WORLD WAR

It's a lot like an Agatha Christie novel, figuring out this Armageddon thing. We have a crime, the bombing of Gaza. We have victims, the Palestinians. We even have the culprits, the people running the Israeli government. But are they the principal actors here? We have accomplices, the people running the US and UK governments. But, again, are they the primary motivators?

I think it is worthwhile when trying to understand a long running situation to look behind the stage props, the actors, the details of the plot and dialogue to inquire into the motivations of the writers, producers and directors of the “show”. To look for the source.

What do we know about Israeli history, culture and people? Are they autonomous or are they dependent on others or act on others instructions? We know that the Rothschild family has been heavily involved in the formation and growth of Israel; that they have provided a lot of the initial funding and have used their political clout to further the cause of Israel. It is highly unlikely that their influence over Israeli policy has waned over the years. International bankers tend to do things as a group. There are other Jewish banking families and I think it is entirely reasonable to believe they are involved with the Israel enterprise as well. When these banking families get involved in something, they like to control it and they treat everything as an investment. They have a purpose and they want a return. It's business ..... the business of the pursuit of evermore wealth and power.

The history of Israel has been one of violence from the start; a seemingly unending series of terrorist attacks and oppression against the Palestinians interspersed with wars. The Israelis have started all these wars bar one, the 1973 “Yom Kippur War”. We might conclude that they are belligerent and extremely aggressive and wont hesitate to start a war to further their interests. Why do they behave like this? The Israelis themselves have more land than they need to live in peacefully; always have. This can be simply demonstrated by the fact that they have had to aggressively promote immigration to Palestine to Jews living all over the world to populate the place. Indeed, the Israelis had to engage in “false flag” terror campaigns against the Sephardic (Oriental or Semitic) Jews living in other Middle East countries to drive them into Israel. Many claim much the same thing happened to the Ashkenazi (non-Oriental, non-Semitic) Jews in Europe through the oppression caused by the Nazis together with support from the Zionists. Historically, Jews have shown a marked resistence to immigrating during the twentieth century to Palestine as it was known prior to 1948 and to Israel as it is now known. Recently, the Israeli government has been offering large inducements to Iranian Jews to emmigrate to Israel. These have not been taken up.

Obviously there is another agenda at play here. As mentioned earlier, the principal actors here are likely to be the “International Bankers” and, if so, it is their agenda we are witnessing being played out. But first, let us return to the Israelis. How is it possible for these Jews, who have lived peacefully amongst, and as part of, a large number of other nations, to suddenly become this belligerent and warlike people?

If we look at their culture, we find it is built on ancient texts, The Hebrew Bible otherwise known as the Old Testament and the Talmud. Both these texts are exclusivist i.e. they promote the Jews as being separate from and superior to the rest of humanity. They are “God's Chosen People” which makes the rest of humanity “God's Rejected or God's Scorned or God's Enemy” and thereby the Jews' enemy. This notion of “God's Chosen” sets them up in contention with the world and if God has rejected the rest of humanity and they are now his enemy then if the Israelis attack and kill any of these same people they are doing God's work. There is no getting around this inescapable conclusion.

This world view of choseness and separateness is inculcated in Jews through their culture from birth if they happen to grow up and mix in a Jewish religious community. This is inevitable.

There are many calls for mercy and justice in the Old Testament but many of these are directed towards the disenfranchised in their own community and even when they are directed towards the benefit of the stranger it becomes confusing, contradictory. What this then requires is a sort of schizophrenic approach to these scriptures which alternatively call for mercy (Micah 6.8 ) and war (Micah 4:13) and genocide (Joshua 6:17-24). This doesn't make for a peaceful and balanced mindset. Indeed, it calls for a “splitness” in the mind to be able to function with this internal contradiction. This internal contradiction must create conflict, first internal conflict and then later external conflict

For the same reason, Christians suffer from exactly the same complaint, if not more so, as the calls for mercy and justice are even more pronounced in the New Testament. In fact, Jesus specifically rejected the priest class and its attendent legalism (the myriad of laws which, in the end, sanction wrongdoing), and the culture of violence and revenge that is such a part of the Old Testament. (See John ch8: 31-44. Jesus accuses the Judeans, known at the time as the Jews as opposed to the Israelites from Israel, as being murderers and followers of Satan. It was the Judeans who had “The Law”, the Torah, the first five books of what is now the Old Testament which called for genocide).
The answer to this mental conflict for Christians and Jews alike is to either follow the way of violence and exclusiveness or the way of mercy and inclusiveness ..... or have two minds, to split.

This cultural programming for both Jews and Christians alike lies relatively dormant until it is triggered through propaganda usually attending some crisis (also usually manufactured) and a target or victim and the means for acting out this violent disposition is provided i.e. wars against “the other”. A large number of both Christians and Jews have shown themselves quite capable of exploitation of the each other. Both groups share the Old Testament and its sentiments and both claim the title of “God's Chosen People”. Despite this competition for God's favour, many Christians and Jews have managed to unite. They have united to persecute a third group, the Muslims, specifically the Palestinians. Some very vocal Christian and Jewish leaders would have us believe that the Palestinians are not only their enemy but everybody's enemy and even God's enemy because they are resisting God's will that Palestine belongs to the Jews as outlined in the Old Testament alongside calls to genocide (See both the Books of Deuteronomy and Joshua).

