occasion defined himself as a very conservative man. I have no elements to conclude that he has changed his self-classification, but the fact that stands out is that he has donated to (and, one presumes, voted for) the most leftwing candidate in the last presidential elections, Bernie Sanders. He also has been on record praising George Soros for donating to the Democratic Party against George W. Bush, which leads us to conclude that he has been misaligned with official “conservatism” for quite some time. It is obvious that when too many people begin to dissent from the mainstream of one movement, claiming that his own system of beliefs is the more “authentic” version of it, it may be time to scrap that movement altogether. Beyond a certain level of repair to be done in a house, it is better to build a new one.

Another phenomenon that is observable in general is how geopolitical considerations tend to trump the individual categorization of left/right as applied to countries. For example, leftwing governments tend to align with Russia and China in detriment of the U.S.A.. They (and their journalistic allies) will come up with a million rationalizations about those countries (e.g., they are less aggressive toward others than the U.S. is; or, they are not strictly democratic in the ‘bourgeois’ sense, but their populations are majoritarily happy and so are not oppressed; etc). But I would bet that what really drives those governments is the simple strategic geopolitical reasoning that, the U.S.A. being the major Capitalist country in the planet, its weakening as a hegemonic global power is the first step to be achieved in order to bring down Capitalism as a hegemonic system. This may go terribly wrong, of course, at least for the leftists. As for dissenting journalists of a conservative persuasion, I do not know what their reasoning would be for wishing the U.S. weakened; maybe in their case those rationalizations I cited are real beliefs.

The Jews are making their move

But Sanders is … and Kushner is …, oh, never mind.

Jews here Jews there – Jews lead everything!

Bernie is an old-world socialist Jew – a kubutz type – who Bloomberg mocks.

95% of US Jews would support Bloomberg over Bernie. The pressure to elect Bloomberg, put on the American people, would be overwhelming.

If Bernie does not win on the first convention ballot – Bloomberg will be a shoe in.

p.s. What would Fox’s Hannity do – support the Jew or Trump?

p.s. Bloomberg gave the DCN 300K, just days before he entered the race.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bmjx/mike-bloomberg-gave-the-dnc-dollar300000-two-days-before-he-entered-the-race

https://theweek.com/articles/892890/mitch-mcconnell-does-again

Major kudos to Mitch McConnell – he has saved the republic again – impeachment is off.

The first time he saved us, was when he kept the Jew judge off the Supreme Court.

The next thing he has done is get all those conservative judges appointed.

Thanks!!

"Jerusalem is not for sale."

Turkish President Erdogan criticised US President Trump's proposed "peace deal" while speaking at the fifth Anatolian Media Awards in Turkey's capital, Ankara pic.twitter.com/Mp4uvIlSE8

— TRT World (@trtworld) January 31, 2020

Peace.

Talha —- Touché — Peace — Art

What intrigued me until recently was that you just don’t seem to care whether the people whom you publish diverge from your own views, sometimes to a large degree. I kept trying to figure out what your goal is in publishing people with whom you explicitly disagree. Why would you want to publish those “Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media” and, most importantly, why do you consider them “interesting” and “important”?

I still don’t know what your ultimate goal is, and in fact I don’t even know whether there is such an ultimate goal. But your immediate goal became fairly clear to me after I read a piece you wrote about a guy named Dauman who claimed his IQ was enormous. That article apparently had nothing whatsoever to do with anything you were writing at the time. As my first guess, I supposed it to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to your own IQ. I was entertaining that silly notion when I came upon the answer, not out of any brilliant insight of my own, but simply because, after you noticed that readers were clearly not getting your point, you explained it in not one, but two comments. Your purpose was exposing the amazing ability of the press to conceal, deceive, and fabricate. That’s when the whole agenda of your website became clear to me (you see, I am more than a little daft): to expose the extreme corruption and the lies of the mainstream press. To achieve that, you don’t have to publish exceptionally uniform views, and not even 100% sensible opinions. Your immediate goal is a destructive, or to use a less shocking word, deconstructive one. You aim primarily at producing doubt, not certainty. If you succeed at instilling doubt about what the hegemonic press says, your goal has been achieved. I am not saying that you prefer to publish lies over publishing the truth. In fact, the more truthful everything you publish is, the more effective you will be, that goes without saying. Also, those categories appertain to facts, not to opinions; and even with regard to facts, they are problematic. The decision whether something that occurred 50 years ago is true or false is, more often than not, a matter of opinion.

That of course explains why in fact the ideological make-up here is almost balanced. Since you apparently don’t care in the least whether you publish rightwing or leftwing pieces, the balance will tend to be more of less even-handed, and a little skewed to the side which is most rejected by the mainstream media. So, it falls a little to the right.

Gandhi (love him or hate him) said

Based Ghandi also said:

“Your Petitioner has seen the Location intended to be used by the Indians. It would place them, who are undoubtedly infinitely superior to the Kaffirs, in close proximity to the latter”

“I venture to write you regarding the shocking state of the Indian Location. … There is, too, a very large Kaffir population in the Location for which really there is no warrant.”

“Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian Location should be chosen for dumping down all the kaffirs of the town passes my comprehension”

“Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly.”

“Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized – the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals. … The reader can easily imagine the plight of the poor Indian thrown into such company!”

“Some Indians do have contacts with Kaffir women. I think such contacts are fraught with grave danger. Indians would do well to avoid them altogether.”

In the short term, McConnell’s undermining of the rule of law has played out very well for him and the GOP. I frankly wonder why it took so long for the Republicans to work out they could take the country, with only token resistance from some winemoms in pussy hats.

In the long term, this gambit may backfire. If the hard Left continues its infiltration of the Democrats, then they will encounter a more formidable foe. Take this headline, for example:

Bernie Sanders Leads Trump, All 2020 Candidates in Donations From Active-Duty Troops

One suspects that the troops see Bernie as something of a peacenik; and with the exception of the Rambo types, I assume that most would rather be home with their families, rather than some Middle East dustbowl. It is possible, though, that quite a few are sympathetic to the movement that Bernie is building, and the next iteration of that movement is likely to be far more radical than Sanders.

Your purpose was exposing the amazing ability of the press to conceal, deceive, and fabricate.

Assuming that you are correct, and I do, most “normal” people who land here will be put off by the bizarre conspiracy mongering, the Jew baiting, the racist ranting, etc. and move on, noticeably with the idea that the MSM is likely “right” about neo-Nazis, racists, etc. Many of the writers and most of the commenters already distrust the MSM. So exactly how does providing neo-Nazies, etc. a playpen bubble where they can back-slap each other, but which scares the hell out of the “normal” reader (the very person that is supposed to be reached) advance “the cause”?

So exactly how does providing neo-Nazies, etc. a playpen bubble where they can back-slap each other, but which scares the hell out of the “normal” reader (the very person that is supposed to be reached) advance “the cause”?

Those “normal readers” will for the first time hear something they never heard before – of course they will reject the anti-Jew notions.

BUT – it will start them looking and thinking. If one looks, one cannot but see the truth of Jew coercion in our culture.

Peak Jew is coming – a crash – then healing.

Think Peace

American Oligarchs – by Andrea Bernstein — the Trump and Kushner families. CSpan2 Book TV

Every voter should see!

https://www.c-span.org/video/?467980-1/after-words-andrea-bernstein

This raises many questions about Trump!

At a minimum, he is a master manipulator of government.

Your quote, Hippo’drome, is why I placed the “love him or hate him” caveat with my quote.

It was the quote itself I was sharing rather than any endorsement of the man himself.

The notion of non-violent non-cooperation with a lawless and corrupt state as a means to bring the state back into line with the people it is supposed to serve or to bring it down entirely if need be.

It’s undeniable that all across the Western world, politicians and governments serve their own self-interests over and above the interests of the people/nations they are “elected” to serve, and that they place themselves above the law and use the state as a shield against prosecution..

There is no obligation for any people to bow to such entities. – In fact there is arguably a moral/ethical responsibility for us to bring them down before it’s too late.

Non-violent non-cooperation is one means by which we might do that,

Regards,
Kali.

Gandhi (love him or hate him) said, “No-violent, non-cooperation becomes every mans sacred duty when the state is lawless and corrupt.”

Given that all government is by concent, and that, as the old saying goes, we get the government we deserve, I feel it’s time to stop cooperating and stop consenting to globalised tyranny in the name of “democracy”, “freedom” and “zion”.

Hear hear!

Think Peace — Do No Harm — Do No Business — with the morally inferior Jews.

Bernie Sanders Leads Trump, All 2020 Candidates in Donations From Active-Duty Troops

One suspects that the troops see Bernie as something of a peacenik

Absolutely – Bernie and Tulsi Gabbard are the lone voices for peace.

The elite 20% led by the Zion Jews hate them both. Tulsi has been pushed out and ignored by the elite. They are trying to do the same to Burnie. Jew ownership of the media controls what we can hear.

Sorry but our military has become a mercenary killing machine for the Jews. There is NO glory in that.

Think Peace — Do No Harm — Do No Business — with the morally inferior Jews.

Luke Ford’s loss can be Unz Review’s gain.

Kevin Michael Grace has been let go by the Luke Ford Show.

If you've enjoyed Kevin Michael Grace the past 18 months on my channel, you'll enjoy him even more as he develops his own channel. The complete KMG archive of our past shows: https://t.co/YFHiM8aTXH

— (((Luke Ford))) (@lukeford) February 3, 2020

@KMGVictoria Yo KMG- just wanted to thank you for all your hundreds of hours of streaming on Luke’s channel. I’ve learnt so much from you. Your breadth of knowledge is truly sensational. I can’t wait to see your new direction!

— Pluto Cosmo Augustine (@DisgraceKevin) February 3, 2020

I was sacked without any warning or explantion. So, no, I don't think this wound will heal anytime soon https://t.co/qnE4HzziPd

— Kevin Michael Grace🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇮🇪⚜🇳🇴 (@KMGVictoria) February 3, 2020

Kevin Michael Grace has journalistic experience, erudition of history/politics, and wide-ranging interests in culture, from high art to pop culture.

It might be a good idea to create a corner for him on Unz Review where he post videos and writings about various topics.

KMG’s contact email: [email protected]

Mr. Unz,

Could you please delete my comment history from unz.com. Further, could you also prevent my username from making further posts.

Thank you.

Paul Craig Roberts’ latest article, “As the Democratic Party Hates ‘Trump Deplorables,’ How Can It Represent White People?” is a perfect description of the current State of the Union.

Since Mr. Roberts doesn’t allow comments, I am using this open thread to make this statement. If you want to know what this American is thinking right now about life for him in his own country, and for others like him in countries like his, read the article.

Every word of it is true.

Existing comments can’t be removed without severely disrupting old threads.

Could I just get my obviously stupid comments deleted? There shouldn’t be more than 10 or 12.

PCR does have some good articles. The commentary on his WW2 article, which was opened surprisingly, was a fantastic thread full of good discussion.

Swan Song to a Millenium…

“Dreams” The Cranberries Paris 1999

My humble suggestion would be to even out the political balance. As things stand, the site publishes viewpoints which are overwhelmingly right-wing, often far-right. It is true that from a Western media PoV, these viewpoints are the most stigmatised (and thus those often most excluded).

This site needs mo ho’s. Where are the ho’s? Too many fellas.

Of those, I’d say 15 would be generally considered on the Left: Gilad Atzmon, Kevin Barrett, Pat Cockburn, Stephen Cohen, Jonathan Cook, Linh Dinh, Pepe Escobar, C.J. Hopkins, Michael Hudson, Ted Rall, the Saker, Israel Shamir, Andre Vltchek, Whitney Webb, and Mike Whitney.

They are more left-of-left or exiled left, that is most current mandarin ‘leftists’ consider them as renegades.

‘Paul Craig Roberts’ latest article, “As the Democratic Party Hates ‘Trump Deplorables,’ How Can It Represent White People?” is a perfect description of the current State of the Union…’

The comic bit is that now the party appears to be considering nominating a homosexual for president.

Blacks are notoriously homophobic, and Hispanics aren’t too crazy about homosexuals either; the Democrats will wind up representing nobody at all.

Peace.

Another succinct statement of truth from Paul Craig Roberts was published yesterday, here in the Unz Review: The Consequence of Globalism Is World Instability.

Our leaders in business and government have brought us to a point at which a plague in China will destroy our livlihood in America — even if Americans don’t get sick. If the coronavirus, or some other illness in the future, becomes serious, the globalist system of which we are a part will suffer.

He explains that Americans, like Citizens of many other counties in the supply chain, would suffer an economic crash if China were unable to produce the parts and finished products it exports. Employment, sales, supplies, would all fall.

The title of Mr. Roberts’ essay is a true statement.

Greedy fools pushed us to this point! What ever happened to the idea of redundant systems? Independence? How stupid it is to force Americans and everyone else to toil in a single industrial system, where if any one (Chinese) part fails, we all fail. How insane.

Perhaps the science-minded readers of this webzine will find this article as interesting as I did:

Are noncommunicable diseases communicable?
B. B Finlay1,2, CIFAR Humans, the Microbiome2
See all authors and affiliations

Science 17 Jan 2020:
Vol. 367, Issue 6475, pp. 250-251
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz3834

Summary
The past century has seen a profound decrease in mortality rates across the world, accompanied by a marked shift from communicable diseases (caused by infectious microbes) to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and respiratory diseases. NCDs—defined as diseases that are not transmissible directly from one person to another—account for more than 70% (41 million) of all deaths globally (1). The definition of NCDs rules out microbial involvement and instead focuses on genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. Data increasingly show that the microbiota is dysbiotic (altered) in individuals with various NCDs. In animal models of NCDs, transplantation of dysbiotic microbiota into healthy animals results in disease, and microbiota composition is shaped by close contact with others. Therefore, we propose that some NCDs could have a microbial component and, if so, might be communicable via the microbiota.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6475/250

What became of the Video pages of those squelched by YouTube? Weren’t they to be accessible here?

Extremely high-yield post on useful meta-concepts to help sift reality i(in our information age) from the detritus:

MEGATHREAD TIME: In 40 tweets I will describe 40 powerful concepts for understanding the world. Some are complex so forgive me for oversimplifying, but the main purpose is to incite curiosity. Okay, here we go:

— Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Peace.

Also, I have not laughed this hard in years, so I thought I would share:

“NOT MY CAT” 💀💀💀 pic.twitter.com/EMHv3woXgj

— Sabrina ✨ (@__Sabbrinaaaa_) January 30, 2020

Peace.

Steve Bannon vs. Bill Maher…

Thank you renewing my interest in that once out-of-season historian, Jacob Burckhardt, who had little faith in progressive democratic institutions and technology. Years ago I read parts of his “Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.” Hate to say, I did not really appreciate its brilliance. He wrote of the whole person, whose need for and love of beauty placed him next to divinity, and gave life and strength to his culture and nation. Now that governing bodies and institutions are in many ways disintegrating, his conceptions seem to be more timely than ever.

Burckhardt did not believe modern rationalism was sufficient to sustain the person or society. Russell, on the other hand, sought truth in mathematics. It was touching to hear him describe as you say, “the time before the First World War as a time of stability and settled verities about politics….” Those times held fast to family and religious traditions. After the War, the center lost its hold. Humanity was cast adrift in a sea of doubt and questioning. Even Russell’s great protege, Wittgenstein, questioned whether mathematics was truth or merely a human construct.

Burckhardt foresaw the crisis of metaphysics and culture that was to come upon Europe. It was realized in the War and in our own day by countless wars springing up everywhere like mushrooms. The “Letters of Jacob Burckhardt” by Alexander Dru is on order; hope to read the profound challenge our time fleshed out by this master of cultural history. Thanks again.

Israeli War Crime of the Day…

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/slow-death-israeli-dams-flood-gaza-crops-ahead-harvest

Thanks for elevating Burkhardt’s ideas of art-family-religion. I’ve read a bit of his history of Italy and found it balm for the spirit.

I don’t know much about Russell, but your comparison was instructive.

Motivated by Phil Giraldi’s article on the billionaire backers of Pete Buttegieg, with Seth Klarman taking the lead role, I’ve been reading materials that our children are force-fed by an organization Klarman heads.

Klarman is Chair of the Trustees at Facing History and Ourselves, an extensive collection of courses in (history) with holocaust and countering antisemitism as the centerpiece, that is taught to middle-school students in dozens of US states as well as internationally.

The program started out a holocaust education program in one school in Klarman’s hometown in 1976; it now reaches over 100,000 public, private and charter school kids each year, and also conducts special programs, seminars and trainings for educators.

The Facing History program on Weimar Germany offers a stunning contrast to the world Burckhardt admired: Facing History viewed Weimar as an outstanding period of cultural development that is important because it was a transition point to a fully democratized political, material, and artistic culture that sadly, claims the author, Paul Bookbinder, the German people were not able to navigate successfully. Bookbinder hopes that by studying the possibilities but failure of Weimar, young people can learn how to adopt the modern forms of art and social being Weimar envisioned, in a fully democratic way. (Klarmen fully endorses the varieties of re-gendering now in vogue).

Bookbinder does not mention that Weimar was also a period when ordinary German people were forced to prostitute themselves to eat; when children were used and abused shamelessly; when the literature, painting, performing arts and popular culture of the period were considered degraded and decadent by many Germans.

Germans were Burckhardtians being forced into a world not of their own making or preference — not at all “democratic.”

I don’t know if Ron Unz is amenable to using this platform to attempt to organize to this extent: a full critique of the large body of material Facing History produces, and that our kids have been taught for over 40 years, is more than I can manage alone. But if several Unz participants agree to coordinate efforts to study the Facing History material and analyze it in comparison with, for example, Pravda articles on holocaust, on antisemitism, and the like, perhaps we could combine forces to produce at least a pamphlet that could be distributed to parents at school conferences, and to Boards of Education and school councils.

The material Klarman’s group is teaching America’s children is nothing short of psychological warfare.
We need to confront it and reclaim our own children.

Jerusalem was conquered, not purchased.

Like Istanbul and, more recently, northern Cyprus.

It was actually a negotiated surrender from the Byzantines to the Rashidun. They simply didn’t have the resources to put up much of a fight after the blowout at Yarmouk.

Peace.

A little over two weeks ago:

Israeli settlers torch Palestinian school in latest ‘price tag’ attack
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-settlers-torch-fifth-grade-classroom-palestinian-village-south-nablus

Palestinian mosque torched in Israeli settler ‘price tag’ attack
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/east-jerusalem-mosque-burned-israeli-settlers-price-tag-attack

Israeli settlers torch Palestinian school in latest ‘price tag’ attack

Palestinian mosque torched in Israeli settler ‘price tag’ attack

Jew killed all olive trees.

But,

Jew must be Jew.

5ds

The more relevant question is this: If God is The Creator of all that is, why wouldn’t He take an interest in us? Even the smallest blade of grass usually gets everything it needs to grow and flourish for its typical lifespan. Same is true with insects, birds, and other two and four-legged critters. So God takes an interest in His creatures far lower on the food chain, but not the one at the top?

The problem, as I see it, is that even for humans, for a God, (or God, Himself) their antics really must seem painfully mundane. What act of significance has any human accomplished in a thousand years? Yes, we have spaceships in orbit, but they’re used more as weapons or spying, than for anything else. Where are our great spiritual epiphanies, that uplift mankind from the primitive sludge, of war and hate?

Civilizations ebb and flow. The Zeitgeist seems more circular, than linear.

As far as I can see, the most critical event of the last millennium is the looming destruction of the Earth’s ecology. Due to the blind greed and fecundity of God’s ‘special creature’.

Why is it, almost none of the world’s religious or spiritual leaders seem to have any concern for the world’s oceans or myriad species, on the verge of extinction, for all time. What does that bode for us as a moral beings, when we’re indifferent to handing this formerly lush planet to the next generations, bereft of many of its miracles, because it suited the current stewards of this planet to stand by idly as they’re wiped out. With more shekels clinking in their pockets, who has time to care about sea turtles?

The Islamic perspective is profoundly different. Adam’s sin is not the cataclysmic event that shoulders the entirety of humankind with the burden of “original sin” and precludes him from return to the garden barring a patently idolatrous declaration.

I know I’m blending things a bit, but for me, mankind’s original sin, is his willful destruction of the planet. (and I’m not talking about the ‘Climate Change’ idiocy). Humans have been slaughtering other humans since the beginning of time, but now we’re on the verge of taking our infinite greed and bloodlust planetary, and not just slaughtering each other, but driving thousands of species extinct, in our damnable, solipsistic megalomania. One day soon, children will be born into a world with poisoned oceans, (already, you don’t eat too much fish, because of the ubiquitous mercury), and they’ll say, ‘did African elephants and mountain gorillas really share this world with us, as freely roaming fellow creatures of God? And we’ll have to answer, ‘why yes honey, but that was before we humans wiped out all their habitats, to make room for billions of more consumer units and tax payers and cannon fodder. What are a few elephants, when you can have a few more billion people buying Walmart plastic things made in China and eating McDonald’s Big Macs?!

We do know, however, about the history of Israel in relation to God because we have a written record which, even in its corrupted form, provides evidence of it.

Why is it so easy, (incredibly easy), for me to consider Israel’s written ‘relation to God’, as nothing more than the written word of men, trying their best to interpret a God. I suspect my Mohawk, at the edge of his realm, watching an eagle soar, would have been just as close to the Eternal One, as he was uplifted by God’s beauty and grace. As a Jew two thousands years ago, wrestling with the texts of his ancestors, trying to divine the will of God. That those words were written, while the Mohawks were not, is hardly more reason to assign them divine origin, at least as I see it.

Truth is, we’re all entitled to the fruits of God’s Kingdom, without any need to demonstrate descent from an allegedly superior bloodline.

Here, here!

Why is it, almost none of the world’s religious or spiritual leaders seem to have any concern for the world’s oceans or myriad species, on the verge of extinction, for all time. What does that bode for us as a moral beings, when we’re indifferent to handing this formerly lush planet to the next generations, bereft of many of its miracles, because it suited the current stewards of this planet to stand by idly as they’re wiped out.

This really is a question – empathy with the natural world seems to be very rare.

Nature has always been something to exploit (kill, harvest, burn, mine, cut down etc.) so I agree that there’s room for “spiritual leaders” to care about the human – nature interaction – maybe not to sanctify it – but to care about it.

Also , this is something that is easily personalized in an anonymous atomized society. The regular “consumer” turns into something else when he/she spends time with, and develops a feeling for plants and animals.

Prophetic scene from “The Graduate”…

Especially when humans become plastic with a tissue endoskeleton.

Putin rejects same sex marriage in Russia and the adoption of children by homosexuals.

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/02/14/vladimir-putin-russia-same-sex-marriage-gender-specific-language-anti-lgbt-gay/

Liberal outrage in the West but for my part congratulations to Putin. I’ve got nothing at all against homosexuals but it’s a minority thing and it should basically be ignored – not fetishized by the media/state and given special rights.

How unWoke! Time to drag Putin before the Hague.

Chris Maser wrote an interesting book, “Harmonizing Culture and Nature”

This is a review that I wrote in 2016:

“Firstly, Chris Maser has written a very valuable book about the natural world and its problems which are worse now (2016) than when the book was published in 1992.

“He’s concerned with habitats and species and says (P33), ‘… the notion is that species continue to evolve until they at last occupy all available habitat niches in the biosphere, which keeps changing, so that species must continue adapting.’

“Some habitats offer more possibilities than others and he highlights the extraordinary richness of the world’s tropical rain forests quoting biologist Louise Emmons, with regard to the Gabon African rainforest; ‘You can stand anywhere and be surrounded by hundreds of organisms that are all ‘doing something’, going about their living in countless interactions—ants carrying leaves, birds dancing, bats singing, giant blue wasps wrestling with giant tarantulas, caterpillars pretending that they are bird droppings, and so on.’

“Then he shows how humans are destroying natural habitats at an accelerating rate, becoming the principal cause of extinctions and evolutionary leaps. Like he says (1992), ‘Each year, an area 80% the size of the State of Oregon burns in the Brazilian Amazon alone’, and this is a lot, considering that tropical rainforests are one of the world’s oldest ecosystems, occupying only 7% of the Earth’s surface but home to more than 50% of all the Earth’s species.

“His point is that human beings approach nature in a manner formed by their past. For most of their history they were an insignificant part in its vastness, and actually threatened by it—hence the memes of ‘carving out the new frontier’, ‘taming nature’ etc. which are all wrong now that the tables have turned.

“Maser shows that intensive chemical based agriculture is seriously removing fertility from soil around the world as green cover is removed along with he natural cycle of dead organic matter returning to the earth (also covered in Peter Andrew’s excellent book ‘Beyond the Brink’).

“He does show a growing awareness of the problem and engages in a very interesting argument (P186) contrasting Ethos with Law. Ethos is something that puts down deep roots into society and moulds it from the bottom up (in other words it IS society). In contrast Law is much more superficial concept that without Ethos it is easily circumvented, as for example with dead letter Environmental Laws routinely ignored by special interests. Like he says, ‘This is not the doing of the scientists, foresters, rangers, and others at working levels the agencies.’ It reflects decisions made by higher authorities in the executive branch of government i.e. They know they can get away with it because most of the population don’t care.

“Maser could have suggested how to internalize (build an Ethos) of sustainability in the general population, but it’s a difficult problem and this is still a great book. Five stars so far and I have decided to ignore the negatives.”

The problem, as I see it, is that even for humans, for a God, (or God, Himself) their antics really must seem painfully mundane.

This is but a projection of your imagination, and God tells us that He is to us as we regard Him, so that is what God is to you: someone for whom the antics of human beings must seem painfully mundane.

But this is not what God is. Nor is God what I think of Him, He transcends my imagination. Yet He is knowable, the Necessarily Existent One. This is an apparent conundrum, but only if we suppose that imagination and knowledge are one and the same.

They are not.

What act of significance has any human accomplished in a thousand years?

Why stop at one millennium? What act of significance has any human ever accomplished?

Without acting to prove otherwise, the ultimate destination of such query is despair — not an ingredient conducive to acts of significance.

Where are our great spiritual epiphanies, that uplift mankind from the primitive sludge, of war and hate?

I’ve found mine. I’m not exactly sure what you’re looking for, but if you’re doing your best to refrain from war and hate, I’d say that’s a good start.

The crimes that others more powerful than us have committed in our name are far too numerous to list here. We’re not accountable for them, no matter what some folks might say. It’s enough to know that the perpetrators will be compensated for what their hands have brought forth sooner or later. Just be grateful you’re not them. That, of itself, is a tremendous blessing.

Civilizations ebb and flow. The Zeitgeist seems more circular, than linear.

“Seems” is the operative word because fundamental aspects of human nature have not changed since the dawn of man; as such, it appears that history repeats while, in truth, familiar patterns of human behavior manifest themselves in novel circumstances.

As far as I can see, the most critical event of the last millennium is the looming destruction of the Earth’s ecology.

A significant problem, no doubt.

Why is it, almost none of the world’s religious or spiritual leaders seem to have any concern for the world’s oceans or myriad species, on the verge of extinction, for all time.

You’re being a bit presumptuous, expecting documentary proof or evidence in hyperlinks and sound bites while the vast majority of the world doesn’t even have a web connection.

We could easily discuss what Islam says about “The Trust” that God gave to man, which includes proper care for the earth and everything in it — flora to fauna to mineral. I neither hunt nor fish solely for sport, nor do I raze woodland for any but the most practical purpose, and despoiling the environment at the cost of my humanity is simply not an option.

One of my brother Muslims insists on a holistic, organic diet. He is exceedingly conscientious about his own habits as they effect the larger environment. Given his circumstances, his way is ideal.

But there are many subject to circumstances in which such practice is essentially impractical, be they limited in their options as a consequence of poverty, their environment, or a combination of both. If we can afford organics and avoid plastic waste and reliance upon toxic chemicals, that’s great. Unfortunately, the vast majority of humankind cannot.

Want to join Greenpeace? Go for it. The average world salary is ~ $42/day. Sure, you can stretch it out longer in many parts of the world, but try it on for size and see how it fits with a wife and children to boot. You’d be surprised how easily you’d forget those concerns you once had the luxury to entertain.

I can’t blame religious leaders for these problems because most of them would, at the very least, be no worse than others, and furthermore, they’re more likely to find reason somewhere in their faith tradition to be better in their own practices and habits.

It’s those who lack any manner of moral or ethical guidance that produce such problems.

Why is it so easy, (incredibly easy), for me to consider Israel’s written ‘relation to God’, as nothing more than the written word of men, trying their best to interpret a God.

Even if you perceive it as such, it does nothing to diminish the scope of its influence.

I agree in part with what you write, but not because I regard the record as a pastiche of ancient fairy tales; rather, I agree with it because, as a whole, the record was provided by men who weren’t “trying their best to interpret a God” so much as presenting an account of history that served to present Israel as the terminus of salvation. To say that the sum of it is fictive is to miss the point. That record made one of the most significant impacts on human history — and particularly that of western civilization — than any other. This fact is undeniable and until it is acknowledged and understood for what it’s worth, not a single individual delving into the “Jewish Question” will ever be able to answer it satisfactorily.

I suspect my Mohawk, at the edge of his realm, watching an eagle soar, would have been just as close to the Eternal One, as he was uplifted by God’s beauty and grace. As a Jew two thousands years ago, wrestling with the texts of his ancestors, trying to divine the will of God. That those words were written, while the Mohawks were not, is hardly more reason to assign them divine origin, at least as I see it.

You’re entirely correct, of course.

But where is the influence of the Mohawk now? And where is that of Israel?

Here, here!

You’re halfway home.

Thank you Miro23,

This really is a question – empathy with the natural world seems to be very rare.

Sadly, it’s by design.

I remember growing up with Jacques Cousteau’s videos, and his heartfelt campaign to protect the oceans from man’s blind greed. At some point, man’s blind greed simply decided that such videos and sentiments didn’t suit their agenda, and so all the profound longing of so many people, to protect our natural world from the ravages of greed, were swept under the rug, and replaced with Global Warming! And Climate Change! They took the movement, and perverted it into a scheme to make them richer than their wildest dreams.

We didn’t have to worry about species or habitats, or exploding numbers of humans in the Third World, no! All we have to do it tax the fuck out of Bubba the redneck in his F150, and the people of N. America and Europe and Australia! That was the solution. Don’t worry about China and India and Indonesia and Africa and Brazil, they can breed and burn their forests and pump gargantuan levels of carbon into the atmosphere and all will be wonderful, so long as we castrate whitey with carbon taxes.

That’s the whole motivation for the Yellow Vests in France. They were told they had to pay massively higher taxes, to save the planet, as France became flooded with super-prolific people from the Third World. (Oh, and they had to pay taxes to pay for that, as well). It’s a wonder they didn’t bring back the guillotine for Macron. (who deserves it, if anyone ever did ; ).

So they squashed Jacques Cousteau’s earnest and sublime message, and profaned it into an abomination so serve their eternal agenda.

And I say God damn them for it.

The regular “consumer” turns into something else when he/she spends time with, and develops a feeling for plants and animals.

