www.oregoncoastradio.com
November 9, 2002
Variations of mothballs are carried about on the cyber light. Maybe they (we) are onto something... Online spirituality?? Check it out:
"There are countless others in your world who are beginning, as you are, to wake up. A new day is preparing to dawn in your reality..."
See: http://www.indymedia.org/a-letter-to-myself
See: http://www.indymedia.org/comments
Two days after the election, I am now inclined to attribute the results nationally to voter apathy and disgust for the hypocrisy of the process as a problem, and lack of demo leadership besides.
The failure on the part of me and the editor-reporter likes thereof was our rapping on Bush & Company WITHOUT rapping on our own guys for being Bush-like, and for the demos voting with him so's he'd have a green light to perpetuate his war, and so on, and for the demo leadership NOT rapping on him about it; to stand up and speak out as the loyal opposition. The demo leadership showed no loyalty to the constituency by NOT opposing Bush & Company. The Greens handed the Republicans some important wins by siphoning off demo votes, but at the end of the day, what diff? Every demo win gives them permission to continue on sleeping with the heartless opposition.
On the hopeful side, alternatives to the status quo are on the horizon that includes pure Blues Brothers (including Lennon or Lenin or the Marx Brothers - your choice), and I also like the Communist Party in Iran.
Oh, and speaking of "Friend or Foe" alliances, without the help of some of the Islamic groups; Shi'ah specifically, NOT Wahabbi or Al-Qaeda (The Base), getting anything done around here would be like the Soviet Union trying to eliminate fascism without the help of the U.S. and the Brits in what became WWII.
It should be noted somewhere that the Wahabbi and Al-Qaeda are the Islamic equivalent of a cross between Christian Identity (Nazi Skinheads) and Jerry Fallwell/Pat Robertson as-Christians. The Sunni, the Muslim majority are like Presbyterians or Methodists or Lutherans. Certainly the genuine article but lightweights as compared to the ordinary Shi'ah*, whose scholarly endeavor on a daily basis actualizes where the Islamic rubber meets the Muslim road. Imam Ali, the cousin of the Prophet has been credited for writings that give an Islamic blueprint for running a civilization or a company within the bounds of some good common sense Islamic law. If there are authentic counterparts in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, one may consider the Shi'ah, the Quaker and the new found religion of rock star Madonna, Kabbalahism (teaches that every person is free to make their own choices) - the commonality is the commitment to peace no matter what Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham, Dan Pipes, Salman Rushdie and/or Ariel Sharon say.
Dan Pipes is a racist and a bigot and knows nothing of which he speaks. He lumps all Muslims together as evil just as he makes no distinction between the Jews (recognized by Muslims as the People of the Book), and the troublesome Israeli and Zionist factions. Pipes' latest tirade is to dismiss the be careful what you pray for or if it walks like a duck or the just plain coincidence of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" getting air play in Egypt, and in hard copy at the Arab Voice that has been serializing an Arabic-language version.
In retrospect, someone could have convinced the Iranian mullahs that banning the Tudeh Party (Communists) was wrong headed at the time (1980-82), but the secular debaters at the time and on the scene didn't know or love Islamic law (al-Shari'ah) enough. Coincidentally, during those same years, the United States supported their friend Saddam in his unprovoked war against Iran.
And again, as politics makes strange bed fellows, after the U.S.S.R. defeated Hitler, the U.S. and the Brits turned against the Soviets and played out the (anti-social, anti-labor, anti-communist and anti-Gypsy) Cold War to its not-so-obvious-yet conclusion...
And remember the price paid for ending fascism in Europe and the Nazi attempt to obliterate communists and Jews, the Soviets lost no fewer than 20,000,000 lives - not counting the ones Stalin executed because he was a Stalinist pervert. Stalin assassinated Trotsky. Stalin hated and exploited the Soviet Jews and poisoned Marxist-Leninism.
And ever mind that the know-nothing congenitally evil twin of Dan Pipes, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would call on the international community to turn its attention to the Islamic Republic (Iran) "the day after" the war against Iraq is over.