As noted earlier, large sections of the populace of both countries are predisposed to violence through religious training, or programming if you like, in large part authorised and validated by leaders pointing to passages in the Old Testament. It is not only violence being advocated but a particular kind of violence: war, slavery and genocide. This is not only sanctioned by the God of much of the Old Testament, but demanded by him. This “god” cannot be the God who created the Universe and all in it because he would be at war with his own creation; at war with himself. This is not possible. If it were possible then this God would have a split mind and as God is mind/spirit without a body this means a split nature which means two Gods; a creator God and a destroyer God; a good God and an evil God. Which God was Joshua listening to when he was told to kill every living thing, man, woman, child and beast in Canaan?
(The Christian God though a three part God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are all of the same nature. Jesus said, “You see me and you see the Father”).

A further argument that this god of genocide is not the God that created the Universe and all in it is this; if this god was the Creator God and wanted to eliminate an entire people, he could simply withdraw their life from them, he being the source of all life. This would have a huge advantage for his “Chosen Ones” in that they would not now have to murder men, women and children and be dead or uffering from injuries and/or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and nightmares and the ongoing deliterious effects of the resultant bloodlust infecting the present and subsequent generations. To command they be murderers is hardly nurturing your “Chosen People”. Once a people visit violence upon an enemy, they bring this same spirit of violence back into their own community when they return. It is now in their psyches and being denied it will fester to erupt against perceived internal and external enemies later on. The only God that would do this is one who wanted the destruction of ALL people, perpertrator and victim alike. Yet this genocidal god can't destroy by itself, it needs to employ humans to do it. If it needs help to destroy then it couldn't possibly create by itself; the defining quality that makes God God. This genocidal god, if it exists at all, is not God but some sort of other being and so should not be given any credence or authority let alone worshipped and followed.

You see the problem here? If you choose war and genocide, you are either obeying an evil, destructive being who wants to destroy you, too, or you are deluded/insane and hearing voices or just straight out evil yourself. What you cannot be is following a loving creator God.

Let us turn to the “accomplices”. Successive US and UK governments have provided taxpayer funds, armaments and political cover for Israel over many years. Both of these countries' governments have been happy to “give” the Israelis a land that belonged to neither of them. Such arrogance! Both the United Kingdom and the United States are “Christian” countries led by “Christian” men (by and large). Both these countries have long and sordid histories of colonialism and empire building, of enslaving whole peoples. Their justification .... the New Testament (go preach the good news to all the nations) and the Old Testament (appropriating the “Chosen People” title) and their methods .... straight out of the Old Testament (war, plunder and genocide). Though it must be noted that “the Good News” which was once exclusively Christianity, is now joined by “Democracy” and “Our Way of Life” (materialism/hedonism) as the religious reasons for the non-religious.

Who are we really dealing with here? Are there actors or interests behind these governments controlling them? Those that know the mechanism of credit creation, the banking system, already know the answer to this. Bankers such as the Rockefellers, Warburgs and Morgans (Christians, Jews and Calathumpians, whatever) control the country's economy by creating money they have just pulled out of thin air by extending credit (which is received as debt to the borrower). It also furnishes them with immense wealth and power over others, not the least of which are politicians and, in turn, the control of the education, legal, police and military systems. They dominate businesses including the media. Everything is channeled their way. If it is not, then they change it. They rule. They rule Britain, the US and also Israel. To see one country ruling another is to miss who is ruling them all.

However for all their power, these bankers and their attendant elite face two problems. One is that the lust for power and wealth is never satisfied. They always want more and so are always busy plotting the next expansion. As The Oracle in the film, “The Matrix” said, “What do men with power want? More Power”!
The second problem is that because their power is based ultimately on fraud, a lie, this may be discovered and then this powerbase will be taken from them.

The country's wealth that is the backing (or that which gives it value) for the bankers manufactured Money Supply belongs collectively to the citizens of the nation, not the bankers. The wealth that comes from the issuance of the Money Supply belongs to the peoples' governments. Should the truth become widely known, then these bankers risk losing all their power and perhaps even their heads. Certainly their heads were at risk when they were dealing in past years with functioning monarchies. The monarch was always liable to discover the truth to arrest them all with no notice. Monarchies were a problem for the bankers.

The First World War eliminated many of the monarchies and hobbled the rest. The First War was of great benefit to the bankers quite apart from the profits that came from providing the loans and armaments that made the war possible in the first place. But today they are still at risk of discovery and overthrow even with a non-functioning democracy. There is always the risk of it awakening and functioning as it should. So this is why totalitarian (but not hereditary) governments are prefered such as fascist and communist ones. (As an interesting aside, the only thing Marx found praiseworthy with Western capitalist countries was their banking system!)

This is the risk posed by the bankers' own fellow citizens . There is also a risk posed by any foreign government that does not use this private banking system. First it would show another system is possible and second, it would flourish. The answer to both these risks is to dominate the world to such an extent that rival countries and systems no longer exist and the populations are controlled to the point of total domination. "1984", in other words. No free thought can be allowed if the risk is to be totally negated. These people, these bankers imperfectly control, in large part, the so called Western world and somewhat more perfectly control the state of Israel. They need an increasingly police/fascist state in the West and the crushing and control of every country in the world presently outside their influence. The principle ones are Iran, Russia and China. This is the goal. All their efforts have and will be building towards this including, and especially, the creation and expansion of Israel. They need a place from which to rule. A place that is totally under their control and a place that holds significance and authority in the minds of people (including Muslims). What better place than Jerusalem?

So given all the above, I see further wars (but not their outcome) as inevitable in an attempt to hide the truth. Truth is their enemy and for good reason.
Another compelling reason (for them) to wage ever more wars is that these people have committed many many crimes. To survive prosecution and, indeed, to survive at all, they need to keep up the level of fear and preoccupation with survival for everyone else. Nothing does this better than ever more wars and terror.

