Okay, so now we’re headed into the murky world of retributions, conspiracy theories and wild distortions. Were there failings by Trump’s security team? Was the assassination attempt sanctioned by Joe Biden? (Hey, no-one likes to be told they’d be a loser on the golf course).
Thomas Matthew Crooks was a kid of twenty years. Presumably, he thought he’d go down in history as the hero who rid the world of Donald J Trump. He only managed to rid the planet of a tiny piece of Trump’s ear.
There followed the usual round of hypocritical outpourings. “My thoughts and prayers are with….” from virtually every politician on the planet. Perhaps a few unspoken cogitations of, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
Aside from his brainwashed followers, to the world populace as a whole, Donald Trump is possibly one of the most hated people on the planet. He’s made no secret of the vile things he’ll do to the world if he regains the Presidency of the United States.
Taking a page from the rulebook of China’s Xi Jinping, Trump is hellbent on ensuring the 2024 election will be the last that Americans vote for a President. He intends to be a king for life. He is also one of Vladimir Putin’s greatest admirers. Escalation of the war in Europe will have his blessing, followed by the disbanding of NATO.
Quickly recovered from his ear piercing, Trump called out to Americans to, “Stand united!” It rang somewhat hollow given that the ex-president is responsible for a greater dis-uniting of the American people than any other US President since the Civil War of 1861.
The outpourings of disgust, dismay, alarm, and various other sanctimonious utterings from around the world this morning, lead one to consider just how many on this planet secretly harbour some regret that Thomas Matthew Crooks was not a better shot?
Posted on - Comments Off on Don’t Call Me Anti-Semitic, I’m Anti-All Religion.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance adopted its working definition of antisemitism in 2016. The definition is, as follows:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
I was castigated recently by a woman who insisted I was dishonest by not writing equally in favour of Israel, which suffered the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7th, rather than my (to her) obvious bias towards the Palestinians and their suffering under the military onslaught of Israel.
I made the point that I had condemned those Hamas attacks in a number of posts HERE and HERE, oh, and HERE, but she was not to be mollified. Obviously I was anti-Semitic. I tried reason, only to find she had blocked my email address, preventing any further discussion.
I have no problem with someone who disagrees with my opinions, but I find it intolerable to be blocked from a discussion before it’s truly started, by someone who has simply stuck a label on me and slammed the door in my face.
I’m an atheist. My journey to atheism has been long and difficult. I arrived here through numerous religious and spiritual paths. I now find the whole concept of religion through the ages to be no more than a clever means to control the populace of the time.
That control continues to this day, despite science having revealed the utter falseness of deities, angels, heavenly after-lives, and all the paraphernalia that surrounds them. Every year the Muslim Hajjes takes the lives of numerous pilgrims. 1,300 deaths is the figure stated for this year’s Hajj, with many more suffering acute illness from the intolerable heat. Meanwhile the Saudi government makes a fortune (around US$12 billion) from the Hajj every year.
Christianity is no better. Christians and Muslims have been at one another’s throats since before Pope Urban II started the first crusade against the Muslims in 1095. It continues to this day. Christians have even been fighting among themselves as Protestants and Catholics slugged it out intermittently throughout the Middle Ages.
Jews believe they are the chosen people of their God. Christians believe themselves the chosen people of their God, who happens to be remarkably similar to the God of the Jews. There’s an uneasy and very hypocritical peace that exists between both factions.
55% of Protestant American Christians firmly believe that they’re living in the ‘End Times’, as foretold in the Biblical Book of Revelations. That figure rises to 63% among US Evangelical Christians. They also believe that when their God (Jesus, the Christ) arrives at Armageddon, he will take all the Christian believers to Heaven, but not the Jews unless they are prepared to convert to Christianity! The rest will be left to fend for themselves.
The Jewish religion has a slightly different interpretation (as one would expect). Before Armageddon (or, End of Days, as is the Jewish interpretation) all nations will come to acknowledge the God of Israel as the only true God (problematic for US Protestant Evangelicals). Two characters, Gog and Magog, play important roles before the commencement of the ‘End of Days’. There has to be a war between, on the one hand the evil Gog/Magog, and on the other the Jewish Messiah (probably not Jesus, the Christ) who will defeat them. Apparently, no-one has discovered who Gog and Magog actually are, which I suppose could cause problems for the Jewish Messiah, if he can’t recognize them.
