Jon,

    Well put, which sets me thinking. So instead of following some
realpolitik tragedy-latent scheme conjured up by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas
Feith for making Palestine into Israel, Jordan into Palestine and Iraq an
Hashemite hash served up by Tommy Franks, our US grill cook on loan, why not
offer Florida to Israel (the fantasy land is already there and the voters
their can be convinced of anything). Then Palestine could remain Palestine,
Jordan stay Hasehmite, and Iraq, Iraq by Jingo, solved?
    After all as history has witnessed many times before the texts are
moveable, and there is the mystery of the "lost tribe" still to be solved.

Charles

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge
to rule it." -H.L. Mencken

----------
>From: Jon & Anne Weidler <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: laureates against the war
>Date: Thu, Feb 13, 2003, 3:22 AM
>

> On Thursday, February 13, 2003, at 01:23  AM, Daniel Pearlman wrote:
>
> "we actually try to put these fine principles into
> practice.  In principle, for example, we care about the Other and we
> even
> profess love for our fellows.  In no other region of the world except
> the
> West have such ideals ever been professed, and in fact they appear
> laughable to every other culture on earth.  It is true that we betray
> our
> gods whenever it is necessary or expedient to do so, but our gods are
> nevertheless nicer guys than others' gods."
>
> In response, I'd like to quote a little slice of the Bodhicharyavatara,
> by eighth century philosopher Shanitdeva:
>
> "For all those ailing in the world,
> Until their every sickness has been healed,
> May I become for them
> The doctor, nurse, medicine itself.
>
> Raining down a flood of food and drink,
> May I dispel the ills of thirst and famine.
> And in the ages marked by scarcity and want,
> May I myself appear as drink and sustenance.
>
> For sentient beings, poor and destitute,
> May I become a treasure ever plentiful, And lie before them closely in
> their reach,
> A varied source of all that they might need.
>
> My body, thus, and all my goods besides,
> And all my merits gained and to be gained,
> I give them all away withholding nothing
> To bring about the benefit of beings."    (- Ch. 3, 8-11)
>
> I'm sure that little comment is required to convince anyone that the
> drift of this passage contains just about as much concern for the Other
> as any religion (or region) has heretofore mustered in the history of
> mankind.
>
> And, in this light, I submit that it is laughable to assume on purely
> parochial grounds that "we" (whoever we includes, whoever's gods and
> traditions it implies) "care about the Other and . . . even profess
> love for our fellows" in some special secret ways that those Others
> couldn't imagine on their own, much less understand or accept.  I would
> suggest further that this "care for the Other" all too often doled out
> abroad (I will assume that by "we" you meant something having to do
> with the U.S., or even more amorphously, "the West") is mix of poorly
> paid, labor intensive employment opportunities and dance radio
> broadcasts installed as replacements for the news.  I have no idea what
> history of the relationship between the West and its Others you could
> possibly have in mind when you say what you do, and it sounds to me
> like you take the benevolent empire a little too much at its word.
>
> Whose gods are nevertheless nicer than whose gods?!?  What possible
> sort of comparison are you hoping to make?  (And how would a god show
> his omnipotent niceness anyway? -- the prophets of Ahab, praying all
> day long, fail to convince Baal to send them a theme park -- and before
> Ezekiel prays to his superiorily nice deity, he urges the wicked
> prophets to make the land all about inhospitable, covering it in swamps
> and stunted orange groves -- and lo, Ezekiel's god was so ultra nice
> and so zippa-dee-do-dah-dang happily-ever-after so-glad-to-help that he
> dropped the entire Orlando metro area down about Ezekiel, smiting the
> wicked prophets with long lines for the rides and overpriced
> cheeseburgers shaped like Mickey -- and Ezekiel sat back, having
> conquered Florida, and felt pretty darn good about it.  Every day,
> tourists of every kind, Brazilians and Japanese, Germans and Canadians,
> and good decent American folks from all over this great land had a nice
> place to take their kiddies, where they could steer clear of the
> nastiness of gods with axes to grind.
>
> "If we can dream it, we can do it." - W.D.
>
> Anyway -
> Jon