Thoughts on war

[doc]

Here. Here's your wholesome American icon. I got him right here.

It's ME baby.

LOL

[dogchow108]

LOL

oh, since i ahve you on here, the hubz connection keeps failing on me...is it down?


i think Patrick Stweartwould have something to say about you taking his image away...or adding a couple of pounds to it!

[doc]

Today I Was a Palestinian
By Shaik Ubaid

Today I was a Palestinian. One of more than 100,000 that marched down the Pennsylvania Avenue, from the White House to the Capitol. I even, briefly, marched under the shade of a huge canopy made out of the Palestinian flag. When I reached out and tentatively touched this symbol of human dignity of an oppressed people, I felt a reverence that is hard to explain. Many a night I had found myself crying silently in the night thinking of the innocent Palestinian children buried alive under the rubble in Jenin and of babies, crying with hunger and fear, cowering behind their mothers in other Palestinian towns. I was crying as much because of empathy as with guilt, after all it were my tax dollars that supported the tanks, apache helicopters and bulldozers that were raining death and destruction on the Palestinians. Today I shed a few more tears, but they were shed openly, in daylight and were tears of relief and gratitude. Watching tens of thousands of fellow Americans and fellow humans marching in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians had revived my faith in the American people. These hundred thousand "honorary Palestinians" including "Jews for Palestine", were marching with determination, holding their banners high.

Again, from that web site. I see a pattern here.

"adding a couple of pounds to it..." I see a pattern there too.

Am I going to have to lay some of my "heavyset" **** on top of you youngster's heads?

[Lipster]

I'll write soon.

Right now my responsibilities lie with the intoxicants resting in someone’s liquor cabinet two blocks away. It's a Jewish holiday today, and for a change it's one were we all get as pissed out of our heads as we can.

And so I bid you farewell for the next day or two while I immerse myself in the wonderful world of alcohol.

Cheye, my email’s still buggered.

Kudos to Chow.

Peace

[dogchow108]

Purim Sameach, Lipster!

man i wish there were enough jews here to throw a costume party, DAMMIT.

[dave]

wow Lipster sounds mad - whats all that about? Never heard of it before? Im lucky i have hated the taste of alcohol since i was around 14 anyway

And i havent jumped ship - everything yu guys were talking about is pretty much right over the top of my head so i cant really say anything... apart from like Rodney King and "Cant we all just get along?" Like i said, i know next to nothing (actually nothing) about politics and all this stuff - which is why i am enjoying the postings so far apart from the lil ad-homein stuff.

dogchow: oh i have read ibn warraq as well - his "why i am not a muslim" is a very interesting book. Has a lot of hate in there which of course i can understand. But the interesting thing is i pretty much agree with a lot he says. The Islam he was exposed to is nothing like the Islam i am currently exposed to and growing in. His was a more "We hear and we Obey" type (to quote Quran), which is what i have noticed a lot of "born" Muslims have whereas mine is more "Truly, there are Signs for those who Reflect" type (again to quote Quran). Sometimes i think i am quite lucky to be a convert as i dont have this whole confusion between what is Islam and what is culture and so on. But other times i wish i could just sit back and let someone else make my decisions for me. The lure of the dark side

Doc, you might find this article interesting as it explains Saudi tampring with stuff pretty good:
Playing in to the hands of the Extremists

Also a real interesting talk with a Rabbi (Harold Schulweiss) and Sheikh (dr. el-fadl)
religion and our world in crisis
its a bit long and you need real player but its pretty cool if you ask me

dave

[doc]

Right now my responsibilities lie with the intoxicants resting in someone’s liquor cabinet two blocks away. It's a Jewish holiday today, and for a change it's one were we all get as pissed out of our heads as we can.

It's time to become a Jew for a day!

Wish I drank.

I should tell you about the last time I became an honorary Jew....

[dave]

u mean theres more than one time?

dave

[doc]

There was only one time. It was long ago, during a life I can't remember much of.

I was young and stupid.Had this great, Jewish girlfriend.

She was fat.

I had hair. I had dreams. I had ambitions. I had a destiny.

She was fat.

I used to enjoy cuddling with her in bed. It was one of the many pleasures in life that I had had.

She had great firm well shaped breasts. And, a gut.

I kind of cared for her. She, on the other hand, was in love. Most definitely more so than I. Her little eyes lit up whenever she saw me. Always wanted to hold my hand. Always wanted to make sure that I was happy. Always wanted to rub my back, lick my toes, cook dinner for me, do my laundry, make sure that my every wish and desire went fulfilled. As, well, as it should be.

And, she was fat. A touch of ugly too.

I was invited to her family Seder. For Passover. To meet the family. Had to wear the little circular thing on my head, which I'll never be able to spell (yarmulke, not bad for a Christian, eh?). Had to eat dinner with her beloved family. Hold hands, say prayers, eat weird food.

They were fat too.

I had read from the book, the book the Jews read out of during the Seder during Passover. I had to pretend to understand what I was doing. I had to pretend that I was interested in what I was doing. I had to pretend that I enjoyed the funny looking tasteless food that they threw on my plate.I had to pretend that I was in love with their daughter. Who, as I assume, they all knew I was banging.

They weren't just fat. Mom and dad were kind of ugly too.

I started to envision the future, as her mom and dad were probably envisioning it. Long term committment, marriage, children. To think, what our children would look like, while I tried to ingest the tasteless Passover feast.

They would have been fat. And bald.

And ugly.

