The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermaths of violence are emptiness and bitterness. This is the thing I’m concerned about. Let us fight passionately and unrelentingly for the goals of justice and peace, but let’s be sure that our hands are clean in this struggle. Let us never fight with falsehood and violence and hate and malice, but always fight with love, so that when the day comes that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in Montgomery that we will be able to live with people as their brothers and sisters….We must come to the point of seeing that our ultimate aim is to live with all men as brothers and sisters under God…
Martin Luther King Jr, Sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 1957
You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they’d experienced the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time.
And we are here, we are here this evening because we are tired now. And I want to say that we are not here advocating violence. We have never done that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people! We believe in the Christian religion! We believe in the teachings of Jesus! The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest!
Love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith, but there is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.
The Almighty God himself is not the God just standing out saying through Hosea, I love you, Israel.
He’s also the God that stands up before the nations and says, Be still and know that I’m God, that if you don’t obey me I will break the backbone of your power and slap you out of the orbits of your international and national relationships.
Martin Luther King Jr., address to the first Montgomery Improvement Association, December 5, 1955
Well, I thought I’d end 2007 with a doom and gloom prophecy for the U.S. economy. If you aren’t aware of what’s being going on, you’ve been living in a hole in Pakistan. The biggest housing bubble in U.S. history has popped. The banking system is going down in flames. The Fed is trying desperately to bail banks out by injecting billions into the system and lowering interest rates. This is devaluating the U.S. dollar at an incredible rate and sending inflation soaring. And since all this destruction of the dollar hasn’t helped a bit, the Fed has now promised to unload $40 billion more and will probably lower interest rates further. California had a large hand in boosting the economy as the center of the housing bubble buildup. But now California is the center of the mortgage and housing meltdown and is facing a projected $14 billion dollar budget shortfall next year because of it. The Governator recently said he will declare a fiscal emergency
in January. California, the biggest economic player in the U.S. economy, will bring down the rest of the nation’s economy just as it propped it up previously. The transportation industry is facing a crisis. Oil prices have shot to astronomical levels. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars more than we ever have before in the history of our nation to police and wage war against other countries. Foreign nations who might have otherwise helped support our economy from outside are being scared away as the dollar decreases in value and interest rates fall.
If this continues, I predict a stock market crash and an economic recession sometime between 2008 and 2011 that will make the dot-com fallout seem like a sniffle and the Great Depression like a bit of a cough. Peter Spence, a leading economist in Britain agrees with me: The Government must suspend a set of key banking regulations at the heart of the current financial crisis or risk seeing the economy spiral towards a future that could make 1929 look like a walk in the park.
The economist Ludwig von Mises has this to say: There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought on by credit expansion. The question is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
My advice: Invest whatever money you’d like to keep in foreign currencies and stocks ASAP. Not only will it be there when the economy rights itself, but it will yield returns you couldn’t dream of. And don’t even think about purchasing a home in the next three years.
Unless it was not evident by now, George W and most of his Republican cohorts are all Fascists. Another one of the many things this tyranical administration has done and is doing that you can add to the list of abominations is telling the Burea of Prisons to deny prisoners access to religious material (unless, of course, the government arbitrarily and unconstitutionally deems those religious materials okay
for prisoners to read). Just wait till you see what books the government says are okay
and then guess how much time we have until the Fascists tell you and me what we can and cannot read. Read the report by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times here.
About 2 1/2 years ago my CRT monitor died (went up in a puff of smoke), and so I decided it was time to finally upgrade to a nice 19 inch LCD. Unfortunately, my video editing machine would no longer boot into windows 2000 (except safe mode), because the last g550 matrox driver release, for windows 2000, doesn’t support LCD monitors. Thus, my only option to get support was to upgrade to windows XP which I didn’t have the money to do.
So I figured I would research to see if GNU/Linux could be a viable video editing platform. But everything I read at the time said no. So I just let the machine sit there for the last two years. About a couple of weeks ago I finally decided to take the plunge and installed Ubuntu on it, so I could at least backup the data that was there and then start clean. Luckily in this time frame GNU/Linux has gain the ability to mount NTFS drives, so I didn’t have to reformat my drives and thus was able to use GNU/Linux to backup the data that was there.
While I was backing up my data I discovered a folder on one of the NTFS drives I had never seen before called “RECYLER”. So I started poking around in the newly discovered folder to see what was in there. And low and behold I found a gold mine. I found the master print of my Camp Attitude video (ogg) I did 5 years ago, which I thought I had forever lost due to me accidentally deleting the wrong file, and not noticing until a year later. I can’t tell you how jubilated I am, this is the find of the century, as I thought I would never be able to make a DVD of this video, so I can show the video to friends and family on a TV instead of a poorly encoded postage stamp QuickTime video on my computer. Which, up to this point was my last remaining copy. So in celebration I’ve made a copy of the master in ogg theora, so you can view the Camp Attitude video (in ogg), here on the website.
