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Sam Kazman: Seven quotes about Communism - Washington Examiner

The late Petr Beckmann, a Czech physicist, fled to the U.S. in 1963. He became known here for his pro-technology and anti-environmentalist writings. In 1991, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Prof. Beckmann visited Leningrad and talked to a young ...

Hostage to Fortune - Counter Punch

Porter, quotes former CIA official, Philip Giraldi, as saying that the U ... In the newsrooms of the West, liberal anti-war journalists reluctantly agree that it was the Bush-Cheney surge in Iraq that did the trick. It is routinely used in evidence ...

Latest Articles - Dissident Voice

... First the anti ... quotes by various leaders of modern Israel. People still living today, who resided in Palestine pre-1948, say the Arabs and Jews lived in harmony until the Zionist Ashkenazis arrived. Since then, there has been non-stop war.

YOUR OPINION - Scranton Times-Tribune

Editor: As the 2010 mid-term elections near, we are beginning to hear a lot of chatter from potential Republican candidates who want to take the congressional seats held by Reps. Chris Carney and Paul Kanjorski. We are hearing them say that this year ...

Flipping through the decade - Colorado Springs Independent

File photo One of the 2007 St. Patrick’s Day parade’s indelible images: police dragging 65-year-old Elizabeth Fineron, who walked with a cane, across the pavement. As the world and our city came upon the end of a tumultuous decade, we wondered ...

News Media and the State - Nolanchart.com

U.S. news media have a peculiar way of reporting U.S. government affairs. If you were a news-wire editor for the New York Times or The Associated Press, tasked with analyzing the passage of a federal law, here is how you would compose the report ...

Archive for February 2007 - The Spokesman-Review

The House was in mid-debate, when suddenly, without warning, Hayden Lake Rep. Jim Clark’s laptop computer started playing a sprightly electronic version of “Happy Birthday.” All the legislators around Clark turned to look at him, and as the ...

Resolved Question: is this not a good clarification concerning wahabism?

The word "Wahabism" is in fact nothing but a meaningless appellation which is used by people in two cases: The term "Wahabism" is often used to describe those who closely stick to the verses of the Qur'an and the narrations of the Prophet Muhammad (may Allah raise his rank and grant him peace) in all religious affairs. Consequently, instead of directly attacking Islam for those things that do not appeal to their desires, they call anyone who follows these texts "Wahabis." Another different and contemporary usage has appeared for this term. Anybody who belongs to any of the current Qutbist type groups or movements that call for political overthrows, endless blind purported Jihads which are based upon principles other than those found in Islam and led by people who have no knowledge based background in Islamic scholarship, are entered into a giant umbrella group called "Wahabism." This is done even though these followers of Sayyid Qutb despise the Salafi/"Wahabi" scholars and their creed. Hence, in the first case, "Wahabism" is used to mean "anything I don't like about Islam," and in the second case, "anything I don't like about what the contemporary Qutbist movements do; things that have no basis in Islam." The media and general population are invited to actually begin to study the principles of Salafism/"Wahabism" and report about it accurately, especially as it seems that the "War Against Terrorism" seems to slowly be turning into the "War Against Wahabism." Some Western intellectuals are doing something to contest this trend, but they are few and far between, and their knowledge of the nature of Salafism is limited. Gary Leupp, a history professor and coordinator of the Asian Studies Program at Tufts University, posed the following question concerning this current of thought: "In Saudi Arabia itself, is "Wahabism" really the threat posited by some neocons? John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, suggests otherwise." Professor Leupp quotes Esposito as saying: "Even conforming to an ultra-conservative, anti-pluralistic faith does not necessarily make you a violent individual." Leupp adds: "There are of course millions of peaceable if ultra-conservative, anti-pluralistic Christians." Driving in his point, Leupp cites F. Gregory Gause III, a professor of political science at the University of Vermont, when he warned the House Subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia about the "dangerous trend" of linking "Wahabism" with terrorism, wherein he explained that this phenomena "is not Saudi or 'Wahabi' in any exclusive sense. It is part of the zeitgeist of the whole Muslim world right now. It is undoubtedly true that the al-Qa'ida network was able to recruit many Saudis. But it would be a mistake to attribute this simply to some purported affinity between 'Wahabism' and al-Qa'ida's message of jihad." Stating that although "some Saudi clerics and intellectuals have supported al-Qa'ida's message [note: the supporters of Sayyid Qutb, the Qutbists]," he adds that "the vast majority have condemned it [note: the Salafi/"Wahabi" scholars]." "Moreover," he says, "Al-Qa'ida has been able to recruit both fighters and intellectual supporters from many countries - Egypt and Pakistan, to name but two - where 'Wahabism' is not a prominent intellectual current." - abridged from the book: The 'Wahhabi' Myth -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Leupp, Saudis http://www.thewahhabimyth.com/ more

Resolved Question: Famous peace quotes from 60's/70's?

From like the 60's/70's? It's for art coursework (war and conflict project). I just need some quotes to do with hippies/ peace/ anti war etc that could inspire me to do things in my sketchbook :) Thanks alot ♥ more

Resolved Question: Where can i go to get MYSPACE graphics && quotes.?

i want some environmental, peace, && anti war quotes to put in my myspace like the little pictures you can add in your sections. where can i go to get some?&& what should i type in google to get results?aids, vegetarian. violence, poverty. animal testing. statistics. meet your meat more

Resolved Question: What can I say back about Bush being a bad president?

My logic is sound about Bush, but I need a comeback to him. What can I say? Me: His advisors planned to start the war in Iraq years before he did. Other guy's responce: You have no real proof of that, there is the Conservative think tank that Liberals try to use as proof, but most of the Advisors are only signatories to the "Statement of Principles" of the organization and not actually active members of it. Mind you the Statement of Principles for this think tank are and I quote: * we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future; * we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values; * we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; [and] * we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. Those four things are pretty much international beliefs for any Conservative. Me: They used the terrorist attack to justify it, yet the terrorist were in Afghanistan, not Iraq. Instead of staying in Afghanistan, we went to Iraq, and never found binLaden who admitted to sending the terrorists to attack us. Other guy's responce: Do you honestly believe that we wouldn't be going into Iraq some time in the twenty years since Gulf War 1. I mean did you not forget how close Clinton came to invading. Iraq was the most misbehaving regime in the Middle East at that time. Yes 9/11 was a wake up call to the danger it posed. But it was Saddam's actions, not some stupid conspiracy that was driving the two countries onto a collision course. Me: When Bush was asked the next year why we didn't put more effort into finding binLaden, he said he "didn't care" about binLaden. So our president who is supposedly defending us from terrorists said he didn't care about finding the man who admitted to attacking us!!!! Other guy's responce: And he was right, he would be pathetically stupid if he focused on Bin Laden and only Bin Laden. The Middle East was a festering bed of Anti American hatred, radicals, and terrorism. Bin Laden had become minimized to the point he had become a figure head and has been one for several years. Bush could have devoted his entire war effort into finding Bin Laden and most likely would have came up empty. But you know what? After about 4 or 5 years of searching, he and everyone else would have raised up their head and realized that while searching for this man, we had made the same stupid mistakes that created 9/11. We had neglected to deal with the Middle East, we had neglected to deal with the Dictators, and we had neglected to deal with Al Qaeda as a whole. Bin Laden could have easily could have become Bush's White Whale. But you should remember, Captain Ahab was so focused on his obsession that in the end, it killed him. Me: Bush continues to send our troops to die in the Middle East at a horrible rate. Other guy's responce: And a much lower rate than many of the other wars. Me: Is it worth thousands of American lives to keep fighting in a country that doesn't even want democracy? They don't want it, so why are we getting killed over it? Other guy's responce: Umm yes, because if you don't secure that country, if you do not make sure that we treat it the right way. It becomes Afghanistan. Read a bit of history, read up on what happened when we took a hands off approach to Afghanistan once the Soviet Union was kicked out. Al Qaeda had repeatedly made their intentions clear, they wanted Iraq, they wanted it badly, they were willing to risk their entire organization for it. They wanted it to be their next base of operations. And you want to leave it because too many people died? Because you believe they don't want democracy when the people have fled to the polls to vote for their Government despite death? Well you know what, consider what would happen if Al Qaeda did have the whole country to work with. Me: If we wanted to help, we would have needed to go about it a different way. Either take so many troops in that we flooded the country and really could ensure peace (but then we would be viewed as occupiers and that would have made our image worse), or we could have killed Sadam quietly and efficiently, without tens of thousands of innocent people getting caught in the crossfire. Other guy's responce: We went in wrong, there is no denying that, but killing Saddam is absolutely stupid. His sons, one of them a known rapist who took pleasure in killing and mutilating people. Some say his sons were even worse than his father, and they would be in command if you killed Saddam. Me: Bush's own father, the former President Bush, warned him that fighting in Baghdad would be dangerous, and the troops would be ambushed. Bush says he does not take advice from his Dad, siYou retards, there was a topic called 'Did Bush do anything right as a president?' and I responded to that topic. Gosh, just answer the damn question >_> more

Resolved Question: Will Obama try and punish Israel, for rejecting his Peace Offering?

May 29, 2009 New peace setback as Binyamin Netanyahu rejects US settlement call Israel and America were locked in one of their most bitter disputes for decades last night after the Israeli Government flatly rejected a direct call from President Obama to halt the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The row threatened to set back President Obama’s already bleak prospects for brokering peace in the Middle East. It is likely to dominate his trip to the region next week, when he makes an address to the Muslim and Arab worlds in Cairo on Thursday MEANWHILE IRAN SAYS: Ahmadinejad Boasts of Enhanced Nuclear Capability, Says 'West Dare Not Threaten Us' President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran has boosted its capacity to enrich uranium, another sign of anti-Western defiance by the leader seeking re-election in a vote next month.-"Now we have more than 7,000 centrifuges and the West dare not threaten us," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying on a small radio station late Wednesday. MEANWHILE: Netanyahu abruptly cancels Europe trip Wednesday, May 27, 2009 Israel Today Cancellation of trip just week in advance comes after France criticized Bibi for saying he will not surrender Jerusalem.... MEANWHILE THE BIBLE SAYS: "It will come about in that day that I will make JERUSALEM a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it Zechariah 12:3 Netanyahu: Jerusalem Will Not Be Divided If the US wants to intervene in other countries wars and ways then they need ... The last time Jerusalem was divided was between 1948 and 1967. .... society" because of the unique history of the Jewish people in EuropePLUS OBAMA LIED.. Check it out.. Wednesday, May 20, 2009 Obama Says It's Time To Divide Jerusalem --Apparently, in his speech to the muslim world from Cairo, Egypt June 4th, Obama intends to announce that it is time to divide Jerusalem, and make the holy city the capital of a Palestinian state. More confirmation of this comes from Globes Online, Israel's Business Arena, HOWEVER LAST JUNE HE SAID JERUSALEM SHOULD REMAIN UN-DIVIDED AND BELONGS TO ISRAEL more

Resolved Question: How do Americans react to the most recent Afghan massacre and Washington's decision to continue airstrikes?

On Monday, the British Guardian quoted an official with the United Nations mission in Kabul who called the reports from the scene “horrifying.” The UN official, who spoke anonymously to the paper, said that bombing was carried out hours after the fighting between the insurgents and US-backed troops had ended. “Local villagers went to the mosque to pray for peace,” he said. “Shortly after evening prayers the air strikes were called in, and they continued for a couple of hours whilst the villagers were frantically calling the local governor to get him to call off the air strikes.”The bombing of civilian homes by an occupying power, even if insurgents are in the vicinity, is forbidden by international law and constitutes a war crime. Moreover, Afghanistan’s principal human rights organization is investigating reports that US forces used white phosphorous shells in attacking the village as well as in previous strikes against civilian targets. These incendiary munitions can be used to create smokescreens or as flares. As an anti-personnel weapon, however, they inflict death and horrendous injuries, sticking to the skin and burning the flesh to the bone. The use of such weapons against civilian targets constitutes a war crime. The Guardian quoted Dr. Mohammad Aref Jalali, who heads a burn center in Herat, where victims were taken. “One of the women who came here told us that 22 members of her family were totally burned,” he said. “She said a bomb distributed white powder that caught fire and then set people's clothes alight.” These war crimes have been carried out by the Obama administration, which is now sending another 21,000 US troops into the Afghanistan war and planning to more than double the size of the US occupation force to 68,000 by 2010. The additional troops will mean more and greater such crimes. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/pers-m12.shtmlWhy Don't People Like Me? 2 The pentagon? You expect anyone to take that serious? The same people who knew where the Iraqi WMD were? Sorry totally unbelievable more

Resolved Question: This is kind of scaring me...?

On the evening of Barack Hussein Obama's election night, the Illinois Lottery was won. Illinois is Obama's home state. Winning number were, AND I QUOTE, Pick 3 - 6, 6, 6, Pick 4 - 7,7,7,9...As many of you know 666 means Anti Christ. and 7779 means God's complete judgment. Put them together and you get "The Antichrist, God's complete Judgment." I had also heard that he recently signed peace with the following countries: France, Germany, Venezuela, and is helping Cuba... All except for France had started HUGE wars, or is on a continues war (except France) *Germany, Venezuela, Cuba* Plz im rlly scared, and to the fact that Ive heard that the world will end on 2012, when Obama's Prez. more

Resolved Question: Was the USA founded as a Christian nation?

From what I understand, people declare the USA is a Christian nation despite all the history. Can anyone explain how it is possible, based on: US Paper money between 1776 -1955 (179 years) did not have the phrase "In God we trust" on it. This was added in 1955 by then Secretary of the Treasury, George W. Humphrey and approved by President Eisenhower. US Coins between 1776-1864 (88 years) did not have the phrase "In God we trust" on them. This was added in 1864 by then Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and approved by Congress. The original pledge of Allegiance as written in 1892 and recited for 62 years did not contain the phrase "under God". In 1954 this phrase was added by the Knights of Columbus and approved by President Eisenhower. The entire US Constitution does not contain the word "God." The US Constitution does not define religion; not even in the First Amendment, which bars the Federal Government from interfering with religion in the United States. Article VI, states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as Qualification" for federal office holders. The oath taken by the President of the United States is Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution. It does NOT contain "So help me God", which has been added verbally by most modern Presidents. The Declaration of Independence uses "God" only once. It is in a God of nature or "mother earth" sense. Quote: "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." The Declaration of Independence once uses the phrase "Divine Providence" without definition. A common definition is "The cooperation of nature with everything that happens." Every religion has its own interpretation of this phrase. Many of the more prominent Founding Fathers were vocal about their opposition to organized religion or anti-clerical. Some of them often related their anti-organized church leanings in their speeches and correspondence, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. First President George Washington was a religious man and expressed this in his National Thanksgiving Proclamations. He enforced the separation between Church & State and made no impositions on Americans with regard to religion during his Presidency. A bill was proposed which would have the government impose a levy "towards the support of that which [religion] they profess." On October 3rd, 1785, Washington wrote a letter to George Mason concerning this bill. He stated that though he is not opposed to the concept of membership to a faith requiring payment, it is unwise to impose religious matters by law. (Library of Congress) Quote:"I think it will be productive of more quiet to the State, than by enacting it into a Law; which, in my opinion, would be impolitic…" During Washington's Presidency, US ships were falling victim to pirates off the coast of Tripoli (now Libya.) A twelve-article treaty with the Muslim nation was drafted to arrange payment in exchange for safe passage of US ships in their waters and peace. To help dispel basis for a religious war, this treaty included the wording: "Article 11. As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion..." The Treaty of Tripoli was unanimously ratified by the Senate, then signed into law and proclaimed to the Nation by second President John Adams on June 10, 1797. It was published in US newspapers with no record of any objection. As early as 1802, religious groups began questioning the intent of the Separation of Church and State. The Danbury Baptists wrote to Founding Father and third President Thomas Jefferson when they feared that their minority could threaten their freedoms. Thomas Jefferson responded in a letter (Which is on record with the U.S. Library of Congress) Quote: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church & State." James Madison, fourth President and the principal drafter of the United States Bill of Rights wrote the following in the document: "Backgrounder on the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom" (Which is on file with the US State Department) Quote: "... no man shall be compelled to frequent more

Voting Question: How World War III Might Unfold -- The Conflict with Iran, and the Unforeseen Consequences?

There must always be an "eye" for an "eye" when it comes to wars and politics, but at what cost? In this case, the two "eyes" are really "I's", Israel and Iran. Both are key players in the Middle East, both are gathering up a storm, and both are preparing to do battle. If the rhetoric from 08 was any indication of what is to come, then a conflict between the two looms in the distance, but the consequences will be far greater than what people expect. In 2008 we saw Iran testing missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv, and we saw them warning that if anyone attacked Iran, Tel Aviv and the Persian Gulf would "light up in a fireball." The Israeli's are quite worried, they know that by 2010 Iran will have the bomb, and believe that by this year they will have the ability to enrich Uranium. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7538524.stm Even Ahmadinejad knows their is going to be a great change coming, he even said so during the summer of 2008. I think he expected the Israeli's to strike then. But no, 2009 is the year to watch, because Israeli intelligence predicts they will have the capability to begin work on the bomb this year, and by 2010 they should have a bomb. Even if they're not working on it, it doesn't change what Israel believes, which is that Iran is a threat working towards their destruction (even if Ahmadinejad quote about wiping Israel of the face of the map is really just a misquote by warmongers). And we all know what will happen if Israel goes in. The entire Middle East will unite against what it sees as an anti-arab militaristic power (and the war in Gaza isn't helping anyone see differently) which is bent on keeping the M East around it down. Syria has said any attack on Iran will be a big mistake, and it doesn't take a genius to realize why. Yet the window for striking is closing, and we all know what Israel does when that happens. They send fighters, and they fight it alone. The US can't get involved now, they have to many domestic issues and public support for a war in the M East is at an all time low (versus pre-Iraq, where over 50% of the pop. supported a war in Iran). And this is a war Israel can't win. Don't get me wrong, when the Israelis are close to being crushed by Syrian, Egyptian, and Iranian tanks America will enter the war, but it will be costly for all involved, and who knows if a Israeli state will even be around afterward. Not to mention the price of oil will sky rocket world wide, creating more money for the Iranians, Russians, and all the others who trade it for currency and weapons. Can America fight the world? Only time will tell, but the fact remains, any attack on Iran will be a BIG mistake, yet its almost inevitable. Especially with the hard line Israel has taken this year to Gaza, which is really starting to piss of the Middle East (with good reason). There is no need for all of us to lose an eye, over something so small and unimportant like nuclear energy. I'm sorry, but Iran has the same rights to it as all of us, and no offense but Iran has been one of the most peaceful countries in the M. East. How many wars have they started, compared to Israel or America? Think about it, before you bomb them. And think about all the unforeseen consequences. A huge Middle Eastern super power centered around Iran. Oil money for Russia. And the fact that any attack on Iran will piss of China, who already has a lot of economic and military deals with them. The enemy of my enemy is a friend, but who is really whose enemy. Can't we all just...get along? Or is war really in our nature? That's up to us to decide. Comments? Questions? Want to see how the next part of WW3 would play out? Go to there and have your say! Peace http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aq1vXn0g.fw5q71xpcUTI0Xsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20090130121143AAZkDuZ more

Resolved Question: When has any country in the arab world extended an olive branch to Israel?

yes, Egypt did, and lo and behold, no Egypt/Israeli war since Camp David. Of course, Egypt did so ONLY after huge and humiliating defeats. What other arab countries have done the same as Egypt. And yes, most if not all arab countries have that in common with Egypt; humiliating defeats by Israel. Israel and Egypt still not buddy buddy, but at the same time, Israel maintains the deal it made with Egypt. And this made after all the peace loving statements made by Nasser about Israel. I would LOVE for some anti-Israel people to tell me how much peace and love Egypt had for Israel, how about some nasser quotes on what he wanted to do to Israel? Those sure were peaceful comments, weren't they? more

Resolved Question: What's with this woman that she continues to bash President Obama?

A Tale Of Two Presidential Workout Fanatics By MICHELLE MALKIN | Posted Friday, December 26, 2008 4:20 PM PT Ah, the perks of media affection. On Christmas Day, the Washington Post delivered a front-page paean to Barack Obama's workout habits. The 1,233-word ode to O's physical fitness read more like a Harlequin romance novel than an A1 news article. Sighed smitten reporter Eli Zaslow, "The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games." Drool cup to the newsroom, stat. Bush's "(over)exercise of power" is Obama's "time to reflect." Zaslow imparted us with vital information about buff Bam's regimen: "Obama has gone to the gym for about 90 minutes a day, for at least 48 days in a row." The Post enlightened us with more gushing commentary from Obama friends and associates, who explain how, as the subtitle of Zaslow's opus put it, "Gym Workouts Help Obama Carry the Weight of His Position." For adoring journalists, you see, Obama's workout fanaticism demonstrates the discipline and balance in his life. Apparently, what's good for Obama's glistening pecs is good for the country. Zaslow quoted Obama's Chicago crony Marty Nesbitt, who offered this diagnosis: "He doesn't think of it as something he has to do — it's his time for himself, a chance for him to reflect. It's his break. He feels better and more revved up after he gets in his workout." And when Obama feels better, the skies will part, the sun will shine (in moderate, environmentally correct, non-global-warming-inducing amounts, of course), and peace will reign worldwide! Too bad the doughy, McDonald's-chomping, coffee-guzzling members of the White House press corps couldn't see the merits of White House exercise over the past eight years. After giggling about his out-of-shape colleagues in the media, Zaslow mentioned in passing that President Bush shares Obama's commitment to health. What he failed to acknowledge is that the same reporters who so greatly admire Obama's lithe figure derided Bush for his training schedule. Former Post writer Jonathan Chait famously attacked Bush three years ago in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times headlined "The (over)exercise of power." Recounting how President Bush ran 3.5 miles a day and preached more cross-training to a federal judge, Chait fumed: "Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? . . . What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy." Chait argued that Bush's passionate devotion to exercise was a dereliction of duty. "Does the leader of the free world need to attain that level of physical achievement?" he jeered. "It's nice for Bush that he can take an hour or two out of every day to run, bike or pump iron. Unfortunately, most of us have more demanding jobs than he does." Can you imagine any member of the Obamedia mocking the incoming gym-rat-in-chief this way? Chait was not alone. Reuters journalist Caron Bohan weaved the same unhinged themes into a piece on Bush's two-hour, 17-mile bike ride with cycling champ Lance Armstrong in Crawford, Texas, in 2005. After noting his six-days-a-week workout schedule, Bohan steered the piece into an anti-war screed: "Bush says exercise helps sharpen his thinking. But some of his critics view his exercise obsession as an indulgence that takes time away from other priorities. Among them is Cindy Sheehan, the Vacaville, Calif., mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who until late last week was camped out down the road from Bush's ranch seeking a meeting with him to discuss her opposition to the war. Sheehan, who left her vigil on Thursday to tend to her sick mother, has said she believes Bush should take fewer bike rides to have more time to focus on the 'the nation's work.' " Fit Republican president = Selfish, indulgent, creepy fascist. Fit Democratic president = Disciplined, health-conscious Adonis role model. The good news: In just a few short weeks, W. will be able to exercise in peace, free from the disapproving glares of journalists now rushing to mop the sweat — er, the glisten — from Barack Obama's hallowed brow. Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=315188478171644 more

Resolved Question: Do you have any anti-drug/peace/love quotes?

Such as, "Crack is wack" "Condoms are cheaper than guns" "make love, not war" Thanks! more

Resolved Question: Should I turn my back on my religion?

Serious question. I always believed that, if you read the Bible, you would learn all about how Jesus was a kind and gentle man that preached love and tolerance. I also learned that He was the only way to get into Heaven. Now, I've heard from numerous sources that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ (seriously) and scripture is quoted and mangled in an attempt to validate this argument. How could they have read the same book as I did? I was drawn to Obama because he spoke of the same tolerance and kindness that they told me I should have since way back in Bible school. Have I misunderstood something, or is all that love and peace talk just b.s.? I mean, when we went to war with Iraq--a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and was later proven had no WMD's--we did it in God's name. more

Resolved Question: anti-war project ideas??? creative people!!!!?

I'm doing an anti-war movement project on the Vietnam war ... and i wanted to make my poster original... some people who already presented did the same old peace sign poster with theyre info in there, or a hand peace sign, or an american flag with a peace sign, or a tye dye.. I want my poster to be original.. any ideas? i was thinking maybe of making it into a dove shape or something.. but maybe something more original would be better i know there has to be some creative people out there that can help and also if anyone knows any good anti-vietnam war : 1. songs 2. poems 3. quotes more

Resolved Question: Obama's Pastor Circulates Hamas Manifesto, What do you all think about this?

By Aaron Klein JERUSALEM – Sen. Barack Obama's Chicago church reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group's official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America's Declaration of Independence. The Hamas piece was published on the "Pastor's Page" of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks landed Obama in hot water, prompting the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech earlier this week. Hamas, responsible for scores of shootings, suicide bombings and rocket launchings against civilian population centers, is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department. The revelation follows a recent WND article quoting Israeli security officials who expressed "concern" about Robert Malley, an adviser to Obama who has advocated negotiations with Hamas and providing international assistance to the terrorist group. In his July 22, 2007, church newsletter, Wright reprinted an article by Mousa Abu Marzook, identified in the publication as a "deputy of the political bureau of Hamas." A photo image of the piece was captured and posted today by the business blog BizzyBlog, which first brought attention to it. The Hamas article was first published by the Los Angeles Times, garnering the newspaper much criticism. According to senior Israeli security officials, Marzook, who resides in Syria alongside Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, is considered the "brains" behind Hamas, designing much of the terror group's policies and ideology. Israel possesses what it says is a large volume of specific evidence that Marzook has been directly involved in calling for or planning scores of Hamas terrorist offensives, including deadly suicide bombings. He was also accused of attempting to set up a Hamas network in the U.S. Marzook's original piece was titled, "Hamas' stand" but was re-titled "A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle" by Obama's church newsletter. The newsletter also referred to Hamas as the "Islamic Resistance Movement," and added in its introduction that Marzook was addressing Hamas' goals for "all of Palestine." In the manifesto, Marzook refers to Hamas' "resistance" – the group's perpetuation of anti-Israel terrorism targeting civilians – as "legal resistance," which, he argues, is "explicitly supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention." The Convention, which refers to the rights of people living under occupation, does not support suicide bombings or rocket attacks against civilian population centers, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America noted. Marzook refers to Hamas' official charter as "an essentially revolutionary document" and compares the violent creed to the Declaration of Independence, which, Marzook states, "simply did not countenance any such status for the 700,000 African slaves at that time." Hamas' charter calls for the murder of Jews. Among its platforms is a statement that the "[resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: 'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!'" In his piece, Marzook says Hamas only targets Israel and denies that Hamas' war is meant to be waged against the U.S., even though Hamas officials have threatened America, and Hamas' charter calls for Muslims to "pursue the cause of the Movement (Hamas), all over the globe." Trinity Church did not respond to a phone message requesting comment. Obama's campaign also did not reply to phone and e-mail requests today for comment. Obama aide wants talks with terrorists WND reported in January that Malley, an Obama foreign policy adviser, has penned numerous opinion articles, many of them co-written with a former adviser to the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, petitioning for dialogue with Hamas and blasting Israel for policies he says harm the Palestinian cause. Malley also previously penned a well-circulated New York Review of Books piece largely blaming Israel for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David in 2000 when Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern sections of Jerusalem and instead returned to the Middle East to launch an intifada, or terrorist campaign, against the Jewish state. Malley's contentions have been strongly refuted by key participants at Camp David, including President Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and primary U.S. envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross, all of whom squarely blamed Arafat's refusal to make peace for the talks' failure. In February 2006, after Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament and amid a U.S. and Israeli attempt to isolate the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority, Malley wrote an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun advocating international aid to the terror group's newly formed government. "The Islamists (Hamas) ran on a campaign of effective government and promised to improve Palestinians' lives; they cannot do that if the international community turns its back," wrote Malley in a piece entitled, "Making the Best of Hamas' Victory." Malley contended the election of Hamas expressed Palestinian "anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat's imprisonment, Israel's incursions, Western lecturing and, most recently and tellingly, the threat of an aid cutoff in the event of an Islamist success." Malley said the U.S. should not "discourage third-party unofficial contacts with [Hamas] in an attempt to moderate it." In an op-ed in the Washington Post in January coauthored by Arafat adviser Hussein Agha, Malley – using what could be perceived as anti-Israel language – urged Israel's negotiating partner, Abbas, to reunite with Hamas. "A renewed national compact and the return of Hamas to the political fold would upset Israel's strategy of perpetuating Palestinian geographic and political division," wrote Malley. He further petitioned Israel to hold talks with Hamas. "An arrangement between Israel and Hamas could advance both sides' interests," Malley wrote. In numerous other op-eds, Malley advocated a policy of engagement with Hamas. more

Resolved Question: Any good quotes on peace or anti-war?

