It's both rewarding and disturbing to note that in the late 90s early 2000s, I was involved with a group made up of cyber security and law enforcement, nationally and internationally to bring us all together to be made aware and educate one another on cyber security threats. I may have mentioned this before, and I'll mention it again. Because we need good news at this point in our country.
To do something unheard of at the time. To bring good hackers and law enforcement in all its forms, together. To share knowledge and be made aware of things out of the scope of law enforcement and many business entities.
We had speakers like Richard Clarke, I believe Gen. Michael Hayden, the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure, and many others. Attendees included law enforcement from FBI, Secret Service,NSA and other "no such agencies", as well as local state and city police, Royal Canadian Mounties, even some from Australia showed up. Our group set up the first cyber crime team for our local city police department which they then took over.
We discussed avenues of corrections, how to address those in power to rectify situations, and we had a strong concern for our situation at the time . Not enough was being done.
Corporations weren't putting more than a single percentage point of their budget into cyber security concerns at the time (and the government wasn't much better). When it could cost them a lot more and has from time to time. Some of our efforts did save a lot of money, time and resources.
We worried. But our efforts did a great deal in making people aware all the way up to the president. Things did change, but not enough. Still to date we've been effective if not lucky.
Russia has been testing our systems, in event of an all out war. We had discussed our electric grids, black hats, white hats, the Chinese Red Hackers, their China Eagles who were supported by their military who were a problem at the time.
Now it is more Russia who is the problem. And North Korea.
There is one great man in particular whom I worked with, who deserves the credit for this group, for thinking of it, for pulling things together, for having beers with those who would never talk together and then, bringing their knowledge, if not themselves all together in the same room to help one another.
And even we were all surprised how well that worked out. Not a little of it because of that one man and his big heart and his big brain. They were each entity, hackers and law enforcement, both surprised by their overall lack of paranoia toward one another and the understanding each had toward the other, once they had a common goal, to protect America and actually sat down and talked together, easily becoming fascinated by the subject matter and the intricacies of the technologies and dynamics of both cyber and national security.
I will not name him. You will not find him on the internet. I could not, not in this context. I was able to "find" him mentioned, but hat was it and there is no connection to anyo fthis. Nor will you most likely find anything about this group.
Though he may very well end up seeing this post himself, or though someone mentioning it to him. But I thank him now for all his efforts (I have thanked him personally more than once in the past), and for you all and always and again from myself.
Many are unnamed and always will be in this work.
But we were then at a time we needed to be and much was done to help our country and our neighboring countries and friends. And they helped others.
I'm glad to have been involved at that time, I miss those meetings which may still be going on. I've left that business for artistic pursuits.
But there are people out there, working hard, day and night to protect us. And I know our efforts back then and possibly still now, paid off.
I just thought you should know.
Cheers!
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Monday, January 29, 2018
Our Terrorist Cell
I'm sitting here in the evening, it's raining outside in Bremerton, Washington. I'm watching Netflix, a show called, Peaky Blinders. Great show. About 19th century England. Gangs. Reminiscent of The Wind in That Shakes the Barley, Perhaps, especially because of actor Cillian Murphy and his being Irish and all, being born in County Cork (I rather liked visiting Cork). and all that.
It's no secret I'm rather partial to the Irish. Being half myself, all on my dad's side of the family. Having had a rather, albeit confused, understanding as a youth of my ethnic responsibilities and well... I do understand enjoying a good conspiracy. Especially for a good reason and all. A good... guerilla fight against greater odds, can be inspiring. Even, addicting. Especially to the disaffected and those who have little control over their lives, or who simply feel that way.
Early in high school I had learned about the troubles from a documentary. I'd long known I was half Irish, that my dad was Irish. I grew up with my mother, after they divorced when I was three. She always celebrated St. Patrick's Day. I remember a banner of cut out, green, "Erin Go Bragh" (or, Éirinn go Brách, Meaning "Ireland forever" in Gaelic) every year hanging in the house.
I hardly ever saw my dad after that and never did after I was sixteen, until he died in 1988. I doubt he ever had a thought himself about Ireland. But I did. I even tried to talk friends, fellow students in tenth grade into going with me to Ireland to fight in the Troubles. Well, it didn't happen. I had no money to get there. I doubt they'd have even wanted me. But that, is a story for another time. Or not.
Anyway, that's how I was at that time. I even wrote a screenplay about what I was like back then. The Teenage Bodyguard, is about a situation I got myself into just after graduating high school. Over the course of a week in 1974, I protected a murder witness from the local mafia.
Great story and a screenplay that is being liked every time it's seen or evaluated. "So why isn't it on the screen already somewhere", one reviewer asked in their review from BlueCat screenplay contest. Another from The Blacklist coverage said it was "a viable project that should be pursued". And so I am.
I kept finding myself in interesting situation back then. I don't know why. Mainly, because people kept asking me to act as a bodyguard for them. First was that frightened woman who asked me to protect her for a week when I was eighteen from some murderers she had worked with at Tacoma's first topless bar, The Tiki, run by the Carbone crime family.
A year later at nineteen, my own mother asked me to be my little brother's bodyguard in Manhattan. She was afraid if he got roughed up during a robbery, he could die inbeing so thin and fragile with liver cancer at the time. There had also been a rash of apartment break ins at that time. So I slept in our small studio apartment on the floor, with my .357 magnum next to me just in case someone tried to break in at 2AM or something.
I had also protected a variety of others off and on over the years. Gamblers wit cash coming to town, a big construction magnate's horse farm at the end of a road where I lived for a while, and so on.
My point being, I do get it. This whole, desire to go to battle, take on great odds, test yourself and live the life of excitement and adventure. it's kind of dumb for most, but I get the attraction.
As I watch this great show (Peaky Blinders), and sip some red wine (yes, there's Guinness in the fridge, but it's wine tonight, forgive me St. Guinness), I understand the feeling that there is no downtown here to go to, to meet locally with other frustrated or angry conspirators in some shady bar, to have talks, to sneak to covert meetings, to talk about how the government is abusing us unfairly and unjustly. How our enemies really have to go. At all costs. Or any. All of that. Not unlike our Founding Fathers did in local Freemason lodges, mostly held at or above local public (drinking) houses (pubs?).
I do get all of that. I understand that feeling. That focus. The mystery. The excitement. The addictive fear. The call to a cause greater than oneself. The ability to be something, right now, immediately. To evoke change when nothing else is happening in one's life. To achieve something now with power when no one else will give you that kind of responsibility or command over other human beings. Even to the point of taking their lives. Even if they are innocent.
I get all that.Well, not so much the taking of innocent lives. I really don't get that. Especially when they are your own. But I get it for a young testosterone filled young man, or woman. Or for one whose family and loved ones are indeed being abused if not murdered by the state as others in other countries have had to suffer through. I get that. I really do.
I doubt it's much different for terrorists in other countries, even in our own country in how some can misguidedly perceive our own reality in America as deserving of terrorism..The home of their ancestry. Maybe. But then, not a lot of Native Americans are terrorists. Some who are not even of that abused ancestry but who understand, empathize, with them. Who feel compassion for their seemingly just cause. Like non Muslims who go to fight with them.
I get all that.
The trouble is... it's nonsense. Mostly. For the most part. 99% of it anyway.
Those are the rumblings of a young man high on testosterone so much of the time. Give them a call to arms... oh my God. They will be there!
But there is another side. There will be those they harm. The innocent. Those they blind themselves about but who do matter, and greatly so. They become blinded by the fog of war and idealism. But not of conscience. And so innocents die. For no good reason.
Not until their hacked minds, hacked by disingenuous ones who put not themselves into danger but those of a younger cohort. Where justice turns into criminal actions and heroes become terrorists. There is brainwashing going on. Media is part of the problem. those manipulating it are more so. Be they Russian hackers joyriding or actually paid by Putin. Or Islamic terrorist leaders or simply... Facebook.
I'm glad I lived through those cold war years. I'm also glad I didn't have to grow up in Belfast or an Ireland under British rule where my ancestors were so abused and genocide wasn't a ridiculous word to banter about. When some Irish tried to eat grass due to starvation during the potato famine, where the dead and emaciated were found in fields with mouths stained green.
My terrorist cell is based in words, not guns, in political actions, not bombs.
It is civilized, not barbaric. I'll kill no innocents. My terrorist cell, does not exist. Because I do not believe in terrorizing human beings. Or anyone. Or anything. It's a bully behavior, that of an immature mind, or mindset.
There is a time for violence. To be sure. But it is far less often than many would like to admit.
And that includes our American born terrorists. Those Christian misguided fools who have killed too many in our country already and should never again. And then there is simply mental illness, and social illness.
Do Act. But at some point we have to see as a race of intelligent beings that death simply isn't always the answer. While in some countries it may be necessary, at certain times, in ours it simply is not.
We have a disease in this country. It is conservatism. It is binary thinking. It is in authoritarian attitudes, having them, or adoring them. It is poor priorities. It is extremists. It is the far right politically motivated. It is the ignorant, the poorly educated, the incorrectly educated, those who believe in alternate facts, alternate realities, alternate morality, alternator mental health.
We need instead to seek out our best nature in life, not our worst.
We need to bring down our worst, and simply refuse to be a part of it.
#terrorism #peace #isis #racism
It's no secret I'm rather partial to the Irish. Being half myself, all on my dad's side of the family. Having had a rather, albeit confused, understanding as a youth of my ethnic responsibilities and well... I do understand enjoying a good conspiracy. Especially for a good reason and all. A good... guerilla fight against greater odds, can be inspiring. Even, addicting. Especially to the disaffected and those who have little control over their lives, or who simply feel that way.
Early in high school I had learned about the troubles from a documentary. I'd long known I was half Irish, that my dad was Irish. I grew up with my mother, after they divorced when I was three. She always celebrated St. Patrick's Day. I remember a banner of cut out, green, "Erin Go Bragh" (or, Éirinn go Brách, Meaning "Ireland forever" in Gaelic) every year hanging in the house.
I hardly ever saw my dad after that and never did after I was sixteen, until he died in 1988. I doubt he ever had a thought himself about Ireland. But I did. I even tried to talk friends, fellow students in tenth grade into going with me to Ireland to fight in the Troubles. Well, it didn't happen. I had no money to get there. I doubt they'd have even wanted me. But that, is a story for another time. Or not.
Anyway, that's how I was at that time. I even wrote a screenplay about what I was like back then. The Teenage Bodyguard, is about a situation I got myself into just after graduating high school. Over the course of a week in 1974, I protected a murder witness from the local mafia.
Great story and a screenplay that is being liked every time it's seen or evaluated. "So why isn't it on the screen already somewhere", one reviewer asked in their review from BlueCat screenplay contest. Another from The Blacklist coverage said it was "a viable project that should be pursued". And so I am.
I kept finding myself in interesting situation back then. I don't know why. Mainly, because people kept asking me to act as a bodyguard for them. First was that frightened woman who asked me to protect her for a week when I was eighteen from some murderers she had worked with at Tacoma's first topless bar, The Tiki, run by the Carbone crime family.
A year later at nineteen, my own mother asked me to be my little brother's bodyguard in Manhattan. She was afraid if he got roughed up during a robbery, he could die inbeing so thin and fragile with liver cancer at the time. There had also been a rash of apartment break ins at that time. So I slept in our small studio apartment on the floor, with my .357 magnum next to me just in case someone tried to break in at 2AM or something.
I had also protected a variety of others off and on over the years. Gamblers wit cash coming to town, a big construction magnate's horse farm at the end of a road where I lived for a while, and so on.
My point being, I do get it. This whole, desire to go to battle, take on great odds, test yourself and live the life of excitement and adventure. it's kind of dumb for most, but I get the attraction.