Quite some time ago, I commented on Awilum that one of the things which makes historical investigation of Torah difficult is that much of the Pentateuchal history is a personal/family/private history instead of the public kind that most ancient documents are concerned with.
Therefore, we have virtually no chance of finding extra-biblical evidence of the Patriarchs or the events and circumstances that shaped their lives. One who requires this in order to believe the Pentateuchal narratives are historically accurate demands what historical investigation cannot reasonably provide.
Angela Erisman of Imaginary Grace challenged my assessment of the part Torah plays in Israelite history, saying that the narratives are primarily public/national, not private/personal. I did not at the time attempt to support or defend my position. Here, however, I hope to look at some specific linguistic evidence from the texts in question that, I believe, do considerable damage to the concept of Torah as representing national history as opposed to a personal/private family record.
In People
and Nation
of Israel by E.A. Speiser, originally published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, June 1960, the differentiated use of ’am and goy (translated people
and nation
respectively) in Hebrew literature is discussed. Several details are worth mentioning. First, YHWH is never connected linguistically to a nation (goy), but a people (’am). For instance, there is no such thing as the construction goy-YHWH (nation of YHWH), only ’am-YHWH (people of YHWH).(p.158) For this reason, Speiser says, all references to Yahweh as a ’national’ God at any given time are terminologically inaccurate
(ibid, note 5). If the head of a nation is the king and if the head of the king is a god, it stands to reason that unless the distinction is specifically made, such a god would be identified intimately in terms of the nation. But YHWH is not defined by a nation. He transcends national and political boundaries (or rules over all the kingdoms of men as is later described in Daniel), setting up and pulling down nations as he wills…including Israel. This is not only shocking generally speaking, but crippling to the idea that Israel is describing or establishing a national identity in Torah.
’Am is also often prefixed in Hebrew names. We have, for example, Amminadab and Ammiel, whereas there is no such thing as Goyminadab, Goymiel, or any other goy-prefixed name.(ibid, p.159). This serves to identity a person with a common ethnic family or lineage as opposed to a national or political body, which is not what one would expect if the characters or authors of the texts were more concerned with the later than the former. Indeed, even Israel herself is referred to in the first five books of Moses with ’am instead of goy. For instance, Exodus 1:9 calls the Israelites an ethnic family line (or ’am) that Pharaoh must let go, not a nation (or goy). In Numbers 23:9, Balaam prophetically announces the Israelites as a people (’am) that will not be reckoned among the nations (goyim). According to linguistic evidence such as this, biblical Israel is a kinship group, not a national one.
On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union.
The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.
No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle-but only in degree-between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man’s ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.
In the Talmud Bavli (better known as the Babylonian Talmud), the Rabbis describe a prayer that was added to the 18 Benedictions after the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome. The subject of this additional prayer (called the Birkat Ha Minim) was the minim or Jewish heretics (see Tractate Berakoth, folio 28b and 29a). Any sectarian Jew who recited the prayer would bring down a curse of Yahweh’s condemnation and judgment upon himself. Therefore, by requiring this to be spoken aloud in the synagogue along with the other 18 Benedictions, it was the purpose of the rabbis to expose the non-Orthodox who would not speak such a thing upon themselves. Several rabbis spoke of these Benedictions metaphorically as vertebrae in the spinal column. To use a modern equivalent of the metaphor, this means that the Rabbis saw these Benedictions (including the additional one against minim) as being the backbone of their faith. One of the Jewish sects that the word minim undoubtedly represented was that of the Jewish believers in Yeshua, the Nazarenes. An ancient version of the Birkat Ha Minim found in the Cairo Geniza actually makes this identification explicit.
For the renegades let there be no hope, and may the arrogant kingdom soon be rooted out in our days, and the Nazarenes and the minim perish as in a moment and be blotted out from the book of life and with the righteous may they not be inscribed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant.
published by Solomon Schechter in Genizah Specimens
, Jewish Quarterly Review 10
Not that I’m an advocate of government stealing from me or you what we have rightfully earned in order to use it for its own brand of arbitrary ethical propaganda…
But in light of Microsoft’s absurd declaration against open source software, saying that it violates at least 235 of its intellectual property
patents, I had me a thought. Since the government has felt free over the past several years to use my money to tell me how bad smoking is and that I shouldn’t do it, wouldn’t it be great if government came out with another campaign–a campaign against Microsoft? Think of the commercial possiblities… There could be billboards saying free yourself from Windows
or see a Vista they won’t let you see
showing a woman racing from a glass house into a field of flowers in the fresh open air, new worlds waiting to be discovered on the horizon.
Like the glass structures of the same name, Windows is enclosing. It limits your freedom by controlling and defining your actions and possibilities. Microsoft is not leading the way in faster, more efficient, more innovative, or more affordable software. Each new version is more system dependant. More resource intensive. And full of more holes and problems. Instead of following software standards meant to increase individual and public utlitiy, efficiency, and interoperability, Microsoft has created their own standards
in order to create a software slave market. Microsoft does not exist to give you more power, but to increase its power over you. Most people are shocked to discover that when they laid down their hundreds of dollars for Windows, they didn’t actually purchase an operating system–only a license to use one. Microsoft still owns, controls, and authorizes your computer use–not you. And the more you try to open their Windows, the harder Microsoft will shut it in your face (Vista).