I am looking for short, sweet, anti-war or peace quotes. Like, 'make love not war'. That sort of thing. more

Resolved Question: Is it right that Our politicians will vote for Israeli needs while ignoring what the common american wants?

Old Yesterday, 06:10 PM #1 Cartman Remember the Intifada Cartman's Avatar Join Date: May 2007 Location: Dallas, Texas Posts: 1,394 Reputation: points: 4864 / Rep Power: 50 Cartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond repute Israeli Lobby In America:Corruption of The American Politician "It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture." -- Michael Medved, well-known Jewish author and respected film critic. For decades Israel has violated well established precepts of international law and defied numerous United Nations resolutions in its occupation of conquered lands, in extra-judicial killings, and in its repeated acts of military aggression. Most of the world regards Israel's policies, and especially its oppression of Palestinians, as outrageous and criminal. This international consensus is reflected, for example, in numerous UN resolutions condemning Israel, which have been approved with overwhelming majorities. "The whole world," United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan recently said, "is demanding that Israel withdraw [from occupied Palestinian territories]. I don't think the whole world ... can be wrong." [note 1] Only in the United States do politicians and the media still fervently support Israel and its policies. For decades the US has provided Israel with crucial military, diplomatic and financial backing, including more than $3 billion each year in aid. Why is the U.S. the only remaining bastion of support for Israel? Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, has candidly identified the reason: "The Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic," he said. "People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful." [note 2] Bishop Tutu spoke the truth. Although Jews make up only about three percent of the US population, they wield immense power and influence -- vastly more than any other ethnic or religious group. As Jewish author and political science professor, Benjamin Ginsberg, has pointed out: [note 3] "Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade's corporate mergers and reorganizations." Today, though barely two percent of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation's largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times ... The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked. Jews are only two percent of the nation's population yet comprise eleven percent of what this study defines as the nation's elite. However, Jews constitute more than 25 percent of the elite journalists and publishers, more than 17 percent of the leaders of important voluntary and public interest organizations, and more than 15 percent of the top ranking civil servants. Stephen Steinlight, former Director of National Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, similarly notes the "disproportionate political power" of Jews, which is "pound for pound the greatest of any ethnic/cultural group in America." He goes on to explain that "Jewish economic influence and power are disproportionately concentrated in Hollywood, television, and in the news industry." [note 4] Two well-known Jewish writers, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, pointed out in their 1995 book, Jews and the New American Scene: [note 5] "During the last three decades Jews [in the United States] have made up 50 percent of the top two hundred intellectuals ... 20 percent of professors at the leading universities ... 40 percent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington ... 59 percent of the directors, writers, and producers of the 50 top-grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982, and 58 percent of directors, writers, and producers in two or more primetime television series." The influence of American Jewry in Washington, notes the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post, is "far disproportionate to the size of the community, Jewish leaders and U.S. official acknowledge. But so is the amount of money they contribute to [election] campaigns." One member of the influential Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations "estimated Jews alone had contributed 50 percent of the funds for [President Bill] Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign." [note 6] "It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture," acknowledges Michael Medved, a well-known Jewish author and film critic. "Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names." [note 7] One person who has carefully studied this subject is Jonathan J. Goldberg, now editor of the influential Jewish community weekly 'Forward.' In his 1996 book, Jewish Power, he wrote: [note 8] "In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation ... Hollywood at the end of the twentieth century is still an industry with a pronounced ethnic tinge. Virtually all the senior executives at the major studios are Jews. Writers, producers, and to a lesser degree directors are disproportionately Jewish -- one recent study showed the figure as high as 59 percent among top-grossing films." The combined weight of so many Jews in one of America's most lucrative and important industries gives the Jews of Hollywood a great deal of political power. They are a major source of money for Democratic candidates. Reflecting their role in the American media, Jews are routinely portrayed as high-minded, altruistic, trustworthy, compassionate, and deserving of sympathy and support. While millions of Americans readily accept such stereotyped imagery, not everyone is impressed. "I am very angry with some of the Jews," complained actor Marlon Brando during a 1996 interview. "They know perfectly well what their responsibilities are ... Hollywood is run by Jews. It's owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering." [note 9] A Well-Entrenched Factor The intimidating power of the "Jewish lobby" is not a new phenomenon, but has long been an important factor in American life. In 1941 Charles Lindbergh spoke about the danger of Jewish power in the media and government. The shy 39-year-old -- known around the world for his epic 1927 New York to Paris flight, the first solo trans-Atlantic crossing -- was addressing 7,000 people in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941, about the dangers of US involvement in the war then raging in Europe. The three most important groups pressing America into war, he explained, were the British, the Jews, and the Roosevelt administration. Of the Jews, he said: "Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government." Lindbergh went on: "For reasons which are understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, [they] wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we must also look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction." In 1978, Jewish American scholar Alfred M. Lilienthal wrote in his detailed study, The Zionist Connection: [note 10] "How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people?... It is the Jewish connection, the tribal solidarity among themselves and the amazing pull on non-Jews, that has molded this unprecedented power ... In the larger metropolitan areas, the Jewish-Zionist connection thoroughly pervades affluent financial, commercial, social, entertainment, and art circles." As a result of the Jewish grip on the media, wrote Lilienthal, news coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in American television, newspapers and magazines is relentlessly sympathetic to Israel. This is manifest, for example, in the misleading portrayal of Palestinian "terrorism." As Lilienthal put it: "One-sided reportage on terrorism, in which cause is never related to effect, was assured because the most effective component of the Jewish connection is probably that of media control." One-Sided 'Holocaust' History The Jewish hold on cultural and academic life has had a profound impact on how Americans look at the past. Nowhere is the well-entrenched Judeocentric view of history more obvious than in the "Holocaust" media campaign, which focuses on the fate of Jews in Europe during World War II. Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has remarked: [note 11] "Whether presented authentically or inauthentically, in accordance with the historical facts or in contradiction to them, with empathy and understanding or as monumental kitsch, the Holocaust has become a ruling symbol of our culture ... Hardly a month goes by without a new TV production, a new film, a new drama, new books, prose or poetry, dealing with the subject, and the flood is increasing rather than abating." Non-Jewish suffering simply does not merit comparable attention. Overshadowed in the focus on Jewish victimization are, for example, the tens of millions of victims of America's World War II ally, Stalinist Russia, along with the tens of millions of victims of China's Maoist regime, as well as the 12 to 14 million Germans, victims of the flight and expulsion of 1944-1949, of whom some two million lost their lives. The well-financed Holocaust media and "educational" campaign is crucially important to the interests of Israel. Paula Hyman, a professor of modern Jewish history at Yale University, has observed: "With regard to Israel, the Holocaust may be used to forestall political criticism and suppress debate; it reinforces the sense of Jews as an eternally beleaguered people who can rely for their defense only upon themselves. The invocation of the suffering endured by the Jews under the Nazis often takes the place of rational argument, and is expected to convince doubters of the legitimacy of current Israeli government policy." [note 12] Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish scholar who has taught political science at City University of New York (Hunter College), says in his book, 'The Holocaust Industry,' that "invoking The Holocaust" is "a ploy to delegitimize all criticism of Jews."[note 13] "By conferring total blamelessness on Jews, the Holocaust dogma immunizes Israel and American Jewry from legitimate censure. ... Organized Jewry has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel's and its own morally indefensible policies." He writes of the brazen "shakedown" of Germany, Switzerland and other countries by Israel and organized Jewry "to extort billions of dollars." "The Holocaust," Finkelstein predicts, "may yet turn out to be the 'greatest robbery in the history of mankind'." Jews in Israel feel free to act brutally against Arabs, writes Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, "believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own." [note 14] Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has spoken with blunt exasperation about the Jewish-Israeli hold on the United States: [note 15] "I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on." Today, the danger is greater than ever. Israel and Jewish organizations, in collaboration with this country's pro-Zionist Christian fundamentalist "amen corner," are prodding the United States -- the world's foremost military and economic power -- into new wars against Israel's enemies. As the French ambassador in London recently acknowledged, Israel -- which he called (a quote which shocked millions -ed) "that ****ty little country" -- is a threat to world peace. "Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?," he said. [note 16] In summation: Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The "Jewish lobby" is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict. As long as the "very powerful" Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish-Zionist distortion of current affairs and history, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the U.S. political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace. Notes 1. Quoted in Forward (New York City), April 19, 2002, p. 11. 2. D. Tutu, "Apartheid in the Holy Land," The Guardian (Britain), April 29, 2002. 3. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (University of Chicago, 1993), pp. 1, 103. 4. S. Steinlight, "The Jewish Stake in America's Changing Demography: Reconsidering a Misguided Immigration Policy," Center for Immigration Studies , Nov. 2001. http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/back130... 5. Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene (Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 26-27. 6. Janine Zacharia, "The Unofficial Ambassadors of the Jewish State," The Jerusalem Post (Israel), April 2, 2000. Reprinted in "Other Voices," June 2000, p. OV-4, a supplement to The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. 7. M. Medved, "Is Hollywood Too Jewish?," Moment, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1996), p. 37. 8. Jonathan Jeremy Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 280, 287-288. See also pp. 39-40, 290-291. 9. Interview with Larry King, CNN network, April 5, 1996. "Brando Remarks," Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1996, p. F4 (OC). A short time later, Brando was obliged to apologize for his remarks. 10. A. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978), pp. 206, 218, 219, 229. 11. From a 1992 lecture, published in: David Cesarani, ed., The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 305, 306. 12. Paula E. Hyman, "New Debate on the Holocaust," The New York Times Magazine , Sept. 14, 1980, p. 79. 13. Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry (London, New York: Verso, 2000), pp. 130, 138, 139, 149. 14. The New York Times, May 27, 1996. Shavit is identified as a columnist for Ha'aretz, a Hebrew-language Israeli daily newspaper, "from which this article is adapted." 15. Interview with Moorer, Aug. 24, 1983. Quoted in: Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby (Lawrence Hill, 1984 and 1985), p. 161. 16. D. Davis, "French Envoy to UK: Israel Threatens World Peace," Jerusalem Post, Dec. 20, 2001. The French ambassador is Daniel Bernard.6/02 About the author Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical Review. He studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). For nine years he served as editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review. www.ihr.org * 1 hour ago * - Edit * - Delete Source(s): the article was from this site http://www.rense.com/general27/jlobby.ht...strictly militant, exactly, are you a muslim brotherrz, being against the state of israel doesnt make one anti-jew, i can see the media has brainwashd you alreadymy point is not that israel is attacking the US militarily, but that why is it that israeli money is able to buy politicians votes and that takes precedence over the United States citizens more

Resolved Question: How does the media report the Israeli Palestinian Conflict?

When we criticise the Chinese occupation of Tibet, nobody criticises us of being anti-Chinese. HISTORY and ORIGIN Understanding the conflict requires the knowledge of two important aspects; the history and origin of the conflict. In 1948 when Israel was established on 78% of historical Palestine, large numbers of Palestinians were made refugees. Some 500 villages were erased. In 1967 Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. When the media reports the conflict, it rarely mentions the history and origin of the conflict. A study by Glasgow University Media Group which monitored TV news between Sept 28th and October 16th 2000 had found that out of 3500 lines of text in total, only 17 lines referred to the History of the conflict. (As detailed in the Glasgow Media Group Book “Bad News from Israel” 2004). It is worth noting that when facts are known people tend to change their views and some switch support. PERSPECTIVES: Israeli perspective: 1948 for Israelis was a war of independence “melhemet Haatzma’ut” but this resulted in the uprooting of more than 700,000 Palestinians who became refugees. The Palestinian perspective: 1948 for Palestinians was “The Nakba” The Catastrophe. Another Study by the Library of International Affairs (30th Oct 07) which Compared media articles over a period of months and reached some conclusions: From primarily Israeli perspective: Palestinians are terrorists From an Arab perspective: they are freedom fighters and the Israelis are illegal occupiers. From an Israeli perspective and indeed from the perspective of Israeli supporters: Ariel Sharon is a hero in the eyes of the Israelis. One New York Times columnist described him once as the feisty warrior, a kind of brave jolly stout fellow. But in Arab eyes he is a war criminal. Many Europeans and Arabs still consider Ariel Sharon as a devious and cunning politician and a murderer. Conclusion of this section: Different interpretations make it difficult to get the real picture. The interpretation is based on prejudices, experiences and interests of both sides. The Power of Headlines: The Glasgow University Media Group provided dozens of examples of misleading and inaccurate headline; however I mention below 2 or 3 examples: “Avenging their death, Israel hit back”. ITV March 3rd 02 “Israel had been dragged into a war on terror”. BBC December 6th 01 Here we can see that the emphasis is on portraying the Palestinian action and the Israeli retaliation. Palestinians are depicted as the trouble makers, the terrorists and Israel responds to teach them a lesson. The Illegal Settlers: In some Western and Israeli press the settlers are pioneers and defenders of biblical Israel. In 2003 B’tasleem an Israeli human rights group said: “the press often reports attacks by Palestinians but the facts are different. B’tasleem listed many examples of settlers setting up road blocks, shooting Palestinians at random burning of crops and cars etc etc. In Hebron 500 settlers make the life of 125000 Palestinians a misery, a hell On earth. 1994: Professor Israel Shahak described how “religious youths from Kiryat Arba were throwing stones on Palestinians. (Israel Shahak is known for his outspoken views about Jewish Religious Extremists). Collective punishment Curfews are imposed on Palestinians never on settlers. Ariel Sharon’s provocation: Violence sparked off 29th sept 2000 following a visit by Sharon to Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. He was reported as saying “I came here with a message of peace”. To Arabs the visit was a provocation. President Bush described Sharon in 2002 as a man of peace But the rest of the world did not believe him. Samples from the BBC: BBC October 3rd 2000 “Ariel Sharon right wing enemy of the peace process” BBC November 1st 01 “Sharon used every opportunity he could to attack the Arabs as terrorists”. Guardian Newspaper UK October 3rd 2000 Amira Haas wrote “when the Intifida began 7 years after Oslo Accord all Palestinians feel betrayed”. Us duplicity: Two examples of US obvious bias: Bush uttered the following words in 2002: Sharon a man of peace. We learned later that the White House phone lines were jammed by Evangelical supporters of Israel demanding that President Bush says something nice about Ariel Sharon. President Bush and his Secretary of State Colin Powell: “Arafat must end terrorism.” This was despite the fact that both Bush and Powell knew that Arafat was under siege at the time. Global Issues Organization was more frank when it stated on July 30th 06 “Sharon a right wing and against peace who committed massacres”. Anti-Semitism and the stifling of debate: Jimmy Carter, former president and author of the book “Palestine, Peace not Apartheid” was attacked and accused of being Anti-Jewish and Anti-Semitic for writing about the pernicious impact of the Apartheid Wall. Professors Norman G Finkelstein and Mehrene Laurdee were denied tenure at De Paul University in Chicago for daring to criticise Israel. Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Stephen Watt, a Harvard Professor, were both criticised , slandered and boycotted for exposing the role of AIPAC and Jewish lobbies in Their book “The Israeli Lobby and the US foreign policy”. On the other hand Elaine Mcardle of the Boston Globe wrote recently “I was lobbied by Aipac. She exposed the tactics used by AIPAC to influence the opinion of journalists in Israel’s favour. Distortions on websites: Writing in a pro-Israel American internet website; Lorella, an American housewife who lived in Tel Aviv since 2001 wrote; “We sat in our living room in Tel Aviv and watched an interview with Saab Erekat, a Palestinian terrorist”. Saeb Erekat the chief Palestinian negotiator, a man who condemned violence and suicide bombers and was accused by Hamas and other extremists of being a friend of Israel because of his rejection of violence is a terrorist according to the Tel Aviv housewife. Another example on the same website: Headline: Terrorists prefer Hillary And they would rather see Rudy Giuliani dead than president. It transpired that a Palestinian in the West Bank said to a reporter “it would be good if Hilary follows her husband’s policy of promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians”. CNN Paula Zahn Now July 24th 2007 on her TV program holds a book and announces “what does the book of revelation tell us about what is happening in the Middle East”. Was she trying to explain the current Middle East situation with reference to an ancient text? Why and in whose interest? (mediamatters.org) Anti-Semitism and Anti-Jewish Syndrome: The China/Tibet analogy: (Counter Punch a US based internet website): when we criticise the Chinese occupation of Tibet, nobody criticises us of being anti-Chinese. When we criticise Kim Jong IL, do we hate the Korean people. We can safely add by saying: When we criticise the Burmese military junta, we are not accused of being anti-Burmese or anti Buddhism. We often criticise Robert Mugabe or Parvis Musharraf but we are not told you are anti the people of Zimbabwe or anti-Muslims of Pakistan. To criticise the Iranian leadership does not mean you are anti-Shiite or anti Farsi people. When we criticise Hugo Chavez are we being haters of Venezuelan people? Why is it then, when someone criticises Israel he is accused of being Anti-Semitic and Anti-Jewish. The reporting of the killing of Mohd Al Durra: Elliot Resnick Jewish press staff reporter October 10th 2007” wrote “evidence mounts inflammatory image was staged” (The image of young Mohammad al-durra dying in the lap of his father struck down by Israeli bullets on Sept 30th 2000 was fake according to Israeli apologists). Boston University Professor Richard Landes (a pro-Israeli academic) Concludes that the entire episode was staged, but he did not offer convincing evidence for his conclusion. (theaugeanstables.com) October 2nd 2007 Natan Sharansky chairman of the Adelson Institute of Strategic Studies at the Shalen Centre in Jerusalem cast doubt on the Al-Durra incident. He blamed a French journalist for inflaming passions against Israel. In the same piece, he denied the Jenin massacre. But failed to explain why journalists and foreign aid workers were barred from entering Jenin for several days. Israel also refused to receive a UN commission of enquiry. Natan Sharansky was concerned that American students he had met in New York were troubled by the Al-Durra incident. (theaugeanstables.com) Gideon Levy’s wrote an editorial article in Haaretz at the time “as far as we can remember, there has been no other case in which Palestinian fired at the IDF and hit a Palestinian child. He was savaged by the cover-up brigade. POLITICIDE a book by Baruch Kimmerling and George Wise, two distinguished Professors(University of Toronto, and the Hebrew University): “Sharon’s objectives in the 1970s were to kill as many civilians as possible. Emphasise civilians (page 62) Page 74: “intentional killing of civilians is a war crime”. Pages 162 and 163: targeted killings to provoke reaction. Haaretz Aug 30th 2002: Moshe Ya’alon Chief of Staff was quoted as saying: "Palestinians are a cancer and the war against them is chemotherapy". Page 194 examples of the violations of the 4th Geneva Conventions: “Israel prevented emergency food into Hebron during the curfew”. Preventing medical aids and ambulances reaching Jenin and Ramallah etc. Page 205: Israeli actions are designed to provoke and irritate Palestinians to make them hate Israel more and more and desire revenge. This can be exploited by Israel in two ways first to show that Palestinians are not real partners for peace and secondly to create more facts on the ground as way of punishment i.e. expanding of settlements and confiscation of land etc. http://english.wa3ad.org/index.php?show=news&action=article&id=1794 more

Resolved Question: RE: General Giap’s statement after Tet of 1968 about quiting.?

Giap’s stated after Tet of 1968 that North Vietnam was planning to stop the war because of the massive losses sustained. They continued only because the American media spun their total defeat into a victory - And because of the ‘peace” and anti-war demonstrations following. I have seen references to that statement, usually attributed to ‘General Giap’s Biography.” I have read many biographical accounts, but can’t find any that show the source. I need to know the name of the book or article containing his quote. Can anyone help? more

Resolved Question: Anti War Shirt Quote?

im doing an antiwar shirt for a protest coming up in august. pick a quote for the back of the shirt- 1.How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business. ~Albert Einstein 2.Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. ~Albert Einstein 3.Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians. ~Barry Goldwater 4.Respect for the rights of others means peace. ~Benito Juárez 5.Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man. ~Bertrand Russell 6.Peace is constructed, not fought for. ~Brent Davis 7.Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have. ~Davy Crockett 8.War settles nothing. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower 9.No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. ~Eugene Debs 10.How can you make a war on terror if war itself is terrorism? ~Howard Zinn11.It’s one thing to fight for what you believe in, another thing to fight for what others believe in. ~James Wolcott 12.We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. ~Jimmy Carter 13.War doesn't make boys men, it makes men dead. ~Ken Gillespie 14.I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. ~Mahatma Gandhi 15.War comes from our being immature, fearful, and injured, and not being able to concieve of other ways of solving problems. ~Patricia Sun*if you dont agree with the "antiwar thing" dont bother answering.** as in dont bother yelling at me about how the US is doing such a great job & that i should be more patriotic. more

Resolved Question: If this "No Fly Zone" resolution was put in place in 2005, why was it still being discussed in the Dem. Debate

If this "No Fly Zone" resolution was put in place in 2005, why was it still being discussed in the Dem. Debates recently in 2007? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Boxer In March 2005 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed Boxer's amendment to the Foreign Affairs Reauthorization Bill strongly urging Saudi Arabia to permit women to run for office and vote in all future elections. Boxer is a cosponsor of S. 495, or the Darfur Accountability Act of 2005, which would impose sanctions against perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Darfur. Sanctions under this legislation include imposition of a military no-fly zone in Darfur, a coordinated effort between the U.S. and Sudanese governments to track down and prosecute individuals in Sudan in any way involved with genocide or other war crimes in Darfur, a call for the Sudanese Government to take an active roll in combating Janjaweed forces within its borders, and a policy of sanctions against the Sudanese government, including sanctions that will affect the petroleum sector, and individual members of the Sudanese government whose actions support the crimes of violent militias in Darfur. Khartoum is also where the CIA hunted bin-laden according to the book "Hunting the Jackal" (militarybookclub.com). China's involvement in acquiring oil in areas where it is politically unsavory for the U.S. gives them a strategic advantage in every anti-U.S. country (like Venezuela) in the world. Energy Security (wikipedia.org) becomes of grave concerns as we are 5% of the worlds population, use 25% of the worlds energy and 40% of the worlds petrol products. tim trevathan <trevathantim@yahoo.com> wrote: http://www.gvnews.net/html/Corp/newsfeed.html HOME | ABOUT GVNN | OUR PHILOSOPHY | GVNN IN THE NEWS | REGISTER | CONTACT US HOME | ABOUT GVNN | OUR PHILOSOPHY | GVNN IN THE NEWS | REGISTER | CONTACT US October 25, 2005 Subscribe to GVNN Global News Feed A powerful, real-time news wire delivered directly to subscriber desktops. GVNN News Alerts Hourly or daily updates of select news stories from our editors. World Headlines Global Crisis News Global Op-Ed Global Business Alert Environment Alert Information Tech World Lifestyles Other News Alerts GVNN Impact Reports Daily or weekly news and information reviews moderated by our editors. Global Crisis Impact Global ICT Impact Environment Women's Issues Other Impact Reports Intelligence Reports Weekly or monthly news-based analysis of global trends. Global Crisis Report World Business Report Global Diversity Information Tech Other Intelligence Partnerships Join the fastest growing global network of independent news providers. MediaChannel Globalvision's media issues supersite. Globalvision Independent media production for the new millennium. Op-Ed In Khartoum's Oil Pipelines Flow Blood By Peter Wanbali The Nation KHARTOUM, May 21, 2002 -- Two documents on the Sudan released almost simultaneously last week expose the complexities and contradictions inherent in the search for peace in that country's conflict that has lasted two decades, killed two million people, displaced 4.5 million others and burnt hundreds of billions of dollars. And nowhere is this more dramatic than in the reports' treatment of the role of oil in the war between the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and its allies, and the Government of Sudan GOS. The first report, Depopulating Sudan's Oil Regions, is written by Diane deGuzman for the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan. It is a searing condemnation of the GOS strategy to strafe civilian populated regions in South Sudan for the express purpose of clearing the regions for oil drilling work to either start or continue. It documents atrocities against the civilians starting from October 2001, when the GOS launched an offensive in the southeast part of Ruweng County, in oil concession Block 2. Although no SPLA troops were on the ground, the report says that the villages between Jukabar and Bal were bombarded from the air, with ground troops moving in to mop up. Many were killed and those lucky to survive now huddle in swampland to the northeast and southeast of the county. Timing too fortuitous to be coincidental Within a month of the clearing up of the region, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC), comprising Talisman Energy, Chinese National Petroleum Corporation, Petronas Carigali and Sudapet, moved a drilling rig into the area. The timing of the raid and the decision by GNPOC was too fortuitous to be coincidental. The report also documents another raid that by mid-February this year had depopulated the northern part of Block 5A, in Western Upper Nile. The two campaigns by the GOS have displaced an estimated 80,000 people from Ruweng County and another 50,000 from the Western Upper Nile, who are now forced to wander in search of food, safety and shelter. Harrowing quotes from men and women who lost loved ones during the raids make for very sober reading, very much in the vein of two earlier reports: The Scorched Earth by Christian Aid in 2000, and Report of an Investigation into Oil Development, Conflict and Displacement in Western Upper Nile, released mid-last year by Georgette Gagnon and John Ryle. The second report released this month was Sen John C. Danforth's memo to the US President. Mr Danforth was appointed Special Envoy for Peace in the Sudan in late 2000 and this is a report on his mission. Several observations stand out, not least his advice that there should be no more new US-led initiatives. Rather, the US should engage more actively bilaterally in the Sudan and that increased support should be offered to existing initiatives like the Kenya-led IGAD peace process and the Egyptian-led Joint Initiative (with Libya). Sen Danforth details four "tests" of will that he subjected the GOS and the SPLA to, whose results were the basis of his guarded optimism. One was demand for a cease-fire and setting up of a comprehensive relief and rehabilitation programme for the devastated Nuba Mountains region; the second was observing days of tranquillity to allow relief agencies work on programmes to eradicate polio, guinea worm and bovine rinderpest. The third was prevention of intentional, wanton attacks (often by government) against innocent civilians and fourth was a proposal to the GOS to strengthen the effectiveness of its own anti-slavery commission. He claims varying degrees of success in these tests. Although Sen Danforth acknowledges that any movement forward must grapple with the thorny issues of self-determination for South Sudan, governance, religion and oil, his analysis of how oil features in the cauldron is perverse. His suggestion that a formula should be worked out for sharing the oil revenue between the GOS and the SPLA is both bizarre and impracticable. Renewed confidence The oil revenue, about $2 million every day, has given GOS renewed confidence and apart from enabling it increase its fighting efficiency, will soon become a significant cause for the war. For the process of peace to move forward - even with renewed vigour from the US and a boost to the sub-regional initiatives - the oil booty must be made a non-issue in the process. Companies like the GNPOC consortium must be prevailed upon to exercise some moral influence on the government and stop pretending that they do not see or care about what their money is financing in the Sudan. Countries like Kenya should also rethink the ridiculous posturing they are involved in - on the one hand acting as concerned mediators and peace-makers while on the other hand they are key customers buying the oil and financing the war. Ultimately, UN sanctions would be considered against all parties involved even if such penalties have not been great successes in the past. This clearly, is a hard number to push when there is so little moral firepower left for the US to expend - see what it did with Nigeria and Angola even at the height of human rights atrocities in those countries. These two reports do not give cause for hope that south Sudan's long walk out of the swamps and depths of despair it has been forced into will be ending any time soon. © The Nation, 2002. Distributed in partnership with Globalvision News Network (www.gvnews.net). All rights reserved. Featured Stories: more

Resolved Question: Why do Jews and Freemasons lie to Christians and Gentiles?

