Posted on 10/25/2002 12:14:19 AM PDT by jennyp
The Recent Nightclub Bombings in Bali Illustrate Just What the "War on Terror" Is Really About
On the night of Saturday, October 12--the second anniversary of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole, a year, month, and day after the destruction of the World Trade Center, and mere days after terrorist attacks in Yemen, Kuwait, and the Philippines--two car bombs detonated outside neighboring nightclubs on the island of Bali, triggering a third explosive planted inside, and killing nearly 200 people (the majority of whom were Australian tourists), injuring several others, and redirecting the focus of the war against terror to Indonesia.
Also on the night of Saturday, October 12, the following bands and DJs were playing and spinning at several of Seattle's rock and dance clubs from Re-bar to Rock Bottom: FCS North, Sing-Sing, DJ Greasy, Michiko, Super Furry Animals, Bill Frisell Quintet, the Vells, the Capillaries, the Swains, DJ Che, Redneck Girlfriend, Grunge, Violent Femmes, the Bangs, Better Than Ezra, the Briefs, Tami Hart, the Spitfires, Tullycraft, B-Mello, Cobra High, Randy Schlager, Bobby O, Venus Hum, MC Queen Lucky, Evan Blackstone, and the RC5, among many, many others.
This short list, taken semi-randomly from the pages of The Stranger's music calendar, is designed to illustrate a point that is both facile and essential to reckoning the effects of the Bali bombings. Many of you were at these shows, dancing, smoking, drinking, talking, flirting, kissing, groping, and presumably enjoying yourselves, much like the 180-plus tourists and revelers killed at the Sari Club and Paddy's Irish Pub in Bali. Though no group has come forward to claim responsibility for the bombings, they were almost certainly the work of Muslim radicals launching the latest volley in the war against apostasy.
Whether the attacks turn out to have been the work of al Qaeda or one of the like-purposed, loosely connected, multicellular organizations that function in the region--groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah (an umbrella network that seeks a single Islamic state comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore), the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (led by the nefarious Abu Bakar Bashir), Laskar Jihad (which waged holy war on Christians in the Spice Islands before mysteriously disbanding two weeks ago), or the Islam Defenders Front (which makes frequent "sweeps" of bars and nightclubs, attacking non-Muslims, and violently guarding against "prostitution and other bad things")--will ultimately prove to be of little consequence. What matters is that the forces of Islamic fascism have struck again, in a characteristically cowardly, murderous, and yes, blasphemous fashion that must register as an affront to every living human with even a passing interest in freedom.
The facile part: It could have happened here, at any club in Seattle. It's a ludicrous thought, of course--at least as ludicrous as the thought of shutting the Space Needle down on New Year's Eve because some crazy terrorist was arrested at the Canadian border--but that doesn't make it any less true. That doesn't mean we should be looking over our shoulders and under our chairs every time we go to a show. It simply means that it could happen anywhere, because anywhere is exactly where rabid Islamists can find evidence of blasphemy against their precious, imaginary god.
Which brings us to the essential part: The Bali bombings were not an attack against Bali; they were an attack against humankind. In all the jawflap about the whys and wherefores of the multiple conflicts currently dotting our collective radar screen--the war against terror, the war on Iraq, the coming holy war, et al.--it seems worth restating (at the risk of sounding pious) that the war against basic human liberty, waged not by us but on us, is at the heart of the matter. Discourse has justifiably, necessarily turned to complexities of strategy, diplomacy, and consequences. The moral truth, however, remains agonizingly basic. We are still dealing with a small but indefatigable contingent of radicalized, militant absolutists who believe that every living being is accountable to the stricture of Shari'a, under penalty of death. As Salman Rushdie wrote, in an oft-cited Washington Post editorial, the fundamentalist faction is against, "to offer a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex." If these were fictional villains, you'd call them hyperbolic, not believable. But they aren't fictional. Their code would be laughable if it weren't so aggressively despicable.
As headlines about Bali cross-fade into news of North Korean nukes, and there are further debates about the finer points of Iraqi de- and restabilization, it's crucial to remember that there is, in fact, a very real enemy, with a very real will, and the very real power of delusional self-righteousness. How to remember? Consider the scene of the attacks (as reported by various Australian and European news sources):
It's a typical hot, sweaty, drunken, lascivious Saturday night. People, primarily young Aussie tourists from Melbourne, Geelong, Perth, and Adelaide, are crammed into the clubs, mixing it up, spilling out into the street. Rock band noises mix with techno music and innumerable voices as latecomers clamor to squeeze inside. Just after 11:00 p.m., a car bomb explodes outside of Paddy's, followed a few seconds later by a second blast that smashes the façade of the Sari Club and leaves a hole in the street a meter deep and 10 meters across. The second bomb is strong enough to damage buildings miles away. All at once, everything's on fire. People are incinerated. Cars go up in flames. Televisions explode. Ceilings collapse, trapping those still inside. Screams. Blistered, charred flesh. Disembodied limbs. Mangled bodies. Victims covered in blood. Inferno.
