The Final Shame: American Female Soldiers
According to the United States Treasury, al-Qaeda now has less money than the opium-enriched Taliban does. But saying so might be dangerous—it might “shame” al-Qaedian fanatics into having to prove us wrong. After all, there are still plenty of oil-enriched Arabs ready to fund both groups.
On the other hand, the women sure are growing restless in the Lands of the Burqa. For example, two female Kuwaiti Members of Parliament, Rola Dashti and Aseel Al-Awadhi, are defying the country’s powerful Islamist movement by refusing to wear hijab, or the headscarf, in Parliament
“You can’t force a woman going to the mall to wear a hijab and you can’t force a woman going to work to wear the hijab,” the MP, Rola Dashti, said. “This is not Iran or Saudi Arabia.”
MP Dashti insists that Kuwait’s constitution grants “freedom of choice and equality between the sexes and does not incorporate sharia.” Nevertheless, a private citizen has filed a lawsuit against the American-educated Dr. Dashti and Professor al-Awadhi for not wearing hijab. The matter will be heard later this month.
Osama bin Laden would not be pleased by naked-faced Muslim women—and in positions of public power. That fact alone might inspire him (and many other Islamic fundamentalists) to acts of terrorism. Here’s why I say so.
A few weeks ago, at this blogsite, I wrote: “Follow the burqa” and you’ll find a fundamentalist household, possibly even a terror cell or two. In my view, those men who demand that women wear shrouds are often the kind of men who might also be terrorists or supporters and funders of terrorism.
Osama bin Laden’s first wife and one of their sons, Omar, have written a Memoir, Growing Up Bin Laden. Although Carmen Bin Laden has also previously written a Memoir (she was married to one of Osama’s brothers, Yeslam), she was not “of the blood.” For a son to go public, exposing his father, and for him to stand by his mother, is unheard of, wondrous, heroic, and quite dangerous.
Growing Up Bin Laden shows us how cruel, weird, misogynist, and tyrannical Osama is both as a husband and a father.
By saying so, I do not mean to reduce evil solely to its psychiatric components or to excuse it. Rather, there is an Islamist culture out there in which such misogyny is normalized and valorized. That culture breeds terrorism. Domestic terrorism, national terrorism, international terrorism. I know: Counter-terrorism experts are not comfortable in talking about psycho-dynamics of family life. They want the specific information that will help them prevent the next act of terrorism.
Allow me to suggest that a psychological or psycho-analytic approach does not mean that a mass murderer and fanatic “gets to walk” away from justice. Understanding the psycho-dynamics of evil does not excuse it; on the contrary. It is one way to understand where it breeds, how it is shaped into human form. Taking a psychological approach does not rule out the equal importance of jihad, fundamentalist Islam, oil economics, geographical, technological and military realities, or the existence of evil. A psychological approach is invaluable in terms of understanding the family dynamics that lead certain men and women to become terrorists, and to support and fund terrorism.
Remember how crazy Mohammed Ata was in terms of his view of women? He imagined that his mortal frame would actually survive the 9/11 incineration intact and he left instructions which demanded that no “unclean” pregnant woman be allowed near his body to prepare it for burial. As I’ve written: “Follow the burqa” and you may potentially find a terror cell and its supporters.
Well—now meet bin Laden, the family man.
According to Dr. Nancy H. Kobrin’s forthcoming book, The Banality of Suicide Terrorism. The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombings (for which I’ve written the Introduction), I know that when Osama was an infant, his father Mohammed banished his mother, Hamida. Thus, psychologically, Osama was “abandoned” by his mother and neglected by his father who had 56 other children and who died when Osama was 10 years old.
Osama married his first wife, Najwa, when she was 15 and he was 17. Like his mother Hamida, Najwa was also from Syria; both his mother and first wife, Najwa, were reportedly very beautiful, glamorous, active, westernized women.
Thus, the young Osama had to bear the shame of having no mother—and of having a mother who was a fourth “revolving position” wife, who was duly divorced, banished, and known as “the slave.” Osama himself was known as the “son of the slave.” Nevertheless, rather than identify the source of all his misery (his father, Islamic gender apartheid), Osama spent his life yearning for paternal affection and attention which he never really got.
Dr. Kobrin points out that the prophet Mohammed also had a series of similar losses (his mother Amina, his wetnurse, Thueiba, his next mother figure, “Halima,” then back to his mother Amina who died when he was five, his guardian-grandfather, etc.)—and that Mohammed’s genocidal persecution of the Jews began after the loss of his first wife and of the uncle who had reared him.