The Uncensored Talmud of Babylonia states: Szaaloth-Utszabot The Book of Jore Dia 17: "A Jew should and must make a false oath when the goyim [non-Jew] asks if our books contain anything against them." Schabbouth Hag (6d): Jews may swear falsely by the use of subterfuge wording. Many researchers who check out Talmud quotes often run into Jews who make claims that the Talmud quotes are either misinterpreted or completely fake. Should we be surprised that Jews lie about the racist and anti-Christian statements in the Talmud in lieu of the above Talmud citation? Absolutely not. They are commanded to mislead and lie to Christians when a Christian asks if the Talmud contains anything against them. Further, the Jewish Kabbalah, the esoteric mystical side of Judaism that is the foundation for Freemasonry, states this: Zohar (1, 160a): Jews MUST ALWAYS try to deceive Christians. "The heirs of the Pharisees often deny the existence of the Talmud passages here cited, in order to brazenly claim that such passages are the 'fabrications of anti-semites.'" - Michael Hoffman II "Judaism's Strange gods," p.72 "In 1994, Rabbi Tzvi Marx, director of Applied Education at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, made a remarkable admission concerning how Jewish rabbis in the past have issued two sets of texts: the authentic Talmudic texts with which they instruct their own youth in the Talmud schools (yeshiviot) and "censured and amended" versions which they disseminate to gullible non-Jews for public consumption." Michael Hoffman II, "Judaism's Strange gods," pg.71 Freemasonry, a Jewish front created to seduce Christians and their leaders also orders the same command of lying for its members. "Grand Sovereign Freemason Commander," Albert Pike writes: "Masonry...conceals its secrets from all except the Adepts and Sages, and uses false explanations and misinterpretations of its symbols to mislead." Again, many well seeking researchers, have tried to find out prominent members of the Masonic lodge including, Jehovah's Witness founder, Charles Taze Russell, Evangelist Billy Graham, Evangelist Robert Schuller, and many others, only to be flately denied by the Masons who are ordered to lie to protect the identity of the composition of their membership. Many fail to realize that Freemasons take blood oaths and swear to uphold the secrets of the rites, rituals, and membership composition. Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is, in fact, the Cabalistic elements in Freemasonry that act as the main driving force in the envenomed and aggressive opposition of the latter to Christianity, and its never-flagging efforts for the undermining and destruction of the Christian organization of society. (Mgr. Dillon, The War of Anti-Christ with the Church, p. 20). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "How often have I heard the Freemasons lament the dominance of the Jews...Ever since the Revolution the Jews have taken possession of the Masonic lodges more and more completely: and their dominance is now unquestioned. The Cabala rules as mistress in the inner lodges; and the Jewish spirit dominates the lower grades...In the mind of Satan the synagogue has an all important part to play...The great enemy counts on the Jews to govern Masonry as he counts on Masonry to destroy the Church of Jesus Christ (Christianity)." (L'Abbá Emmanuel Barbier, Infiltrations Maáoniques, quoted in Dictionaire Apologetique de la Foi Catholique, Gustave Gautherot; He was the Professor for the History of the Revolution in the Institute Catholique de Paris, and author of several works on different phases of the modern anti-Christian movement on which he is generally recognized as one of the best authorities). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "This intimate connection between the two powers (Freemasonry and Cabalistic Judaism) (writes R. Lambelin) is becoming so evident that there is no longer any attempt made to deny it. The Jewish lodges of B'nai B'rith, which originated in the English-speaking countries, have swarmed all over Europe, and even into Asia; and they assume the leadership of control in the whole Masonic organization. Under cover of Theosophy a new religion, which is specifically Jewish, though enveloped in a nebulous mist that obscures its character, is bidding fair to take the place of the traditional Christian belief which it flatters, and insensibly destroys." (Les Victoires d'Israel, pp. 211-212; Freemasonry and The Anti-Christian Movement, Edward Cahill, p. 92). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "There will burst forth one fine evening one of these formidable crises which will shake the earth and which occult societies have long prepared for Christian society, and then perhaps will suddenly appear in open day, throughout the entire world, all the militia, all the fraternal and unknown sects of the Cabala. The ignorance, the carelessness in which we live, of their sinister existence, their affinities, and their immense ramifications will in no way prevent them from recognizing each other, and under the banner of no matter what universal alliance, giving each other the kiss of Peace, they will hasten to gather together under one Chief..." (Le Juif, Le Judaisme et La Judaisation des Peuples ChrÇtiens, Gougenot des Mousseaux (1869); The Trail of the Serpent, Miss Stoddard, p. 318). "The real chiefs of this immense association of Freemasonry (the few within the innermost circles of initiation), who must not be confounded with the nominal leaders or figure-heads, are mostly Jews, and live in close and intimate alliance with the militant members of Judaism, those, namely, who are the leaders of the Cabalistic section. This älite of the Masonic association, these real chiefs, who are known to so few even of the initiated, and whom even these few know only under assumed names (noms de guerre) carry on their activities in secret dependence (which they find very lucrative for themselves) upon the Cabalistic Jews." (Le Juif, la Judaisme, et la Judaisation des Peuples ChrÇtiens (Paris, 1869), p. 340).How long are we as a society going to allow those who are associated with Freemasonry (including secret societies like skull and bones, etc) rule us?It has not been proven false. Proove it.and i am not anti-semetic. I am ati=being controlled by jews/freemasons/christians/muslims/anybody.i am not anti-semetic, i am anti-being controlled by jews / freemasons / muslims / bhuddists / christians / anybody.you know you can't call someone antisemetic the second they say the word jew. I wouldn't call you anti-Muslim if you said that they were lying to us and trying to kill us.yes, many christians are freemason, but they are not privy to the secrets of this secret society until they are initiated to a higher level. Each level you learn a little bit more. 33rd degree masons believe that lucifer is more powerful than god, and this is who they serve.just because something was learned a long time ago does not make it rubbish. it has NOT been disproven and it should be taken seriously until it is.Kadnil, i am not talking about all jews.i am only talking about orthodox jews, who follow the teachings of the kabbalah"MarkS", go read some books, then come back here and ask me again. "Mark S" Yes, i said "controlled by." The reason i say that is that about half of our presidents have been FREEMASONS, and most of the others that were not were related to Freemasonry one way or another, such as Bush, being a member of "Skull and bones," or "the Ordder of Death." Most of the Presidents since the 20th century have spent time at the Bohemian Club discussing policy in "riverside chats" and then participating in a mock human sacrifice ritual. These are the same people that control what i can own, where i can go, and what i can do.Call me a racist, and censor me. That is controlling language and controlling information. That in itself is controlling. more

Resolved Question: Jews of Iraq? What about them?

Of course I thought I knew it all back then. I was young, idealistic, and more than willing to put my life at risk for my convictions. It was 1947 and I wasn't quite 18 when the Iraqi authorities caught me for smuggling young Iraqi Jews like myself out of Iraq, into Iran, and then on to the Promised Land of the soon-to-be established Israel. I was an Iraqi Jew in the Zionist underground. My Iraqi jailers did everything they could to extract the names of my co-conspirators. Fifty years later, pain still throbs in my right toe-a reminder of the day my captors used pliers to remove my toenails. On another occasion, they hauled me to the flat roof of the prison, stripped me bare on a frigid January day, then threw a bucket of cold water over me. I was left there, chained to the railing, for hours. But I never once considered giving them the information they wanted. I was a true believer. My preoccupation during what I refer to as my "two years in hell" was with survival and escape. I had no interest then in the broad sweep of Jewish history in Iraq even though my family had been part of it right from the beginning. We were originally Haroons, a large and important family of the "Babylonian Diaspora." My ancestors had settled in Iraq more than 2,600 years ago-600 years before Christianity, and 1,200 years before Islam. I am descended from Jews who built the tomb of Yehezkel, a Jewish prophet of pre-biblical times. My town, where I was born in 1929, is Hillah, not far from the ancient site of Babylon. The original Jews found Babylon, with its nourishing Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to be truly a land of milk, honey, abundance-and opportunity. Although Jews, like other minorities in what became Iraq, experienced periods of oppression and discrimination depending on the rulers of the period, their general trajectory over two and one-half millennia was upward. Under the late Ottoman rule, for example, Jewish social and religious institutions, schools, and medical facilities flourished without outside interference, and Jews were prominent in government and business. As I sat there in my cell, unaware that a death sentence soon would be handed down against me, I could not have recounted any personal grievances that my family members would have lodged against the government or the Muslim majority. Our family had been treated well and had prospered, first as farmers with some 50,000 acres devoted to rice, dates and Arab horses. Then, with the Ottomans, we bought and purified gold that was shipped to Istanbul and turned into coinage. The Turks were responsible in fact for changing our name to reflect our occupation-we became Khalaschi, meaning "Makers of Pure." I did not volunteer the information to my father that I had joined the Zionist underground. He found out several months before I was arrested when he saw me writing Hebrew and using words and expressions unfamiliar to him. He was even more surprised to learn that, yes, I had decided I would soon move to Israel myself. He was scornful. "You'll come back with your tail between your legs," he predicted. About 125,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel in the late 1940s and into 1952, most because they had been lied to and put into a panic by what I came to learn were Zionist bombs. But my mother and father were among the 6,000 who did not go to Israel. Although physically I never did return to Iraq-that bridge had been burned in any event-my heart has made the journey there many, many times. My father had it right. I was imprisoned at the military camp of Abu-Greib, about 7 miles from Baghdad. When the military court handed down my sentence of death by hanging, I had nothing to lose by attempting the escape I had been planning for many months. It was a strange recipe for an escape: a dab of butter, an orange peel, and some army clothing that I had asked a friend to buy for me at a flea market. I deliberately ate as much bread as I could to put on fat in anticipation of the day I became 18, when they could formally charge me with a crime and attach the 50-pound ball and chain that was standard prisoner issue. Later, after my leg had been shackled, I went on a starvation diet that often left me weak-kneed. The pat of butter was to lubricate my leg in preparation for extricating it from the metal band. The orange peel I surreptitiously stuck into the lock on the night of my planned escape, having studied how it could be placed in such a way as to keep the lock from closing. As the jailers turned to go after locking up, I put on the old army issue that was indistinguishable from what they were wearing-a long, green coat and a stocking cap that I pulled down over much of my face (it was winter). Then I just quietly opened the door and joined the departing group of soldiers as they strode down the hall and outside, and I offered a "good night" to the shift guard as I left. A friend with a car was waiting to speed me away. Later I made my way to the new state of Israel, arriving in May, 1950. My passport had my name in Arabic and English, but the English couldn't capture the "kh" sound, so it was rendered simply as Klaski. At the border, the immigration people applied the English version, which had an Eastern European, Ashkenazi ring to it. In one way, this "mistake" was my key to discovering very soon just how the Israeli caste system worked. They asked me where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I was the son of a farmer; I knew all the problems of the farm, so I volunteered to go to Dafnah, a farming kibbutz in the high Galilee. I only lasted a few weeks. The new immigrants were given the worst of everything. The food was the same, but that was the only thing that everyone had in common. For the immigrants, bad cigarettes, even bad toothpaste. Everything. I left. Then, through the Jewish Agency, I was advised to go to al-Majdal (later renamed Ashkelon), an Arab town about 9 miles from Gaza, very close to the Mediterranean. The Israeli government planned to turn it into a farmers' city, so my farm background would be an asset there. When I reported to the Labor Office in al-Majdal, they saw that I could read and write Arabic and Hebrew and they said that I could find a good-paying job with the Military Governor's office. The Arabs were under the authority of these Israeli Military Governors. A clerk handed me a bunch of forms in Arabic and Hebrew. Now it dawned on me. Before Israel could establish its farmers' city, it had to rid al-Majdal of its indigenous Palestinians. The forms were petitions to the United Nations Inspectors asking for transfer out of Israel to Gaza, which was under Egyptian control. I read over the petition. In signing, the Palestinian would be saying that he was of sound mind and body and was making the request for transfer free of pressure or duress. Of course, there was no way that they would leave without being pressured to do so. These families had been there hundreds of years, as farmers, primitive artisans, weavers. The Military Governor prohibited them from pursuing their livelihoods, just penned them up until they lost hope of resuming their normal lives. That's when they signed to leave. I was there and heard their grief. "Our hearts are in pain when we look at the orange trees that we planted with our own hands. Please let us go, let us give water to those trees. God will not be pleased with us if we leave His trees untended." I asked the Military Governor to give them relief, but he said, "No, we want them to leave." I could no longer be part of this oppression and I left. Those Palestinians who didn't sign up for transfers were taken by force-just put in trucks and dumped in Gaza. About four thousand people were driven from al-Majdal in one way or another. The few who remained were collaborators with the Israeli authorities. Subsequently, I wrote letters trying to get a government job elsewhere and I got many immediate responses asking me to come for an interview. Then they would discover that my face didn't match my Polish/Ashkenazi name. They would ask if I spoke Yiddish or Polish, and when I said I didn't, they would ask where I came by a Polish name. Desperate for a good job, I would usually say that I thought my great-grandfather was from Poland. I was advised time and again that "we'll give you a call." Eventually, three to four years after coming to Israel, I changed my name to Giladi, which is close to the code name, Gilad, that I had in the Zionist underground. Klaski wasn't doing me any good anyway, and my Eastern friends were always chiding me about the name they knew didn't go with my origins as an Iraqi Jew. I was disillusioned at what I found in the Promised Land, disillusioned personally, disillusioned at the institutionalized racism, disillusioned at what I was beginning to learn about Zionism's cruelties. The principal interest Israel had in Jews from Islamic countries was as a supply of cheap labor, especially for the farm work that was beneath the urbanized Eastern European Jews. Ben Gurion needed the "Oriental" Jews to farm the thousands of acres of land left by Palestinians who were driven out by Israeli forces in 1948. And I began to find out about the barbaric methods used to rid the fledgling state of as many Palestinians as possible. The world recoils today at the thought of bacteriological warfare, but Israel was probably the first to actually use it in the Middle East. In the 1948 war, Jewish forces would empty Arab villages of their populations, often by threats, sometimes by just gunning down a half-dozen unarmed Arabs as examples to the rest. To make sure the Arabs couldn't return to make a fresh life for themselves in these villages, the Israelis put typhus and dysentery bacteria into the water wells. Uri Mileshtin, an official historian for the Israeli Defense Force, has written and spoken about the use of bacteriological agents. According to Mileshtin, Moshe Dayan, a division commander at the time, gave orders in 1948 to remove Arabs from their villages, bulldoze their homes, and render water wells unusable with typhus and dysentery bacteria. Acre was so situated that it could practically defend itself with one big gun, so the Haganah put bacteria into the spring that fed the town. The spring was called Capri and it ran from the north near a kibbutz. The Haganah put typhus bacteria into the water going to Acre, the people got sick, and the Jewish forces occupied Acre. This worked so well that they sent a Haganah division dressed as Arabs into Gaza, where there were Egyptian forces, and the Egyptians caught them putting two cans of bacteria, typhus and dysentery, into the water supply in wanton disregard of the civilian population. "In war, there is no sentiment," one of the captured Haganah men was quoted as saying. My activism in Israel began shortly after I received a letter from the Socialist/Zionist Party asking me to help with their Arabic newspaper. When I showed up at their offices at Central House in Tel Aviv, I asked around to see just where I should report. I showed the letter to a couple of people there and, without even looking at it, they would motion me away with the words, "Room No. 8." When I saw that they weren't even reading the letter, I inquired of several others. But the response was the same, "Room No. 8," with not a glance at the paper I put in front of them. So I went to Room 8 and saw that it was the Department of Jews from Islamic Countries. I was disgusted and angry. Either I am a member of the party or I'm not. Do I have a different ideology or different politics because I am an Arab Jew? It's segregation, I thought, just like a Negroes' Department. I turned around and walked out. That was the start of my open protests. That same year I organized a demonstration in Ashkelon against Ben Gurion's racist policies and 10,000 people turned out. There wasn't much opportunity for those of us who were second class citizens to do much about it when Israel was on a war footing with outside enemies. After the 1967 war, I was in the Army myself and served in the Sinai when there was continued fighting along the Suez Canal. But the cease-fire with Egypt in 1970 gave us our opening. We took to the streets and organized politically to demand equal rights. If it's our country, if we were expected to risk our lives in a border war, then we expected equal treatment. We mounted the struggle so tenaciously and received so much publicity that the Israeli government tried to discredit our movement by calling us "Israel's Black Panthers." They were thinking in racist terms, really, in assuming the Israeli public would reject an organization whose ideology was being compared to that of radical blacks in the United States. But we saw that what we were doing was no different than what blacks in the United States were fighting against-segregation, discrimination, unequal treatment. Rather than reject the label, we adopted it proudly. I had posters of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and other civil rights activists plastered all over my office. With the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Israeli-condoned Sabra and Shatilla massacres, I had had enough of Israel. I became a United States citizen and made certain to revoke my Israeli citizenship. I could never have written and published my book in Israel, not with the censorship they would impose. Even in America, I had great difficulty finding a publisher because many are subject to pressures of one kind or another from Israel and its friends. I ended up paying $60,000 from my own pocket to publish Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews, virtually the entire proceeds from having sold my house in Israel. I still was afraid that the printer would back out or that legal proceedings would be initiated to stop its publication, like the Israeli government did in an attempt to prevent former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky from publishing his first book. Ben Gurion's Scandals had to be translated into English from two languages. I wrote in Hebrew when I was in Israel and hoped to publish the book there, and I wrote in Arabic when I was completing the book after coming to the U.S. But I was so worried that something would stop publication that I told the printer not to wait for the translations to be thoroughly checked and proofread. Now I realize that the publicity of a lawsuit would just have created a controversial interest in the book. I am using bank vault storage for the valuable documents that back up what I have written. These documents, including some that I illegally copied from the archives at Yad Vashem, confirm what I saw myself, what I was told by other witnesses, and what reputable historians and others have written concerning the Zionist bombings in Iraq, Arab peace overtures that were rebuffed, and incidents of violence and death inflicted by Jews on Jews in the cause of creating Israel. The Riots of 1941 If, as I have said, my family in Iraq was not persecuted personally and I knew no deprivation as a member of the Jewish minority, what led me to the steps of the gallows as a member of the Zionist underground? To answer that question, it is necessary to establish the context of the massacre that occurred in Baghdad on June 1, 1941, when several hundred Iraqi Jews were killed in riots involving junior officers of the Iraqi army. I was 12 years of age and many of those killed were my friends. I was angry, and very confused. What I didn't know at the time was that the riots most likely were stirred up by the British, in collusion with a pro-British Iraqi leadership. With the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following WW I, Iraq came under British "tutelage." Amir Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein who had led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman sultan, was brought in from Mecca by the British to become King of Iraq in 1921. Many Jews were appointed to key administrative posts, including that of economics minister. Britain retained final authority over domestic and external affairs. Britain's pro-Zionist attitude in Palestine, however, triggered a growing anti-Zionist backlash in Iraq, as it did in all Arab countries. Writing at the end of 1934, Sir Francis Humphreys, Britain's Ambassador in Baghdad, noted that, while before WW I Iraqi Jews had enjoyed a more favorable position than any other minority in the country, since then "Zionism has sown dissension between Jews and Arabs, and a bitterness has grown up between the two peoples which did not previously exist." King Faisal died in 1933. He was succeeded by his son Ghazi, who died in a motor car accident in 1939. The crown then passed to Ghazi's 4-year-old son, Faisal II, whose uncle, Abd al-Ilah, was named regent. Abd al-Ilah selected Nouri el-Said as prime minister. El-Said supported the British and, as hatred of the British grew, he was forced from office in March 1940 by four senior army officers who advocated Iraq's independence from Britain. Calling themselves the Golden Square, the officers compelled the regent to name as prime minister Rashid Ali al-Kilani, leader of the National Brotherhood party. The time was 1940 and Britain was reeling from a strong German offensive. Al-Kilani and the Golden Square saw this as their opportunity to rid themselves of the British once and for all. Cautiously they began to negotiate for German support, which led the pro-British regent Abd al-Ilah to dismiss al-Kilani in January 1941. By April, however, the Golden Square officers had reinstated the prime minister. This provoked the British to send a military force into Basra on April 12, 1941. Basra, Iraq's second largest city, had a Jewish population of 30,000. Most of these Jews made their livings from import/export, money changing, retailing, as workers in the airports, railways, and ports, or as senior government employees. On the same day, April 12, supporters of the pro-British regent notified the Jewish leaders that the regent wanted to meet with them. As was their custom, the leaders brought flowers for the regent. Contrary to custom, however, the cars that drove them to the meeting place dropped them off at the site where the British soldiers were concentrated. Photographs of the Jews appeared in the following day's newspapers with the banner "Basra Jews Receive British Troops with Flowers." That same day, April 13, groups of angry Arab youths set about to take revenge against the Jews. Several Muslim notables in Basra heard of the plan and calmed things down. Later, it was learned that the regent was not in Basra at all and that the matter was a provocation by his pro-British supporters to bring about an ethnic war in order to give the British army a pretext to intervene. The British continued to land more forces in and around Basra. On May 7, 1941, their Gurkha unit, composed of Indian soldiers from that ethnic group, occupied Basra's el-Oshar quarter, a neighborhood with a large Jewish population. The soldiers, led by British officers, began looting. Many shops in the commercial district were plundered. Private homes were broken into. Cases of attempted rape were reported. Local residents, Jews and Muslims, responded with pistols and old rifles, but their bullets were no match for the soldiers' Tommy Guns. Afterwards, it was learned that the soldiers acted with the acquiescence, if not the blessing, of their British commanders. (It should be remembered that the Indian soldiers, especially those of the Gurkha unit, were known for their discipline, and it is highly unlikely they would have acted so riotously without orders.) The British goal clearly was to create chaos and to blacken the image of the pro-nationalist regime in Baghdad, thereby giving the British forces reason to proceed to the capital and to overthrow the al-Kilani government. Baghdad fell on May 30. Al-Kilani fled to Iran, along with the Golden Square officers. Radio stations run by the British reported that Regent Abd al-Ilah would be returning to the city and that thousands of Jews and others were planning to welcome him. What inflamed young Iraqis against the Jews most, however, was the radio announcer Yunas Bahri on the German station "Berlin," who reported in Arabic that Jews from Palestine were fighting alongside the British against Iraqi soldiers near the city of Faluja. The report was false. On Sunday, June 1, unarmed fighting broke out in Baghdad between Jews who were still celebrating their Shabuoth holiday and young Iraqis who thought the Jews were celebrating the return of the pro-British regent. That evening, a group of Iraqis stopped a bus, removed the Jewish passengers, murdered one and fatally wounded a second. About 8:30 the following morning, some 30 individuals in military and police uniforms opened fire along el-Amin street, a small downtown street whose jewelry, tailor and grocery shops were Jewish-owned. By 11 a.m., mobs of Iraqis with knives, switchblades and clubs were attacking Jewish homes in the area. The riots continued throughout Monday, June 2. During this time, many Muslims rose to defend their Jewish neighbors, while some Jews successfully defended themselves. There were 124 killed and 400 injured, according to a report written by a Jewish Agency messenger who was in Iraq at the time. Other estimates, possibly less reliable, put the death toll higher, as many as 500, with from 650 to 2,000 injured. From 500 to 1,300 stores and more than 1,000 homes and apartments were looted. Who was behind the rioting in the Jewish quarter? Yosef Meir, one of the most prominent activists in the Zionist underground movement in Iraq, known then as Yehoshafat, claims it was the British. Meir, who now works for the Israeli Defense Ministry, argues that, in order to make it appear that the regent was returning as the savior who would reestablish law and order, the British stirred up the riots against the most vulnerable and visible segment in the city, the Jews. And, not surprisingly, the riots ended as soon as the regent's loyal soldiers entered the capital. My own investigations as a journalist lead me to believe Meir is correct. Furthermore, I think his claims should be seen as based on documents in the archives of the Israeli Defense Ministry, the agency that published his book. Yet, even before his book came out, I had independent confirmation from a man I met in Iran in the late Forties. His name was Michael Timosian, an Iraqi Armenian. When I met him he was working as a male nurse at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Abadan in the south of Iran. On June 2, 1941, however, he was working at the Baghdad hospital where many of the riot victims were brought. Most of these victims were Jews. Timosian said he was particularly interested in two patients whose conduct did not follow local custom. One had been hit by a bullet in his shoulder, the other by a bullet in his right knee. After the doctor removed the bullets, the staff tried to change their blood-soaked cloths. But the two men fought off their efforts, pretending to be speechless, although tests showed they could hear. To pacify them, the doctor injected them with anesthetics and, as they were sleeping, Timosian changed their cloths. He discovered that one of them had around his neck an identification tag of the type used by British troops, while the other had tattoos with Indian script on his right arm along with the familiar sword of the Gurkha. The next day when Timosian showed up for work, he was told that a British officer, his sergeant and two Indian Gurkha soldiers had come to the hospital early that morning. Staff members overheard the Gurkha soldiers talking with the wounded patients, who were not as dumb as they had pretended. The patients saluted the visitors, covered themselves with sheets and, without signing the required release forms, left the hospital with their visitors. Today there is no doubt in my mind that the anti-Jewish riots of 1941 were orchestrated by the British for geopolitical ends. David Kimche is certainly a man who was in a position to know the truth, and he has spoken publicly about British culpability. Kimche had been with British Intelligence during WW II and with the Mossad after the war. Later he became Director General of Israel's Foreign Ministry, the position he held in 1982 when he addressed a forum at the British Institute for International Affairs in London. In responding to hostile questions about Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the refugee camp massacres in Beirut, Kimche went on the attack, reminding the audience that there was scant concern in the British Foreign Office when British Gurkha units participated in the murder of 500 Jews in the streets of Baghdad in 1941. The Bombings of 1950-1951 The anti-Jewish riots of 1941 did more than create a pretext for the British to enter Baghdad to reinstate the pro-British regent and his pro-British prime minister, Nouri el-Said. They also gave the Zionists in Palestine a pretext to set up a Zionist underground in Iraq, first in Baghdad, then in other cities such as Basra, Amara, Hillah, Diwaneia, Abril and Karkouk. Following WW II, a succession of governments held brief power in Iraq. Zionist conquests in Palestine, particularly the massacre of Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin, emboldened the anti-British movement in Iraq. When the Iraqi government signed a new treaty of friendship with London in January 1948, riots broke out all over the country. The treaty was quickly abandoned and Baghdad demanded removal of the British military mission that had run Iraq's army for 27 years. Later in 1948, Baghdad sent an army detachment to Palestine to fight the Zionists, and when Israel declared independence in May, Iraq closed the pipeline that fed its oil to Haifa's refinery. Abd al-Ilah, however, was still regent and the British quisling, Nouri el-Said, was back as prime minister. I was in the Abu-Greib prison in 1948, where I would remain until my escape to Iran in September 1949. Six months later-the exact date was March 19, 1950-a bomb went off at the American Cultural Center and Library in Baghdad, causing property damage and injuring a number of people. The center was a favorite meeting place for young Jews. The first bomb thrown directly at Jews occurred on April 8, 1950, at 9:15 p.m. A car with three young passengers hurled the grenade at Baghdad's El-Dar El-Bida Café, where Jews were celebrating Passover. Four people were seriously injured. That night leaflets were distributed calling on Jews to leave Iraq immediately. The next day, many Jews, most of them poor with nothing to lose, jammed emigration offices to renounce their citizenship and to apply for permission to leave for Israel. So many applied, in fact, that the police had to open registration offices in Jewish schools and synagogues. On May 10, at 3 a.m., a grenade was tossed in the direction of the display window of the Jewish-owned Beit-Lawi Automobile Company, destroying part of the building. No casualties were reported. On June 3, 1950, another grenade was tossed from a speeding car in the El-Batawin area of Baghdad where most rich Jews and middle class Iraqis lived. No one was hurt, but following the explosion Zionist activists sent telegrams to Israel requesting that the quota for immigration from Iraq be increased. On June 5, at 2:30 a.m., a bomb exploded next to the Jewish-owned Stanley Shashua building on El-Rashid street, resulting in property damage but no casualties. On January 14, 1951, at 7 p.m., a grenade was thrown at a group of Jews outside the Masouda Shem-Tov Synagogue. The explosive struck a high-voltage cable, electrocuting three Jews, one a young boy, Itzhak Elmacher, and wounding over 30 others. Following the attack, the exodus of Jews jumped to between 600-700 per day. Zionist propagandists still maintain that the bombs in Iraq were set off by anti-Jewish Iraqis who wanted Jews out of their country. The terrible truth is that the grenades that killed and maimed Iraqi Jews and damaged their property were thrown by Zionist Jews. Among the most important documents in my book, I believe, are copies of two leaflets published by the Zionist underground calling on Jews to leave Iraq. One is dated March 16, 1950, the other April 8, 1950. The difference between these two is critical. Both indicate the date of publication, but only the April 8th leaflet notes the time of day: 4 p.m. Why the time of day? Such a specification was unprecedented. Even the investigating judge, Salaman El-Beit, found it suspicious. Did the 4 p.m. writers want an alibi for a bombing they knew would occur five hours later? If so, how did they know about the bombing? The judge concluded they knew because a connection existed between the Zionist underground and the bomb throwers. This, too, was the conclusion of Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whom I had the opportunity to meet in New York in 1988. In his book, Ropes of Sand, whose publication the CIA opposed, Eveland writes: In attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in synagogues. Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel. . . . Although the Iraqi police later provided our embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and library bombings, as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-American leaflet campaigns, had been the work of an underground Zionist organization, most of the world believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the flight of the Iraqi Jews whom the Zionists had "rescued" really just in order to increase Israel's Jewish population." Eveland doesn't detail the evidence linking the Zionists to the attacks, but in my book I do. In 1955, for example, I organized in Israel a panel of Jewish attorneys of Iraqi origin to handle claims of Iraqi Jews who still had property in Iraq. One well known attorney, who asked that I not give his name, confided in me that the laboratory tests in Iraq had confirmed that the anti-American leaflets found at the American Cultural Center bombing were typed on the same typewriter and duplicated on the same stenciling machine as the leaflets distributed by the Zionist movement just before the April 8th bombing. Tests also showed that the type of explosive used in the Beit-Lawi attack matched traces of explosives found in the suitcase of an Iraqi Jew by the name of Yosef Basri. Basri, a lawyer, together with Shalom Salih, a shoemaker, would be put on trial for the attacks in December 1951 and executed the following month. Both men were members of Hashura, the military arm of the Zionist underground. Salih ultimately confessed that he, Basri and a third man, Yosef Habaza, carried out the attacks. By the time of the executions in January 1952, all but 6,000 of an estimated 125,000 Iraqi Jews had fled to Israel. Moreover, the pro-British, pro-Zionist puppet el-Said saw to it that all of their possessions were frozen, including their cash assets. (There were ways of getting Iraqi dinars out, but when the immigrants went to exchange them in Israel they found that the Israeli government kept 50 percent of the value.) Even those Iraqi Jews who had not registered to emigrate, but who happened to be abroad, faced loss of their nationality if they didn't return within a specified time. An ancient, cultured, prosperous community had been uprooted and its people transplanted to a land dominated by East European Jews, whose culture was not only foreign but entirely hateful to them. The Ultimate Criminals Zionist Leaders. From the start they knew that in order to establish a Jewish state they had to expel the indigenous Palestinian population to the neighboring Islamic states and import Jews from these same states. * Theodor Herzl, the architect of Zionism, thought it could be done by social engineering. In his diary entry for 12 June 1885, he wrote that Zionist settlers would have to "spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country." * Vladimir Jabotinsky, Prime Minister Netanyahu's ideological progenitor, frankly admitted that such a transfer of populations could only be brought about by force. * David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, told a Zionist Conference in 1937 that any proposed Jewish state would have to "transfer Arab populations out of the area, if possible of their own free will, if not by coercion." After 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted and their lands confiscated in 1948-49, Ben Gurion had to look to the Islamic countries for Jews who could fill the resultant cheap labor market. "Emissaries" were smuggled into these countries to "convince" Jews to leave either by trickery or fear. In the case of Iraq, both methods were used: uneducated Jews were told of a Messianic Israel in which the blind see, the lame walk, and onions grow as big as melons; educated Jews had bombs thrown at them. A few years after the bombings, in the early 1950s, a book was published in Iraq, in Arabic, titled Venom of the Zionist Viper. The author was one of the Iraqi investigators of the 1950-51 bombings and, in his book, he implicates the Israelis, specifically one of the emissaries sent by Israel, Mordechai Ben-Porat. As soon as the book came out, all copies just disappeared, even from libraries. The word was that agents of the Israeli Mossad, working through the U.S. Embassy, bought up all the books and destroyed them. I tried on three different occasions to have one sent to me in Israel, but each time Israeli censors in the post office intercepted it. British Leaders. Britain always acted in its best colonial interests. For that reason Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour sent his famous 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild in exchange for Zionist support in WW I. During WW II the British were primarily concerned with keeping their client states in the Western camp, while Zionists were most concerned with the immigration of European Jews to Palestine, even if this meant cooperating with the Nazis. (In my book I document numerous instances of such dealings by Ben Gurion and the Zionist leadership.) After WW II the international chessboard pitted communists against capitalists. In many countries, including the United States and Iraq, Jews represented a large part of the Communist party. In Iraq, hundreds of Jews of the working intelligentsia occupied key positions in the hierarchy of the Communist and Socialist parties. To keep their client countries in the capitalist camp, Britain had to make sure these governments had pro-British leaders. And if, as in Iraq, these leaders were overthrown, then an anti-Jewish riot or two could prove a useful pretext to invade the capital and reinstate the "right" leaders. Moreover, if the possibility existed of removing the communist influence from Iraq by transferring the whole Jewish community to Israel, well then, why not? Particularly if the leaders of Israel and Iraq conspired in the deed. The Iraqi Leaders. Both the regent Abd al-Ilah and his prime minister Nouri el- Said took directions from London. Toward the end of 1948, el-Said, who had already met with Israel's Prime Minister Ben Gurion in Vienna, began discussing with his Iraqi and British associates the need for an exchange of populations. Iraq would send the Jews in military trucks to Israel via Jordan, and Iraq would take in some of the Palestinians Israel had been evicting. His proposal included mutual confiscation of property. London nixed the idea as too radical. El-Said then went to his back-up plan and began to create the conditions that would make the lives of Iraqi Jews so miserable they would leave for Israel. Jewish government employees were fired from their jobs; Jewish merchants were denied import/export licenses; police began to arrest Jews for trivial reasons. Still the Jews did not leave in any great numbers. In September 1949, Israel sent the spy Mordechai Ben-Porat, the one mentioned in Venom of the Zionist Viper, to Iraq. One of the first things Ben-Porat did was to approach el-Said and promise him financial incentives to have a law enacted that would lift the citizenship of Iraqi Jews. Soon after, Zionist and Iraqi representatives began formulating a rough draft of the bill, according to the model dictated by Israel through its agents in Baghdad. The bill was passed by the Iraqi parliament in March 1950. It empowered the government to issue one-time exit visas to Jews wishing to leave the country. In March, the bombings began. Sixteen years later, the Israeli magazine Haolam Hazeh, published by Uri Avnery, then a Knesset member, accused Ben-Porat of the Baghdad bombings. Ben-Porat, who would become a Knesset member himself, denied the charge, but never sued the magazine for libel. And Iraqi Jews in Israel still call him Morad Abu al-Knabel, Mordechai of the Bombs. As I said, all this went well beyond the comprehension of a teenager. I knew Jews were being killed and an organization existed that could lead us to the Promised Land. So I helped in the exodus to Israel. Later, on occasions, I would bump into some of these Iraqi Jews in Israel. Not infrequently they'd express the sentiment that they could kill me for what I had done. Opportunities for Peace After the Israeli attack on the Jordanian village of Qibya in October, 1953, Ben Gurion went into voluntary exile at the Sedeh Boker kibbutz in the Negev. The Labor party then used to organize many buses for people to go visit him there, where they would see the former prime minister working with sheep. But that was only for show. Really he was writing his diary and continuing to be active behind the scenes. I went on such a tour. Ben Gurion's Scandals by N.Giladi How the Haganah and Mossad eliminated Jews. Available in our BookstoreWe were told not to try to speak to Ben Gurion, but when I saw him, I asked why, since Israel is a democracy with a parliament, does it not have a constitution? Ben Gurion said, "Look, boy"-I was 24 at the time-"if we have a constitution, we have to write in it the border of our country. And this is not our border, my dear." I asked, "Then where is the border?" He said, "Wherever the Sahal will come, this is the border." Sahal is the Israeli army. Ben Gurion told the world that Israel accepted the partition and the Arabs rejected it. Then Israel took half of the land that was promised to the Arab state. And still he was saying it was not enough. Israel needed more land. How can a country make peace with its neighbors if it wants to take their land? How can a country demand to be secure if it won't say what borders it will be satisfied with? For such a country, peace would be an inconvenience. I know now that from the beginning many Arab leaders wanted to make peace with Israel, but Israel always refused. Ben Gurion covered this up with propaganda. He said that the Arabs wanted to drive Israel into the sea and he called Gamal Abdel Nasser the Hitler of the Middle East whose foremost intent was to destroy Israel. He wanted America and Great Britain to treat Nasser like a pariah. In 1954, it seemed that America was getting less critical of Nasser. Then during a three-week period in July, several terrorist bombs were set off: at the United States Information Agency offices in Cairo and Alexandria, a British-owned theater, and the central post office in Cairo. An attempt to firebomb a cinema in Alexandria failed when the bomb went off in the pocket of one of the perpetrators. That led to the discovery that the terrorists were not anti-Western Egyptians, but were instead Israeli spies bent on souring the warming relationship between Egypt and the United States in what came to be known as the Lavon Affair. Ben Gurion was still living on his kibbutz. Moshe Sharett as prime minister was in contact with Abdel Nasser through the offices of Lord Maurice Orbach of Great Britain. Sharett asked Nasser to be lenient with the captured spies, and Nasser did all that was in his power to prevent a deterioration of the situation between the two countries. Then Ben Gurion returned as Defense Minister in February, 1955. Later that month Israeli troops attacked Egyptian military camps and Palestinian refugees in Gaza, killing 54 and injuring many more. The very night of the attack, Lord Orbach was on his way to deliver a message to Nasser, but was unable to get through because of the military action. When Orbach telephoned, Nasser's secretary told him that the attack proved that Israel did not want peace and that he was wasting his time as a mediator. In November, Ben Gurion announced in the Knesset that he was willing to meet with Abdel Nasser anywhere and at any time for the sake of peace and understanding. The next morning the Israeli military attacked an Egyptian military camp in the Sabaha region. Although Nasser felt pessimistic about achieving peace with Israel, he continued to send other mediators to try. One was through the American Friends Service Committee; another via the Prime Minister of Malta, Dom Minthoff; and still another through Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia. One that looked particularly promising was through Dennis Hamilton, editor of The London Times. Nasser told Hamilton that if only he could sit and talk with Ben Gurion for two or three hours, they would be able to settle the conflict and end the state of war between the two countries. When word of this reached Ben Gurion, he arranged to meet with Hamilton. They decided to pursue the matter with the Israeli ambassador in London, Arthur Luria, as liaison. On Hamilton's third trip to Egypt, Nasser met him with the text of a Ben Gurion speech stating that Israel would not give up an inch of land and would not take back a single refugee. Hamilton knew that Ben Gurion with his mouth had undermined a peace mission and missed an opportunity to settle the Israeli-Arab conflict. Nasser even sent his friend Ibrahim Izat of the Ruz El Yusuf weekly paper to meet with Israeli leaders in order to explore the political atmosphere and find out why the attacks were taking place if Israel really wanted peace. One of the men Izat met with was Yigal Yadin, a former Chief of Staff of the army who wrote this letter to me on 14 January 1982: Dear Mr. Giladi: Your letter reminded me of an event which I nearly forgot and of which I remember only a few details. Ibrahim Izat came to me if I am not mistaken under the request of the Foreign Ministry or one of its branches; he stayed in my house and we spoke for many hours. I do not remember him saying that he came on a mission from Nasser, but I have no doubt that he let it be understood that this was with his knowledge or acquiescence.... When Nasser decided to nationalize the Suez Canal in spite of opposition from the British and the French, Radio Cairo announced in Hebrew: If the Israeli government is not influenced by the British and the French imperialists, it will eventually result in greater understanding between the two states, and Egypt will reconsider Israel's request to have access to the Suez Canal. Israel responded that it had no designs on Egypt, but at that very moment Israeli representatives were in France planning the three-way attack that was to take place in October, 1956. All the while, Ben Gurion continued to talk about the Hitler of the Middle East. This brainwashing went on until late September, 1970, when Gamal Abdel Nasser passed away. Then, miracle of miracles, David Ben Gurion told the press: A week before he died I received an envoy from Abdel Nasser who asked to meet with me urgently in order to solve the problems between Israel and the Arab world. The public was surprised because they didn't know that Abdel Nasser had wanted this all along, but Israel sabotaged it. Nasser was not the only Arab leader who wanted to make peace with Israel. There were many others. Brigadier General Abdel Karim Qasem, before he seized power in Iraq in July, 1958, headed an underground organization that sent a delegation to Israel to make a secret agreement. Ben Gurion refused even to see him. I learned about this when I was a journalist in Israel. But whenever I tried to publish even a small part of it, the censor would stamp it "Not Allowed." Now, in Netanyahu, we are witnessing another attempt by an Israeli prime minister to fake an interest in making peace. Netanyahu and the Likud are setting Arafat up by demanding that he institute more and more repressive measures in the interest of Israeli "security." Sooner or later I suspect the Palestinians will have had enough of Arafat's strong-arm methods as Israel's quisling-and he'll be killed. Then the Israeli government will say, "See, we were ready to give him everything. You can't trust those Arabs-they kill each other. Now there's no one to even talk to about peace." Conclusion Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. Certainly it has been easier for the world to accept the Zionist lie that Jews were evicted from Muslim lands because of anti-Semitism, and that Israelis, never the Arabs, were the pursuers of peace. The truth is far more discerning: bigger players on the world stage were pulling the strings. These players, I believe, should be held accountable for their crimes, particularly when they willfully terrorized, dispossessed and killed innocent people on the altar of some ideological imperative. I believe, too, that the descendants of these leaders have a moral responsibility to compensate the victims and their descendants, and to do so not just with reparations, but by setting the historical record straight. That is why I established a panel of inquiry in Israel to seek reparations for Iraqi Jews who had been forced to leave behind their property and possessions in Iraq. That is why I joined the Black Panthers in confronting the Israeli government with the grievances of the Jews in Israel who came from Islamic lands. And that is why I have written my book and this article: to set the historical record straight. We Jews from Islamic lands did not leave our ancestral homes because of any natural enmity between Jews and Muslims. And we Arabs-I say Arab because that is the language my wife and I still speak at home-we Arabs on numerous occasions have sought peace with the State of the Jews. And finally, as a U.S. citizen and taxpayer, let me say that we Americans need to stop supporting racial discrimination in Israel and the cruel expropriation of lands in the West Bank, Gaza, South Lebanon and the Golan Heights. more