Today, Imam Khomeini would roll over Beethoven if he knew what some of his co-founders of the Islamic Revolution (in Iran) have been doing lately. Free speech, free press? No matter what some of the old clerics say, they just don't get it; that more "reformist" free speech and more free press strengthens the Revolution. The Imam's fatwa was perfectly in order, however, God knows, the longer Salman Rushdie lives, for example, the more he is discredited as a writer, as an artist and as anyone who has anything to say on the subject of Islam and Muslims.
*Nowhere in the world are there more notorious hypocrites than the hard-liner cleric "class" in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is utter horse shit, for example, to compare the cases of Salman Rushdie and Hashem Aghajari, a liberal academic and journalist. What Rushdie did with words in the fictionalizing the Prophet's name was ultimately shameful to all Muslims and Islam. What Aghajari did was embarrass a bunch of clerics by essentially exposing them for the hypocritical frauds they really are and was arrested after a speech in which he called for reform within the Islamic clerical establishment. The clerics are exposed for caring nothing of a commitment to peace (Islam) compared to their care for a kind of unwarranted privilege that was absolutely unheard of in the days of the Prophet and Imam Ali.
If indeed there is a case for blasphemy or apostasy, it should be against the accusers rather than the accused. What balls! What chutzpah for the Iranian clerics to think they deserve the kind of veneration and privilege reserved for the Pope alone, speaking of blasphemy and apostasy. The cleric class has set itself up as a body of popes, whose word is law and carries with it life or death.
What happened to al-Qur'an that in Imam Khomeini's time was sufficient?
How is it that the hard-line cleric class has usurped the Revolution by setting itself up as a body of shah-like kings (or gods as defined by the King James Version of the Bible); expecting to be worshipped and feared? And to merely state what is true about the clerics, that "they have abused their authority, stolen goods, land, oil revenues and tax money from the Iranian people" is now a crime punishable by death? Have they gone completely nuts over there?
According to BBCi, a number of senior religious figures, albeit at the liberal end of the clerical spectrum, had ruled that there was nothing culpably blasphemous about Aghajari's speech, in which he called for an end to "blind obedience" to clerical decrees. The Guardians Council has kept up constant pressure on the judiciary to take "strong and harsh" (death penalty) action against the reformist Hashem Aghajari.
If "better" or "worse" can be observed from 10,000 miles away, hard-line clerics are no better for bolstering their psychotic support from and for each other as a group than a single Muslim who is devoted. Neither the Iranian hard-liners or American and Israeli wishful thinkers seem to realize the Islamic Republic is about Islam and Muslims and a repudiation of western corruption, hegemony and lies, not about self-appointed clerics or kings at all. Contrary to their own selfish, self-centered and self-serving greed, the clerics are not equal to or the same as the institution of Islam or the institution of the Islamic Revolution or the Islamic Republic.
While reformists and hard-liners are at a critical moment in their struggle for power within Iran's Islamic system, at the end of the day it may take terminal old age on the part of the present day hard-liners to finally return vitality to what Imam Khomeini and the 'Students Following the Line of Imam' and the Iranian merchant class started in 1979, or for the Basij forces to look the other way when ordinary people take back their government and their Revolution from the corporate-like clerics, just as is needed in any country you can name.
In Islam (no matter what you see in Sa'udi Arabia, Afghanistan or downtown Tehran) and Marxism (no matter what you see in in the former Soviet Union or China today) or Christianity (no matter what you see in Rome or Falls Church, Virginia), there is that spark* of purity and devotion that somehow gets nearly lost under the proverbial bushel basket. Darkness can't put out light whereas light can put out darkness, as they say. Somewhere in the utilization of the light is the hope for getting something done around here. The problem is that one must be intentionally honest and astute enough to wield the light without getting blinded or letting go altogether and flying into it or something else. [MORE]
*Maybe just plain Lenin or Khomeini-type "genius" could be of consideration in this regard.
Also see: All of the Above - "The Allies"
|
LiveJazz