So, we have two malevolent forces intent on war and both driven by power over others and both focusing on Jerusalem. One force are the adherents of a genocidal god who makes appearences throughout the Old Testament which was written some 2500 to 3000 years ago. Many of these adherents sit in churches and synagogues around the world. The other force is a financial elite of international bankers who first made their appearance on earth some 300 years ago. Both forces are being driven by the same people, the bankers, and they have launched a rollercoaster they are mentally incapable of stopping. We must put the brakes on by withdrawing our silent support.

Would we be more powerful and successful against this evil (and more at peace with ourselves) if we rejected violence and the notions of retaliation and punishment and promoted instead truth, inclusiveness, compassion and mercy as our weapons? If we acted this out by refusing employment that furthered warfare especially military service? If we helped others avoid having to do military service or manufacture weapons through poverty or the threat of poverty? By noncompliance in every form we can think of; by speaking truth at every opportunity? How else do you break this spell, that a violent God can be good, that has afflicted so many Christians and Jews alike?

If we challenged every Christian or Jew who utters exclusive, racist and violent things and asked instead, “Is this what you think your Creator God wants of you? The God who created us all?”

Or perhaps, “Why would your God want you to destroy someone he created; someone he could kill himself if he wanted to and spare you the blood on your hands and its attendant trauma?”

The Creator God cannot be violent without doing violence to himself, without splitting, as argued before. If we are made in God's image, do we then do violence to ourselves when we do violence to others? (By “violence” in this context, I mean that measure of physical force that in any way goes beyond that minimum necessary to restrain the violent from harming us.)

Can we bring violence to an end by refusing to participate in it; by refusing to support it wherever we find it being taught be it in our church, our synagogue, our club, our employment, our government?

In this essay, which needs to be relatively short, I have tried to simplify things without being simplistic. There is much else going on, of course, but I wanted to focus on something that is fundamental to this apocalyptic world situation that is not getting much attention. And also focus on where we might start to undo this situation without running the risk of exacerbating it through further violence.

Comments

interesting

Great read James.
Been thinking a lot lately about religion. I was brought up in the Presbyterian(later Uniting)church. Haven't been a Christian for about 15 years or so now. I can no longer reconcile the hypocrisy of the church with the practises of the living. There is something fundamentally wrong with any religion that allows such extremes of belief as does Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Don't misunderstand, I also believe a person should be free to believe what she wants, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.
Seems to me that the old saw about 'following the money' is most probably true. Look at the Roman Catholic Church. Money and power seem to have an intrinsic link with religion.

Hypocrisy

Thanks Debbieanne. The answer to hypocrisy is to speak the truth. And religions are hypocritical because they are not about truth but power, as you have observed. There is no more blatant example of this than the Old Testament and how it has been used. I have tried to show that it is the "something" that is "fundamentally wrong" with these religions. I can't speak about Islam but I suspect the OT has had its signature impact there as well.
Don't get me started on the Roman Catholic Church!

interlocking processes

You are bumping up against the contradiction of monotheism. As Pope John Paul ll described it, the "All-knowing Absolute." Knowledge is a feedback loop of distinction and judgement, while the universal state of the absolute lacks any division of distinction. It is neutral basis, not apex. So a spiritual absolute would be the essence of awareness from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell. The problem is that human knowledge originates from the focal point of the individual and after attempting to peel away all the details and complexities of life, we have settled on this idealized conscious knowledge as our god and in a fit of megalomania, projected it onto the entire universe. To the extent there is a spiritual absolute, no matter how far into the abyss it extends, it is this raw consciousness which we simply give form to. Good and bad are not some metaphysical duel between the forces of light and darkness, but are the basic binary code of biological calculation. Even the most elemental life forms are drawn to what is beneficial and repelled by what is detrimental. Between light and dark are not just shades of grey, but all the colors of the spectrum.

At the foundation of our physical description of reality is four dimensional spacetime. This is actually just a projection of our individual point of reference. For one thing, three dimensional space is simply the coordinate system of the center point. There can be any number of coordinate systems defining the same space and that is what is the situation in the Middle East, with two coordinate systems, each using their own separate reference points, are defining the same space. Defining time as a dimension is intuitive, but a logical fallacy. The very concept of history and narrative that creates our thought processes view time as a path(dimension) or flow from past to future. The fact is that it goes the other way. The future becomes the past. There is no dimension along which we travel from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Time is a consequence of motion, not the basis for it. So it is an emergent property and actually temperature is more fundamental, as temperature is an average of motion, while time is a specific reference moving against context, which necessarily is thermal and not absolute. In other words, to the hand of the clock, it is the face going counterclockwise and the face consists of innumerable other reference points all moving from their past to future. Just as the sun appears to move east to west, but really it's the earth rotating west to east.

So time is created as energy coalesces into mass, creating bottlenecks of input and output, be it parts and materials coming together into a product, or people coming together into a movement. Remember it wasn't Jesus who made Christianity a state religion, but Constantine who found the cross to be a powerful war totem. What comes together though, eventually comes apart when the forces of disintegration exceed the forces of attraction.
Those at the top of the social order are simply top predators in a collapsing ecosystem and that makes them vulnerable. Though the same processes which create complex biological organisms are the same that lead to complex social structures.

Keep in mind that it was the polytheists who developed democracy, because they had to order the competing coordinate frames of the various gods, while monotheism only served to validate top down monarchy. What we need is a philosophical model that understands there will always be two sides to the coin, even though we only tend to see one at a time. The concept that is most effective in describing this is convection. That what is under pressure heats up and rises, while that which looses pressure cools down and falls. Not only does it define weather and geology, but politics and economics as well.