Now transpose this horrible, fiery mass murder from the seedy, alien lushness of Bali to, say, Pioneer Square, where clubs and bars are lined up in the same teeming proximity as the Sari and Paddy's in the "raunchy" Jalan Legian district, the busiest strip of nightlife in Kuta Beach. Imagine a car blowing up outside the Central Saloon and another, across the street at the New Orleans. Again, it seems too simple an equation, but the fact remains that the victims were not targeted at random, or for merely political purposes. They were doing exactly what any of us might be doing on any night of the week: exercising a liberty so deeply offensive to religious believers as to constitute blasphemy. And the punishment for blasphemy is death.
There is an ongoing lie in the official governmental position on the war against terror, which bends over backwards to assure us that, in the words of our president, "we don't view this as a war of religion in any way, shape, or form." Clearly, in every sense, this is a war of religion, whether it's declared as such or not. And if it isn't, then it certainly should be. Not a war of one religion against another, but of reason against religion--against any belief system that takes its mandate from an invisible spiritual entity and endows its followers with the right to murder or subjugate anyone who fails to come to the same conclusion. This is the war our enemies are fighting. To pretend we're fighting any other--or worse, that this war is somehow not worth fighting, on all fronts--is to dishonor the innocent dead.
At least we agree on something. You think that making sense is too constraining.
I'll concede that there have been bigots and ignoramouses who have equated Jew with Pharisee with Christ-killer with root of Germany's problems with money-grubber with big-nosed crotchity money lender.
However, my assumption is that we here are at least mildly intelligent and educated people. B/c of that, we needn't appeal to some Christian folk definition of "Pharisee". Because we can read, we can at the very least, look it up in Webster's.
Compare with Hegel, who stipulated "thought thinking itself" as the foundation of his "System to end all systems." Which implies there is no "something" outside immediate personal consciousness worth thinking about; so just get rid of it all, the entire "exterior world," and take the fast lane to the Absolute Idea...which seems to be indistinguishable from the Self...which (somewhat ironically) has been rendered a total abstraction by means of this process.
Compared to Hegel, Descartes is an empiricist.
Hear, hear.
ok,
Matthew 27:22 Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.
Matthew 27:23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.
Matthew 27:24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
Matthew 27:25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
So, what now? Oh, it's not ALL the jews in judea--just the crowd in front of Pontias Pilate's mansion?
Maybe nobody killed jesus--maybe he just stumbled onto the cross by accident and impailed himself.
The slaughter of non-Christians and forced conversions in the name of Christ was as wrong as wrong could be. Any reading of the Sermon on the Mount would have shown that practice to be wrong (Matthew 5-7.)
IMHO, the problem was, is and always will be when people believe that the end justifies the means. It never does. Never.
If only the people of the times were able to read, and knew the language, and cared enough to check everything out. Sigh...
Again, thank you for the discussion! Hugs!!!
Agreeing with you is not the base definition of "making sense".
I'll concede that there have been bigots and ignoramouses who have equated Jew with Pharisee with Christ-killer with root of Germany's problems with money-grubber with big-nosed crotchity money lender.
And why were they able to do that?
However, my assumption is that we here are at least mildly intelligent and educated people.
And do you offer a guarantee that everyone who reads and interpretes the words of the Gospels for the next thousand years will be "mildly intelligent and educated people"?
Like Torquemada?
Sadly, however, no one seems to know in what order of precident one part of the bible trumps another. Why is Matthew 5-7, for example, supposed to take precidence over, say, the doctrine that witches should be stoned to death? Where is the schedule of precidence, if there is one? Apropos to this question, one of the posters here just gave us a verse that seems to equate witchery with arcane orthodox jewish practices. How am I not, therefore, to take the commandment to kill witches to be a license from God to hunt down orthodox jews?
I am a big fan of contentiousness, as you may have noted. But I respect your reticience, and thank you for the research.
Agreeing with my belief that a contradiction is nonsense, is.
And why were they able to do that?
This is just begging for a sarcastic response. Are you going somewhere with this?
And do you offer a guarantee that everyone who reads and interpretes the words of the Gospels for the next thousand years will be "mildly intelligent and educated people"?
