What if you shave off the rhetorical baggage and ideology from the individual? What is left after sifting through the debris of myth and stereotype and generalization while hoping to eye a few shards; archaeological artifacts of the real? What if we can dispose of all the noise, and have a dialog, a face to face with the quiet. Lets face it, we live on a continent that is gun crazy and even many of the so-called peace types, greens, and the liberal left are also trigger happy and quick to shoot with words, aggressively insular in the righteousness of their position. It seems the growth of pop culture has had an equal expansionary effect of ideological hardening of the arteries.
Read More: http://thenextweb.com/me/2011/08/08/anonymous-reportedly-hacks-syrian-ministry-of-defense-website/ ---Scrolling across the top of the website are links to videos illustrating the unrest, deaths and civil injustice in the country. At the foot of the website are a number of links to protest group websites, Facebook pages and Twitter profiles all campaigning against the actions of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the military.---
There are a great many of us who seem to want to stay in a permanent state, a narcissistic coma of the world of higher educated white liberal wish fulfillment fantasy. With all its distorted moral dilemmas in a search for a renewal of enlightenment. And if there is no urge or desire for our new cold war replacement enemy to be somewhat reasonable- submissive and whitened up- then they have to be subtly demonized.And that means setting the narrative cultural tone through white eyes that have a stake in the system. Its all about non-moslem consciousness. Ultimately, you can’t feel guilty because they are such horrible bastards attitude ingeniously permeates so-called respectable society.
One of the most controversial and divisive issues in North America is whether the Muslim faith is inherently violent or non-violent.Its been an ambiguous issue with severe ambivalence emanating from some quarters.Interestingly, we are in Ramadan, a month of fasting which is said to induce a kind of quietude in which a meditative mood is said to take hold. Quite a contrast to say sectarian violence in Iraq. The question is whether the actual thought material is overtly of a religious nature; or whether the religious locus is simply more diffused, slower and more deliberate with an accompanying increased or heightened sense of awareness of transporting oneself through an existence. It is perhaps a reason for Ramadan being a month long since it imposes a severe disruption of the self-absorbed and hectic rituals that constitute what could be described as the normal life resulting in a more deliberate approach to life.
As far as an imposed interruption goes, it seems fairly extreme. But, if this form of piety and almost zen like relation with the quiet is at the core of the Islamic faith, then one has to question the propaganda hosed over us from the anti-Islam block that is basically evolved into a business model unto itself. From ivory towers to populist politics, many want a piece of this jingoistic pie.
Ultimately, Islam is not predicated on violence. It is inherently non-violent. The problem that is rarely recognized is that the principal religious faiths appear systematically diverse which means unable to be defined and labeled in a definite sense. All are loaded with internal strife. All in their own way profess their brand of faith as the truest and most genuine article. Given that religion is a allegorical representation of an individual, it very neatly describes all the passions, desires and contradictions within the individual.
---This time around, however, Barak pulled the rug out from under Israel's favorite scare tactic. The former Israeli Prime Minister/current Minister of Defense/Deputy Prime Minister told Ha'aretz today that even "f Iran succeeds in developing nuclear weapons, it is unlikely to bomb Israel," thereby undermining one of the Netanyahu administration's main propaganda lines that a nuclear-armed Iran (if one ever were to exist) would represent an immediate "existential threat" to the self-proclaimed Jewish state. According to Ha'aretz, Barak voiced his opinion that "Israel should not spread public panic about the Iranian nuclear program and responded to a question about whether he thought Iran would launch a nuclear attack on Israel by saying, "Not on us and not on any other neighbor." Just a few days ago, on May 1, both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres repeated their dire warnings and tired talking points about the supposed Iranian threat. Speaking at the opening ceremony of Holocaust Memorial Day at Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to Jewish victims of Nazi genocide, Netanyahu and Peres both "stressed Iranian nuclear aspirations as an existential threat to Israel," ...Read More:http://mondoweiss.net/2011/05/the-neverending-story-updates-on-the-fantasies-falsehoods-and-fear-mongering-about-irans-nuclear-program.html image:http://www.doctormacro.com/movie%20star%20pages/Marx%20Brothers.htm
Into this mix can be tossed the atheist religion as well. Dawkins, Hitchens et al. who use religion as a scapegoat without really delving into its varieties and textures. They are on a very thin line, susceptible of being as reactionary and stiff as those they ridicule with such eloquent facility; too much of a zero-sum game and right and wrong sophisticated children’s fairy tales. They end up being media cannon fodder as well since they are unwilling to admit that religion can exist without and in spite of fanaticism and dogmatism. Fascism and Communism in all it mutant forms showed a smug co-existence with rigid rules of conduct in the absence of religion.
