Discontented Soul

As the Free Trade Agreement looked more and more like becoming a reality, we learned that George W had 'promised [Prime Minister] John Howard an FTA as a Christmas present,' or if you prefer, as a reward for his arse-licking over Iraq.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall after the FTA comes into force,

- when the relatives of those who thought the Oz/US FTA was the best thing since sliced bread suffer accidents or terrible wasting diseases;

- when those who supported the Oz/US FTA have to start taking out third mortgages on their houses to pay for the drugs to help those relatives; and

- when those who traded Australian interests for cheap laptops start to wail “Why, oh why, did we ever cut the ground out from under our ‘quaint, old-fashioned’ Pharmaceutical Benefits System?”

Advance Australia WHERE?

Here’s a challenge for Australians. Do we continue ‘sucking the hole’ of the Great Crusader Bush and his little mates, or do we vote for Mark Latham, and find ourselves ‘liberated’ — not as brutally as the Iraqis have been, but cut off from the warm embrace of Uncle Sam?
Make no mistake — this President would do it. Not only is he possibly the least well-read and least well-travelled president in US history, but he is actually proud of the fact. And, like the most unscrupulous Mafia Don, he demands absolute loyalty — “you’re either with us, or against us.” Add to this the fact that Dubya is a fundamentalist Christian who talks in terms of Good ‘n’ Evil and wants to bring on the Second Coming of Christ, and you have a very dangerous individual to oppose.

Will we have the courage to vote against the allies of such a man? I know I will.

Dear Sir
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from you, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. For example, when someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
However, I do need some advice from you regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them.
1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord (Leviticus1:9). The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness — Leviticus15:19-24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.
4. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to New Guineans, but not New Zealanders. Can you clarify? Why can't I own New Zealanders?
5. I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states that he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Leviticus 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
7. Leviticus 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Leviticus 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field — as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Leviticus 24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Leviticus 20:14)
I know that you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your devoted fan,
Jim

The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious. In the long run only he will achieve basic results influencing public opinion who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form despite the objections of the intellectuals.
— Josef Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany

Close your eyes and repeat after me … “Mark Latham is anti-American.”

As in the Metropolis of the USofA, here in the colony of Australia, we are currently having debates about sexuality, and especially homosexuality. I wrote a Letter to the Editor pointing out the lunacy of the Christian position, and received an an attempted justification of its morality. This is My reply to that:

So, D Halpern, “all your ancestors were human”? I take you to mean that you will have no truck with any rubbish of the kind put about by that young whippersnapper, Charlie Darwin. Stout fellow!!!! It’s much better to believe that human beings were created out of dirt by some Spirit-In-The-Sky, than to try to come to terms with all that gobbledegook purveyed by the evolutionist chappies — much simpler too!
And you have a ‘foundation’ for your views? What? De word o’ de Lord? God’s Holy Book that gives merely a flat assertion that IT is the truth? I’m sure there is a concept in Philosophy that describes such an assertion of self-evidence, but I will merely offer a quote from another, who, like Trotsky, belonged to a group whom those of your ilk persecuted for nearly two millennia — until guilt forced you to stop. The mediaeval Jewish philosopher, Moshe ben Maimon, wrote, “They are utter fools who accept a thing as convincing proof simply because it is in writing.”
And is this God who “loves me even without my permission” the same one who will throw me into a fiery lake for eternity for bonking my sister, my daughter, the guy next door, his wife and/or the family donkey? If he is so far “above humanity,” why does he care who (whom) I’m bonking? Or is it that, if I stop my illicit bonking, he will soften the heart of the CEO of DuPont and make him give free AIDS drugs to Africa AND let us keep our PBS? Or are you one of these capitalist Christians who believe that if one doesn’t work three jobs and save 110% of one’s income one doesn’t deserve to be healthy?
My religious views would run to about thirteen volumes, mostly promulgating the view that Christianity is a parasitical religion, which has tried to hijack, gut and then kill every other belief system ever devised. But you are right in that I have stopped listening to one whose sole source of Truth is a book which, if taken literally in true “fundamentalist” fashion, is a series of barely creditable miracle stories grafted onto the life of a genuinely holy man who died a painful death at the hands of his country’s occupiers.
I envy you your sense of security, Mr Halpern. Next time you are bothering God, ask him these very pertinent questions:

1) If it is literally true that he created Adam out of dirt, did he give Adam a navel? What about Eve, created from Adam’s rib?