If this were written as fiction, it would be considered too fantastic to be acceptable. According to the churches, it’s not fiction but the sacred word of their God. Down through the ages they’ve brainwashed their congregations, over many generations, into believing it to be truth.
If I appear a little flippant it’s simply because the whole religious concoction is so outrageously fictitious that it beggars belief. Is it not easier just to believe in Santa Claus, a fat guy in a bright red dressing gown who lives somewhere in Lapland and flies around the world once a year on a magic sleigh pulled by reindeer, delivering toys to little children?
To hark back to my label of ‘Anti-Semite’. I’m an atheist, but no-one accuses me of being, “Anti-religious”, or “Anti-Christian”, or even, “Anti-Hindu”. Why accuse me of antisemitism, (which is only a fancy word for ‘Anti-Jewish’) when I have already, on more than one occasion, made clear in my writing that I do not take sides. My concern in any conflict is it’s effects on the innocent, in this case both Palestinians and Israelis. I consider Vladimir Putin to be the most evil of men, but in no way do I hold the Russian people en masse responsible for Putin’s criminality in Ukraine.
I’m no Holocaust denier either. The extermination of people of Jewish origin by Eichmann and his murderers stands as possibly the worst known individual atrocity in human history. They were innocents being cold-bloodedly slaughtered in the most appalling manner.
Atrocities have been an ongoing saga of the human species since we came into existence. Always there are atrocities being perpetrated by humans against other humans in the world. Today: Palestine/Israel; Russia/ Ukraine; the Sudanese civil war; Ethiopia; Central African Republic; DRC… the list goes on and on.
The Holocaust was an abomination, but in terms of human life, if all the present day and recent history atrocities in the world were added together, the figure of six million would possibly pale into insignificance.
Adolf Eichmann was an anti-Semite. He hated the Jewish people and wished to destroy them all. I do not hate anyone, but I despise any individual, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Atheist responsible for the brutal and cold-blooded killing, maiming, raping, torturing, of innocent human beings who just want to live their lives in peace and harmony.
Last night I sat through the UK’s Channel Four ‘Dispatches’ program, entitled “Kill Zone: Inside Gaza.” Could anyone sit through this hour long documentary and not be moved to tears by the horrors that unfolded?
Yes, we’ve seen and heard the news. We’ve watched some of the devastation of Gaza and the suffering and deaths of many Palestinians, but to illustrate the full macabre horror took the efforts of Palestinian journalists and camera people to capture it, in all it’s full blown revulsion and repugnance. Revulsion at the mass suffering taking place; repugnance at the Israeli government’s apparently cold-blooded attitude to the slaughter they’re inflicting.
The Guardian’s review of the program leaves little unsaid. I would entreat everyone to read it, and if possible to watch the documentary. Some of those who made it gave their lives to do so.
It begs the question as to why we human beings do this to each other? Out of eight billion souls on this planet, there are probably less than eight hundred with the real power to create chaos and death on a huge scale. That’s 0.000001 percent of 8 billion. The rest of us just want to live in peace with each other. Whether we are Israeli, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Russian, or from Timbuktu, we have no desire to kill each other or cause our fellow beings suffering.
It’s the remaining 0.000001 percent who create all the wars and chaos in the world. The ones who hold the power. The presidents, the dictators, the leaders of terrorist groups. It’s power that we, the people, have mostly handed to them. We vote them into office. History tells us clearly that those who hold the reins of power are incapable of controlling it. It corrupts them and causes a madness that eats away at their brains like some aggressive, parasitic worm. It causes mental sickness, deluding them into believing themselves as little gods.
But they are not gods. They are weak human beings who cannot handle the power we allow them in a way that reflects our wishes.
When are we, the other seven billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and two hundred going to do something to stop them?
It would by unfair to end this post without mentioning the Israelis who had their lives torn asunder by the heinous crimes of Hamas last October 7th. The maimed, the kidnapped, the bereaved. It is to be hoped that the perpetrators, or at least those who planned the attack and gave the orders, can in time be held to account, along with Netanyahu and his cohorts. We need more power to the International Criminal Court, not less when it suits.