Back to al-Qaeda’s founder. Osama, the husband, never banished his first wife, Najwa, who, we are told, used to play tennis and paint—but Osama forced her to fully veil, Saudi style. Their wedding? No jokes, no music, no dancing was allowed. Thereafter, Osama never allowed Najwa out of the house except to visit relatives or to move to another house. She lived her life in purdah, in prison. She endured Osama’s marriage to three other women, one of whom she herself chose. She never complained.
Osama did not allow modern medicine for his children; refrigerators were forbidden, as were air conditioners, phones, toys, and televisions. Osama expected his sons to also become suicide killers and he subjected his young children to dangerous and frightening military maneouvers. According to Omar and Najwa, Osama also murdered his children’s pets in chilling ways—ways that characterize many other serial killers.
Once, Osama killed a pet monkey. He had one of his lackeys run it over with a car. Osama said “The monkey was not a monkey but was a Jewish person turned into a monkey by the hand of God.” He gassed a new litter of puppies, Nazi-style, trying to see how long it would take them to die.
But what was it that sent Osama totally over the edge? What compelled him to plan the mass murders of civilians on every continent? Omar tells us. When Osama saw American female troops on Middle Eastern Arab soil, he cried out. “ Women! Defending Saudi men!”
That was the ultimate shame, the only shame that mattered, greater than the shame of having no mother, no father, the shame of being known as the “son of the slave.” Instead of bonding with persecuted women and/or trying to protect them, Osama went the usual psychological route. He subjugated and imprisoned his wives and bonded with his absent father by becoming like him, only more so.
Psychologically, unconsciously, Osama has denied needing to be protected by a strong woman, namely a mother, when he was an infant, and his denial goes so far that he chose to becomes a serial killer, a mass murderer; he specializes in killing life. He is an anti-Mother. Osama takes his rage out on America, Jews, Christians, Israelis because, in his eyes, they have freed their women; indeed, to him, such countries are therefore like women and must be subordinated.
Amazingly, at least one son, Omar, not only fled Afghanistan and his father’s control, he took his mother Najwa out with him. He did so even before 9/11.
Thus, the experience of naked-faced women in positions of power (in the American military or in the Kuwaiti Parliament) as “shaming” men, is one major component of Islamic terrorism. There is no appeasing this misogynist madness. One must stand against it.
President Obama must do everything in his power to help free Middle Eastern women from illiteracy, poverty, forced veiling, forced, arranged marriages to first cousins, polygamy, purdah, etc. Alas, thus far, he has flattered their jailors and crowed about America’s support for the hijab. Perhaps our President should talk to the brave Kuwaiti parliamentarians.
As interesting as it is to probe the personal problems and family history of bin Laden, we are dealing not only with a neurotic or psychotic leader but with a community that has devoted itself to intolerance and violence. Members of the community share a certain amount of family history, but the Islamists are motivated by their faith in a much more significant way than they are by their neuroses. Big chunks of the world have gone collectively crazy at various times in history. Germany in the Hitler era is one example. Another is China during the Cultural Revolution. A third is Cambodia under Pol Pot. A fourth is Western Europe during the centuries that the Inquisition was being pursued.
Why do otherwise intelligent people start believing–en masse–in poisonous ideas? Ionesco raises the question in his play RHINOCEROS but doesn’t give us an answer
I would change the first two words of this section: “President Obama must do everything in his power to help free Middle Eastern women from illiteracy, poverty, forced veiling, forced, arranged marriages to first cousins, polygamy, purdah, etc.”
Instead of President Obama, I would put in “A US government in exile”. For the sinister force now ensconced in the Oval Office is not in the least bit interested in carrying out these wise words. Nor are his armies of zombies.
Your column was brilliant as usual!
1) [For example, two female Kuwaiti Members of Parliament, Rola Dashti and Aseel Al-Awadhi, are defying the country’s powerful Islamist movement by refusing to wear hijab, or the headscarf, in Parliament]
YES!!!! Kuwait is the 51th American state, so it is bound to happen there, the start of the implosion of the Great and Peaceful Religion.
2) [Growing Up Bin Laden shows us how cruel, weird, misogynist, tyrannical Osama is both as a husband and a father.]
Osama looks after Mohammed, I mean the Prophet.
3) [Remember how crazy Mohammed Atta was in terms of his view of women?]
Which view was exacerbated by frequenting strip joints in South Florida before the explosion. He must be now enjoying the “blow-up” virgins in heaven, pity they don’t have a brain so they can’t discuss the Mein Kampft, I mean the Quoran.