Resolved Question: Anyone agree with me?

I sincerely apoligize for the hypocricy and foul language i used in my last question, "What the f is wrong with people" and ,"Why does it seem everyone in our society favors war and dstruction over peace nd understanding". I was really crying before, because i could not stand to see people acting so arrogant, and so cruel and uninformed. One of my answers that gave anti war quotes from famous people got two ratings as a bad answer. why? Because people are afraid of the truth i suspect, that alot of people do not give into there bloodthirst ways, and more people favor peace than war. you don't see anti peace protestorrs do you, you see anti war protestors. What has war ever done good for us, with the exception of when diplomacy is out of the question(such as when we are attacked first) or when commpromise fails, and then we move to war, such as in the american revolution. more

Resolved Question: do you think that yahoo is anti-islamic racist?!!?

please check this site http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=allah&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8 a picture with god name on a pig?!! what on earth is this picture supposed 2 mean/??! ISLAM’S ANSWER TO THE RACIAL PROBLEM BY A GERMAN DIPLOMAT THE HAJJ This annual pilgrimage, or Hajj as it is called in the Arabic language, is one of the five pillars, one of the five fundamental religious duties to be performed by Muslims. Without going further into the details of the conditions to be fulfilled in order to be able to proceed on this pilgrimage, or of the rites and rituals to be observed in its course, let me describe in a few words the most striking and unforgettable sight that will be present itself to your eye upon reaching the sacred territory: You will see a multitude of men, women and also children, close perhaps to two million, from every corner of the world, black and brown of complexion, Yellow and white, Arabs and Iranians, Turks and Malays, Chinese and Africans, black and white Americans, blond and blue-eyed Europeans- in short to quote one of our great Germanic Poets, Frederick Schiller : " Who knows the nations, who the names of all who here together came?" NO DISTINCTION And there is still more that fills us with wonder: Whether black or brown, yellow or white, rich or poor, young or old, every male that our eye beholds is dressed alike, wearing two white seamless sheets of simple material, thus eliminating completely all marks and signs of distinction of dress between the African and American, the Asian, Australian and European, the mighty and wealthy and the poor and lowly. Here they have come, brother unto brother, sister unto sister, bearing witness to the brotherhood of mankind, to the equality of all human beings before their creator, for it is to worship Him and to extol His glory that has brought them here. They have heard and heeded His call, and their reply uttered, nay cried out by all and sundry, echoing and re-echoing from the surrounding mountains is: "LABBAIK, ALLAHUMMA LABBAIK" HERE AM I, O ALLAH, HERE AM I, THERE IS NONE WHO IS THE PARTNER, ALL PRAISE AND BLESSING BELONG TO THEE ALONE, FOR THOU ART THE SOVEREIGN, AND THOU HAST NO PARTNER." The pilgrimage to Mecca, the huge assembly of believers from all five continents, the gathering together of the multitude of worshippers of all races on the plain of Arafat is perhaps the most spectacular expression, symbol and proof of unity and brotherhood of man as enunciated and upheld by the religion of Islam, and it is equally a symbol and proof of the equality of man before Allah, the Supreme Being, as taught by this religion. The concept and idea of the oneness of humanity is Islam's unique contribution to human civilization, and it came as a natural sequel to its cardinal doctrine, the doctrine of " TAUHID" or the unity of God. The doctrine which runs through all teachings of the Holly Quran like a red thread, has found its most concise and terse expression in the 112th chapter of the Holly book, called "AL-IKHLAS," or purity of Faith: "Say He is God, the One and Only; God the Eternal, Absolute; He begotten not, nor is He begotten; And there is None like unto Him." Holly Quran 112: 1-4 (Read these verses and the verses following in conjunction with their commentary by A. Yusuf Ali.) THE RABB He, Allah, the One and Only, is the author of all existence; He is our creator, to Him we belong and to Him is our return. And He is more than mere author and creator: He is also the "RABB" of his creation and His creatures: and "RABB" according to the great authority on the Holly Quran , Imam Raghib, in Arabic it signifies 'THE CHERISHER, SUSTAINER AND FOSTERER OF A THING IN SUCH A MANNER AS TO MAKE IT ATTAIN ONE CONDITION AFTER ANOTHE RUNTIL IT REACHES ITS GOAL OF COMPLETION AND PERFECTION." "Thus Allah being the "Rabb ul-Alamin," the "Rabb of the worlds," as He is called in the opening chapter, of the Holly Quran and of all of us, whom He created. "HE DEALS WITH ALL OF US ALIKE, NO MATTER TO WHICH RACE, NATION, TRIBE OR PARENTAGE WE MAY BELONG, for He created us all alike, as the Holly Quran further elucidates in numerous verses and words, such as: "AND MANKIND IS NAUGHT BUT A SINGLE NATION." Holy Quran 2:213 We are all the children of Adam, and Adam was made of dust. Here Dawned the idea for the first time in human history that all men have a common origin and that, because of their common origin, because we belong to Allah, all and sundry, to whom is our ultimate return, the whole of humanity is but one family, one nation and should, ideally, form one fraternity, the universal brotherhood of man. The differences of color and languages, of build and of features are not regarded as differences of quality, or as marks or degrees of excellence, but as an expression of the diversity in nature: Says the Holy Quran: "AMONG HIS SIGNS IS THIS,THAT HE CREATED YOU FROM DUST: AND THEN, BEHOLD, YE ARE MEN SCATTERED( FAR AND WIDE)" "AND AMONG HIS SIGNS IS THE CREATION OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH, AND THE VARIATIONS AND DIVERSITY OF YOUR TONGUES AND OF YOUR COLOR; VERILY IN THAT ARE SIGNS FOR THOSE WHO KNOW." Holy Qur'an 30:22 Allama Yousuf Ali, commenting on this verse, remarks: "All mankind were created of a single pair of parents; yet they had spread to different climates and developed different languages and different shades of complexions. And yet, their basic unity remains unaltered. They feel in the same way, and are equally under God's care". Whatever a country in which a people lives, whatever the language they speak, whatever the color of their skin, they are recognized as one family, living under one roof- the canopy of heaven scattered, but of common origin: Says the Holy Qur'an: "O MANKIND! REVERENCE YOUR GURDIAN LORD, WHO CREATED YOU FROM A SINGLE PERSON, CREATED OF LIKE NATURE, HIS MATE, AND FROM THEM TWAIN SCATTERED (LIKE SEEDS) COUNTLESS MEN AND WOMAN." Holy Qur'an4:1 UNITY OF MANKIND There is one verse in the Holy Qur'an, however, which not only re-states the common origin of man, explains the division of humanity into nations, or race and tribes, tells us that the object and purpose of this division was also the ultimate unification of humanity, but goes a step further: It points out to us the one and only criterion, the only standard by which man is judged by god, and thus by which we should also judge our fellow-man. As you will presently see, THIS CRITERION IS NOT HIS COLOR, NOR HIS RACE, NOT HIS SOCIAL STANDING OR CASTE, NOT EVEN HIS SKILL AND THE DEGREE OF HIS INTELLIGENCE. It is something which to achieve lies within reach of every human being, black or brown, white or yellow, rich or poor, if only he made an effort to cultivate it within himself. Says the Holy Qur'an: "O MANKIND WE CREATED YOU FROM A SINGLE (PAIR) OF A MALE AND A FEMALE, AND MADE YOU INTO NATIONS AND TRIBES, THAT YE MAY KNOW EACH OTHER. VERILY THE MOST HONORED OF YOU IN THE SIGHT OF GOD IS (HE WHO IS) THE MOST RIGHTIOUS OF YOU AND GOD HAS FULL KNOWLEDGE AND IS WELL AQUAINTED (WITH ALL THINGS)." Holy Qur'an 49:13 "The principle of the brotherhood of man laid down here", observe an author of an English translation of the Holy Qur'an, "is based on the broadest foundation. The address here is not the believers: but to men in general, who are told that they are all, as it were, members of one family, and their divisions into nations, races, tribes and families should not lead to estrangement from, but to a better knowledge of each other. Superiority of one over another in this vast brotherhood does not depend on race, nationality, wealth or rank but on righteousness, on the careful observance of duty towards God and fellow-man, on moral greatness", to which I maybe permitted to add: and on the strength of one's "IMAN", of faith in the one and only God because it is through faith and through submission unto the will of God only through which we can attain to moral greatness. This verse of the Holy Qur'an is the answer of Islam to racism, an answer which, as far as the Muslim community is concerned, did not remain a pious exhortation but sounded the death knell of racial discrimination in the world of Islam as borne out not only by the example set by the Prophet Mohammed (P.B.O.H.); but also subsequent events in the history of all Muslim nations and by the general attitude of the Muslims until the present day. I am inclined by personal experiences gathered during travels in almost all Muslim countries in the course of the last 25 years, to insist that, in consequence of these teachings of Islam and their translation into practice by the Prophet (P.B.U.H.); such a complete change was brought in the minds and hearts of all who embraced Islam, in the minds and hearts of all Muslims that is, that to them racial differences present no problems at all, nay, that they are largely almost totally unaware of, and most certainly little disturbed or embarrassed by, such differences. A BEAUTIFUL PATTERN OF CONDUCT There are instances galore in the life of the Prophet Mohammed, upon whom be peace and blessings of God, which show us that, as is the case with regard to all injunctions of the Holy Qur'an, he was the perfect exemplar, the beautiful pattern of conduct also with regard to the application and actualization of the principle of the brotherhood of man in his own dealings with his followers as well as in his personal relations with adherents of other faiths. But we can only appreciate fully how formidable a task it was to establish this principle among his followers, if we look at the social conditions which prevailed in Arabia before the advent of the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) .Let me in order to illustrate this point, quote from a book of a non-Muslim author, namely from "The social structure of Islam" by reuben levy: " The population of Arabia , outside of a few settled communities embedded in it, has throughout historical times been so constituted as to form a number of groups or tribes, very loosely held together either by loyalty to a particular leader or by the assumption of descent from a common ancestor, whether real or legendary. Within each of such groups or tribes, the independence of individual units- the tents or families- has always been taken as a matter of course, and the head of each unit has been regarded as being in status the equal of every other. In the heads of the families lies the power to elect the "SHAYKH" or tribal chief, of whom in theory, no special qualification is required. In actual practice, however there is normally a strong prejudice in favor of choosing the "SHAYKH" from amongst the number of particular families. At the time of the rise of Mohammed such families held a position of great influence within the community, so that in any claim to authority the factor of birth was considered of a paramount importance. Noble ancestry was the supreme test of nobility, and no person whose genealogy was not entirely free of hereditary taint for example ancestors of servile or Negro origin could be regarded as conforming to the requisite standard. Such person were relegated to the humbler ranks of society and were thus compelled to undertake careers that inevitably marked them as inferior beings ... In the same way that the old nobility resisted the assumption of equality by other Arabs, so the inhabitants of Arabia as a whole refused to consider foreigners as being their peers." The Arabs regarded themselves as a superior race. And as regards the Negroes they did not recognize them except as slaves. It is to this situation to which the Holy Qur'an refers in the following verse: "AND HOLD FAST ALL TOGETHER , BY THE ROPE WHICH GOD (STRETCHES OUT FOR YOU), AND BE NOT DIVIDED AMONG YOURSELVES; AND REMEMBER WITH GRATITUDE GOD'S FAVOURON YOU; FOR YE WERE ENEMIES, AND HE JOINED YOUR HEARTS IN LOVE, SO THAT BY HIS GRACEYE BECAME BRETHREN; AND YE WERE ON THE BRINK OF THE PIT OF FIRE, AND HE SAVED YOU FROM IT. THUS DOTH GOD MAKE HIS SIGNS CLEAR TO YOU: THAT YE MAY BE GUIDED." Holy Qur'an 3:103 Among the measures introduced by the Prophet of Islam to level the differences of rank and of race among his steadily growing community perhaps prayer ought to be mentioned in particular. Five times a day the Muslims meet together for prayer. Among the first Muslims were members of the noblest Arab families as well as a good number of Negro slaves. At prayers they all stood shoulder to shoulder before the Almighty, and when, in the further course of prayer, they prostrated before their Lord, it might well have been that the head of a noble Arab praying in a row behind a Negro slave rested at the latter's feet. In prayer and in the company of the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) no differences of status was recognized between the two. UNITY IN PRAYER From standing side by side in the ranks of prayer, the next step was a mere corollary; they mingled freely on terms of perfect equality on all other occasions. Service to God was thus the door through which the fraternization of humanity was effected... The negro slaves and the noble Arab were made to meet together on terms of equality in prayer and in religious gatherings. It was thus impressed on their minds, that they were all equal before God, and life once molded on these lines led to the natural consequence that the negro slaves and the Arab nobility enjoyed equal status in society. In the first Muslim community a negro slave, Bilal, was chosen by the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) himself to deliver the "ADHAN", the call to prayer, while the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) himself was the "IMAM" or leader of congregation. Thus, of the two office-bearers of the Mosque, the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) himself of noble blood and birth, was one, the other being Bilal, a negro. In his famous oration, which he delivered on the occasion of his "Farewell Pilgrimage", his last pilgrimage before he closed his eyes forever, the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) re-affirmed re-stated the principle of equality and brotherhood of man in Islam, thus bequeathing it as a sacred legacy to generation after generation of Muslims after him until the present day. Let me quote from the oration: "YE PEOPLE! LISTEN TO MY WORDS, FOR I KNOW NOT WHTHER ANOTHER YEAR WILL BE VOUCH SAFED TO ME AFTER THIS YEAR TO FIND MYSELF AMONGST YOU AT THIS PLACE." "YOUR LIVES AND PROPERTY ARE SACRED AND INVIOLABLE AMONGST ONE ANOTHER UNTIL YE APPEAR BEFORE THE LORD... AND REMEMBER, YE SHALL HAVE TO APPEAR BEFORE YOUR LORD WHO SHALL DEMAND FROM YOU AN ACCOUNT OF ALL YOUR ACTIONS... YE PEOPLE, YE HAVE RIGHTS OVER YOUR WIVES, AND YOUR WIVES HAVE RIGHTS OVER YOU. TREAT THEM WITH KINDNESS AND LOVE... KEEP ALWAYS FAITHFULL TO THE TRUST REPOSED IN YOU." "YE PEOPLE LISTEN TO MY WORDSAND UNDERSTAND THEM. KNOE YE THAT ALL MUSLIMS ARE BROTHERS UNTO ONE ANOTHER. YE ARE ONE BROTHERHOOD." "ALL MEN ARE EQUAL IN ISLAM. THE ARAB HAS NO SUPERIORITY OVER THE NON-ARAB,NOR DOES THE NON-ARAB HAVE SUPERIORITY OVER THE ARAB, SAVE IN THE FEAR OF GOD." That the Prophet's bequest was heeded and the example set by him was followed by subsequent generations of Muslims through out the ages and history. It is impossible for me within the limits of the time allotted to me for this talk to render a detailed, much less a comprehensive account of all such facts and incidents which afford proof of my assertion. I can only quote some of them, and I maybe permitted to do so at random: One of the acid tests of unrestrained and unrestnoted inter-racial relations are inter-racial marriages. That such marriages were never frowned upon by Muslims in borne out by the fact that many a Ruler of the Umayad and Abasside as well as of later dynasties, had Turkish, Greek or even Negro mothers. On the other hand, social rank or high office did not bestow upon the bearer special privileges before the law and certainly did not entitle him to ill-treat a brother Muslim with impunity. The following incident which is reported to have occurred during the reign of Omar, the second Caliph after the death of the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) is an example of absolute equality of all men in Islam. EQUALITY BEFORE LAW Jabbala, king of the Ghassanides, having embraced Islam, set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca. While performing the circumambulation of the Ka'aba, a humble pilgrim engaged in the same sacred duties, accidentally dropped a piece of his pilgrim's dress over the royal shoulders. Jabbala turned round furiously and struck him a blow. The poor man went to the caliph and prayed for justice. Omar sent for Jabbala and asked him why he has so ill-treated a brother Muslim. He answered that the man had insulted him, and had it not been for the sanctity of the place, he would have killed him on the spot. Omar replied that his words added to the gravity of his offense, and that, unless he obtained the pardon of the injured man he would have to submit to the penalty of the law. When Jabbala refused to do as he was bidden because- as he returned- he was a king and the other only a common man, Omar replied " king or no king, both of you are Muslims and both of you are equal in the eye of law." But perhaps one of the most instructive examples of the policy of Islam towards different races is furnished by Spain. Permit me to quote from Syed Amir Ali's fundamental work "The spirit of Islam": "Immediately by their arrival on the soll of Spain, the Muslims or Saracens publish an edict assuring to the subject races, without any difference, the most ample liberty. Suevl, Goth, Vandal, Roman and Jew, were all placed on an equal footing. Their woman were invited to intermarry with the conquerors. ...THE FIDELITY OF THE ARABS IN MAINTAINING THEIR PROMISES, THE EQUAL-HEADED JUSTICE WHICH THEY ADMINISTERED TO ALLRACES AND CLASSES, WITHOUT DISTINCTION OF ANY KIND, SECURED THEM THE CONFIDENCE OF THE PEOPLE... The Jews profited most by the change of government ", and when many centuries later Spain was re- conquered by ferdinand and Isabelle, innumerable Jews left the country for Muslims lands, preferring a life in their home-country under the new rulers of whose racial and religious tolerance they were not convinced. RELIGIOUS OF TOLERANCE And this is another aspect of the principle of the brotherhood of mankind as envisaged and enunciated by Islam: namely religious tolerance. The essence of the attitude of Islam towards adherents of other faiths is to be found in the charter which was granted to the Jews by the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) after his arrival in Madina, and in the massage which he sent to the Christians of Najran, a town in Southern Arabia, then largely inhabited by Christians, after Islam had fully established itself in the Arab Peninsula. "IN THE NAME OF THE MOST MERCIFUL AND COMPASSIONATE GOD," says this first charter of freedom of conscience, "GIVEN BY MOHAMMED, THE PROPHET(P.B.U.H.), TO THE BELIEVERS, WHETHER OF THE QURESH OR OF YATHRIB(AS MADINA WAS THEN CALLED) -AND TO ALL INDIVIDUALS, OF WHATEVER ORIGIN, WHO HAVE MADE COMMON CAUSE WITH THEM: ALL THESE SHALLCONSTITUDE ONE NATION... THE JEWS WHO ATTACH THEMSELVES TO OUR COMMONWEALTH SHALL BE PROTECTED FROM ALL INSULTS AND VEXATIONS:THEY SHALL HAVE AN EQUAL RIGHT. WITH OUR PEOPLE TO OUR ASSISTANCE AND GOOD OFFICES. THE JEWS OF THE VARIOUS BRANCHES-(and here follows the names of the various Jewish tribes of Medina and the surrounding territories)- AND ALL OTHER SDOMICILED IN YATHRIB, SHALL FORM WITH THE MUSLIMS ONE COMPOSITE NATION; THEY SHALL PRACTICE THEIR RELIGION AS FREELY AS THE MUSLIMS;THE CLIENTS- MENING THE PROTECTED, AND THE ALLIES OF THE JEWS SHALL ENJOY THE SAME SECURITY AND FREEDOM." This was a paraphrase of the charter granted by the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) to the Jews after he had arrived in Yathrib, a town which because of him became known as MEDINAT-UN-NABI -THE CITY OF THE PROPHET, or in short Madina, while the massage to the Christians of Najran , sent to them almost at the end of the Prophet's mission, runs as follows: MASSAGE TO CHRISTIANS "TO THE CHRISTIANS OF NAJRAN AND THE NEIGHBOURING TERRITORIES,THE SECURITY OF GOD AND THE PLEDGE OF HIS PROPHET ARE EXTENDED FOR THEIR LIVES, THEIR RELIGION AND THEIR PROPERTY- TO THE PRESENT AS WELL AS THE ABSENT AND OTHERS BESIDES; THERE SHALL BE NO INTERFERENCE WITH THE PRACTICE OF THEIR FAITH OR THEIR OBSERVANCES; NOR ANY CHANGE IN THEIR RIGHTS OR PRIVILEDGES; NO BISHOP SHALL BE REMOVED FROM HIS BISHORPIC NOR ANY MONK FROM HIS MONASTERY, NOR ANY PRIEST FROMHIS PRIESTHOOD, AND THEY SHALL CONTINUE TO ENJOY EVERYTHING GREAT AND SMALL AS HERETOFORE; NO IMAGE OR CROSS SHALL BE DESTROYED; THEYSHALL NOT OPPRESS OR BE OPPRESSED; THEY SHALL NOT PRACTICE THE RIGHTS OF BLOOD VENGEANCE AS IN THE DAYS OF IGNORANCE- (the era before the advent of Islam)-; NO TITLE SHALL BELEVIED FROM THEM NOR SHALL THEY BE REQUIRED TO FURNISH PROVISIONS FOR THE TROOPS." "This document," observes Sayed Amir Ali in his book quoted before " has furnished the guiding principle to all Muslim rulers in their mode of dealing with their non-Muslim subjects, and if they have departed from it in any instance the cause is to be found in the character of the particular king. If we separate the political necessity which has often spoken and acted in the name of religion, no faith is more tolerant than Islam to the followers of other creeds. "Reasons of State" may have led a sovereign here and there to display a certain degree of intolerance, or to insist upon a certain uniformity of faith; BUT THE SYSTEM ITSELF HAS EVER MAINTAINED THE MOST COMPLETE TOLERANCE. Christians and Jews, as a rule, have never been molested in the exercise of their religion, or force to change their faith. If they are required to pay a special tax, it is in lieu of military service, and it is but right that those who enjoy the protection of the State should also contribute in some shape to the public burdens. Towards the idolaters there was greater strictness in theory, but in practice the law was equally liberal. If at any time they were treated with harshness, the cause is to be found in the passions of the ruler of the population. The religious element was used only as pretext." If there have been instances of religious intolerance in the history of the Muslims nations, these instances- and that should be very clearly understood- did not happen because of Islam but in spite of Islam and they only betray back of knowledge of the teachings of Islam, and of understanding of the spirit and principles of that religion. You might like to interpose here that the idea of racial equality and of the brotherhood of mankind is not the exclusive property of Islam, nay that these ideas have been proclaimed by different individuals and ideologies in different places of our globe and at different times. You might like to quote to me- as I did to you- from various sacred and profane works of the most dissimilar authors, and you will certainly insist that in the west- in Europe and America- this idea has been accepted and adopted as a principle or policy, of organized society, since the 18th century at the latest when the Age of Enlightenment had dawned and the French Revolution had sounded the clarion call of "Liberate, Egalite, Fraternite!" EQUALITY IN ACTION I certainly can not and shall not claim that the idea of racial equality and of human brotherhood is the invention of Islam and has only been proclaimed by that religion and by nobody else. BUT I CLAIM AND INSIST THAT ONLY IN AND AMONG THROUGH ISLAM HAS THIS IDEA EVER BEEN REALIZED IN ACTION OVER CENTURIES AND AMONG THE MOST DIFFERENT AND DISSIMILAR NATIONS AND RACES. In spite of the lofty ideals of enlightenment and of the French Revolution the West did not and has still not solved the racial problem, nor has the West been able until today to establish racial equality everywhere in its hemisphere. It is barely thirty years ago racism raised to the position of State Philosophy- the most brutal and barbaric racism that can be imagined- the one I referred to at the very beginning of my talk, was crushed in my own country. Racism in the shape of "Apartheid" is still allowed to raise its ugly head in South Africa, and racism is certainly not eradicated in the United States in spite of the abolition of slavery that took place some time ago and in spite of legislation introduced after the Second World War, aiming at the leveling of differences between the various racial groups and at the doing away with racial discrimination. In the Socialist World, Marxism Leninism or Communism has introduced its own brand and type of racism - namely what I maybe permitted to call "IDEOLOGICAL RACISM" WHICH IS AS HATEFUL AND ABHORRENT AS BIOLOGICAL RACISM. So, wherever we look we find that neither the ideals of Age of Enlightenment and of the French Revolution, nor the UN charter of Human Rights, the latest exercise in bringing about racial equality and in abolishing racial discrimination have been able to achieve their goal, while Islam has most certainly done so. I maybe forgiven if at this place I narrate some of my own personal experiences as a Muslim: I mentioned before as in the course of the last 25 years or so I have visited almost every Muslim country and I have been posted for longer or shorter periods in about half a dozen of them. Wherever I went I was immediately accepted by the local Muslims as one of theirs, and my religious affiliation proved to have an incomparably stronger and deeper effect on them than my nationality or the color of my skin. As a matter of fact the latter were of absolutely no consequence at all in their attitude towards me. And when I married to a young Muslim lady from Pakistan, more than 22 years ago, it did not create the slightest embarrassment to the family of my wife nor to us, the young couple. The marriage was accepted with the same naturalness as any marriage of two Pakistanis, and no one of my Muslim relative or friends ever considered or treated our children as half-caste in the ugly meaning of that word, nor were my children ever made to feel any different from full-blooded Pakistani, or full-blooded German children. They, who grew up among Muslims never knew of racial differences between men until- yes, until in the wake of one of our numerous transfers from one post to another we perforce had to make a brief sojourn in South Africa. There they saw for the first time in their life those ugly signs "For Whites Only" And it was there that they were made to realize that in a country where racism reigns, Ahmed can not play football in the street with John, and Leila cannot just drop in at Linda's to admire her new doll. And what a shock they got when they saw that their father and their mother, in order to do such a simple transaction as to buy postage stamps, had to enter the post office through different doors. - But then they stood in front of a beautiful church, and their perturbed minds were set at rest when,- for it was Christmas time - they read the invitation written in bold letters above the door: "ALL ARE WELCOME ," MUCH SMALLER LETTERS, ONCE AGAIN THE UGLY SIGN "FOR WHITES ONLY!" So even here, in the House of God, and during Christmas, the Festival of Joy and of Love, there was no bridge to cross the deep, deep gap between fellow human-beings who have everything else in common- except the color of their skin. THE SUCCESS OF ISLAM Why, then, has Islam succeeded where other systems and ideologies seem to have failed? What is the secret of its success, and in what way can the religion of Islam contribute to the solution of the racial problem under which millions and millions of our fellow human-beings are still reeling? In my humble opinion Islam has succeeded where other systems and ideologies have failed because of two decisive factors: NAMELY THE UNIVERSALITY OF ITS TEACHINGS AND THE DIVINE SANCTION ON WHICH THE ISLAMIC CONCEPT OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF MANKIND IS BASED. A Muslim believes that Islam is not only the last of the world's great religions but also an all-inclusive religion which contains within itself all religions which went before it. It is one of its most striking characteristics that is requires its followers to believe that all great religions of the world that preceded it have been revealed by God, and it is a fundamental principle of Islam that a Muslim must also believe in all prophets who were raised up before the Prophet Muhammed(P.B.U.H.). Prophets according to the express teachings of the Holy Qur'an were sent by God to all nations: Says the Holy Qur'an: "AND THERE IS NOT A NATION BUT A WARNER HAS GONE AMONG THEM." Holy Qur'an 13:7 But whereas all previous Prophets were sent with SPECIFIC MISSIONSTO THEIR OWN PEOPLE ONLY, Prophet Mohammed(P.B.U.H.) was SENT TO ALL NATIONS OF THE EARTH, as the Holy Qur'an teaches us: "O MANKIND! I AM THE APOSTLE THAT HATH COME TO YOU IN TRUTH FROM GOD: Holy Quran 4:170 and elsewhere: WE SENT THEE NOT BUT AS A MERCY FOR ALL NATIONS." Holy Qur'an 21:107 "There is no question now," say Allama Yusuf Ali in his commentary to this chosen verse, of race or nation, of a "CHOSEN PEOPLE" or "THE SEED OF ABRAHAM' or 'the seed of David' or of Hindu Arya-Varta, of Jew or Gentile, Arab or Ajam, Turk or Tajik, European or Asiatic, White or colored; Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian, or African; or American, Australian or Polynesian." The Prophet Muhammad(P.B.U.H.) was sent to them all- and that distinguishes him from all other Prophets, and that also distinguishes Islam from all other religions. The massage that was revealed to the Prophet Muhammed(P.B.U.H.) from On High was a massage addressed to all nations on earth, and the principles set forth in that message applied universally to the whole mankind. He was the last of the Prophets, and Islam, based on the revelation which the Prophet(P.B.U.H.) received is the final and perfect expression of the Divine will. Says the Holy Qur'an: "THIS DAY HAVE I PERFECTED YOUR RELIGION FOR YOU, COMPLETED MY FAVOUR UPON YOU, AND HAVE CHOSEN FOR YOU ISLAM AS YOUR RELIGION" Holy Qur'an 5:4 It is the self-same God, the Supreme Being, the Ultimate Cause, the One and Only, our Lord and Creator Who has also spoken to us, through the mouth of the Prophet Muhammed(P.B.U.H.), the words which I have already quoted earlier and which I should like to call back into our memory: "AND MANKIND IS NAUGHT BUT A SINGLE NATION." Holy Qur'an 2:213 "VERILY, O MANKIND, WE CRWEATED YOU FROM A SINGLE (PAIR) OF A MALE AND A FEMALE AND MADE YOU INTO NATIONS AND TRIBES, THAT YE MAY KNOW EACH OTHER, (NOT THAT YE MAY DESPISE EACH OTHER). VERILY THE MOST HONOURED OF YOU IN THE SIGHT OF GOD IS HE WHO IS THE MOST RIGHTEOUS (AND GOD FEARING DUTIFUL) OF YOU." Holy Qur'an 49:13 In Islam and to every single one of its followers the equality of man and the brotherhood of mankind are not the figment of the human brain and mind. They are guiding principles decreed by God. Equality and Fraternity, as well as liberty, according to the teachings of Islam, are religious categories, and only where they are conceived as such can these lofty ideals become reality. There is no road to the unification of humanity, no road to a brotherhood of man which knows no boundaries of color, race, country, language and rank except through God, the Creator and "Rabb" of all that is in the heavens and on earth. Without absolute and unreserved faith in Him, and in the truth and universality of His revelation- without the will to serve Him, which is the purpose of our creation, and to follow His commandments and guidance this goal can never be achieved as history tells us. ABSOLUTE VALUES Only God, the Absolute, has established absolute values by which we can access our and our fellow- "VERILY, THE MOST HONOURED OF YOU IN THE SIGHT OF GOD, O MEN, IS HE WHO IS THE MOST RIGHTIOUS, THE MOST GOD-FEARING, OF YOU." Holy Qur'an 49:13 This is the yard stick by which in Islam man is measured, and not his race, caste, or rank. Peace and mutual trust among individuals and nations alike can only be brought about if we base our inter-human relations on the recognition of, and strict adherence to, ABSOLUTE VALUES. Materialism, humanity's ideal in modern times, lacks all prerequisites because its VALUE CONCEPTS HCANGE FROM TIME TO TIME AND FROM PLACE TO PLACE. Islam is the only force which provides man with the spiritual and ,oral foundation on which lasting peace and mutual trust and respect among the nations of the world can be built. Islam is, first and foremost, an international religion, and it is before the grand international ideal of Islam, the ideal of equality of all races and of the unity of the human kind, an ideal founded on the belief in the Oneness of God, that the curse of racism and narrow minded nationalism, which have been and still are responsible for many of the troubles of the ancient and the modern world, can be swept away. The Muslim community, past and present, has not only established true and lasting brotherhood among its members, a brotherhood that encompasses everyone who belongs to it, irrespective of racial or social differences, it has also shown us by its example the road to this goal. THE STARTING POINT IS FAITH, UNQUESTIONING FAITH IN GOD, THE "RABB" OF THE WORLD. From there it leads us to submission unto His will-the stage at which we willingly and cheerfully obey His commandments and actualize the principles laid down by Him for our actions and conduct- until we reach the stage of supererogatory service to God and men. The road leads us, to use Arabic terms, from IMAN, FAITH to ISLAM, SUBMISSION and ULTIMATLY to IHSAN. And this the road we have to tread if we want to bring about mutual respect and trust among men, the road to the abolition of all racial and social discriminations, the road to the unification of mankind, to the universal brotherhood to which the assembly of Muslims of all races and from every nook and corner of the world at Mecca during the day of Hajj of pilgrimage bears witness. But this assembly also shows us that our unity lies in God, and God only. May we be inspired by their faith and example; may we follow their road, A'ameen! (This is a paper read at the international Islamic Conference in London on April4th by brother Muhammad Amen Hobohm, who is a diplomat now in the West German embassy in Sri Lanka). more

Resolved Question: Why gays become Buddhist?

It's a rhetorical question because I have the answer. Buddhism is the most tolerant religion in the world. Unlike other religions such as Christianity and Islam that breed hate and violence, Buddhism is staunchly anti-war and accepting of everyone. Here's a famous Buddhist quote about peace, "Victory begets enmity; the defeated dwell in pain. Happily the peaceful live, discarding both victory and defeat." Buddhism also denies the existence of god and the soul (the Buddha is not our equivalent to god by the way), and covers both the natural and the spiritual unlike other religions. Unfortunately, Buddhism is not very well known in the West, so I invite all of you in the gay community seeking Truth to come learn a little about Buddhism.A little bit more about the teachings of Buddhism: Life, besides surviving, is about finding true happiness. Buddhism teaches why suffering arises( people look for happiness in all the wrong places, for example) and how to eliminate it. The ultimate goal of every Buddhist is to realize Nirvana, or Absolute Truth. Two of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path or Middle Way (the path to putting and end to suffering and realizing Nirvana). "The First Noble Truth is Dhukka, the nature of life, its suffering, its sorrows and joys, its imperfection and unsatisfactoriness, its impermanence and insubstantiality. The Second Noble Truth is the Origin of Dukkha, which is desire, thirst, accompanied by all other passions, defilements and impurities. The Third Noble Truth is the Cessation Dukkha, Nirvana, the Absolute Truth, Unbinding. The Fourth Noble Truth is the Path leading to the realization of Nirvana." For anyone who wants to learFor anyone who wants to learn more I suggest you get the book "What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula. Its a *REALLY* excellent book and gives a very thorough introduction to Buddhism.The Four Noble Truths are "TRUTH" because they are undebatable facts of life, this is suffering, this is its origin, you can put an end to it, this is how." We don't preach "This alone is true and everything else is false." We are tolerant of other religions, no matter how misguided we believe them to be.I broke away from Christianity as well to become Buddhist and my family was accepting of it either. Don't let them lead you astray, work out your own salvation.It's a Buddhist teaching that we don't try and *force* people to follow Buddhism, we bring the subject up, and if someone isn't interested we let it go. Christianity tells homosexuals that they're doomed to fire and brimstone. They can choose to accept that if they wish. I'm appealing to those who don't accept it. That is how someone's sexuality can play a role in their religion. more

Resolved Question: Why do Democrat Tactics Work?