The depths of our souls, are like the depth of the oceans, full of wonder and possibilities and infinite mysteries. When children are exposed to nature, you’re so right, it changes them. And not just children, but adults too.

Often it’s hunters, who start out wanting to kill magnificent beasts, but who learn to love and respect those beasts, who then become some of the most passionate defenders of our natural treasures, the unspoiled wild places on earth.

This is a review that I wrote in 2016:

“Firstly, Chris Maser has written a very valuable book about the natural world and its problems which are worse now (2016) than when the book was published in 1992.

Doesn’t it sort of ripe your heart out, that this critical issue has been coopted by the scumfucks of the world, as an excuse for them to have unlimited power to tax every breath, while encouraging billions more people (to tax), as the “solution” to it all?

There seems to be literally no depth to the depraved, sinister, literally infinite greed in the blackened and putrid human heart. They would sell out Earth itself, for a few shekels more.

“Our leaders in business and government have brought us to a point at which a plague in China will destroy our livlihood in America — even if Americans don’t get sick. If the coronavirus, or some other illness in the future, becomes serious, the globalist system of which we are a part will suffer.”

This has been the case at least twice throughout history – in the Bronze Age collapse of the 12th ct. BCE, and during the fall of the degenerated and Christianized Roman Empire in the 3d-5th ct. CE. Our turn seems to be up, especially considering the failure of Hitlerism.

This is but a projection of your imagination, and God tells us that He is to us as we regard Him, so that is what God is to you: someone for whom the antics of human beings must seem painfully mundane.

I can understand how you could interpret it that way, but I don’t agree.

A man, (or woman) could live the most explosive life, full of wonders and experiences to fill tomes. Marco Polo meets Thomas Aquinas. And yet, their lives and aspirations, would be all known, down to the last whizzing atom of their DNA – to God Himself, for who there are no mysteries, or curiosities. Just His creation, as He created it. No more, and no less.

I don’t engage in the vanity that I have the power to upset or surprise God. He (It, Whatever) knows all. And as profound and intriguing as some human’s lives no doubt are (to other humans), I still imagine that everything going on in the vast universe, is rather more wonderous and encompassing (taken on the whole) than the (occasionally enigmatic) antics of humans, on planet Earth.

I’m not pooh-poohing our lives and the depth of our experiences, just doubting that God would consider them as profoundly significant as we do.

But this is not what God is. Nor is God what I think of Him, He transcends my imagination. Yet He is knowable, the Necessarily Existent One. This is an apparent conundrum, but only if we suppose that imagination and knowledge are one and the same.

They are not.

But there’s a potential logical fallacy there. Since I consider what’s ‘knowable’, as far more elusive than what’ ‘imaginable’. I appreciate your eloquence, but would simply prefer to consider God as far more ‘imaginable’, than ‘knowable’. The latter being as aspiration, whereas the former is perhaps mortally achieved.

Why stop at one millennium? What act of significance has any human ever accomplished?

Exactly!

From the perspective of God.

Humans accomplish wonders daily, hourly. From the perspective of other humans.

From a human perspective, Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson, flying around in outer space, must seem significant. But do you imagine that God thinks so?

Without acting to prove otherwise, the ultimate destination of such query is despair — not an ingredient conducive to acts of significance.

Oh, but I disagree. It’s because we’re not expected to rise to the expectations of a God, that our antics are all the more magnificent. We don’t have to impress God, with our humble efforts, we only have to impress ourselves, and hopefully our loved ones, to feel perfect happiness and fulfillment. Richard Branson may have always wanted to go to space as a little boy. And now that he’s on the cusp of his dreams, it isn’t because he’ll impress God, by doing so, but just that he’ll impress himself.

By setting our goals to things that are earthly, and human, we avoid the despair we might otherwise feel when we fall short of God’s demands (as interpreted by men) for our lives.

Where are our great spiritual epiphanies, that uplift mankind from the primitive sludge, of war and hate?

I’ve found mine. I’m not exactly sure what you’re looking for, but if you’re doing your best to refrain from war and hate, I’d say that’s a good start

Right back at you, Sir!

Why is it, almost none of the world’s religious or spiritual leaders seem to have any concern for the world’s oceans or myriad species, on the verge of extinction, for all time.

You’re being a bit presumptuous, expecting documentary proof or evidence in hyperlinks and sound bites while the vast majority of the world doesn’t even have a web connection.

I’m not talking about the vast majority, I’m talking about those who’re so obsessed with their narrow agendas, that even as they know, that Brazil’s rainforests (for instance) will not survive the unsustainable growth of human numbers in Brazil, that they DON”T CARE.

The important thing for them, is to exploit the rainforests for the maximum benefit to themselves, right now! And damn all the millions of people, current and future, (with or without web access), in order to use the natural ecology and their teeming poor, as a means of exulting themselves and getting richer and more powerful – with ever more millions of the teeming poor, who’s suffering is exploited for the benefit of the elites. And that’s true from Brazil to N. America to Europe and Africa and South America to Asia and the Middle East, and everywhere in between.

Human greed. For lucre and power.

I’m not always sure there’s a God, but I am sure there’s a devil. And he resides in that damnable, intractable, human imperative for domination of his fellow humans. Power. At all costs.

despoiling the environment at the cost of my humanity is simply not an option.

If humanity could learn what you’ve learned, then perhaps I’d wonder if there’s isn’t a God out there somewhere. Failing that, all I see is a baboon-like ape, consumed with an insane greed for more and more and more power, (over other humans). And I can’t bring myself to imagine that a God would create such a species. (not on purpose, at least ; ).

If we can afford organics and avoid plastic waste and reliance upon toxic chemicals, that’s great. Unfortunately, the vast majority of humankind cannot.

It’s not the vast majority that are the problem. It’s the demonic elites, that are the problem. The ones who simply WILL NOT mention over-population, because from the Catholic Church, to Third World governments, to greedy cocksuckers like the Koch brothers, [one down…], our elites LOVE masses and masses of poor people to exploit, for their own nefarious agendas.

The average world salary is ~ $42/day. Sure, you can stretch it out longer in many parts of the world, but try it on for size and see how it fits with a wife and children to boot.

I’ve lived on less. I’ve lived on the streets dude, and out of my car, and come up from the bottom of society, so I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to arrive at the day labor spot, and you arrive at 5:00 am, and then at about 6:00 am, maybe some guy arrives and says he needs three or five guys, and you work all day at some menial task, and you’re given (back then) $20.00 for your trouble.

Still, a hell of a lot better than most of the poor people in the world, but hardly a trust-fund person’s lifestyle. (that was a few decades ago, but you don’t have to lecture me on hardship ; ).

I can’t blame religious leaders for these problems because most of them would, at the very least, be no worse than others,

I can. All day long. Because for one, spiritual leaders are supposed to be better than the rest. But more to the point, my problem with ‘spiritual leaders’, is that it seems to me, that their all-consuming obsession, is always, always, ALWAYS to want and demand a bigger flock.

How many spiritual leaders, are fine with the relative size of their flock?

How many spiritual leaders, are not interested in the ascendancy of their particular bent on spirituality?

How many of them would tell the poor and desperate women of their devout, that they need not bring more poor and desperate children into the world, when they can’t feed the ones they have?

How many spiritual leaders are out there, that recognize what it’s like to try to raise a family on $42.oo a day? (or less, in many, many cases).

Where are the world’s spiritual leaders, who understand what crushing poverty is like? And how the despair (you want despair, try living on nothing, but an empty belly, and no prospects for work, with children to feed. That is despair, and it is felt by billions of desperately impoverished people the world over. And what do their spiritual leaders tell them? Do they say, here’s access to family planning, or we spiritual leaders, will not eat one bit more than the poorest among our flock?

Or do they say be ‘fruitful, and multiply’! For that is God’s prescription for all poor women of the faithful.

nothing more than the written word of men, trying their best to interpret a God.

Even if you perceive it as such, it does nothing to diminish the scope of its influence.

.. in the realm of man.

That record made one of the most significant impacts on human history — and particularly that of western civilization — than any other. This fact is undeniable and until it is acknowledged and understood for what it’s worth, not a single individual delving into the “Jewish Question” will ever be able to answer it satisfactorily.

Well, I have to acknowledge the truth of what you’re saying.

The Abrahamic religions are a reality, both historic and current. And I’m not even opposed to them, per se. Except insofar as I consider them destructive, and counter-productive to human (and beyond) happiness and posterity.

Insofar as Islam and Christianity, and Judaism are conducive to peace and general prosperity and happiness, and the future there of, then I’m a proponent. Insofar as they’re not, then neither am I.

I measure my spirituality against real world results. If it brings suffering and despair, then I find it wanting. If it brings fulfillment and a soul, ebullient with truths and a longing for higher understanding, then it’s on to something.

We each have to follow our own paths, and as they intersect, we learn and grow, and are occasionally edified, and enlightened.

Thank you for taking the time to enlighten my path, with your deep knowledge of Islam (and humanity), and beyond.

Salaam.

“That’s the whole motivation for the Yellow Vests in France. They were told they had to pay massively higher taxes, to save the planet, as France became flooded with super-prolific people from the Third World. (Oh, and they had to pay taxes to pay for that, as well). It’s a wonder they didn’t bring back the guillotine for Macron. (who deserves it, if anyone ever did ; ).”

Then why are they not murdering the immigrant Negroes? Why are they letting the swarthy-skinned inhabit their sacred temples? I believe you to be sorely mistaken. No Aryan in his right mind wants to exterminate the Neanderthals of this world, or to preserve Nature. All he wants is lower taxes, higher pay, and peaceful death when his daughters mingle with foreigners.

I don’t engage in the vanity that I have the power to upset or surprise God. He (It, Whatever) knows all. And as profound and intriguing as some human’s lives no doubt are (to other humans), I still imagine that everything going on in the vast universe, is rather more wonderous and encompassing (taken on the whole) than the (occasionally enigmatic) antics of humans, on planet Earth.

Is this logical, however? How do you infer that big JEW cares little for every human life from the dogma that he knows everything? In our society, there are people that devote their lives to ants (and those are even less relevant to us than microbes). I would posit the opposite – if big JEW outside & above Nature exists, he would care for every little life even more than the living themselves.

I’m not always sure there’s a God, but I am sure there’s a devil. And he resides in that damnable, intractable, human imperative for domination of his fellow humans. Power. At all costs.

If Aryans of America had been greedy for power enough, they would have long since nuked the Third World, and thus there would have been no overpopulation. But of course, that’s a blind spot of yours. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg has mixed his precious Jewish blood with a Chinese… They are destroying themselves just like the USSR right in front of our eyes, and you are still afraid of White man’s [suicidally ever weaker] desire for power!

P.S. “The important thing for them, is to exploit the rainforests” – Could you stop putting commas between the subject and the predicate?

The current Munich Security Conference (Feb 14-16th ) shows that the globalist NWO feels an internal threat.

https://www.defensenews.com/smr/munich-security-conference/2020/02/10/munich-report-nato-funding-quarrels-mask-a-more-sinister-threat-to-the-alliance/

COLOGNE, Germany – As Western leaders continue to squabble over military contributions to NATO, a new report warns that the true threat to the Alliance lies in the rise of anti-democratic leanings in its own ranks.

According to the authors, the threat inside comes in the form of “illiberalism” that prizes ethnic, cultural and religious unity over the rules-based order that has guided the West for decades.

Such tendencies are on the rise in Europe, with far-right parties gaining steam or having secured some power already.

The smear is the term “far-right” – a catch-all term for anyone who doesn’t want open frontiers, uncontrolled outsourcing, multiculturalism and the whole “Progressive” package.

Excellent comment Rurik (as is the vast majority of your input on this website – I’d give you a gold star in a heartbeat if it were up to me).

I’ve just, a few minutes ago, posed a question on Rons’ MOSSAD Assassinations thread, which I’d have posted here had I read through these latest exchanges first…

Yesterday I asked AaronB why it is wrong to condemn someone’s religion.

It’s a serious question for me.
Though I was brought up in a Christian family, and remained a Christian myself until the age of 18, I never did understand why societies protect religious beliefs.

Of course, now I see more clearly that organised, dogma-based religions are an intrinsic tool for maintaining social control and cohesion. So from a purely political perspective, I can answer my own question.

But I fail to understand why religious individuals feel their beliefs should be respected and protected. – Particularly given the bloody battles for religious domination which have characterised human history under the predominant “big three”. And given that the words “I believe” literally mean “I din’the know”.

I’m not an atheist by any means. My own spiritual practices [edit to add: meditation, not taking anything, real or imagined, personally, coming to know “god” by coming to know myself – specifically coming to know what I am not (I am not my ego, my ideas, my feelings, my thoughts, my body, my reactions, my beliefs…] are the foundation of my being. – And freed from religious dogmas, I can explore further and deeper than I ever could as a practising Christian.

But I’d like to (at the risk of going off topic) pose that same question to others here, to anyone who feels religious beliefs and ideologies should be protected and held as sacrosanct.

I really would appreciate some of your thoughts and insights on this question.

Thanks,
Kali.

[Just retrieved from the moderation queue.]

Of course, now I see more clearly that organised, dogma-based religions are an intrinsic tool for maintaining social control

Horse in front of the cart. People religiously fast because it follows from their beliefs, not because any religious institution says so. People who recognise certain truths live in certain ways. A doctor might say “don’t rub poison ivy all over your body or you’ll get sick” to protect your health, in the same way religious leaders may say “don’t commit murder or your soul will get sick”, but yet is the medical industry a tool of social control? No, it is recommending to you what is good for you based on their accepted truths, you can rub it on your body, just as you can murder someone else.

If religions were tools for social control, how did you escape from them? They let you leave and apostatize so very clearly they’re not exerting control.

I never did understand why societies protect religious beliefs.

Why does society protect any beliefs, religious or otherwise? Your political, economic, and social views are all protected too. If you think people should not be protected based on their religious beliefs then what’s the difference to people not being protected due to their political? Your line of thinking leads straight to tyranny and despotism.

I’m not an atheist by any means. My own spiritual practices…meditation

If you’re focusing on yourself (“my ego, my ideas, my thoughts, my body”) that’s not spiritual at all. You’re purely humanist and profane, there can be no spirituality without something Divine to focus on.

There is also plenty of evidence of religion being true, because many people have attested to miracles and other acts of God. As G. K Chesterson writes:

If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the [Christian’s] story about the [supernatural] either because the man is a [Christian] or because the story is a [supernatural] story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy [trusting testimony], or you affirm the main principle of materialism– the abstract impossibility of miracle.

You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence–it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle.

If I say, “Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles,” they answer, “But mediaevals were superstitious”; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles.

Though Chesterson was writing on Christianity I believe he was right about other religions tool.

And the effects of this skeptical materialism as plain to see, which sagely, these two understood:

Only in the West did a philosophy develop that was not only no longer the love of wisdom but went so far as to deny the category of wisdom as a legitimate form of knowledge. The result was a hatred of wisdom that should more appropriately be called ‘misosophy’ (literarily hatred of Sophia, Wisdom) rather than philosophy.
– Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“When people want to be rid of Heaven it is logical to start by creating an atmosphere in which spiritual things appear out of place; in order to be able to declare successfully that God is unreal they have to construct around man a false reality, a reality that is inevitably inhuman because only the inhuman can exclude God. What is involved is a falsification of the imagination and so its destruction.”
― Frithjof Schuon

Thanks for your reply Tusk. I do appreciate the opportunity to flesh-out my own perspective and, hopefully, reach some conclusions together.

I don’t have time to give a considered response just now, but hopefully will have either later today or tomorrow.

Ate ja (until soon)
Kali.

No worries. If you ever have the time G. K. Chesterson’s book Orthodoxy, which I referenced in my previous comment, is available to read here on Unz through the HTML books section. It’s a pretty light read but I think he makes some good points fairly outside mainstream religious perspectives so it may be worth a look if you are interested.

Looking forward to your response whenever it is.

Thank you Kali,

You’re very kind and very generous. I’m honored that you’d consider me worthy of a star, but I’m not cut out for that kind of respectability. And being more on the fringe, kind of suits me.

Of course, now I see more clearly that organised, dogma-based religions are an intrinsic tool for maintaining social control and cohesion.

Yes, they are.

But I fail to understand why religious individuals feel their beliefs should be respected and protected

Because all people’s beliefs should be respected and protected. Unless they’re advocating harm to others. If people’s religion or philosophy is ‘live and let live’, then I for one respect that. If, on the other hand, their religion or philosophy states that others- of a different religion or philosophy; have no right to self-determination, and that they must be subjugated, then all bets are off.

to anyone who feels religious beliefs and ideologies should be protected and held as sacrosanct.

I think I just answered that.

People’s beliefs, (just as their lack there of), should be considered sacrosanct, so long as they’re not hurting anyone. But I suppose a lot of nuanced arguments could be made about the potential harm to a child when you fill his little head with erroneous notions of his place in the world, intended to keep him subordinate and obedient to the PTB.

There’s a fine line between Jim Jones, and John Hagee.

A doctor might say “don’t rub poison ivy all over your body or you’ll get sick” to protect your health, in the same way religious leaders may say “don’t commit murder or your soul will get sick”,

Where are these religious leaders saying ‘don’t commit murder, or your soul will get sick’ ?

Are they in the Christian churches of America? Where mass-murder is the order of the day, and America has murdered over a million innocent souls, since 9/11. Where are the religious leaders exhorting their flocks to repudiate all this murder?

Are they, perchance in the synagogues?

Even in the Mosques, it seems to me that Saudis are murdering Yeminis. And Turks are murdering Syrians. And rogue Muslims in Morocco are hacking the heads off of Norwegian girls, apparently to please Allah.

So I wonder if a little more self-reflection might be in order, before we get a little too smug about our religious proscriptions against murder, when few are more bloodthirsty than those caught up in the fanatical religious zealotry of our times.

Iceland is generally secular, (and even has a nascent paganism movement), and yet to my knowledge, not one Icelandic man has ever hacked the head off an Icelandic, (or any other) girl.

And I can promise you, that it’s not because a religious leader had to tell them not to.

They simply don’t do so, because it’s not in their hearts to do so. No religion or religious leader had to scare them away from the daily desire to hack girls heads off. The motivation simply does not exist. Quite the contrary; they love their womenfolk, and want to see them proper, and no religion or religious leaders were in the slightest way necessary for that state of affairs.

Some religious proponents would have us believe that were it not for religious proscriptions against murder and rape and theft, that people would be running around hacking and raping and stealing wholesale.

This is pure balderdash.

I don’t engage in the vanity that I have the power to upset or surprise God.

No, but you do engage in the vanity that your imagination of God is somehow more reasonable than that of others without any certainty that this is so. ; )

I’m not pooh-poohing our lives and the depth of our experiences, just doubting that God would consider them as profoundly significant as we do.

A father knows that his baby son will soon take his first steps. It’s a profoundly significant milestone to the father, but hardly surprising to dad that this will inevitably happen. Dad also delights at his first words, but it’s not an earth-shattering phenomeon. It’s something the father expects.

Of course, there are a few fathers who find these events to be mundane, anodyne, and trivial — those who lack the requisite love.

God’s relationship to man is not less intimate than that of a father to his son. After all, God created him. It follows that, in so doing, God will take an interest in him.

I appreciate your eloquence, but would simply prefer to consider God as far more ‘imaginable’, than ‘knowable’. The latter being as aspiration, whereas the former is perhaps mortally achieved.

Well, to the extent you insist on this presupposition, it will always be so for you.

Knowledge is by degrees, but the latter degrees are unattainable without reaching the first, which is affirmation. You don’t reach it because, by your own admission, you remain in doubt concerning Him.

From a human perspective, Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson, flying around in outer space, must seem significant. But do you imagine that God thinks so?

It depends on how we define significance.

God has knowledge of even a leaf falling in the forest. Is it significant to Him? In a sense, it is. Everything is because He willed everything to be, but nothing is significant to Him in the sense that it surprises Him because He already has knowledge of it.

If you affirm God’s omniscience and omnipotence, you also have to affirm that everything is as He has willed it, which means that nothing is without higher purpose. This is the conclusion we arrive at applying fundamental logic.

By setting our goals to things that are earthly, and human, we avoid the despair we might otherwise feel when we fall short of God’s demands (as interpreted by men) for our lives.

You’re presuming that God demands we shoulder a burden that is too great to bear, which is evident in your reference to “the expectations of a God.”

God doesn’t expect us to be like Him. The very notion is absurd on its face. Nor does He even compel us to keep faith with Him (regardless of what the priests among us may decree).

But He has created us in such a way that our action invariably yields consequence. Setting one’s goals to “things that are earthly and human” includes far too subjective a range of action that could easily incorporate what is essentially detrimental to us.

It is earthly and human to pursue one’s desires, but what distinguishes the good desire from the bad? Without an objective criterion, you can’t draw the distinction.

The faithful with God understand both His prescriptions and proscriptions as beneficial to their well being in this life and the next, and not a one of them constitutes a burden too great to bear. They certainly don’t necessitate being like God, since nothing and nobody can be like Him.

you don’t have to lecture me on hardship ; )

Not my intention, Rurik. Just keeping things in perspective.

Insofar as the hypocrisy of religious leaders is concerned, I won’t contest its existence, but it’s enough for me to be vigilant where my own actions are concerned. I needn’t decry others’ hypocrisy while the potential for my own is all too proximate. Such is the nature of any effort to do what is good in the eyes of God.

You might be interested to know that there are such leaders who understand crushing poverty and hunger and do their best to alleviate it among others. You’re not going to see a lot of news about them, but they certainly exist, thank God.

Even if you perceive it as such, it does nothing to diminish the scope of its influence.
.. in the realm of man.

Where else would we be? ; )

Insofar as Islam and Christianity, and Judaism are conducive to peace and general prosperity and happiness, and the future there of, then I’m a proponent. Insofar as they’re not, then neither am I.

Would you be an opponent of fire simply because it can be used for destructive purposes while the weight of its benefit far outweighs those?

We each have to follow our own paths, and as they intersect, we learn and grow, and are occasionally edified, and enlightened.

Thank you for taking the time to enlighten my path, with your deep knowledge of Islam (and humanity), and beyond.

You’re welcome, and I thank you for your patience, empathy, and willingness to receive me with an open mind and open heart.

Ma’as-salaamah.

I’m not American Rurik so unfortunately I cannot adequately speak on American religious life, though I will say it seems quite the anomaly. I would say any issues of American religion come down to Protestantism simply because Americans are free to interpret the Bible themselves instead of through the Tradition of the Church. This ultimately leads to people cherry picking quotes to back up their inane and material choices, exactly the same way an open borders advocate may pick a quote about Jesus saying let there be no neighbours in order to push their position. This is purely a humanist interpretation and ultimately is incorrect because without the divinity of the Church and the knowledge of the priests you are easily led astray by earthly thoughts.

But once again I’m not American so I don’t really know, those are just some random thoughts on the matter.

Where are these religious leaders saying ‘don’t commit murder, or your soul will get sick’ ?

I don’t know why you think this isn’t the case. Go to any Church (or perhaps any religious institution but I won’t speak for others) and ask them ‘Can I murder someone?’ and see what their response is. I guarantee you it won’t be “go for it”.

You also confuse church and state. Despite their being wars and murder they aren’t directed by the Pope or the Church for instance (at least currently) so I don’t see what the church has to apologise for post 9/11. I certainly believe you have a point, and it is true, that the fanatical pro-Zionist Evangelicals have certainly enabled this behaviour, but once again it’s entirely profane and their humanist Jew loving that allows the state a willing mass of support.

Even in the Mosques, it seems to me that Saudis are murdering Yeminis. And Turks are murdering Syrians. And rogue Muslims in Morocco are hacking the heads off of Norwegian girls, apparently to please Allah.

Well I can’t speak for the Islamic world so I’ll leave that to Talha or anyone else to cover if they wish to, though I’m sure it is probably the same thing that generally Islam doesn’t sponsor those activities. I think you should also note there is a racial component to religion as well. A White muslim is definitely preferable to an African one, and certainly I’d prefer an athiest White to an athiest African.

And that ultimately leads into what you said about Iceland. I don’t think that it’s secular or pagan society necessarily has anything to do with their functional society largely, but instead the fact that they’re Icelandic does. It’s the same as the Japanese, it isn’t that Shinto caused a homogenous and safe society but instead the Japanese who created such a society found solace in the Shinto/Buddhist traditions. So by the same token I don’t think it is God that forms (or should form) our morality, but instead it is our morality that leads to God. All points on a circle when going inward reach the centre and that is the reason.

I would certainly agree with you that those who say religion caused people to be well behaved are wrong. Religion can’t make a man not murder only guide them, that’s why they don’t have total control because we live (generally) in secular states that are separated from religion. The church doesn’t take part in the mundane aspects of this world but only the divine. This is pretty much what Locke argued for in his Two Treatises of Government and it is what we have received. So it makes little sense to praise secular states and then say religion didn’t help them, because of course that’s true, they’re necessarily separated. I do think it’s hard to tell the difference between effects though. How can you possibly tell when religion caused someone to rethink their actions and provided a good to the world? So I think overall it’s a bit ridiculous to blame religion for things it has nothing to do with (state affairs) while condemning them for not doing more, and at the same time denying they do any good at all.

If religion does not preach love, no point in having it.
If it does not lead to God, might as well sleep for eternity.

Life is void and cold nothingness without Him.
With Him, coruscant sun and spring-scented bloom.

I’m not sure what an open thread is, but presumably it can accommodate points that might be tangential on another thread. In one you mention “experiments” that (by implication) undergird your belief in a vast universe. Can you name one such experiment, preferably replicable but not necessary. Two would be splendid.

I have been under the impression that experiments in the actual physical realm have played no role in the formulation of this view. Rather, the entire area of inquiry has been entrusted to a clerisy of very smart people with magical telescopes kept under lock and key and incomprehensible mathematical equations that purport to describe reality. They do “thought experiments,” like Einstein’s theory of relativity, but not, to my knowledge, testing of anything that can be grasped with our senses.

Anything come to mind?

No, but you do engage in the vanity that your imagination of God is somehow more reasonable than that of others without any certainty that this is so. ; )

what irony.

What you’re accusing me of, is exactly what I’d accuse the religiously devout of.

A certainty that their respective take on God, is correct to the exclusion of other people’s beliefs, (or lack there of).

I have no such certainties. All I can tell you for certain, is that I don’t know. I don’t know what God’s name is. I don’t know if He exists. He may, or perhaps, She may. I simply don’t know.

I don’t think that is ‘engaging in the vanity that my imagination of God, is somehow more reasonable than others’, except insofar as I consider my beliefs far more humble, because I consider my faculties, for ‘knowing’ or ‘imagining’ the infinite, to be woefully lacking the capacity.

I can’t know or even really imagine God, because for me, that would be a leap of arrogance that I simply would prefer to avoid. The difference between myself, and the devout, is one of humility. I’m far too humble, (when it comes to God), to presume to have the kind of mind that could connect to the infinite. My mind is very finite. I can contemplate God, or the Gods, but imagining that I can know of Him, or imagine what His designs or intentions for me are, (or anyone else) is beyond my mortal capabilities.

God’s relationship to man is not less intimate than that of a father to his son. After all, God created him. It follows that, in so doing, God will take an interest in him.

Well, this is of course the rote motivation people like Freud concluded that man created his Gods. As a kind of father figure- a protector and safe harbor from the exigencies of a tumultuous and foreboding world. I don’t say such a God exists, and I wouldn’t presume to say He doesn’t. It is for each of us, to figure that particular question out, for ourselves. (IMHO).

If your God, has a father-like interest in our well-being, (considering the events of the 20th and 21st centuries), then I might point out that He sure works in mysterious ways.

But what if you’re wrong? What if there isn’t a father-like God, benevolently watching over us all? What if the Eternal Wars and decimation of the environment, are all a direct consequence of man’s all too mortal appetites? And that if we’re going to find solutions, to things like the Eternal Wars, then we’re going to have to rely on our mortal selves, from which these problems arose.

If it was man who created the conditions in Gaza, (and not God) then maybe it’s man, who must seek ways to redress those conditions. Yes? No?

Well, to the extent you insist on this presupposition, it will always be so for you.

Knowledge is by degrees, but the latter degrees are unattainable without reaching the first, which is affirmation. You don’t reach it because, by your own admission, you remain in doubt concerning Him.

Sine qua non

Yes, I know.

God has knowledge of even a leaf falling in the forest. Is it significant to Him? In a sense, it is. Everything is because He willed everything to be, but nothing is significant to Him in the sense that it surprises Him because He already has knowledge of it.

If you affirm God’s omniscience and omnipotence, you also have to affirm that everything is as He has willed it, which means that nothing is without higher purpose. This is the conclusion we arrive at applying fundamental logic.

This is all fine, but I don’t see why we couldn’t replace God, with providence, (or fate, or ‘the universe’ or nature) and be in perfect agreement.

IOW, why does there have to be a agent of the leaf falling? Why can’t it just have succumbed to the forces of gravity, having grown on the tree, and lived and died, all without even so much as a God to supervise it?

You’re presuming that God demands we shoulder a burden that is too great to bear, which is evident in your reference to “the expectations of a God.”

Yes, you’re right. Growing up in a religious household, I feel there were some burdens that came with being religious, that were too great to bear. Perhaps the most glairing one was the demands to suspend one’s reason, and accept that a man could live in the belly of a whale, for three days. Or that the dinosaurs existence was kind of an anomaly, that one shouldn’t contemplate too earnestly, vis-a-vis the account of earth’s history, as told by the Holy Bible.

If God endowed me with anything more precious than my reason, I’m not aware of it. Creating me with reason, and then demanding that I stifle it, was for me, a burden too great to bear.

God doesn’t expect us to be like Him. The very notion is absurd on its face.

I guess you weren’t raised a Christian. Our whole raison d’être, was to conduct ourselves in the manner of living as demonstrated by God, when He assumed His mortal self as Jesus Christ, to show us all how to aspire to live. The point is to be as much like Him, as we are all capable.

Nor does He even compel us to keep faith with Him (regardless of what the priests among us may decree).

You have a very liberal understanding of the Abrahamic God(s), I would posit.

It is earthly and human to pursue one’s desires, but what distinguishes the good desire from the bad? Without an objective criterion, you can’t draw the distinction.

‘Do no harm’.

And if you want to go one farther, to sainthood, you can add ‘be kind’. They are their own reward.

The faithful with God understand both His prescriptions and proscriptions as beneficial to their well being in this life and the next, and not a one of them constitutes a burden too great to bear.

Well, I guess since we are splitting hairs here, when you mention ‘the faithful’, I couldn’t help think of our mutual friend on the other thread, for who- ‘keeping the faith’, means treating the people of Gaza as less than human. How do you reconcile that for one person, (Christian or Jewish Zionist) ‘keeping the faith’, is to another- genocide and death?

How can members of the respective ‘faithful’, all be in God’s good graces, when the fanatically religious IDF bulldozer driver is destroying yet another mosque in Palestine?

You seem loath to ever admit, that Judaism and Islam are at times, mutually exclusive. And that a Jewish God that demands the death and genocide of Arabs, can still be considered legitimate.

