Love for Life

Email received from Dick Eastman

(1) Conclusion: Palestinian terror tactics "inevitable consequence" of Israeli occupation

(2) Survey challenges Americans' Zionistic "they-hate-our-freedom" perceptions of Islam

(3) The world is not going to be saved by legislation.

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(1)

Israel's U.N. ambassador in Geneva slams Dugard's analysis.

UN expert calls Palestinian terrorism 'inevitable consequence' of Israeli occupation

The Associated Press Tuesday,
February 26, 2008

GENEVA: A report commissioned by the United Nations suggests that Palestinian terrorism is the "inevitable consequence" of Israeli occupation and laws that resemble South African apartheid — a claim Israel rejected Tuesday as enflaming hatred between Jews and Palestinians.

The report by John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the U.N. Human Rights Council, will be presented next month, but it has been posted on the body's Web site.
In it, Dugard, a South African lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in the 1980s, says "common sense ... dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by al-Qaida, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation."

While Palestinian terrorist acts are to be deplored, "they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation," writes Dugard, whose 25-page report accuses the Jewish state of acts and policies consistent with all three.

He cited checkpoints and roadblocks restricting Palestinian movement, house demolitions, and what he terms the "Judaization" of Jerusalem.

As long as there is occupation, there will be terrorism, he argues.

"Acts of terror against military occupation must be seen in historical context," Dugard says. "This is why every effort should be made to bring the occupation to a speedy end. Until this is done, peace cannot be expected, and violence will continue."

Israel's U.N. ambassador in Geneva slammed Dugard's analysis.

"The common link between al-Qaida and the Palestinian terrorists is that both intentionally target civilians with the mere purpose to kill," Itzhak Levanon said. "The fact that Professor Dugard is ignoring this essential fact, demonstrates his inability to use objectivity in his assessment.

"Professor Dugard will better serve the cause of peace by ceasing to enflame the hatred between Israelis and Palestinians, who have embarked on serious talks to solve this contentious situation."

Dugard was appointed in 2001 as an unpaid expert by the now-defunct U.N. Human Rights Commission to investigate only violations by the Israeli side, prompting Israel and the U.S. to dismiss his reports as one-sided. Israel refused to allow him to conduct a U.N.-mandated fact-finding mission on its Gaza offensive in 2006.

The report will be presented next month at the 47-nation rights council's first regular session of the year. The new body has been widely criticized — even by its founder, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan — for spending most of its time criticizing one government, Israel's, over alleged abuses.

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(2)

"They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other" not.

Major survey challenges Americans' Zionistic perceptions of Islam

The American Free Press
Tuesday, February 26, 2008

WASHINGTON: A huge survey of the world's Muslims released Tuesday challenges Western notions that equate Islam with radicalism and violence.

The survey, conducted by the Gallup polling agency over six years and three continents, seeks to dispel the belief held by some in the West that Islam itself is the driving force of radicalism.

It shows that the overwhelming majority of Muslims condemned the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 and other subsequent terrorist attacks, the authors of the study said in Washington.

"Samuel Harris said in the Washington Times (in 2004): 'It is time we admitted that we are not at war with terrorism. We are at war with Islam'," Dalia Mogahed, co-author of the book "Who Speaks for Islam" which grew out of the study, told a news conference here.

"The argument Mr Harris makes is that religion in the primary driver" of radicalism and violence, she said.

"Religion is an important part of life for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, and if it were indeed the driver for radicalisation, this would be a serious issue."

But the study, which Gallup says surveyed a sample equivalent to 90 percent of the world's Muslims, showed that widespread religiosity "does not translate into widespread support for terrorism," said Mogahed, director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

About 93 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical, according to the poll, based on more than 50,000 interviews.

In majority Muslim countries, overwhelming majorities said religion was a very important part of their lives -- 99 percent in Indonesia, 98 percent in Egypt, 95 percent in Pakistan.

But only seven percent of the billion Muslims surveyed -- the radicals -- condoned the attacks on the United States in 2001, the poll showed.

Moderate Muslims interviewed for the poll condemned the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington because innocent lives were lost and civilians killed.

"Some actually cited religious justifications for why they were against 9/11, going as far as to quote from the Koran -- for example, the verse that says taking one innocent life is like killing all humanity," she said.

Meanwhile, radical Muslims gave political, not religious, reasons for condoning the attacks, the poll showed.