Here is what is wrong with the financial process;
The elephant in the room is the obscured logic of economic reality. Money is saved by investing it. That means loaning it to someone else. Therefore total savings are determined by how much can be prudently loaned, not by how much can be reserved from earnings. In order to accommodate surplus savings, loan standards were lowered and fantasy investment vehicles were created, blowing a circulation bubble far greater than a few trillion can patch. The demand side of the equation cannot be ignored. It is the borrower that is the foundation of Capitalism and when the borrower is tapped out, so is the economy. All the lender has is worthless paper, without the borrower. What the stimulus plan proposes is that the bubble can be re-inflated by making money cheaper to borrow, so that the lenders and their bankers can continue to draw interest, but it doesn't matter how much you plant, if the soil is barren.

It is necessary to understand money as the public utility that it is, not the private property we have been led to believe. As an analogy, you own your house, car, business, etc. but not the roads connecting them. Money is similar to the roads. It's the interchangeability that makes it work. It is both medium of exchange and store of value, but as store of value it amounts to fat cells in the economy. Necessary in moderation and broadly distributed, but dangerous in excess and concentration. If those administering transportation systems insisted on squeezing as much profit from the rest of the economy as possible and that they were the only ones capable of making it work, it would be viewed as corruption, pure and simple. In fact, that's what the railroads did and it was.

Private banks often used to issue their own currency. Now we have a publicly supported currency leased out to a private banking system. The next step will be a public banking system that will be incorporated at all levels of government, just as roads are, so that profits are re-cycled back through the communities which created them and depositors would naturally bank with those institutions that supported the services they are most likely to use. Competition would be a function of the various communities using the income to provide the best environment for people and business.

That is why it is interesting to watch the banking system being rapidly nationalized. Rather than spending untold wealth to restore it to health and return it to the private sector, it needs to be broken up and distributed to the various levels of government, from counties and towns, to cities and states, with some degree of federal oversight of the banks and control of the currency.

Viewing money as a public utility would incline us to store wealth in our communities and environment, rather than drain value out to put in a bank.

Growth is bottom up, not top down. The problem with treating the economy like a game of Monopoly is that when one person owns everything, the game is over and then starts again. In real life, this stage is called revolution. The economy must function as a convective cycle of rising assets and precipitating benefits, otherwise we have the current situation of large storm clouds of marginally productive wealth hanging over a parched economy.

This isn't an ideology, just an observation of how to differentiate between public and private functions. Time will make it more apparent.

McJ's picture

Borrower tapped out...

"It is the borrower that is the foundation of Capitalism and when the borrower is tapped out, so is the economy. All the lender has is worthless paper, without the borrower. What the stimulus plan proposes is that the bubble can be re-inflated by making money cheaper to borrow, so that the lenders and their bankers can continue to draw interest, but it doesn't matter how much you plant, if the soil is barren."

Interesting point, because in a recent lecture by Michel Chossudovsky he discusses exactly this. He says that a few creditors are now holding trillions of dollars worth of paper wealth (most in the form of debt or credit notes) and there is no way they can possibly collect it because of course the system is rigged (the creditors create the money, which they then lend to the real economy which must in return repay it plus interest - not possible!). He explains how the point of this is to collapse the real economy so they can then use their paper wealth to buy up it's assets at bargain basement prices. He gives the example of Warren Buffet who is in the process buying up GM for a song. They also leverage our indebtedness to them to force us to privatize our social institutions (health care etc.) and bring in further deregulation so they can gather even more wealth and power over us.

It's a good watch - you can find it at the link.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5524526231174165759&ei=3c9zSdaJ...

"I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain..." -- Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

interlocking reality

You are bumping up against the contradiction of monotheism. As Pope John Paul ll described it, the "All-knowing Absolute." Knowledge is a feedback loop of distinction and judgement, while the universal state of the absolute lacks any division of distinction. It is neutral basis, not apex. So a spiritual absolute would be the essence of awareness from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell. The problem is that human knowledge originates from the focal point of the individual and after attempting to peel away all the details and complexities of life, we have settled on this idealized conscious knowledge as our god and in a fit of megalomania, projected it onto the entire universe. To the extent there is a spiritual absolute, no matter how far into the abyss it extends, it is this raw consciousness which we simply give form to. Good and bad are not some metaphysical duel between the forces of light and darkness, but are the basic binary code of biological calculation. Even the most elemental life forms are drawn to what is beneficial and repelled by what is detrimental. Between light and dark are not just shades of grey, but all the colors of the spectrum.

At the foundation of our physical description of reality is four dimensional spacetime. This is actually just a projection of our individual point of reference. For one thing, three dimensional space is simply the coordinate system of the center point. There can be any number of coordinate systems defining the same space and that is what is the situation in the Middle East, with two coordinate systems, each using their own separate reference points, are defining the same space. Defining time as a dimension is intuitive, but a logical fallacy. The very concept of history and narrative that creates our thought processes view time as a path(dimension) or flow from past to future. The fact is that it goes the other way. The future becomes the past. There is no dimension along which we travel from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Time is a consequence of motion, not the basis for it. So it is an emergent property and actually temperature is more fundamental, as temperature is an average of motion, while time is a specific reference moving against context, which necessarily is thermal and not absolute. In other words, to the hand of the clock, it is the face going counterclockwise and the face consists of innumerable other reference points all moving from their past to future. Just as the sun appears to move east to west, but really it's the earth rotating west to east.