I suffer no such contradictions. For me, a “Christian Zionist’, is a deluded fool, (and far worse).

A Zionist, Jewish supremacist, is as close to God, as a crocodile’s droppings. I don’t even pretend, that they’re entitled to respect as a religion. Their religion (Zionism, as it’s practiced today) is the religion of jackals. So at least I’m not bound up in contradictions, where one person’s god demands the wholesale slaughter of the adherents of another people’s God. ‘But they’re both legitimate Gods- or even more perversely, (at least for me) one and the same God’.

Insofar as the hypocrisy of religious leaders is concerned, I won’t contest its existence, but it’s enough for me to be vigilant where my own actions are concerned. I needn’t decry others’ hypocrisy while the potential for my own is all too proximate. Such is the nature of any effort to do what is good in the eyes of God.

Well said.

You might be interested to know that there are such leaders who understand crushing poverty and hunger and do their best to alleviate it among others. You’re not going to see a lot of news about them, but they certainly exist, thank God.

That is true, and it’s also true for utterly non-religious people.

Charity is not the sole purview of the religious.

.. in the realm of man.

Where else would we be? ; )

Imagining that the heavens and earth, and entire universe were all created for our personal benefit?

That God created earth and the heavens, so that He could inhabit it with His special project, to heap praise upon Him, and to worship Him?

I find such a God as a bit vain, no?

Where are the Gods that have no use for man’s homage and fealty? But are satisfied simply to have put it all in motion.

Why are such Gods, (in need of supplicants and paeans to their greatness) so perfectly aligned with how I see the id of mortal man?

Indeed, for much of recorded history, there wasn’t even a line drawn between the Pharos or Caesars and such/ and God Himself. They were considered virtually one and the same.

Would you be an opponent of fire simply because it can be used for destructive purposes while the weight of its benefit far outweighs those?

I would reject the use of fire for harmful purposes, and hail it for beneficial purposes.

I would reject religious beliefs that I consider harmful, and hail those that I consider beneficial.

I would reject the genocidal, murderous hatred of Zionism, and hail those parts of Judaism and Christianity that give hope and meaning to people’s lives.

Much like I think most Muslims reject the murderous hatred of Daesh, while embracing the tenets of Islam that are sublime and beneficial.

I thank you for your patience, empathy, and willingness to receive me with an open mind and open heart.

It is my distinct pleasure. Thank you.

Fii Amanillah

Hello Tusk,

Allow me to re-invert the horse/cart positions, or try to…

Horse in front of the cart. People religiously fast because it follows from their beliefs, not because any religious institution says so.

Whilst there are definate spiritual and physical benefits to fasting, I do doubt that millions of people all around the planet would spontaneously decide to fast at exactly the same time every year if it weren’t for the religious institutions which guide/shape/determine this pattern of behaviour. It’s “the institution” which decides the holy days.

(For the sake of clarity, I’m not suggesting here that the combined energy of millions of people engaged in a sacred, spiritual endeavor (be it prayer, meditation fasting or something else) is not a very powerful thing. I “believe” (I. E. I don’t know) it certainly could be.)

People who recognise certain truths live in certain ways.

I would suggest that the recognition of certain “Sacred Truths” is not the sole preserve of the Religious Practitioner, that is to say someone who seeks those Truths pimarily from the perspective of a given Authodoxy. – Again, that’s not to say that ‘Truths’ cannot be found there, but those Truths may be found in many unauthodox ways.

A doctor might say “don’t rub poison ivy all over your body or you’ll get sick” to protect your health, in the same way religious leaders may say “don’t commit murder or your soul will get sick”, but yet is the medical industry a tool of social control? No, it is recommending to you what is good for you based on their accepted truths, you can rub it on your body, just as you can murder someone else.

[…]

If you’re focusing on yourself (“my ego, my ideas, my thoughts, my body”) that’s not spiritual at all. You’re purely humanist and profane, there can be no spirituality without something Divine to focus on.

I’m gonna take these two together and invert them if I may. Because it’s in addressing this second point that I answer the first.

Your second point here, to me, is screaming of the profane. A profanity which is inherrent in “the big three” Religions. That is the externalisation of the Divine -“Religion” says “a universal God, Creater of all things exists, but exists as something wholly external to You. That You were born “sinful” in the eyes of this Almighty external “God”… You may have a relationship with this “God”, through His self-appointed priest class, if you behave the way they say He says you should.

This is misdirection. Isn’t that one of the first rhings we learn when it comes to “the power-brokers” in the establishment media – What aren’t they telling you? – That the Divine is intrinsic to Your Being. There is No Separation between you and God.

Of course the controllers of the universe don’the want You discovering this Existential Truth, so they point to the external only.
And, surely, The Divine may be perceived in the external,
It is the Divine in You that perceives the Divine in Creation.
But until you know Yourself, until you perceive the Divinity which is your essence, you cannot fully know God. – Jesus knew God. St Francis of Assissi knew God. Rumi knew God. And so many others besides. But the priest class has interpreted the teaching of Jesus, called him Christ, nailed him to a cross because You are “sinful”… they have taken the Divine and used it to simultaneously psychologically torture you and offer you either real (St Francis) or imagined (absolution) relief from that torture.

Crucially, and to come to your first point, quoted above, it is
when I (and I/went come to explore my/our True Nature, the Essence of my/our Being, I/we discover the Divine Loving God which “Surpasses all understanding”, to be my essential nature, seated at the heart of my being. That which would not murder or harm anyone. (This refusal to harm another extends to the infant, whose genitals do not serve as any kind of “divine covenant” with some external “god”. I don’the say that to be shocking, or to provoke, but to illustrate the insanity which is committed under the “codes of conduct” devined by the priest class and disseminated through the generation after generation of Religious Practitioners. )

I don’t require a “law” (be it “God” Given or “devined” by some proxy parliament – same thing really ) which tells me to behave according to my Nature.

Conversely, I will not obey any “law” which requires me to act against my nature. Conscription, for example. – I’m sorry but “onward Christian soldiers” for God, Queen and … errr. .. nation state?
Nor would I ever bring even potential harm to a child by having them vaccinated, regardless of what the “law” (handed down by the priest class) says.

I realise that the idea of a “no-law” society (which is essentially what I’m talking about here) must sound quite outlandish to anyone who has never taken the time to examine their own nature. You’ve been told you were born “sinful”, and anyway, just look around at the way people behave, obviously we need “laws” … And certainly, in any society which externalises God, utterly divorced from our own Essential Divinity, divorced from the opportunity to “know thyself “… probably needs codes to tell them how to be.

But removing the priest class (including politicians and judges) does not remove us from God, nor from our inbuilt yearning to know God. Nor does it remove the teachings, the books, the tomes, the scrivings of the wise (or the unwise) which may guide us on our way.

The removal of the priest class (and its Religious and state institutions) does not mean the death of God, but it does mean the death of tyranny (whilst I also accept your answer, below) regarding my own thinking/questioning leading to tyranny).

We are born seeking God, seeking Meaning, Understanding. That the priest class inserts itself in our culture and stands directly between You and the Divine does not make your own Divinity just stop. Remove the priest class in all its forms and the possibility opens up for a Direct knowing of the Divine as it exists at the center of our Being.

(I do hope I’mel not getting preachy at all here! My intention is only to give an insight into my – not exactly “mainstream” – perspective.)

If religions were tools for social control, how did you escape from them? They let you leave and apostatize so very clearly they’re not exerting control.

This presupposes that all methods of social control are authoritarian.

It also neglects the role of Religious Institutions in shaping societies, providing the basis of “Rule of Law” (specifically codes of “law” to be imposed on the masses) whilst diseminationg “codes of conduct” and various ‘behaviour modification” techniques, inculcating the people with various superstitions. -That the miraculous indeed does exists, notwithstanding.

Why does society protect any beliefs, religious or otherwise? Your political, economic, and social views are all protected too. If you think people should not be protected based on their religious beliefs then what’s the difference to people not being protected due to their political? Your line of thinking leads straight to tyranny and despotism.

Fair point. Well taken.

As for Chesterton, I won’t argue with him until I’ve read him. – Thank you kindly for the recommendation. I’ve been at a loss to find something to read that isn’t JQ related … if I have to read one more account of the evil mascinations of the original (OK, not quite “original”, but you get the point) evil priest class, I think I might weep. I’ll gladly read Chesterton instead. 🙂

Kind regards,
Kali.

The Fed doesn’t allow audits.

What prevents the Chairman, others
from enriching selves and friends.
Blessed accounts hidden, of course.
Billions go each day to who knows
where and for what reason(s).

5ds

I think overall it’s a bit ridiculous to blame religion for things it has nothing to do with (state affairs)

Hello again Tusk.

I think you and I have a fundamental disagreement on the role of Religion within the state.

I would suggest that, as one of the primary functions of the state is the codifying and enforcement of Law. To this end the state has adopted one of the primary functions of “the priest class” which is the recieving, interpreting and codifying of “God’s Law”.

In times gone by these functions were performed jointly by priests and Kings, today “the state” inherits the mantle of the priest class in determining the acceptable behaviour of its population, but only within the framework of “rule of law” already institutionalised by the priest class. One (the state) is an extention of and a continuation of the other. – In the state called “UK”, offices of state are called “ministries, and members of government are called ministers. And though secularised now, the origins of the power of the state as it manifests today lies entirely within the relms of Religion and the assumed Divinity of the priest class.

Queenie is the head of the state and the head of the Church of England. The Arch Bish of Canterbury, her director of all things ecleasiastical, makes it his business to lead the CoE, and his flock, to bend before the Chosenest of the chosen, whilst queenies government finds ways to codify that submission to Jewish Power into law for the rest of us to obey, as if commanded by “God”.

Catholic states pay financial tribute to the Vatican. Because, I would argue, the state (not the nation or the people) derives it’s underlying authority, and quite possibly it’s very existence, from Religion.
Secularised or not, Religion lies at the very heart of the state.

Kali.

If religion does not preach love, no point in having it.
If it does not lead to God, might as well sleep for eternity.

Agree.

Life is void and cold nothingness without Him.
With Him, coruscant sun and spring-scented bloom.

And here also, I agree, except that I would alter the terminology to not externalises God. “Him” is an unattainable “other”, not intrinsic to my being, unlike God or the Divine, which is always present.

Boas noits gents,
Kali

leads to people cherry picking quotes to back up their inane and material choices, exactly the same way an open borders advocate may pick a quote about Jesus saying let there be no neighbours in order to push their position. This is purely a humanist interpretation and ultimately is incorrect because without the divinity of the Church and the knowledge of the priests you are easily led astray by earthly thoughts.

Few people I know of are more committed to open borders, (only for white Christendom) than the Pope. He seems more like Barbara Spectre on that issue, than Barbara Spectre.

And as for going astray, there again, I think of ‘those priests’, and what was tolerated in the Catholic Church, for so long, going all the way up the hierarchy.

Go to any Church (or perhaps any religious institution but I won’t speak for others) and ask them ‘Can I murder someone?’ and see what their response is. I guarantee you it won’t be “go for it”.

No, not when you put it in those terms. But go to any church, and tell them that you’re joining up to fight the ‘war on terror’, and your assignment is going to be a CIA drone operator, and you’re going to be taking the fight to the bad guys, because if ‘we fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here’.

And then check out the approval from all of those Christian faces. Beaming with pride at your bravery.

You’re not stupid, so it should be pretty obvious that the Eternal Wars are all based on obvious lies.

And, I suspect that most Christians, and certainly most ministers and pastors and priests, are not stupid either. So it should be monumentally obvious to even them, by now, that all of these wars, are all based on obvious lies. Duh. (I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way, but just that it’s all ‘duh’ obvious).

So, what that means to me, is that every single Christian minister or priest, who knows that America (and France and England and others), have been engaged in illegal wars against innocent nations, (Libya, for instance, or Syria today), but refuse to speak out about it, are just as guilty as the men pulling the trigger on the Hellfire missile, and ‘bug-splatting’ another village.

They’re just as guilty as Bush and Blair and Clinton and Obama, because it is cowardly silence, that is the main catalyst for all these wars.

Nothing betrays the soul of a man (or Church) than the sound of crickets, at the sight of evil doings.

I just heard that the Boy Scouts of America is declaring bankruptcy, because thousands of little boys were raped, by a pedophile scandal that went on for decades.

And all to the thunderous sound of crickets, from the leadership ranks.

Just like Jerry Sandusky, and the entire athletic Dept of Penn State, they all knew, this monster was raping little boys, and they said nothing.

They’re just as guilty.

And it’s the same with the Eternal Wars for Israel. These wars are an abomination upon our nation’s souls. And not just America, but France too. And many others.

And yet where are the voices of Christian leadership, demanding in the most strident terms available to them, that illegal and immoral wars of aggression fought against innocent nations and people, (that have harmed no one), MUST STOP!!! In the name of Jesus Christ, we must stand up as one, and demand ‘not one more child’s innocent life is going be laid at the ledger of America’s soul.

But instead, I hear the Pope talking about ‘Climate Change’, and I cringe.

What the &^%$ does the Pope think adding millions more super-prolific people are going to do to help Climate Change in Europe?

so I don’t see what the church has to apologise for post 9/11.

How many quotes are there out there, about ‘for evil to prevail, all it takes is the silence of cowards’.

A Church does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a society. And if that society is engaged in wholesale evil, then for that Church to be other than evil itself, it MUST speak out against the evil.

When the NYT sent a ‘journalist’ to the Ukraine in the 1930s, to report on the famine, it was his job as a journalist and human being, to point out that there was a deliberate campaign of genocide underway, and the state was systematically starving to death millions of men, women and children.

But instead, he didn’t mention the state-sponsored starvation, because doing so would have been inconvenient to his career. The result was millions murdered horrifically, and a ‘journalist’ that won a Pulitzer Prize.

Some people would like to delude themselves, that if they stay silent about things like murder or rape, or contrived aggressive wars, based on lies, that they’ll be immune from any guilt, so long as they simply stay silent, and cower in a corner, and don’t mention a word about it.

They’re wrong. And their silence, (and therefor guilt), should and will damn them.

fanatical pro-Zionist Evangelicals have certainly enabled this behaviour, but once again it’s entirely profane and their humanist Jew loving that allows the state a willing mass of support.

Can’t argue with that.

A White muslim is definitely preferable to an African one, and certainly I’d prefer an athiest White to an athiest African.

Oh my goodness. This is a breach of decorum, for many here at the Unz. The ultimate faux pas.

But I think being white, you’re entitled to prefer your own kind, just as an African is free to prefer his own kind, as well. (not that there aren’t plenty who would disagree with that simple truth).

So by the same token I don’t think it is God that forms (or should form) our morality, but instead it is our morality that leads to God

I’m good with that.

But I’d take it one farther, and suggest that our morality (or lack there of), is a consequence of our DNA. A mother does not need to be told to love her babies, she simply does. Men treat the extended members of their tribe, with devotion as a rule. And, he treats his rivals and enemies as he should, depending on what is prudent for his and his posterity’s survival.

It is this survival that is at the heart of our moral codes, and hopefully, the spirituality that guides them. If your religion or morality does not result in your survival, then it is a failed and destructive religion and/or morality.

So I think overall it’s a bit ridiculous to blame religion for things it has nothing to do with (state affairs) while condemning them for not doing more, and at the same time denying they do any good at all.

Well, I certainly would never deny that religion has done, and continues to do some very good things. Giving people a meaning to their lives, that is critical for their happiness, for instance.

Providing parameters, in many cases, as people require them for a harmonious society.

But since our religions, also are the fount of our spiritual truths, I do demand that for a religious leader, to be worthy of the name, he is bound to repudiate evil when it’s widely practiced by his society.

Maybe too many people are so bludgeoned by the tropes of ‘wokeness’, these days, that they can’t recognize that telling a six year old that they might be a different gender, than they were born, is a moral atrocity. OK, fine. They’re in a daze.

But when it comes to Eternal Wars, based on obvious lies, slaughtering and maiming and displacing millions upon millions of innocent people world wide, as it mortgages the future of America’s children, to the tune of untold trillions of unpayable debt, plus interest, then I can’t abide the cowardly silence of our spiritual leaders. As the Pope rails about open borders, (for all white nations, and only white nations), and blubbers about ‘Climate Change’ idiocy, I tend to get a bit cynical.

Cheers.

Hello gsjackson,

Glad I finally have time to respond to your comment.

you mention “experiments” that (by implication) undergird your belief in a vast universe. Can you name one such experiment, preferably replicable but not necessary. Two would be splendid.

Well, it wasn’t an experiment (or two) in particular, but (unlike religious beliefs), my beliefs tend to be based on what science considers established, (until it can be un-established by a better theory and more experiments).

The reason I think (for instance) that the DNA molecule is the building-block of all life on planet Earth, (at least that we know about), is because the molecule (in its many miraculous forms) can be found in the nucleus of every living cell on earth.

By subjecting every theory to experiment, and re-experiment, I’m convinced that science is the best metric we have for determining how things work. Take for instance Climate Change. You can be absolutely certain that the Climate Change “scientists” are charlatans to a man and women, because they tell us the ‘science is settled’, while any true scientist knows damn well that the ‘science is never settled’. Especially with something as convoluted and debatable as ‘human-caused Climate Change. If you look closely at the Climate Change proponents, they are exactly like religious devotees. They believe. And they expect you to, or else you’re a bad person.

Science is incredibly useful, but alas, science can only take us so far. It’s can’t answer the ‘why’ of the universe. It can’t tell us what there was before the universe, it can’t tell us what’s outside of the universe, it can’t tell us if there is a purpose to the universe, or none at all. All it can tell us is the nuts and bolts, and how the universe works.

So for the ‘why’, we need something more than science, and that’s where spirituality and religion come in. At least in my humble opinion.

And so as people seek the ‘why’; they look to the respective answers, and find the one that resonates with their soul. (again, that’s how I see it in my opinion ; )

We can crunch the numbers, and see that the universe is expanding, and we can pull the double helix of the DNA molecule apart, and manipulate it in a thousand different ways. Science can tell us much. But it can’t tell us if there’s a line we should not cross, as humans are treating DNA like so many little ‘mad scientists’, creating all manner of life forms, some of which perhaps we have no business meddling with. This is why science should not be the end-all for philosophical debate. It has no soul.

I’d like to see science and spirituality find common ground, as guides to the human species on how (and how not) to conduct ourselves. ‘Don’t exploit the environment to the point that you’re greed is creating a polluted, poisoned dead rock for the next generations.

Don’t use drones to splatter wedding parties in Third World nations, just because you can.

(Can’t we at least all agree on that?!)

You know who I think I’d have a hard time getting to sign up on a ban for using assassination drones in poor countries? Openly declared Christians like Pompeo or Pence.

Imagine if we could subject The Rapture to experimentation. Imagine if The Rapture could be put under the microscope of scholarly and theological scrutiny, bringing to bear our collective experimental wherewithal. Particle colliders, and AI, to find out if the idea has any merit whatsoever. Imagine the kind of world we would have, if it could be conclusively determined that human beings can not force the return of Jesus, by slaughtering all His modern day relatives in Palestine, and replacing them all with East European Khazars, who call themselves ‘Jews”.

Just that one simple little change in the way millions of religious people believe, would be huge, on the geopolitical stage today.

(I’m getting carried away, I know ; )

They do “thought experiments,” like Einstein’s theory of relativity, but not, to my knowledge, testing of anything that can be grasped with our senses.

Of course I have to go all the way back to Galileo here, since with our senses, it does seem like the sun rises in the east, and sets in the west, of a stable and unmoving Earth. That’s how it feels to us, with our senses and perceptions, but we all know today, that such is not the case.

And you’re right about those telescopes all being tightly kept under lock and key. They’re far more interested in keeping us all in the dark, than illuminating things that might be inconvenient to their positions of power. So they carefully trickle the information out, so long as it comports with everything that keeps themselves in power.

We may think we’ve come a long way since the time of Galileo, but we really haven’t.

Cheers.

“But since our religions, also are the fount of our spiritual truths, I do demand that for a religious leader, to be worthy of the name, he is bound to repudiate evil when it’s widely practiced by his society.

Maybe too many people are so bludgeoned by the tropes of ‘wokeness’, these days, that they can’t recognize that telling a six year old that they might be a different gender, than they were born, is a moral atrocity. OK, fine. They’re in a daze.

But when it comes to Eternal Wars, based on obvious lies, slaughtering and maiming and displacing millions upon millions of innocent people world wide, as it mortgages the future of America’s children, to the tune of untold trillions of unpayable debt, plus interest, then I can’t abide the cowardly silence of our spiritual leaders. As the Pope rails about open borders, (for all white nations, and only white nations), and blubbers about ‘Climate Change’ idiocy, I tend to get a bit cynical.”

Great synopsis Rurik. You are at the top of your game and Mr. Unz should award you stars!

I’m just wondering how “we all know today” that the heliocentric model is correct. Einstein and Stephen Hawking have said that both the Ptolemaic and Copernican models account equally well for all observable data. Hawking acknowledged that he preferred the Copernican system simply because the math worked out better by assuming that the sun is stationary. Einstein was in the business of pulling the heliocentric model’s chestnuts out of the fire after experiments in the 19th century (e.g., Michaelson-Morley) failed to prove the earth’s motion. He was a dedicated partisan who won the brass ring by coming up with a theory — relativity — that explained how it is conceivably possible that the earth could be in motion that is completely undetected.

What “we all know today” appears to be, of course, utterly absurd on its face: The earth is a spinning ball revolving 1,000 mph at the equator, while traveling around the sun at 67,000 mph, while the solar system is traveling hundreds of thousands mph around the galaxy, all of which is beating feet at a million or so mph away from a big bang that happened 14 billion years ago and led to the creation of everything. The sun, which appears to be a couple hundred miles away, is actually 93 million miles away, because it has to be for the heliocentric model to work. If you watch someone walk half a mile down the road he will all but disappear, yet we are able to see stars that are quadrillions of miles away.

You seem to be making a distinction between “what science considers to be established” — presumably including the current understanding of astrophysics — and what it has deemed “settled,” e.g., climate change. Not sure I see a difference. In both cases we are asked to accept the argument from authority, and make profound assumptions about the nature of the world we live in strictly on the basis of what we are told by a secretive clerisy of self-replicating credentialism (accept the prevailing paradigm or get lost). Sounds like blind religious faith to me.

Make mine a tall glass of skepticism.

Thank you FLgeezer,

But no stars for moi.

I’m given to off-color language. My grammar is atrocious. I’m occasionally intemperate and even ‘excitable’.

I don’t even aspire to respectability, because I consider it overrated.

Would you want to exalt the comments of someone like that?!

I’ve even admitted to Mr. Unz himself, that I’m occasionally guilty of a deliberate kind of hyperbole and sensationalism, from time to time, when I cynically think it might bolster my arguments, (or at least, get people to read them ; )

That is not the kind of commenter that you want others to think has earned a star, I’d posit Sir.

But thank you FLgeezer, for your generous words of support. That is the kind of thing that is far more rewarding for me, than a star next to my name, (that I would find burdensome, in trying to be worthy of it ; )

Cheers.

Make mine a tall glass of skepticism.

I’m with you on that!

I knew a guy once, (very smart fellow), and I remember him telling me that he was told in school, (in Germany) that the concrete he was standing on, wasn’t really a solid surface, but rather was mostly empty space, filled by whizzing atoms, with neutrons and protons and electrons all spinning around like crazy, to create the illusion of a solid surface.

I remember his telling me he considered all those teachers full of shit, because he knew that what he was standing on, was solid.

The earth is a spinning ball revolving 1,000 mph at the equator, while traveling around the sun at 67,000 mph, while the solar system is traveling hundreds of thousands mph around the galaxy, all of which is beating feet at a million or so mph away from a big bang that happened 14 billion years ago and led to the creation of everything.

Pretty good synopsis, even if you don’t believe a word of it.

I have no problem with the Copernican model, if someone thinks it’s a sound theory. God bless, if so.

My problems are with people who believe things that cause them to murder other people in order to steal their stuff.

Zionists, for instance, and how that particular belief system is leading the world to yet another global conflagration.

No one I’ve ever heard of, who holds with the Copernican model of the sun and solar system, also advocates for torture and drone assassination and genocide.

So I’m personally all good with Copernicus. Perhaps if it were more widely prevalent, over the motivating narratives of the day, there’d be far less horrors and mayhem and misery in the world.

Cheers.

I think you could profitably bring a sharper sociological lens to bear on all this, since that’s the context you want to address it in (I was hoping to get a science education so I can rid myself of this socially inexpedient skepticism). Far as I know, there isn’t a significant overlap between Christian Zionists and people questioning the Copernican model, which I assume is the correlation you want to make. The latter often fix their attention on the Jesuit and Freemason origins of the model, postulate that both are front organizations for Zion, and wind up speculating about the nefarious purposes of ((elites)) imposing incorrect beliefs on the general public through control of the media and academia. Just like in the climate change debate.

This sentence is positively baffling:

“No one I’ve heard of, who holds with the Copernican model of the sun and solar system, also advocates for torture and drone assassination and genocide.”

While I’m not prepared to name names, I’d wager that every neocon living and dead (or have any of them died yet; are Irving Kristol and Poddy still with us?), and every other dutiful servant of Zion holds with (or at least holds forth) the Copernican model.

The notion is out there that the model was a stalking horse for an agenda of control that involved first destroying religious faith. If that’s the case, I’m not all good with Copernicus.

every other dutiful servant of Zion holds with (or at least holds forth) the Copernican model.

Perhaps I’m the one that can get a science education.

From what I understand, (not being an astronomer or even a scientist), is that the Copernican model is more correct than the Ptolemy model, that had the Earth at the center of the Universe.

But revisions to the Copernican model have been made since then, that shows that even the sun, is not the center of the universe.

How have I gone off the rails here?

Which is the correct model?

destroying religious faith. If that’s the case, I’m not all good with Copernicus.

Well, I’m hoping that you don’t consider something as fundamental to human nature, as ‘religious faith’, can be destroyed by pointing out some obscure error with their astronomical models of the universe.

Does God care if the earth revolves around the sun, or vice versa?

I’d say that which ever is the case, then that’s how God wants it.

As for ‘destroying religious faith’, and my own skepticism vis-a-vis organized religion..

If the religions that are practiced in my society, give people happiness and a sense of well-being, while providing them with the spiritual truths necessary to get them though hard times, while allowing for an un-hobbled search for the eternal truths, come what may, then I’d be all for such a religion.

My problem is with the religions today, whose leaders advocate for the destruction of their faithful’s way of life, down to their very DNA.

If your religious leader is exhorting his flock, to fund an invasion of their lands, by hoards of non-Westerners and non-Christians, with a massive chip on their shoulders, for all the ‘oppression’ that whitey has forced the rest of the world’s people to suffer for millenniums, all so that whitey can make amends, by handing over all he has, and going gently into that goodnight~ well then I have very little use for such religions and, particularly, such religious leaders.

As I’ve said, the first and foremost test of a good religion, is that your faithful survive its tenets, so that there is another generation to pass on the religious truths.

But mostly what I see today, is a Christianity in full-blown suicide mode, advocating homo-‘marriage” and replacing Christmas as the main celebration, with celebrating ‘diversity’ and Multiculturalism’ as its holy catechisms. With the Holocaust replacing the Crucifix as its most precious religious sacrament.

The God who was murdered on the cross, has been supplanted as the object of worship, with a genuflecting homage to the descendants of the people who murdered Him.

Christians will stand by idly, as an “artist” who put a crucifix in a bucket of piss, is heralded as a superlative genius, as the “art” is sent around the act circuits, for people to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’.

But imagine those same Christians, if someone put a little oven, full of soap, in a bucket of piss, to mock the lies we’ve all been bludgeoned with for generations.

Christians would be demanding a modern-day crucifixion of such an artist, for his effrontery to everything holy and sacred in their lives.

Piss Christ- no problem for Christians that I’m aware of.

‘Piss oven’ – they’d be pulling their hair out.

No disagreement with all of that. There is the view, though, that the same people who are laying waste to Christianity today began the project centuries ago by dethroning God’s and man’s place in the universe. By putting the sun at the center of the cosmos, and constructing a procrustean, gerrybuilt system requiring a spinning ball earth, a mysterious force called gravity unobservable anywhere else in nature, incomprehensibly vast distances and relativity, all to keep the ungainly, absurd-on-its-face beast propped up.

The payoff is people who come to regard themselves as meaningless specks in a meaningless cosmos. Hurled into lives of purposeless, despairing, self-serving hedonism, they become all the easier to control.

There is supposed to be a letter from one Freemason to another in the 19th century discussing the ease with which this project of undermining religious belief is carried out, in this case with respect to evolution. The silly intellectuals, it was said, would serve as a vanguard because their vanity and desire to position themselves as superior to the masses makes them readily accept any theory that undercuts popular beliefs.

All of that sounds very familiar. I look around at the society that gets deconstructed in the UR every day and see exactly the same sort of things going on. It doesn’t seem too far-fetched to think that it didn’t begin just yesterday.

I like these two paragraphs from John Chuckman:

Apart from the ugly lies before wars, remember that America’s most weighty contribution to world culture is exceedingly refined techniques of marketing, a smarmy art developed in the course of the nation’s historic, headlong rush to get rich. So many things in American life – goods, services, religion, and even elections – have more marketing in them than content. Much of American life has about it the quality of “Have a nice day!” from a computerized phone system.

Orwell was wrong in 1984 putting forward the idea of the Party’s gradually eliminating words to control people’s ability to think and speak critically. He was of course parodying the Soviet Union which to some extent did follow the practice. But the repressive old Soviet Union is gone while America thrives, constantly inventing new words – marketing gibberish, psycho-babble, political rubbish, science-fiction religion – which strives to puff up nothing into something. In America, you can literally fill a small library with books and magazines on any number of subjects from education to health that contain nothing genuinely furthering human understanding.

http://dissidentvoice.org/June05/Chuckman0615.htm

5ds

One day I’ll figure out how to get my first
fake handle (5 dancing shlomos) to work.

“Much of American life has about it the quality of “Have a nice day!” from a computerized phone system.”

I spend a lot of time in Europe and in just about every commercial transaction I have there, purchasing food or whatever, the sales person, upon discerning that I’m an American, will conclude the interaction with “have a nice day.”

I’m not sure whether they’re mocking Americans for our fatuousness or they think our marketing-saturated souls require continual doses of this pollyanna pabulum.

Rurik,

Just dropping in to let you know I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll get to your latest response soon, Lord-willing and the creek don’t rise.

In the meantime, may you be well.

Ma’as-salaama.

the same people who are laying waste to Christianity today began the project centuries ago by dethroning God’s and man’s place in the universe.

Hmm..

This is kind of heavy.

By putting the sun at the center of the cosmos, and constructing a procrustean, gerrybuilt system requiring a spinning ball earth, a mysterious force called gravity unobservable anywhere else in nature,

Alright, now I have to ask point blank. To your mind, is (a stationary) Earth the center of the universe?

