Participatory Spirituality for the 21st Century
binLaden's dead, ding dong the wicked terrorist is dead. (Sung to the tune of the Wizard of Oz song about the wicked witch.)
Ok, yes it feels good to get vengeance on the bastard responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US. The blood lust is thick and heavy in the US with not just his death but the manner is which it was executed, shot in the head at close range. The left eye, to be exact. An eye for and eye and all that. We feel relief that he was murdered in cold, calculating foresight, which by the usual legal standard is 1st degree murder. Ah, but this is war, where all is fair, eh?
Now I'm not a bleeding heart liberal though I am most certainly a progressive. I get that war is sometimes necessary, and that part of war is killing. And I'm also in favor of the death penalty in certain criminal cases, so I'm not completely anti-killing. After all, "death to all fanatics,"* the famous slogan of Hassan i-Sabbah, the reputed leader of the Hashashin assassins** at one time, is one of my favorite catch-phrases. Still, I have pause to wonder about the animal fury that we've taken up as a people on the news of this execution.
Is it a legitimate moment of revenge? A necessary time-out to revel in justice done? And/or does it reduce us to the level of the savage murderer that perpetrated the crime against us? Does it incite further acts of terrorism when said terrorists see that we are just as blood-thirsty as they, in the name of our God? And where does religious forgiveness play into this? How do we meet pragmatic and insular political ends through the usual religious motives of compassion and love? Just wondering.
* Which slogan ironically includes those who utter it, since they too are fanatics and must kill themselves. It's a sort of Sufi koan to wake one up to their own contradictions.
** Double irony that our elite Seal force that executed bin Laden were modern day Hashashin assassins.
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here's moore on osama:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/06/us-michaelmoore-idUSTRE74...
and hitchens on moore:
http://www.slate.com/id/2102723/
and hitchens on chomsky:
http://www.slate.com/id/2293541/
great that no one on this planet can agree on anything!
allow me to set the record straight:) we are fighting terror with terror.......
and then there is jesus's opinon on 911 ----it was all a hologram hoax in drag.....
As far as Moore thinking the American public deserves harm and even death for its government's crimes--an atrocious and heinous accusation--Moore says of bin Laden in his CNN interview:
"I'm pleased the he'll no longer be around to do any harm to anybody."
He goes on to note that celebrating someone's death is another thing. And that it was his religious upbringing that leads him to his conclusions. Not quite the paranoid boogeyman Hitchens' own paranoid brand of "patriotism" sees.
andrew: and then there is jesus's opinon on 911 ----it was all a hologram hoax in drag.....
I don't like this line of reasoning. It might lead to the following misunderstanding:
Since the world of matter is all Illusion, a hologram, ha ha, there's nothing to worry about, so why even care about some guys in Armani suits falling out of the windows of the crashing WTC Towers.
This is morally defunct, definitely not postmetaphysical, and I'm pretty sure Jesus never said or implied anything like it.
Full Stop.
your going to have to take up your grievance with god christophe! you can find him/her here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler
Christophe said:
andrew: and then there is jesus's opinon on 911 ----it was all a hologram hoax in drag.....
I don't like this line of reasoning. It might lead to the following misunderstanding:
Since the world of matter is all Illusion, a hologram, ha ha, there's nothing to worry about, so why even care about some guys in Armani suits falling out of the windows of the crashing WTC Towers.
This is morally defunct, definitely not postmetaphysical, and I'm pretty sure Jesus never said or implied anything like it.
Full Stop.
and here:
http://www.fabrica.it/project/i-am-jesus-trailer
andrew said:
your going to have to take up your grievance with god christophe! you can find him/her here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler
Christophe said:andrew: and then there is jesus's opinon on 911 ----it was all a hologram hoax in drag.....
I don't like this line of reasoning. It might lead to the following misunderstanding:
Since the world of matter is all Illusion, a hologram, ha ha, there's nothing to worry about, so why even care about some guys in Armani suits falling out of the windows of the crashing WTC Towers.
This is morally defunct, definitely not postmetaphysical, and I'm pretty sure Jesus never said or implied anything like it.
Full Stop.
Michael Moore has some more recent comments on the killing with which I agree. Some excerpts:
The Nazis killed tens of MILLIONS. They got a trial. Why? Because we're not like them. We're Americans. We roll different.
I would like the evildoers to be forced to stand trial in front of that world. I know a lot of people see no need for a trial for these bad guys (just hang 'em from the nearest tree!), and think trials are for sissies. "They're guilty, off with their heads!" Well, you see, that is the exact description of the Taliban/al Qaeda/Nazi justice system. I don't like their system. I like ours. And I don't want to be like them. In fact, the reason I like a good trial is that I like to show these bastards this is how it's done in a free country that believes in civilized justice. It's good for the rest of the world to see that, too. Sets a good example.