As I watch this great show (Peaky Blinders), and sip some red wine (yes, there's Guinness in the fridge, but it's wine tonight, forgive me St. Guinness), I understand the feeling that there is no downtown here to go to, to meet locally with other frustrated or angry conspirators in some shady bar, to have talks, to sneak to covert meetings, to talk about how the government is abusing us unfairly and unjustly. How our enemies really have to go. At all costs. Or any. All of that. Not unlike our Founding Fathers did in local Freemason lodges, mostly held at or above local public (drinking) houses (pubs?).
I do get all of that. I understand that feeling. That focus. The mystery. The excitement. The addictive fear. The call to a cause greater than oneself. The ability to be something, right now, immediately. To evoke change when nothing else is happening in one's life. To achieve something now with power when no one else will give you that kind of responsibility or command over other human beings. Even to the point of taking their lives. Even if they are innocent.
I get all that.Well, not so much the taking of innocent lives. I really don't get that. Especially when they are your own. But I get it for a young testosterone filled young man, or woman. Or for one whose family and loved ones are indeed being abused if not murdered by the state as others in other countries have had to suffer through. I get that. I really do.
I doubt it's much different for terrorists in other countries, even in our own country in how some can misguidedly perceive our own reality in America as deserving of terrorism..The home of their ancestry. Maybe. But then, not a lot of Native Americans are terrorists. Some who are not even of that abused ancestry but who understand, empathize, with them. Who feel compassion for their seemingly just cause. Like non Muslims who go to fight with them.
I get all that.
The trouble is... it's nonsense. Mostly. For the most part. 99% of it anyway.
Those are the rumblings of a young man high on testosterone so much of the time. Give them a call to arms... oh my God. They will be there!
But there is another side. There will be those they harm. The innocent. Those they blind themselves about but who do matter, and greatly so. They become blinded by the fog of war and idealism. But not of conscience. And so innocents die. For no good reason.
Not until their hacked minds, hacked by disingenuous ones who put not themselves into danger but those of a younger cohort. Where justice turns into criminal actions and heroes become terrorists. There is brainwashing going on. Media is part of the problem. those manipulating it are more so. Be they Russian hackers joyriding or actually paid by Putin. Or Islamic terrorist leaders or simply... Facebook.
I'm glad I lived through those cold war years. I'm also glad I didn't have to grow up in Belfast or an Ireland under British rule where my ancestors were so abused and genocide wasn't a ridiculous word to banter about. When some Irish tried to eat grass due to starvation during the potato famine, where the dead and emaciated were found in fields with mouths stained green.
My terrorist cell is based in words, not guns, in political actions, not bombs.
It is civilized, not barbaric. I'll kill no innocents. My terrorist cell, does not exist. Because I do not believe in terrorizing human beings. Or anyone. Or anything. It's a bully behavior, that of an immature mind, or mindset.
There is a time for violence. To be sure. But it is far less often than many would like to admit.
And that includes our American born terrorists. Those Christian misguided fools who have killed too many in our country already and should never again. And then there is simply mental illness, and social illness.
Do Act. But at some point we have to see as a race of intelligent beings that death simply isn't always the answer. While in some countries it may be necessary, at certain times, in ours it simply is not.
We have a disease in this country. It is conservatism. It is binary thinking. It is in authoritarian attitudes, having them, or adoring them. It is poor priorities. It is extremists. It is the far right politically motivated. It is the ignorant, the poorly educated, the incorrectly educated, those who believe in alternate facts, alternate realities, alternate morality, alternator mental health.
We need instead to seek out our best nature in life, not our worst.
We need to bring down our worst, and simply refuse to be a part of it.
#terrorism #peace #isis #racism
Monday, June 5, 2017
Cowardly Islamic Terrorist's Final Religion War
Yet another attack this past weekend by yet more alleged religious mental defects, murderers and criminals in London. Wishing all the best to those in London who have been killed, harmed, frightened or who have to repeatedly put up with the assholes who think their victim mentality, their need for relevancy through foolish banal religious mindsets, through the sick theistic belief system of fools, cretins and underachievers gives them any kind of license whatsoever to do harm to others.
First off, Islamic terrorists are cowards, pure and simple. Sort of, Not so much perhaps in many of their physical actions in combat or even suicidal actions, but most assuredly in their inability to be a part of human society and achieve change through means that do not harm or destroy others. Especially those innocents and members of their own religion.
However, suicide murder can also be considered a cowardly act in that once one disregard one's death in the event, there is clearly then no need, no strife, no efforts, no thoughts needed in achieving the difficult issues of evoking a movement through slower and more acceptable forms of political and social changes.
In that, they are pure cowards, lazy, stupid even and all those other things Republicans tend to label the poor and non Republican types with.
Is this going to be how the final global Religion War to end all religious wars begins? It may not start today, or next week, next year, or even ten years from now. But someone will one day have to ask, is today where it all started?
Will it end religions around the planet finally evolving us into the future? Finally? Actually one could call this the Reality Wars, except it's not a war against reality, it's a war against unreality. We have to start seeing the real world how it really is and not through a filter of unreality in religious thought and those who have taken that to their secular way of thinking. Yes, it's a hot mess.
Not these vastly silly Middle Eastern desert religions eschatological end of times crap. But the actual end to the childish religious beliefs that have infected this planet since we first pulled ourselves out of the muck and the slime, looked up at the sun in the sky and began to worship it's power and majesty out of fear. Because religion was indeed bread from fear of an ignorant and ancient people. One that I would submit, began before we could think clearly, through out ignorance and fear of things like darkness and being within the food chain, and not at the top of it for a very, very long time.
After all, how could religions not evolve in that environment?
Religious Wars that begin from what will start merely as a lash out at religiously spawned murderers? Then when all religious and religious, especially Islamic followers and leader do not stand up and take action in order to support their reasons to exist outside of realms of science, of facts, of objective reality, then finally the rest of the world in all it's rationalist and atheists, then in one religion against another, those who can finally simply no longer take it anymore, attack the fantasy cults of Islamic terrorists and other religions not their own, as we then all devolve into utter and murderous insanity?
Before that happens w all need Islam, as well as all religious believers and leaders in general to express an ever viral allergic reaction to their way of thinking in any of those cultures who might be leaning in the directions of fantasy beliefs systems and especially the death oriented religions such as the Middle Eastern Death cults of Judaism, Catholicism and Christianity and Islam.
Is this the beginning of the end of all religions worldwide? Do we really want to take these immature belief systems into the stars with us? Is this why no extraterrestrials want to visit this planet because religion in their minds is simply too childish, too dangerous a belief system to allow contact with or to allow to expand into the cosmos?
Getting back to the hard facts, do we allow religions to continue, to allow these sick cults like Islamic terrorism to continue to fester and grow like a mold on our minds around the world? Are we seeing the beginning of how religion on planet Earth, ends?
Humans have a basic sense of OCD, of Obsessive Compulsivity which when it gets out of control turns into a disorder. We see it time and against in systems and processes that break down in human culture and business. In believing things like religion, we give a nod and a smile to the potential for some very bad things to happen.
Humans will turn anything into a religion, merely by their OCD leanings of turning anything into a religion, into a ridiculous belief system that goes beyond rationality to the ethereal. Our desire to believe that if a little of something is good or great, then much much more is fantastic when in reality is is typically death, pure and simple.
Even one of our greatest forms of thought like Buddhism, which is not and should never have been a religion has, by those raised in many of those Buddhist cultures, striven to turn it too into a religion. We have done this with sex, with money and economies. With just about anything if you give us a chance.
Even calling it in the western sense, Buddhism, rather than Dharma, is in a sense trying to turn it into something it's not, merely out of our ignorance of what it was originally meant to be. And even some of that original thought on it from the first Buddha was out of some degree of ignorance which with time and knowledge we could have honed to a sharp basis of reality and betterment and yet, has been turned into a religion.
Question
What is Buddhism?
Answer
The name Buddhism comes from the word 'budhi' which means 'to wake up' and thus Buddhism is the philosophy of awakening. This philosophy has its origins in the experience of the man Siddhata Gotama, known as the Buddha, who was himself awakened at the age of 35. Buddhism is now 2,500 years old and has about 300 million followers world-wide. Until a hundred years ago, Buddhism was mainly an Asian philosophy but increasingly it is gaining adherents in Europe and America.
Question
So Buddhism is just a philosophy?
Answer
The word philosophy comes from two words 'philo' which means 'love' and 'sophia' which means 'wisdom'. So philosophy is the love of wisdom or love and wisdom, both meanings describing Buddhism perfectly. Buddhism teaches that we should try to develop our intellectual capacity to the fullest so that we can understand clearly. It also teaches us to develop love and kindness so that we can be like a true friend to all beings. Thus Buddhism is a philosophy but not just a philosophy. It is the supreme philosophy.
From Buddhanet
The argument about how great religions are, have been countered by how horrifying they have at times been. It's not just all about finding the disaffected, but in finding the veins of cancer in these communities, in their advocates and religions, in the religious and the criminal leaders overall, and in religions themselves.
How do you justify the criminals who run mega churches and do not do what their religions teach? How do you justify the slut shaming , gender shaming, and other types of shaming by religions and their religious against their own for merely having a human nature? One their are taught to hate, to hate the basics of being human.
Eliminating these religious terrorists is not just about eliminating these terrorists, but in eliminating the hold religions have in a growing force of unreality and in eliminating these religions themselves. We have to divest ourselves of religions before we can grow beyond this nonsense.
As we have seen the only way religions are any good is when they are diluted, when much of what their tenets teach are ignored, when humans, pick and choose what is best to believe in what their religion has taught since the beginning. The basis, the foundation, the history of which is so typically ridiculous.
When are we going to grow up and see clearly what the problem is here, and it is not just that of those who take the worst of their religion and run with it, leading to death and destruction. And as in Muslim terrorists, typically the death and destruction of there own?
Wake up and smell the religious mayhem, the theistic sadism, the fantasy idiocy.
We can do so much better. But we need a massive change and real understanding of our nature of that of our universe. But religion certainly is not IT.
First off, Islamic terrorists are cowards, pure and simple. Sort of, Not so much perhaps in many of their physical actions in combat or even suicidal actions, but most assuredly in their inability to be a part of human society and achieve change through means that do not harm or destroy others. Especially those innocents and members of their own religion.
However, suicide murder can also be considered a cowardly act in that once one disregard one's death in the event, there is clearly then no need, no strife, no efforts, no thoughts needed in achieving the difficult issues of evoking a movement through slower and more acceptable forms of political and social changes.
In that, they are pure cowards, lazy, stupid even and all those other things Republicans tend to label the poor and non Republican types with.
Is this going to be how the final global Religion War to end all religious wars begins? It may not start today, or next week, next year, or even ten years from now. But someone will one day have to ask, is today where it all started?
Will it end religions around the planet finally evolving us into the future? Finally? Actually one could call this the Reality Wars, except it's not a war against reality, it's a war against unreality. We have to start seeing the real world how it really is and not through a filter of unreality in religious thought and those who have taken that to their secular way of thinking. Yes, it's a hot mess.
Not these vastly silly Middle Eastern desert religions eschatological end of times crap. But the actual end to the childish religious beliefs that have infected this planet since we first pulled ourselves out of the muck and the slime, looked up at the sun in the sky and began to worship it's power and majesty out of fear. Because religion was indeed bread from fear of an ignorant and ancient people. One that I would submit, began before we could think clearly, through out ignorance and fear of things like darkness and being within the food chain, and not at the top of it for a very, very long time.
After all, how could religions not evolve in that environment?
Religious Wars that begin from what will start merely as a lash out at religiously spawned murderers? Then when all religious and religious, especially Islamic followers and leader do not stand up and take action in order to support their reasons to exist outside of realms of science, of facts, of objective reality, then finally the rest of the world in all it's rationalist and atheists, then in one religion against another, those who can finally simply no longer take it anymore, attack the fantasy cults of Islamic terrorists and other religions not their own, as we then all devolve into utter and murderous insanity?
Before that happens w all need Islam, as well as all religious believers and leaders in general to express an ever viral allergic reaction to their way of thinking in any of those cultures who might be leaning in the directions of fantasy beliefs systems and especially the death oriented religions such as the Middle Eastern Death cults of Judaism, Catholicism and Christianity and Islam.