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ron in Houston, thanks for calling. You're next on the EIB Network, sir. Hello. CALLER: Mega dittos, mighty one. The reason I called, this has been a frustration for about the last three months right now. How long is everybody going to forget how many times the Democrats have tried to give away everything this country's done? I'm to the point now, I'll put up the money to basically put most of the Democratic Party on Ritalin because they're becoming an out-of-control reality program. In fact, they may be the basis for the original reality programs out there. Can you explain to me how they keep getting away with the junk they're putting out there and they do it over and over and over again. I watched it during Reagan, and when the huge threat of the Soviet Union was out there. The Soviet Union was kind of a rusty bucket ready to fall over, but until the day it happened, Reagan was looked at as a fool. I'm not particularly a big fan of George Bush, but George Bush can get the job done. Let him be president. I'm sorry. I want to just scream right now. RUSH: Wait. If I understood everything you're saying, and your call is a little distorted, you're wondering how in the world people keep falling for the same Democrat trick? CALLER: It's the same thing over and over and over again. I'm an ex-Navy officer. I spent a lot of time out on US aircraft carriers. I spent a lot of time watching situations and I'm sitting there watching what's going on and I'm watching what the media is spitting back out in the States, and there's no correlation. RUSH: Well, I explained this. Look, there's so many factors in this answer. In the first place, public education system. Young skulls full of mush have grown up not learning about history. They've grown up being told that Bill Clinton was a great president, and that Abe Lincoln is worth one paragraph. They've, in many cases, grown up and been told that the white settlers of this country, the original settlers were racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes. They've been inculcated with conflict resolution that tells them that we're the problem and we have to cave and give up. We also have a bunch of people here in a nation of prosperity and vast affluence who don't have to pay attention to these uncomfortable thing if they don't want to. They don't have to, quote, "sacrifice," as such when the Democrats and the media in concert convince them there's no problem. It's something they'd like to hear, and so they believe it. BREAK TRANSCRIPT I just had a conversation with our official call screener today, Bo Snerdley, in his office. He says people on the phones are fit to be tied, particularly at Nancy Pelosi. They're throwing the word "traitor" around all over the place. It leads me to try to explain in a little bit more depth an answer to a question we got from a caller near the end of the last hour. He was beside himself, this former Navy man, and his perception is the American people buy everything the Democrats say, and he doesn't understand it. After they said Reagan was the biggest problem facing the free world, Reagan dispatched the Soviet Union. His point was that there are so many instances where you can look, historically, and find that liberal Democrats are wrong in what they claim, not just in foreign policy, but their whole social safety net program has been a disaster, and why people don't see this, and it's very frustrating thing to him. He wanted to know why I thought that was the case, and I had a minute and a half to give an answer. For a minute and a half, it was a brilliant answer. A better answer than anybody else could utter in a minute and a half. That's because I'm a highly trained broadcast specialist who understands the nature of brevity as the soul of wit. But let me expand on this, because it is a frustrating thing, and I feel it sometimes, too, even in the midst of my optimism. Remember, I have said that during all of this the Democrats are sowing their seeds for a massive landslide defeat. There is history for that, too. There is plenty of history that the American people don't buy what the Democrats sell. The reason so many of you think that most Americans are is because of the Drive-By Media. Now, the Drive-By Media no longer has its monopoly but it's still very powerful and it's a one-note samba. It is pro-Democrat. It is pro-liberal. It is anti-Bush. It is anti-Republican, and it is relentless, and I want to remind you of something else. Everybody knows that the three nightly newscasts on the major three networks are not as large, singularly, as they used to be in terms of audience. Combined, they still reach about 30 million people a night, whereas Cronkite used to do that all by himself. There is a new media, and there's an alternative, and it's growing. It's burgeoning, and it's creating problems for the liberal Democrats, although those problems are not often recounted in their house organs, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Drive-By television networks, the cable networks. So you're looking for validation that they are weakening, and you don't see it because what you watch on television, 90%, portrays the Democrats as omnipotent and powerful, all over the place, gaining strength, the American people love and support them, and that impression has to be considered somewhat valid, what with the election results of last November. At the same time, I don't think it's as pervasive as it used to be. But let's talk about the people that watch the nightly newscasts for one second. Many of you in this audience are multitaskers and you access a whole lot of different sources of media. You listen to this program, and you go on the Internet. You watch some cable news. You're all over the place. You read various different things. You would be surprised at the number of Americans whose only source of news is the nightly newscasts. Now, they're primarily elderly, upper middle-age and beyond. You can see that by looking at the commercials -- and I don't mean this to sound funny, even though it is. But you're watching a newscast and the commercials are burial plots here and Preparation H over there and heart medicine here and Lipitor over there. When basically 80% of the commercials are medicines to sustain your life for another five years, you know who the audience is, and that's habitual. They have not transformed into the new media. They are out there. These are people, too, that have landline telephones. These are people that have not moved into cell phones and the Internet, and guess who it is that pollsters call? Pollsters have a tough time getting hold of people with cell phones, and they're having a tougher and tougher time getting hold of people that use landline phones. But this crowd that we're talking about does; they still do. This generational shift has not been completed yet, and the people that produce these nightly newscasts are well aware of this, and they're always making efforts here to try to lower their demographics. But they've got a problem, because their newscasts happen at the end of the day when a lot of people already know what they're going to see when they turn on the nightly news. But those who watch it -- and there's 30 million of them every night, averaged, if you combine all three -- it's their first taste of the day, and they believe it. It's hook, line, and sinker. It's the Bible to them, and that's it. So there's a large chunk of it, and then you have, sadly, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of people who are just sponges, and they access the Drive-By Media, and they just believe it. It carries with it this note of authority. You know from your own experience growing up: If you read it in the paper, it was true. It's just like law enforcement never, ever falsely charges people. Law enforcement never screws up. If they say somebody did it, you think they did it. That's just human nature. I'm not even talking politics here. There's certain institutions in this country that have always enjoyed a tremendous amount of credibility and respect and very few people have ever questioned it, and the Drive-By Media is one of those. That's really the root of the question. How in the world can people continue to believe this stuff, not just the media, but how can they believe the Democrats when time and time again everything the Democrats say turns out to be not true? Here's a Navy man calling. "How can it be that people are not outraged over Pelosi? How can it be that they're not outraged over the fact that the Democrats are trying to secure the defeat and un-fund, de-fund the United States Military?" Why are there not massive protests in the street of anger and outrage over this? Well, there are answers to this, and they're traditional. Most of the people that would do those kind of protests don't ever protest. The protesters are the malcontent leftists who make it their job. They go out and they secure rent-a-mobs and they try to create chaos and tumult and this is what the media is doing, and the Democrats, they don't want you happy. They don't want you content, not with a Republican in the White House, and certainly not with a Republican they think is illegitimate, and certainly not when the Republicans run the House and Senate or ran the House and Senate. They don't want you happy. And then you've gotta factor in human nature. Sad to say, it's much easier to be a pessimist than it is to be an optimist. It's much easier to be doom and gloom. It's much easier to think the worst is going to happen than to believe the best will happen, and most people's experiences in their lives are that excrement happens, and good things are rare and they're unique, and that's why they're rare and unique, because they don't happen that much. So you factor all of these things together. You know, why is it is that Nancy Pelosi is not the equivalent of Jane Fonda, for crying out loud? She's trying to undermine her own country for her own self-interests and the interests of her party. I know it's frustrating to watch this stuff and think that most of your fellow citizens are just a bunch of blithering idiot sponges soaking it all up. I don't think it's as bad as you think, but it is a problem. There are a lot of people who are not thinkers. There are a lot of people who are not curious. There are a lot of people who want to be mired in misery or doom and gloom. It's a natural mind-set, and it's fed to them each and every day. But, as I say, if you go back and look at the number of things, historically, the Democrats don't win every election, and everything that you think is going to happen doesn't in regards to their prominence and victory. I'm telling you, I know some of you just think I'm whistling Dixie here, but far more people in this country than you might believe or you might be aware of, are watching what's happening and are just as outraged as you are, and when it comes time for them to express themselves, they will do so, and the Democrats are cruising for a major humiliation again. I don't know how soon. It may not be 2008, it may be 2010 or 2012. I'm talking about electorally, but it is going to happen. They're reconstructing the exact circumstances they created post-Vietnam going into Watergate and that they think led them to the Promised Land. Of course they lost in a 49-state landslide with George McGovern as their nominee. Guess who Democrats are talking to about advising them for their future? They're out there having conferences with George McGovern. They have a perverted sense of their own success. When it's defined and when it happens, or how it's defined and when it has happened, this is something that's just going to take time to play out. The tough thing for those of you who are affected by this, is you never, ever see this even when they do lose. Even when they're shellacked, you don't see humiliation or embarrassment in the Drive-By Media. The minute they lose, they ratchet it up again. "Okay, what are the Democrats going to have to do to win?" There is never credit for Reagan, never credit for Bush, never credit for victorious Republicans. They always slough it off to, "Well, again, the right-wing Christian hayseeds, you know? They came through. Democrats failed to," blah, blah, some other thing. Victory is never legitimate. It's because of some mistake Democrats made, and they start out trying to correct the mistakes and the media helps them out with this. It's a one-note samba for the first time in the Drive-By Media. But it's not as one sided and had as bad in terms of the perception of the majority of the American people as you believe, as you might think. Listen to the number of people who call here asking this question. You are not just lone voices appearing on this program. There are countless others, thousands, hundreds of thousands who are sitting out there and throwing things on the radio going, "Yeah! Yeah! Say it again! Say it louder!" They're just as irritated as you are. They don't have an outlet, and they're not interviewed by the Drive-By Media and so forth. News is a product like any other product that's marketed and packaged and put on the grocery shelves or any other store shelf, for sale. I don't care how lofty they think their position is because it's constitutionally protected. I don't care about any of that. These people put together an agenda. There are people (they're working right now) putting together these newscasts this afternoon and tonight, and don't believe that they're not putting these things together with their own agendas and their own desires and what they think will look good, what they think will get ratings in some cases. But for the first the most part, it's not about objectivity or reporting real news or anything of the sort. Their worldview is what it is, and things that don't fit in their worldview they don't even see. So it's buck-up time. (sigh) I hate to being an I told you so, but I warned everybody back in October, this was the kind of thing you're going to have to put up with if the Republicans lose the election. It's bad enough when they win, the Democrats are relentless -- and the Drive-Bys. But now they won, and, of course, they're puffing their chests out and they're beating their chests like King Kong, Tarzan, Mighty Joe Young, whatever you want, and they're just feeling their oats right now, and it's that pompous arrogance and condescension that's also offensive in the way they go about things. But you gotta have faith, folks. The Democrats have not totally triumphed, and they never will totally triumph. There are too many of you who care too much, who will stop it. One other factor -- and I've mentioned this before, too. Particularly when it comes to the war on terror, war in Iraq, the Drive-Bys have done one hell of a job of convincing enough Americans that there's no threat. In fact, not only is there no threat, there wouldn't be a threat at all if we weren't attacking Muslims, if Bush weren't in the White House. 9/11? Why, it was just a mere episode, and most people don't want to remember it. Most people don't want to be reminded of it. They don't want to think that they're going to be, their whole lives, constantly on a vigil protecting themselves and waiting for the next attack. That's not what being an American is. Being an American is to be insulated from the stuff that happens in the Middle East, insulated from the stuff that happens in the Third World, insulated from the stuff that happens in places like Afghanistan and what's going on in the Philippines now, and in some of Indonesia. That's not what being an American is. Being an American is about having as carefree a life as possible with the normal trials and tribulations, but it does not include getting up every day and worrying to death over whether another couple jets are going to go into another couple buildings and another 3,000 people be incinerated. If anybody comes along and convince the American people they don't have to worry about that, then they'll gladly take the bait -- and, voila! It is happening, and because of our affluence and prosperity, people are able to go live their lives however they choose and pay scant or no attention to this whatsoever, and then, some of these people, after deciding that they don't want to pay any attention to this and that they don't want to live their lives under constant fear, constant threat that this could happen again, they don't want to be vigilant about this, all it takes to add to that is everyday a pummeling of the president and the whole thing about the war on terror and how we're creating circumstances. Now the Iranians are doing what they're doing because of us. They were peace-loving people before we came along! The Iraqis had been better off with Saddam Hussein. So you couple all of that natural mind-set of what it is to be an American or what it has been to be an American, with a desire for that to continue, and then you portray the "threat" to being an American as living in the embodiment of George W. Bush. Well, you can see how some people would buy into that, because everybody wants to blame somebody other than themselves. You might say, "Well, why don't they blame the Democrats?" Because nowhere in the media are the Democrats being blamed, other than here. We're not insignificant. We're not small by any stretch. I'll tell you, Fox News is what it is, but it's a speck compared to the three networks, all the rest of the Drive-Bys and the magazines and the newspapers and so forth and so on. There are reasons for this. There are explanations for it. Solutions? Well, in my case I just rely on the ultimate judgment and decency of a majority of the American people, the vast amount of times, to prevail, and I still believe that. more

Resolved Question: Do you guy's find this interesting?

Jewish Racism Monday, March 19, 2007 Evidence of the Abuse of the United Nations for the Purpose of Waging Illegal Aggressive War Against Predominantly Moslem Nations Christopher Jon Bjerknes http://www.jewishracism.com The Charter of the United Nations prohibits aggressive war and prohibits threats of force against member nations. It states in the relevant part, "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."—Charter of the United Nations, Chapter 1, Article 2, Paragraph 4. The United Nations, and other international bodies, have been corrupted by Zionists, who call for aggressive war, and/or threaten force, against predominantly Moslem countries, in direct violation of the United Nations Charter. The former American Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, a friend of AIPAC, recently stated, "I believe that either regime change in Iran or, as a last resort, military action is the only thing that will stop the Iranians from getting nuclear weapons[.]"—John Bolton, Former American Envoy to the United Nations, as quoted by Janine Zacharia and Bill Varner, "Bolton Says U.S. Should Seek 'Regime Change' in Iran", Bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.m.58sr9RqM&refer=home, (1 March 2007). Jacques Chirac, who made a point of condemning anti-Semitism when announcing that he would not run for reelection, allegedly called upon Israel to aggressively attack Syria, and allegedly offered to obstruct the UN and bodies of the EU, so as to favor such an illegal aggression. Ezra HaLevi wrote, "Chirac asked that Israel act to topple the Assad regime, and promised in return to block any moves against Israel within the United Nations or European Union."—Ezra HaLevi, "France Urged Israel to Invade Syria During War", Arutz Sheva www.IsraelNationalNews.com, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/121878, (19 March 2007). Meyrav Wurmser stated, in December of 2006, "I know this will annoy many of your readers. . . But the anger is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians. Instead of Israel fighting against Hizbullah, many parts of the American administration believe that Israel should have fought against the real enemy, which is Syria and not Hizbullah."—Meyrav Wurmser, as quoted by Yitzhak Benhorin in, "Neocons: We expected Israel to attack Syria", http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3340750,00.html, (16 December 2006). The UN stood silent for a very long time as Israel committed an illegal war of aggression on Lebanon, in 2006. The UN does not attack Israel, India or Pakistan for their nuclear weapons programs, but does attack Iran for exercising its lawful rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Pakistan President Perez Musharraf, who recently participated in a campaign to unite Moslem nations, and who opposes an aggressive Zionist attack on Iran, now faces political upheaval. The United Nations has taken no serious action to enforce its many resolutions against Israeli crimes against humanity. Clearly, the UN has been thoroughly corrupted by warmongering Zionists, and has repeatedly violated its Charter, selectively enforced its powers, and openly abused its authority in a highly prejudicial, and openly genocidal manner. Millions of Moslems have died at the hands of Zionists with the approval of, or passive consent of, the UN. The UN is an instrument of Zionist aggression against humanity. It grew out of the Zionist League of Nations, and its demonstrable purpose was and is to steal the land of Palestine for World Jewry, and to prepare the way for the Jewish Messianic Kingdom of Judaic prophecy. Like International Communism, the United Nations grew out of an open plan by Jewish bankers, and their agents, to foment world wars which would leave the Gentiles clamoring for peace, so as to create an atmosphere where the Goyim could be duped into accepting World Government on the false premise that the elimination of national sovereignties (other than Israel) would result in eternal peace. The Zionists are now exploiting the UN to create a Third World War, so that they can complete their "Jewish Utopia" and enforce the Noahide Laws, destroy all Gentile government, religion and culture, expand Israel to the borders of "Greater Israel", and begin the process of exterminating the hated Goyim once and for all, so that the godly Jews can restore divine order to the radioactive Earth. In the News: Prevent a Military Attack on Iran more

Resolved Question: How many of you can't read this?