So time is created as energy coalesces into mass, creating bottlenecks of input and output, be it parts and materials coming together into a product, or people coming together into a movement. Remember it wasn't Jesus who made Christianity a state religion, but Constantine who found the cross to be a powerful war totem. What comes together though, eventually comes apart when the forces of disintegration exceed the forces of attraction.
Those at the top of the social order are simply top predators in a collapsing ecosystem and that makes them vulnerable. Though the same processes which create complex biological organisms are the same that lead to complex social structures.

Keep in mind that it was the polytheists who developed democracy, because they had to order the competing coordinate frames of the various gods, while monotheism only served to validate top down monarchy. What we need is a philosophical model that understands there will always be two sides to the coin, even though we only tend to see one at a time. The concept that is most effective in describing this is convection. That what is under pressure heats up and rises, while that which looses pressure cools down and falls. Not only does it define weather and geology, but politics and economics as well.

Here is what is wrong with the financial process;
The elephant in the room is the obscured logic of economic reality. Money is saved by investing it. That means loaning it to someone else. Therefore total savings are determined by how much can be prudently loaned, not by how much can be reserved from earnings. In order to accommodate surplus savings, loan standards were lowered and fantasy investment vehicles were created, blowing a circulation bubble far greater than a few trillion can patch. The demand side of the equation cannot be ignored. It is the borrower that is the foundation of Capitalism and when the borrower is tapped out, so is the economy. All the lender has is worthless paper, without the borrower. What the stimulus plan proposes is that the bubble can be re-inflated by making money cheaper to borrow, so that the lenders and their bankers can continue to draw interest, but it doesn't matter how much you plant, if the soil is barren.

It is necessary to understand money as the public utility that it is, not the private property we have been led to believe. As an analogy, you own your house, car, business, etc. but not the roads connecting them. Money is similar to the roads. It's the interchangeability that makes it work. It is both medium of exchange and store of value, but as store of value it amounts to fat cells in the economy. Necessary in moderation and broadly distributed, but dangerous in excess and concentration. If those administering transportation systems insisted on squeezing as much profit from the rest of the economy as possible and that they were the only ones capable of making it work, it would be viewed as corruption, pure and simple. In fact, that's what the railroads did and it was.

Private banks often used to issue their own currency. Now we have a publicly supported currency leased out to a private banking system. The next step will be a public banking system that will be incorporated at all levels of government, just as roads are, so that profits are re-cycled back through the communities which created them and depositors would naturally bank with those institutions that supported the services they are most likely to use. Competition would be a function of the various communities using the income to provide the best environment for people and business.

That is why it is interesting to watch the banking system being rapidly nationalized. Rather than spending untold wealth to restore it to health and return it to the private sector, it needs to be broken up and distributed to the various levels of government, from counties and towns, to cities and states, with some degree of federal oversight of the banks and control of the currency.

Viewing money as a public utility would incline us to store wealth in our communities and environment, rather than drain value out to put in a bank.

Growth is bottom up, not top down. The problem with treating the economy like a game of Monopoly is that when one person owns everything, the game is over and then starts again. In real life, this stage is called revolution. The economy must function as a convective cycle of rising assets and precipitating benefits, otherwise we have the current situation of large storm clouds of marginally productive wealth hanging over a parched economy.

This isn't an ideology, just an observation of how to differentiate between public and private functions. Time will make it more apparent.

John Merryman

Cause and effect

John M, to the extent that I could follow your writing, I disagree with it, particularly the money theory. The most immediate and crucial point at this late stage is that bankers make money and gain power from wars and so will continue to promote them.
The main purpose of my essay was, though,to try and show the cause and effect link between what some Christians and Jews are doing and what they believe. Then I attempted to show that they are wrong from within their own framework of thinking or belief system. From this I was then projecting forward to what they are likely to do and suggesting a way to head off or at least impact to some degree the coming disaster.

james, I'm in basic

james,

I'm in basic agreement with your position, or I wouldn't have been so verbose. The problem with monotheism is that it really doesn't account for reciprocity, that every action tends to have a re-action, law of unintended consequences. Its only real dichotomy is good vs. bad. So it has the tendency to lead people to extremes in the belief that if a little of something is good, alot of it must be better. This creates irreconcilable differences when two groups of people have conflicting goals, since both consider themselves divinely motivated. There was a lot of other thinking mashed into that piece, so it does get confusing. My thoughts on money are not so much to socialize the system, as that by defining it as a public utility, to demythologize it. Make it a tool of society, not a god.

Basic agreement

John, thanks for your comments. I don't have much to argue with there except maybe a qualification or two regarding Christianity as distinct from other monotheistic religions. But that would take me off into comparitive theology and I'd rather stay with religion and politics and their immediate effects on us.

Quite an essay James.

Coincidental to your timely essay, I am undertaking to read the bible from beginning to end for the first time. I tried a couple of months ago and when I got to "dominion over the earth" and "subduing all the animals", I set it aside.

On my second effort, I'm up to Genesis 20. It makes me gag. God is depicted as a four-year-old spoiled kid and the three-year-olds are lapping it up.

God sees the earth is populated with evil and so starts again with the seed of evil (chosen-ness) planted firmly in the solution of the ark.

Fast forward to today and we have James at the Winter Patriot blog writing a very plausible (and very readable, thank you) description of what was set in motion in Genesis.

( And just because... Cain offers a vegetarian sacrifice but that's not good enough. His brother Abel whacks a lamb and stuffs it in the smoker... and God though that was tasty enough, apparently. Blah: if you really think you need to sacrifice, cut your own damn toe off and smoke that.)