Is this the beginning of the end of all religions worldwide? Do we really want to take these immature belief systems into the stars with us? Is this why no extraterrestrials want to visit this planet because religion in their minds is simply too childish, too dangerous a belief system to allow contact with or to allow to expand into the cosmos?
Getting back to the hard facts, do we allow religions to continue, to allow these sick cults like Islamic terrorism to continue to fester and grow like a mold on our minds around the world? Are we seeing the beginning of how religion on planet Earth, ends?
Humans have a basic sense of OCD, of Obsessive Compulsivity which when it gets out of control turns into a disorder. We see it time and against in systems and processes that break down in human culture and business. In believing things like religion, we give a nod and a smile to the potential for some very bad things to happen.
Humans will turn anything into a religion, merely by their OCD leanings of turning anything into a religion, into a ridiculous belief system that goes beyond rationality to the ethereal. Our desire to believe that if a little of something is good or great, then much much more is fantastic when in reality is is typically death, pure and simple.
Even one of our greatest forms of thought like Buddhism, which is not and should never have been a religion has, by those raised in many of those Buddhist cultures, striven to turn it too into a religion. We have done this with sex, with money and economies. With just about anything if you give us a chance.
Even calling it in the western sense, Buddhism, rather than Dharma, is in a sense trying to turn it into something it's not, merely out of our ignorance of what it was originally meant to be. And even some of that original thought on it from the first Buddha was out of some degree of ignorance which with time and knowledge we could have honed to a sharp basis of reality and betterment and yet, has been turned into a religion.
Question
What is Buddhism?
Answer
The name Buddhism comes from the word 'budhi' which means 'to wake up' and thus Buddhism is the philosophy of awakening. This philosophy has its origins in the experience of the man Siddhata Gotama, known as the Buddha, who was himself awakened at the age of 35. Buddhism is now 2,500 years old and has about 300 million followers world-wide. Until a hundred years ago, Buddhism was mainly an Asian philosophy but increasingly it is gaining adherents in Europe and America.
Question
So Buddhism is just a philosophy?
Answer
The word philosophy comes from two words 'philo' which means 'love' and 'sophia' which means 'wisdom'. So philosophy is the love of wisdom or love and wisdom, both meanings describing Buddhism perfectly. Buddhism teaches that we should try to develop our intellectual capacity to the fullest so that we can understand clearly. It also teaches us to develop love and kindness so that we can be like a true friend to all beings. Thus Buddhism is a philosophy but not just a philosophy. It is the supreme philosophy.
From Buddhanet
The argument about how great religions are, have been countered by how horrifying they have at times been. It's not just all about finding the disaffected, but in finding the veins of cancer in these communities, in their advocates and religions, in the religious and the criminal leaders overall, and in religions themselves.
How do you justify the criminals who run mega churches and do not do what their religions teach? How do you justify the slut shaming , gender shaming, and other types of shaming by religions and their religious against their own for merely having a human nature? One their are taught to hate, to hate the basics of being human.
Eliminating these religious terrorists is not just about eliminating these terrorists, but in eliminating the hold religions have in a growing force of unreality and in eliminating these religions themselves. We have to divest ourselves of religions before we can grow beyond this nonsense.
As we have seen the only way religions are any good is when they are diluted, when much of what their tenets teach are ignored, when humans, pick and choose what is best to believe in what their religion has taught since the beginning. The basis, the foundation, the history of which is so typically ridiculous.
When are we going to grow up and see clearly what the problem is here, and it is not just that of those who take the worst of their religion and run with it, leading to death and destruction. And as in Muslim terrorists, typically the death and destruction of there own?
Wake up and smell the religious mayhem, the theistic sadism, the fantasy idiocy.
We can do so much better. But we need a massive change and real understanding of our nature of that of our universe. But religion certainly is not IT.
Monday, January 23, 2017
Are we witnessing the death throes of Religion?
Will Islam be the religion that takes us from nation state world wars (2 so far) to ideological world wars (seeing anything fomenting around you yet?). Finally pushing religion over the edge from its last vestiges post dark ages to utter obscurity and mere historical research topic?
Sure it may not look that way to believers, but these things happen and when they do, at times vast changes can take place in a very small amount of time.
Many Christians, Muslims, Islamists, religionists, theists, conservatives and even Trump supporters suffer from the arrogance of ignorance.
In that ignorance they call others out for that same thing because they have information that feels foreign or unreal to them. That behavior is a mainstay of the Republican party. A party that is not ignorant itself but guilty of their own actions, of purposefully attack Americans through government, out of their ignorance, and their desire for power and money.
Some out of a skewed desire to do good, but cannot see that within the environment they have built and allowed to be built, around them. In their desire to be their own entity outside of one they despise, they have allowed themselves to be further encased in their detached ideologies. And so other than the few bigots and racists in their party, they are very much a party desiring the best for America. No matter how many may need to die to achieve that goal.
When you have a bad idea (think, self serving Islamist or even Christian terrorism, or American conservatism) and you push it on others to the point of hurting them, of even killing them, what exactly do you think eventually is going to be the backlash?
When do people feel they have finally taken enough and what will they do about it? I'm currently writing a horror sci fi story, "The Unwritten" (soon to be out in my book, Anthology of Evil II) in which a parallel universe has had the Religious Wars and then from the backlash of that came the Science Wars. Science wins out. Because truth always will in the end, it just takes time. Religion was squashed over that of reason. With the demise of religions came the demise of conservatism, or the rise of reasonable and rational conservatism for what it was intended to be and not what it has been absconded and transformed into. The rise of reason and humane attitudes toward one another and the planet then inevitably takes over.
I am not and have never been against people, but against stupid mindsets that lead to ignorant behaviors. Believing Trump is better than someone who is obviously a better quality person in either (take your pick) Bernie OR Hillary; conservative beliefs of ludicrous anti people doctrines; murdering over stupid ideologies based in pie in the sky ancient beliefs of fantasies from ancient and ignorant cultures, and then formed those beliefs in such a way so as to disallow updating that knowledge base...because it destroys those fantasies.
An extremely dangerous and destructive habit to be sure in ignoring reality, in beleiving what is not real to be real. Just be aware of what could be coming. Because we've been setting ourselves up for failure and allowing it to progress.
Religion is also the mindset that leads to denials and one has to be careful about that. It has led to the American form of political conservatism, a cancer on American society and government. It has devastated many of our citizens leading now to a Donald Trump type candidate and no president elect.
Where DO YOU think this current form of conservative political movement came from? Do you not believe it came from religion? Specifically, Christianity? From Christian Evangelicalism? From a mindset born of religion, from their belief systems, from practicing constant denials of reality for the sake of perpetuating religious beliefs in revealed religions, of fear. Fear of a greater power outside of oneself and one's community? Fear of reprisals by a divine force who apparently actually hates you and wasn't considering loving after thousands of years until a historical figure in Jesus of Nazareth come into religious literature because of a failing empire of Constantine the Great?
Fears which conservatism is based in? Fear of knowledge? One has to ask oneself, why does religion beg it's believers to study it only and not its origins? Why is educations anti religion? Why does many of its adherents advocate avoiding education? Why are conservatives in Republicans so anti education? Why do conservatives act one way, then deny their actions, blaming those who had nothing to do with the results of what they have done. Over and over and over again?
Doesn't it all fit together rather nicely and we're not suppose to notice?
All that being said I've never been anti religion through most of my life. I don't mind people having their beliefs if they keep them out of my personal reality, including my government in a country designed to allow for all and not for one to control which we're seeing now in some conservative Christians in government abusing their positions in the Republican party to abuse our citizens. It wasn't until them, until terrorists that I started thinking we need to get control of religions. Trouble being you can't just control one or two, or just their bad parts because of their design. I find it sad for all that so few are ruining things for so many, both believers and non believers alike.
IS the current individual groundswell of attacks based in religious beliefs, white Christian domestic terrorism which we've seen for years graduating to international Islamic delusion brought real, physical desiring death?
It IS interesting to note that the oldest of these three religions in Judaism doesn't seem to be really bothering the world, perhaps because it is the eldest of the three brothers in religion from that area of origin?
Is this the beginning of the end for death based religions (life is better after death in a heaven), capitalistic religions (if I do now, I will reap the rewards later in Heaven)? Why do these problematic religions all come from the Middle East? From the ancient and harsh environment of the desert? With multiple religions based in a single location leading to discord and bitterness?
One has to realize that a single mind worm in a large entity such as Islam, a belief perpetrated by a group, can cascade down into death and destruction before one even realizes it and it's too late.
One has to realize that the end of something long lived, tough, that refuses to die can exhibit a massive amount of pain and destruction as it dies in order to fight for survival that it is losing, in order to appear more alive than it is.
Is this the end?
And if so, just whose end will it be?
We're living in interesting times, to be sure....
#Religion #Islam #Christianity #DesertReligions
Sure it may not look that way to believers, but these things happen and when they do, at times vast changes can take place in a very small amount of time.
Many Christians, Muslims, Islamists, religionists, theists, conservatives and even Trump supporters suffer from the arrogance of ignorance.
In that ignorance they call others out for that same thing because they have information that feels foreign or unreal to them. That behavior is a mainstay of the Republican party. A party that is not ignorant itself but guilty of their own actions, of purposefully attack Americans through government, out of their ignorance, and their desire for power and money.
Some out of a skewed desire to do good, but cannot see that within the environment they have built and allowed to be built, around them. In their desire to be their own entity outside of one they despise, they have allowed themselves to be further encased in their detached ideologies. And so other than the few bigots and racists in their party, they are very much a party desiring the best for America. No matter how many may need to die to achieve that goal.
When you have a bad idea (think, self serving Islamist or even Christian terrorism, or American conservatism) and you push it on others to the point of hurting them, of even killing them, what exactly do you think eventually is going to be the backlash?
When do people feel they have finally taken enough and what will they do about it? I'm currently writing a horror sci fi story, "The Unwritten" (soon to be out in my book, Anthology of Evil II) in which a parallel universe has had the Religious Wars and then from the backlash of that came the Science Wars. Science wins out. Because truth always will in the end, it just takes time. Religion was squashed over that of reason. With the demise of religions came the demise of conservatism, or the rise of reasonable and rational conservatism for what it was intended to be and not what it has been absconded and transformed into. The rise of reason and humane attitudes toward one another and the planet then inevitably takes over.
I am not and have never been against people, but against stupid mindsets that lead to ignorant behaviors. Believing Trump is better than someone who is obviously a better quality person in either (take your pick) Bernie OR Hillary; conservative beliefs of ludicrous anti people doctrines; murdering over stupid ideologies based in pie in the sky ancient beliefs of fantasies from ancient and ignorant cultures, and then formed those beliefs in such a way so as to disallow updating that knowledge base...because it destroys those fantasies.
An extremely dangerous and destructive habit to be sure in ignoring reality, in beleiving what is not real to be real. Just be aware of what could be coming. Because we've been setting ourselves up for failure and allowing it to progress.
Religion is also the mindset that leads to denials and one has to be careful about that. It has led to the American form of political conservatism, a cancer on American society and government. It has devastated many of our citizens leading now to a Donald Trump type candidate and no president elect.
Where DO YOU think this current form of conservative political movement came from? Do you not believe it came from religion? Specifically, Christianity? From Christian Evangelicalism? From a mindset born of religion, from their belief systems, from practicing constant denials of reality for the sake of perpetuating religious beliefs in revealed religions, of fear. Fear of a greater power outside of oneself and one's community? Fear of reprisals by a divine force who apparently actually hates you and wasn't considering loving after thousands of years until a historical figure in Jesus of Nazareth come into religious literature because of a failing empire of Constantine the Great?