And one day, quite a while after being an "honorary Jew for a day", I went to visit my mom. I told her all about my wonderful experience, being on the side of the real people of God. I told her about the food that I ate, the family that I spent time with, the book I had read out of, and the little circular thing that I had trouble spelling and pronouncing, that I had worn on my head. A head, I remind you, that had hair on it.

She asked me if I was still dating that "fat ugly bitch".

Never became an "honorary Jew for a day" after that.

[Lipster]

Just got back.

My head hurts.

Off to bed now for a while, then I guess it's back to round two.

Rolf Doc, that's hilarious. It's your own damn fault you went at Passover, there's hardly anything tasty you can eat and the food IS crap. And the seder can be tedious. So bad luck, maybe you should try a Purim next time. With a Vegas honey by your side. You've got the rest of the day to try it.

And try Kipa for the little circular thing. Only the US calls it yarmulke.

Dave, in a nutshell, around the year 480 BC during the Median and Persian rule, the Jewish nation was slated for annihilation by request of the Sultan's vizier. Through a sequence of events the decree was turned on its head. Had it gone through, the Jews would have been wiped out, so every year we celebrate.

PSameach Chow...you can still have a party…

Gotta sleep…

[dogchow108]

i wouldnt say really hateful- just very, very very blunt. when you think about it, the feircest opposiiton to a concept usually comes from within the population practicing it. but i agree with you that there is a certain advantage of being a convery to a religion rather than being born into it, for alll sorts of reasons.


doc- you show us a picture and we'll believe you had hair.

as for the circular thing (which a avoid) to wear on the head,

"Kippah" - which kinda translated into something you put as a cap onto a surface.

or, as yiddish like to call it, "Yammika" like saying yummy, then with the interrogative japanese article, "ka"

[dogchow108]

Doc- what you need to do is go to a Seder at a secular's house- like in my house, we throw out most of the prayer and just eat a lot of food aside from the tsateless garb that constitutes the traditional stuff.

[Pujo]

It's not black and white...

This post alone made me want to re-register to this forum. This is an incredibly interesting topic, and I can see that all of the posters here are informed about the issues.

But it's pretty clear that most of us are picking sides on this 9-11/Israel-Palestine conflict, with the exception of Dave, who seems to be weighing in on this situation.

I've been doing quite a bit of research for my novel that takes place during the height of the Crusades. I find that knowing the history reveals quite a bit about modern conflicts (in this case, the middle-east). But more knowledge only adds to the confusion, for during the course of my research, this situation has been revealed to be so complex that it is impossible to tell who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

Isn't that the way our human world works? We'd all like to think that life is like a Disney movie, where the evil dudes are admitedly evil. We've had a few situations like this; Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. But more often, lines between good and evil cannot be drawn, for both parties are capable of doing good and committing evil. Take Mother Teresa for example; many see her as a saint for her efforts to feed the starving, but others are aware of her not-so-saintly views.

I think most of us are in agreement that good and evil is in the eye of the beholder. Most Americans see bin Laden as an evil person because he is responsible for the deaths of thousands of American lives. Many Arabs see bin Laden as a hero for his efforts to keep European and American powers out of Moslem states.

I must admit that I am fairly "left" in my own views, but when sharing my opinion with others, I try to look at things from an objective viewpoint. It's hard to do, for it seems we all have the urge to judge the world according to our own views. Sometimes, we just have to watch or read up on the situation instead of just drawing up conclusions after a single atrocity occurs.

Something I have learned from objective perception; the aggressor is not always the bad guy, the victim is not always the good guy.

Something else I have learned from objective perception; history validates the Chaos Theory. In other words, history (natural and/or human history) is the Butterfly Effect in action.

To elaborate on this, my high school history teacher always told me that every single event in Western History can be traced back to Moses in some way. In broader terms, every single event in human history can be traced back to Lucy (we all know Lucy, right?). Its possible for historians to compile a chronological text explaining how the migratory patterns of early bipedals caused the Bulshevik Revolution in 1917, but then we'd have to mow down the Amazon in order to obtain the paper for that book. The point is that it is impossible to blame a certain person or non-person for the occurance of an event, for that person/non-person's actions are the result of the various events in the past. This applies to our modern conflict. Richard cour de Lyon and Salah al-Din were the parents of al-Qaeda and the fathers of the United Nations. It would be reasonable to put them on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, and give them the Nobel Peace Prize.

We cannot dismiss any facts here, for every event has merrit when looking at present situations.


Some things to look into:

- European Jew's original plan to settle in South America
- Christian/Moslem/Jewish Relations from the 7th-11th century
- Moslem vs. European civilization and culture in the early medieval period (if history were any different, it is possible that middle-eastern countries could have developed into the major world powers)
- Christian Fundamentalist agenda in regards to Israel
- Western "interests" in the middle east
- Cultural change following the Crusades (after the fourth Crusade) and Mongolian Invasions


Am I a goddamn liberal?

You know they have a ninja emoticon...

[doc]

Great points. Very well said.

Now Dave will never get off the god damn fence.

LOL

[doc]

From Debkafile:

As the toll of the Madrid rail attacks climbs rapidly to 190 dead, 1,200 injured, terror experts note their appalling scale dwarfs any previous ETA assaults. They suggest the hand of al Qaeda or collaboration between the Islamist group and Basque terrorists behind the bombings. A senior Washington security official sees definite al Qaeda hallmarks. No group has claimed responsibility.

The bomb blasts struck three rush-hour commuter trains in Madrid early Thursday - at Atocha, El Pozo and Santa Eugenia stations. Spanish government accused Basque ETA terrorists of crime.

What does Islamic law say about taking the lives of purely innocent, non-combattant people?