McJ's picture

Thanks for the humour and

laughing out loud Laughing out loud
Thanks for the humour and very good points as well. I agree with James - daunting task. Keep us up on your progress!

You may enjoy Rick Gervais' take on creationism seeing as you are taking on the bible and all...

"I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain..." -- Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

Thanks for the laugh. My

Thanks for the laugh. My take on Genesis was/is very similar.

Daunting prospect

That's a daunting prospect you have before you, IC. To help bear you up, you might appreciate this reply to Dr. Laura Schlessinger entitled Why Can't I Own a Canadian?

McJ's picture

Very funny!

Thanks I enjoyed that. Humour is such an excellent and expedient way to make a point. smiling

"I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain..." -- Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

Leviticus 20

Down the bottom of that article is a reference to Lev 20:14 saying you can't marry a woman AND her daughter. In fact, there is a whole list of people you can't sleep with listed in Leviticus ch20; your father's wife, your auntie, your sister, your daughter-in-law and others. But there's one notable incestuous relationship which isn't mentioned. Want to guess which one it is? Yes, having sex with your daughter is not mentioned even though it is by far the most common form of incest.
Leviticus was written by the Levites, the priests, so I'm sure it was an oversight. Right? Because priests don't do that sort of thing, do they?

The thing about listing all those you can't sleep with is that anybody not on the list is fair game. One has to consider that that was the intention when it was written. It will certainly be interpreted that way later on by these legal minded power brokers. Nice.

Yep, That's funny.

I suspect that as a Canadian I am already at least partly owned by Americans.

And I have an irritating feeling that I'm going to pay for my assault on Genesis. Maybe it will go away if I let my temple hairs grow.

McJ's picture

temple hairs

"Maybe it will go away if I let my temple hairs grow."

Leviticus 19:27-28 -"You shall not round the edge of your head..."
Considering the literal translations we are are discussing...are we sure Jehovah was talking about hair? In the same sentence he is very specific about the beard. "..nor shall you destroy the edge of your beard".
I mean, maybe these ancient guys didn't like the shape of their heads. And then what about bald guys?

At any rate you're going to need a curling iron if you want them nice barrel curls.

"I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain..." -- Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

McJ's picture

Speaking of currency...

Great essay James. Thanks for posting it!
It made me think of a point I find myself making whenever conversations turn to discussions of war or even to what to about other groups of people who are perceived as doing bad things to us or acting against our ideas of what is 'good' or in our interest. It is basically that the overwhelming majority of these 'others' (whoever they are) are the same as us, they want the same things from life which is quality of life -family, friendship, meaningful work, to be appreciated for their efforts, to live in a nice place in pleasant surroundings (a connection to nature), education for themselves and their families, good health and less stress - be they black, brown, white, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Chinese, Russian, Indian, European or American etc. Even tho to me, this is a simple and obvious point, I never seem to get very far with it. The retort is always an endlessly creative 'but', which is basically an argument predicated on fear that the real desire of 'the others' is to take away from us, those very things we desire so much. The violent and horrific history of the world with groups of people continuously slaughtering, enslaving and dominating one another makes no sense unless we recognize that fear is the common currency. Otherwise we would be working together to create a fulfilling life for all of us. (That is not to say we wouldn't have problems or disputes just that our motivations would be different.)

You ask, James, "Can we bring violence to an end by refusing to participate in it; by refusing to support it wherever we find it being taught be it in our church, our synagogue, our club, our employment, our government?"
Those very few who seek to have power and control over the overwhelming majority have always used fear as a tool to dominate us. Organized religion imo, is just a really good gig for producing fear and as you point out, if we accept the Judeao/Christian model most are left with an internal conflict which ultimately seeks expression in an external conflict. My questions are:
Why is it apparently so easy for us to accept irrational fears (as opposed to natural fears such as falling, or the 'fight or flight' from imminent danger), when it is obviously against our own self interests? Are we basically flawed and if so, was this the creator's intent? And what is the elixir that feeds those who crave power? Is it fear, because it appears to me for the whole of our known history it has been the tool of choice to satisfy their cravings?

I don't have answers, only musings so hope some of this made sense. Again, great read James and I well be doing some more pondering on this.

"I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain..." -- Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

Thanks fo r your kind words,

Thanks fo r your kind words, McJ. I read once that all wars were wars against the ordinary people waged by the elite. I find it hard to argue with that.
Yes, fear immobilises us against doing what is best for ourselves in the face of demands to the contrary from authorities. Alice Miller has much to say on this. Essentially, our upbringing practices inhibit the functioning of our freewill, our autonomy.

As for the psychopaths, pride and fear are the twin drivers IMO. They get away with their destructive behaviour mainly, I think, because of the above childhood conditioning and just plain ignorance on the part of the majority of the population as to the psychopathic nature.

McJ's picture

the chicken or the egg

Well, I have started to read Miller along with the four other books I am currently reading which I know is probably not the best idea! I think my mind likes the chaos or at least that's the story I'm sticking to.

Where my thoughts are going with this is to the beginning as in Genesis or perhaps to the beginning as in of theism. I am not meaning to be trite here but if violence is a result of childhood conditioning then when/where did it start - with the chicken or the egg? Is it part of a human's animal nature to be violent, which is necessary for survival in that he/she needs to kill to eat? Were we once a species connected to nature, understanding ourselves as being a part of it rather than separate from, and having dominion over it? Did that understanding keep our violent side in it's rightful place, so to speak? When did the movement toward violence against each other begin (and also indiscriminate violence against other animals/nature) and what caused that change if we were not created this way?