The Unthinkable Thought "Jesus said, 'It is to those who are worthy of my Mysteries that I tell my Mysteries.'" The Gospel of Thomas On the site where the Vatican now stands there once stood a Pagan temple. Here Pagan priests observed sacred ceremonies which early Christians found so disturbing that they tried to erase all evidence of them ever having been practised. What were these shocking Pagan rites? Gruesome sacrifices or obscene orgies perhaps. This is what we have been led to believe. But the truth is far stranger than this fiction. Where today the gathered faithful revere their Lord Jesus Christ, the ancients worshipped another godman who, like Jesus, had been miraculously born on 25 December before three shepherds. In this ancient sanctuary Pagan congregations once glorified a Pagan redeemer who, like lesus, was said to have ascended to heaven and to have promised to come again at the end of time to judge the quick and the dead. On the same spot where the Pope celebrates the Catholic mass, Pagan priests also celebrated a symbolic meal of bread and wine in memory of their saviour who, just like Tesus, had declared: "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation." When we began to uncover such extraordinary similarities between the story of Jesus and Pagan myth we were stunned. We had been brought up in a culture which portrays Paganism and Christianity as entirely antagonistic religious perspectives. How could such astonishing resemblances be explained? We were intrigued and began to search further. The more we looked, the more resemblances we found. To account for the wealth of evidence we were unearthing we felt compelled to completely review our understanding of the relationship between Paganism and Christianity, to question beliefs that we previously regarded as unquestionable and to imagine possibilities which at first seemed impossible. Some readers will find our conclusions shocking and others heretical, but for us they are merely the simplest and most obvious way of accounting for the evidence we have amassed. We have become convinced that the story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah, but a myth based on perennial Pagan stories. Christianity was not a new and unique revelation but actually a Jewish adaptation of the ancient Pagan Mystery religion. This is what we have called 'the Jesus Mysteries Thesis.' It may sound farfetched at first, just as it did initially to us. There is, after all, a great deal of unsubstantiated nonsense written about the 'real' Jesus, so any revolutionary theory should be approached with a healthy dose of scepticism. But although this book makes extraordinary claims, it is not just entertaining fantasy or sensational speculation. It is firmly based upon the available historical sources and the latest scholarly research. Whilst we hope to have made it accessible to the general reader, we have also included copious notes giving sources, references and greater detail for those who wish to analyse our arguments more thoroughly. Although still radical and challenging today, many of the ideas we explore are actually far from new. As long ago as the Renaissance, mystics and scholars saw the origins of christianity in the ancient Egyptian religion. Visionary scholars at the turn of the nineteenth century also made com-paxable conjectures to our own. In recent decades, modern academics have repeatedly pointed towards the possibilities we consider. Yet few have dared to boldly state the obvious conclusions which we have drawn. Why? Because to do so is taboo. For 2,000 years the West has been dominated by the idea that Christianity is sacred and unique, whilst Paganism is primitive and the work of the Devil. To even consider that they could be parts of the same tradition has been simply unthinkable. Therefore, although the true origins of Christianity have been obvious all along, few have been able to see them, because to do so requires a radical break with the conditioning of our culture. Our contribution has been to dare to think the unthinkable and to present our conclusions in a popular book rather than some dry academic tome. This is certainly not the last word on this complex subject, but we hope it may be a significant call for a complete reappraisal of the origins of Christianity. THE PAGAN MYSTERIES In Greek tragedies the chorus reveals the fate of the protagonists before the play begins. Sometimes it is easier to understand the journey if one is already aware of the destination and the terrain to be covered. Before diving deeper into detail, therefore, we would like to retrace our process of discovery and so provide a brief overview of the book. We had shared an obsession with world mysticism all our lives which recently had led us to explore spirituality in the ancient world. Popular understanding inevtitably lags a long way behind the cutting edge of scholarly research and, like most people, we initially had an inaccurate and out-dated view of Paganism. We had been taught to imagine a primitive superstition which indulged in idol worship and bloody sacrifice, and dry philosophers wearing togas stumbling blindly towards what we today call 'science.' We were familiar with various Greek myths which showed the partisan and capricious nature of the Olympian gods and goddesses. All in all, Paganism seemed primitive and fundamentally alien. After many years of study, however, our understanding has been transformed. Pagan spirituality was actually the sophisticated product of a highly developed culture. The state religions, such as the Greek worship of the Olympian gods, were little more than outer pomp and ceremony. The real spirituality of the people expressed itself through the vibrant and mystical 'Mystery religions.' At first underground and heretical movements, these Mysteries spread and flourished throughout the ancient Mediterranean, inspiring the greatest minds of the Pagan world, who regarded them as the very source of civilization. Each Mystery tradition had exoteric Outer Mysteries, consisting of myths which were common knowledge and rituals which were open to anyone who wanted to participate. There were also esoteric Inner Mysteries, which were a sacred secret only known to those who had undergone a powerful process of initiation. Initiates of the Inner Mysteries had the mystical meaning of the rituals and myths of the Outer Mysteries revealed to them, a process which brought about personal transformation and spiritual enlightenment. The philosophers of the ancient world were the spiritual masters of the Inner Mysteries. They were mystics and miracle-workers, more comparable to Hindu gurus than dusty academics. The great Greek philosopher Pythagoras, for example, is remembered today for his mathematical theorem, but few people picture him as he actually was a flamboyant sage who was believed to be able to miraculously still the winds and raise the dead. At the heart of the Mysteries were myths concerning a dying and resurrecting godman, who was known by many different names. In Egyp he was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis, in Italy Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. Fundamentally all these godmen are the same mythical being. As was the practice from as early as the third century BCE, in this book we will use the combined name "Osiris-Dionysus" to denote his universal and composite nature, and his particular names when referring to a specific Mystery tradition. From the fifth century BCE philosophers such as Xenophanes and Empedocles had ridiculed taking the stories of the gods and goddesses literally. They viewed them as allegories of human spiritual experience. The myths of Osiris-Dionysus should not be understood as just intriguing tales, therefore, but as a symbolic language which encodes the mystical teachings of the Inner Mysteries. Because of this, although the details were developed and adapted over time by different cultures, the myth of Osiris-Dionysus has remained essentially the same. The various myths of the different godmen of the Mysteries share what the great mythologist Joseph Campbell called 'the same anatomy', just as every human is physically unique yet it is possible to talk of the general anatomy of the human body, so with these different myths it is possible to see both their uniqueness and fundamental sameness. A helpful comparison may be the relationship between Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Bernstein's West Side Story. One is a sixteenth-century English tragedy about wealthy Italian families, whilst the other is a twentieth-century American musical about street gangs. On the face of it they look very different, yet they are essentially the same story. Similarly, the tales told about the godmen of the Pagan Mysteries are essentially the same, although they take different forms. The more we studied the various versions of the myth of Osiris-Dionysus, the more it became obvious that the story of Jesus had all the characteristics of this perennial tale. Event by event, we found we were able to construct Jesus' supposed biography from mythic motifs previousl3 relating to Osiris-Dionysus: - Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the saviour and 'Son of God'. - His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin. - He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on 25 December before three shepherds. - He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites ot baptism. - He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. - He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honour him. - He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. - After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory. - His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days. - His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolize his body and blood. These are just some of the motifs shared between the tales of Osiris-Dionysus and the 'biography' of Jesus. Why are these remarkable similarities not common knowledge? Because, as we were to discover later, the early Roman Church did everything in its power to prevent us perceiving them. It systematically destroyed Pagan sacred literature in a brutal programme of eradicating the Mysteries -- a task it performed so completely that today Paganism is regarded as a 'dead' religion. Although surprising to us now, to writers of the first few centuries CE these similarities between the new Christian religion and the ancient Mysteries were extremely obvious. Pagan critics of Christianity, such as the satirist Celsus, complained that this recent religion was nothing more than a pale reflection of their own ancient teachings. Early 'Church fathers,' such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus, were understandably disturbed and resorted to the desperate claim that these similarities were the result of 'diabolical mimicry.' Using one of the most absurd arguments ever advanced, they accused the Devil of 'plagiarism by anticipation,' of deviously copying the true story of Jesus before it had actually happened in an attempt to mislead the gullible! These Church fathers struck us as no less devious than the Devil they hoped to incriminate. Other Christian commentators have claimed that the myths of the Mysteries were like pre-echoes of the literal coming of Jesus, somewhat like premonitions or prophecies. This is a more generous version of the'diabolical mimicry' theory, but seemed no less ridiculous to us. There was nothing other than cultural prejudice to make us see the Jesus story as the literal culmination of its many mythical precursors. Viewed impartially, it appeared to be just another version of the same basic story. The obvious explanation is that as early Christianity became the dominant power in the previously Pagan world, popular motifs from Pagan mythology became grafted onto the biography of Jesus. This is a possibility that is even put forward by many Christian theologians. The virgin birth, for example, is often regarded as an extraneous later addition that should not be understood literally. Such motifs were 'borrowed' from Paganism in the same way that Pagan festivals were adopted as Christian saints' days. This theory is common amongst those who go looking for the 'real' Jesus hidden under the weight of accumulated mythological debris. Attractive as it appears at first, to us this explanarion seemed inadequate.We had collated such a comprehensive body of similarities that there remained hardly any significant elements in the biography of Jesus that we did not find prefigured by the Mysteries. On top of this, we discovered that even Jesus' teachings were not original, but had been anticipated by the Pagan sages! If there was a 'real' Jesus somewhere underneath all this, we would have to acknowledge that we could know absolutely nothing about him, for all that remained for us was later Pagan accretions! Such a position seemed absurd. Surely there was a more elegant solution to this conundrum. THE GNOSTICS Whilst we were puzzling over these discoveries, we began to question the received picture of the early Church and have a look at the evidence for ourselves. We discovered that far from being the united congregation of saints and martyrs that traditiona! history would have us believe, the early Christian community was actually made up of a whole spectrum of different groups. These can be broadly categorized into two different schools. On the one hand there were those we will call 'Literalists', because what defines them is that they take the Jesus story as a literal account of historical events. It was this school of Christianity that was adopted by the Roman Empire in the fourth century CE, becoming Roman Catholicism and all its subsequent offshoots. On the other hand, however, there were also radically diffejent Christians known as 'Gnostics.' These forgotten Christians were later persecuted out of existence by the Literalist Roman Church with such thoroughness that until recently we knew little about them except through the writings of their detractors. Only a handful of original Gnostic texts survived, none of which were published before the nineteenth century. This situation changed dramatically, however, with a remarkable discovery in 1945 when an Arab peasant stumbled upon a whole library of Gnostic gospels hidden in a cave near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. This gave scholars access to many texts which were in wide circulation amongst early Christians, but which were deliberately excluded from the canon of the New Testament -- gospels attributed to Thomas and Philip, texts recording the acts of Peter and the 12 disciples, apocalypses attributed to Paul and James, and so on. It seemed to us extraordinary that a whole library of early Christian documents could be discovered, containing what purport to be the teachings of Christ and his disciples, and yet so few modem followers of Jesus should even know of their existence. Why hasn't every Christian rushed out to read these newly discovered words of the Master? What keeps them confined to the small number of gospels selected for inclusion in the New Testament? It seems that even though 2,000 years have passed since the Gnostics were purged, during which time the Roman Church has split into Protestantism and thousands of other alternative groups, the Gnostics are still not regarded as a legitimate voice of Christianity. Those who do explore the Gnostic gospels discover a form of Christianity quite alien to the religion with which they are familiar. We found ourselves studying strange esoteric tracts with titles such as Hypostasis of the Archons and The Thought of Norea. It felt as if we were in an episode of Star Trek -- and in a way we were. The Gnostics truly were 'psychonauts' who boldly explored the final frontiers of inner space, searching for the origins and meaning of life. These people were mystics and creative free-thinkers. It was obvious to us why they were so hated by the bishops of the Literalist Church hierarchy. To Literalists, the Gnostics were dangerous heretics. In volumes of anti-Gnostic works -- an unintentional testimony to the power and influence of Gnosticism within early Christianity -- they painted them as Christians who had 'gone native.' They claimed they had become contaminated by the Paganism that surrounded them and had abandoned the purity of the true faith. The Gnostics, on the other hand, saw themselves as the authentic Christian tradition and the orthodox bishops as an 'imitation church.' They claimed to know the secret Inner Mysteries of Christianity which the Literslists did not possess. As we explored the beliefs and practices of the Gnostics we became convinced that the Literalists had at least been right about one thing: the Gnostics were little different from Pagans. Like the philosophers of the Pagan Mysteries, they believed in reincarnation, honoured the goddess Sophia, and were immersed in the mystical Greek philosophy of Plato. 'Gnostics' means 'Knowers', a name they acquired because, like the initiates of the Pagan Mysteries, they believed that their secret teachings had the power to impart 'Gnosis' -- direct experiential 'Knowledge of God.' Just as the goal of a Pagan initiate was to become a god, so for the Gnostics the goal of the Christian initiate was to become a Christ. What particularly struck us was that the Gnostics were not concerned with the historical Jesus. They viewed the Jesus story in the same way that the Pagan philosophers viewed the myths of Osiris-Dionysus -- as an allegory which encoded secret mystical teachings. This insight crystallized for us a remarkable possibility. Perhaps the explanation for the similarities between Pagan myths and the biography of Jesus had been staring us in the face the whole time, but we had been so caught up with traditional ways of thinking that we had been unable to see it. THE JESUS MYSTERIES THESIS The traditional version of history bequeathed to us by the authorities of the Roman Church is that Christianity developed from the teachings of a Jewish Messiah and that Gnosticism was a later deviation. What would happen, we wondered if the picture were reversed and Gnosticism viewed as the authentic Christianity, just as the Gnostics themselves claimed? Could it be that orthodox Christianity was a later deviation from Gnosticism and that Gnosticism was a synthesis of Judaism and the Pagan Mystery religion? This was the beginning of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. Boldly stated, the picture that emerged for us was as follows. We knew that most ancient Mediterranean cultures had adopted the ancient Mysteries, adapting them to their own national tastes and creating their own version of the myth of the dying and resurrecting godman. Perhaps some of the Jews had likewise adopted the Pagan Mysteries and created their own version of the Mysteries which we now know as Gnosticism. Perhaps initiates of the Jewish Mysteries had adapted the potent symbolism of the Osiris-Dionysus myths into a myth of their own, the hero of which was the Jewish dying and ~surreeting godman Jesus. If this was so, then the Jesus story was not a biography at all but a consciously crafted vehicle for encoded spiritual teachings created by Jewish Gnostics. As in the Pagan Mysteries, initiation into the Inner Mysteries would reveal the myth's allegorical meaning. Perhaps those uninitiated into the Inner Mysteries had mistakenly come to regard the Jesus myth as historical fact and in this way Literalist Christianity had been created. Perhaps the Inner Mysteries of Christianity, which the Gnostics taught but which the Literalists denied existed, revealed that the Jesus story was not a factual account of God's one and only visit to planet Earth, but a mystical teaching story designed to help each one of us become a Christ. The Jesus story does have all the hallmarks of a myth, so could it be that that is exactly what it is? After all, no one has read the newly discovered Gnostic gospels and taken their fantastic stories as literally true; they are readily seen as myths. It is only familiarity and cultural prejudice which prevent us from seeing tlae New Testament gospels in the same light. If those gospels had also been lost to us and only recently discovered, who would read these tales for the first time and believe they were historical accounts of a man born of a virgin, who had walked on water and returned from the dead? Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Mithras and the other Pagan Mystery saviours as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem? We had both been raised as Christians and were surprised to find that, despite years of open-minded spiritual exploration, it still felt somehow dangerous to even dare think such thoughts. Early indoctrination reaches very deep. We were in effect saying that Jesus was a Pagan god and that Christianity was a heretical product of Paganism! It seemed outrageous. Yet this theory explained the similarities between the stories of Osiris-Dionysus and Jesus Christ in a simple and elegant way. They are parts of one developing mythos. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis answered many puzzling questions, yet it also opened up new dilemmas. Isn't there indisputable historical evidence for the existence of Jesus the man? And how could Gnosticism be the original Christianity when St Paul, the earliest Christian we know about, is so vociferously anti-Gnostic? And is it really credible that such an insular and anti-Pagan people as the Jews could have adopted the Pagan Mysteries? And how could it have happened that a consciously created myth came to be believed as history? And if Gnosticism represents genuine Christianity, why was it Literalist Christianity that came to dominate the world as the most influential religion of all time? All of these difficult questions would have to be satisfactorily answered before we could wholeheartedly accept such a radical theory as the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. THE GREAT COVER UP Our new account of the origins of Christianity only seemed improbable because it contradicted the received view. As we pushed further with our research, the traditional picture began to completely unravel all around us. We found ourselves embroiled in a world of schism and power straggles, of forged documents and false identities, of letters that had been edited and added to, and of the wholesale destruction of historical evidence. We focused forensically on the few facts we could be confident of, as if we were detectives on the verge of cracking a sensational 'whodunnit', or perhaps more accurately as if we were uncovering an ancient and unacknowledged miscarriage of justice. For, time and again, when we critically examined what genuine evidence remained, we found that the history of Christianity bqueathed to us by the Roman Church was a gross distortion of the truth. Actually the evidence completely endorsed the Jesus Mysteries Thesis! It was becoming increasingly obvious that we had been deliberately deceived, that the Gnostics were indeed the original Christians, and that their anarchic mysticism had been hijacked by an authoritarian institution which had created from it a dogmatic religion - and then brutally enforced the greatest cover-up in history. One of the major players in this cover-up operation was a character called Eusebius, who, at the beginning of the fourth century, compiled from legends, fabrications and his own imagination the only early history of Christianity that still exists today. All subsequent histories have been forced to base themselves on Eusebins' dubious claims, because there has been little other information to draw on. All those with a different perspective on Christianity were branded as heretics and eradicated. In this way falsehoods compiled in the fourth century have come down to us as established facts. Eusebius was employed by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the state religion of the Empire and gave Literalist Christianity the power it needed to begin the final eradication of Paganism and Gnosticism. Constantine wanted 'one God, one religion' to consolidate his claim of 'one Empire, one Emperor.' He oversaw the creation of the Nicene creed -- the article of faith repeated in churches to this day -- and christians who refused to assent to this creed were banished from the Empire or otherwise silenced. This 'Christian' Emperor then returned home from Nicaea and had his wife suffocated and his son murdered. He deliberately remained unbaptized until his deathbed so that he could continue his atrocities and still receive forgiveness of sins and a guaranteed place in heaven by being baptized at the last moment. Although he had his 'spin doctor' Eusebius compose a suitably obsequious biography for him, he was actually a monster -- just like many Roman Emperors before him. Is it really at all surprising that a 'history' of the origins of Christianity created by an employee in the service of a Roman tyrant should turn out to be a pack of lies? Elaine PageIs, one of the foremost academic authorities on early Christianity, writes: "It is the winners who write history -- their way. No wonder, then, that the traditional accounts of the origins of Christianity first defined the terms (naming themselves "orthodox" and their opponents "heretics"); then they proceeded to demonstrate -- at least to their own satisfaction -- that their triumph was historically inevitable, or, in religious terms, "guided by the Holy Spirit." But the discoveries [of the Gnostic gospels] at Nag Hammadi reopen fundamental questions." History is indeed written by the victors. The creation of an appropriate history has always been part of the arsenal of political manipulation. The Roman Church created a history of the triumph of Literalist Christianity in much the same partisan way that, two millennia later, Hollywood created tales of 'cowboys and Indians' to relate 'how the West was won' not 'how the West was lost.' History is not simply related, it is created. Ideally, the motivation is to explain historical evidence and come to an accurate understanding of how the present has been created by the past. All too often, however, it is simply to glorify and justify the status quo. Such histories conceal as much as they reveal. To dare to question a received history is not easy. It is difficult to believe that something which you have been told is true from childhood could actually be a product of falsification and fantasy. It must have been hard for those Russians brought up on tales of kindly 'Uncle Joe' Stalin to accept that he was actually responsible for the deaths of millions. It must have strained credibility when those opposing his regime claimed that he had in fact murdered many of the heroes of the Russian revolution. It must have seemed ridiculous when they asserted that he had even had the images of his rivals removed from photographs and completely fabricated historical events. Yet all these things are true. It is easy to believe that something must be true because everyone else believes it. But the truth often only comes to light by daring to question the unquestionable, by doubting notions which are so commonly believed that they are taken for granted. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis is the product of such an openness of mind. When it first occurred to us, it seemed absurd and impossible. Now it seems obvious and ordinary. The Vatican was constructed upon the site of an ancient Pagan sanctuary because the new is always built upon the old. In the same way Christianity itself has as its foundations the Pagan spirituality that preceded it. What is more plausible than to posit the gradual evolution of spiritual ideas, with Christianity emerging from the ancient Pagan Mysteries in a seamless historical continuum? It is only because the conventional history has been so widely believed for so long that this idea could be seen as heretical and shocking. RECOVERING MYSTICAL CHRISTIANITY As the final pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, we came across a small picture tucked away in the appendices of an old academic book. It was a drawing of a third-century CE amulet. We have used it as the cover of this book. It shows a crucified figure which most people would immediately recognize as Jesus. Yet the Greek words name the figure 'Orpheus Bacchus,' one of the pseudonyms of Osiris-Dionysus. To the author of the book in which we found the picture, this amulet was an anomaly. Who could it have possibly belonged to? Was it a crucified Pagan deity or some sort of Gnostic synthesis of Paganism and Christianity? Either way it was deeply puzzling. For us, however, this amulet was perfectly understandable. It was an unexpected confirmation of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. The image could be that of either Jesus or Osiris-Dionysus. To the initiated, these were both names for essentially the same figure. The 'chance' discovery of this amulet made us feel as though the universe itself was encouraging us to make our findings public. In different ways the Jesus Mysteries Thesis has been proposed by mystics and scholars for centuries, but has always ended up being ignored. It now felt like an idea whose moment had come. We did, however, have misgivings about writing this book. We knew that it would inevitably upset certain Christians, something which we had no desire to do. Certainly it has been hard to be constantly surrounded by lies and injustices without experiencing a certain amount of outrage at the negative misrepresentation of the Gnostics, and to have become aware of the great riches of Pagan culture without feeling grief that they were so wantonly destroyed. Yet we do not have some sort of anti-Christian agenda. Far from it. Those who have read our other works will know that our interest is not in further division, but in acknowledging the unity that lies at the heart of all spiritual traditions -- and this present book is no exception. Early Literalist Christians mistakenly believed that the Jesus story was different from other stories of Osiris-Dionysus because Jesus alone had been an historical rather than a mythical figure. This has left Christians feeling that their faith is in opposition to all others -- which it is not. We hope that by understanding its true origins in the ongoing evolution of a universal human spirituality, Christianity may be able to free itself from this self-imposed isolation. Whilst the Jesus Mysteries Thesis clearly rewrites history, we do not see it as undermining the Christian faith, but as suggesting that Christianity is in fact richer than we previously imagined. The Jesus story is a perennial myth with the power to impart the saving Gnosis which can transform each one of us into a Christ, not merely a history of events that happened to someone else 2,000 years ago. Belief in the Jesus story was originally the first step in Christian spirituality -- the Outer Mysteries. Its significance was to be explained by an enlightened teacher when the seeker was spiritually ripe. These Inner Mysteries imparted a mystical Knowledge of God beyond mere belief in dogmas. Although many inspired Christian mystics throughout history have intuitively seen through to this deeper symbolic level of understanding, as a culture we have inherited only the Outer Mysteries of Christianity. We have kept the form, but lost the inner meaning. Our hope is that this book can play some small part in reclaiming the true mystical Christian inheritance. The Pagan Mysteries "Blest is the happy man Who knows the Mysteries the gods ordain, And sanctifies his life, Joins soul with soul in mystic unity, And, by due ritual made pure Enters the ecstasy of mountain solitudes; Who observes the mystic rites Made lawful by the Great Mother; Who crowns his head with ivy, And shakes his wand in worship ot Dionysus." Euripides Paganism is a 'dead' religion -- or more accurately an 'exterminated' religion· It did not simply fade away into oblivion. It was actively suppressed and annihilated, its temples and shrines desecrated and demolished, and its great sacred books thrown onto bonfires. No living lineage has been left to explain its ancient beliefs. So, the Pagan worldview has to be reconstructed from the archaeological evidence and texts that have survived, like some giant metaphysical jigsaw puzzle. 