Why should I? I'm not arguing with them. I'm arguing with you. Or are you holding solidarity with those who are not mildly intelligent and educated people?
beavus: yum yum yum...dee-licious! :^) [burp]
So, what now? Oh, it's not ALL the jews in judea--just the crowd in front of Pontias Pilate's mansion? Maybe nobody killed jesus--maybe he just stumbled onto the cross by accident and impailed himself.
This is a restatement of your argument? What does this have to do with anything we've been arguing about? Now you're starting to scare me, buddy. Maybe you should lie down.
Well, but I think it would be more careful to emphasize as follows:
After the conflicts with Rome (A.D. 66-135) PHARISAISM BECAME PRACTICALLY SYNONYMOUS WITH JUDAISM
I have surveyed the various dates that have been given for the writing of the various gospels, and nearly all historians put them toward the middle or end of this conflict. And furthermore, the intent of the writers is painfully clear from the quotes I have dragged up: to indict the conservative jews in what was obviously a Roman act to win converts from jewery. Even the holy see has conceded this in modern times. Pontius Pilate obviously killed christ for obviously good reasons of roman prudence in keeping an oppressed people from finding a king and revolting. Yet look what a hero Matthew and John make of him, passing the guilt on to the crowd of jews around his palace, or to the Pharasees...or all their children forevermore, for goodness sakes. How big a hint does one need to see the obvious? Europe did not condemn the jews for 1600 years out of a vacuum. It came from somewhere. Where? Unless you want to contend that it is, in fact, the nature of Jews to be unworthy of fellowship and citizenship due to their racial characteristics.
The base argument is not about Pharasee's, and never was, it is about whether or not the Bible is a principle source of the European anti-semitism that led to the holocaust. Pharasee's was a side-issue. There are several hundred verses of the Gospels that contain anti-semitic references such as these: the intent is perfectly clear. The Pharasee question was just a minor attempt, mostly on Alamo-Girl's part, to excuse one part of the Gospels of a crime the entire thing commits, in establishing the Doctrine of Salvation through the crucifixion and ressurrection, which is constitutive, and specifically aimed at definitively excluding orthodox jews from salvation.
Like your insistence that, by golly, you've captured a contradiction, if I would just quit resisting your arbitarily chosen domain of discourse, this is just avoidance through patronization; since you can't seem to figure out how to put up an argument, you are hoping that being snooty will be mistaken for a refutation.
LR,(? - you mean LW, right?) in your next post to uncbuck you state that the "standard" is Reason. The above excerpt seems to indicate that Reason (implicitly the reasonable individual) is the foundation of moral life. Reason does this by discriminating what is "higher." While this is clearly true, you say nothing about what standard is being used to discriminate what is higher from what is lower.
Life, the higher is what contributes to living as a human being. Reason is the means by which human beings understand, operate in and manipulate reality, and the actions one takes either contribute to living or are destructive of it. There is no other way to deal with reality and there is no other purpose to reason other than to effectively live in reality, that is to enhance one’s life. It doesn’t matter whether it is figuring out how much grain I need to make it through the winter, or that my life will be better if I go out and get a job rather than living by robbing my neighbors and spending the rest of my life running, hiding and trying to avoid retribution and revenge. The thing about reason is that it is absolute, one cannot only think as far as one likes and then abandon it because the next conclusion isn’t to one’s liking or it is too much work. And this is the problem, this is exactly what the vast majority of people do. Henry Ford said, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is why so few people engage in it” and he was right. Most people can’t be bothered to really think. Or if they do, it is no farther than the next moment. IMHO, your take above is hopelessly idealistic: You will not find in any human community of a certain size any consensual ground, if the standard of the "ideal ground" is wholly left to competing human preferences and interests. Certainly it's clear people have been known to disagree about what HIGHER value most "contributes to civilization." Socialists have one take on this; libertarians another; Islamacists yet another; etc., etc.
I think you are wrong here, it isn’t hopelessly idealistic. I think the problem is that so many people reject reason for whatever ‘reason’ and at that point their thoughts and actions are filled with contradictions and are contrary to reality. You are so used to this state of affairs you cannot imagine it being any different. But when does anyone say, “We must think rationally. We must use our reason.” Never. People say, ’You must believe this, you must believe that, you must think this, you must think that.“ They don’t say, ’You must use your reason to think, and think rationally, think logically, and think completely.’ They tell you what to think, not how to think. This is wrong. No one can think for another.