Fears which conservatism is based in? Fear of knowledge? One has to ask oneself, why does religion beg it's believers to study it only and not its origins? Why is educations anti religion? Why does many of its adherents advocate avoiding education? Why are conservatives in Republicans so anti education? Why do conservatives act one way, then deny their actions, blaming those who had nothing to do with the results of what they have done. Over and over and over again?
Doesn't it all fit together rather nicely and we're not suppose to notice?
All that being said I've never been anti religion through most of my life. I don't mind people having their beliefs if they keep them out of my personal reality, including my government in a country designed to allow for all and not for one to control which we're seeing now in some conservative Christians in government abusing their positions in the Republican party to abuse our citizens. It wasn't until them, until terrorists that I started thinking we need to get control of religions. Trouble being you can't just control one or two, or just their bad parts because of their design. I find it sad for all that so few are ruining things for so many, both believers and non believers alike.
IS the current individual groundswell of attacks based in religious beliefs, white Christian domestic terrorism which we've seen for years graduating to international Islamic delusion brought real, physical desiring death?
It IS interesting to note that the oldest of these three religions in Judaism doesn't seem to be really bothering the world, perhaps because it is the eldest of the three brothers in religion from that area of origin?
Is this the beginning of the end for death based religions (life is better after death in a heaven), capitalistic religions (if I do now, I will reap the rewards later in Heaven)? Why do these problematic religions all come from the Middle East? From the ancient and harsh environment of the desert? With multiple religions based in a single location leading to discord and bitterness?
One has to realize that a single mind worm in a large entity such as Islam, a belief perpetrated by a group, can cascade down into death and destruction before one even realizes it and it's too late.
One has to realize that the end of something long lived, tough, that refuses to die can exhibit a massive amount of pain and destruction as it dies in order to fight for survival that it is losing, in order to appear more alive than it is.
Is this the end?
And if so, just whose end will it be?
We're living in interesting times, to be sure....
#Religion #Islam #Christianity #DesertReligions
Monday, November 28, 2016
Addiction to CCC - Conservative Cognitive Closure
It has been found by one researcher that the similarity between extremists, between terrorists, is that of what is called, cognitive closure.
When I discovered that it really made me think.
I am not an extremist, never have been. I have always, and always have tried, to have an open mind. That would be antithesis to one who is deep into the rapture of cognitive closure.
Cognitive closure gives one a feeling a security, of self assurance. A belief that the world is understandable. Cause and effect are discernible. Clearly discernible. It is an easy way of existence in one sense. It may lead to physical difficulties, it may lead to death. But mentally once you achieve cognitive closure, you are pretty much done. No more thinking is required, because you have arrived.
At that point further information, especially information that is diametrically opposed to the closure, is not only unnecessary, it can cause a very negative reaction. It can cause actions that feel required in order to drown out the contrary view points.
This is an especially attractive condition when one lives in certain environments, be those endemic, or even caused by the individual.
Poverty is a strong precursor. Then to be dashed further down in poverty to where it is life threatening, not only to the individual but to those around them. More especially if it is not just those around them but is happening to a specific group, especially if it is the group the individual is a part of.
It gives one a sense of well being, of being special, elevated, even part of the divine. Thus, if it exists in an environment with religion, it is a heady, and dangerous cocktail of emotion and action.
Another precursor is two fold. Ignorance and unfairness. Ignorance in an individual, or group, who cannot access the information they need to make decisions, or ignorance in being fed incorrect information by a group for a specific political purpose. Or political religious purpose. Unfairness in that it is either perceived or real. If you add into that, poverty, or oppression (either perceived or real), you have an intense brew for extremism.
Conservatism lends itself well to this outright because it requires similar ways of thinking.
Milton Friedman lays out four money spending modes, most efficient to least:
a. Spend your own money on yourself.
b. Spend your own money on someone else.
c. Spend someone else’s money on yourself.
d. Spend someone else’s money on someone else (which happens to be how government spends money).
Conservatives would argue that you should spend your own money because you know best what you need. That breaks down so fast it could give me a nose bleed. Conservatives use this tactic to bolster their agenda and too many who hear it, don't catch what the issues are about it.
Truth is we need hybrids of most things in order for a system to work. That's what breaks down with racism too, at least, purity of race type racism. As for spending money, you need a hybrid system of spending your money, spending others, others spending your, and voila! You have a country. One that is functional and can be and remain strong.
If all the moving parts are allowed to work together properly and no one abuses their share of the pie. And therein is what has been going wrong world wide. The belief that free commerce, capitalism run amok, is good. The cream will rise to the top and only those at the top will reap those benefits. That is where government comes in, to hone the process so it is more equal too all.
The natural course is to give to those at the top. Altering that, appears to those at the top and others who vote against their own best interests, see it as a conspiracy. But that is in part what a government is supposed to do. To conspire to make things work, keep the country strong, and increase the quality of living...for all citizens.
This is how the conservative argument always goes. Because the natural course HAS to be altered to protect and save the process, it appears to be a hidden agenda to subvert the natural course of either democracy or capitalism. Mostly, capitalism. The two easily get confused by many.
The concern is getting the balance right, and having a balance to, well, balance. When all the money goes to the top and there isn't any to use, or when a country disproportionately spends the money, skipping over necessary programs and efforts, things begin to break down.
A pure democracy, or communism or socialism for that matter, without other elements involved is going to be dysfunctional. Pure capitalism is a nightmare. While there are those who say democracy shouldn't have any socialism, or capitalism should run free and so then the market will correct its path, in practice that has been found to be untrue.
These concepts can sound great to the uninformed. However they fail if not properly handed and with great damage, without more involved with them to give them the support they need. They can become in fact nightmares for those living within them. Just as purity racism can and frequently has gone so wrong in the past.
That matters little to one who is addicted to cognitive closure, though. Like any junkie hooked on drugs, they can be mean when they don't get their fix, or support, but once satiated with their drug or deep into exercising their beliefs, they are in bliss. Try again to take that away and at some point, bad things will happen, even to the point of sinking a ship and taking down all hands.
We have been seeing this of late quite a bit.
There is one other issue involved in this type of thing. The group. Those who feel successful, feel more independent. Those who feel more frustrated, more abused, adhere more to the group. Extrapolating that out to our current 2016 presidential election, we see a large group of the disenfranchised who are being very vocal, very angry and very frustrated.
They are actually a group that shouldn't be as effective as they are. Much like terrorists in groups like ISIS, or Al Shebab. The similarities there are not in how despicable their actions are but in their need for the group, their similarities in a need for cognitive closure and other elements mentioned above.
On the other side, the Democrats do not feel as downtrodden, as disenfranchised. They too feel the other things of the economy and lack of upward economic progression, but they do not as much feel the need for the group. Intelligence, and a sense of control or success in life, allows one more independence from the group.
This consideration overall has much to do with our present day world. That of terrorists, discontent in difficult and downtrodden parts of the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. Of the American conservative feeling so much desire to vote for someone who says ridiculous things but things they wanted to hear. They want to feel that cognitive closure, that security, that need for the group, that end to their perceived (or real) pain.
We will have to find a way to educate these types of people to understand what it is they find overwhelming, but we will also need to find ways to satisfy their reasonable and necessary needs for security and requirements merely to live, and further to live well, or at least in such a way as they find it fair and reasonable.
The warning here is if you feel a need for this kind of cognitive closure, it can be a warning sign that something is wrong. Some might argue that it also indicates a need for God, deity, community, or even, love. And that has some truth to it. Still, in certain circumstances, and there have been many of these of late, and seriously so, it is a warning.
When I discovered that it really made me think.
I am not an extremist, never have been. I have always, and always have tried, to have an open mind. That would be antithesis to one who is deep into the rapture of cognitive closure.
Cognitive closure gives one a feeling a security, of self assurance. A belief that the world is understandable. Cause and effect are discernible. Clearly discernible. It is an easy way of existence in one sense. It may lead to physical difficulties, it may lead to death. But mentally once you achieve cognitive closure, you are pretty much done. No more thinking is required, because you have arrived.
At that point further information, especially information that is diametrically opposed to the closure, is not only unnecessary, it can cause a very negative reaction. It can cause actions that feel required in order to drown out the contrary view points.
This is an especially attractive condition when one lives in certain environments, be those endemic, or even caused by the individual.
Poverty is a strong precursor. Then to be dashed further down in poverty to where it is life threatening, not only to the individual but to those around them. More especially if it is not just those around them but is happening to a specific group, especially if it is the group the individual is a part of.
It gives one a sense of well being, of being special, elevated, even part of the divine. Thus, if it exists in an environment with religion, it is a heady, and dangerous cocktail of emotion and action.
Another precursor is two fold. Ignorance and unfairness. Ignorance in an individual, or group, who cannot access the information they need to make decisions, or ignorance in being fed incorrect information by a group for a specific political purpose. Or political religious purpose. Unfairness in that it is either perceived or real. If you add into that, poverty, or oppression (either perceived or real), you have an intense brew for extremism.
Conservatism lends itself well to this outright because it requires similar ways of thinking.
Milton Friedman lays out four money spending modes, most efficient to least:
a. Spend your own money on yourself.
b. Spend your own money on someone else.
c. Spend someone else’s money on yourself.
d. Spend someone else’s money on someone else (which happens to be how government spends money).
Conservatives would argue that you should spend your own money because you know best what you need. That breaks down so fast it could give me a nose bleed. Conservatives use this tactic to bolster their agenda and too many who hear it, don't catch what the issues are about it.
Truth is we need hybrids of most things in order for a system to work. That's what breaks down with racism too, at least, purity of race type racism. As for spending money, you need a hybrid system of spending your money, spending others, others spending your, and voila! You have a country. One that is functional and can be and remain strong.
If all the moving parts are allowed to work together properly and no one abuses their share of the pie. And therein is what has been going wrong world wide. The belief that free commerce, capitalism run amok, is good. The cream will rise to the top and only those at the top will reap those benefits. That is where government comes in, to hone the process so it is more equal too all.
The natural course is to give to those at the top. Altering that, appears to those at the top and others who vote against their own best interests, see it as a conspiracy. But that is in part what a government is supposed to do. To conspire to make things work, keep the country strong, and increase the quality of living...for all citizens.
This is how the conservative argument always goes. Because the natural course HAS to be altered to protect and save the process, it appears to be a hidden agenda to subvert the natural course of either democracy or capitalism. Mostly, capitalism. The two easily get confused by many.
The concern is getting the balance right, and having a balance to, well, balance. When all the money goes to the top and there isn't any to use, or when a country disproportionately spends the money, skipping over necessary programs and efforts, things begin to break down.
A pure democracy, or communism or socialism for that matter, without other elements involved is going to be dysfunctional. Pure capitalism is a nightmare. While there are those who say democracy shouldn't have any socialism, or capitalism should run free and so then the market will correct its path, in practice that has been found to be untrue.
These concepts can sound great to the uninformed. However they fail if not properly handed and with great damage, without more involved with them to give them the support they need. They can become in fact nightmares for those living within them. Just as purity racism can and frequently has gone so wrong in the past.
That matters little to one who is addicted to cognitive closure, though. Like any junkie hooked on drugs, they can be mean when they don't get their fix, or support, but once satiated with their drug or deep into exercising their beliefs, they are in bliss. Try again to take that away and at some point, bad things will happen, even to the point of sinking a ship and taking down all hands.
We have been seeing this of late quite a bit.
There is one other issue involved in this type of thing. The group. Those who feel successful, feel more independent. Those who feel more frustrated, more abused, adhere more to the group. Extrapolating that out to our current 2016 presidential election, we see a large group of the disenfranchised who are being very vocal, very angry and very frustrated.
They are actually a group that shouldn't be as effective as they are. Much like terrorists in groups like ISIS, or Al Shebab. The similarities there are not in how despicable their actions are but in their need for the group, their similarities in a need for cognitive closure and other elements mentioned above.
On the other side, the Democrats do not feel as downtrodden, as disenfranchised. They too feel the other things of the economy and lack of upward economic progression, but they do not as much feel the need for the group. Intelligence, and a sense of control or success in life, allows one more independence from the group.