'Pagan' was originally a derogatory term meaning 'country-dweller,' used by Christians to infer that the spirituality of the ancients was some primitive rural superstition. But this is not true. Paganism was the spirituality which inspired the unequalled magnificence of the Giza pyramids, the exquisite architecture of the Parthenon, the legendary sculptures of Phideas, the powerful plays of Euripides and Sophocles, and the sublime philosophy of Socrates and Plato. Pagan civilization built vast libraries to house hundreds of thousands of works of literary and scientific genius. Its natural philosophers speculated that human beings had evolved from animals. Its astronomers knew the Earth was a sphere which, along with the planets, revolves around the sun. They had even estimated its circumference to within one degree of accuracy? The ancient Pagan world sustained a population not matched again in Europe until the eighteenth century. In Greece, Pagan culture gave birth to the concepts of democracy, rational philosophy, public libraries, theatre and the Olympic Games, creating a blueprint for our modern world. What was the spirituality that inspired these momentous cultural achievements? Most people associate Paganism with either rustic witchcraft or the myths of the gods of Olympus as recorded by Hesiod and Homer. Pagan spirituality did indeed embrace both. The country people practised their traditional shamanic nature worship to maintain the fertility of the land and the city authorities propped up formal state religions, such as the worship of the Olympian gods, to maintain the power of the status quo. It was, however, a third, more mystical, expression of the Pagan spirit which inspired the great minds of the ancient world. The thinkers, artists and innovators of antiquity were initiates of various religions known as 'Mysteries.' These remarkable men and women held the Mysteries to be the heart and soul of their culture. The Greek historian Zosimos writes that without the Mysteries "life for the Greeks would be unlivable" for "the sacred Mysteries hold the whole human race together." The eminent Roman statesman Cicero enthuses: "These Mysteries have brought us from rustic savagery to a cultivated and refined civilisation. The rites of the Mysteries are called "initiations" and in truth we have learned trom them the first principles of life. We have gained the understanding not only to live happily but also to die with better hope." Unlike the traditional rituals of the official state religions, which were designed to aid social cohesion, the mysteries were an individualistic form of.spirituality which offered mystical visions and personal enlightenment. Initiates underwent a secret process of initiation which profoundly trans-r formed their state of consciousness. The poet Pindar reveals that an initiate into the Mysteries "knows the end of life and its God-given beginning." Lucius Apuleius, a poet-philosopher, writes of his experience of initiation as a spiritual rebirth which he celebrated as his birthday, an experience for which he felt a "debt of gratitude" that he "could never hope to repay." Plato, the most influential philosopher of all time, relates: "We beheld the beatific visions and were initiated into the Mystery which may be truly called blessed, celebrated by us in a state of innocence. We beheld calm, happy, simple, eternal visions, resplendent in pure light." The great Pagan philosophers were the enlightened masters of the Mysteries. Although they are often portrayed today as dry 'academic' intellectuals, they were actually enigmatic 'gurus.' Empedocles, like his master Pythagoras, was a charismatic miracle-worker. Socrates was an eccentric mystic prone to being suddenly overcome by states of rapture during which his friends would discover him staring off into space for hours. Heraclitus was asked by the citizens of Ephesus to become a lawmaker, but turned the offer down so that he could continue playing with the children in the temple. Anaxagoras shocked ordinary citizens by completely abandoning his farm to fully devote his life to "the higher philosophy." Diogenes owned nothing and lived in a jar at the entrance of a temple. The inspired playwright Euripides wrote his greatest tragedies during solitary retreats in an isolated cave. All of these idiosyncratic sages were steeped in the mysticism of the Mysteries, which they expressed in their philosophy. Olympiodorus, a follower of Plato, tells us that his master paraphrased the Mysteries everywhere. The works of Heraclitus were renowned even in ancient times for being obscure and impenetrable, yet Diogenes explains that they are crystal clear to an initiate of the Mysteries. Of studying Heraclitus he writes: "It is a hard road to follow, filled with darkness and gloom; but if an initiate leads you on the way, it becomes brighter than the radiance of the sun." At the heart of Pagan philosophy is an understanding that all things are One. The Mysteries aimed at awakening within the initiate a sublime experience of this Oneness. Sallustius declares: "Every initiation aims at uniting us with the World and with the Deity." Plotinus describes the initiate transcending his limited sense of himself as a separate ego and experiencing mystical union with God: "As if borne away, or possessed by a god, he attains to solitude in untroubled stillness, nowhere deflected in his being and unbusied with self, utterly at rest and become very rest. He does not converse with a statue or image but with Godhead itself. And this is no object of vision, but another mode of seeing, a detachment from self, a simplification and surrender of self, a yearning for contact, and a stillness and meditation directed towards transformation. Whoever sees himself in this way has attained likeness to God; let him abandon himself and find the end of his journeying ." No wonder the initiate Sopatros poertcally mused, "I came out of the Mystery Hall feeling like a stranger to myself." THE SACRED SPECTACLE AT ELEUSIS What were these ancient Mysteries that could inspire such reverent awe and heartfelt appreciation? The Mystery religion was practised for thousands of years, during which time it spread throughout the ancient worid, taking on many different forms. Some were frenzied and others meditative. Some involved bloody animal sacrifice, while others were presided over by strict vegetarians, At certain moments in history the Mysteries were openly practised by whole populations and were endorsed, or at least tolerated, by the state. At other times they were a small-scale and secretive affair, for fear of persecution by unsympathetic authorities. Central toall of these forms qf the Mysteries, however, was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman. The Greek Mysteries celebrated at Eleusis in honour of the Great Mother goddess and the godman Dionysus were the most famous of all the Mystery cults. The sanctuary of Eleusis was finally destroyed by bands of fanatical Christian monks in 396 CE, but up until this tragic act of vandalism the Mysteries had been celebrated there for over 11 centuries. At the height of their popularity people were coming from all over the then known world to be initiated: men and women, rich and poor, slaves and emperors -- even a Brahmin priest from India. Each year some 30,000 Athenian citizens embarked on a 30-kilometre barefoot pilgrimage to the sacred site of Eleusis on the coast to celebrate the autumn Mysteries of Dionysus. For days they would have been preparing for this important religious event by fasting, offering sacrifices and undergoing ritual purification. As those about to be initiated danced along the 'Sacred Way' to Eleusis, accompanied by the frenzied beat of cymbals and tambourines, they were accosted by masked men who abused and insulted them, while others beat them with sticks. At the head of the procession was carried the statue of Dionysus himself, leading them ever onward. After ritual naked bathing in the sea and other purification ceremonies the crowd reached the great doors of the Telesterion, a huge purpose-built initiation hall. Only the chosen few who were already initiated or about to be initiated into the secret Mysteries could enter here. What awesome ceremony was held behind these closed doors that touched the great philosophers, artists, statesmen and scientists of the ancient world so deeply? All initiates were sworn to secrecy and held the Mysteries so sacred that they kept this oath. From large numbers of hints and clues, however, we know that they witnessed a sublime theatrical spectacle. They were awed by sounds and dazzled by lights. They were bathed in the blaze of a huge fire and trembled to the nerve-shattering reverberations of a mighty gong. The Hierophant, the high priest of the Mysteries, was quite literally a 'showman' who orchestrated a terrifyingly transformative dramatic reenactment of sacred myth. He himself was dressed as the central character - the godman Dionysus. A modern scholar writes: "A Mystery Religion was thus a divine drama which portrayed before the wondering eyes of the privileged observers the story of the struggles, sufferings, and victory of a patron deity, the travail of nature in which life ultimately triumphs over death, and joy is born of pain. The whole ritual of the Mysteries aimed especially at quickening the emotional life. No means of exciting the emotions was neglected in the passion-play, either by way of inducing careful predispositions or of supplying external stimulus. Tense mental anticipations heightened by a period of abstinence, hushed silences, imposing processions and elaborate pageantry, music loud and violent or soft and enthralling, delirious dances, the drinking of spirituous liquors, physical macerations, alternations of dense darkness and dazzling light, the sight of gorgeous ceremonial vestments, the handling of holy emblems, auto-suggestion and the promptings of the Hierophant -- these and many secrets of emotional exaltation were in vogue." This dramatization of the myth of Dionysus is the origin of tragedy and theatre. But the initiates were not a passive audience. They were participants who shared in the passion of the godman whose death and rebirth symbolically represented the death and spiritual rebirth of each one of them. As a modern authority explains: "Dionysus was the god of the most blessed ecstasy and the most enraptured love. But he was also the persecuted god, the suffering and dying god, and all whom he loved, all who attended him, had to share his tragic fate." By witnessing the awesome tragedy of Dionysus, the initiates at Eleusis shared in his suffering, death and resurrection, and so experienced a spiritual purification known as 'catharsis.' The Mysteries did not offer religious dogmas to simply be believed, but a myth to be entered into. Initiation was not about learning something, but about experiencing an altered state of awareness. Plutarch, a Pagan high priest, confesses that those who had been initiated could produce no proof of the beliefs that they acquired. Aristotle maintains, "It is not necessary for the initiated to learn anything, but to receive impressions and to be put in a certain frame of mind." The philosopher Produs talks of the Mysteries as evoking a "sympathy of the soul with the ritual in a way that is unintelligible to us and divine, so that some of the initiates axe stricken with panic, being filled with divine awe; others assimilate themselves to the holy symbols, leave their own identity, become at home with the gods, affd experience divine possession." Why did the myth enacted by the Mysteries have such a profound effect? ENCODED SECRET TEACHINGS In antiquity the word mythos did not mean something 'untrue't as it does ( for us today. Superficially a myth was an entertaining story, but to the initiated it was a sacred code that contained profound spiritual teachings. Plato comments, "It looks as if those also who established rites of initiation for us were no fools, but that there is a hidden meaning in their teachings." He explains that it is "those who have given their lives to true philosophy" who will grasp the "hidden meaning" encoded in the Mystery myths, and so become completely identified with the godman in an experience of mystical enlightenment. The ancient philosophers were not so foolish as to believe that the Mystery myths were literally true, but wise enough to recognize that they were an easy introduction to the profound mystical philosophy at the heart of the Mysteries. Sallustius writes: "To wish to teach all men the truth of the gods causes the foolish to despise, because they cannot learn, and the good to be slothful, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the former from despising philosophy and compels the latter to study it." It was the role of the priests and philosophers of the Mysteries to decode the hidden depths of spiritual meaning contained within the Mystery myths. Heliodorus, a priest of the Mysteries, explains: "Philosophers and theologians do not disclose the meanings embedded in these stories to laymen but simply give them preliminary instruction in the form of a myth. But those who have reached the higher grades of the Mysteries they initiate into clear knowledge in the privacy of the holy shrine, in the light cast by the blazing torch of truth." The Mysteries were divided into various levels of initiation, which led an initiate step by step through ever deepening levels of understanding. The number of levels of initiation varied in different Mystery traditions, but essentially the initiate was led from the Outer Mysteries, in which the myths were understood superficially as religious stories, to the Inner Mysteries, in which the myths were revealed as spiritual allegories. First the initiate was ritually purified. Then they were taught the secret teachings on a one-to-one basis. The highest stage was when the initiate understood the true meaning of the teachings and finally experienced what Theon of Smyrna calls "friendship and interior communion with God." THE INTERNATIONAL MYSTERIES The Mysteries dominated the Pagan world. No other deity is represented on the monuments of ancient Greece and Italy as much as Dionysus, godman of the Eleusinian Mysteries. He is a deity with many names: Iacchos, Bassareus, Bromios, Euios, Sabazius, Zagreus, Yhyoneus, Lenaios, Eleuthereus, and so the list goes on. But these are just some of his Greek names! The godman is an omnipresent mythic figure throughout the ancient Mediterranean, known in different ways by many cultures. Five centuries before the birth of Christ, the Greek historian Herodotus, known as 'the father of history', discovered this when he travelled to Egypt. On the shores of a sacred lake in the Nile delta he witnessed an enormous festival, held every year, in which the Egyptians performed a dramatic spectacle before "tens of thousands of men and women," representing the death and resurrection of Osiris. Herodotus was an initiate into the Greek Mysteries and recognized that what he calls "the Passion of Osiris" was the very same drama that initiates saw enacted before them at Eleusis as the Passion of Dionysus. The Egyptian myth of Osiris is the primal myth of the Mystery godman and reaches back to prehistory. His story is so ancient that it can be found in pyramid texts written over 4,500 years ago! In travelling to Egypt Herodotus was following in the footsteps of another great Greek. Before 670 BCE Egypt had been a closed country, in the manner of Tibet, or Japan more recently, but in this year she opened her borders and one of the first Greeks who travelled there in search of ancient wisdom was Pythagoras. History remembers Pythagoras as the first 'scientist' of the Western world, but although it is true that he brought back many mathmatical theories to Greece from Egypt, to his contemporaries he would have seemed anything but 'scientific' in the modern sense. A wandering charismatic sage dressed in white robes and crowned with a gold coronet, Pythagoras was part scientist, part priest and part magician. He spent 22 years in the temples of Egypt, becoming an initiate of the ancient Egyptian Mysteries. On returning to Greece he began to preach the wisdom he had learned, performing miracles, raising the dead and giving oracles. Inspired by Pythagoras, his disciples created a Greek Mystery religion modelled on the Egyptian Mysteries. They took the indigenous wine god Dionysus, who was a minor deity all but ignored by Hesiod and Homer, and transformed him into a Greek version of the mighty Egyptian Osiris, godman of the Mysteries. This initiated a religious and cultural revolution that was to transform Athens into the centre of the civilized world. The followers of Pythagoras were models of virtue and learning, regarded as puritans by their neighbours. Strict vegetarians, they preached non-violence towards all living things and shunned the temple cults that practised the sacrifice of animals. This made it impossible for them to participate in the traditional Olympian religion of Athens. Forced to live on the fringes of acceptability, they often organized themselves into communities that shared all possessions in common, leaving them free to devote themselves to their mystical studies of mathematics, music, astronomy and philosophy. Nevertheless, the Mystery religion spread quickly amongst the ordinary people and within a few generations the Egyptian Mysteries of Osiris, now the Mysteries of Dionysus, inspired the glory of Classical Athens. In the same way that Osiris was synthesized by the Greeks with their indigenous god Dionysus to create the Greek Mysteries, other Mediterranean cultures which adopted the Mystery religion also transformed one of their indigenous deities into the dying and resurrecting Mystery godman. So, the deity who was known as Osiris in Egypt and became Dionysus in Greece was called Attis in Asia Minor, Adonis in Syria, Bacchus in Italy, Mithras in Persia, and so on. His forms were many, but essentially he was the same perennial figure, whose collective identity was referred to as Osiris-Dionysus. Because the ancients recognized that all the various Mystery godmen were essentially the same mythic being, elements from different myths and rites were continually combined and recombined to create new forms of the Mysteries. In Alexandria, for example, a charismatic sage called Timotheus consciously fused Osiris and Dionysus to produce a new deity for the city callled Serapis. He also gave an elaborate account of the myth of the Mystery godman Attis. Lucius Apuleius received his initiation into theMysteries from a high priest named after the Persian godman Mithras. Coins were minted with Dionysus represented on one side and Mithras on the other? One modern authority tells us that "possessed by the knowledge of his own secret rites," the initiate of the Mysteries "found no difficulty in conforming to any religion in vogue." Like the Christian religion which superseded it, the Mysteries reached across national boundaries, offering a spirituality which was relevant to all human beings, regardless of their racial origins or social status. Even as early as the fifth century CE philosophers such as Diogenes and Socrates called themselves "cosmopolitans' -- "citizens of the cosmos" -- rather than of any particular country or culture, which is testimony to the international nature of the Mysteries. One modern scholar, commenting on the merging and combining of different mystery traditions, writes: "This went a long way towards weaning the minds of men from the idea of separate gods from the different nations, and towards teaching them that all national and local deities were but different forms of one great Power. But for the rise of Christianity and other religions, there can be little doubt but that the whole of the Graeco-Roman deities would continually have merged into Dionysus." OSIRIS-DIONYSUS AND JESUS CHRIST Osiris-Dionysus had such universal appeal because he was seen as an 'Everyman' figure who symbolically represented each initiate. Through understanding the allegorical myth of the Mystery godman, initiates could become aware that, like Osiris-Dionysus, they were also 'God made flesh.' They too were immortal Spirit trapped within a physical body. Through sharing in the death of Osiris-Dionysus initiates symbolically 'died' to their lower earthly nature. Through sharing in his resurrection they were spiritually reborn and experienced their eternal and divine essence. This was the profound mystical teaching that the myth of Osiris-Dionysus encoded for those initiated into the Inner Mysteries, the truth of which initiates directly experienced for themselves. Writing of the Egyptian Mystery godman Osiris, Sir Wallis Budge, who was keeper of antiquities in the British Museum, explains: "The Egyptians of every period in which they are known to us believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation at the hands of the power of evil, that after great struggle with these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the king of the underworld and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered death the righteous might also conquer death. "He represented to men the idea of a man who was both God and man, and he typified to the Egyptians in all ages the being who by reason of his sufferings and death as a man could sympathise with them in their own sickness and death. The idea of his human personality also satisfied their cravings and yearnings for communion with a being who, though he was partly divine, yet had much in common with themselves. Originally they looked upon Osiris as a man who lived on the earth as they lived, who ate and drank, who suffered a cruel death, who by help of certain gods triumphed over death, and attained unto everlasting life. But what Osiris did they could also do." These are the key motifs that characterize the myths of all the Mystery godmen. What Budge writes of Osiris could equally be said of Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, Mithras and the rest. It also describes the Jewish dying and resurrecting godman Jesus Christ. Like Osiris-Dionysus, he is also God Incarnate and God of the Resurrection. He also promises his followers spiritual rebirth through sharing in his divine Passion. CONCLUSION The Mysteries were clearly an extremely powerful force in the ancient world. Let's review what we've discovered about them: - The Pagan Mysteries inspired the greatest minds of the ancient world. - They were practised in different forms by nearly every culture in the Mediterranean. - They comprised Outer Mysteries which were open to all and secret Inner Mysteries known only to those who had undergone a powerful process of mystical initiation. - At the heart of the Mysteries was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman - Osiris-Dionysus. - The Inner Mysteries revealed the myths of Osiris-Dionysus to be spiritual allegories encoding spiritual teachings. The question which intrigued us was whether the Mysteries could have somehow influenced and shaped what we have inherited as the "biography" of Jesus? Unlike the various Pagan Mystery godmen, Jesus is traditionally viewed as an historical rather than a mythical figure, literally a man who was an incarnation of God, who suffered, died and resurrected to bring salvation to all humankind. But could these elements of the Jesus story actually be mythical stories inherited from the Pagan Mysteries? We began investigating the myths of Osiris-Dionysus more closely, searching for resemblances with the Jesus story. We were not prepared for the overwhelming number of similarities that we uncovered. Diabolical Mimicry "Having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, the wicked spirits put forward many to be called Sons of God, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things that were said with regard to Christ were merely marvellous tales, like the things that were said by the poets." Justin Martyr Although the remarkable similarities between the myths of Osiris-Dionysus agd the supposed "biography" of Jesus Christ are generally unknown today, in the first few centuries CE they were obvious to Pagans and Christians alike. The Pagan philosopher and satirist Celsus criticized Christians for tryingto pass off the Jesus story as a new revelation when it was actually an inferior imitation of Pagan myths. He asks: "Are these distinctive happenings unique to the Christians -- and if so, how are they unique? Or are ours to be accounted myths and theirs believed? What reasons do the Christians give for the distinctiveness of their beliefs? In truth there is nothing at all unusual about what the Christians believe, except that they believe it to the exclusion of more comprehensive truths about God." The early Christians were painfully aware of such criticisms. How could Pagan myths which predated Christianity by hundreds of years have so much in common with the biography of the one and only saviour Jesus? Desperate to come up with an explanation, the Church fathers resorted to one of the most absurd theories ever advanced. From the time of Justin Martyr in the second century onwards, they declared that the Devil had plagiarized Christianity by anticipation in order to lead people astray? Knowing that the true Son of God was to literally come and walk the Earth, the Devil had copied the story of his life in advance of it happening and created the myths of Osiris-Dionysus. The Church father Tertullian writes of the Devil's "diabolical mimicry" in creating the Mysteries of Mithras: "The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments. He baptises his believers and promises forgiveness of sins from the Sacred Fount, and thereby initiates them into the religion of Mithras. Thus he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection. Let us therefore acknowledge the craftiness of the devil, who copies certain things of those that be Divine." Studying the myths of the Mysteries it becomes obvious why these early Christians resorted to such a desperate explanation. Although no single Pagan myth completely parallels the story of Jesus, the mythic motifs which make up the story of the Jewish godman had already existed for centuries in the various stories told of Osiris-Dionysus and his greatest prophets. Let's make a journey through the 'biography' of Jesus and explore some of these extraordinary similarities. SON OF GOD Despite Christianity's claim that Jesus is the "only begotten Son of God." Osiris-Dionysus, in all his many forms, is also hailed as the Son of God. Jesus is the Son of God, yet equal with the Father. Dionysus is the "Son of Zeus, in his full nature God, most terrible, although most gentle to mankind." Jesus is "Very God of Very God." Dionysus is "Lord God of God born." Jesus is God in human form. St John writes of Jesus as "the Word made flesh." St. Paul explains that "God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh? Dionysus was also known as Bacchus, hence the title of Euripides' play The Bacchae, in which Dionysus is the central character. In this play, Dionysus explains that he has veiled his "Godhead in a mortal shape" in order to make it "manifest to mortal men.. He tells his disciples, "That is why I have changed my immortal form and taken the likeness of man." Like Jesus, in many of his myths the Pagan godman is born of a mortal virgin mother. In Asia Minor, Attis' mother is the virgin Cybele. In Syria, Adonis' virgin mother is called Myrrh. In Alexandria, Aion is born of the virgin Kore. In Greece, Dionysus is born of a mortal virgin Semele who wishes to see Zeus in all his glory and is mysteriously impregnated by one of his bolts of lightning. It was a popular tradition, recorded in the most quoted non-canonical text of early Christianity, that Jesus spent only seven months in Mary's womb. The Pagan historian Diodorus relates that Dionysus' mother Semele likewise was said to have also had only a seven-month pregnancy. Justin Martyr acknowledges the similarities between Jesus' virgin birth and Pagan mythology, writing: "In saying that the Word was born for us without sexual union as Jesus Christ our teacher, we introduce nothing beyond what is said of those called the Sons of Zeus." Nowhere was the myth of the 'Son of God' more developed than in Egypt, the ancient home of the Mysteries. Even the Christian Lactantius acknowledged that the legendary Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus had "arrived in some way at the truth, for on God the Father he had said everything, and on the Son." In Egypt, the Pharaoh had for thousands of years been regarded as an embodiment of the godman Osiris and praised in hymns as the Son of God. As an eminent Egyptologist writes, "Every Pharaoh had to be the Son of God and a human mother in order that he should be the Incarnate God, the Giver of Fertility to his country and people." In many legends the great prophets of Osiris-Dionysus are also portrayed as saviours and sons of God. Pythagoras was said to be the son of Apollo and a mortal woman called Parthenis, whose name derives from the word parthenos, meaning "virgin." Plato was also posthumously believed to be the son of Apollo. Philostratus relates in his biography of Apollonius that the great Pagan sage was regarded as the "Son of Zeus." Empedocles was thought to be a godman and saviour who had come down to this world to help confused souls, becoming "like a madman, calling out to people at the top of his voice and urging them to reject this realm and what is in it and go back to their own original, sublime, and noble word." Mythic motifs from the Mysteries even became associated with Roman Emperors who, for political reasons, cultivated legends about their divine nature which would link them to Osiris-Dionysus. Julius Caesar, who did not himself even believe in personal immortality, was hailed as "God made manifest, the common saviour of human life." His successor, Augustus, was likewise the "saviour of the universal human race." and even the tyrannical Nero is addressed on an altar piece as "God the deliverer for ever." In 40 BCE, drawing on Mystery myths, the Roman poet and initiate Virgil wrote a mystical 'prophesy' that a virgin would give birth to a divine child. In the fourth century CE Literalist Christians would claim that it foretold the coming of ]esus, but at the time this myth was interpreted as referring to Augustus, said to be the "Son of Apollo," preordained to rule the Earth and bring peace and prosperity. In his biography of Augustus, Suetonius offers a cluster of 'signs' that indicated the Emperor's divine nature. One modern authority writes: "They include some striking points of similarity to the gospel narratives of the birth of Christ. The senate is supposed, with ludicrous implausibility, to have decreed a ban on rearing male Roman babies in the year of Augustus' birth because of a portent indicating that a king of Rome had been born. On top of this slaughter of the innocents, we are offered an Annunciation: his mother Aria dreamed during a visit to the temple of Apollo that the god had visited his favour on her in the form of snake; Augustus was born nine months later." An inscription written around the time that lesus is supposed to have lived reads: "This day has given the earth an entirely new aspect. The world would have gone to destruction had there not streamed forth from him who is now born a common blessing. Rightly does he judge who recognises in this birthday the beginning ot life; now is that time ended when men pitied themselves for being born. From no other day does the individual or the community receive such benefit as from this natal day, full of blessing to all. The Providence which rules over all has filled this man with such gifts for the salvation of the world as designate him as saviour for us and for the coming generations; of wars he will make an end, and establish all things worthily. By his appearing are the hopes of our forefathers fulfilled; not only has he surpassed the good deeds of earlier times, but it is impossible that one greater than he can ever appear. The birthday of God has brought to the world glad tidings that are bound up in him. From his birthday a new era begins." But this is not a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus. It is not even a eulogy to the Mystery godman. It is in honour of Augustus. These mythic motifs were clearly so common by the first century BCB that they were used to fabricate legends politically helpful to a living Emperor. Celsus catalogues numbers of figures to whom legend similarly attributes divine parentage and a miraculous birth, and accuses Christianity of clearly using Pagan myths "in fabricating the story of Jesus' virgin birth." He is disparaging of Christians who interpret this myth as historical fact and regards the notion that God could literally father a child on a mortal woman as plainly absurd. Much material omitted here. CONCLUSION Either the Devil really has perfected the art of diabolical mimicry or there is a mystery to solve here. Let's review the evidence: - Jesus is the saviour of mankind, God made man, the Son of God equal with the Father; so is Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus is born of a mortal virgin who after her death ascends to heaven and is honoured as a divine being; so is Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus is born in a cave on 25 December or 6 January, as is Osiris-Dionysus. - The birth of Jesus is prophesied by a star; so is the birth of Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus is born in Bethlehem, which was shaded by a grove sacred to Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus is visited by the Magi, who are followers of Osiris-Dionysus. - The Magi bring Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, which a sixth-century BCE Pagan tells us is the way to worship God. - Jesus is baptized, a ritual practised for centuries in the Mysteries. - The holy man who baptizes Jesus with water has the same name as a Pagan god of water and is born on the summer solstice celebrated as a Pagan water festival. - Jesus offers his followers elemental baptisms of water, air and fire, as did the Pagan Mysteries. - Jesus is portrayed as a quiet man with long hair and a beard; so is Osiris-Bionysus. - Jesus turns water into wine at a marriage on the same day that Osiris-Dionysus was previously believed to have turned water into wine at a marriage. - Jesus heals the sick, exorcises demons, provides miraculous meals, helps fishermen make miraculous catches of fish and calms the water for his disciples; all of these marvels had previously been performed by Pagan sages. - Like the sages of the Mysteries, Jesus is a wandering wonder-worker who is not honoured in his home town. - Jesus is accused of licentious behaviour, as were the followers of Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus is not at first recognized as a divinity by his disciples, but then is transfigured before them in att his gIory; the same is true of Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus is surrounded by 12 disciples; so is Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while crowds wave branches, as does Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus is a just man unjustly accused of heresy and bringing a new religion, as is Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus attacks hypocrites, stands up to tyranny and willingly goes to his death predicting he will rise again in three days, as do Pagan sages. - Jesus is betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, a motif found in the story of Socrates. - Jesus is equated with bread and wine, as is Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus' disciples symbolically eat bread and drink wine to commune with him, as do the followers of Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus is hung on a tree or crucified, as is Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus dies as a sacrifice to redeem the sins of the world; so does Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus' corpse is wrapped in linen and anointed with myrrh, as is the corpse of Osiris-Dionysus. - After his death Jesus descends to hell, then on the third day resurrects before his disciples and ascends into heaven, where he is enthroned by God and waits to reappear at the end of time as a divine judge, as does Osiris-Dionysus. - Jesus was said to have died and resurrected on exactly the same dates that the death and resurrection of Osiris-Dionysus were celebrated. - Jesus' empty tomb is visited by three women followers; Osiris-Dionysus also has three women followers who visit an empty cave. - Through sharing in his passion Jesus offers his disciples the chance to be born again, as does Osiris-Dionysus. Discounting the 'diabolical mimicry' argument, as all sane people must, how are we to explain these extraordinary similarities between Pagan myth and the story of Jesus? more

