Sedona AZ (December 5, 2015) – The following is an opinion letter to the SedonaEye.com editor:
Subject: War With ISIS or ISIL
Ref: Current events of late November and early December 2015
Dear SedonaEye.com Editor;
In honor and memory of the thousands of men, women and children who died or were injured during the surprise airplane attack on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, September 11, 2001, in New York City, NY.
Listening to Politicians and Mainstream Media this morning (Dec 3) would be hilarious if the subject and the “Prevailing Opined Solutions” were not so deadly serious and so far off the target of doing anything worthwhile to overcome the immediate problems of “Safety and Security” in the United States, but also the entire World.
Jeb Bush wants to “Declare War against ISIS” which is entirely the wrong target – like trying to isolate and fight against one healthy, fast growing male kitten when you are being overrun by feral cats.
ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and the larger ISIL (Islamic State in Levant) includes all the countries along the eastern Mediterranean Coast. They are a symptom or a small sample of the real problem, which is the OBNOXOUS, SATANIC, FORCEFUL, INVASIVE “GOVERNMENT OF ISLAM”, a government that has no physical boundaries and rules by “FORCE AND FEAR.” This “Government” camouflaged by and with the Muslim “Religion” is subservient to Islam and is pressing for “WORLDWIDE CONTROL” and getting away with it.
Why? Because the Political Class worldwide has never realized nor accepted the FACTS that: 1) War is or should be actually more “Against an Ideology” than “Against a Geographic Point” and, 2) i.e. in WWII, we declared war against Japan, Germany, and Italy. We did not have any beef against the land, the land is not what we were at war with, our problem was against the ideologies of the Political Leaders.
I maintain ALL WARS ARE ABOUT IDEOLOGY, yet still they are fought as CONTROLLED PHYSICAL BOUNDARIES. In other words, what I am saying – indeed shouting – is “WE NEED TO RECOGNIZE ISLAM AS A GOVERNMENT AND DECLARE WAR ON IT WHEREVER IT IS” even if, and when, it’s in ‘Our Own Neighborhood or Family.’
The Mainstream Media and the other Liberals, including Geraldo Rivera, are blaming the attack in San Bernardino (California) on the Second Amendment and Legal Gun Owners. So, let’s get real here, THIS is FACT: There would not be any crime if there were no laws against anything, thus the “Fault For The Crime Is The Law.
IF WE JUST DIDN’T HAVE THOSE PESKY LAWS, WE WOULD NOT HAVE ANY CRIME. So let’s just do away with the Laws and we’ll be a “Crime-Free Nation” and, in that vein, I guess “Anarchy is Utopia or Nirvana.”
The previous paragraph points to “Stupidity Personified” which could be used as a valid definition for Liberal – Progressive – Socialist – RepublicRATS and or DemocRATS — you know, the “Rats” that swarm in Washington, DC.
Dale Gohr
Clarkdale Arizona
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=682JLrsUmEM
San Bernadino shooting story shot full of holes
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/12/06/holes/
today from Reuters in England….”Farook’s financial transactions supported the belief that the shooting was premeditated and not the result of a dispute with a co-worker at the holiday lunch for San Bernardino County workers…”
Seems he followed the ISIL terrorist modus operandus manual…everyone knew it wasn’t workplace violence except Hollywood and White House and Hillary Clinton WANT TO PROPAGANDIZE IT AS SUCH TO LET THEMSELVES OFF THE HOOK FOR “STUPID”…
I’m mostly disappointed though in our new Attorney General. I have a great deal of respect for her and her record even where I have disagreed; she caved to the White House and she’s better than that. Let’s see the real woman who might one day make a good President stand up for justice, not narcissistic political junkies drunk on power like President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
All wars are Banker’s wars!
@DarrylZ
Isn’t that a bit simplistic? Like saying the IMF is always responsible for ruining a country when loans go to infrastructure to modernize? Why is complexity too difficult for a reasoned mind?
Dale, question?
So who started what?
The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a number of crusades that attempted to capture the Holy Lands, called by Pope Urban II in 1095. It started as a widespread pilgrimage in western Christendom and ended as a military expedition by Roman Catholic Europe to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquests of the Levant (632–661), ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem in 1099
You say OBNOXOUS, SATANIC, FORCEFUL, INVASIVE “GOVERNMENT OF ISLAM”
It could be read as OBNOXOUS, SATANIC, FORCEFUL, INVASIVE “GOVERNMENT OF Christendom. ”
Some people in the world see the west forcing our way of life on them.
Something to think about.
Steve
It’s always humorous to read an historically inaccurate but God I love Wikipedia and Google history rebuttal, and, if you had been my student, you would have failed this assignment, Mr. Segner, not for political correctness which is for those without inquiring minds and higher reasoning power, but for providing false information as a context for, at minimum, four different “historical” “arguments” within a single text.