2) More pertinently, if God created Adam “in his own image,” does GOD have a navel? Why? In whose womb did God need an umbilical cord?

3) Even more importantly, if I succumb to the urging of Christians such as you, and get myself “born again,” will I have TWO navels?

Searching questions, Mr Halpern, and if God can’t produce answers to satisfy a rational adult like me, he’ll have Buckley’s of convincing me that he DIDN’T create Adam and Steve!

I read with amusement today that the US-appointed female “mayor” of Baghdad has been recalled to Washington, and that Jay Garner, America’s ‘Mr Fixit in Iraq’ will soon suffer the same fate. Almost a month after they ‘delivered the Iraqi people from the clutches of the tyrant Saddam’, the Gods of Washington have not even managed to set up a rudimentary version of ACTEW (Australian Capital Territory Electricity & Water) to meet the human needs of those who have been ‘liberated’ and who are still alive.
This miserable war has been marked by allusions to 1939 and quotations from Classical languages — I think I can add another. The Roman Historian Tacitus has the Pictish chieftain Calgacus describe Roman imperialism in terms which aptly suit the swarming khaki-clad soldier-ants of the Coalition of the Shilling — “ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant — where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.”
Of course Latin tags mean nothing to the fighting men and women from Dumpville, Texas, Lower Bowelstutter, East Lancs or Kickatinalong, Western Australia — one doesn’t need The Humanities to pull a trigger, one merely ‘obeys orders.’ Nor are they important to the ‘born-again’ fundamentalists running the world’s only superpower and its lackeys — they know that the only word that matters, God’s Word, was handed down in the English of the King James’ Bible.
Actually, I would like to ask these fundamentalists a question — if the War in Iraq is the opening salvo in Armageddon, why does Jesus want the Iraqi Oil Ministry guarded?

Amid all the jubilation of a ‘free’ Iraq, I wonder how many people have noticed that something else has died — the Twentieth Century. Everything that we held dear has been consigned to the rubbish bin and we are now back to 1913 — with better technology.
Consider:
· Instead of the imperfect but desirable ideal of a ‘Parliament of Nations,’ wherein competing interests are balanced and resolved by debate and war is scorned as an instrument of policy, we now have a single superpower, which will work under the slogan of ‘might is right’ and circumnavigate the globe toppling governments which it, in its wisdom, finds offensive;
· Instead of the ideal of American ‘democracy,’ where lip service is paid to the concept of ‘liberty and justice for all,’ we will now have an Athenian-style ‘democracy,’ where ‘liberty and justice’ is confined to those who think and act like Americans;

· Instead of the ‘presumption of innocence,’ we will have puritan Salem’s assumption that it is the duty of the ACCUSED to prove him/herself innocent;
· Instead of the ‘Welfare State,’ we will now have a combination of the ‘Nanny State,’ and the American Calvinist concept of “if you cant afford a doctor, you don’t deserve one, because you haven’t worked hard enough or saved enough,” where tax-cuts will be given to the rich, while social spending will be slashed;
· Instead of ‘reasonable working conditions’ protected by trade unions, we will now have ‘individual reward for individual effort’ — a code for longer working hours and lowered working conditions;
· Instead of respected Civil Libertarian lawyers, we will now have ‘dangerous radicals,’ who defend such ideals as Double Jeopardy and Habeas Corpus;
· Instead of a ‘free press,’ devoted to reporting and analysis, we will now have Fox News and endless variants of Stan Zemanek (a right-wing populist talk-back radio host in Eastern Australia);
· Instead of ‘multiculturalism,’,\ actual and internalized, we will now have racism and jingoism under the ‘benign’ auspices of an imperialistic USA;
· Instead of the religious tolerance that even the Vatican is promoting, we will have endless ‘Crusades’ inspired by fanatical Christian fundamentalism.
Ave atque Vale, C20 (sighs).
OK, I submit — I am ready to accept imprisonment for the ‘heresy’ of not wanting to live in the Amerikan (sic) Empire.