The Observation Deck

There is no need to fear. Our poor understanding of biology is congruent with our poor understanding of physics, chemistry, mathematics, foreign languages, geology, history, or geography.

Christian Fundamentalism can't have given us all that. The new Churches are much bigger in the Sunbelt. They are massively broad and flat buildings with massive parking lots. I imagine the anonymity of being in a large crowd is just as inviting as the reassurance one gains from being in a large crowd. And Church is a good place to meet people who aren't drinking and smoking.

Jim, Lynn & all...

If you haven't already you may want to look into the teachings of a man named Sayyid Qutb, who many regard as the father of "modern" Islamic philosophy. The NYT Sunday Magazine did a story on him about a yr ago.

Qutb did most of his work in the 30s through 50s. He was executed in Egypt,but his brother carried on his teachings, eventually mentoring Zawhiri, who passed it along to Osama bin Laden.

To get to the admittedly oversimplified nut of the matter,Qutb saw an Islam that was integrated into EVERYTHING, law, science, government, etc. Nothing legitimate exists outside of the Islamic umbrella.

BUT, I don't think Qutb was anti-science. While many western scientists are indeed non-believers, Qutb, from what I can gather, indeed did espouse a universe created by Allah but guided by natural, measurable forces.

In other words, the divinely-inspired evolution that many ordinary Christians would espouse if only the scientists and preachers would back off and let us.

And finally, if Islam is anti-science, why are there so many Pakistani doctors?

Ms. Roberts:

I would not be so quick to push the breakdown of WWII analogies in the present crisis. The ideology and history speak for themselves, rather cogently in the conflict of the present, I would say. The geopolitical and ethnocentric alliances persist in the very rhetoric of the contemporary battle.

Therefore I like to filter with the long view.

Let’s focus, then, on Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, appointed by the British in 1922, going through some Neocon sources.

Sir Martin Gilbert writes in the American Spectator, one of Mr. Call’s favorite magazines, if memory serves me, a review of The Myth of Hitler's Pope:How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews From the Nazis by David G. Dalin:

He features the Mufti:

“This senior Muslim prelate met Hitler several times during the war, called openly for the destruction of European Jewry, and intervened with Hitler to prevent rescue efforts.

Having been given an office in wartime Berlin, Hajj Amin mobilized political and military support for the Nazi regime. Traveling to German-occupied Yugoslavia, he helped raise a Muslim Waffen SS company, which turned its savage attentions against both Jews and Serbian Christians. In one of his many broadcasts from Germany to the Middle East, Hajj Amin said of the Jews: "They cannot mix with other nations but live, as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals...." Hitler found the Mufti a useful tool.â€Â￾

For more:
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10237

Here’s Dalin on “Hitler’s Muftiâ€Â￾ in First Things:

“After the defeat of the Axis powers, Hajj Amin al-Husseini escaped indictment as a war criminal at Nuremberg by fleeing to Egypt, where he received political asylum and where, shortly after his arrival, he met the young Yasser Arafat, a teenager then living in Cairo. (Arafat and al-Husseini were, in fact, distantly related: Arafat’s mother was the daughter of al-Husseini’s first cousin.) Arafat soon became a devoted protégé of the grand Mufti, who brought a former Nazi commando to Egypt to teach Arafat and others how to fight. Arafat first shed Jewish blood during terrorist raids against Israel in 1947.

The Mufti’s mission of waging ongoing war against the Jews was continued by Arafat during the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1969, for example, the PLO recruited two former Nazi instructors, Erich Altern, a leader of the Gestapo’s Jewish affairs section, and Willy Berner, an S.S. officer in the Matthausen extermination camp. Another former Nazi, Johann Schuller, was found supplying arms to the Fatah. The Belgian Jean Tireault, secretary of the neo-Nazi La Nation Européenne, also went on the Fatah payroll. Still another Belgian, the neo-Nazi Karl van der Put, recruited the PLO. So, too, the German neo-Nazi Otto Albrecht was arrested in West Germany with PLO identity papers, after the PLO had given him $1.2 million to buy weapons.

Arafat always revered al-Husseini, who died in 1974, as his beloved hero and mentor. In a major address in April 1985, Arafat said he took “immense prideâ€Â￾ in being the Mufti’s student and emphasized that the PLO “is continuing the pathâ€Â￾ he set. Close to thirty years after al-Husseini’s death, Arafat referred in an August 2002 interview to “our hero al-Husseiniâ€Â￾ as a “symbol of withstanding world pressure, having remained an Arab leader in spite of demands to have him replaced because of his Nazi ties.â€Â￾

For more:

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0 ... dalin.html

When one considers what is taking place in Latin America, in Venezuela, we are seeing the persistent lineaments of a European conflict between the English (free market?) and Germanic (socialized?) powers.