This consideration overall has much to do with our present day world. That of terrorists, discontent in difficult and downtrodden parts of the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. Of the American conservative feeling so much desire to vote for someone who says ridiculous things but things they wanted to hear. They want to feel that cognitive closure, that security, that need for the group, that end to their perceived (or real) pain.
We will have to find a way to educate these types of people to understand what it is they find overwhelming, but we will also need to find ways to satisfy their reasonable and necessary needs for security and requirements merely to live, and further to live well, or at least in such a way as they find it fair and reasonable.
The warning here is if you feel a need for this kind of cognitive closure, it can be a warning sign that something is wrong. Some might argue that it also indicates a need for God, deity, community, or even, love. And that has some truth to it. Still, in certain circumstances, and there have been many of these of late, and seriously so, it is a warning.
Monday, February 1, 2016
Terrorist, Zealot
I was watching The Blacklist last week. A character said something about a criminal they had caught being a Zealot.
A bell went off in my head.
I, we, many of us, have been talking about religious fundamentalists, Muslim terrorists. But I've seen normal citizen Muslim Fundamentalists talking in interviews about how they are the real fundamentalists and how terrorists aren't and have hijacked their Islam and fundamentalism. Terrorists have subverted the citizen's, the true believers, not these charlatan's benign fundamentalism which is not so much a literal interpretation of Islam but a search for the purity that can be found within it.
See, that's what religion is actually about. Finding the spirit of it, the purity within it, the benign and the beautiful. Once you turn religion into something ugly like Daesh has, well, it's an ugly faux religion. Mohammed becomes The Great Satan. You, and others like you Daesh, have done that.
Choosing to select out the most violent and damaging elements in a religion is, as in any religious choosing, just that, a personal choice. A choice to be destructive. Because for a certain selection of individuals it hits the pleasure centers of their brain, configured in such a way through information received and then doted upon, as well as the physical brain structure.
Throughout those many the individuals in these groups, such as Daesh (ISIL, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, etc.), the balance sways from one side to the other whether it is their learnings or the way they are hardwired as to why they are how they are. And within those elements, the intensity of their purpose sways along with it.
So what are these terrorists, other than merely criminals?
There is an historical record of Zealots in the bible and through the historian Josephus.
So why is nobody calling them Zealots? Too much historical theistic baggage associated with them? Because these were originally Christians and not Muslim as are these modern terrorists and so would be seen as offensive? Or does Zealot not fit since Islam didn't even exist back when Zealots did, in Islam being a newer religion, but still one of the major three major harsh, anachronistic desert or Abrahamic religions.
Much as using terms like The Crusade isn't very useful in referring to Islamic references, calling Islamic terrorists Zealots, may very well be incorrect. However in the same vein as George Bush referring to terms like "making a crusade" in trying to irritate terrorists (or in calling Saddam Hussein, "Soddom" or "SaDamn"), so would calling them Zealots be considered offensive to them.
But also and more importantly to the rest of the Muslim world (as we really don't care much if terrorists are offended or not) and I really don't see a need to offend the majority of the Muslim world, most of whom really aren't doing anything wrong.
"According to the Jewish historian Josephus, three main Jewish groups existed at the time of Christ—the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. He also mentions a fourth group called the Zealots who were founded by Judas of Galilee and Zadok the Pharisee. Josephus notes that the Zealots “agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord" (Antiquities 18.1.6)." - GotQuestions.org
These types of shall we call them, nutcases(?), have been around for a long, damn time.
So, what does it matter? It matters because it tells us much about them that has long been documented. These modern Muslim terrorists aren't some new phenomenon like some of us believe. Using suicide vests is. But it's not a new tradition, sacrificing themselves for their beliefs. It's an old tactic using a new technology. Explosives.
"Of importance in New Testament history, the Zealots led a rebellion when Rome introduced imperial cult worship. The Great Jewish Revolt began in A.D. 66. The Zealots successfully overtook Jerusalem, but their revolt was ultimately unsuccessful. In A.D. 70, the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the temple. A remnant of the Zealots then took refuge in Masada." - GotQuestions.org
A bell went off in my head.
I, we, many of us, have been talking about religious fundamentalists, Muslim terrorists. But I've seen normal citizen Muslim Fundamentalists talking in interviews about how they are the real fundamentalists and how terrorists aren't and have hijacked their Islam and fundamentalism. Terrorists have subverted the citizen's, the true believers, not these charlatan's benign fundamentalism which is not so much a literal interpretation of Islam but a search for the purity that can be found within it.
See, that's what religion is actually about. Finding the spirit of it, the purity within it, the benign and the beautiful. Once you turn religion into something ugly like Daesh has, well, it's an ugly faux religion. Mohammed becomes The Great Satan. You, and others like you Daesh, have done that.
Choosing to select out the most violent and damaging elements in a religion is, as in any religious choosing, just that, a personal choice. A choice to be destructive. Because for a certain selection of individuals it hits the pleasure centers of their brain, configured in such a way through information received and then doted upon, as well as the physical brain structure.
Throughout those many the individuals in these groups, such as Daesh (ISIL, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, etc.), the balance sways from one side to the other whether it is their learnings or the way they are hardwired as to why they are how they are. And within those elements, the intensity of their purpose sways along with it.
So what are these terrorists, other than merely criminals?
There is an historical record of Zealots in the bible and through the historian Josephus.
So why is nobody calling them Zealots? Too much historical theistic baggage associated with them? Because these were originally Christians and not Muslim as are these modern terrorists and so would be seen as offensive? Or does Zealot not fit since Islam didn't even exist back when Zealots did, in Islam being a newer religion, but still one of the major three major harsh, anachronistic desert or Abrahamic religions.
Much as using terms like The Crusade isn't very useful in referring to Islamic references, calling Islamic terrorists Zealots, may very well be incorrect. However in the same vein as George Bush referring to terms like "making a crusade" in trying to irritate terrorists (or in calling Saddam Hussein, "Soddom" or "SaDamn"), so would calling them Zealots be considered offensive to them.
But also and more importantly to the rest of the Muslim world (as we really don't care much if terrorists are offended or not) and I really don't see a need to offend the majority of the Muslim world, most of whom really aren't doing anything wrong.
"According to the Jewish historian Josephus, three main Jewish groups existed at the time of Christ—the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. He also mentions a fourth group called the Zealots who were founded by Judas of Galilee and Zadok the Pharisee. Josephus notes that the Zealots “agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord" (Antiquities 18.1.6)." - GotQuestions.org
These types of shall we call them, nutcases(?), have been around for a long, damn time.
So, what does it matter? It matters because it tells us much about them that has long been documented. These modern Muslim terrorists aren't some new phenomenon like some of us believe. Using suicide vests is. But it's not a new tradition, sacrificing themselves for their beliefs. It's an old tactic using a new technology. Explosives.
"Of importance in New Testament history, the Zealots led a rebellion when Rome introduced imperial cult worship. The Great Jewish Revolt began in A.D. 66. The Zealots successfully overtook Jerusalem, but their revolt was ultimately unsuccessful. In A.D. 70, the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the temple. A remnant of the Zealots then took refuge in Masada." - GotQuestions.org
So, the "Masada people", known by that moniker for that terrestrial land formation where the Siege of Masada in 74A.D. occurred. Surrounded by Roman troops it led to the mass suicide of 960 Jewish family residents of Masada as well as the Sicarii rebels and families, at the end of the First Roman\Jewish War.
The Masada victims have been praised and thought very highly of all through history since it happened, for standing by beliefs to the bitter end. In fact mentioning Masada has become shorthand for a positive consideration of sticking with your beliefs to the end, regardless.
The Masada victims have been praised and thought very highly of all through history since it happened, for standing by beliefs to the bitter end. In fact mentioning Masada has become shorthand for a positive consideration of sticking with your beliefs to the end, regardless.
People don't usually mean to take it to you and your family's death.
"Because of their often-violent tactics, the Zealots have been called some of the world’s first terrorists. Though the label is only partially true (not all Zealots were violent), the reputation of Zealots as forceful, aggressive agitators carries a significant lesson for us. Jesus chose Simon the Zealot, a man who likely desired to forcibly remove the Roman government, and He also chose Matthew, a tax collector working for the Roman government. Both Simon and Matthew, though natural enemies, were part of the Twelve. What a beautiful illustration of the peace Jesus brings! Today, God still brings healing and changes lives. Those with a violent past or extremist tendencies can be transformed as God uses them to spread the good news of Christ’s love for all people." - GotQuestions.org
"Good news of Christ's love". Unless those zealots are Muslim, an offshoot of Christianity, which is an offshoot of Judaism and Buddhism.
Overall this tells us a lot about our current terrorists... zealots, the world's Muslim oriented infestation.
Who were the Sacari?
"In 66 CE, at the beginning of the Great Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire, a group of Jewish extremists called the Sicarii overcame the Roman garrison of Masada and settled there. The Sicarii were commanded by Eleazar ben Ya'ir,[3] and in 70 CE they were joined by additional Sicarii and their families expelled from Jerusalem by the Jewish population with whom the Sicarii were in conflict. Shortly thereafter, following the Roman siege of Jerusalem and subsequent destruction of the Second Temple, additional members of the Sicarii and many Jewish families fled Jerusalem and settled on the mountaintop, with the Sicarii using it as a refuge and base for raiding the surrounding countryside.[7][8] The works of Josephus are the sole record of the events that took place during the siege. According to modern interpretations of Josephus, the Sicarii were an extremist splinter group of the Zealots and were equally antagonistic to both Romans and other Jewish groups.[9] It was the Zealots, in contrast to the Sicarii, who carried the main burden of the rebellion, which opposed Roman rule of Judea (as the Roman province of Iudaea, its Latinized name).
According to Josephus, on Passover, the Sicarii raided Ein-Gedi, a nearby Jewish settlement, and killed 700 of its inhabitants.[10][11][12]" - Wikipedia
Kind of an annoying people by anyone's standard. Unless I suppose, you were one of them but even then I bet some of them thought they were annoying.
The point of all this is that it tells us what our modern day version of the zealot is like, who they are internally and, the extent to which they will go for their cause. However ridiculous and unrealistic it may be. That makes them dangerous and frequently, unreasonable. Not crazy as some claim. But focused. When you focus on something unreal, unrealistic, that really creates a problem. For yourself and everyone you come into contact with.
A problem we have seen and continue to see in American conservative and religious groups.
They do things that are counter productive for others and for themselves, and they break things. The current Republican party is a prime example of political dysfunctional function and something they have broken.
They do things that are counter productive for others and for themselves, and they break things. The current Republican party is a prime example of political dysfunctional function and something they have broken.
Some great strides in recent decades have come about in things like hostage negotiation and negotiating through difficult and dire circumstances. However look how things have gone in the Middle East in that vein. Now consider zealots, coming from those people in that region. Our own defective conservatives and their issues in America are weak by comparison. So using many of these new techniques is questionable at best. We have taken here in America basically to containing them until they fizzle out, then collect them. It's better than situations like Ruby Ridge, or Waco, Texas. When it came be done.
Finally what this history of dysfunction, of destructive fundamentalism, of zealotry tells us is just as I'd suspected and as many others do. Ultimately they are doomed to failure.
It may take special weapons and tactics and I do not mean what you see in movies. Not what you might be thinking of, visualizing. But perhaps something we haven't even thought of yet. What beats people like this is choking them off until they can see their beliefs die, until others see those beliefs die, or in converting them.
Which is typically most easily done with lead moving at high velocities or in very fast burning substances rated at over 7,000 feet per second. That is to say, explosives, think drone attacks in the Middle East, drones which I must say, I am against probably about 90% of the times they are used as collateral damage in killing civilians for me, is unacceptable.
It may take special weapons and tactics and I do not mean what you see in movies. Not what you might be thinking of, visualizing. But perhaps something we haven't even thought of yet. What beats people like this is choking them off until they can see their beliefs die, until others see those beliefs die, or in converting them.