The payoff is people who come to regard themselves as meaningless specks in a meaningless cosmos. Hurled into lives of purposeless, despairing, self-serving hedonism, they become all the easier to control.

At what time in history, would you consider ideal for religious truths to have brought the most blessings to their human adherents?

Was the Age of Enlightenment, and the Renaissance, all folly?

with respect to evolution. The silly intellectuals, it was said, would serve as a vanguard because their vanity and desire to position themselves as superior to the masses makes them readily accept any theory that undercuts popular beliefs.

I have no problem ‘undercutting popular beliefs’. But only if those popular beliefs are in error, and more to the point, are destructive.

If believing that the earth is the center of the universe, will lead to world peace, end poverty, bolster human happiness and prosperity, and engender a culture of respect for nature and the environment, while creating a global resolve to end pointless suffering, then I suspect I’d eagerly become an adherent. Even it the founding principles were suspect, on some levels.

I’m just not sure religion is any more of a guarantee of those things, than science would be.

Both are subject to the foibles of man. The most immediate threat to all life and happiness and prosperity, that I can see today, is Zionism. A doctrine of genocidal madness, foisted upon the planet by Jewish and Christian religious zealots (and their bought and paid-for political whores). Can a belief in evolution be any worse than ‘we must destroy seven nations in five years’ ? Not to mention the resolve to import the teeming billions of the Third World into the West.

.. I look around at the society that gets deconstructed in the UR every day and see exactly the same sort of things going on. It doesn’t seem too far-fetched to think that it didn’t begin just yesterday.

I enjoy your eloquence very much. And I’m convinced you participate here in good faith. That is more important to me than 100% agreement on every issue.

If a general well-being, and hope for the future, are our intentions and goals, then I don’t suppose it matters too much which religion we adhere to, so long as the results are healthy and happy people, children laughing and playing, and a future that looks bright.

Right now I’m not too convinced of that bright future, and I’m not sure if science (Monsanto and Big Pharma and the MIC, et al) is more to blame, or the religious fanatics at the Vatican/Zionism/SJW ‘wokeness’- are our more serious common threats. Massive migrations of millions of humans, from widely disparate backgrounds and incompatible ethnicities, all descending upon the West, in a human tidal wave of genocidal rage, are what concerns me. And the Endless Wars designed to ultimately enslave us all to a Total surveillance, Orwellian global, dystopian police state.

Ever since Rhodesia was ‘guilted’ into ethno-suicide, I’ve sort of paid a kind of peripheral attention to the white denizens of Zimbabwe, as I consider them a sort of ‘canary in the coal mine’, for the general prospects for the people of the West. Recently South Africa descended into suicidal madness, and the tenor of the leadership of the dying (((murdered))) West, has been to cut them loose. Putin’s Russia alone offers them succor.

So it’s the prospects of Western civilization, and it’s people, that are my motivating principle.

And if a nascent rebirth of Christian spirituality, is the solution to a global genocide, then I’m all for it.

But alas, I must confess, that the state of the Christian Church today, leaves me feeling very gloomy about any prospects of civilizational rebirth, coming from that lot.

“One nation under God”…

Apologies to the woke crowd for whom any mention of God is blasphemy.

I have no idea what the center of the universe is, and I don’t think anybody else living does either. I’m not sure why you equate skepticism about things that are taken on faith, such as speculative science (i.e., science that has not proved its mettle by resulting in TV’s and computers that turn on, buildings and bridges that stand up, etc.) with simple-minded religious faith. Well yes, actually I am sure, of course — that’s how the culture and the rulers of our discourses have taught us to frame these matters.

Do you deny that your acceptance of the official story about astrophysics is based on anything other than the fact that it’s what you’ve always been told, and a savvy surmise that if you express skepticism your smart card will be revoked and you’ll be called stupid? My own religious views are far from fully formed, and I consider them irrelevant to the discussion I began on another thread about being skeptical of “knowledge,” however it might package itself, be it “science,” “religion” or whatever. As LaPlace said: there’s no need of the God hypothesis. Of course, until there is.

I do believe that Jewish supremacism is not something new under the sun, and it has always regarded Christianity as its mortal enemy. Like Trump, whatever its shortcomings Christianity does have all the right enemies. And while I’m no historian of the Middle Ages, I also believe that the bountiful cultural fruits of the West that you seem to have an appreiciation for owe much if not everything to Christendom. You’ll find planty on that combing through the works of Joe Sobran and the people he read. I’m quite certain Joe saw himself as doing history, not apologetics.

Our rulers are skilled propagandists, and I suspect that didn’t just begin in the 18th or 19th century with the age of mass communication. Call something “science” and the intellectuals will roll over to have their bellies scratched, then go home with you completely domesticated.

No worries. God lives in America today!

I have no idea what the center of the universe is, and I don’t think anybody else living does either.

well, if there’s anything to relativity, it’s right here, sitting in this chair. I suspect that’s true in a metaphysical way, for all of us.

why you equate skepticism about things that are taken on faith, such as speculative science (i.e., …) with simple-minded religious faith.

I hope I didn’t come across that way. Some people would claim that many things I think, amount to little more than simple-minded faith in science. And some of them are no doubt true.

Do you deny that your acceptance of the official story about astrophysics is based on anything other than the fact that it’s what you’ve always been told, and a savvy surmise that if you express skepticism your smart card will be revoked and you’ll be called stupid?

I get your point, and you’re right, I take it on a kind of faith, that the earth is spinning around, doing what all those astronomers and astrophysicists tell me it’s doing.

..being skeptical of “knowledge,”

Well, you’re not the first. That’s why the man came up with ‘I think, therefor I am’, as a good starting point. Beyond that, it tends to get speculative.

Like Trump, whatever its shortcomings Christianity does have all the right enemies

In its unadulterated forms, (Russian orthodox today) I agree. But too often for me, it’s a religion of passive surrender, at least in the West.

the West that you seem to have an appreiciation for owe much if not everything to Christendom

Well, there was Greece, and Rome after that. But even more so, I sort of consider many of the underlying strengths of the West, as residing in the DNA of Western man. Not that Christianity didn’t (and still does) play a powerful role in the West’s accomplishments, heritage and collective virtues.

Those cathedrals are not for nothing. And without Christians like Charles Martel, the West would not even exist today.

I’m quite certain Joe saw himself as doing history, not apologetics.

Where is his equal today?

Call something “science” and the intellectuals will roll over to have their bellies scratched, then go home with you completely domesticated.

Well, it certainly must seem like that, at times.

Let’s just figure out a way to give Christianity its vigor back.

I was just posting something on the Boy Scouts, and how they decided to allow openly homosexual troop leaders take the boys out camping, (with expected results).

If a Christian organization for the development of Christian boys, into solid Christian leaders of the community.. is rampant with flaming homosexuals, all vying to act as role models for these young boys, then what’s left of the Christian spirit of such an organization?

To me, it’s dead.

It’s not like the BSA didn’t have ample reason to think they were letting the fox into the chicken coop. My father was an Air Force lawyer and back in the ’50s he prosecuted a major who had molested just about all the boys in his scout troop. The old man was a WWII vet proud to wear the uniform, had the Rurik gift of empassioned, outraged rhetoric and really let the scumbag have it, so much so that the pederast threatened in court to kill him.

I’ve taken a lot of pleasure in the BSA predicament, because it was so predictable and provides a tiny bit of evidence of a morally ordered universe. A big tip of the cap to the Mormons, who have a huge scouting presence and cut off all relations with the mother ship when homo scoutmasters were approved. They can probably take full credit for bringing down the rotting edifice.

By all means reinvigorate Christianity, but I’m afraid it’s going to take a bunch of truth-telling pastors like the one Geokat is always puffing, Chuck Baldwin. They’re in very short supply in the current rendition of these United States.

What you’re accusing me of, is exactly what I’d accuse the religiously devout of.

To be fair, you casually implied that having the capacity to upset or surprise God is “vanity.” I agree insofar as surprising Him is concerned, but not with regard to upsetting Him. Your statement suggests that you possess knowledge of God sufficient to determine that such conviction is vain.

But this is impossible if you “have no such certainties” about God, which is the only reason I responded as I did (with a smile and a wink, I might add).

I appreciate your humility. There is much truth in what you say concerning God insofar as His transcendent magnificence is concerned. He is The Sublime, far beyond what the imagination may comprehend, neither created nor ephemeral, having no need of anything, be it location, direction or dimension.

But it’s a mistake to confuse affirming knowledge of God with arrogance. It is a quite natural, instinctive human impulse to perceive that the cosmos and its comprehensively ornate and orderly composition is the handiwork of a Creator — an impulse that has remained with man since his beginnings. There is nothing arrogant about such conviction. In fact, it is rather the opposite. Knowing God breeds humility before Him.

Yes, I’m well aware of the myriad cliched arguments against this. You may point to examples that appear to prove the opposite, but these typically demonstrate either expropriation of God’s Name or motive that remains obscure. Humility isn’t necessarily easily understood until we examine the facts closely, and even then motive may remain unknown.

What if there isn’t a father-like God, benevolently watching over us all? What if the Eternal Wars and decimation of the environment, are all a direct consequence of man’s all too mortal appetites? And that if we’re going to find solutions, to things like the Eternal Wars, then we’re going to have to rely on our mortal selves, from which these problems arose.

The questions lean upon a false dichotomy which can be demonstrated by asking the following:

“What if there is a Omniscient, Ominpotent, and Benevolent God who endows man with great agency to determine his worth (much as one entrusted with great power), yet man all too often inclines toward his all too mortal appetites, making life on earth more miserable for himself and others than need be?”

If it was man who created the conditions in Gaza, (and not God) then maybe it’s man, who must seek ways to redress those conditions. Yes? No?

Yes.

IOW, why does there have to be a agent of the leaf falling? Why can’t it just have succumbed to the forces of gravity, having grown on the tree, and lived and died, all without even so much as a God to supervise it?

Because the inevitable consequence of such denial is to entertain the possibility that everything which exists, in all of its terrifying yet intoxicating majesty, bears no higher purpose beyond ephemeral existence; that it is but the mathematically highly improbable, random byproduct of deaf, dumb, blind, lifeless, and unconscious particles’ perpetual collision, union, and dissolution; that the offenses and injustices too numerous to list in this vale of tears would remain invidiously unrequited; that the sufferance of good folk against the relentlessly oppressive currents of licentiousness, avarice, and inequity would draw to a heart-rendingly soul-crushing conclusion — unrecompensed and unsung.

The soul instinctively pleads for justice in the wake of the world’s many inhumanities. You yourself manifest this very instinct throughout your posts. And you are right to say that it is man’s responsibility to bring about a better day to the extent he is able to do so. In this abode of examination, this dar al-imtihan, we distinguish ourselves from others to the extent we do so, joining the good company of God.

But our hands can only reach so far, and there is much injustice we will never be able to resolve, no matter our effort. God, however, is more than capable of settling such matters, and He will — with absolute equity and finality.

Speaking for myself, it is far too difficult to perceive our existence alternatively.

If God endowed me with anything more precious than my reason, I’m not aware of it. Creating me with reason, and then demanding that I stifle it, was for me, a burden too great to bear.

Reason is the root of my faith: a hadith attributed to the Prophet sallALLAHU ‘alaihi wa sallam.

Reason, however, is not merely a product of the intellect. Of itself, the intellect is a labyrinth replete with cul de sacs. It can’t attain answers to every question, especially the greatest ones we’ll ever ask, the first being “Why everything?”

At the end of the day, those answers are inescapably a matter of faith, which is a conclusion that the sharpened intellect will never be able to avoid.

Perhaps one could apply scientific method, making himself the subject of his own experiment in which he tests a religion much as he would a hypothesis, beginning with the affirmation of God and the Hereafter, adopting the perspective of the faithful and their concomitant practices. That would be the fairest means of testing its validity, though it would prove quite demanding if potentially corrupting variables weren’t eliminated as well.

I began my own journey to Islam by applying its mandate against backbiting, nothing more. You’d be surprised just how much this singular, simple-seeming principle transformed my outlook on people.

I guess you weren’t raised a Christian.

Oh, but I was.

Which is how I know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s impossible to meet those standards, I agree, though the Beatitudes are, among other lessons of Jesus ‘alaihis-salaam, a wonderful source of guidance.

You have a very liberal understanding of the Abrahamic God(s), I would posit.

Not really.

Look at this way: even if someone is forced throughout his life to declare a faith he does not actually possess, is God effectively compelling him to keep faith in his heart?

God Himself does not reach this far. Man may coerce action, but he can’t reach the core of another’s heart, however much he may try.

‘Do no harm’.

That works, to an extent.

Many would say that murderers don’t deserve capital punishment — that of itself, it is cruel and inhumane, the worst variety of harm. They contend that two wrongs don’t make a right. Those who disagree assert that allowing the crime of murder to go unpunished results in greater harm to society. Both have fair-seeming arguments, so which is correct according to the principle of “do no harm”?

I ask rhetorically, because if you attempt to use the intellect alone in order to answer the question, there is no clear answer. It remains, and always will remain, a matter of faith. “Be kind” may be similarly dissected and understood.

You seem loath to ever admit, that Judaism and Islam are at times, mutually exclusive. And that a Jewish God that demands the death and genocide of Arabs, can still be considered legitimate.

You would have to be quite unfamiliar with my posts here to draw a conclusion like this.

First of all, I don’t imagine any such thing as a “Jewish God.” The very notion is absurd on its face. I have always asserted that the God of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad is one and the same God.

In the latest American Pravda thread, my first reply was in response to Mr. Unz’s poignant statement concerning the effect of the Jewish faith tradition upon its adherents for well over two millennia. As you may recall, I quoted from Douglas Reed’s Controversy of Zion, wherein Reed, in summarizing the history of the Children of Israel, draws a distinction between original Israel and Israel following the ascent of Judah.

In Islam, we affirm that God sent prophets to the Children of Israel. Because those prophets submitted to God, they and their followers were, by definition, Muslim. These individuals are clearly not the same as the renegades of Israel sharing a common bloodline with them.

Indeed, renegades who were entrusted with the preservation of God’s Word corrupted the record of it in order to procure worldly advantage for themselves and their progeny, which is why one gathers the impression that a “Jewish God” manifests himself throughout.

I have never held that Judaism and Islam are identical. Rather, I affirm that, historically, God has sent unto the House of Israel many Prophets and Messengers who were definitively Muslim. That contemporary Israel has deviated a considerable distance from this legacy is unquestionably beyond doubt.

I find such a God as a bit vain, no?

Here we have to pause in order to fathom what we mean by “worship.”

Worship is not expressed merely in ritual prayer, nor solely by fasting, nor by charity alone. It is not restricted to the incantation or recitation of God’s Words.

One hour of reflection upon God is worth one year of worship.

Another haddith attributed to the Prophet, one intended to emphasize that worship is less bound to specific ritual than it is to consciousness. Essentially, all worship lies in the effort to keep good company with God. It is the protracted, sustained remembrance of Him as the Causer of Causes, the very reason for the existence of all that is, was, and shall be; the vigilant reliance upon Him in all matters, however apparently trivial or grave.

Again, it is the logical conclusion of knowing He is God, without whom we simply would not be.

No, He doesn’t need us to remember Him or rely upon Him, but He is pleased when we prove ourselves worthy of His company, and He rewards the faithful accordingly.

This is an abode of examination. It cannot be otherwise.

Indeed, for much of recorded history, there wasn’t even a line drawn between the Pharos or Caesars and such/ and God Himself. They were considered virtually one and the same.

Two continua throughout human history: those who hold that God is One and Uncreated, and those who hold otherwise.

In this respect, humankind has not changed since Adam.

Fii Amanillah

Wa eeyakum.

Do you deny that your acceptance of the official story about astrophysics is based on anything other than the fact that it’s what you’ve always been told, and a savvy surmise that if you express skepticism your smart card will be revoked and you’ll be called stupid?

Hi gsjackson,
I hope you din’t mind me butting in to address this point as it is something I have taken an interest in over recent years.

First a very brief personal history: In 2015 I came to live in Portugal from England, and for the first couple of years had extremely limited, spariodic Internet access. I also had, for the first time in my life, a spectacular, unpolluted view of “the heavens (night sky).
During my first winter here I tracked the paths of Venus and Mars as they raced across the sky, changing their relative positions. Obviously these planets held different orbits tof each other, and to the Earth.

On those occasions I connected to the Internet I saw that an increasing, and surprisingly large number of people posting on social media were supporting (and preaching) “Flat Earth Theory”.
My initial reaction was much as you describe above – That is, predominantly based on received wisdom, rather than any specific observations of my own, my observations of Mars and Venus notwithstanding.

In the meantime a very close friend had devised a calendar (the Universal Celestial Calendar) which actually shows our (Earths) possition in space and time. Shortly my husband began writing an app to demonstrate that calendar. (Link bellow.)

For my own part, this (astrology) was an entirely new subject and I had many questions. And so I began to observe more closely and more deliberately with a view to understanding how we “know” that the Earth is a moving sphere and how we “know” that the earth orbits the Sun.

I noted the changing possition of the sunrise and sunset throughout the course of the year, moving south in the wintertime and North in the summer time.
Just this observation alone demonstrated that the Earth isn’t stationary and that, alongside the other planets in the solar system, it seemed that the Earth really does orbit the sun.
This tentative observation was confirmed for me during a total lunar eclipse in the summer of 2018. – The Earth had somehow got in between the sun and the moon to cast a shadow over the moon.

In the meantime hubbie was literally “doing rocket science” in order to calculate elliptical orbits for the Great Year – the 24000 year cycle [the time-scale IS disputed, but careful calculation on hubbies part along with careful reading of available literature, etc, meant that he basically nailed it, and everything lined up as it should] of our sun with its “hypothetical” twin.

And as my Internet access gradually improved I learned more about what the “Flat Earthers” were arguing, including that gravity isn’t a real force, and that “boyancy” accounted for what we atribute to gravity.
And so I wondered, if this were true, why do the more buoyant objects around us still cling to the Earth. Why, as a leaf decomposes, for example, does it not begin to gain boyancy and float above the ground.
And whilst I realise there is a lot more to the theory of gravity than this simple “pull factor”, surely this simple observation is enough to demonstrate that something other than buoyancy is at work? Why not call it gravity?

I also learned that Flat Earth Theory suggests that, rather than rising and setting as the Earth spins on its axis, the sun “simply” moves very far away and returns, accounting for “night and day”.
Yet, as I observed, I did not see the sun growing larger and smaller throughout the course of the day as it would if it were moving further away and closer. I also noted that the top of this mountain I live on remains in shadow for most of the morning until the sun is high enough in the sky to light it up, whilst the lower slopes reflect bright sunshine (Portugal! Sunny Portugal!). If the sun remained at the same hight, this wouldn’t be the case.

My point is that simple, basic observations which any one of us can make for ourselves can reveal the veracity of the “spinning ball” heliocentric model of our solar system. –
Ah, I almost forgot – a couple of years ago we scored a telescope through which we, naturally, view our surrounding planets, each of which, like our moon, is obviously spherical. So by extrapolation, and knowing that the sphere is the most efficient shape possible, I conclude that the Earth is very probably spherical.

Respectfully,
Kali.

UCC website – https://www.universalcelestialcalendar.com

UCC app (writen by my hubby! 🙂 Fully interactive, but still a work in progress, as the planets of our solar system need to be included ) –
https://ucc.zone/apps/calclock/

GS, how is your familiarity with Foucault’s Pendulum? It appears, so far as my ability to reason is concerned, to not only demonstrate a spinning earth but a spinning ball earth. Certainly it seems very different to reconcile with a fixed and flat earth.

It appears to me that there is an extraordinary effort to prevent knowledge of our place in the universe and that effort has been going on for some considerable period, millennia at minimum. That effort appears to employ the promotion of belief over reason and the use of logical falicies to attack reason and science. Just I do not accept that we (at least in the last several millennia) recognised any enthroned god or had even the merest inkling of our place in the universe to begin with. The very idea of an enthroned god is a contradiction in terms.

Kali’s comment, that a belief is a demonstration of ignorance, is key. Is ignorance really something that should be sanctified as a right?

gift of empassioned, outraged rhetoric

really let the scumbag have it

God bless your dad!

I’ve taken a lot of pleasure in the BSA predicament, because it was so predictable and provides a tiny bit of evidence of a morally ordered universe. A big tip of the cap to the Mormons, who have a huge scouting presence and cut off all relations with the mother ship when homo scoutmasters were approved. They can probably take full credit for bringing down the rotting edifice.

I agree. I’d only hope that it wasn’t just the Mormons, but that there’s still something of human decency left alive in the greater American populace, that sees homosexual men, wanting to cavort with Boy Scouts, as something from Sodom and Gomorra, which should be burned to the ground (metaphorically) with all due haste.

By all means reinvigorate Christianity, but I’m afraid it’s going to take a bunch of truth-telling pastors like the one Geokat is always puffing, Chuck Baldwin. They’re in very short supply in the current rendition of these United States.

Chuck is OK, but as Geo (Geokat) often links to, the guy that really tells the truth is Rick Wiles, at https://www.trunews.com/

Thanks for weighing in. I’ve followed with interest the same online discussions for about three years, and there are some standard responses to some of your points.

On eclipses — there have been over 50 of them recorded where both the sun and moon were visible above the horizon and the earth could not have been between the two. Eclipses occur with exact regularity and have been accurately predicted for thousands of years by geocentrists, including Ptolemy. In those days it was thought that an entity called the black sun was the cause.

I’m not sure what your point about the sun’s trajectory (assuming it were in motion) proves. It suggests the earth’s movement if you assume the sun is stationary, but that is the question at issue. If the sun is in motion, it can go in any direction it wants to.

I read the point about the sun not appearing smaller as it rises and sets a while back, and made a point of observing it. It did look a little smaller to me, though not much (to my eye it looks a little bigger and closer when I’m 35,000 feet up in an airplane, which, of course, would be ridiculous if it’s 93 million miles away).

That is the thing I cannot believe about the sun — that it is 93 million miles away. But for heliocentrists it has to be, because otherwise how would the stars be in the exact same positions when you have traveled six months to the other side of the sun at the speed of 67,000 mph? The distances have to be unfathomable for there to appear to be no repositioning. All the motion that’s supposed to be going on continuously with the earth, the solar system and the galaxy, at supersonic speeds, and there the stars are, always in the same place.

And if the sun is 93 million miles away, how can there be such a dramatic difference in climate over a distance of a few hundred miles, like between North Dakota and southern Texas, or the UK and Portugal?

As for why a withering leaf doesn’t float upwards, well maybe Newton got the law of motion right even if he did invent gravity out of whole cloth (to save heliocentrism, which requires a spinning ball earth, otherwise how explain night and day; but how do the ocean water and unattached objects keep from falling off the ball, ergo gravity). An object at rest tends to stay at rest, maybe? It seems to me the more pertinent question is how can gravity hold quintillions of tons of ocean water yet is overcome by the flap of a butterfly’s wings and my feeble little finger.

Your telescope shows the planets to be spheres? Photos I’ve seen make them look like roundish, glowing entities that don’t appear to be terra firma. Guess I’ll have to get my own.

What I have been able to observe personally suggests no evidence of earth’s curvature, which is generally accepted by heliocentrists to be eight inches per mile squared. Flying on a normal clear day here in Arizona (I scoff at your Portugal sunshine) I can see for about 100 miles in either direction. No curvature. The horizon really does continuously rise to eye level the higher you go. I have been to an overlook in the Sierras where I could see Mt Lassen, Mt Shasta and everything in between — a distance of over 120 miles. There’s supposed to be over a mile and a half of curvature between the two points. None was visible.

FYI (or maybe for mine), we are talking about astronomy here, right, not astrology? Not that I know squat about either.

I would find Foucault’s pendulum to be extremely underwhelming evidence, even if some correlation were demonstrated between the table’s movement and the alleged earth’s rotation.

Einstein supposedly said that the earth’s movement cannot be proven. Do you doubt him? Do you dare to doubt the highest priest of the Higher Learning, a member of that clerisy whose pronouncements we must accept or risk displaying “ignorance,” which you seem to be implying should be suppressed? I hope the recommended suppression isn’t too severe — like the Inquisition or some such.

Oh OK, I was confusing the two. Wiles is the one I was thinking of.

OK AnonStarter,

This time it’s I that will have to defer my reply, as I’ll be traveling this weekend.

Peace and God bless.

GS, are you suggesting I should accept Appeal to Authority (and from a (((tribe))) plagiarist at that)? Do you have an alternative explanation for the observations of the behaviour of a Foucalt’s Pendulum?

No, quite the opposite, via sarcasm. But if you don’t accept Einstein’s relativity you’ve got the same problems he was addressing that were presented by the 19th century experiments that failed to detect any motion of the earth.

If the video is to be believed, the results of Foucault’s pendulum have been all over the map and don’t prove anything.

Don’t have spare data to watch videos. Typical FE response though, “I don’t know fuck-all about it but the FE god Eric Dubay made a confusing u-toob about it.” Seems the FE attitude is “some folks did the experiment and got inconsistant results, therefore those who demontrated it consistently must be frauds.” Oh, not to overlook the following from a FE site about the experiment: “Mach’s Principle explains that if the earth was still and the all the stars went around the Earth then the gravitational pull of the stars would pull the pendulum.”, what? gravity? Are Dubay and Co now admitting gravity. Eloquent you may be GS, but what value is that if you are also a FE cultist? Reply if you like but don’t anticipate a response.

Why the hostility? Is something getting lost in translation into a second language, like the sarcasm? Do you think my scoffing at your Portugal sunshine was anything other than a good-natured jibe? You know — like we have far more than we want in Arizona, ha, ha, ha. Your wife did mistkenly call astronomy astrology, but I’m sure I’ve made that mistake in the past, and it’s always good to be clear on the difference.

So sorry if I offended you, but if my cultish ignorance is offending your rigorously scientific sensibilities then you’ve got a problem. I may not have been trained in a sicentific discipline, but I’ve been trained to know a strong argument from a weak one, and I do.

GS, I think you are mistaking disgust for hostility and anger. What disgusts me is how disingenuous responses from FE proponents are. They have a stink about them, similar to the stench of hasbara disinfo. What suggests that I would be disturbed in the slightest about your comparison between the sunniness in Portugal and Arizona?

A strong argument is one that is pertinent, logical, rational and corresponds with the facts. I don’t see that you have presented any strong argument.

Ron, have you considered a column or similar to collect the myriad of Deep State ( Is Peter Dale Scott still around, or underground?) exposes that seem to crop up every day?
This piece on the Assange abomination for example should get more attention,
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/chief-magistrate-assange-extradition-received-financial-benefits-shadowy-groups

The Epstein affair probably deserves one of it’s own, but a place to collect all the evidence that the scales of justice are heavily weighted. always and everywhere, toward societies most evil.

Defender of the Motherland Day, Russia, February 23 2020

Спаси и сохрани.

https://tass.com/defense/1123223

Israel hangs dead Palestinian from bulldozer

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200224-israel-hangs-palestinian-martyr-from-bulldozer/

The bulldozer approached the body as Palestinians tried to recover Al-Naem’s corpse to avoid it being detained by occupation forces.

They were forced to flee as the vehicle approached them at speed, picked up Al-Naem’s body by his clothing and carried him away, he lifeless body is clearly visible as a tank nears to protect the Israeli machinery.

A number of Palestinians were injured in the attack, with one seen hopping away after he was shot in the leg by occupation forces.

Israeli Defence Minister Naftali Bennett defended the military action stating that the military was trying to retrieve the body of “a terrorist”.

“This is how it should be done, and this is how it will be done,” he wrote.

Dear Abby,

I read so much worrying news and commentary these days that it’s difficult not to sink into despair sometimes.

It transpires that all of our lives we’ve been lied to and manipulated by ‘our’ governments and by the establishment media. These days we actually write in terms of (((‘our’ governments))) and (((the media))) because it’s said to be “anti-sham-itic” to mention the powerful kabal of (((jews))) who shape (((narratives))) for our consumption, even as they shape the geo-political landscape for our enslavement.

These days we have the Internet and, with it, access to all kinds of accurate information. We try to share and to alert our loved ones to the fact that we’re being lied to, and have been all our lives, but (((they))) do all they can to marginalise and discredit us, so that it often seems that no one listens.

It’s very upsetting because we know that it is only through awareness that we the people can stop our current trajectory, which will result in our enslavement to a globalised (((corporate empire))) and/or massive environmental devastation, (((they))) even lie about the causes of that!

And when it seems that the truth may be finally getting out, we are threatened with global, geothermal nuclear armagedon, ffs! I guess this would be ((their))) final solution for us uppity goyim.

Whilst I realise that there is not a great deal you can do about any of this, Dear Abby, I hope that you can at least offer a little distraction and maybe even a little levity, whimsy or lightheartedness.

Thanks in advance,
Heavy-hearted.

P. S. @GSJackson, please accept my apologies for not responding to your latest comments/replies. I ought to have known better than to say anything at all really – I find the whole flat-Earth thing to be a pointless distraction (and not even of the good kind I’m in need of!). I will offer just one word more to you in relation to our brief exchange – astromonology. 😉 No hard feelings I hope.

Hard feelings? Toward you, none of course. You were perfectly civil and made solid points. Toward the person who jumped in pointlessly just to call me ignorant, a cult member and disgusting — well, we have a one-word button that sums up such people nicely, and there’s no need for further response.

Another flat out lie AS. I am going to continue to point them out. I know it is hard for you to believe ut the IDF and Israelis do not wish to harm Palestinians.

The Islamic Jihad terrorist wasn’t hanged from a bulldozer like the title implies. The IDF used a bulldozer to move his body because he could have had an explosive vest. He was killed trying to plant explosives along the border.

Dear Abby,

Whilst I realise that there is not a great deal you can do about any of this, Dear Abby,

I hate to break this to you, Heavy-hearted, but your pleas to Dear Abby will have fallen on deaf ears:

Pauline Esther “Popo” Phillips (née Friedman) … was an American advice columnist and radio show host who began the Dear Abby column in 1956…

Pauline Friedman, nicknamed “Popo”, was born in Sioux City, Iowa to Russian Jewish immigrants Rebecca (née Rushall) and Abraham B. Friedman, owner of a chain of movie theaters.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Phillips

… IDF and Israelis do not wish to harm Palestinians.

Neither harm nor theft nor meanness do Yid wish.

Israeli settlers on Monday morning destroyed Palestinian wheat fields with poisonous chemicals near al-Sakout village in the northern Jordan Valley.

A Palestinian bakery in the heart of Old Jerusalem has been forced to close by Israeli authorities after 60 years in business. The reason provided for the forced closure was that the bakery had been providing baked goods to Palestinian worshipers headed to Al-Aqsa Mosque to pray.

Israeli settlers, on Sunday, continued fencing large tracts of land in the northern Jordan Valley as they chased Palestinian herders out of pastures in the area, according to local sources.