There is a considerable discourse (some mythic but isn't the whole conflation of ethocentric and historicist fictions the root of the crazed Jaweh/Allah/Jesus made me/wants me to do it monotheistic behavior that pushes for the end times) concerning the movement of Nazis to Latin America after WWII.

Miguel Serrano (born September 10, 1917) is a retired Chilean diplomat, conversationist with Herman Hesse and Carl Jung, and author of books on esoteric Hitlerism. He is quite wild.

For intro:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Serrano

It's a thick millennial context that cloaks the raw geopolitics, but frightening nonetheless.

Kenneth Warren

Try as I may, I can't make the Germans-Hamas/Hizbulah analogy work.
And it looks worse if we DO make it work according to Mr.Call's premise.

If the Germans considered themselves oppressed after WW1,it was because of the conditions of the Armistice. If you want to make the analogy work, you then have to concede that the very creation of Israel was a mistake that was bound to have the same effects as Versailles, which is now considered to be a colossal mistake.

(No less a prominent pro-Israel columnist than Richard Cohen of the Washington Post recently said that putting the Jewish state where the world did after the Holocaust was probably a fatal error; better a homeland should have been carved out of Poland or Germany, which would have exacted a price from those actually responsible for the Holocaust)

So you're left with one reality: An aggrieved general population with a fanatical element within it. The grudge will not be settled through force, and the the west has too much of a stake, politically and morally, to the survival of Israel to broker a truly even-handed agreement.

It is the immovable object and the irresistable force. And without SKILLFUL diplomatic manuvering (can you imagine that coming from the current administration?) it's hard to imagine anything but continued low-level bloodshed, which may be preferable to cataclysm.

So who stands between the world and WW3? Bush? Cheney? Tony Blair?
Certainly Dennis Kucinich's role is hardly worth considering.

Ms. Roberts:

It's not a perfect analogy but the Axis and Allied powers, the Land (Germany, Russia, Iran) and Sea (England, U.S. Israel) powers are still very much in the order of Harold Mackinder's geopolitical model, making the problem so intractable.

Add also that as "democracy" spreads the people vote in Islamic rather than secular parties.

Hamas/Hizbulah get elected.

What you see in our Congressman's marginal effect as instigator for An Office of Peace, I see as imagining the cleanest break from the nightmare cycle of violence. A silly thing to imagine peace, perhaps. That's why I wanted to put up material on the Mufti to thicken Mr. Call's post and reveal the history the Neocon/Freeper/Coulter Haw Haw figure is invoking.

Whether it's Zionism or the conflation of Arabic culture with Islam there's always the cultural problem of ethnocentric irrational charter myths.

Masking the geopolitical resource grab, often with imperial England and intelligence agencies red-handed on the staging grounds pushing another iteration of mythic PSYOPS, the frames, fictions, histories are ever dripping in blood.

The more the modernizing thrust increases the rate of free trade and exchange, the more the marginalized left behind traditional populations feel compelled to up the exchange rate with their Gods.

Tragically, there is little doubt that herd thinning is on the way.

Kenneth Warren

Joan Roberts wrote:So who stands between the world and WW3? Bush? Cheney? Tony Blair?
Certainly Dennis Kucinich's role is hardly worth considering.

Joan

First, let me run my disclaimer. I like Congressman Kucinich, and his wife, is an added bonus to the region and district.

That said, certainly an offer of peace and open dialog beats what we have tried. This is nothing to gloat over, but let's be honest, everything Dennis said about this mess, he has said all along. As such, there is a certain amount of respect outside of this region and country for him being a person that is willing to talk.

I was at his call for a cease fire, and it was pretty moving. Every religion and region in the area was represented in the room. All working together, in a call for peace. Did it end the conflict, no. All I can think is if every Congress person, did similar meetings, we would have a better grasp on the situation, and a much healthier country, mentality.

FWIW


Will call for the names, I believe this woman was head of a Muslim Women's group in Cleveland.



Joan I have liked Dennis since he was mayor of Cleveland. But a couple years ago I saw a 3 hour special of people speaking with his Holiness the Dali Lama. People from all over the world, asking questions in conversation with him. Only two held their own, and one excelled. Both were Americans, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Congressman Kucinich.

It was nice seeing an American politician on a world stage not spunding or acting like and idiot.


.

Bill:

Efraim Halevy, Mossad director from 1998 to 2002, was interviewed by the Toronto Globe and Mail. He makes a distinction between al-Qaeda and Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. I believe this distinction has bearing on your assessment of who is a Haw Haw, and from the pragmatic perspective of a former Mossad director with whom negotiations might occur.

Colin Freeze writes:

“A pragmatist, Mr. Halevy met many Arab and Muslim leaders through his work, and said that he would not close the door to talks with Hamas, Hezbollah or even Iran. But he says the threat posed by al-Qaeda's ideology is by far the most sinister one that exists today.â€Â￾

For more:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... ernational

Kenneth Warren