Which is typically most easily done with lead moving at high velocities or in very fast burning substances rated at over 7,000 feet per second. That is to say, explosives, think drone attacks in the Middle East, drones which I must say, I am against probably about 90% of the times they are used as collateral damage in killing civilians for me, is unacceptable.
All this effort by terrorists, all this destruction, the killing of so many innocents and so many of their own soldiers, of their own Muslim believers, all for them merely to fail in the end, or sooner.
We can see it. They can even see it. The point is that none of that matters because they will still do it.
What that means to us is that we have to finish them off. Because they cannot find a sane conclusion on their own. In their seeking their most sane conclusion, to the rest of us it simply appears, insane.
Thanks for that religion, youth, greed, disparate in economic status, and so on. Because much of what terrorists are after and what has ignited their anger, bitterness and actions, are not necessarily what it seems, or what they claim. In the end they are just as stupid and deluded as many of the rest of us.
We just don't usually go around killing people becuase we're pissed off, or blame it on religion. We need to see them accurately, understand their motivations. Their actual motivations. And for that we can see back over time how this can come to be and how we can wipe this mind worm (implanted idea that grows, evolves and cannot easily be rid of) religious infection that overflows out onto other areas in the Human Experience.
But initially it all begins in one fundemental thought. When that thought is not a good one, or even if it is a good one, it can lead to some very negative and most of the time, unnecessary consequences.
We can see it. They can even see it. The point is that none of that matters because they will still do it.
What that means to us is that we have to finish them off. Because they cannot find a sane conclusion on their own. In their seeking their most sane conclusion, to the rest of us it simply appears, insane.
Thanks for that religion, youth, greed, disparate in economic status, and so on. Because much of what terrorists are after and what has ignited their anger, bitterness and actions, are not necessarily what it seems, or what they claim. In the end they are just as stupid and deluded as many of the rest of us.
We just don't usually go around killing people becuase we're pissed off, or blame it on religion. We need to see them accurately, understand their motivations. Their actual motivations. And for that we can see back over time how this can come to be and how we can wipe this mind worm (implanted idea that grows, evolves and cannot easily be rid of) religious infection that overflows out onto other areas in the Human Experience.
But initially it all begins in one fundemental thought. When that thought is not a good one, or even if it is a good one, it can lead to some very negative and most of the time, unnecessary consequences.
Think...Masada.
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
What is it (should it be) to be an American?
Thanks to The History Place web site for this.
I've heard some people asking this week, just who are we as Americans now? Who do we think we are? Right wing extremism, extreme fundemental, evangelical Christianity and Republicans confused in the implosion of their party as well as our having now to deal with a different kind of enemy in religious if not Islamic terrorism and the rise of groups as an enemy over that of nation states, has diluted what it is to be an American.
In this speech just replace Britain for France. Or simply wait, as I'm sure there will be attacks forthcoming again on the UK, sadly. Transpose the elements of WWII for today's struggles and today's events and players. But the core should sound familiar. And if it doesn't, you need to question your orientation today.
From Harold Ickes - May 18, 1941
I've heard some people asking this week, just who are we as Americans now? Who do we think we are? Right wing extremism, extreme fundemental, evangelical Christianity and Republicans confused in the implosion of their party as well as our having now to deal with a different kind of enemy in religious if not Islamic terrorism and the rise of groups as an enemy over that of nation states, has diluted what it is to be an American.
In this speech just replace Britain for France. Or simply wait, as I'm sure there will be attacks forthcoming again on the UK, sadly. Transpose the elements of WWII for today's struggles and today's events and players. But the core should sound familiar. And if it doesn't, you need to question your orientation today.
From Harold Ickes - May 18, 1941
This remarkable speech was delivered during an I am an American Day gathering in New York's Central Park by Harold Ickes, President Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior. It came at a perilous moment in history, May of 1941, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seemed headed toward possible world domination.
By this time, countries that had fallen to the Nazis included Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and areas in North Africa. Airfields and cities in England were now under ferocious air attack from the German Luftwaffe while wolf-packs of Nazi U-boats attempted to blockade the British Isles.
Many Americans, however, still questioned the wisdom and necessity of direct U.S. involvement in the European war. Pacifist sentiment was steadily growing, while at the same time Fascism was sometimes referred to as the "wave of the future" by respected Americans, buoyed in part by the ceaseless barrage of highly effective anti-democratic propaganda emanating from the Fascist countries of Europe including Germany.
In this speech, Harold Ickes counters that propaganda, defines what it means to be a free American, and offers a blunt assessment of the perilous future the United States would face standing alone against a victorious Hitler.
Here it is:
I want to ask a few simple questions. And then I shall answer them.
What has happened to our vaunted idealism? Why have some of us been behaving like scared chickens? Where is the million-throated, democratic voice of America?
For years it has been dinned into us that we are a weak nation; that we are an inefficient people; that we are simple-minded. For years we have been told that we are beaten, decayed, and that no part of the world belongs to us any longer.
Some amongst us have fallen for this carefully pickled tripe. Some amongst us have fallen for this calculated poison. Some amongst us have begun to preach that the "wave of the future" has passed over us and left us a wet, dead fish.
They shout--from public platforms in printed pages, through the microphones--that it is futile to oppose the "wave of the future." They cry that we Americans, we free Americans nourished on Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, hold moth-eaten ideas. They exclaim that there is no room for free men in the world any more and that only the slaves will inherit the earth. America--the America of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln and Walt Whitman--they say, is waiting for the undertaker and all the hopes and aspirations that have gone into the making of America are dead too.
However, my fellow citizens, this is not the real point of the story. The real point--the shameful point--is that many of us are listening to them and some of us almost believe them.
I say that it is time for the great American people to raise its voice and cry out in mighty triumph what it is to be an American. And why it is that only Americans, with the aid of our brave allies--yes, let's call them "allies"--the British, can and will build the only future worth having. I mean a future, not of concentration camps, not of physical torture and mental straitjackets, not of sawdust bread or of sawdust Caesars--I mean a future when free men will live free lives in dignity and in security.
This tide of the future, the democratic future, is ours. It is ours if we show ourselves worthy of our culture and of our heritage.
But make no mistake about it; the tide of the democratic future is not like the ocean tide--regular, relentless, and inevitable. Nothing in human affairs is mechanical or inevitable. Nor are Americans mechanical. They are very human indeed.
What constitutes an American? Not color nor race nor religion. Not the pedigree of his family nor the place of his birth. Not the coincidence of his citizenship. Not his social status nor his bank account. Not his trade nor his profession. An American is one who loves justice and believes in the dignity of man. An American is one who will fight for his freedom and that of his neighbor. An American is one who will sacrifice property, ease and security in order that he and his children may retain the rights of free men. An American is one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.
Americans have always known how to fight for their rights and their way of life. Americans are not afraid to fight. They fight joyously in a just cause.
We Americans know that freedom, like peace, is indivisible. We cannot retain our liberty if three-fourths of the world is enslaved. Brutality, injustice and slavery, if practiced as dictators would have them, universally and systematically, in the long run would destroy us as surely as a fire raging in our nearby neighbor's house would burn ours if we didn't help to put out his.
If we are to retain our own freedom, we must do everything within our power to aid Britain.
We must also do everything to restore to the conquered peoples their freedom. This means the Germans too.
Such a program, if you stop to think, is selfishness on our part. It is the sort of enlightened selfishness that makes the wheels of history go around. It is the sort of enlightened selfishness that wins victories.
Do you know why? Because we cannot live in the world alone, without friends and without allies. If Britain should be defeated, then the totalitarian undertaker will prepare to hang crepe on the door of our own independence.
Perhaps you wonder how this could come about? Perhaps you have heard "them"--the wavers of the future--cry, with calculated malice, that even if Britain were defeated we could live alone and defend ourselves single handed, even against the whole world.
I tell you that this is a cold blooded lie.
We would be alone in the world, facing an unscrupulous military-economic bloc that would dominate all of Europe, all of Africa, most of Asia, and perhaps even Russia and South America. Even to do that, we would have to spend most of our national income on tanks and guns and planes and ships. Nor would this be all. We would have to live perpetually as an armed camp, maintaining a huge standing army, a gigantic air force, two vast navies. And we could not do this without endangering our freedom, our democracy, our way of life.
Perhaps such is the America "they"--the wavers of the future--foresee. Perhaps such is the America that a certain aviator, with his contempt for democracy, would prefer. Perhaps such is the America that a certain Senator desires. Perhaps such is the America that a certain mail order executive longs for.
But a perpetually militarized, isolated and impoverished America is not the America that our fathers came here to build.
It is not the America that has been the dream and the hope of countless generations in all parts of the world.
It is not the America that one hundred and thirty million of us would care to live in.
The continued security of our country demands that we aid the enslaved millions of Europe--yes, even of Germany--to win back their liberty and independence. I am convinced that if we do not embark upon such a program we will lose our own freedom.
We should be clear on this point. What is convulsing the world today is not merely another old-fashioned war. It is a counter revolution against our ideas and ideals, against our sense of justice and our human values.
Three systems today compete for world domination. Communism, fascism, and democracy are struggling for social-economic-political world control. As the conflict sharpens, it becomes clear that the other two, fascism and communism, are merging into one. They have one common enemy, democracy. They have one common goal, the destruction of democracy.
This is why this war is not an ordinary war. It is not a conflict for markets or territories. It is a desperate struggle for the possession of the souls of men.
This is why the British are not fighting for themselves alone. They are fighting to preserve freedom for mankind. For the moment, the battleground is the British Isles. But they are fighting our war; they are the first soldiers in trenches that are also our front-line trenches.
In this world war of ideas and of loyalties we believers in democracy must do two things. We must unite our forces to form one great democratic international. We must offer a clear program to freedom-loving peoples throughout the world.
Freedom-loving men and women in every land must organize and tighten their ranks. The masses everywhere must be helped to fight their oppressors and conquerors.
We, free, democratic Americans are in a position to help. We know that the spirit of freedom never dies. We know that men have fought and bled for freedom since time immemorial. We realize that the liberty-loving German people are only temporarily enslaved. We do not doubt that the Italian people are looking forward to the appearance of another Garibaldi. We know how the Poles have for centuries maintained a heroic resistance against tyranny. We remember the brave struggle of the Hungarians under Kossuth and other leaders. We recall the heroic figure of Masaryk and the gallant fight for freedom of the Czech people. The story of the Yugoslavs', especially the Serbs' blows for liberty and independence is a saga of extraordinary heroism. The Greeks will stand again at Thermopylae, as they have in the past. The annals of our American sister-republics, too, are glorious with freedom-inspiring exploits. The noble figure of Simon Bolivar, the great South American liberator, has naturally been compared with that of George Washington.
No, liberty never dies. The Genghis Khans come and go. The Attilas come and go. The Hitlers flash and sputter out. But freedom endures.
Destroy a whole generation of those who have known how to walk with heads erect in God's free air, and the next generation will rise against the oppressors and restore freedom. Today in Europe, the Nazi Attila may gloat that he has destroyed democracy. He is wrong. In small farmhouses all over Central Europe, in the shops of Germany and Italy, on the docks of Holland and Belgium, freedom still lives in the hearts of men. It will endure like a hardy tree gone into the wintertime, awaiting the spring.
And, like spring, spreading from the South into Scandinavia, the democratic revolution will come. And men with democratic hearts will experience comradeship across artificial boundaries.
These men and women, hundreds of millions of them, now in bondage or threatened with slavery, are our comrades and our allies. They are only waiting for our leadership and our encouragement, for the spark that we can supply.
These hundreds of millions, of liberty-loving people, now oppressed, constitute the greatest sixth column in history. They have the will to destroy the Nazi gangsters.
We have always helped in struggles for human freedom. And we will help again. But our hundreds of millions of liberty-loving allies would despair if we did not provide aid and encouragement. The quicker we help them the sooner this dreadful revolution will be over. We cannot, we must not, we dare not delay much longer.