Resolved Question: Christians, Shiites and Sunni have joined hands in lebanon why don't you?

The Western media, which often downplays the size of public rallies and anti-war demonstrations, confirms that "hundreds of thousands" of people from all sectors of Lebanese society gathered in Beirut in anti-government demonstrations, demanding the resignation of the US-Israeli supported government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. The Beirut government is taking orders directly from the US embassy. The Siniora government has allowed the deployment of NATO forces on Lebanese territory under the pretext of a UN sponsored peace-keeping operation. NATO warships under German command are stationed off the country's Eastern Mediterranean coastline. NATO has a military cooperation agreement with Israel. The banners read "Down with Feltman's government," in reference to US ambassador Jeffrey Feltman: "We want a national unity government," "We want a clean government" (quoted in The Hindu, 1 December 2006) Police source estimated the crowd at 800,000 people, almost half the population of the Beirut metropolitan area. Organizers said it was much larger. (Associated Press). The significance of the rally has been casually dismissed. According to the BBC, it was organized by Hezbollah and its so-called "pro-Syrian allies". The rally had little to do with Syria. It demanded the resignation of an illegal government, which supports the interests of US and Israel. Among the allegedly "pro-Syrian" protagonists of these mass demonstrations was Michel Aoun, a staunch opponent of Damascus who led the insurrection against Syrian military presence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. All sectors of Lebanese society are demanding the resignation of the government. A majority of the Christian Maronite community is firmly behind the protest movement: "I call on the prime minister and his ministers to resign" said Michel Aoun: "I wish that the prime minister and his ministers were among us today, not hiding behind barbed wire and army armored carriers. He who has his people behind him does not need barbed wire," Emile Lahoud, the country's president, has also confirmed in that the Siniora government has violated the country's constitution: "This government is no longer legal because it is not representative of all the country's religions,'' he said, following the resignation of five cabinet ministers from Hezbollah, Amal as well as one Christian loyal to President Emile Lahoud. "Hezbollah's deputy general security, Sheik Naim Kassim, made it clear the fight is against 'American tutelage' and said the protest action will continue until the government falls. 'We will not let you sell Lebanon, we will protect the constitution and people of Lebanon,' Kassim said on television Friday, addressing Saniora." (Daily Star, 1 December 2006) Meanwhile, President George W. Bush warned that "Iran and Syria were trying to destabilize Lebanon". US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton described the anti-government demonstrations as "part of the Iran-Syria inspired coup d'etat." Christians, Shiites and Sunni have joined hands. The Lebanese people are demanding the resignation of a government which is acting on behalf of the US and the Israeli invaders of their country. They are demanding the formation of a national unity government which will defend the Lebanese homeland against US-Israeli aggression. more

Resolved Question: Muslims SAY they are for peace ?

Watch this video - can anyone prove this is not the 'Muslim' way ? http://www.break.com/index/startswiththe... The Bible fortells the existence of the False Prophet- significant, since Islam is growing into the BIGGEST religion on the planet. Isn't killing non-Muslims the real way of the Koran ? If not, can you prove that, possibly with religious quotes from your Koran ? Qur’an:9:5“Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.” Qur’an:9:112“The Believers fight in Allah’s Cause, they slay and are slain, kill and are killed.” ( - This is aimed at Muslims, mainly, atheists, etc. and their anti-everything opinion- don't bother, no one cares. ) Apparently people can't handle criticism, even when it's brought forward in a honest, factual way such as this. Is the video false, are all of the quotes false ? WAKE UP.Should it ALSO bother the entire world that Islam is the 2nd biggest religion in the world - and growing ! See this link : http://www.adherents.com/religions_by_ad... OR that Muslim population is increasing at an exponential rate around the world ? See this link : http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back902... Ok, What do you think ? After reading/ watching ALL of that, give me your informed answer. Thanks.there were some bad links - here are good ones, in order- http://www.break.com/index/startswiththekids.html http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back902.htmlThanks no_nickname: I'm getting lectured by an 8th GRADER - LOL ! I hope someone else on here has more brains than that ?mlaheji م ﻟﺤﺠﻲ - you're right- allah is merciful- essentially, kill anyone NOT Muslim, unless they become Muslim, then set them free ! What a wonderful religion based on terrorism. Thanks for answering my question, but FAILING TO DISPROVE ANYTHING. You only proved all of the threatening issues correct. WOW. more

Resolved Question: How many people believe that the anti-christ is among us today?

Do you believe he is walking the earth at this time? Do you think he is one of our world leaders of today and just hasn't been exposed yet? Do you think it's possible that he could even be our own president. Think about it. It says "his message will be peace, but he will wage war with the nations of the earth" that is not an exact quote! I can't remember the exact scripture, but it is something to that extent. Think about what are presidents message is, then think about what he's doing. Security and peace. But what is he doing? I think we are being led down a dark path and not too many people want to notice it. Especially christians because most of them are republican. I believe people in religion can be blinded by politics. more

Resolved Question: Bush a true orator?

"We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job. That's what I'm telling you." —George W. Bush, Gulfport, Miss., Sept. 20, 2005 "If it were to rain a lot, there is concern from the Army Corps of Engineers that the levees might break. And so, therefore, we're cautious about encouraging people to return at this moment of history." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2005 "Listen, I want to thank leaders of the — in the faith — faith-based and community-based community for being here." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 6, 2005 "So please give cash money to organizations that are directly involved in helping save lives — save the life who had been affected by Hurricane Katrina." —George W. Bush, Washington D.C., Sept. 6, 2005 "I can't wait to join you in the joy of welcoming neighbors back into neighborhoods, and small businesses up and running, and cutting those ribbons that somebody is creating new jobs." —George W. Bush, Poplarville, Miss., Sept. 5, 2005 "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." —George W. Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, who resigned 10 days later amid criticism over his job performance, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005 (Listen to audio; read more stupid quotes about Hurricane Katrina) "We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter) --George W. Bush, touring hurricane damage, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005 "My thoughts are, we're going to get somebody who knows what they're talking about when it comes to rebuilding cities." —George W. Bush, on rebuilding New Orleans, Biloxi, Miss., Sept. 2, 2005 "Americans should be prudent in their use of energy during the course of the next few weeks. Don't buy gas if you don't need it." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 1, 2005 "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." —George W. Bush, turning to his aides while surveying Hurricane Katrina flood damage from Air Force One , Aug. 31, 2005 "The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who's spending time investigating it." —George W. Bush, on the probe into how CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity was leaked, Washington D.C., July 18, 2005 "I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend." —George W. Bush, on visiting Denmark, Washington D.C., June 29, 2005 "I was going to say he's a piece of work, but that might not translate too well. Is that all right, if I call you a 'piece of work'?" —George W. Bush to Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, Washington, D.C., June 20, 2005 "The relations with, uhh — Europe are important relations, and they've, uhh — because, we do share values. And, they're universal values, they're not American values or, you know — European values, they're universal values. And those values — uhh — being universal, ought to be applied everywhere." —George W. Bush, at a press conference with European Union dignitaries, Washington, D.C., June 20, 2005 "You see, not only did the attacks help accelerate a recession, the attacks reminded us that we are at war." —George W. Bush, on the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington, D.C., June 8, 2005 "And the second way to defeat the terrorists is to spread freedom. You see, the best way to defeat a society that is — doesn't have hope, a society where people become so angry they're willing to become suiciders, is to spread freedom, is to spread democracy." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 8, 2005 "It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth." —George W. Bush, on an Amnesty International report on prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Washington, D.C., May 31, 2005 (Listen to audio) "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." —George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 (Listen to audio) "We discussed the way forward in Iraq, discussed the importance of a democracy in the greater Middle East in order to leave behind a peaceful tomorrow." —George W. Bush, Tbilisi, Georgia, May 10, 2005 "I think younger workers — first of all, younger workers have been promised benefits the government — promises that have been promised, benefits that we can't keep. That's just the way it is." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 4, 2005 "It means your own money would grow better than that which the government can make it grow. And that's important." —George W. Bush, on what private accounts could do for Social Security funds, Falls Church, Va., April 29, 2005 "I can only speak to myself." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005 "It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005 "We expect the states to show us whether or not we're achieving simple objectives — like literacy, literacy in math, the ability to read and write." —George W. Bush, on federal education requirements, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005 "He understands the need for a timely write of the constitution." —George W. Bush, on Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005 "Well, we've made the decision to defeat the terrorists abroad so we don't have to face them here at home. And when you engage the terrorists abroad, it causes activity and action." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005 "But Iraq has — have got people there that are willing to kill, and they're hard-nosed killers. And we will work with the Iraqis to secure their future." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005 "I appreciate my love for Laura." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 20, 2005 "We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 20, 2005 "Part of the facts is understanding we have a problem, and part of the facts is what you're going to do about it." —George W. Bush, Kirtland, Ohio, April 15, 2005 "I'm going to spend a lot of time on Social Security. I enjoy it. I enjoy taking on the issue. I guess, it's the Mother in me." —George W. Bush, Washington D.C., April 14, 2005 "We look forward to analyzing and working with legislation that will make — it would hope — put a free press's mind at ease that you're not being denied information you shouldn't see." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 14, 2005 "I want to thank you for the importance that you've shown for education and literacy." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 13, 2005 "I understand there's a suspicion that we—we're too security-conscience." —George W. Bush, Washington D.C., April 14, 2005 "If they pre-decease or die early, there's an asset base to be able to pass on to a loved one." —George W. Bush, on Social Security money held in private accounts, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, March 30, 2005 [I'm] occasionally reading, I want you to know, in the second term." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 16, 2005 "In this job you've got a lot on your plate on a regular basis; you don't have much time to sit around and wander, lonely, in the Oval Office, kind of asking different portraits, 'How do you think my standing will be?'" —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 16, 2005 "In terms of timetables, as quickly as possible — whatever that means." —George W. Bush, on his time frame for shoring up Social Security, Washington D.C., March 16, 2005 "I like the idea of people running for office. There's a positive effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office and say, vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America. I don't know, I don't know if that will be their platform or not. But it's -- I don't think so. I think people who generally run for office say, vote for me, I'm looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table." —George W. Bush, on elections in the Middle East, Washington, D.C., March 16, 2005 "I repeat, personal accounts do not permanently fix the solution." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 16, 2005 "This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table." —George W. Bush, Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 22, 2005 "If you're a younger person, you ought to be asking members of Congress and the United States Senate and the president what you intend to do about it. If you see a train wreck coming, you ought to be saying, what are you going to do about it, Mr. Congressman, or Madam Congressman?" —George W. Bush, Detroit, Mich., Feb. 8, 2005 "Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red." —George W. Bush, explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005 "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." —George W. Bush, to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005 (Listen to audio) "After all, Europe is America's closest ally." —George W. Bush, Mainz, Germany, Feb. 23, 2005 "Because he's hiding." —George W. Bush, responding to a reporter who asked why Osama bin Laden had not been caught, aboard Air Force One, Jan. 14, 2005 "I'm also mindful that man should never try to put words in God's mouth. I mean, we should never ascribe natural disasters or anything else to God. We are in no way, shape, or form should a human being, play God." —George W. Bush, ABC's 20/20, Washington D.C., Jan. 14, 2005 "I want to appreciate those of you who wear our nation's uniform for your sacrifice." —George W. Bush, Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 14, 2005 "I speak plainly sometimes, but you've got to be mindful of the consequences of the words. So put that down. I don't know if you'd call that a confession, a regret, something." —George W. Bush, speaking to reporters, Washington, D.C., Jan. 14, 2005 "Who could have possibly envisioned an erection — an election in Iraq at this point in history?" —George W. Bush, at the white House, Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2005 "We need to apply 21st-century information technology to the health care field. We need to have our medical records put on the I.T." —George W. Bush, Collinsville, Ill., Jan. 5, 2005 "I believe we are called to do the hard work to make our communities and quality of life a better place." —George W. Bush, Collinsville, Ill., Jan. 5, 2005 Read More Bushisms • Bushisms from 2004 • Bushisms from 2003 • Bushisms from 2002 • Bushisms from 2001 • Bushisms from 2000 Got a Bushism? Email it to politicalhumor.guide@about.com Are You An Expert on Bushspeak? Take the Bushisms Quiz -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Email This Page to a Friend | Subscribe to Newsletter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Daniel Kurtzman, Your Guide to Political Humor. FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now! Sponsored Links Anti-Bush Merchandise Posters, Bumper Stickers & More Daily Blog & News Roundup www.bushmark.com George W. Bush Are You Happy Bush Won? Vote & Win a Free Razr Phone bush.peel.com Look Alikes Nationwide Music-TV-Movies-Political Stage Show-Meet & Greet www.besserentertainment.com George W Bush Humor Videos, bloopers, songs, jokes, & hilarious cartoons. 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