Enter Open Source. Everything that Microsoft isn’t, open source is. It’s for that reason that open source has taken the world by storm and Microsoft is trying desperately to control it–from selling cripled versions of its operating system and software for 3 dollars overseas to making empty threats of patent violation lawsuits. In time, the Tyrant will fall and the digital Middle East will be free. Until then, Microsoft is a much bigger threat to civilization than cigarettes. Of course, I’m a computer addict, not a tabacco one.
I received the following pseudepigraphic folklore in my email. Apparently it has been going around for some time and undergone many changes. This is one of its latest incarnations with my comments interspersed among it.
Paul Harvey and Prayer Paul Harvey says: I don’t believe in Santa Claus, but I’m not going to sue somebody for singing a Ho-Ho-Ho song in December. I don’t agree with Darwin, but I didn’t go out and hire a lawyer when my high school teacher taught his Theory of Evolution. Life, liberty or your pursuit of happiness will not be endangered because someone says a 30-second prayer before a football game. So what’s the big deal? It’s not like somebody is up there reading the entire book of Acts. They’re just talking to a God they believe in and asking him to grant safety to the players on the field and the fans going home from the game. But it’s a Christian prayer, some will argue. Yes, and this is the United States of America, a country founded on Christian principles. According to our very own phone book, Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200-to-1. So what would you expect — somebody chanting Hare Krishna? If I went to a football game in Jerusalem, I would expect to hear a Jewish prayer. If I went to a soccer game in Baghdad, I would expect to hear a Muslim prayer. If I went to a ping pong match in China, I would expect to hear someone pray to Buddha. And I wouldn’t be offended. It wouldn’t bother me one bit. When in Rome … But what about the atheists? is another argument. What about them? Nobody is asking them to be baptized. We’re not going to pass the collection plate. Just humor us for 30 seconds. If that’s asking too much, bring a Walkman or a pair of ear plugs. Go to the bathroom. Visit the concession stand. Call your lawyer! Unfortunately, one or two will make that call. One or two will tell thousands what they can and cannot do. I don’t think a short prayer at a football game is going to shake the world’s foundations.
Throughout the history of the world, religions have been defined by geography, race or ethnicity, and ruling power. In most places and most times you were part of a religion because your father and grandfather and grandfather’s father were part of that religion, because you were in a land and culture defined by that religion, and because your rulers and authorities enforced that religion. Globalization and freedom of religion have enabled many parts of the world to break free from these controlling factors, which is glorious news to some, but dire news to others (like China or Baghdad).
This is a very new situation. The United States has not been around long (it still might be called a young nation) and it was the very first nation in history to purposely pursue the release from these controlling religious factors and do it with a large measure of success. In this kind of new secular environment which aims to give the most freedom to the most people without preference, the prayer at a football game
situation, which is inherently a public situation and not a private one, can proceed only in two directions without plunging us back into the religion-contained environment: 1. disallow any kind of prayer or 2. allow almost every kind of prayer. Those who do not see 2 taking place will inevitably go for 1. And since we hold a precarious position in history, this is, indeed, a foundation-shaking situation.
Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights.
Speaking as a Christian, I have to say that the sentence above was so badly worded that it smacks of an anti-Christian attitude, not a Christian one. It was Christ himself who told us to turn the other cheek. If people are not interested in following him, then they have no place arguing for prayers to him at football games.
Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating; to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying.
I don’t think this is true in the slightest. No one has outlawed private prayer anywhere in this nation. I’ve never had anyone sue me or accuse me of praying before meals or at bedtime.
God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well . .. just sue me. The silent majority has been silent too long.. It’s time we let that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard that the vast majority don’t care what they want. It is time the majority rules!
I’m not sure what century or nation the author is living in…but in this century and in this nation (the U.S. in the 21st Century), the majority is not Christian.
It’s time we tell them, you don’t have to pray; you don’t have to say the pledge of allegiance; you don’t have to believe in God or attend services that honor Him. That is your right, and we will honor your right … But by golly, you are no longer going to take our rights away. We are fighting back … and we WILL WIN! God bless us one and all … especially those who denounce Him , God bless America, despite all her faults. She is still the greatest nation of all. God bless our service men who are fighting to protect our right to pray and worship God. May 2007 be the year the silent majority is heard and we put God back as the foundation of our families and institutions. Keep looking up. If you agree with this, please pass it on. If not delete it. AND THAT’S THE REST OF THE STORY
BC
Definitely stand up for what you believe and fight for your rights. But don’t do it under the mistaken pretense that you are part of the majority or that your rights supersede or have pre-eminence over someone else’s. If you really want to have prayer at football, there is nothing stopping you from doing so. The question is whether you will participate in this new secular environment or help push us back into the historical mold.