The Qalandia airport has been closed by Israeli authorities since the outbreak of the second Intifada, in the year 2000. The Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing is planning to build a new settlement there, to be larger than “Ma’aleh Adumim” settlement in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israeli soldiers shot and killed, on Sunday morning, a young Palestinian man, and injured four, on Palestinian lands, in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
An Israeli armored bulldozer was filmed repeatedly crushing the body of the slain Palestinian with its blade, then grabbing the corpse with the blade and swinging the body back and forth in the air.
The Israeli army claimed that its soldiers observed two Palestinians approaching the perimeter fence, before placing an explosive device. It alleged that the soldiers then rushed to the scene and fired live ammunition at the two Palestinians, causing the explosive device to explode.
The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, has reported that the slain Palestinian was one of its members.
The Brigades stated that the Palestinian has been identified as Mohammad Ali Hasan an-Na’em, 27, from Khan Younis. The slain Palestinian was unarmed and wasn’t even in military attire when the soldiers attacked him, along with many residents, with their bulldozer, and live rounds.
Israeli officials frequently make outrageous claims about Palestinians they kill, which are often proven later to be false.
Media sources in Gaza said several Palestinians tried to reach the two Palestinians to provide them with the needed medical care and move them to a hospital, but a military bulldozer sped towards them and drove over the corpse of the slain Palestinian, before scooping it using the bulldozer’s plow.
The second Palestinian was injured with a live round in his leg and was rushed to a hospital in Khan Younis after the Palestinians managed to evacuate him before the soldiers could reach him.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has reported that two other Palestinians were shot and injured by Israeli army fire while attempting to help evacuate the wounded.
Israeli sources initially quoted the army claiming its soldiers killed two Palestinians in the incident.
Despite the military claims, a video from the scene shows the corpse of the young man on Palestinian land in an area quite a distance away from the fence.

Eight-year-old Malek Issa on Sunday underwent a surgery in which doctors removed his left eye which was hit by an Israeli rubber-coated steel bullet about a week ago.

Many fanatic illegal Israeli colonists attacked several Palestinian shepherds in the at-Tiwana village, near Yatta, south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday.
The Israeli assailants came from Havat Ma’on illegal colony, which was built on private Palestinian lands, and started hurling rocks at the shepherds.
Israeli soldiers came to the scene but did not intervene, and instead were trying to force the Palestinian shepherds away.

Two young men suffered injuries when a horde of Jewish settlers physically assaulted them in Ras Ein al-Auja hamlet, north of Jericho city.
Lawyer Mahmoud al-Ghawanmeh, a resident of the hamlet, said that dozens of settlers escorted by dogs stormed the hamlet and tried to steal some sheep from local residents and beat two young men as they tried to fend them off.

All this Yid entertainment before Yid breakfast.
Food and drink stolen.
Same with tables, chairs and utensils.

For dessert Yid murders more olive trees
and urinates into well water not yet stolen.

5ds

I should have guessed! LOL

In the yUK we had our own equivalent. Trouble is I couldn’t remember how to spell her name (Deirdree or something). I went with Abby because I could spell it.

Actually it occurred to me that UR could carry a ‘problem page’, with someone like CJ Hopkins, or even you, Geikat (!) to respond to our real or imagined issues. Something like that could bring a little levity to our daily reading.

Thanks for your response to my silly post. 😉

Love,
Kali.

Hello again, AnonStarter,

To be fair, you casually implied that having the capacity to upset or surprise God is “vanity.” I agree insofar as surprising Him is concerned, but not with regard to upsetting Him. Your statement suggests that you possess knowledge of God sufficient to determine that such conviction is vain.

I was raised to believe that God cared very much indeed whether or not I stole a cookie out of the cookie jar, or said my prayers before bed, or a hundred other petty observances of piety that God Himself would pay very close attention to, lest He be angry with me.

This while God didn’t seem to be interested enough in wars, where His children were flayed alive by napalm bombs, or riddled with bullet holes, all while He was paying very close attention if I ignored a chore, and played instead.

Perhaps it was His priorities that I considered so skewed, that I wondered at His wisdom.

Does He care if I believe in Him? Didn’t you suggest earlier, that He didn’t. And if He doesn’t, then what pray, might it be that I could do to anger Him?

But it’s a mistake to confuse affirming knowledge of God with arrogance. It is a quite natural, instinctive human impulse to perceive that the cosmos and its comprehensively ornate and orderly composition is the handiwork of a Creator — an impulse that has remained with man since his beginnings. There is nothing arrogant about such conviction. In fact, it is rather the opposite. Knowing God breeds humility before Him.

Perhaps the distinction is between knowing of God, vs. knowing Him by name and personal relationship.

Wouldn’t you agree that John Hagee is an arrogant buffoon? (at best).

Ditto the rest of these arrogant scoundrels and hucksters…

“What if there is a Omniscient, Ominpotent, and Benevolent God who endows man with great agency to determine his worth (much as one entrusted with great power), yet man all too often inclines toward his all too mortal appetites, making life on earth more miserable for himself and others than need be?”

Well then, doesn’t it logically follow, that His creation is flawed?

Because the inevitable consequence of such denial is to entertain the possibility that everything which exists, in all of its terrifying yet intoxicating majesty, bears no higher purpose beyond ephemeral existence; that it is but the mathematically highly improbable, random byproduct of deaf, dumb, blind, lifeless, and unconscious particles’ perpetual collision, union, and dissolution; that the offenses and injustices too numerous to list in this vale of tears would remain invidiously unrequited; that the sufferance of good folk against the relentlessly oppressive currents of licentiousness, avarice, and inequity would draw to a heart-rendingly soul-crushing conclusion — unrecompensed and unsung.

OK, I’m with you that such sounds terribly pointless, from that (very eloquent) perspective.

But if we take a different tack, then life, sans a creator, is the most unlikely blessing imaginable.

If we were put here by a God, with instructions on how to live, and why we’re here, then where’s the mystery?

But if we simply arrived, by dint of chance, then our potentials and possibilities are as infinite, as our existence is unlikely.

If you tell a child, ‘you were created by God, to do such and such’, then you’re perhaps circumscribing his potential, no?

If he’s told that he was put here by God, to live his life according to the tenets of God’s proscriptions, written down by His prophets, then isn’t that sort of a boundary on that child’s imagination, for his possibilities, and his purpose on this earth?

Just ruminating here..

dar al-imtihan

‘this world is Dar al-Imtihan (a place of test or trial –

For the others like me, who had to check it out..

The soul instinctively pleads for justice in the wake of the world’s many inhumanities. … are right to say that it is man’s responsibility to bring about a better day to the extent he is able to do so. In this abode of examination, this dar al-imtihan, we distinguish ourselves from others to the extent we do so, joining the good company of God.

Well, I’d like to be in that kind of God’s good graces. I also think, it’s its own reward.

But our hands can only reach so far, and there is much injustice we will never be able to resolve, no matter our effort. God, however, is more than capable of settling such matters, and He will — with absolute equity and finality.

I pray you are right, Sir.

“Why everything?”

At the end of the day, those answers are inescapably a matter of faith, which is a conclusion that the sharpened intellect will never be able to avoid.

Or answer…

I began my own journey to Islam by applying its mandate against backbiting, nothing more. You’d be surprised just how much this singular, simple-seeming principle transformed my outlook on people.

As noble a reason to seek answers to human folly, as I can think of.

though the Beatitudes are, among other lessons of Jesus ‘alaihis-salaam, a wonderful source of guidance.

Most assuredly.

Many would say that murderers don’t deserve capital punishment — that of itself, it is cruel and inhumane, the worst variety of harm. They contend that two wrongs don’t make a right. Those who disagree assert that allowing the crime of murder to go unpunished results in greater harm to society. Both have fair-seeming arguments, so which is correct according to the principle of “do no harm”?

Shooting a rabid dog, isn’t ‘doing harm’. It’s doing the dog a favor. But I get how the mantra can get a bit subjective. I suppose it’s meant ‘in the first place’ sense, so that we do no harm, to others- in the first place. But if we’re harmed, then that mantra goes straight out the window.

I ask rhetorically, because if you attempt to use the intellect alone in order to answer the question, there is no clear answer.

Well, I thought I did a halfway decent job.

I have always asserted that the God of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad is one and the same God.

The only God?

Is Lord Rama, a God? (I heard something about Kashmir today on the radio).

One hour of reflection upon God is worth one year of worship.

Another haddith attributed to the Prophet, one intended to emphasize that worship is less bound to specific ritual than it is to consciousness. Essentially, all worship lies in the effort to keep good company with God. It is the protracted, sustained remembrance of Him as the Causer of Causes, the very reason for the existence of all that is, was, and shall be; the vigilant reliance upon Him in all matters, however apparently trivial or grave.

Thank you for taking the time to edify me with your knowledge and eloquence vis-a-vis Islam, and its teachings. (I owe a debt to Talha, for his efforts along the same lines).

There is a depth to Islam, and a earnestness, that I find compelling, when its adherents are sincere. I suppose like Christianity, on those rare occasions when its adherents, are actually sincere.

In any case, it’s been a pleasure.

Alhamdulillah

Greetings, Rurik.

I was raised to believe that God cared very much indeed whether or not I stole a cookie out of the cookie jar, or said my prayers before bed, or a hundred other petty observances of piety that God Himself would pay very close attention to, lest He be angry with me.

Well, I can’t vouch for the quality of your upbringing. Some approaches to understanding God simply aren’t comprehensible to young children and they may, in fact, breed resentment if the adults raising them aren’t modeling the very piety they expect of others.

From what you tell me, it appears as if you were reminded of God’s wrath more often than you were of His mercy, which might help to explain your current perspective.

This while God didn’t seem to be interested enough in wars, where His children were flayed alive by napalm bombs, or riddled with bullet holes, all while He was paying very close attention if I ignored a chore, and played instead.

But it wasn’t God who was upset at you for ignoring that chore and playing instead, was it? I’m sure you can think of at least one thing you were able to do that was supposed to “anger God” which had no apparent effect of so doing, something that your parents never discovered, right?

Perhaps it was His priorities that I considered so skewed, that I wondered at His wisdom.

Consider two things: your parents’ perspective isn’t necessarily representative of God’s and God’s judgment isn’t manifest completely in this worldly life.

Does He care if I believe in Him? Didn’t you suggest earlier, that He didn’t. And if He doesn’t, then what pray, might it be that I could do to anger Him?

We have the agency to keep faith with Him, but He doesn’t compel us to do so. The world is rife with too many examples of ambivalence toward God to require any need for proof of it.

Does He care about it?

If someone designs and manufactures a computer just for you, it’s fairly certain he’ll put a lot of care into the process and he’ll probably take an interest in how that machine is functioning for the duration of your ownership, even offering to maintain its efficient functionality at your request. Of course, there’s no guarantee you’ll use it in such a way that won’t infect it with viruses or cause another variety of damage to it.

He’d probably tell you what to avoid in order to forestall the potential for such damage, but ultimately, it’s your machine. You can not care about him as you please. He’ll probably even tell you so, but, of course, the consequences are yours to bear. It’s likely you’d return to him for help if you need it, though.

When care isn’t reciprocal, it’s the ungrateful party who suffers, not the one who cares. God gives us ourselves and everything we need to be content and expects little in return for it. If we’re unable to reciprocate even that much, we’re bound to suffer for it.

Such is the nature of our reality.

Perhaps the distinction is between knowing of God, vs. knowing Him by name and personal relationship.

Absolutely.

The former is easy. Even the polytheists of Mecca knew of God while they remained ignorant of the latter. The vast majority of Americans “believe in God,” which simply means they affirm His existence, but much of the American landscape does not evince a knowledge of God.

Wouldn’t you agree that John Hagee is an arrogant buffoon? (at best).

Hagee is one among many preachers who, in effect, have abandoned Christianity after being convinced of its falsity and persuaded to pledge himself to the Noahide Covenant as set forth by rabbinical authorities. He’s a zionist dupe, as are so many charlatans like him.

Well then, doesn’t it logically follow, that His creation is flawed?

No more than to say that any given sport is “flawed” because the potential for fouls or penalties inhere to its participants.

God created man with the potential to forget Him. The angels complained about this before the superiority of God’s knowledge became evident to them. From our perspective, there is confusion, but only when we refuse to perceive the world as an abode of examination.

If we were put here by a God, with instructions on how to live, and why we’re here, then where’s the mystery?

Has humankind ceased to discover new realms and information by dint of empirical scientific endeavor? Is the perpetual phenomenon of such discovery insufficiently intriguing to you?

Perhaps your former religion was less accommodating, but Islam doesn’t prohibit such inquiry, investigation, and discovery.

But if we simply arrived, by dint of chance, then our potentials and possibilities are as infinite, as our existence is unlikely.

It isn’t our potentials and possibilites that would be infinite, but rather, our ruminations about the cause of existence, which might be good fodder for science fiction, but terribly impractical as a means of personal and social administration.

We’re currently inundated with every variety of fiction genre, from new age fantasy to dystopic speculation, awash and bloated in an ocean of imagination. It’s a natural and inevitable consequence of what you mention, a nation of daydreamers, unmoored from the realities with which most of the world concerns itself daily.

Small wonder, then, that the electorate is as manipulated by the wonderful promises of an election season as it is …

If you tell a child, ‘you were created by God, to do such and such’, then you’re perhaps circumscribing his potential, no?

Only if your impression of God is a terribly onerous one for him to accept. Even I would have a problem if taking an extra cookie from the jar warranted consignment to hellfire.

If he’s told that he was put here by God, to live his life according to the tenets of God’s proscriptions, written down by His prophets, then isn’t that sort of a boundary on that child’s imagination, for his possibilities, and his purpose on this earth?

Sure, but you’ll find that even non-religious parents establish strict boundaries for their children, not because they want to restrict them, but because they want to protect them from potential harm. This is only natural.

Imagination needn’t be restricted where it serves a beneficial purpose, and the scientific insurgency of the medieval Muslim world provides wonderful historical evidence of this. Yet where it yields nothing more than a nation of daydreamers, well … see my earlier example for manifest proof of its detriment.

The hard truth is there simply isn’t that broad a range of possible vocations in our brief worldly sojourn. That’s not the way things have been since Adam and it’s not likely to change no matter how many generations pass from now until Judgment Day. There may be some professions which a devoted Muslim would steer clear of — pornographer, interest-charging moneylender, or liquor store proprietor, to name a few — but I’d say most non-Muslim parents would rather their children find alternatives to these.

In any event, most professions are acceptable in Islam.

I also think, it’s its own reward.

It bears a taste of the garden’s fruit. This is what you savor. Now imagine it intensified exponentially …

I pray you are right, Sir.

As surely as you are reading this passage.

At the end of the day, those answers are inescapably a matter of faith, which is a conclusion that the sharpened intellect will never be able to avoid.
Or answer…

Not so, since the intellect’s acknowledgement of faith’s necessity may lead one to keep faith, which is effectively an answer.

As noble a reason to seek answers to human folly, as I can think of.

I had learned that, with some limited exceptions, Islam proscribes backbiting irrespective of its truth. When I tried applying this, refusing to speak ill of a roommate in the presence of another, it resulted in a profound change in the dynamics of our household. The backbiting individual began warming up to his erstwhile target and it appeared that I was the new topic of discussion when absent from them.

No good deed goes unpunished, at least among most men.

Well, I thought I did a halfway decent job.

It isn’t bad, though there’s also great potential for interpreting perceived “harm” as adversity which affects oneself first and foremost; in which case, it’s not conducive to the benefit that one derives from fasting or other kinds of self-abnegation, for example.

The only God?

Yes.

Can’t vouch for any others. The meta-god hypothesis (an endless concatenation of successively greater “gods” creating subordinates) requires a minimum of one to be true. That’s all we need. Just one.

Any more would be superfluous when one has all the power and knowledge.

Thank you for taking the time to edify me with your knowledge and eloquence vis-a-vis Islam, and its teachings. (I owe a debt to Talha, for his efforts along the same lines).

There is a depth to Islam, and a earnestness, that I find compelling, when its adherents are sincere. I suppose like Christianity, on those rare occasions when its adherents, are actually sincere.

In any case, it’s been a pleasure.

You’ve been very patient with me and I appreciate your willingness to discuss such matters as most folks avoid like the plague. I also enjoy your candor immensely. You’ve got a whale of a heart, Rurik. May it remain so.

Alhamdulillah

Ameen!

One more thing: I want you to raid the cookie jar tonight. Take whatever you want.

Oh, and don’t forget the milk.

Cuddliest Love Ever…

So…so much for the Milwaukee Brewery shooting.

Shooter’s been identified. American black — move along.

US Marine Corps leadership bans the Confederate Flag February 2020 at all bases worldwide.

What if USMC troops don’t continue to bend to the Progressive agenda?

From the article:

Top Marine official bans Confederate-era paraphernalia at all Corps bases worldwide

Prohibiting Confederate symbols is just one part of Berger’s forward-moving agenda. The Commander General also ordered leaders to find more combat roles for women, extend parental leave policies to same-sex couples, and consider year-long maternity leave for new mothers, according to Military.com.

Richard Kohn, a history professor who studies peace, war and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill told Military.com that modernizing the Marine Corps is long overdue, but necessary.

“We have the need within the country to try and create as much unity as possible and to suppress white nationalism and racism within the ranks of the military because, every once in a while, it crops up and causes an issue,” Kohn said.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/militarykind/2020/02/27/confederate-flag-banned-marine-bases-worldwide/4897206002/

Understandable ban.
Who from the South joins the Marines?

Acceptable flag – Star and Bars.
Old Glory OK if going into actual battle.

5ds

Names check out.

Commandant Berger also indicated
metal battlefield helmets out.

New battle headgear: kippers.
Battle colors: olive drab, Iraqi-sand brown.

Parade dress head wear: Light blue kipper with ringlets.

5ds

NATO knew that the communist style extreme social liberalism would lead to Right wing incubation and backlash.

In fact, the institutional globalist extremism was so irrational that its primary role can only be seen as instigation of reaction.

Don’t allow their pearl clutching and faux shock to dictate perspective.

What they want to is frame a controlled process as organic and unpredictable, with an unpredictable outcome.

Its similar to how the American press tries to control national political sentiment, via the creation and control of scandal, in the two years leading up to any presidential election. It wants use to see such scandal as organic, and that they are just reporting on it, when the fact is that they actively and purposefully create the scandal to effect their desired political outcomes.

Similarly, the outcomes of liberal social extremism are planned by institutional globalism and are therefore predicted by them and predictable by anyone else. Especially the outcome of Right Wing growth and backlash.

See the Jewish books (I recommend the Zohar) for the initial stages of that planned outcome, and the Christian books for the later stages. The initial stages outline a worldwide genocide, and the later stages the resolve that event into a post-technological New Eden.

2,500+ years of zealous belief and agenda did not dissipate with either of the Martin Luthers nor Marx.

That history was baked in and the locusts have been arising from the pit for some time now as a result. They are being given power, as scorpions of the Earth have power.

None of what will continue to occur is organic nor the least bit unpredictable.

Calling out their theater is perhaps what will annoy them the most.

As this silly show is religious belief for them and, above all else, they require it to continue as a believable organic process (their planned actions being seen as a naturally occurring fulfillment of prophecy).

So I recommend calling out this clumsy theater as the best tactic above all others.

For example, the official narrative is that somehow Europe lacks the capability to stop primitive peoples from flooding into it. This is obvious nonsense. However, the fulfillment of prophecy dictates that such a catastrophe not be seen as planned but is organic and inevitable. So this obvious lie is forced upon the public, who is made to swallow a widely known lie if they are not to be outcast from society.

If everyone were to stop believing that rapeugee influx into Europe were anything but an actively facilitated attempt to fulfill Jewish religious prophecy, which is in essence pulling back the curtain, then they would no longer be able to ascribe what is occurring to prophecy fulfillment and the entire mechanism loses its desired effect.

Again, that effect being the impression of an unstoppable force that will lead to mass genocide followed by false salvation via a false (Jewish) Messiah followed by real salvation by a Real One.

Commandant Berger continued:
“Humvees, jeep-type vehicles no longer to be used.”

“Marines will now ride
reddish heifers for transport.”

New-type marines will be
allowed to mount rainbow heifers.

Such is the new life.

5ds

Why not simply guard the borders? That could in time result in a stable population, which itself would negate need for additional housing (beyond replacement of damaged stock, of course).

It’s not a complete solution, but I see nothing in keeping with current American law that is.

Nu?

‘In the Qatari capital of Doha, America’s top diplomat will stand with leaders of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s former rulers who harbored Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network as they plotted, and then celebrated, the hijackings of four airliners that were crashed into lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania, killing almost 3,000 people.’

We’re still good friends with Israel as well. What’s the problem?

Article last year.
Not mentioned: Excellent Nazi camp healthcare and reduced stress for inmates.

Holocaust Paradox: Long Lives for Those Who Survived

My elementary school teacher taught that those who emerged from the horrors of the camps would die young. A reasonable assumption, but wrong.
By Peter R. Orszag January 28, 2019 (bloomberg opinion. pay for article if you want)
The strong survived.

Sunday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, causing me to think about an assertion I heard from an elementary school teacher. She said that even those who survived the Holocaust were so debilitated that the rest of their lives would be short. As with many things I learned in elementary school, the reality is more complicated, and my 10-year-old self would be glad to know that my teacher was probably more wrong than right.

Living through a horrendous event, like confinement in a concentration camp or prisoner-of-war camp, does create health problems serious enough to shorten most people’s lives. But those who survive also seem to have other characteristics — perhaps a stronger immune system and a more optimistic outlook than the general population — that tend to make people live longer.

Longer lives and so many lived. In fact, more survived than were imprisoned, so it seems.

5ds

Jetman Vince Reffet Takes off over Dubai, Feb 14…

People have wings. They just don’t know it.

Vive la France! Vive l’Esprit!

Just heard a POS has died.

POS destroyed a great corporation.
Unemployed thousands when he was the worst employee.
A smug, arrogant, ignorant, intensely greedy, evil, shit.
A traitor to America who belonged in Guantanamo.
Send his carcass to China to be fed to pigs.
He sent jobs there. We send his rotted corpse.

Jack Welch, who seriously harmed America,died 60 years too late.

5 dancing shlomos

That dilemma’s solved, anyway.

Amazon has reversed its ‘free shipping for Jews only’ policy for the West Bank.

Presidents Putin and Lukashenko (Belarus) Tour Transfiguration Monastery, Valaam Island

Спаси и сохрани.

I have a request for any memers out there:

I want a meme replacing “fake and gay” with “that’s so Jewish”- this approach was used inadvertently on “Gingers” and they’ve never recovered. The Jews who aren’t subversive, underhanded, meddling, dishonest, and spiteful should be ashamed of those that are in their ranks, just as IKAGO blacks should of theirs (if they plan on associating positively with white people on a daily basis).

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

-MLK jr.

“Our lives are fashioned by our choices. First we make our choices. Then our choices make us.”

-“Anne Frank”, a girl who became a first rate writer with little formal training/schooling after receiving “her” diary at the age of thirteen. I wonder why people downplay her prodigy.

All of the Jewish/Marxist meddling comes down to being astroturf fake to the 10th power combined with a sinister and covert agenda against the white race at large. Hence the label, “fake and gay”.

“That’s so Jewish” doesn’t use any pejoratives, it just (rightly) frames the word Jewish as one.

It could easily be used to cover the following descriptors: manipulative, phony, underhanded, spiteful, mean-spirited, Bloombergish, f*cked up, lame, contrived, PC, etc. Generally it would describe sh*tty behavior that isn’t approved of.

I can easily see the black and brown hordes that they have led against us picking up and happily using this new slang, as all other races could sympathize with the joke.

Hello AnonStarter.

Finally I have time, space and Internet connection (the three together being a rare thing for me these days) to communicate my response to your comments on the nature of God and faith. I hope you don’t mind my butting in!

First let me say that I very much appreciate the time you take and efforts you go to on this platform to describe your own perspective and to share your religious interpretations of life and God with us.

Personally I know far too little about the Muslim perspective/religion so am very grateful that you, Talya and others take time and care to explain it. Thank you.

Does He care about it?

If someone designs and manufactures a computer just for you, it’s fairly certain he’ll put a lot of care into the process and he’ll probably take an interest in how that machine is functioning for the duration of your ownership, even offering to maintain its efficient functionality at your request. Of course, there’s no guarantee you’ll use it in such a way that won’t infect it with viruses or cause another variety of damage to it.

Sadly, this analogy flies in the face of my own personal experience.
God gave me life, and certainly made me perfect, including ensuring that I had the strength and courage I would later need to overcome the “viruses” which, not my misuse, but misuse by others brought to bare on my perfect soul.

The “god” of the world’s religions, though I was told “he” loved me and wanted me for a sunbeam, by all of the standards of love that I now know, did not love me. “He” in fact, created a living hell, and a hell in the afterlife for me and all who do not manage to overcome the “original sin” with which “he” afflicted us.

He’d probably tell you what to avoid in order to forestall the potential for such damage, but ultimately, it’s your machine.

When damage is inflicted by external sources, and when God itself is presented as some external “other” requiring obedience, the child, or man or woman, may have caused to reject, or even hate, such a “god”.

And though, in my experience, God does exist and holds nothing but infinite love for all creation, this religious “god” falls short of either honouring or explaining such infinite love.

I grew up with a church-going, Christian mother (and thank God for her) which meant that I was a church-going child.
I will not recount my childhood experiences here. Suffice it to say that because of those experiences I was plagued by nightmares. It was these nightmares which brought me, by some miracle, to an understanding/recognition of a God which is unbound by the religious dogma which anthropromorphesises and maculinises It.

One night, when I was around 8 years old I woke from a nightmare so bad I can still remember the details. There was no way I was going back to sleep after that, so I sat up in bed, leaned on the windowsill and gazed at the moon, which happened to be almost full that night.

I have no idea how long I sat there. But that night I felt, for the first time in my life, that I was, though a tiny spec in the universe, and integral part of the whole. Suddenly, for the first time, I KNEW GOD, and I knew that I mattered, that I was loved.

I think, knowing what I do now, that that was my first experience of meditation, of “no-mind”. And that one single experience sustained me until the age of 13. I knew, at least until I was 13, that God loved me and that, somehow I mattered.

Of course, with my childlike understanding, I morphed the God I knew with the “god” of the church until I became old enough to distinguish one from the other.

But it was not the God of the religions who saved me, it was the infinite God of my own soul, and of yours.

And though my certainty of God’s love was shattered a few years later, that profound glimps of God, or my remembrance of it, was enough to ensure my later healing from viruses which I did not bring on myself.

The external god of rules and judgements, concocted by the levites, and accepted in good faith by jews, Muslims and Christians, is not the God that I know, even though this notion of God does bring peace to many a disturbed mind.

As a very wise man once said, the Tao that can be writen (the God that can be reduced?) is not the Tao.

It is through meditation, a practice of silencing the mind, that I find and experience the endless, infinite love which is the centre of my being.

The external god of the levites is the one I rage against whenever I loose my way.

With much love and gratitude,
Kali.

I cut that comment a little short when the world came home to disturb my contemplations .

Next time I may expound on the practice of meditation. 😉

Israeli Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian revealed yesterday that the Israeli occupation authorities issues permits to large pharmaceutical firms to carry out tests on Palestinian and Arab prisoners, Felesteen.ps reported.

The Hebrew University lecturer also revealed that the Israeli military firms are testing weapons on Palestinian children and carry out these tests in the Palestinian neighbourhoods of occupied Jerusalem.

Speaking in Columbia University in New York City, Shalhoub-Kevorkian said that she collected the data while carrying out a research project for the Hebrew University.

“Palestinian spaces are laboratories,” she said. “The invention of products and services of state-sponsored security corporations are fueled by long-term curfews and Palestinian oppression by the Israeli army.”

https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-pharmaceutical-firms-test-medicines-on-palestinian-prisoners/5669606

[Continued from “Why does Netanyahu Keep Winning?”]

I appreciate the admonition to avoid vain contention.

To those who prefer good manners, it is easy to determine when the tone of a conversation becomes less than civil. Sometimes it’s glaringly obvious; on other occasions, we find it between the lines. Because the manner of our discourse matters, I discontinued the exchange with Assad.

That said, had he been able to keep it civil, I don’t see that most contributors here would have much of an argument against our dialogue, since there are far too many examples of far less edifying and more contentious off-topic banter across most discussion threads. I suppose I could strive to redirect every one of my own conversations to this thread, which has been made available for such purposes, but I’m not sure that’s necessary.

Perhaps Mr. Unz could provide us with some counsel in this respect, though I don’t want to burden him with the obligation of producing too many guidelines. The free flow of commentary appears to be an integral feature of the forum rather than a bug, so it appears that self-regulation will continue to be the means by which we maintain good conversation, however off-topic it may be.

was-salaam.

Because the manner of our discourse matters, I discontinued the exchange with Assad. That said, had he been able to keep it civil

Well, herein lies the rub. The issue is not that there shouldn’t be a civil discussion exploring these things, but I’ve seen how these things get when you converse with certain types of personalities. In the end, there is nothing gained except the names of Companions (ra) being dragged through the mud on these forums and it just creates useless noise for everyone else.

there are far too many examples of far less edifying and more contentious off-topic banter across most discussion threads.

Sure, but just because others are flinging poo at each other in some other room, doesn’t necessarily mean it is of any benefit to do the same in the room you’re in.

Wa salaam.

The issue is not that there shouldn’t be a civil discussion exploring these things, but I’ve seen how these things get when you converse with certain types of personalities.

Those things are just an indication that civil discussion with these individuals is not possible.

Setting aside Assad, I’ve used the posts of some contentious individuals as a foil by which to inform the readership. You’ve done this on countless occasions as well, and rather effectively at that, alhamdulillah. Insofar as “flinging poo” is concerned, I simply don’t reciprocate in kind, and I’d certainly appreciate it if anyone here could demonstrate otherwise.

The point is that off-topic conversation is de rigueur here. If we want to establish some kind of personal guideline for discussing what is manifestly off-topic, perhaps we could simply move the conversation here — the potential for it to become significantly protracted might warrant this.

Still, I don’t see that it matters too much whether it moves here or not, so long as a thread doesn’t get too cluttered by such dialogue and the discussion remains civil.

was-salaam.

Why my does that not suprise me.
Those evil parasites squatting on stolen Palestinian land are a bunch of evil feckers!

Thank you for the useful information.
I have experienced good interactions with Muslims both living in England and the differant countries that I have visited.
To be frank I have my doubts about Asad. Just a feeling I have that he might not be who he claims to be. He gets on too well with Fran and says some things that do not sit well with me

Thank you for the useful information.

Most welcome – any time.

Both of them (Fran, Assad) are on my ignore list to be honest. I see part of their comments when others quote them, like AnonStarter did.

Just a feeling I have that he might not be who he claims to be.

“Assad” is a guy who has returned under multiple identities (Tammy, Akbar Ali, Hercule Poirot, Jeffery Cohen) ; always trying to start a fight with me in particular about Sunni/Shiah debating points. As per the advice of my teachers, I have ignored it. And then I started ignoring him because it was just getting on my nerves and he has a right to his opinions, but not my time.