The Crusades were not of the West, and thus have nothing to do with it.
Key words overlooked in your own text, regain and recapture.
Pilgrimage? Crusades? Read, do not Google, to see why your reference is incorrectly notated if you will, and learn.
You wrote, Muslim conquests of the Levant (632–661) were followed by the Crusades, yet you negate the fact with a politically “incorrect” after statement.
Regardless of your religion or politics, the past, forgive me for the triteness – is carved in stone – and, as such, research for present and past present day “arguments” available. There are those who deny the Holocaust, blame the West for everything including pre-sliced store bought bread, while failing to hold all other continents accountable for centuries of persecution and enslavement and warfare while flailing at a north American continent whose own indigenous populations practiced enslavement, warfare and persecution of each other (is this the “west” you refer to in your rebuttal – I’m unaware that our indigenous people participated in the Crusades or the creation of the Levant prior to the Crusades, but am open to reading this information if you provide its reference?). Indigenous populations had established and accepted practices of all the above, yet it was the “new America” that changed those globally-accepted abhorrent practices for its new arrivals from lands that to this day continue its practice. You will find that all other continents except north America and Europe and Oceania continue to struggle with enslavement, class warfare, religious persecution, and government instability. The lesson is that the global community continues to evolve, no matter what country. No one is immune to its need, but do not irrationally negate the gifts of the west when denigrating it as scholars of history know better.
One can only hope you will educate yourself as your history teachers seem to have done an unremarkable job. Historical sound bites are not accepted by the wise, they are fast food for the fool.
James Fitzgerald
Los Angeles
Connie and I support a program at NAU called Philosophy in the public interest. One of the speakers said before you get into a discussion, first think about the other point of view and then formulate yours.
A little History,
The western powers divided up the Middle East after the First World War. We installed puppet rulers to control the newfound oil reserves.The CIA put the Shaw of Iran in place to protect the oil supplies to the west.
Now lets look an America 1800.
We divided the country up, we attacked the locals took away their land and sold it to whites and when they attacked we were outraged.
Lets look at America in 1846/1847
we attacked Mexico forced them to give us New Mexico, California and more.
1854 Perry arrived in Japanese waters with a small squadron of U.S. Navy ships, because he and others believed the only way to convince the Japanese to accept western trade was to display a willingness to use its advanced firepower.
At the time, many Americans believed that they had a special responsibility to modernize and civilize the Chinese and Japanese. In the case of Japan, missionaries felt that Protestant Christianity would be accepted where Catholicism had generally been rejected.
1898 U.S. attacks on Spain’s Pacific possessions led to involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately to the Philippine–American War.
I can go on forever, our hands are not clean, it seems we are ALWAYS at war, a war that is in our “Best interests”.
The American way of life, Christianity, democracy, capitalism, are not for everyone. The world has been exploited to support the America dream, well I guess we are getting some push back,
Steve Segner
so Mr. Segner – are you declaring yourself a Muslim?
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature”
An Opiate I choose not to indulge in.
ss
Mr. Segner,
With respect, please know that a paraphrase has context.
Because Wikipedia seems to be a much used resource, we took the opportunity to visit that site and provide a snippet of the paraphrase.
Original thought is rare amongst antagonists. Original thought is often maligned and destroyed by paraphrasing masses.
As others may desire to read your sound bite within context, Wikipedia again offers a limited scope, but your paraphrase (it is not a quote) is not new or original, and is theoretically constructed by design from several Jewish laws (of which there are hundreds, and not ten).
Today’s naysayers rarely understand this paraphrase within its context, and misuse of it is common to express antipathy towards modernday religions.
Whilst it is a philosophical (and ancient) concept, conceived because of man’s bestial behaviours towards another, it proves contrary to what you may believe it to convey.
Here’s one relative point: A famous rabbi in his day challenged the government and the religious leaders to lift the poor and the downtrodden from the yoke of oppression. Hence we have a philosophical ideal embraced by communists, capitalists, socialists, anarchists, theologians, religions, educationalists, spiritualists, global mankind ad infinitum. Form and substance constructed by the masses for the masses.
What you failed to include with your paraphrase is Karl Marx’s sentence which predicated the sentence you provided: Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.
Marx makes the argument for being religious and being irreligious, but he is merely repeating centuries of the same philosophical arguments by hundreds, and if counted and known the lost works of thousands, including a famous rabbi, a buddha, Greeks and Romans and Phoenicians, pre-Muslim Egyptians, spiritualists, atheists, Hindus, globalists, worldviewers, anarchists, terrorists and peacemakers, and believers in One God and All Gods…amongst millions of other belief and philosophical thoughts organized and disorganized.