Call it blind faith. Presently we have economists like Paul Krugman, Stiglitz and Roubini bleating, somewhat dogmatically with demagogic overtones, for more stimulus from government and government moving recklessly toward austerity in the fear of their debt credit ratings being downgraded. Both sides clinging to a certain irrational certainty that they are in the right; their own views are “faith” based, but they would not categorize it as religious. Who knows, perhaps a Ramadan experience would furnish some necessary calm and quietude producing some worthwhile reason.
Night of the Living Dead, George Romero. on Sam Huntington:The spread of Western consumption patters, which he describes as irrelevant: "Somewhere in the Middle East, a half-doszen young men could well be dressed in jeans, listening to rap, and, between their bows to Mecca, putting together a bomb to blow up an American airliner." This universal assumption is also challenged in Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World. Read More:http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/The_Clash_of_Civilizations_and_the_Remaking_of_World_Order image:http://welcome-to-monster-land.blogspot.com/2009/06/zombie-kill-of-week-night-of-living.html
Societal factions seem forever refighting old wars,like a bad karma that refuses to defuse itself. In the West there is a infatuation with congratulating ourselves for being on the right side. The Arab world for the most part is caricatured as unenlightened and made shovel ready to label, judge and dismiss. And when our mainstre
edia depicts discrimination such as torturing Iraqis, it basically poses two related questions; that being how will this affect white people and, inevitably, we’re so pleased with ourselves for not being evil and racist like the perpetrators. The media is simply a reflection and operates on the same narrative principles as Hollywood.
Susan Sontag 2001:The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards. Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic president who assures us that America stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. ...Read More:http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/susan.htm image:http://www.thedeadballera.com/BeerDrinkersAlSchact.html
ADDENDUM:
Mark Steyn is even more pessimistic:
The future belongs to Islam
Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare. (…) the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad. The Western Muslim’s pan-Islamic identity is merely the first great cause in a world where globalized pathologies are taking the place of old-school nationalism….
---And in indeed it would appear that war it is. The following statement by EfraimHalevy, former head of Israel 's Mossad and National Security Council, aptly conveys a widely felt sentiment: The 11th of September was, if you will, an official and biting declaration of World War III.(4) Several years later, he remarked: We are in the middle of World War Three, and I see no end to it.(5) This assessment by Halevy is reflected in a rather brusque characterization of the situation by a well-known authority in Islamic studies: The war has started … between two civilizations - between the civilization based on the Bible and between the civilization based on the Koran.(6) If this formulation seems a little abrasive for some, this is how Bernard Lewis, arguably today's most prominent scholar of Islam, chose to convey his perception of affairs: We are facing a need and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations – the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.(7) Read More:http://www.jerusalemsummit.org/eng/public_diplomacy.php image:http://www.filmfan.com/pages/memorial_decarlo.html
…For states in demographic decline with ever more lavish social programs, the question is a simple one: can they get real? Can they grow up before they grow old? If not, then they’ll end their days in societies dominated by people with a very different world view. (…)
Europe, like Japan, has catastrophic birth rates and a swollen pampered elderly class determined to live in defiance of economic reality. But the difference is that on the Continent the successor population is already in place and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be. (…) On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. (…)
There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe — without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. (…)
---Flemming Rose, editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest-circulation newspaper, is visiting Israel under the auspices of the Hebrew University's Shasha Center for Strategic Studies, headed by former Mossad director Efraim Halevy. He's here to lecture on how nations need to find the right balance between religious sensitivities and freedom of expression. Rose says the OIC is trying to use Durban II to rewrite the rules of human rights and international law in a way that undermines the values of liberty enshrined in the Western canon - including the US Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's all part of an ongoing Muslim campaign that has been making significant strides, says Rose.---Read More:http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/us-muslim-engagement/
“We’re the ones who will change you,” the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.” As he summed it up: “Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours.” Read More:http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/islam/a
---Samuel Huntington's article "The Clash of Civilizations?" appeared in the Summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs, where it immediately attracted a surprising amount of attention and reaction. Because the article was intended to supply Americans with an original thesis about "a new phase" in world politics after the end of the cold war, ..."It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future." Read More:http://www.thenation.com/article/clash-ignorance image:http://broadwayworld.com/printcolumn.cfm?id=107785
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