The fight for Britain is in its crucial stages. We must give the British everything we have. And by everything, I mean everything needed to beat the life out of our common enemy.
The second step must be to aid and encourage our friends and allies everywhere. And by everywhere I mean Europe and Asia and Africa and America.
And finally, the most important of all, we Americans must gird spiritually for the battle. We must dispel the fog of uncertainty and vacillation. We must greet with raucous laughter the corroding arguments of our appeasers and fascists. They doubt democracy. We affirm it triumphantly so that all the world may hear:
Here in America we have something so worth living for that it is worth dying for! The so-called "wave of the future" is but the slimy backwash of the past. We have not heaved from our necks the tyrant's crushing heel, only to stretch our necks out again for its weight. Not only will we fight for democracy, we will make it more worth fighting for. Under our free institutions, we will work for the good of mankind, including Hitler's victims in Germany, so that all may have plenty and security.
We American democrats know that when good will prevails among men there will be a world of plenty and a world of security.
In the words of Winston Churchill, "Are we downhearted," No, we arc not! But someone is downhearted! Witness the terrified flight of Hess, Hitler's Number Three Man. And listen to this--listen carefully:
"The British nation can be counted upon to carry through to victory any struggle that it once enters upon no matter how long such a struggle may last or however great the sacrifices that may be necessary or whatever the means that have to be employed; and all this even though the actual military equipment at hand may be utterly inadequate when compared with that of other nations."
Do you know who wrote that? Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. And do you know who took down that dictation? Rudolf Hess.
We will help to make Hitler's prophecy come true. We will help brave England drive back the hordes from Hell who besiege her and then we will join for the destruction of savage and blood-thirsty dictators everywhere. But we must be firm and decisive. We must know our will and make it felt. And we must hurry.
Harold Ickes - May 18, 1941
Monday, November 16, 2015
Death to the Great Satan of Islamic Terrorism!
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| I took this shot at Blarney Castle which is perfect related to terrorists. The delusional can't see the forest for the trees essentially leading to stupidity. |
Death to Abdelhamid Abaaoud coordinator to the Paris attack and multiple failed attacks this year, as well as Charlie Hebdo. Human filth, still walking the earth, but not for much longer.
I would like to apologize ahead of time to good Muslims faithful to their Islamic beliefs and roots.
Those of you who disagree with my posting semblances of your prophet but who would never consider killing me over it, I mean no offense.
I'm also glad to see Muslim leaders are speaking out against groups like ISIS\ISIL and other losers of such ill quality and low substance.
IF that is your belief however, then we do have a problem and perhaps we do need a religious war where religion will finally be wiped out. Just know that I have no need to end Islam. Religions in general perhaps, but only through speaking openly about my beliefs in non violent, non lethal ways.
Understand that I do not have to respect your beliefs, your religion, your God or your Allah.
No one does!
Want more?
I would like to apologize ahead of time to good Muslims faithful to their Islamic beliefs and roots.
Those of you who disagree with my posting semblances of your prophet but who would never consider killing me over it, I mean no offense.
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| Not in My Name campaign |
I'm posting these things because of those Muslims who will kill over things like a damn cartoon, thinking that all people should follow Islam.
Even though I know the truth, it gives me no right to kill believers. And vice versa, terrorists.
I'm perfectly happy to leave theists alone to live and pursue happiness, to build calluses on their foreheads, to wear out tiny rugs and knee cartilage. Unless it impedes my pursuit of happiness through their pursuit of happiness.
We are a disparate world that needs to learn to live together, not to kill each other.
Western countries admittedly have a culpability in all this mess as has been shown. But that does not excuse these killings. Even if they are not religiously motivated, they are being done by Muslims nonetheless. The world is a rough place that doesn't need innocent people being slaughtered just because your people are having a rough time of it. Heartless? Perhaps. But there are other ways and attacking people you only perceive to have done you harm is not one of them.
One has only to respect that you have the right to believe in your delusions, just as we all do.
No one has a right to force their beliefs on another, that's a kind of rape. If you belong to a religion that teachers otherwise, you are the one in league with Satan, the Devil, with Evil incarnate. Nearly all serial murders are found to have a strict religious upbringing. Then you have also obviously acquired quite a few sociopaths.
Sex, alcohol, drugs, co-mingling of the sexes, may all seem bad to you but I question if you simply don't get enough of it and so you are basically just pissed off all your life. I would be. It's been shown that too restrictive religions lead to personality problems. What those things require in life is building borders and mechanisms to handle life as an adult, not hiding behind religion, fearing the world.
In killing innocents Islamic terrorists are basically claiming that Muhammad is evil, a joke.
Why would they do that? Why DO they do that? Because, that is what terrorism is. Fundamentally, an alternate and real definition of violent Islam.
Je suis Charlie!
Je suis Paris!
Je suis Beirut!
Je suis... all victims of terror!
Je suis... all victims of terror!
And all the other places terrorists have attacked
where innocents have died and been maimed.
Terrorists attacking the innocent
are mentally and socially damaged people
attacking the entire modern human race.
Backward people pushing a backward and warped agenda.
I suspect Paris and all of France are feeling the same thing toward terrorists about this current attack.
Terrorists attacking the innocent
are mentally and socially damaged people
attacking the entire modern human race.
Backward people pushing a backward and warped agenda.
Want more?
See my blog from this weekend after the Paris attack.
Islamic Terrorism a World Wide Social Cancer - Paris
Islamic Terrorism a World Wide Social Cancer - Paris
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| http://www.crumbproducts.com/ |
If this stuff makes you want to kill someone over your God, Allah, or more likely your interpretation of you ancient religion you refuse to allow to evolve in order to join the rest of the wold, you are the problem.
Grow up! Try evolving into a mature adults and understand things as they are, not as you wish them to be.
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaaba |
Don't get me wrong. Christianity and Judaism is just as silly a religion.
Go off in a corner and reflect on your mistake. Stop listening to your religious leader because obviously if you are thinking that way he, and you, are idiots plain and simple.
If you want a "Caliphate" that never existed so you can live as if you won the lotto to do whatever you want, then you have the problem.
You are the one needing to be destroyed.
And you will be in the end. Evil is cyclical and your cycle is running out.
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| http://www.charliehebdo.fr/index.html |
I don't care about you if you adhere to beliefs of a terrorist.
I don't care that you're offended.
I don't care that you feel there is a make believe war against you or your holidays or your religion.
I don't care what you think if you are talking about nonsense your favorite nutcases have dreamed up.
I don't care that you think your God or religion says you can hurt people or kill them.
I care about real people, really being hurt.
I care about real pain and real suffering, not perceived pain and not perceived suffering.
I care about the poor who have no money or food or healthcare.
I don't care about the rich who are sad they will have less money for others to have something at all, when it will not affect the rich at all in any real substantive way.
I care about reality.
I care about people. Not your luxuries in life when others don't have because you do. Or when others are dying because of your God, or your buddies who like to kill and enjoy the benefits of power over others who are not of your clan, cult, tribe or nonsense belief system.
So I guess I do care. I just don't much care about you.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Islamic Terrorism a World Wide Social Cancer - Paris
I'm very pleased to hear Muslims speaking out against terrorism after the attack in Paris on November 13, 2015, Friday the 13th.
I am myself half Czechoslovakian, half Irish. I feel a close tie to Europe and just spent a couple of weeks in Ireland in September for my birthday. I feel these attacks close to my heart.
Je suis Charlie! Je suis Paris! And Beirut! And all the other places terrorists have attacked where innocents have died and been maimed.
A word about those who shoot down people changing their Facebook photo to exhibit the French flag, or some other small token of French support. Stop shooting them down to make yourself feel superior! Anything helps! Something is more than nothing. Talking about how we can do more is best, but chastising people for meaning well, does nobody any good.
Terrorists are by definition unimportant people who have found a way to make themselves feel important, while they never really are and never really can or will be. Truly being an important person takes thought and working with a system, not trying to kill it through murder and mayhem.
Terrorism is the greatest social cancer we have. The attack in Paris Friday night was horrendous, cowardly, the result of tiny minds who don't deserve to breathe the same air as those they attacked.
Let's start with wishing the human trash, "Jihadi John" Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British militant, a not so fond farewell.
Feel free to burn in your own personal Hell, pal.
They deserve no quarter and they love their misplaced martyrdom.
I have had enough of religion and especially religious extremism. Even more so that of those who use religious concepts for purposes of greed or pleasure. Attacking innocent people gives terrorists pleasure. They go against their own religion, their own beliefs and they don't even understand that. Or how religion or evolution works. They especially, as most theists, do not understand social evolution or religious evolution.
I spent my entire life studying religion having started out Catholic and ending up an atheist who uses Buddhism as a guide in life, as well as Aikido. Wrap you head around that one. I wrote a Horror \ Sci Fi book titled, Death of heaven which tells the story of a world and a human race sorely mistaken on religion and our history where the belief and history of religion comes crashing down with all due pain and intensity. Video Trailer.
That gives you a little background on me and where I'm coming from. Religion to me now seems truly silly and killing over it, even more so. You don't kill innocents. I'm against that be you serial murderer, terrorist or America.
I don't think for instance, any drone strike should ever happen without 100% being sure no innocents die. All terrorists do is temporarily scare a few people, and then piss off a lot. It makes people angry to be unfairly attacked. You're not supporting your cause. If you think your prophet is telling you to do that, you're wrong, he's wrong, your religion is wrong.
Terrorism is used in order to get something when your army is too small to get what your people want. But what your people want is untenable to the rest of the world and so in the end, you will lose. Just kill yourself now and save us all a lot of time and trouble. And more death. Or get your act together and play nice and be in the world rather than against it. Only a religion would teach that.
It will be a great shock I'm sure when Islamic terrorists martyr themselves and then arrive in heaven only to realize it was all a sham. Not really though. After all, how can they be surprised to find that when they die, nothingness?
Religion exists, what they teach in general does not. Which makes Islamic terrorism even stupider.
This isn't about all Muslims or Islam itself. Though it has something to do with it.
I am myself half Czechoslovakian, half Irish. I feel a close tie to Europe and just spent a couple of weeks in Ireland in September for my birthday. I feel these attacks close to my heart.
Je suis Charlie! Je suis Paris! And Beirut! And all the other places terrorists have attacked where innocents have died and been maimed.
I do not have to respect your beliefs, your religion, your God or your Allah. No one does. One has only to respect that you have the right to believe in your delusions, just as we all do. No one has a right to force their beliefs on another and if you belong to a religion that teachers otherwise, you are the one in league with Satan, the Devil, with Evil. Islamic terrorists in killing innocents are therefore saying that Muhammad is evil, a joke.
Why should they want to do that?
A word about those who shoot down people changing their Facebook photo to exhibit the French flag, or some other small token of French support. Stop shooting them down to make yourself feel superior! Anything helps! Something is more than nothing. Talking about how we can do more is best, but chastising people for meaning well, does nobody any good.
Terrorists are by definition unimportant people who have found a way to make themselves feel important, while they never really are and never really can or will be. Truly being an important person takes thought and working with a system, not trying to kill it through murder and mayhem.
Terrorism is the greatest social cancer we have. The attack in Paris Friday night was horrendous, cowardly, the result of tiny minds who don't deserve to breathe the same air as those they attacked.
Let's start with wishing the human trash, "Jihadi John" Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British militant, a not so fond farewell.
Feel free to burn in your own personal Hell, pal.
They deserve no quarter and they love their misplaced martyrdom.
I have had enough of religion and especially religious extremism. Even more so that of those who use religious concepts for purposes of greed or pleasure. Attacking innocent people gives terrorists pleasure. They go against their own religion, their own beliefs and they don't even understand that. Or how religion or evolution works. They especially, as most theists, do not understand social evolution or religious evolution.