If your text, Mr. Segner, was the sole survivor of an internet failure, we would be debating it in the future no less and no more than we continue to do today. It is the eternal external internal conundrum:
Marx
Main article: Marxism and religion
The quotation, in context, reads as follows (emphasis added):
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.[2]
Sade
In the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette, published in 1797 (trans. Austryn Wainhouse, 1968), Sade uses the term in a scene where Juliette explains to King Ferdinand the consequences of his policies (emphasis added):
Though nature lavishes much upon your people, their circumstances are strait. But this is not the effect of their laziness; this general paralysis has its source in your policy which, from maintaining the people in dependence, shuts them out from wealth; their ills are thus rendered beyond remedy, and the political state is in a situation no less grave than the civil government, since it must seek its strength in its very weakness. Your apprehension, Ferdinand, lest someone discover the things I have been telling you leads you to exile arts and talents from your realm. You fear the powerful eye of genius, that is why you encourage ignorance. This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you. And that is why where you reign no establishments are to be found giving great men to the homeland; the rewards due knowledge are unknown here, and as there is neither honor nor profit in being wise, nobody seeks after wisdom.
I have studied your civil laws, they are good, but poorly enforced, and as a result they sink into ever further decay. And the consequences thereof? A man prefers to live amidst their corruption rather than plead for their reform, because he fears, and with reason, that this reform will engender infinitely more abuses than it will do away with; things are left as they are. Nevertheless, everything goes askew and awry and as a career in government has no more attractions than one in the arts, nobody involves himself in public affairs; and for all this compensation is offered in the form of luxury, of frivolity, of entertainments. So it is that among you a taste for trivial things replaces a taste for great ones, that the time which ought to be devoted to the latter is frittered away on futilities, and that you will be subjugated sooner or later and again and again by any foe who bothers to make the effort.
Novalis
In 1798, Novalis wrote in Blüthenstaub (Pollen):[3]
Ihre sogenannte Religion wirkt bloß wie ein Opiat reizend, betäubend, Schmerzen aus Schwäche stillend.
(Their so-called religion works just like an opiate—Stimulating—dulling pain from weakness.)
Heinrich Heine
In 1840, Heinrich Heine also used the same analogy, in his essay on Ludwig Börne:
Welcome be a religion that pours into the bitter chalice of the suffering human species some sweet, soporific drops of spiritual opium, some drops of love, hope and faith.[4]
Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley, a canon of the Church of England, wrote this four years after Marx:[5]
We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable’s hand book, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded, a mere book to keep the poor in order.[6]
Lenin
Main article: Marxist–Leninist atheism
Vladimir Lenin, speaking of religion in Novaya Zhizn in 1905,[7] clearly alluded to Marx’s earlier comments (emphasis added):
Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.}end.
We offer that Mr. Segner and all others, whilst attending your philosophy support associations and or sitting alone in mindfulness, may you find that Being is the root of reason, not acquiescing (listening) to ignorance and or wisdom unquestioned.
A collaboration of students Diaz, Gustas, Ling, Moon, Patel, Petrov.
Hank asked
December 8, 2015 at 9:52 pm
So Mr. Segner – are you declaring yourself a Muslim?
My reply ““Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature”
An Opiate I choose not to indulge in.
Diaz, Gustas, Ling, Moon, Patel, Petrov.
Cannot seem to understand my “simple answers”, Religion, (all) are a waste of time.
There is no god, life is now and nothing later we are just DNA blowing in the wind. .
So please no more five pages of utter nonsense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIl-XY9t_Lw
How to fight the good fight! http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001jkmYdBWS7LyVrKsL0pa_2ALsGNFtK3YzNN05XLB479xEqZaTP-mXFadKljsLNHzgdZ3mndgSK-H79mqz7hybQd1k-EAl6vOjiItbdnVeTYxvBDlxhmL4k27TucmIltTM5DZZshZqTGyy-o6_wOrLoNrinS9I7lB0lvTtNBS4jWZiSonfmXSvXMFEorFrfpqC&c=FlMjNiBmkRmrryOjWGDpIKIr-xIl2zZoEvqq_aukNuTo-i0sUylKMg==&ch=rP0tX1aCOie1kTQ6zrz6Kd-5cPKbq8RuLr–auJn38kJ7zPCof0pjQ==
MOVIE Night at Christ Center
580 Brewer Road, Sedona (Roundabout at Burger King)
FRIDAY – December 11th, 6:00 PM Join Us!
Interesting statistics.
If you think guns are a problem in the U.S., you should watch this.
If, on the other hand, you do not believe guns are a problem then you should watch this.
I have never seen this before. Very well done.
You folks will really like this one (especially those of you in TX).
Be sure to watch it until the very end.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/pELwCqz2JfE?rel=0&autoplay=true
Muslims need to turn in terrorists among them. Simple. It’s the law. Might not be sharia, but it’s the law of this land. If you don’t believe in America’s laws, no matter who you are or what religion/creed you practice, leave.