He has been kicked off by the moderators multiple times and warned many, many times for diverting threads int Sunni/Shiah debates.

Do with that info what you will.

Peace.

Insofar as “flinging poo” is concerned, I simply don’t reciprocate in kind

Solid policy to abide by. It only reflects poorly on the person flinging it and their hands get dirty.

Still, I don’t see that it matters too much whether it moves here or not, so long as a thread doesn’t get too cluttered by such dialogue and the discussion remains civil.

Yeah, it’s not really a hard and fast rule I want to establish. I was just personally doing it out of respect for others because I felt I came in very late into the conversation and didn’t feel it was right to steer it off topic as the first thing I did. Which is why I made use of the MORE tag – which is quite useful to be honest and saves others time. And the people actually interested in what you have to say (when it is so off topic) can simply click/tap and see what it is.

Wa salaam.

To be frank I have my doubts about Asad. Just a feeling I have that he might not be who he claims to be. He gets on too well with Fran and says some things that do not sit well with me

fYI. It took a while for me to recall, but I have encountered Assad before, on UR. He is a phony. With his blessed Hashem and blessed sister. If you catch him in a lie and confront him the blessed talk stops. He is all Ali all the time. At the end of my conversation he was calling me girly not sister.
I watched the Sheikh Imran Hosein video. He sounded very devoutly Jewish. Devout religious Muslims and devout religious Jews sound similar, a little nutty (just the religious guys) Islam has evil monarchs and are socialist. The Jews have no leaders and are capitalist. I think Muslims hate capitalism not Zionist.
I am sure if the Jews had evil monarchs, wore robes and hung out in the dessert on the poor side of the track, and stoped dealing in the world of finance we would all get along just fine. On the religious side I see no difference. It seems Islam needs a structure to take care of their people the Umah), at least the Arab Muslims. The Jews are just free floating.

Well it is about time for Colin to show up so I bid you a good night.

He is all Ali all the time. At the end of my conversation he was calling me girly not sister.

Very true! I have seen you evolve and became a God fearing good Jew. Yes, Shalom sister as you have become a very moral person by separating the damned State of Israel from Judaism.

Even if we leave “B” in the Brahma and the Brahman. We get “with Mercy” and “with Merciful”! Check out both Hebrew and Arabic. The 3 letters root, “RMH” is womb where the life takes place and from where God’s Mercy initiates. Check out the name Rahm Emanuel and what does it means?

There is only One Creator, and we approach the same Creator differently. In Islam, both Moses and Jesus are vessels to Elohim for their adherents!

I have few more question for you, as my learning quest continues. According the Jewish Moderator, he used to claim that, “Creator cannot be creation”. We didn’t get to around this as the forum shut down due to lack of funding. As Shia Muslims we also believe that the Creator cannot be creation. And, everything one sees around is creation including the Quran (Scripture). Of course, this include emotions too as these are creations too. What is the belief of Judaism regarding this. If emotions are not creation, is God fearful sometimes? Fear is one of the emotions!

Blessed be HaShem! (Blessed be The Name)!

To be frank I have my doubts about Asad. Just a feeling I have that he might not be who he claims to be. He gets on too well with Fran and says some things that do not sit well with me

Hi there,

Can you please list those things that do not sit well with you? So, that I can learn and be careful in the future.

Many thanks in advance!

I am the same person that I was before. I have not separated from Israel. Many people in my family are engaged in Torah study in Israel which is a very holy place filled with Torah study, on every corner. Do you know how much Torah study is going on in Israel.
Israel is involved with a Jihad agains Islam, they are fighting for sovereignty over it’s ancient homeland and holy sights. Muslims and Jews are engaged in a struggle over the homeland of the Jewish people as described in the OT, the NT and the Q’ran.

(BITCHon)

Just heard the nauseating vulture, Chuck Schumer pick the bones of the virus sick for political gain. What a bastard!

Leave it to a Jew, to cheer-lead negativity in America – he is a totally disgusting human being!

(BITCHoff)

I am the same person that I was before. I have not separated from Israel. Many people in my family are engaged in Torah study in Israel which is a very holy place filled with Torah study, on every corner. Do you know how much Torah study is going on in Israel.

Shalom,

Thank you sister for being so candid. No, I don’t want to separate you from Israel, and nice to know so much Torah study is going on in Israel. Hopefully, you separate Torah from Naviim, Ketuvim and Talmud as people say the problem lies in these books and not Torah, especially in Talmud.

Israel and Jews are there to stay, so are the Palestinians. Since, Palestinians are the injured party, why don’t Israel offer them a peace plan in open which they cannot refuse. Why have secret negotiations and the same time keep on building settlements, thus devouring all the land! I am from Oman, and we have an Isreal Embassy in Oman which is shut, and I would like it to be opened. The property for the embassy belongs to the country of the embassy.

Netanyahu with Sara recently visited Oman. Rabin visited Oman several times, and his last visit was six months before he was murdered. He chose the embassy plot and building. It was supposed to be opened when the peace agreement was signed, but alas he was murdered!

Prince of Peace Jesus saying, “those who live with sword will perish with sword”.

Blessed be haShem!

P.S. Can you please answer the questions about Judaism, which I have raised in my post #185 to you, so to quench my thirst for knowledge!

Do you occupy same cubicle as FTaubman?

Hopefully, you separate Torah from Naviim, Ketuvim and Talmud as people say the problem lies in these books and not Torah, especially in Talmud.

Talmud is many volumes of hate and ugliness

but,

Torah is basis for Israel and hate and
chosenness and the right to do every
evil act desired by spawn of the devil.

If you aren’t another Israeli BSer
speaking from your ass and laughing,
then you are a misguided, naive Omani
embracing foolishness.

5 dancing shlomos

I have few more question for you, as my learning quest continues. According the Jewish Moderator, he used to claim that, “Creator cannot be creation”. We didn’t get to around this as the forum shut down due to lack of funding. As Shia Muslims we also believe that the Creator cannot be creation. And, everything one sees around is creation including the Quran (Scripture). Of course, this include emotions too as these are creations too. What is the belief of Judaism regarding this. If emotions are not creation, is God fearful sometimes? Fear is one of the emotions!

This is a complex question. The kind that books are written on and the quick answer is above my pay grade. Spiritually there is very little difference between Islam and Judaism, only in the implementation and management, and Judaism’s exclusivity problem.

From my limited perspective the creator can not be the creation. Human emotions like love are part of the spiritual realm and not tangible material substance. In Judaism the soul is divided into the material and the spiritual. It is up to each individual to connect with the divine to lift the spiritual and provide substance like food, form the metaphysical. The metaphysical is the realm of emotions. And Judaism is built as a way to manage emotions. If we let our emotions rule us we would be reduced to rag dolls being pulled in any direction at momentary shifts in emotion. So the emotion of fear takes huge discipline and connection to the divine to overcome, as well as lust and other emotions. As you can see without Hashem and Allah people run pretty amok with their emotions and end up being quite depraved.

As to weather Hashem feels fear. I have no idea. From what I can tell Hashem cannot control evil impulses. Like the plaques in Egypt. Why didn’t Hashem skip to the last plaque. Why all the build up. The answer given in the Midrash is that the Egyptians had to reach their full measure of evil.
So apparently Hashem could not control the measurement of evil. How much he can control I do not understand.

Full Spectrum Exuberance by Roots Master Justin Johnson…

We are the people of shit.
We have a god-given right to be shit.

Though our god is small, incomplete,
some would say a carney huckster snake
in the poison weeds, he gives his
chosen the right to be shit:

https://alethonews.com/2020/03/10/maiming-palestinians-for-sport-is-a-war-crime/

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-42-knees-in-one-day-israeli-snipers-open-up-about-shooting-gaza-protesters-1.8632555

Let’s hear it for the Torah-created shit.

5 dancing shlomos

Shalom Fran,

Thanks for your reply. In Hebrew the definite article is Ha (ha) and in Arabic it is Al (al). Eloh and Ilah are same word and mean the same thing, meaning God. Therefore, when the definite article Al is added to Ilah it becomes Allah. Jews write Elohim for Eloh out of respect and Elohim is a Semitic plural meaning three or more. Without the vowels Eloh is written as Elo and El. Both Muslims and Jews believe that Elohim is the Creator of both Good and Evil.

Shia believe that everything we see around is creation, including Emotions, Time, Space and so forth and the Creator cannot be creation. Als0, Allah has no body, shape, spirit, image and so forth. Thus, Elohim cannot have Emotions such as Love, Hate, Fear, Prejudice and so forth. So Allah didn’t choose Jews for choosiness. He chose them for the message, when others failed. Even the Jews failed, so he chose the Arabs to carry the message!

Body, spirit, image, shape requires Space and the Space is creation like Time. Where was Elohim was before He Created the Space. Again Elohim (Allah) is the Creator of Time, therefore Allah is everywhere and for Him everywhere is NOW. No past nor future, only NOW everywhere. Thus due to this Shia believe in Freewill and the Sunni believe in Predestination. But the Freewill is subject to the Will of Elohim. I am thirsty and go to get water to quench my thirst, but on the way I have heart attack and die.

If one says that, “From what I can tell Hashem cannot control evil impulses.”, then Elohim is not a God who doesn’t control everything. We get into dualism.

Yes to Shia, it is Ali, Ali and the progeny of the Prophet through his only surviving daughter Fatima and his cousin Ali. The spirituality in Shia is called Irfan (Irfani) and in Sunni it is Sufi. The Sufi are Ali, Ali too. To them Ali is their spiritual leader and the caliphs are political leaders.

God have Mercy on all His Creation as He is the Rabbi (Sustainer) of all His Creation!

If you aren’t another Israeli BSer
speaking from your ass and laughing,
then you are a misguided, naive Omani
embracing foolishness.

I am just showing Fran and others on this forum that we Muslims mean PEACE! You can Google that recently Netanyahu and Sara came to Oman to visit our Late Sultan Qaboos (God have Mercy on him) but unfortunately Israel don’t want Peace and keeps on building Settlements to devour all the land. Our Sultan recently died, you can Google this too. He was very benevolent ruler. Even India and Modi shut down everything for one day (24 hours) in his respect.

Iran including all the Arabs have said that if the Palestinians except Peace, they will accept Peace too. If Iran doesn’t then what a good way to isolate Iran in front of the world! Iran is no threats to anyone, as they are very backward country under all those sanctions. They get all their technology from Russia, and from USA too through Russia!

I am just showing Fran and others on this forum that we Muslims mean PEACE!

Why?

Jew/Israel wants Muslims dead.
Jew wants all the land, water, oil.
Jew wants you and your smile gone.
Judaized West wants what Jew wants
plus control of oil and seaways.

Torah you forgot.

Torah gives Judaizm gives diseased
belief system gives diseased minds
gives problems we have now.

And you want to show them you are nice!

Fran and her ilk want dogs.
The idiot others are brainwashed by the likes of Fran.

5ds

It is too bad you feel that way. I have found that all people are the same, and most religious text teach the same. It is individual people that corrupt and create problems, not one group in particular.
There are good and bad Jews as Muslims.
I enjoy conversing with Muslims and others on this site to find common ground and maybe eliminate misconceptions. Islam and Judaism are very similar. I find Islam does not recognize Judaism as equal to Islam which is a problem.
There is nothing in our Torah or Talmud that evil. It is a history and story of humanities attempt to get close to a divine being.

From Michael McCaffrey on RT and the other side of Hollywood –

Hollywood movie peasants like me are the real victims as coronavirus time bomb ticks off film after film

The reality is that people working in the entertainment industry ecosystem are just as poorly situated financially as the rest of Americans, 40 percent of whom do not have the savings to afford a $400 emergency.

While Tom Cruise has a $100 million rainy day fund, Hollywood’s plebeians do not get sick days, rarely if ever get unemployment, and are perpetually saddled with financial and employment insecurity.

They are also burdened not only by exorbitant L.A. housing costs but also by overpriced and under-performing health insurance when they are lucky enough to have any insurance at all.

Coronavirus slowing down or stopping film and TV production is a cataclysm for Hollywood’s proletarian backbone. The desperation here is already palpable as the stark reality for those living paycheck-to-paycheck is starting to sink in. The 60,000 homeless people already living in filth on the streets of L.A. are a constant and stark reminder of how quickly things can go bad.

Islam and Judaism are very similar. I find Islam does not recognize Judaism as equal to Islam which is a problem.

Wrong! Islam consider all religions to be very similar and equal, not just Judaism and Islam. All religions are same including Hinduism and Buddhists. Terms like “Idol Worshipers” and “Pagans” are very derogatory.

Shalom!

What does the word Infidel mean? Why does Islam bully Jews over our holy sites like the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron, and the temple mount in Jerusalem.
Islam’s holy sites are Mecca and Medina. Al Aqsa is Islam’s third holiest site. Jerusalem and the Temple mount are Judaism’s one and holy site. If you look at our Torah and bible, Israel and Jerusalem are every other word. Judaism’s spiritual substance is physical space of Jerusalem.

You say Islam recognizes other religions and holy sites. Why not our holy sites? The tomb of the Patriarchs our patriarchs when managed by Islam would stop Jews at the steps of Mosque the Muslims built over the tomb? They will not allow Jews to enter the tomb?The temple mount where Mohammed flew to heaven. Mohammed never visited Jerusalem when alive. Jerusalem was the seat of two Jewish temples that each stood for 400 years.

All you hear from Shia is Al Quds!!! Al Quds. Why the fight over our holy sites? Many many Muslims and religious leaders from Islam refuse to acknowledge that the temples lie under Al Aqsa. Why?

What does the word Infidel mean?

Shalom,

Infidel is an English word and not Arabic. It is as derogatory as “idol worshiper” and “pagan”. Quran is discouraged to be translated. Most of the translations by the individuals are more than 100 years old and translated with Wahhabi agenda. The most selling English translated Quran in the USA is by N. J. Dawood. Again, a very old translation. He is also a Iraqi Jew with a greater agenda. All Qurans are translated verse by verse, his translations are four to five verses, running into each other.

I believe you are internally battling between Judaism and the Evil State of Isreal, and the rest is smoke screen. The land belongs to Palestinians, and it is as paramount to Red (Native) Indians claiming the entire USA.

The Jews were uprooted from Palestine by Byzantines. The second Caliph Omar had a Jew as his most trusted adviser who had converted to Islam. Omar didn’t make a move, without the Jew guiding him for Power and Mammon, he allowed the Jews to come back to Palestine for Dhimmi tax. He was the very first Caliph who spread Islam by SWORD for Power and Mammon.

Though, there is good news on the horizon. Rivlin to tap Gantz to form next government, his office says: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/Hk0YeAoS8 as Gantz has 61 vote behind him to form the government. Lately, all the air is out of Netanyahu and he looks very, very scared!

I am sure some of the Likudnik will abandon ship as the rats always abandon the sinking ship!

The liberal permanent state failed America – not the Trump administration.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) took the wrong tact on testing for a pandemic – period. South Korea did pandemic testing right – NOT the CDC. What the CDC created was faulty. It had regulations that stopped the US health systems, from doing the right method of testing. The CDC is part of the permanent state, funded (with oversight) by congress.

Chuck Schumer has been an elected member of congress for 22 years – Pelosi for 33 years — Trump for 3 years.

Schumer and Pelosi had 55 years of oversight on the CDC – as leaders they have responsibility for the CDC screwups – NOT Trump!

For Schumer and Pelosi to dump on Trump for CDC failures is total BS!

The liberal elite and their permanent state have left the American people defenseless.

Well we can disagree about land ownership. For sure there were Arabs living there not known as Palestinians at that time. There were Jews living there as well albeit a smaller community.
The land was divided between Arab and Jews. The Jews accepted it and the Arabs did not. There was a war. All the Arab Jews got thrown out of Muslim countries came to Israel. All the Arabs were but into refugee camps instead of making them citizens like in Lebanon etc. Finally they did in Jordan.
The land was split with the larger portion going to the Arabs and the smaller portion to the Jews.
What is unfair about that?
No one is giving the native Americans back their land. The Arabs lost. The land was conquered by the Jews much the way Islam conquered its lands or the Ottomans their land. That is the way of the world conquer and divide
All of Arabia is Muslim a tiny line on the map is Jewish. There is no more left in Israel their is only right and more right. I agree with you that Netanyahu has been in power too long.

Peace will come brother when Islam accepts the sovereignty of Israel as a Jewish state, and abandons a Palestinian state which was a made up country from the beginning.

Israel, We Won’t Forget Rachel

On March 16th, an Israeli soldier* driving a bulldozer two-stories high crushed to death 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, an American nonviolent human rights protestor. According to numerous witnesses and photographic documentation, she was killed intentionally.

Israel has killed Americans before. (And thousands since.)

https://ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/corrie.html

https://ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/corrie-articles.html

*Yid parasite

5 dancing shlomos

T-shirts, coffee mugs for sale.

“I was here the day the earth stood still.”

5ds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_kidnapping_and_murder_of_Israeli_teenagers

T-shirts, coffee mugs for sale.

“I was here the day the earth stood still.”

*1100 bs

* 1100 Israeli’s blown to bits by suicide bombs in 2000. By all accounts intentionally.

*Murderers every last one to the tunnels they build to Jewish schools to kill Jewish children.

From a diseased belief system,
diseased minds with lies and
deceptions for brain cells.

Humans may care for Gengis Khan,
Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Lincoln

but,

humans do not care for
diseased parasites determined
to control, destroy, suck bloodless
the human race.

No one cares for these parasites, some 2500 years old.

Other:

any one know the fund raising methods
of universities in countries not USA?

Are they constantly fund raising, harassing
grads for money, overcharging students?

5 dancing shlomos

Peace will come brother when Islam accepts the sovereignty of Israel as a Jewish state, and abandons a Palestinian state which was a made up country from the beginning.

I don’t think Islam and/or any Muslim and/or any Arab Country has ever objected for Israel being a Jewish state. Where did you get such a silly idea for another smoke screen!

Yes, I have heard give other countries, such as Jordon or Egypt’s Desert to Palestinians for peace as we Jews want to devour the whole Palestinian land. We Jews don’t want two state solution, we are too busy devouring the whole of Palestine. Once, we have done that we will then devour Jordon, Lebanon and Syria with no sight in end with all those conquests.

Fran I would like to chew on this very carefully as drums of war are heard stronger and stronger. Chew on this, when Putin walked over and took Crimea. At that time, I said that both Obama and Putin are in cahoots and Obama gave the Crimea to Putin on a Silver Platter. People thought that I being a dumb foreigner, I don’t know the meaning of cahoots. Chew on it Fran!

Also chew on that Iran is at the borders of Israel, where Israel is very far, far away from Iran. Obama didn’t want to destroy Syria, just felicitate both Russia and Iran to be on the borders of Israel, in the fog of war!

Corona is fake. All the passenger planes are being converted to cargo planes. KSA and Russia are smart to bring down the price of oil for less then $25. Wonder why?

I don’t think Islam and/or any Muslim and/or any Arab Country has ever objected for Israel being a Jewish state. Where did you get such a silly idea for another smoke screen

Huh? The Palestinian leadership refuses to accept Israel as a Jewish state, and Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran refuse to accept any state with a Jewish majority and want all Jews to leave. Why don’t you listen to what they say?

Assad this is the problem with these type of communications. Corona is not a fake. People have it here in Suffolk county where I live.
Israel has no desire to take over other countries. If Arab Muslim counties believe that Israel is a Jewish state, why does the Palestinian leadership refuse to sign off on that. THEY REFUSE.
Look to the Arab community to solve the problems of Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, not Israel.
There are no more wars, only proxy wars. Iran is not strong enough to attack Israel, which has very advance weaponry.
Israel is not the problem, it is the surrounding Arab countries that are dysfunctional.

There are 1.7 million Arab citizens of Israel that can stay. All Palestinians can stay just not a state on the land of Israel.

I hope you run into a Mexican drug lord and you choke on the evil parasite of opium. The drug money parasites in Islam keep drug lords booming.

*1100 bs

So much for this being a free society.

‘As you most likely have heard already, this afternoon the Health Officer of the City of Berkeley joined the Public Health Officers of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties to announce a legal order directing residents to shelter at home.

This unprecedented action legally limits activity, travel and business functions to only the most essential needs for three weeks beginning March 17. For further information, please review the FAQs posted on the City of Berkeley’s website.

It is imperative we all abide by the orders of the Public Health Officer and the Library must take additional actions beyond postponing programming and the closing of our facilities.’

That this is utterly unnecessary and not even particularly useful doesn’t exactly help.

…The sole consolation is that it’s unenforceable. ‘I’m homeless; no, I don’t have I.D.’

‘…The idiot others are brainwashed by the likes of Fran…’/i>

Oh, I don’t think Fran’s brainwashing very many people — not in the direction she would like, anyway.

…certainly she must be helping quite a few to make up their minds about Israel — but again, not in the way she would like.

It is important to realize not all Jews are like Fran. One must try to keep that in mind.

Oh, I don’t think Fran’s brainwashing very many people — not in the direction she would like, anyway.

Please see the following thread for my two responses #379 and #380, to your post #376.

Give proper credit to all Muslims, to Sunni Muslims, to Shia Muslims, to Arabs, to Iranians, and other Muslims.

Please see the following thread for my two responses #379 and #380, to your post #376.

Forgot to quote to give the link for the thread. Here is the link:

https://www.unz.com/gatzmon/why-does-netanyahu-keep-winning/

‘…All you hear from Shia is Al Quds!!! Al Quds. Why the fight over our holy sites? Many many Muslims and religious leaders from Islam refuse to acknowledge that the temples lie under Al Aqsa. Why?’‘

There’s nothing to acknowledge. Al-Aqsa is the Temple. The Muslims, recipients of the restored Quran, made sure they had the right place, then rebuilt it.

Happy to clear that up for you. No need to thank me.

Good one Colin, you hit the nail on the head. Jews and Israelis disagree with that assessment, but I am glad you pointed out the divide as Islam claims to be the owners of our holy sites.

That is what wars are about, you fight over the disagreement over territory and there are winners and losers. Islam lost and the Jews won, so it is ours by force for now, just like Islam conquered their lands by force. You might as well be talking into a paper bag for all impact you and the people that think like you have. I guess you live in some fantasy land.

Like trying to get the US to give Texas back to Mexico. I don’t think so, but it shows how comical and ignorant you do deny Jewish historical claims, which most enlightened Muslims agree on. I guess Talha has done a good job converting you.

Wadaa’an

‘… Like trying to get the US to give Texas back to Mexico…’

Actually, the pertinent point would be that we didn’t take Mexico proper — even though we’d conquered all of it.

That’s what wise winners do.

‘Good one Colin, you hit the nail on the head. Jews and Israelis disagree with that assessment, but I am glad you pointed out the divide as Islam claims to be the owners of our holy sites…’

You’re still missing the point. As far as Muslims are concerned, there never was a new religion; just the original.

They got rid of the accumulated corruptions and restored the one true text — which is from God, and which is eternal, and immutable.

Now, if you want to stick to your corrupted files, you do that, but they’ve got the restored version, and they put the Temple back up too.

corrupted files…restored version

The latest OS has all the bug fixes and cumulative patches…and is backwards compatible.

Peace.

You go guy.

You’re still missing the point. As far as Muslims are concerned, there never was a new religion; just the original.

Can I quote you? Should I spread the word that we don’t get it? Thanks for clueing me in. I feel what is the word so so enlightened.

Lol. We have been around a long time and heard a lot better chive then that. We just don’t get it? We got some big theological guns in are arsenal Colin.

I am glad you get it Colin. Where would we all be without the retired mover telling it like it is?

Colin is a lot like Wally. No one died in the German WW2 camps of anything other then natural causes. Why? Wally says so and he sent a memo out explaining how it went down. Those who think otherwise simply did not get Wally’s memo.

Colin believes Israel is evil and Islam is the uncorrupted authentic version of Judaism restored!!! Why? Because Colin heard a Muslim say so and sent a memo out to explain. Colin has never been to Israel or actually studied theological arguments regarding Judaism and Islam by scholars. He has never spoken to an IDF soldier or a Palestinian. He knows because someone told him.

And like Wally he sent a memos with a fact sheet.

What kind of mind despite all signs of authenticity of two distinct versions of the truth, decides an argument based on likability. They “don’t like” the people who disagree with them. It is a popularity contest. Group think is a big deal here in UR. Gilad invented an entire philosophical argument to wind his Jew hatred around.

Only on UR could someone with hate as their argument win a popularity contest.

Only on UR could you pedal a bogus claim that Jews spread a virus to deliberately cause death and get 700 people to sign off and share the how and why. UR is the emotional comfort blanket for haters to stupid to reason for themselves. Questions? Just ask Colin or Wally.

‘Can I quote you?’

Yes, you may.

‘…Questions? Just ask Colin or Wally.’

It’s striking how you manage to insinuate, first, that I don’t think the Holocaust happened, and second, that I subscribe to the theory that Israel created the Corona Virus.

I’ve underestimated you! However deficient you may be in human intelligence in its more commendable aspects, you are possessed of a sort of rudimentary, vicious cunning.

Pay attention: Below is what you have said a million times in a million different ways on a million posts. I never said anything about you not believing in the Holocaust or the Corona virus. I was using those arguments as analogy for comparison to your one track mind, when there are legitimate counter arguments. Funny you think I am vicious and cunning while you following me around on these threads calling me names and harassing me not to disseminate information but to humiliate me.

There’s nothing to acknowledge. Al-Aqsa is the Temple. The Muslims, recipients of the restored Quran, made sure they had the right place, then rebuilt it.

Happy to clear that up for you. No need to thank me.

Harassing me with your pseudo pretentious language that makes no sense.
Like: sort of rudimentary, vicious cunning.

What does rudimentary, vicious cunning mean? Is the cunning like a fog of cunning. Or is the viciousness like a sort of mean but not fully mean because it is rudimentary.
or my favorite Colin faux intellectual comment like this.

human intelligence in its more commendable aspects,

Is that actual english? Like what is human intelligence? What are the more commendable aspects of human intelligence?
Ah Colin keep your thesaurus close by. Some day you will have some lingual breakthroughs, and maybe be able to reason ideas on your own.

The situation in Greece seems more important to me than this virus.

I gotta be honest, that seems pretty insecure, to need to take over another religions holy sites and insist that you’re the restored version.

I find Islam a little less impressive for that, tbh.

I’m beginning to find “replacement theology” fascinating, and I didn’t know it was such a big part of Islam too. It really explains a lot of the history.

It’s really based on envy and as such is a backhanded compliment, but it may explain why Islam and Christianity had such a harsh and uncharitable attitude towards non-members and consigned them to hell – in such stark contrast to the liberal Jewish attitude, which sees other religions as potentially valid paths to God, and in contrast to the relaxed attitude of the Eastern faiths.

It is because they are insecure – so lack the self confidence to accept that other paths may also be legitimate.

I was talking to a an orthodox Jewish friend today, and he said that any religion that says non-members go to hell cannot be true, and that’s how you know it.

I am also increasingly struck by how Islam also has a Devil, Dajjal, and sees evil as an I dependent force at war with God. It seems Islam is not as monotheistic as I thought, and shares shades of a dualistic theology with Christianity, which has Satan.

Jews do not have a Dajjal or Satan figure in our theology, we have the “evil inclination” – I am beginning to think that Judaism should really be grouped more with the older Eastern faiths rather than the young and derivative Western faiths, since it seems to share more with them and to derive directly from a more ancient source, as do the Eastern faiths.

Interesting discussions here, and new things come to light constantly. Thanks to all the Muslim contributors here and to their promoters like Colin Wright.

Yeah it has been a slog feast. I think Talha has almost fully converted Colin, with ego stroking. He executes the revisionist theme flawlessly. Our Temple is now the mosque with an upgrade. It also helps as I stated in earlier posts that hatred becomes the raison d’être backing their argument. Fascinating. You could promote Baal with child sacrifice and people on UR would buy it if couched in proper Jew hatred. Like the Jews made them sacrifice their children so they are the victims of the Jews.

Also Islam seems to be dependent on the caliphate linage from the prophet which is confusing on who inherited the mantle. The internal struggle seems ripe for demonization of one over the other, so Jews become part of a larger plot. In Judaism the revelation was the beginning and the end. Nothing to fight over. I wonder why Mohammed could not seal it in his life time?

More ways in which Judaism is unlike its derivative religions and more like Eastern faiths –

Judaism seeks to “unite” Earth and Heaven – we don’t reject physical things but seek to elevate them and make them sacred. The theme of uniting and making whole is a big part of many Jewish rituals. Uniting is also a theme of Eastern faiths, while Christianity and Islam seem more dualistic.

There is no such thing as eternal damnation – at most, you get one year in hell according to Judaism, where you are refined so you can face God, not punished. The extremely harsh belief in eternal damnation, present in Islam and Christianity, is absent in Judaism and Eastern faiths, which have an ultimately optimistic view that in the end, everyone is saved.

At the End of Time, both Christianity and Islam seem to envision a vengeful and destructive process that is very bloody, with Satan like figures and non believers being destroyed etc – in Judaism, when God redeems the Jewish people all the people in the world will rejoice and sing for joy, finally understanding that the process of Jewish redemption is for the whole world. Ultimately, the non Jews partake of the joy of the Jews – everyone is saved.

Although I’m being critical of Christianity and Islam, I still think they are beautiful and valid in many, many ways. They too reflect the source.

Colin Wright is temperementally Muslim – or at least, the bad version of Islam that dominates the religion today (but does not reflect what the religion could be at its best, after it matures). Angry, primal, and primarily motivated by hate, opposition, and envy.

His taking his place alongside AnonStarter and Kevin Barrett is all but assured. I will attend his conversion ceremony 🙂

I was watching that gil-shuster guy on YouTube interview Palestinians about whether they would let a non-Zionist Israeli – a Jew – live in Palestine. A few people were incredibly gracious and said sure, but I was shocked by the sheer racism of the many who said never – their voice seeething with hate. It was startling. And I thought – right there, is why this conflict continues. Right there.

You know Fran, Christianity started out extremely insecure about Jews with its “replacement” theology and insisting no other paths are valid, etc – but ended up maturing. Islam seems much more insecure than I thought, and more dualistic, like Christianity – so I see a similar process of maturing at work likely here as well.

The thing, you can’t base your identity on being “negative” permanently.

Yeah I get all that. But Christianity was top dog for a long time and successful in presenting itself as the face of the West. Clearly Islam is on the decline and the Jews have been very successful in merging separation of church and state with Capitalism into a pretty dynamic society in Israel. You would think that the Islamic countries and Muslims would seek a life line of compatibility with the Jews out of a desire for survival never mind advancement. They are just unable to function in Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Europe anywhere. Yet inexplicably they are full of rage and irrationality towards us, like a death rattle of Jihadism. Lets throw bombs inside Israel. What good will that do?
They are not adapting to life without a caliph to bind them together and tell them what to do like Umar. They need authoritarian direction, they do not do well with freedom.
Christianity survived because it help direct democracy and capitalism along with the Jews to bring more prosperity to more people then any system in the world. Unfortunately Islam requires a totalitarian socialistic system of dictators.