I spent my entire life studying religion having started out Catholic and ending up an atheist who uses Buddhism as a guide in life, as well as Aikido. Wrap you head around that one. I wrote a Horror \ Sci Fi book titled, Death of heaven which tells the story of a world and a human race sorely mistaken on religion and our history where the belief and history of religion comes crashing down with all due pain and intensity. Video Trailer.
That gives you a little background on me and where I'm coming from. Religion to me now seems truly silly and killing over it, even more so. You don't kill innocents. I'm against that be you serial murderer, terrorist or America.
I don't think for instance, any drone strike should ever happen without 100% being sure no innocents die. All terrorists do is temporarily scare a few people, and then piss off a lot. It makes people angry to be unfairly attacked. You're not supporting your cause. If you think your prophet is telling you to do that, you're wrong, he's wrong, your religion is wrong.
Terrorism is used in order to get something when your army is too small to get what your people want. But what your people want is untenable to the rest of the world and so in the end, you will lose. Just kill yourself now and save us all a lot of time and trouble. And more death. Or get your act together and play nice and be in the world rather than against it. Only a religion would teach that.
It will be a great shock I'm sure when Islamic terrorists martyr themselves and then arrive in heaven only to realize it was all a sham. Not really though. After all, how can they be surprised to find that when they die, nothingness?
Religion exists, what they teach in general does not. Which makes Islamic terrorism even stupider.
This isn't about all Muslims or Islam itself. Though it has something to do with it.
You can have the bible according to Mickey Mouse with nothing violent in it, and you'd still have violent people using it as a justification for their sickly desired actions.
These religions I'll grant you, these Desert Religions born of hard times, hard people in an area allowing anonymity in migrating about for thousands of years, in having created religions that are death oriented to begin with, are much like mind worms with questionable teachings that just won't die.
Yes, religion needs to go away and it will as we mature as a race of beings. It was apparently necessary for a very long time, though. We need to stop kowtowing to the concept of religion and make it fit our modern mold of non violence and scientific based thinking.
Religion is here for now and people are infected with it. They choose how to make it be productive, in a useful social adhering way, or a way useful only to specific individuals in a violent and disgusting way to support their desires to be more than they are.
Religion isn't the root problem here, really. It just seems that way as a justification for questionable acts. If the Quran didn't exist, they'd use a missile manual they found in the wild that some Russian dropped or they'd find a way for Buddhism to be violent. Or something else. These are people who want to do what they want to do, regardless of what their religion says.
Let's not let us off the hook on this because of their religion that these terrorists have used as a crutch to affect their pathetic and sad purposes. And remember, if you get angry and not terrorized, they lose. And yet in a way, they win, in perpetrating their anger and violent beliefs, their us against them and they are the demon paradigm.
These religions I'll grant you, these Desert Religions born of hard times, hard people in an area allowing anonymity in migrating about for thousands of years, in having created religions that are death oriented to begin with, are much like mind worms with questionable teachings that just won't die.
People pick and choose in their religion and these nut cases choose to force it into violent forms.
Yes, religion needs to go away and it will as we mature as a race of beings. It was apparently necessary for a very long time, though. We need to stop kowtowing to the concept of religion and make it fit our modern mold of non violence and scientific based thinking.
Religion is here for now and people are infected with it. They choose how to make it be productive, in a useful social adhering way, or a way useful only to specific individuals in a violent and disgusting way to support their desires to be more than they are.
Religion isn't the root problem here, really. It just seems that way as a justification for questionable acts. If the Quran didn't exist, they'd use a missile manual they found in the wild that some Russian dropped or they'd find a way for Buddhism to be violent. Or something else. These are people who want to do what they want to do, regardless of what their religion says.
However this is also very much a socio-economic disease perpetrated by first world countries abusing this region for many decades because of their ignorance and backward ways that we have utilized for our benefit and finally it's come back to bite us all.
It really was only a matter of time.
Let's not let us off the hook on this because of their religion that these terrorists have used as a crutch to affect their pathetic and sad purposes. And remember, if you get angry and not terrorized, they lose. And yet in a way, they win, in perpetrating their anger and violent beliefs, their us against them and they are the demon paradigm.
Someone posted this meme today. I'm sure they meant well and I'm sure they are angry. So am I. Although I pretty much agree with this meme, even I found it offensive. This simply isn't how to do this. It's not accepting responsibility for it either, to post anonymously. It's not being brave. It's just not useful. It satiates in the same vein that mentally small people who become terrorists are satiated by their killing and martyrdom.
Part of my charter in here on my blog is looking forward, understanding and fixing what is broken. Or at least openly discussing it.
So I modified this meme and posted it, taking full responsibility for it.
When I did, I got a chill in the consideration of what this could entail. I posted it with hashtags on the three top terror related and Islamic tags. I don't think I'm anybody. I'm nobody. Just like the terrorists. A nobody. But as things are today, a silly video someone puts out gets millions of hits in a day unexpectedly, or someone says something offhandedly and they find themselves on an international news or media show.
We never know anymore who will get their fifteen minutes or more of fame. I'm nobody but just like terrorists, should they come at me they could turn a nobody into a somebody overnight and yet, my name would live on and theirs? They name would fade into a sorry past of themselves, their family, their history, into the nothing they built themselves into being.
I suddenly thought of Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's excellent novel, Slaughterhouse Five and his demise, his lifelong knowledge all his life of how it would all end for him...at a lecture he would one day give in his future. I do hope this doesn't lead to my carrying a gun forever from now on, or dying at a book signing some day because of some violent deluded faux Islamic activist.
Even if we don't like the tune.
And good grief, stop support shaming!
Remember slut shaming? Now we have supporter shaming....stop it.
Those who shoot down people changing their Facebook photo to exhibit the French flag, or making some other small token of French support, stop shooting them down in order to make yourself feel superior!
Anything helps!
Something is more than nothing.
Talking about how we can do more is best, but chastising people for meaning well, for exhibiting support in any small or large way, does nobody any good. If you have suggestions on how to support in better ways, fine, share them, but share them in a positive supportive way. Not in ways that make people not want to show support. The more people who are obviously on the side of good, of the victims, is good.
We cannot know everything (as in the Beirut attack), we cannot do everything. Everyone can support in their own way. Some are not as brave as others, does that make their efforts worthless when their small token or sign of support may inspire someone who makes a far greater effort? No. All efforts are efforts and affect he overall zeitgeist of support.
If you have support shamed, consider yourself duly shamed.
#ISLAM #Terrorism #ISIS
Part of my charter in here on my blog is looking forward, understanding and fixing what is broken. Or at least openly discussing it.
So I modified this meme and posted it, taking full responsibility for it.
When I did, I got a chill in the consideration of what this could entail. I posted it with hashtags on the three top terror related and Islamic tags. I don't think I'm anybody. I'm nobody. Just like the terrorists. A nobody. But as things are today, a silly video someone puts out gets millions of hits in a day unexpectedly, or someone says something offhandedly and they find themselves on an international news or media show.
We never know anymore who will get their fifteen minutes or more of fame. I'm nobody but just like terrorists, should they come at me they could turn a nobody into a somebody overnight and yet, my name would live on and theirs? They name would fade into a sorry past of themselves, their family, their history, into the nothing they built themselves into being.
I suddenly thought of Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's excellent novel, Slaughterhouse Five and his demise, his lifelong knowledge all his life of how it would all end for him...at a lecture he would one day give in his future. I do hope this doesn't lead to my carrying a gun forever from now on, or dying at a book signing some day because of some violent deluded faux Islamic activist.
But we have to stand up to these mindsets, these people, this kind of thing.
If you want to have a religion in these times it cannot contain beliefs or actions like in saying, no one can draw a picture of your religious leader, saint or prophet. You certainly have no right to kill someone over your religious beliefs.
And you sure as hell have no right to kill someone over a God Damned cartoon! What are you? Two years old, with a gun, or bomb?
And so I put my name on the redone meme.
If you want to have a religion in these times it cannot contain beliefs or actions like in saying, no one can draw a picture of your religious leader, saint or prophet. You certainly have no right to kill someone over your religious beliefs.
And you sure as hell have no right to kill someone over a God Damned cartoon! What are you? Two years old, with a gun, or bomb?
And so I put my name on the redone meme.
I accidently posted the wrong one at first and now that is out there forever too even though I quickly took it down and put up the right one (a change from having labeled it as JZMurdock.com and then instead to Murdockinations.com going from my personal web site to my blog).
I thought giving my name so directly was just making it too easy for them and instead I offered a location where people could post for or against me to mouth off to me online and from anywhere if they feel like it.
Better to yell at me here than shoot someone in their proximity. At least it has the potential for that.
Artists, cartoonists, journalists and comics are not violent.
Terrorists are.
It is the job of the artistic and journalistic communities to disrupt our status quo when it is incorrect or ignorant. But they do not kill or harm people. If people are mentally harmed by them it is an issue within those individuals or their community. That does not mean they should take up arms and harm other human beings.
There is a biblical phrase, "an eye for an eye". You do not retaliate unduly, but appropriately. I would throw away the ancient and juvenile biblical form altogether. Retaliation is ridiculous. Appropriate action is sane and intelligent, toward the goal of achieving a peaceful status quo.
It is our artist's and journalist's job to open our eyes.
To non-Muslims, do not group them all together.
Muslim's, do not be a part of the problem.
It our job as individuals and members of society and the human race to open our eyes. To see reality through the filter of life, not just history. Especially when you come to learn how much history, even biblical history is inaccurate, and how it no longer fits the world today.
Parts of it surely do, but you have to pick your way through and see things in a way many times in order to make it appropriate. Which calls into question the entire endeavor. It is best not to harm others in your pursuit therefore, of what path you have chosen through you own religious tome and current theists leader's interpretation of said tome. As with the physician's pledge, do no harm.
Better to yell at me here than shoot someone in their proximity. At least it has the potential for that.
Artists, cartoonists, journalists and comics are not violent.
Terrorists are.
It is the job of the artistic and journalistic communities to disrupt our status quo when it is incorrect or ignorant. But they do not kill or harm people. If people are mentally harmed by them it is an issue within those individuals or their community. That does not mean they should take up arms and harm other human beings.
There is a biblical phrase, "an eye for an eye". You do not retaliate unduly, but appropriately. I would throw away the ancient and juvenile biblical form altogether. Retaliation is ridiculous. Appropriate action is sane and intelligent, toward the goal of achieving a peaceful status quo.
It is our artist's and journalist's job to open our eyes.
To non-Muslims, do not group them all together.
Muslim's, do not be a part of the problem.
It our job as individuals and members of society and the human race to open our eyes. To see reality through the filter of life, not just history. Especially when you come to learn how much history, even biblical history is inaccurate, and how it no longer fits the world today.
Parts of it surely do, but you have to pick your way through and see things in a way many times in order to make it appropriate. Which calls into question the entire endeavor. It is best not to harm others in your pursuit therefore, of what path you have chosen through you own religious tome and current theists leader's interpretation of said tome. As with the physician's pledge, do no harm.
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| My reworked, more positive and better meme |
Sometimes we have to stand up and face the music.
Even if we don't like the tune.
And good grief, stop support shaming!
Remember slut shaming? Now we have supporter shaming....stop it.
Those who shoot down people changing their Facebook photo to exhibit the French flag, or making some other small token of French support, stop shooting them down in order to make yourself feel superior!
Anything helps!
Something is more than nothing.
Talking about how we can do more is best, but chastising people for meaning well, for exhibiting support in any small or large way, does nobody any good. If you have suggestions on how to support in better ways, fine, share them, but share them in a positive supportive way. Not in ways that make people not want to show support. The more people who are obviously on the side of good, of the victims, is good.
We cannot know everything (as in the Beirut attack), we cannot do everything. Everyone can support in their own way. Some are not as brave as others, does that make their efforts worthless when their small token or sign of support may inspire someone who makes a far greater effort? No. All efforts are efforts and affect he overall zeitgeist of support.
If you have support shamed, consider yourself duly shamed.
#ISLAM #Terrorism #ISIS
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| https://www.facebook.com/JZMurdock |
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