I know - a lot of questions!! which I'm not expecting answers to - just musing/meddling my way along. smiling

"As for the psychopaths, pride and fear are the twin drivers IMO."
I would also add that secrecy seems to have its allures, however I think producing fear is the big draw.

"I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain..." -- Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

Uncivilized civilization

Fear and Psychopathy are intimately linked to violence. I didn't go into either in my essay as it was getting perhaps too long as it was. Also missing is a longer discussion on what constitutes violence and when does fighting with your neighbour become war. There's an important distinction.
How did the "chicken and egg" thing get started? I don't know but maybe the advent of "Civilization" with its specialisation of labor and the introduction of money and the end of barter and simple sharing had something to do with it. These two changes greatly facilitated exploitation of fellow citizens and neighbouring tribes or nations. Daniel Quinn has a lot of valuable things to say about this in his book "Ishmael" (nothing to do with religion or sectarian politics). Yes, another book!! Quinn also discusses this distinction between fighting and war. Highly recommended. Hope you are getting some sleep!

I am not meaning to be trite

I am not meaning to be trite here but if violence is a result of childhood conditioning then when/where did it start - with the chicken or the egg?

I don't think this matters. The conditioning is a continuous process. We simply need to understand how it works in order to stop it. What it originated from is only a philosophical question, that cannot be answered, in my opinion.

McJ's picture

sleep

Sleep! hahaha - cuts into my reading time.
You guys must just suck up books. Cartman
I need to find a way that I can put these books on my head and then all the information will just sink into my brain. sticking out tongue

Interesting you bring up the definition of what constitutes violence because as I was writing that last comment I was thinking - now what exactly is violence, is killing for food, or acting in self defense an act of violence? So, I went on a google search which produced very little in the way of a consistent definition. Most defined it in terms of harm to other humans, although violence to property was also included in some. I also found out that the Jains consider eating honey an act of Himsa (violence) because honey contains many small insects, eggs of bees and disabled bees and like alcohol contains millions of single cell organisms called Nigoda. They believe you "commit sin equivalent to burning seven villages by eating one drop of honey."
However...strangely, I like their definition.
"The nature of non-violence is judged by our intentions and actions. If a person deliberately and knowingly harms other living beings, it is violence...Whether it is by our actions, or by our speech or by our thoughts, hurting others is Himsä - violence.

I would put this more simply. Act without intent to harm.
Or...action with intent to create harm is violence.
(Not so easy to accomplish, as it requires always knowing your intent - which means you need to understand the truth behind your actions. Intent, as I have discovered over the years, is a slippery little devil to discover at times.)

"I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain..." -- Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

Principle of proportion

A libertarian pointed to that essay by Roderick Long, on Sheldon Richman's blog. Sheldon had dismissed Palestinian shelling as equally wrong and the commenter had asked when, then, would Palestinians be justified in doing that ? The essay is also written by a libertarian, and you know how touchy coercion is to this current, so this should be a good start for such a debate.

McJ's picture

I did a quick read

I did a quick read of Long's essay and now am off to work... Excellent food for thought -thanks for linking to it. And I agree, good start for a debate.

"I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain..." -- Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

Good explanation

This is a good explanation of the choices and consequences of using physical force as an aggressor and as a defender and I agree entirely with the author on his choice of and definition of defensive coercion. There is much to support this position, too, in the New Testament which will surprise some. For instance, see this article here
It shows very clearly how the truth has been turned on its head to support religious and other leaders. There are other examples as well including the famous "Turn the other cheek". I'll write on it when I have a little more time.

Turning the other cheek

The other day, Littlehorn (thanks), linked to an essay on violence by Roderick Long. It is an excellent essay , in my opinion, but it mentioned an issue almost in passing that I think is much misunderstood. So with the reader's indulgence, I'll pursue it with the following comments!

Assuming I'm reading him correctly, Long equated Christ's admonition to “turn the other cheek” with pacifism. He seemed also to equate non violent resistence with pacifism as well. I don't agree with either proposition.
“Turn the other cheek” is often thought to be the passive acceptance of violence and, indeed, to be encouraging more violence from the attacker. But in the original context it is actually advocating quite the opposite and is a non violent act of defiance against someone who is acting as if he has authority or power over the person struck. Mathew 5:39 (NKJV) says, “But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also”.

First of all, we are dealing with an insult here not a full on assault against life and limb. “Resist (not)” here in the Greek means to “(not) stand against” i.e go toe to toe against, to brawl with the attacker. The “right” cheek is mentioned as it is important. Most people (left handers and trained boxers aside) strike out with their right hand. For a right hander to strike someone else on their right cheek means to deliver a “backhander”, to strike using the back of the hand. This is the insult of someone who sees themselves as superior to the “victim”, to having power over them. This is how servants and slaves were treated. By turning the other cheek the “victim” is saying, “I do not accept that you have power over me nor is the attack legitimate”.

Turning the other cheek denies the striker the opportunity to repeat the insult. The attacker now only has the choices of backing down or escalating the violence by throwing a punch but in doing so becomes a common brawler and loses any high standing they may have had. Either way the attacker loses face in the eyes of any audience. And either way the “victim” has not responded out of fear nor accepted the presumption of power. He has not bowed his head and cowered nor attacked back and escalated the violence. Dignity has been maintained and defiance and the presumption of equal standing (at least) has been the response.
It is not a passive acceptance of violence. To do so would legitimate it and I cannot see Jesus legitimating violence. He was clearly against it. So the only response left is the nonviolent insult or the act of defiance in return.

Should anyone find themselves in this situation, literally, and decides to follow Christ's advice, I would add that it is important to maintain eye contact!