The survey shows radicals to be neither more religious than their moderate counterparts, nor products of abject poverty or refugee camps.

"The radicals are better educated, have better jobs, and are more hopeful with regard to the future than mainstream Muslims," John Esposito, who co-authored "Who Speaks for Islam", said.

"Ironically, they believe in democracy even more than many of the mainstream moderates do, but they're more cynical about whether they'll ever get it," said Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

Gallup launched the study following 9/11, after which US President George W. Bush asked in a speech, which is quoted in the book: "Why do they hate us?"

"They hate... a democratically elected government," Bush offered as a reason.

"They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

But the poll, which gives ordinary Muslims a voice in the global debate that they have been drawn into by 9/11, showed that most Muslims -- including radicals -- admire the West for its democracy, freedoms and technological prowess.

What they do not want is to have Western ways forced on them, it said.
"Muslims want self-determination, but not an American-imposed and -defined democracy. They don't want secularism or theocracy. What the majority wants is democracy with religious values," said Esposito.

The poll has given voice to Islam's silent majority, said Mogahed.

"A billion Muslims should be the ones that we look to, to understand what they believe, rather than a vocal minority," she told AFP.

Muslims in 40 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East were interviewed for the survey, which is part of Gallup's World Poll that aims to interview 95 percent of the world's population.

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(3)

"Government is essentially immoral. Divine right of kings means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost. All socialism involves slavery. An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature. One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken. Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society. Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both. Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community. Love is life's end, but never ending. Love is life's wealth, never spent, but ever spending. Love's life's reward, rewarded in rewarding. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy. In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances. Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative. Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror. The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future. If you fell down yesterday, stand up today. What really matters is what you do with what you have."

Understand this, the world is not going to be saved by legislation.

The Montpelier Tribune Sentinel -- Letters to the Editor
Tuesday, February 27, 2008

MONTPELIER: "All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do. Today we are manipulated in a thousand ways to oppress each other. Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us. Government is always in the hands of a conspiracy. In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful. Ever and always there is some kind of false-flag attack to rally the people "Remember the Maine!" "Remember the Lusitania!" "Remember Pearl Harbor!" "Remember September 11!" The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering and deceit upon which its power is founded.

"Force is not a remedy. Force is the enslavement of the men tricked into using force even more than it the attempt to enslave those who are the objects of force. An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens. War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves. And so good men cling to the lies of their controllers as they act against all reason and inclination. If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state. War is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it. Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.

"Tyrants rule by fear. They rule by creating conflict. Their agents turn one religion against another. They turn one people against another. They capture goverment by creating first fear and then conflict. The tyrants pit one group against another. Each group then presents a leader, let us say a candidate for the presidency of the United States, but this leader is not chosen because he is a great and good leader, but because he has the ability to bring fear and controllable desperation to the other group. In their terror all thought of principle and reform and the good of all is caste aside and only the one thought -- vote for whomever to defeat the terror that the other party is offering. And so the party of the democracy will vote for their candidate whom they did not really pick for themselves and did not really want to defeat the terror nominated by party of the republic and the party of the republic, whose eyes were only on the horrible rise of the terror candidate of the opposition party that they allowed operatives to raise up the terror of their own party. So both parties, manipulated into fear of the enemy to the point where they forget their own traditional virtues end up electing one or another terror in service of tyranny, doing so out of fear of the perceived greater terror offered by the other party even though the terror in each party was put there to effect just that outcome. All the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of this kind. All parties without exception, when they seek for power in this way, are merely the instruments of organized interests, the ruling minority. A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

"Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.

"And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived. The Rothschilds, and that class of money-lenders of whom they are the representatives and agents - men who never think of lending a dime to their next-door neighbors, for purposes of honest industry, unless upon the most ample security, and at the highest rate of interest - stand ready, at all times, to lend money in unlimited amounts to those robbers and murderers, who call themselves governments, to be expended in shooting down those who do not submit quietly to being robbed and enslaved.'

"The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: 'Your money, or your life.' And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a 'protector,' and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to 'protect' those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful 'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you. He does not keep 'protecting' you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.

"While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness in not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful. Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons. Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. And remember, no human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. Men are not fish. They need common law that evolves from cooperating humanity itself to enable them to cooperate and to live and prosper in peace. It is that cooperation that the tyrant wishes to control so that it will serve his interests at the interest of community. God forbid that thy continue to get away with it.

Elmer Lane
Plymouth Notch, VT