‘… Unfortunately Islam requires a totalitarian socialistic system of dictators…’

Not that you’re bigoted or anything.

Would you say that Judaism requires shooting unarmed children?

You would think that the Islamic countries and Muslims would seek a life line of compatibility with the Jews out of a desire for survival never mind advancement.

Sure, but all declining cultures start acting in dysfunctional ways. No longer being able to successfully adapt – losing contact with reality – is a primary feature of being in decline. And declining cultures start lashing out and acting self-destructively, like Europe did in the early 20th century. Islam is in a similar place now.

I am beginning to think that the dualistic tendencies in Christianity and Islam don’t give them staying power, because it creates imbalance and one sidedness. Each religion took a side of Judaism and overemphasized it – this led to a great burst of initial energy, but no staying power.

While I think Islam will mature and mellow out, I don’t know if will ever again be a major force in the world.

Clearly Islam is on the decline and the Jews have been very successful in merging separation of church and state with Capitalism into a pretty dynamic society in Israel. You would think that the Islamic countries and Muslims would seek a life line of compatibility with the Jews out of a desire for survival never mind advancement.

Of course, but if the entire premise of your existence is that you “replace” Jews, then rational considerations take a back seat.

If Muslims have to adapt to Jews, and not the other way around, then Islam is a lie. That’s the problem. Islam does not have an identity independent of Jews, I now see – if Islam is true, and replaces Jews and corrects and restores Judaism, then Muslims being equal to or under Jews invalidates Islam.

By putting themselves in opposition to Reality, Muslims have created an unwinnnable situation for themselves. This is the problem when one opposes Reality.

Christianity had the exact same problem with relation to Jews. Both religions have beauty and truth, but both committed an Original Sin of putting themselves in fundamental opposition to Reality.

Christianity corrected course, because Reality cannot be ignored forever. It bites back. Islam will necessarily do so as well – or die. You cannot thrive if you are fundamentally at odds with Reality.

They are not adapting to life without a caliph to bind them together and tell them what to do like Umar. They need authoritarian direction, they do not do well with freedom.
Christianity survived because it help direct democracy and capitalism along with the Jews to bring more prosperity to more people then any system in the world. Unfortunately Islam requires a totalitarian socialistic system of dictators.

This is true, at the moment.

To add –

The major concept in Judaism is redemption of a broken world. One repairs a world that was originally perfect but got broken. One heals, unites opposites, elevates the physical, redeems, and repairs. Those are the Jewish themes.

The major concept in Christianity and Islam appear to be battle – a battle between good and evil. A battle against one side of Gods creation. And a battle against all other spiritual paths.

Judaism is clearly closer to Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. And Islam and Christianity have clear dualistic tendencies that they probably picked up from Zoroastrianism.

Very interesting.

‘I gotta be honest, that seems pretty insecure, to need to take over another religions holy sites and insist that you’re the restored version…’

What’s ‘insecure’ about it? Were the Protestants ‘insecure’ because they insisted on correcting the errors they perceived as having crept into Catholic practice? For that matter, were the Maccabees ‘insecure’ because they insisted on purifying Judaism? Mohammed confronted what was no doubt a lot of confused Judaic and Christian gibberish and made sense of it — or got the true word from God, according to his followers.

It’s okay with me. I don’t feel any need to somehow downgrade Islam and make it ‘insecure’ with respect to Judaism or imply that its claims are necessarily invalid. Maybe they’re right, and at least the text isn’t overtly genocidal or internally inconsistent.

Not that, to be frank, I really have a dog in this fight. I can’t see any good reason to believe any of it — but abstractly, both Islam and Christianity are a lot more pleasing in their respective ways than that dreadful collection of ancient bigotries, murderous prescriptions, and outrageous superstitions that you’re pleased to subscribe to. I mean, believe in appeasing the volcano God by casting a plump young virgin into the fiery pit if you must — but don’t expect me to find the ideology appealing, or feel obliged to accord it some especial esteem.

Really, what’s going on here is that you’re desperately clinging to some sense of objective superiority for Judaism — one that can in some way transcend the inherent egocentricity of any belief system. Given the rather obvious shortcomings of Judaism as a consistent, plausible, or even appealing belief system, that’s not too tenable.

But insist on adhering to it. Whatever. I suppose your sense of loyalty is commendable.

You do need to realize, however, that you’re never going to get anyone else to buy it. Worse, it’s not as if you even manage to more or less go off and mind your own business — as say, the Mennonites, the Mormons, or whatever Muslim sects I don’t know about do. No, you want us to put up with your crimes, fight wars to fulfill your pathological hostilities, and fund the whole ball of wax.

…and you want us to agree it’s all a fine idea and like it, to boot.

Fuck you.

‘Yeah it has been a slog feast. I think Talha has almost fully converted Colin, with ego stroking. He executes the revisionist theme flawlessly. Our Temple is now the mosque with an upgrade. ‘

It always was the mosque. Talha didn’t introduce me to that concept; it’s Islam 1.

Good class; you should take it.

Very interesting. At the end of our battles and exploits on this site Aaron we have cracked the code of Islamic /Jewish incompatibility. You have been able to clearly articulate it.
It’s amazing to really understand it.
Israelis and religious Jews have understood it for a while. That is why Israel has rolled up the peace plans. They figured out they are not dealing with rational people. Losers in Gaza hurling bombs into Israel. Or creating arson fires at the borders so children get maimed. Insanity. Israelis and Jews also figured out it was never about land that it was always about religious hegemony.
The problem is the left still supports Muslims as anti colonist. Maybe they will figure it out.

It is hard to understand that Islamist are so counter intuitive to life and happiness, most people believe they are oppressed by Israel. They cannot fathom that the Islamic leaders are oppressing their own people as authoritarian oppressors. What westerner could understand that? I always think why can’t these people stand up for themselves their leaders are so corrupt and awful. Look at the Assad’s father and son.
I had hoped to talk straight up with the Muslims on this site. Look how that went. A small microcosm of the entire saga.
Judaism and the eastern religions require personal
prayer and partricipitation. It is an individual effort. Islam requires an Umah to unite around a common goal of converting and conquering with the goal of everyone eventually becoming Muslim and part of the Umah controlled by an Islamic religious leader. Islam cannot survive church and state separation.
Attaturk tried but it lead to secularism and is viewed as a failure.

Needing to invalidate others to prop your self up seems very insecure to me. Its the same thing as the idea that all non-members of your religion go to hell – you’re not confident enough in your path to accept others may be good in their own way.

All this is classic insecurity.

You say that we don’t leave you alone…well, all we wanted in ancient times was one small piece of land in the middle of nowhere to practice our religion and way of life. We had no imperial vision. We just wanted a base to serve God in our own way. But first the Greeks, then the Romans, wouldn’t leave us alone, not to mention the Persians, Babylonians, etc.

No one could leave us alone.

Then Christians come along and create this new religion based on invalidating our religion and replacing it and tell us no path but theirs is valid and that our father is Satan. Is that leaving us alone? If you want yo create your own religion, fine – if you want to base it on ours and borrow from it, also fine. But why the unnecessary hostility right at the start?

And you say we could have just been like Menonnites in Europe – but you know this is not true. Until the modern period, Europe was not tolerant of religious minorities. Peaceful inoffensive groups like the Cathars – whose crime was to actually live out Christian ideals like love and self-abasement – were viciously exterminated in a very bloody manner. The Wars of Religion in Europe were the most vicious and bloody wars Europe endured until the ideological wars of the 20th century – because Europeans would not let others peacefully practice their religion.

Jews had no choice but to ally with the powerful nobility in order to survive – they had to make themselves useful to those in power or they would never have survived in intolerant Christian Europe and would have been exterminated like the Cathars. Even so, they were constantly attacked and expelled. All manner of healthy and good occupation was denied them, and they were not allowed to bear weapons. When they became good at making money anyways, they are hated.

Then the Muslims create a new religion based on ours and borrowing from it, and right away also claim to invalidate us and replace us, claim.our holy sites as theirs and immediately build mosques on all of them, rather than, in brotherhood and peace, merely offering another path while respecting ours. And then they decide they have to subjugate us, and make us second class citizens to glorify their religion.

Is that leaving us alone?

And even today, how many simply cannot leave Israel alone and let it live…

Now, I’m not particularly blaming Christians or Muslims or Europeans or whoever, because this is how humans act – life appears to be a struggle of all against all, man is wolf to man, and the way of mankind seems to be to conquer and subjugate and extend his power over whoever he can. Jewish redemption means an end to all this.

But the idea that Jews could have survived as an inoffensive minority that retested into the hills, much less thrived, is refuted by every page in the history books.

‘… Christianity survived because it help direct democracy and capitalism along with the Jews to bring more prosperity to more people then any system in the world…’

That statement is idiotic.

‘And even today, how many simply cannot leave Israel alone and let it live…’

…particularly those into whose faces you’re grinding your boot.

Why, oh why, do your victims wiggle and squeak so? You poor, misunderstood conquerors of Palestine. All you want to do is torment your victims in peace, for all time, but will they just hold still?

Oh, it’s a tough row you’ve got to hoe — and no one understands.

‘…The major concept in Judaism is redemption of a broken world. One repairs a world that was originally perfect but got broken. One heals, unites opposites, elevates the physical, redeems, and repairs. Those are the Jewish themes.

The major concept in Christianity and Islam appear to be battle – a battle between good and evil. A battle against one side of Gods creation. And a battle against all other spiritual paths…’

This doesn’t seem to owe much to anything beyond your preferences. You describe Judaism not as it is, but as you apparently would prefer your reader to believe it is. Perhaps you would genuinely like it to be that way as well; that still doesn’t make it so.

As to Christianity and Islam, my own impressions — which I think are balanced if not particularly well-informed — is that the emphasis in neither one is as you describe.

Christianity focuses on a laudable if perhaps impractical renunciation of all sin. Islam’s emphasis seems to be more on a similar but somewhat distinct ideal of right living. Neither one is about ‘a battle against one side of God’s creation.’ That’s nonsense.

As to a ‘battle against all other spiritual paths,’ well, Judaism’s hardly in a position to criticize there, is it? Let’s be honest, Aaron. I mean, we all know exactly what’s in the Torah. We also know what Jewish practice has been through the ages. Nope; spiritual pluralism hasn’t exactly been one of Judaism’s strong suites.

Christianity isn’t tolerant either — no claims there — but it’s indisputable that Islam is the only one of the three that extends even conditional tolerance to the other two. If tolerance is a criteria, point to Islam. No question.

So, if you want to go on and on about religions, that’s fine, but at least try not to lie, instead of endlessly distorting everything so as to exalt Judaism by deceit.

Ironically, your very means of argumentation hardly does credit to Judaism. What are we to think of a faith that can only be defended by such distortions?

Goldman Sachs’ “Let Them Eat Cake”

At least someone’s doing well: Goldman Sachs gives CEO 20% raise as it forecasts crash for America

Even as the US stock market continued its free-fall due to the coronavirus pandemic, the top banker at Goldman Sachs got a pay raise of $2 million a year, a $7.65 million cash bonus, plus stock options worth $17.85 million.
His compensation package is the biggest for a Goldman Sachs CEO since Lloyd Blankfein took home $41 million in 2007, right before the mortgage collapse.

https://www.rt.com/business/483690-goldman-sachs-ceo-raise/

Oh, it’s a tough row you’ve got to hoe — and no one understands.

Indeed. Such a tormented soul.

I know you’re an atheist, Colin, and you may not believe me when I say I don’t do conversions, but all of this aside, there’s a reason I regularly cite the biblical record while most here think it isn’t worth the paper it’s penned on. We can rightfully question and reasonably reject a lot of what we find in it; and yet, if it ends there, we ignore a crucial narrative that helps to explain not only Israel’s conduct to date, but more importantly, prophecies they continue to rationalize as unfulfilled. I won’t speculate as to why Aaron assiduously avoids addressing the latter topic, but it’s clear that he fears it, which would explain his concerted effort to divert discussion in alternate directions every time it’s mentioned.

We referenced Song of Songs 5: 16, in which the Hebrew equivalent of the name “Muhammad” explicitly appears, yet since a Semitic name always bears meaning beyond the name itself, it’s been disingenuously translated as “altogether lovely” in most bibles.

At the following link, you’ll find a line-by-line comparison between Song of Songs 5: 10-16 and a physical description of Muhammad as provided by multiple biographical sources:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010927130413/http://shibli.zaman.net/ss516/ss516-1b.htm

There are others related to Song of Songs available here, Part 2 being the sole broken link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010815060544/http://shibli.zaman.net/etymology.htm

Fully aware of my own bias, I would simply ask the following:

How is it that an explicit reference to Muhammad, one providing an accurate physical description of him, could have been retrofitted by Muslims into a record of Scripture kept so closely under the guardianship of the most elite rabbinical authories?

Something else to consider from The Interpreter’s Bible Encyclopedia:

..and the book itself [Song of Songs] as an allegory depicting in great detail the experiences of the nation in its relations with its God from the Exodus down to the coming of the Messiah and the building of the Third Temple. This in general is also the interpretation of the Midrash Rabbah and such famous scholars as Saadia ben Joseph, Rashi, and Ibn Ezra, although they differ considerably among themselves in details.

Rabbinical authorities far more proximate to the original appearance of Song of Songs saw it as allegorical, a reference to the terminus of prophethood following the Messiah, including construction of the Third Temple. This dovetails nicely with what you’ve often said concerning al-Aqsa. Even the classical Jewish priesthood would agree.

As for Aaron’s lachrymose disposition, I suppose it can’t be helped. Who knows to what neurosis I’d fall victim if compelled to defend the amorphous pastiche of moral relativism that passes for Judaism in his world?

There but for the grace of God …

Yes, Fran, our discussions on this site with our Muslim friends has proven very fruitful indeed. It took time, but clarity is beginning to emerge. A lot of your comments helped me along the path to understanding as well, and a lot if the responses you elicited.

I don’t think any of us understood the extent to which Islam is not truly monotheistic but dualistic – and dualistic religions do not seek reconciliation but seek to fight and destroy evil. I think this is one of two keys to understanding why Islam does not seem able to get along with Jews – or anyone else, really.

The figure of Dajjal should have been a clue. If a Satan figure is central to your theology, someone has to fill that role for you to crush. You are in a battle and you need an enemy.

Like you, I was extremely puzzled by this whole ascribing all evil to one side and all good to the other. The extreme things that even Talha was willing to believe about Jews made no sense to me, not to mention the other Muslims hee, like Kevin Barrett and AS. And I was also puzzled that no matter how generous I was to the good side of Islam, it was never reciprocated. A tone either of hostility, or of attempting to deny value, was always kept up, however subtle.

I had an epiphany when AS responded to my praising Islam with telling me Judaism is based on a Lie – he was quite polite, but could not in good faith abandon his basic theology. I don’t blame him, but it helped me understand his theology.

It was apparent that what was sought was not harmony and peace, but aggressive domination and defeat – and if your theology is dualistic, you cannot help but think this way. The world is set up as a battle between good and evil. Others must represent evil and be crushed or subjugated. You don’t strive for healing, unity, and rectification, but victory and subjugation.

Now, this way of thinking is not without merit – but it is a primitive reflection of the Truth, which is not the defeat of evil but its repair and elevation, the ultimate unity of opposites. Jewish insistence on monotheism – on unity and oneness – was meant to oppose exactly such dualistic tendencies. But the derivative religions could not maintain that high level, and for that reason, perhaps, lack staying power. We shall see.

The second key to understanding Islam, that I mentioned earlier, I had as an epiphany when Colin Wright very helpfully made that comment that our holy sites belong to Islam and they are the corrected version of Judaism, and Talha responded by agreeing.

I suddenly thought – lame. So that’s all it is – not a grand and magnificent tradition in its own right, but based on envy, and derivative. And then I felt pity and compassion – a religion that acts this way suffers from a massive inferiority complex. And that gave me the key to understanding the extremely harsh idea that everyone not a member of your religion goes to hell l, which seemed so puzzling, and the strange need to subjugate Jews and Christians.

It has been an interesting journey.

The desperate attempt by Islam to inject Mohammed into Jewish scripture. The Song of Songs is a love poem. Odd to find a prophesy of Mohammed in that location.
Compare to prediction of the Messiah (Jesus) in the book of prophets Isaiah. It makes more sense to find the prediction of a prophet in the actual book by prophets. Compare Song of Songs sensual depiction of a lover, to the Prophet Isaih 11:16

Isaiah 11:6 English Standard Version (ESV)
6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
    and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
    and a little child shall lead them.

Song of songs: http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2014/05/muhammad-in-song-of-solomon-516.html
Excerpt: Desperados !!! Islamic Desperados

This is what happens when Muslim apologists try to force Muhammad into the Bible. They go to a passage in which Solomon’s bride is praising her husband’s body, and they expect us to believe that she’s actually having adulterous thoughts about a future prophet. Shabir Ally and Zakir Naik take a perfectly normal Hebrew word and try to transform it into a prophecy of Muhammad, but in doing so they end up claiming that Muhammad was Ezekiel’s wife and that God promises to desecrate him!

Since Shabir calls Song of Solomon 5:16 the “most significant” reference to Muhammad in the entire Old Testament, we can only wonder how persuasive the rest are!

The central idea in Judaism is “tikkum olam” – I am sure you will admit this, at least. It means rectification of the world, quite simply.

And the main theme in the Kabbalah is reconciling opposites and unifying the physical and the spiritual.

The central idea in Christianity is “spiritual warfare”. And the central idea in Islam is “Jihad” – which of course has a spiritual as well as a physical side, but means quite simply battle, war, struggle.

Now, both Christianity and Islam have a Satan like figure – a Devil or Head Demon that opposes God and must be crushed and destroyed. Judaism does not have this. Satan is merely “the Accuser” in Judaism, a loyal servant of God who tests man.

And lets examine Fran’s and my attiude contrasted with that of AnonStarter, Kevin Barrett, Talha, and your proto-Muslim self – the Muslim contingent here are willing to ascribe extreme levels of malice and deliberate mischief to Jews stretching back to ancient times. Fran is more fiery than I am, certainly, but our basic attitude is one of “disappointment” in Islam, frequent praise and appreciation, and a hope that it will ripen, mature, and perfect itself. We lament that it is “immature”, and we don’t harshly condemn it as “evil”.

This is the basic different between a monotheistic theology based on healing and rectification – “tikkun olam” – and a dualistic theology based on a battle between good and evil.

Also, Islam believes everyone not a member of their religion goes to hell – this is not tolerant. And Islam commands its adherents to subjugate Jews and Christians because it glorifies Islam that people of other religions are second class citizens. Given some level of protection, yes, but the intent is to demean. This is not tolerant, although more tolerant than Christianity.

By contrast, Judaism has the “ger toshav” – the non-Jew who is allowed to live in Israel. The whole atmosphere surrounding how he is to be treated is markedly different. We are reminded that we were strangers in Egypt, so a basis for compassion is established. And he is classed among the main category of “unfortunately”, along with the widow and the orphan, and has to be treated with consideration. Finally, the morning prayer service includes prayers for his protection. Judaism believes God is glorified by treating foreigners with compassion.

This is a very interesting article:

Wikipedia Slashes Spanish Flu Death Rate

Looks like Wikipedia is busily rewriting history during the current pandemic by lowering the Spanish Flu mortality rate from 10-20% to 2-3%. Any ideas why?

Colin like most of the haters on this site will never get past their hate to reconcile conflicting ideas. They have no ability to do that. I can rethink Judaism and brutally criticize it (the bronze age, Purim etc) and still see the good.
Colin and the extreme left who hate Jews for conspiracies or whatever will follow the old adage: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. But who could possibly think that an atheist and the radical left Marxist and anarchist can embrace and or be embraced by Islam is laughable. The next up on the WN list after Jews will be Muslims. The next up on the Islamic list will be the non believer and renegade non conformist. It is the ultimate in phony alliance. Hatred is powerful glue. I had no idea the level that hatred blots out reason and the ability to reason until UR. When commentators post memes of tortured children and point to Israel. When Israel point of fact has less tortured children then any Arab country or any country in the world. It is fact. Look at the children next door in Syria.

The smarter you are with regards to attempting conversations with our Muslim friends on this site the more brutal the responses. I guess the less bright people are more malleable to their ideas. But the conversations are like night and day. Case in point they will no longer talk to me directly, only thru intermediaries like Colin

‘…Jews had no choice but to ally with the powerful nobility in order to survive – they had to make themselves useful to those in power or they would never have survived in intolerant Christian Europe and would have been exterminated like the Cathars. Even so, they were constantly attacked and expelled. All manner of healthy and good occupation was denied them, and they were not allowed to bear weapons. When they became good at making money anyways, they are hated…’

I think you reverse cause and effect here. For example, the Ashkenazim did not appear in Carolingian Europe as earnest settlers seeking only to farm — but were then denied the chance and so had to become slave traders, etc and became hated on that account. Nor did they move into the Sixteenth Century Ukraine, asking if please, could they settle down and become peasants as well. No: from the start they traded in slaves in Dark-age Europe, and from the start they offered their services to the Polish Catholic nobility of the Sixteenth Century as arrendors, willing to oppress and exploit the Orthodox Christian peasantry on their behalf.

In fact, when the Russian Tsars of the early Nineteenth Century tried to eliminate the source of friction between Jews and Christians in their newly acquired territories in the Ukraine by settling the Jews as peasants on empty lands, the Jews obstinately refused to farm. However understandably, they wanted to keep exploiting and impoverishing the Christian peasantry, and thus keep making themselves hated.

The Ashkenazim at least chose their role, and thus made themselves hated. Your selective history notwithstanding, other groups and religious minorities have managed to make themselves tolerated, if not beloved. I mentioned the Mormons and the Mennonites — but it’s not just in the modern world that such groups have found a place for themselves and managed to preserve a unique identity without exciting the rage of their neighbors. I’m aware of the ‘Saxons’ in Transylvania, who managed to fit in quite well for centuries, and indeed, were never driven out by their neighbors, but only by Stalin in 1945. The Phanariot Greeks in Istanbul also seem to have flourished up until modern times.

No doubt there are others. You would have it that Jews were inevitably hated simply because they were different — or that they were hated because of the role they were forced to take up. The evidence suggests difference alone wasn’t sufficient. Jewish behavior — and that behavior was voluntarily chosen — had a lot to do with it. The Jews — again, at least the Ashkenazim — chose to become successively slave dealers, agents of an oppressive and alien aristocracy, commissars for a murderous Bolshevik regime, and — today — ‘Neo-cons’ manipulating modern America into successive evil and futile wars on behalf of their psychotic mini-Reich in the Middle East.

You can bleat that all Jews shouldn’t be hated on that account, and indeed, I would agree with you. All Jews shouldn’t be hated on that account. But surely, you can’t pretend that it’s a mystery that sometimes they are. This isn’t a fate visited upon an innocent and helpless minority. It’s a fate that’s a direct consequence of the behavior of at least some in that minority.

Just to take the immediate future: when the Israel Lobby finally does manage to frog-march America into that war with Iran, and when that war turns out to be the moral and material catastrophe it almost certainly will, would you argue American and Zionist Jewry will be entirely blameless if the reaction focusses on them?

Hmmm…there’s a lot of stuff being said about Islam and myself around these parts.

People’s misunderstandings of Islamic doctrine is pretty par for the course around here so that’s no surprise.

But I’ll clarify some things for anybody who is actually on the fence on interested. To commence…

There should be no problem in sharing holy sites with others as I have mentioned about the Temple Mount or other holy sites. I have often stated (in fact many times) that the city of Jerusalem should become an independent and demilitarized city under the joint control of Jews, Christians and Muslims with space-sharing or time-sharing arrangements for access to the various holy sites which hold significance to others. Just because the figures that are buried in these places are recognized in our tradition as our prophets and messengers (which goes for any prophet or messenger ever sent) doesn’t mean they don’t also belong to others. Same with the spiritual significance these places hold. Whether we, as Muslims, believe a religious tradition to be valid or not is irrelevant to whether or not we should respect their right to worship in those places.

As far as Islam being the corrected version of Judaism (or Christianity), that is simply myopic – which is fine if one assumes it is false and simply plagiarized*. It’s not even from that branch – in fact it’s latest manifestation is from the Ishmaelite Abrahamic line. It is the original primordial religion that predates Judaism which is one of the reasons that Jerusalem is not its center.
“He has ordained for you that religion which He enjoined upon Noah, and that which We inspire in you (Muhammad), and that which We enjoined upon Abraham and Moses and Jesus, saying: ‘Establish the religion, and be not divided therein.’…” (42:13)

It is a return specifically to what was exemplified best by Ibrahim (as) as primordial religion (that of the Haneefs):
“Ibrahim was neither a ‘Jew’ nor a ‘Christian’. but a man of pure natural belief (Haneef) — a Muslim. He was not an idolator.” (3:67)

“They say, ‘Be Jews or Christians and you will be guided.’ Say, ‘Rather adopt the religion of Ibrahim, a man of natural pure belief (Haneef) who was not an idolator.’” (2:135)

Which is why Islam asserts that everyone, not just Semites, received prophets and messengers:
“And We certainly sent into every nation a messenger…” (16:36)

It simply sets the record straight for the things other got wrong (including Judaism and everyone else).

Another point; Shaytan is not some independent evil power apart from and a rival to God – there is NO independent power apart from God. This doesn’t even make any sense once someone understands basic-level Islamic creed regarding metaphysical realities. Nothing has any intrinsic existence or capability except what is granted such by the Divine Will.

Shaytan know that he loses, he’s known from the beginning. He simply wants to drag as many humans down with him since misery loves company. In fact, he is the worst type of evil adversary; he encourages humans to do evil and then abandons them when they reap the consequences:
“And Shaytan will say when the matter has been concluded, ‘Indeed, Allah had promised you the promise of truth. And I promised you, but I betrayed you. But I had no authority over you except that I invited you, and you responded to me. So do not blame me; but blame yourselves. I cannot be called to your aid, nor can you be called to my aid. Indeed, I deny your association of me [with Allah] before. Indeed, for the wrongdoers is a painful punishment.’” (8:48)

Now, one can simply disagree with all of this, which is totally fine. But other peoples’ misunderstandings (especially outsiders with specific biases) of our religion does not define our religion. We do.

This is about all I want to contribute to clarify my position so others aren’t speaking on my behalf, for anyone interested in what I might have to say on these subjects as well as clarify the Islamic position on certain things. Not really interested in getting into a debate about it.

Peace.

‘only thru intermediaries like Colin…’

I’m going to have to add that to my portfolio.

Anti-semite, Jew, Shabbos Goy, and now…

INTERMEDIARY OF THE MUSLIMS!

I’m a real triple threat…quadruple threat. Did I mention I garden and do home electrical work as well?

The smarter you are with regards to attempting conversations with our Muslim friends on this site the more brutal the responses

I have noticed this as well.

Because they are not interested in harmonizing or reconciliating – they are interested in forcing submission.

If your theology is dualistic rather than based on “tikkun”, repairing and elevating, you have no choice but to think this way.

Its not really their fault. This is their theology.

I used to see Islam as somehow “Eastern”, but in fact the areas ruled by Islam were the base for Zoroastrianism – the world’s purest form of Dualism. And Talha tells us that Persia, the old base of Zoroastrianism, was the single most influential region in all of Islam.

So the old Zoroastrians were the ones who contributed the most to shaping the character and development of Islam! Is it any wonder that after its monotheistic Jewish origins, it seems to have fallen into a marked strain of Dualism?

And Ron Unz can fairly be described as a very pure example of Zoroastrian Dualism – he firmly believes there is an ancient evil force in the world that is the essence of evil that must be fought. Is it any surprise that Ron particularly favors Muslims on his site?

The alt-right idelogy is also Zoroastrian Dualist, btw.

And I am beginning to wonder if anti-Semitism is precisely because Jews deny Dualism – Jews are seen as the essence of all evil by Dualists precisely because are monotheists. I remember utu, a fierce anti-Semite l, used to get furious with me because I refused to take sides, but tried to see the good in the bad and the bad in the good.

An interesting idea that deserves to be followed up, at any rate.

Colin like most of the haters on this site will never get past their hate to reconcile conflicting ideas. They have no ability to do that.

Colin is also a classic Zoroastrian Dualist, which is why he finds Islam so congenial. And why he constantly thinks all good is on one side and all bad on the other.

And if my theory above is correct, as a classic Dualist he must be at constant war with monotheists. If he understood Eastern non-duality, I suspect he would hate it as much as Judaism.

The next up on the WN list after Jews will be Muslims. The next up on the Islamic list will be the non believer and renegade non conformist.

Absolutely. That’s their tragedy – they will always need an enemy. Evil is always on the “other side” – harmony cannot exist.

I had no idea the level that hatred blots out reason and the ability to reason until UR. When commentators post memes of tortured children and point to Israel.

Me neither. It was a learning experience. I had not encountered before people who thought this way, that all evil is on one side.

‘Colin like most of the haters on this site will never get past their hate to reconcile conflicting ideas. They have no ability to do that…’

We can’t all aspire to match your majestic intellect, Fran. We can’t even pretend to equal the perfect absence of religious and ethnic bigotry you so consistently display.

Really, it’s kind of like comparing, oh I dunno, the souls of cattle to those of human beings.

But as you gaze down upon us poor troglodytes, Fran, you should strive to conceal the certainty you feel of your superiority. Try not to rub it in. That’s tacky.

Noblesse oblige and all that, Fran. Come on. Don’t be cruel to the goyim. You’ve got all that intellectual heft. Mentally, you’re the big guy — or gal — here; try not to throw your weight around.

Your whole post is such a target-rich environment, Aaron. It’s like being at a smorgasbord; it all looks so good.

…but I can’t eat it all; lessee…

I think I’ll take this:

‘…If your theology is dualistic rather than based on “tikkun”, repairing and elevating, you have no choice but to think this way.

Its not really their fault. This is their theology…’

Of course, Islam — and myself — are only ‘dualistic’ because it suits the purposes of your argument; the claim has no basis in fact at all.

…and then you proceed to build on this; Judaism doesn’t suffer from this fault that others do, so it — and you — are intellectually (and morally) superior to Islam — and Talha, I, and everyone else who cares to wade into your palace of lies.

But it’s all lies; can’t you understand that? It’s lies at both ends; you would make Islam into something that it’s not, make Judaism into something that it’s not, and then win the argument.

It’s as if I overlooked the fact that I’m in my sixties and you’re presumably less than half that and asserted that I can beat you in a sprint. How did I decide that? Why, I claimed to be Usain Bolt and decided you’re a quadriplegic; and of course Usain Bolt can beat a quadriplegic in a sprint.

Q.E.D. But surely, you can see the problem with the reasoning here. Hint: I’m not Usain Bolt in the first place, and it’s improbable you’re a quadriplegic.

It’s all very irritating. First, because lies really do set me off; you keep pretending to identify various traits that I have, when in fact the ones I actually do have are quite obvious and amply explain my behavior. You lie; I go off into a frenzy of barking. It’s not complicated.