Back in my school daze, I

Back in my school daze, I was brought up short by a question posed by a member of the Black Panthers.
"What is violence? Is hunger violence? Is poverty violence?"
Those reading the studies of Alice Miller, http://www.alice-miller.com/index_en.php
which have been touched upon in recent posts, might understand that violence is a conditioned response to asocial situations.
To remain passive in the face of evil, which seems to be the norm here in the redwhiteandblue, is a symptom of the surrender of the will to those willing to assert power - those sociopathic types who seize "leadership" on the terror laden playground which is this battered world upon which we live.
To build a new construct of reality in which we are able to declare outrage at the murderous theft and exploitation which is the norm in the human condition on this world, may seem a task beyond hope.
Yet, what other choice is there?
For myself, compassion is the bedrockupon which I function, knowing that whatever the evil, whatever the crime, those actively involved are little more than wind-up toys, unconscious, pushing ever faster on the hamsterwheel of percieved reality.
"September 1, 1939"
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives,
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night."
- W.H. Auden
Too much is "unmentionable", too much is unsaid, too much is taken as a matter of course, and we die, in our millions, not making a fuss.
Mommy spank.

Well said Don. Far too much

Well said Don. Far too much is left unsaid or twisted beyond all recognition. Society as a whole seems to have lost its core of compassion, empathy means nothing anymore, (except if it happens to your fellow countryman for some reason. see AUS bush fires)

"The unmentionable odor of death"

Great comments, Don. Particularly this,
"To remain passive in the face of evil, which seems to be the norm here in the redwhiteandblue, is a symptom of the surrender of the will to those willing to assert power - those sociopathic types who seize "leadership""
It seems to me that violence is primarily about trying to take away our freewill.
And that's a powerful poem of Auden's

Violence Vs the Violent

Definitions of violence are very useful but I think they lose their usefulness in dealing with violence as they become more specific. The danger is that you end up like the Levitical priests covering all the things you are against and leaving open, intentionally or not, those you haven't mentioned. This becomes a mine for endless arguments with legalists who are employed by, or are themselves, perpertrators of violence. Whole legal systems (particularly Common Law systems) are also great examples of this.

So I think the answer is to keep the definition broad (like McJ's) and rather than focusing on the nature of violence, focus instead on the nature of the violent. The Israelis have not been restrained largely because there has been no examination of them; what is their culture, how do they think and what is their motivation? What kind of people can do these things? What kind of people can steal a whole country through lies and terror and talk and behave as if they have done nothing wrong and/or if they may have, that it was entirely justified and more?

The answers to these questions will galvanise us into action against the violence much quicker than the answers to questions about the nature of violence, legitimate though they are. While ever we are examining the violence we are not examining the people causing it, the source. I am reminded of writer Ron Suskind quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:
"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." (from Wikipedia)"

While people are examining the truly violent's last outrage, they are off creating the next “reality” or outrage. Clearly there is no end to this while ever they are free to create havoc. And we will never catch up to the violent while we are focusing on their most recent behaviour (and perhaps arguing with them or their representatives about it) and not on them. There is no need to argue with the violent. There is no need to convince them or get their agreement that what they are doing is violent. There is only the need to stop them.

YOU guys are so amazing.

YOU guys are so amazing. Your writing and insights keep me coming back to soak up the knowledge. Thanks to you all.

McJ's picture

IDF recruits...embracing god's commandent of war

Rabbi's speaking to young men soon to be drafted in the IDF. sad
From the Jerusalem Post Feb. 25/09
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull...
...Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau delivered a speech expressing hope that Israel would embark on preemptive wars rather than wait for "the enemy to come here... and see the whites of our eyes."
...Rabbi Haim Druckman, who heads Bnei Akiva, said that "fighting our enemies is a commandment. To serve in the IDF is a commandment....They know why they fight, what this country is for us, that this is the land of our fathers, the land God gave to us. There is nothing more just than our war for our existence and our country, which our enemies want to destroy."
...Kiryat Arba Chief Rabbi Dov Lior delivered a fiery and overtly political speech, calling for Israeli sovereignty over the whole of the Land of Israel and criticizing what he described as weak-minded IDF strategies in the face of Israel's enemies.
Citing the Torah, Lior noted that "200,000 Israelites and 10,000 Judahites fought Amalek. Why are the Judahites counted separately from the others? Because the Israelite army pitied Amalek. Today this is called being humanitarian."
He added, "Only the tribe of Judah did not pity Amalek, and destroyed it... The sons of Torah are taught not to pity their enemies."
Lior expressed hope that a growing number of IDF strategists coming from the national-religious camp would have an influence on future military campaigns.
"We need ethics from the Torah, not the Christian world, which teaches to turn the other cheek. This hypocrisy is against human nature," Lior said.

"I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain..." -- Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

There it is in black and

There it is in black and white (thanks McJ) and it's by no means the first of these sort of pronouncements.
"Citing the Torah, Lior noted that "200,000 Israelites and 10,000 Judahites fought Amalek. Why are the Judahites counted separately from the others? Because the Israelite army pitied Amalek. Today this is called being humanitarian."" For more on the distinction between Israelites and Judahites see here from Douglas Reed The complete book The Controversy of Zion see here

If only the so called Christians out there in TeeVeeLand could understand what this vitriol means. Perhaps if they went to Jerusalem and saw this going on they might understand

McJ's picture

and read all over.

Black and white and read all over! They don't appear to be making much of an attempt to hide it. It's right out in the open for anyone to read.

"The most unpleasant truth in the long run is a far safer travelling companion than the most agreeable falsehood." Emerson

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