The other thing a trial does is, it establishes a very public and permanent historic record of the crimes against humanity. This is why we put the Nazis on trial in Nuremberg. We didn't do it for them. We did it for ourselves and for our grandchildren so that they would never forget these horrors and how they were committed. And we did it for the German people so they could see the evidence of what their elected leaders had done. Very helpful. Very necessary. Very powerful. And for those who wanted blood back then – well, the majority of the Nazis all hanged in the end. So, it doesn't mean the bad guys get away – they still swing from the highest tree.
Some believe that this was a "war" we were in with al Qaeda – and you don't do trials during war. It's thinking like this that makes me fear that, while bin Laden may be dead, he may have "won" the bigger battle.... We did exactly what bin Laden said he wanted us to do: Give up our freedoms (like the freedom to be assumed innocent until proven guilty), engage our military in Muslim countries so that we will be hated by Muslims, and wipe ourselves out financially in doing so. Done, done and done, Osama. You had our number. You somehow knew we would eagerly give up our constitutional rights and become more like the authoritarian state you dreamed of. You knew we would exhaust our military and willingly go into more debt in eight years than we had accumulated in the previous 200 years combined.
If we really want to send bin Laden not just to his death, but also to his defeat, may I suggest that we reverse all of that right now. End the wars, bring the troops home, make the rich pay for this mess, and restore our privacy and due process rights that used to distinguish us from any other country. Right now, our democracy looks like Singapore and our economy has gone desperately Greek.
Hideki Tojo killed my uncle and millions of Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos and a hundred thousand other Americans. He was the head of Japan, the Emperor's henchman, the man who was the architect of Pearl Harbor. When the American soldiers went to arrest him, he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest. The soldiers immediately worked on stopping his bleeding and rushed him to an army hospital where he was saved by our army doctors. He then had his day in court. It was a powerful exercise for the world to see. And on December 23, 1948, after he was found guilty, we hanged him. A killer of millions was forced to stand trial. A killer of 4,000 (counting the African embassies and USS Cole bombings) got double-tapped in his pajamas. Assuming it was possible to take him alive, I think his victims, the future, and the restoration of the American Way deserved better. That's all I'm saying.
i wouldn't say that this is a knockout punch but in my view hitchen's should be on the matt....it's also hard to agree with hitchen's that 500 years of western colonization and imperialism is irrelevant to todays global circumstances....i think moore's probably a little off here too as he seems to also have an idealistic bent when it comes to america...america was founded on these types of atrocities so i see it as nothing new although today the stakes are global....
sorry it was you who took the bait christope, haha....i couldn't resist, my apologies.....i should drag kela over to the pub!
There was a drunken sailor bash at the end of the world wars, relieve a major component of those celebrations and today’s. I think we are talking ourselves into a more bloodthirsty component of today’s events then is there, I hope in part not inadvertently creating what we are condemning.
Life is built on precedents. One precedent was the Spanish police trying to arrest the al Qaeda members responsible for the Madrid train bombing with percussion grenades and they blew themselves up taking a police officer with them. Another precedent was Saddam found hiding in the ground after which the medic put a thermometer in his mouth that seemed to be an ideal beginning that ended in a shouting lynch mob type trial. Would a victim and a true believer have unwittingly worked together to disrupt bin Laden’s trial?
The only way the Spanish police officer killed along with the terrorists would have stayed alive if sharp shooters quickly shot them in the temple before they could have blown themselves up. It is incredibly good news that bin Laden didn’t behave the way he makes his followers do. It discombobulates their mindset.
Gold value has dropped dramatically and silver has never been cheaper, indicating that investors don’t hedge on currency collapse like they used to.
Please google
the-war-is-over-it-ended-may-2-lets-celebrate
in-past-people-negotiated-an-end-to-a-war
Something major has been missing from the discussion. Overwhelmingly court verdicts are cheered not when the noose tightens or electricity sizzles. Saddam was arrested the right way. Remember the photo with a thermometer in his mouth. His trial and conviction was a lynch mob of hate, but no cheering at the end when the body fell. The Wicked Witches spell was broken in her death. Bin Laden's spell was broken not by the bullet to his head but the helicopter crash. Let all of us whether we cheered at the beginning, or not, cheer that wonderful crash. Bin Laden as a clever version of Charles Mansion spread his Helter Skelter misery around. He booby-trapped reality in that whenever an al Qaeda agent killed himself rather than being captured al Qeada won. Taking as many with one as you go increases the misery turned into joy. When the Spanish commuter train masterminds were confronted with percussion bombs they blew themselves up taking a police officer with them. The exposed terrorist who crashed a truck into a US military gate killing just himself was an al Qaeda victory.
A 7-year-old with Down Syndrome remotely detonated was an al Qaeda victory. Had the original plan to rush bin Laden crashing through the windows worked instead of the helicopter failing his followers would think any comments later about bin Laden not being armed or booby trapped was insults to a true martyr.
Lets all of us get together and cheer that crash,
http://phillyimc.org/en/helicopter-crash-saved-earth
With both bin Laden and the Wicked Witch at least part of the cheering was the cheering of the breaking of the spell,
http://www.readersupportednews.org/pm-section/22-22/6044-ding-dong-...
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