Second, because it makes everyone waste time. Witness Talha spending several paragraphs demonstrating that Islam isn’t dualistic. Well, of course it’s not, you no more seriously thought it was than you believe anything else you dream up, and he got suckered into wasting time proving that indeed, water is wet. You just concocted that lie because it let you cook up another one of your sophisms.

Do you convince yourself? Do you think you convince anyone else? Fran would agree with you if you found it convenient to assert two and two make five. What’s the point, Aaron?

Thank you for your clarifications, Talha.

It is the original primordial religion that predates Judaism which is one of the reasons that Jerusalem is not its center…

It simply sets the record straight for the things other got wrong (including Judaism and everyone else)…

“They say, ‘Be Jews or Christians and you will be guided.’ Say, ‘Rather adopt the religion of Ibrahim, a man of natural pure belief (Haneef) who was not an idolator.’” (2:135)..

So Judaism and Christianity are invalidated – they got things wrong and are corrupted. Islam is the corrected version.

It isn’t the case that there are multiple valid paths to the Divine appropriate for different peoples with different dispositions. It also isn’t the case that different spiritual paths are appropriate for people on different levels, some being higher or lower, but all valid.

All paths other than Islam are corrupted versions of the original primordial religion and invalid on some level at least.

Which is why Islam asserts that everyone, not just Semites, received prophets and messengers

However, Mohammed corrected all the other messengers. So all the other traditions are to some degree wrong and invalid beside that started by Mohammed.

Shaytan know that he loses, he’s known from the beginning. He simply wants to drag as many humans down with him since misery loves company. In fact, he is the worst type of evil adversary; he encourages humans to do evil and then abandons them when they reap the consequences:

But he is an Adversary. So Islam sees itself as being in a battle, where there is an adversary that must be fought, battled, defeated, and crushed, rather than seeing itself as being involved in a process where the world is healed, repaired, reconciliated, integrated, and harmonized.

Dualism.

From wiki –

Among socio-economic factors were restrictions by the authorities. Local rulers and church officials closed many professions to the Jews, pushing them into marginal occupations considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting and moneylending, tolerating them as a “necessary evil”.

Why were restrictions necessary if Jews anyways did not want to practice honest trades? (And slave trading??)

And why did Catholics massacre the Cathars and stamp them out, who were a remarkably pacific and inoffensive sect? And why the Wars of Religion, if people were allowed to practice their religion in peace?

All paths other than Islam are corrupted versions of the original primordial religion and invalid on some level at least.

Correct.

However, Mohammed corrected all the other messengers.

Incorrect. He was sent to (among other things) correct what their followers messed up.

But he is an Adversary.

Yes, he as enemy, just like one’s own animal self can be one’s enemy.

must be fought, battled, defeated, and crushed, rather than seeing itself as being involved in a process where the world is healed, repaired, reconciliated, integrated, and harmonized.

Neither is mutually exclusive. Humans cannot destroy Shaytan, he has been given respite until the Day of Judgement. They can only avoid his traps and his plots.

Dualism

If that’s what you want to call it. How others define us is not all that relevant.

Peace.

‘… (And slave trading??)…’

I’m not responsible for your ignorance of the details of life in Dark Age Europe.

‘ …So Islam sees itself as being in a battle, where there is an adversary that must be fought, battled, defeated, and crushed, rather than seeing itself as being involved in a process where the world is healed, repaired, reconciliated, integrated, and harmonized…’

Now you see, there you go.

No doubt you can select texts to support this interpretation of Judaism — but you’ll have one hell of time making a case for Judaism ever having concerned itself with realizing this goal in practice.

As to the ‘dualism’ of Christianity and Islam, you know perfectly well this trait is at least as pronounced in Judaism — if anything, more pronounced, as Judaism tends to perceive a ‘dualism’ between the Jews themselves and everybody else. In fact, when Christians get into this mood, they usually decide they are the Jews and everyone else are the gentiles.

So gee — wherever did this ‘dualism’ come from?

Witness Talha spending several paragraphs demonstrating that Islam isn’t dualistic.

I guess everyone will have to decide for themselves.

Talha has helpfully explained that Islam considers itself to have corrected the errors of Judaism and Christianity – indeed all other faiths – and to have restored the original purity of the primordial religion.

This means other religions are invalid to a greater or lesser extent, and that Islam alone is fully legitimate.

Similarly, everyone may have got prophets, but Mohammed corrected the errors of all the other religious and spiritual traditions, so only the prophetic traditions concerning him are truly valid.

This sets up an oppositional dualism – an us vs them mentality. It is not a mentality of reconciliation and cooperation. It is a theology of aggressive invalidation. Dualism rather than harmonizing of diverse strands.

Judaism by contrast believes religions and faiths are not necessarily more or less legitimate but appropriate to different peoples, and there is no necessary conflict between them. At worst, Judaism believes that different spiritual paths are appropriate to people on different spiritual levels, but again, there is no necessary antagonism here.

I was just talking to an orthodox friend of mine, and commenting on the harsh belief that non Muslims go to hell, I mentioned that Judaism believes non members can go to heave, if perhaps on a lower level – he immediately corrected, saying its not a question of levels, but that non Jews have their own, perfectly valid, relationship to God, that is different from ours.

Now as Talha very helpfully also explained, Islam believes in an Adversary that is an independent personality trying to drag mankind down, who is to be fought and defeated.

The message here is not one of healing and reconciliation, of integration and repair, but of victory in battle, of one side losing and the other winning.

Is there talk in Islam of making the profane sacred, of elevating the physical and uniting it with the spiritual, of repairing the world – of unifying and achieving wholeness – or is the language that of victory on battle? Perhaps a spiritual battle, but a battle.

That’s dualistic.

But again, everyone will have to decide for themselves.

And please understand I am not trying to condemn Islam as a potentially valid religious path appropriate to some people.

As a non-dualist, I do not have an us vs them mentality, but seek to harmonize diverse strands – like a tapestry. I do not see Judaism as more correct and valid than Islam potentially – both can be valid for different peoples, who have different relationships to God.

But it seems to me that Islam has a monotheistic strand, inspired by Judaism, and a dualistic Zoroastrian strand, perhaps there from the beginning but surely developed by the heavy Persian influence on Islam.

It is said that Arabs conquered Persia – but did perhaps Zoroastrian Persians really end up conquering Arabia in the end? Did the conquered conquer the conquerors? If so, this would not be at all unusual – Greece culturally conquered Rome, and the Chinese culturally conquered the Mongols.

And as long as this us vs them mentality exists, I think Islam will find it impossible to live at peace with its neighbors, as we see. As a young religion, it has not yet integrated these two strands, and as the Arabs were a primitive people, they perhaps were unable to resist the ancient and immensely sophisticated Zoroastrian Persians.

I look forward to the day that Islam joins the ranks of the mature non-dualistic religions, Judaism and the Eastern faiths, and finally leave a behind its Zoroastrian influence and become a genuine monotheism.

At that day, Islam will be able to finally live it peace with its neighbors and take its honored place in the tapestry of religions. It will have ripened into a beautiful mature fruit.

No doubt there are others. You would have it that Jews were inevitably hated simply because they were different — or that they were hated because of the role they were forced to take up. The evidence suggests difference alone wasn’t sufficient. Jewish behavior — and that behavior was voluntarily chosen — had a lot to do with it. The Jews — again, at least the Ashkenazim — chose to become successively slave dealers, agents of an oppressive and alien aristocracy, commissars for a murderous Bolshevik regime, and — today — ‘Neo-cons’ manipulating modern America into successive evil and futile wars on behalf of their psychotic mini-Reich in the Middle East.

That is the point Colin you are a skunk, a stinking skunk. You consistently describe Jews and Judaism as genetically and theologically evil and inherently the source of trouble. For you as the above description is that Jewish behavior is the diabolical thread tearing at the inherent goodness of others.

Aaron and I are saying is Fuck that. We know better who we and are ancestor are. It is our heritage.

I hold the very enlightened egalitarian idea that all humans are the same. All. Muslims, Christians, Hindu, etc. all the same. The Jews are no better or worse. Human behavior is a shit fight over resources and supremacy by everyone, no one goes unscathed in the battles of humanity.

Thought history the Jews got dealt hands and they played their hand the best they could, like the rest of humanity.

The first extensive Jewish emigration from Western Europe to Poland occurred at the time of the First Crusade in 1098. Under Bolesław III (1102–1139), the Jews, encouraged by the tolerant regime of this ruler, settled throughout Poland, including over the border in Lithuanian territory as far as Kiev.[34] Bolesław III recognized the utility of Jews in the development of the commercial interests of his country. Jews came to form the backbone of the Polish economy. Mieszko III employed Jews in his mint as engravers and technical supervisors, and the coins minted during that period even bear Hebraic markings.[31] Jews worked on commission for the mints of other contemporary Polish princes, including Casimir the Just, Bolesław I the Tall and Władysław III Spindleshanks.[31] Jews enjoyed undisturbed peace and prosperity in the many principalities into which the country was then divided; they formed the middle class in a country where the general population consisted of landlords (developing into szlachta, the unique Polish nobility) and peasants, and they were instrumental in promoting the commercial interests of the land

During the Early Middle Ages the Islamic polities of the Middle East and North Africa and the Christian kingdoms of Europe often banned each other’s merchants from entering their ports.[9] Corsairs of both sides raided the shipping of their adversaries at will. The Radhanites functioned as neutral go-betweens, keeping open the lines of communication and trade between the lands of the old Roman Empire and the Far East. As a result of the revenue they brought, Jewish merchants enjoyed significant privileges under the early Carolingians in France and throughout the Muslim world, a fact that sometimes vexed local Church authorities.

While most trade between Europe and East Asia had historically been conducted via Persian and Central Asian intermediaries, the Radhanites were among the first to establish a trade network that stretched from Western Europe to Eastern Asia.[10] More remarkable still, they engaged in this trade regularly and over an extended period of time, centuries before Marco Polo and ibn Battuta brought their tales of travel in the Orient to the Christians and the Muslims, respectively. Indeed, ibn Battuta is believed to have traveled with the Muslim traders who traveled to the Orient on routes similar to those used by the Radhanites.

It is not that I am superior to you Colin, but I will give you no quarter to pursue you toxic bigotry full of idiotic nonsense. I will lord my sense of righteousness fresh with the knowledge of my own history and family over you like a moral person confronting a stinking racist skunk.
You are a skunk. You stink.

“I gotta be honest”

Snicker laugh — AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA’ AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA’

‘Yes, he as enemy, just like one’s own animal self can be one’s enemy.

must be fought, battled, defeated, and crushed, rather than seeing itself as being involved in a process where the world is healed, repaired, reconciliated, integrated, and harmonized.

Neither is mutually exclusive. Humans cannot destroy Shaytan, he has been given respite until the Day of Judgement. They can only avoid his traps and his plots….’

I’d point out that Aaron’s attempts to distort the matter notwithstanding, in neither Islam nor Christianity is the focus on ‘defeating’ Satan; ultimately, he cannot be defeated — certainly not by men.

Rather, in Christianity — and I suspect, in Islam — the emphasis is on overcoming the temptations and snares Satan places in our path. He can no more be ‘crushed’ than a hot day can be ‘crushed.’ It — or he — is there and will always be there. The critical question is simply how one responds.

Aaron needs to discover a full-blown ‘dualism’ to make his sophism work. However, Aaron’s need doesn’t cause this ‘dualism’ to come into being.

Witness Talha spending several paragraphs demonstrating that Islam isn’t dualistic.

Dualism, perennialism, Western faith, Eastern faith…all of these definitions and terms are not native to Islam. If others want to call us that after the doctrine is clarified, it’s fine, makes no difference to someone like me. Islam has its own native terms like tawheed and such. It actually doesn’t have a utopian vision because the world is simply a testing ground, that is its purpose, it was never meant to be paradise or last forever or be perfected. Which is why, if one has studied islamic eschatology, then one realizes that the defeat of the Dajjal by the forces led by the Mahdi (as) and the Son of Mary (as) ushers in a golden age – for a while. After that, things will eventually deteriorate until disbelief becomes predominant. It is like spiritual entropy.

At this point, the test is done, the world has outlived its usefulness and it is folded up.
“The Hour will not begin until there is no one left on earth who says, ‘Allah, Allah.’” – reported in Muslim

“Among the most evil of mankind will be those on whom the Hour comes when they are still alive, and those who take graves as places of worship.” – reported in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad

“[After the golden age has passed and believers have died off] Only the wicked people would survive and they would be as careless as birds with the charactertistics of beasts. They would never appreciate the good nor condemn evil. Then the Satan would come to them in human form and would say: ‘Don’t you respond?’ And they would say: ‘What do you order us?’ And he would command them to worship the idols but, in spite of this, they would have abundance of sustenance and lead comfortable lives. Then the trumpet would be blown…” – reported in Muslim

This world is ultimately not redeemable, it was never meant to be…our souls, on the other hand, are. We are simply asked to act in accordance with the dictates of the Creator within the situations we have been placed as testing grounds.

Peace.

‘That is the point Colin you are a skunk, a stinking skunk…’

Rhetorically, you and Aaron make kind of an interesting tag team.

I’m tempted to ask if between the two of you, you span the range of Jewish ethical possibilities — but that really wouldn’t be fair.

(in case you were wondering, yes, you’ve just been insulted.)

‘…It is not that I am superior to you Colin..’

There’s the understatement of the day, you pathetic little vole.

Colin thinks this way because his spiritual lineage is a rather pure and unadulterated form of Zoroastrian Dualism – he needs a Devil to fight, and he will create one if necessary.

This website is the spiritual headquarters of Zoroastrian Dualism, and its creator and leader, Ron Unz, may be seen as the Head Priest of this spiritual lineage in the world today.

This ancient and primitive heresy always reappears in the world and never fully dies out.

To be fair, it is an attitude that has some level of spiritual truth to it, except that it is a very primitive level of spirituality and a very dim reflection of the pure Light of Truth.

Ok, but evil is externalized – it is not in your own soul, it is some outside force that causes you to fail. It is a force that is semi independent of you, and that actively wants you to fail.

That is why you and other dualists see the world in terms of enemies, a fight between good and evil, and that is why for dualists, moral failures and errors are always the cause of sinister our side agents – an attitude shared by Islam and the alt-right.

For the dualist, evil is am external force we are locked into battle with. It is constantly trying to seduce us and make us fall. Our own moral failures are the result of external forces – the Jews, perhaps, of the freemasons, or what have you.

Jews see things differently. Certainly there is the “evil inclination”, but it is within us, and certainly there are malicious forces that wish us no good, but our moral failures are never the fault of some external evil force or principle that actively works for our failure.

So we tend not to, for instance, blame Christians or Muslims for our moral failures or the corruption of our society and religion, although we certainly blame them for our suffering when appropriate.

And for Jews, the point is to ultimately reconcile and elevate the corrupted world – not defeat its evil elements, which are seen not as active external forces but as broken aspects as a result of mans original sin.

******

I like Talha’s point that words and terms don’t matter – the definitions do. To that end, we should define clearly what we mean.

‘I guess everyone will have to decide for themselves.

Talha has helpfully explained that Islam considers itself to have corrected the errors of Judaism and Christianity – indeed all other faiths – and to have restored the original purity of the primordial religion.

This means other religions are invalid to a greater or lesser extent, and that Islam alone is fully legitimate…’

Well, honestly, Aaron, that makes three of us.

Only you would seek to find in that some point of superiority for Judaism.

I know you’re incorrigibly mendacious, but try to at least make your lies interesting.

I can’t give this post a mere “Thanks,” as it deserves a better response.

Of course, Islam — and myself — are only ‘dualistic’ because it suits the purposes of your argument; the claim has no basis in fact at all.

…and then you proceed to build on this; Judaism doesn’t suffer from this fault that others do, so it — and you — are intellectually (and morally) superior to Islam — and Talha, I, and everyone else who cares to wade into your palace of lies.

But it’s all lies; can’t you understand that? It’s lies at both ends; you would make Islam into something that it’s not, make Judaism into something that it’s not, and then win the argument.

When you’re on target, boy do you knock ’em down.

I would also add that there’s an inherently binary relationship between any given conviction and what lies beyond it, so all of this talk about one religion possessing duality while another does not is simply meaningless. If there was no such fundamental duality, what need would we have to distinguish one path from another?

True story: My favorite teacher, a fundamentalist orthodox Muslim, had a neighbor who was a card-carrying member of the Jewish Defense Organization. They and their sons got along without a single argument over religion. Go figure.

So if Aaron wants his special perspective of Judaism, he’s more than welcome to it — always has been, always will be. I’m not sure how talking out both sides of one’s mouth functions as “tikkun olam,” but there it is.

“By their fruits ye shall know them.”

the emphasis is on overcoming the temptations and snares Satan places in our path. He can no more be ‘crushed’ than a hot day can be ‘crushed.’ It — or he — is there and will always be there. The critical question is simply how one responds.

That’s basically a good summary – he is part of the trial that is this world. Once it ends, his entire raison detre ends. And I can only really speak to my own tradition. My spiritual teachers have taught that man has two enemies; the external (Shaytan) and the internal (one’s untamed animal self/ego [nafs]) – of the two, the nafs is the bigger enemy.

Peace.

I

would also add that there’s an inherently binary relationship between any given conviction and what lies beyond it, so all of this talk about one religion possessing duality while another does not is simply meaningless. If there was no such fundamental duality, what need would we have to distinguish one path from another?

Interesting point. Thanks for raising it.

What is the point of there being different religions? From your dualist perspective, there is no point – only one is valid, and the rest invalid.

This is inherently aggressive, although the aggression can take on a muted form in decent people.

From the non-dualist and Jewish perspective, the point of different religions is that 1) Different peoples with different dispositions have a unique relationship to God, emphasizing different things 2) People on different spiritual levels must necessarily follow different paths.

It is the either/or perspective as opposed to the both/and perspective. It is the tapestry of interlocking parts perspective vs the my way or the highway perspective. It is the perspective of wholeness vs the perspective of the fragment.

Beyond the question of religion, duality refers to the belief that the world is a battlefield between two opposing forces, rather than a process of healing unification. It is the belief that creation is divided into two aspects, one which will triumph over the other, rather than both integrating and harmonizing in a higher divine unity.

Talha said it best – the world cannot be redeemed, healed, unified, or repaired. It will be finally destroyed and souls will be gathered up to God. Physical and spiritual are opposed, and the physical will be destroyed. This is classic Gnostic dualism – a position I respect, but one that is not monotheistic and not as profound as the Truth, which goes deeper than apparent division and reaches an underlying Unity.

Jews believe the physical and the spiritual are not two opposing forces, but both emanations of the one Divinity – it is a false opposition, ultimately. The corruption of the world which occludes spiritual radiance can be healed and repaired, and there is no fundamental dualism in essence.

Only you would seek to find in that some point of superiority for Judaism

You are a dualist, so I would not expect you to find monotheism superior.

You have a fundamentally different metaphysics.

An interesting character you might find interesting is Bruce Charlton. He is a frank Christian dualist – very honest about not being a monotheist and who also sees the world as a battlefield between forces of good and evil.

He also shares your, err, interesting temperament Colin 🙂 I think he can help you become more spiritually refined as a dualist – he seems the best of the dualists to me.

As a non-dualost, I think that even dualism has its place on the spiritual pantheon. It is appropriate for some people on a certain spiritual level.

But Colin – I think you urgently need some spiritual discipline. You act right now like a terrible person, but I don’t really think you’re a bad guy deep down. You’re pretty smart, too, not at all stupid. Your anger and rage now is unfocused and unintelligent, and your suffering clear.

Convert to Islam already – or if not, find solace in some form of dualistic Christianity like that offered by Bruce Charlton. Do yourself a favor. Some sort of spiritual discipline is necessary for all of us.

Talha said it best – the world cannot be redeemed, healed, unified, or repaired.

I specifically said, the world cannot ultimately be redeemed. I did not say this other stuff. That’s your interpretation.

Physical and spiritual are opposed,

Those are your words, not mine.

Peace.

From your dualist perspective, there is no point – only one is valid, and the rest invalid.

Validity is the quality of being correct or true. You can not hold other religions as valid because if you did, it would necessarily require you to negate the truth of Judaism as you see it.

Case in point: Jews continue to hold that the Moshiach has not been sent by God, while Christians hold that Jesus was the Moshiach. One cannot hold both views as mutually valid, particularly when they define their respective religions as fundamentally as they do.

In examining the entirety of your argument, it’s clear that when you speak of “validity,” you’re referring to a transparently conditional one, subject to the scrutiny and affirmation of those you regard as learned among God’s chosen people (perhaps yourself). In short, your concept of “validity” is a necessarily Jewish — and, as such, non-universal — one. It cannot possibly be otherwise.

Another point: If you actually held that Islam was a valid path, what need would it have to “mature”? In fact, you don’t hold it as such. You yourself have stated that it has potential, which implies that it has yet to attain validity.

Bottom line: You want for your religion what it really can never have. It’s a rational desire, I’ll grant, but it simply isn’t the truth and no amount of unctuous rhetoric will change that fact.

Those are your words, not mine.

Funny, I had the same thought.

Is this “tikkun olam” or “sheber olam”?

Hard to tell.

was-salaam.

Validity is the quality of being correct or true. You can not hold other religions as valid because if you did, it would necessarily require you to negate the truth of Judaism as you see it.

False.
You can hold validity as being relative to what one is taught and brought up with. I believe that there is more then one valid path to follow and we all end up at the same place. If you believe there is only one valid path. That is the whole point.That is what this entire argument is about.
You believe that your path is valid and Aaron and I are swindlers trying to wind you up.

God’s chosen people (perhaps yourself). In short, your concept of “validity” is a necessarily Jewish — and, as such, non-universal — one. It cannot possibly be otherwise.

False
Chosen is time sensitive who’s shelf life has expired. It is finished. Chosen referred to a time in the distant past when Jews were chosen to experience a revelation. A moral code and set of commandments as well as the nature of divinity, and the sanctity of life. Novel ideas at the time of the revelation. We were chosen to pass it along. Mission accomplished. At this time we are all the same. Judaism and Christianity, Hinduism all bound by moral codes and the sanctity of life.

Bottom line: You want for your religion what it really can never have. It’s a rational desire, I’ll grant, but it simply isn’t the truth and no amount of unctuous rhetoric will change that fact.

What Aaron and I have been pointing out is the rhetorical imbalance like the statement above. Aaron and I believe it is all good all the religions are good. You and Colin believe everything involving Jews and Judaism is riddled with deceit and evil.
So when Aaron talks about duality. The response is we are con artist.
The response is:
But it’s all lies; can’t you understand that? It’s lies at both ends; you would make Islam into something that it’s not, make Judaism into something that it’s not, and then win the argument

You have decided that we are swindlers and con artist. So no matter what we say it is viewed as a new con game. I am guess I am good with that, or have learned to accept it. So why try to engage a swindler to what end? Colin constantly engages to infer that Judaism is a con game and Jews are con artist. For me it is nihilistic, futile, and goes against the nature of god’s will for peace, divine grace and acceptance. It is just repulsive to engage in such a destructive manner.

You can hold validity as being relative to what one is taught and brought up with.

Then what you are proffering is, by definition, moral relativism.

The distillation of your argument is simple: Judaism is equivalent to having no religion at all, since the very same kind of belief you describe is pragmatically indistinguishable from any one of a number of secular persectives which hold that most of the world’s religions are equally valid paths to goodness. In your case, you’re merely substituting said “goodness” for God; otherwise, there’s no difference.

If you want to call that “swindling,” it’s up to you. I’m just a reporter here, telling it like it is.

Last night I skimmed through the last 28 or so comments in this thread, only to be treated to a display of dishonesty, arrogance, condescension and vomit-inducing supremacist ideology from our resident jew-trolls, both screeching about how hateful some of our most respectful and courteous commenters are, cackling about “derivitive” theologies, and gloating about the imagined/invented on-the-spot “merrits” of their religion.

Aaron, I’m absolutely certain, is here to play games and toy with people for his own personal entertainment, including with Fran (you think he likes you Fran, but he’s just using you to promote himself).

In her defence, at least Fran believes the lies she spews, and seems to be genuinely unaware that she is the most overtly toxic hater on this platform. I feel she is truly deluded, which, in itself, makes her twisted rantings and inversions of the truth at least somewhat honest – from her perspective at least.
That said, the hatered she spews forth is just as vile as that which she accuses others of, if only she could see it.

But Aaron is, from what I see, a complete fraud.

So Islam sees itself as being in a battle, where there is an adversary that must be fought, battled, defeated, and crushed,

Is it not the case that “the jews” are locked in perpetual battle against the goyim, to cleanse the world of all enemies of their psycho-God, to bring us all to our knees before them, to enforce, on behalf of psycho-God, their commandments, their “law” on us? Does that not make judaism the most adversarial of all religions?

rather than seeing itself as being involved in a process where the world is healed, repaired, reconciliated, integrated, and harmonized.

Harm-onised under the boot of Jewish supremacism, integrated under Jewish law?

No thanks dude. If it’s all the same to you, take your tikkun olam, your supremacist Noahide “law”, the commandments of your psych-God, and piss-off back to the dessert in which your fucked-up ideology was devised.

Viva Palestine!
Kali.

Now I understand!!

Islam is, ultimately, about transendance, as is my own spiritual perspective.

This world is ultimately not redeemable, it was never meant to be…our souls, on the other hand, are. We are simply asked to act in accordance with the dictates of the Creator within the situations we have been placed as testing grounds.

Thank you Talha. I am a lot clearer now regarding the Islamic religion, and it’s spiritual teachings.

Nameste (the Divine in me bows to the Divine in you),
Kali.

I can’t give this post a mere “Thanks,” as it deserves a better response.
[…]
When you’re on target, boy do you knock ’em down.

Couldn’t agree more!

Colin, when I suggested you were a narcissist a few weeks ago, I was 100% wrong. – You later suggested I might have been right. In that, you were wrong!

Please do accept my apologies. I don’t know whether your comments have improved, or if my perception has cleared (probably the latter – revealing a very common cycle for me) but my apology is unequivocal.

Thank you for your contributions here. They make a huge (possitive) difference to my experience of this forum.

With love,
Kali.

Thank you for reading my posts.

Islam is, ultimately, about transendance, as is my own spiritual perspective.

Yes. The physical world is important in so far as it is a means to attain one’s ultimate goal, which is closeness to the Divine:
“Know that the life of this world is but amusement and diversion and adornment and boasting to one another and competition in increase of wealth and children – like the example of a rain whose [resulting] plant growth pleases the tillers; then it dries and you see it turned yellow; then it becomes [scattered] debris. And in the Hereafter is severe punishment or forgiveness from Allah and approval. And what is the worldly life except the enjoyment of delusion?” (57:20)

A past shaykh in my spiritual lineage made a useful analogy. The world is like a vast ocean and one’s own heart and soul is like a boat that is navigating towards the harbor of its ultimate destination. One respects the ocean, it is a means of one’s own provision and also the means by which one accomplishes one’s goal, reaching the harbor. BUT one must not be deluded or mistaken and grow so attached to the ocean that one forgets their goal and – even more forgetfully – allows the water to enter upon the boat of their heart. Because once it takes on too much water, it will flounder and result in disaster for one’s soul.

Nameste

Thank you, peace be upon you as well.

So basically, I’m all terrible, and you’re all good. And Jews are all terrible, and every other group is good.

Classic Dualism.

Validity is the quality of being correct or true. You can not hold other religions as valid because if you did, it would necessarily require you to negate the truth of Judaism as you see it.

One can hold that certain aspects or claims of a tradition are not valid, but that overall the tradition is capable of lifting people spiritually.

One can hold that overall, a tradition is spiritually efficacious, and it may even be beneficial for certain people to hold specific false beliefs in the short term that help them spiritually.

Another point: If you actually held that Islam was a valid path, what need would it have to “mature”? In fact, you don’t hold it as such. You yourself have stated that it has potential, which implies that it has yet to attain validity

I regard Islam as a spiritually efficacious path for people on a certain level – it genuinely helps and assists people on a certain level attain spiritual fruits.

Even as it is right now, it has its place on the spiritual pantheon and genuinely helps many people.

At the same time, I think that like all living and dynamic systems, it is evolving – and that eventually, it will reach a higher spiritual level, where it doesn’t have to hate jews in order to feel good about itself, but can see the truth that we all have a part to play.

But even in its current state, where it is Dualistic and hates Jews, Islam has a certain level of vakidit and spiritual effectiveness that is not to be despised.

As a Dualist, I understand that this is hard for you to understand.

Hey Fran,

One can be angry with them, but I think it is better to simply understand them. They cannot help thinking the way they do, and once you understand how they think, everything they do makes total sense. They are a classic “type” worth understanding.

For instance, Talha seems like a “nice guy”, but is extremely chummy with the worst and most aggressive people here – plain bullys – like Colin Wright and Kevin Barrett, but won’t talk to you.

It seems incredibly puzzling at first – but once you understand he is a classic Dualist, it is no mystery. Colin is on “his side” and you are not. Considerations of basic decency and universal humanity are not the significant factors to a Dualist. Sides are.

The “original sin” of Dualists is to externalize the evil in their own soul. We all have evil and good running through our own soul, but the Dualist tries to pretend that his own evil is an external force – so he hates Jews or blacks or whoever, and believes in conspiracy theories. Because evil is outside, not inside him.

This is an ancient spiritual tradition – Zoroastrian Dualism – that has always appealed to some people and is enormously influential in Islam. This is a classic “type” of person and psychology – we need to understand it intelligently. And the Unz website may be regarded as one of the modern epicenter of this ancient spiritual tradition.

And Islam should be seen as at least partly a vehicle for Persian Zoroastrianism – Persians being by far the most influential people in the development of Islam, who clearly smuggled in their Dualist tendencies.

Jewish monotheism – and Eastern non-dualism – arose specifically in response to this spiritual sin.

Did you ever wonder why Jews insist so strongly on the Oneness of God? Why the central prayer in Judaism is the Shema, which celebrates the Oneness of God?

Seems really weird, right? What’s so important about Oneness? Why can’t there be many Gods? Aren’t other aspects of religion more important? And why do Eastern faiths make non-duality the very pivot and centerpiece of their faiths?

Because from this oneness all morality and human decency flows, and all capacity for spiritual evolution – and when one falls into the heresy of Dualism, one externalizes the evil in oneself as an outside force, and one no longer sees the enemy as oneself bit as some outside entity, be it Jews or whatever.

And that is the secret to anti-Semitism – Jews say, no, there are no two forces, and evil is not external to you. It is in you that you must fight it.

To the Duslist, this is the worst message you can give him. But it is also the only message that will help him spiritually evolve.

And now, as monotheists and non-dualists, we must give even dualism its due and not merely condemn it. And this is utterly incomprehensible to the Dualist, that we can see goodness in and be geneous to even what we oppose. Because as non-dualists, we don’t really oppose anything. There is no war – all is One, and God us One.

Dualism, to give it it’s due, is a legitimate rung on the spiritual ladder. It is the first step, and we should not be too harsh on people who are attracted to it. They too are on the Way. We should only wish them a speedy journey.