The lack of consensus is due to different premises, and/or faulty logic. The Islamacists (sic) are using one set of premises, and the socialists another. Neither stands up to ’reason’ and neither stands up logically. This has been at the heart of almost everything that I have ever said here, “What is the ’reason’ in reality for this premise?” Does it stand to ’reason?’
What you called ’hopelessly idealistic’ isn’t “idealistic” at all. It is actually the way that it is in reality. The more people who can reason properly to come to the conclusion that it is in their own ‘best self interest’ to respect the rights of others because one wants those same rights for oneself, the better that society will be. The more civilized, the more productive, the more creative, the more ‘capitalistic.’ If you really think it through you will see it cannot be any other way. If you want the right to live, if you want the right to make your own choices, if you want the right to think as you wish, if you want the right to own your own home, if you want the right to choose your career or own a business, if you want the right to have a family, if you want the right to worship any religion you choose, then you must conclude those same rights must also extend to everyone else or there is no ’reason’ they apply to you. It is just arbitrary assumption that ’reason’ can prove is a contradiction. Contra-diction, it speaks against itself. It proves itself wrong. If it isn’t a “Right” for everyone, it isn’t a ‘right’ for you.
The guy who was the teacher and inspiration for Cesar Chavez had a great line, “Respect for one another’s Rights is the meaning of peace.”
It ’stands to reason’ that it is in my own best self interest to be in a place ’at peace.’ Those who don’t see this are those, like the Muslims, that take their premises from something other than reality, or like socialists or criminals, don’t think it through enough to realize their ideas contain contradictions that make them ultimately self destructive and defeating.
I was listening to Glen Beck, a talk show host, and he said something very pertinent. He talked about how Islam today is where Christianity was 700 years ago when it was doing things like the Inquisition and the witch burnings and all that. Islam is still in the Thirteenth Century in terms of its outlook on what ‘civilized’ behavior is. All the problems of the world can be seen in these terms, people are living in various periods of the past, using paradigms that were valid 20, 50, 100, 200, 1000, 2000 or even 4000 years ago as if they were still valid today, and they are not.
Very few people understand the value of ’reason.’ They prefer belief, or faith, or dogma, or formalism or just about anything other than examining what they think to see how valid it is. It is a never ending process. One cannot be lazy and really think. But it is the only way we advance, materially, scientifically, socially, culturally and morally.
Could very well be, just remember that last time i saw it. Rand said so much it's hard to keep track of it all. Wasn't trying to deprive anyone of the proper credit, least of all Rand.
Exactly. Which is where extremists such as those who murder in the name of pro-life rights go horribly wrong, and where certain fundamentalist cults (e.g. Bill Gothard) go astray. God said, Vengeance is mine. A person answers to Him, not to his human peers. And herein lies the overwhelming vacuum in the Islamic "religion"-- the denial of the individual's relationship and responsibilities to his God, and the power of a self-appointed mortal regime over the individual...
Yes, but there was so much that was assumed that he just overlooked. If the demon was all there was, why was it a demon and not a god? If it was a demon then that implies there is a god too, so where was god? All this implied 'existence' prior to his "I am." How is that box any different that 'this box' that we find ourselves in that we call reality? I understand what you are saying, all he could truly verify as existing as he preceived them were his thoughts, which proved he existed. But all his proof is dependent upon prior existence of something, and at that point the statement reverses, he existed or he couldn't exist to think. He didn't create himself by thinking, which can also be implied by his statement. In the final analysis it makes little difference and I agree with you he quit before he should have.
This is funnier than your teacher's joke.
A contradiction is not necessarily nonsense. For most purposes, you can take it as such. To many computer scientists a contradiction is an unavoidable hole in a program from which you don't return, but which is ineradicable in the otherwise acceptable, shippable code. For many practical mathematicians, it is an indication that the formal domain of discourse is inadequate, and can therefore be ragarded as a useful indicator of error, like a canary in a coal mine. How can something that's entirely nonsense be a useful indicator?
However, we'll take it as given that a contradiction is nonsense, which is a good enough assumption for government work.
And in that sense, I have not disagreed. I have disagreed that the domain of discourse you've addressed with your logic in discerning a contradiction is an adequate map of the application of the label "Pharasee" to a given group of peoples as I have used it. Using "Pharasee" to mean "lawful jew" is very far from my own invention, as I have drug up quotes to show you. You may disagree with this, but that doesn't make my position "contradictory". For my position to be contradictory, I have to agree with you that the only relevant use of Pharasee is it's most narrow literal interpretation, which I don't, most emphatically in this case, as it was not the most narrow literal interpretation that was received by the likes of PIUS XII or Torquemada.
I tink, therefore, I aim.
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