4) [Once, Osama killed a pet monkey]
He definitely needs a Jewish shrink, whether a Reich, a Rank, an Adler or even a Freud. This fella is a sick puppy, no doubt.
5) [Osama takes his rage out on America, Jews, Christians, Israelis because, in his eyes, they have freed their women; indeed, to him, such countries are therefore like women and must be subordinated.]
Please, don’t forget the Hindus, Osama also hate them, as they worship the Mother (Maheshwari).
6) [President Obama must do everything in his power to help free Middle Eastern women from illiteracy, poverty, forced veiling, forced, arranged marriages to first cousins, polygamy, purdah, etc.]
Firs Lady Michelle, from Chicago, could live for a month in Yemen as a Yemeni woman, then report back.
It was announced today that the judge in the case of Rifqa Bary in Florida, Orange County, reversed his earlier ruling and, after certain evaluations, will return her to her parents in Ohio.
It would be a good idea, if your are for her protection, that people contact their lawmakers, especially in Florida and Ohio, because many people are not familiar with honor-killings and related abuse problems. Honorable African-American attorney Ted Williams, a man of character whom I admire, defended her case forcibly on Fox News today.
As Dr. Chesler wrote recently, the parents more than likely won’t kill her, as many eyes are on them, but surely the danger exists that they force her into going back to Sri Lanka where she will be at their mercy, for example, to be forcibly married and raped or worse.
This case is at the core of the liberties afforded by the Constitution in this country, to protect her from the Islamic garbage.
I must admit that I don’t much care how people become evil and/or deranged: that they are evil and/or deranged and therefore must be stopped is enough for me. But the article shows just how badly the human psyche can be damaged when the nuclear family is destroyed or perverted – the second applying to both bin Laden’s childhood situation and the family he created later as an adult. And this is common in Islamic societies because of Mohammed’s evil example. We were not created to share a husband with others, or to have many wives, or to be torn from either of our parents for no good cause. It is a Satanic ploy to destroy the human race by destroying or perverting the institution of marriage and thereby the family. The Biblical model is made clear in Genesis 2, and Christ reiterates it for our benefit in Matthew 19:4. In Malachi 2:16 God says, “I hate divorce.”
It is not our job to “free” Middle Eastern women from anything. They are as human as we are. If they choose to reject their slavery, they are entirely capable of doing so.
It *is* our job to prevent Muslims from enforcing Islamic ideas about humiliating clothing (hijab — no matter how fancy — abayah, burkah, etc.), gender apartheid, physical beatings, “uncovered meat” rape, and the like on free women in free societies. That should be our focus.
Obama’s Muslim advisor, the bag-headed, allegedly statistics-doctoring Mogahed, is on record stating that “most women” feel that Sharia law accords them “gender justice.” With this in mind, it appears we have enough of a task keeping deity-approved domestic violence, religious woman-murder, gender apartheid, child molestation, forced marriage, and other Islamic Stone-Age practices controlled within our own societies.
I’m afraid Middle Eastern females need to fend for themselves. We’re spending enough money, time, and effort protecting ourselves from their pious males.
Someone, somewhere on a blog, said that what we are fighting about is the way women are to be, for lack of a better word, treated.
And therefore, what system is to be used to guarantee their freedom or their slavery.
President Obama must do everything in his power to help free Middle Eastern women from illiteracy, poverty, forced veiling, forced, arranged marriages to first cousins, polygamy, purdah, etc. Alas, thus far, he has flattered their jailors and crowed about America’s support for the hijab. Perhaps our President should talk to the brave Kuwaiti parliamentarians.
Not only that, but he has babbled so much about accommodating, appeasing and negotiating with the Taliban that the last thing one would expect Buraq Arafat Saddam Hussein Osama to do now is to take the 180-degree turn on his policies that such actions in favor of mahoundian women would require. Or does anyone seriously think that the Taliban would be willing to accept any criticism, let alone actual actions, against the mobile tents that they’d rather that all women on the planet wore?
I’m surprised that Buraq hasn’t yet followed in Norwegian feminist Unni Wikan’s footsteps and suggested that Western women should all veil themselves in order to “adapt to a new multicultural society.” That sure would give him more popularity among mahoundians for a day or two.
A fourth is Western Europe during the centuries that the Inquisition was being pursued
Actually the Medival Inquisition gave far more guranteees to the accused and was less prone to use torture than secular courts. For Spanish Inquistion it killed twelve thousand persons in three centuries that makes 40 a year. In the menatime in Protestant Europe panic stricken mobs burnt fourty thousand “witches” in just 40 years (a thousand a year) so it looks like it was better to have a special judiciary channeling the process so people would defer suspects to it instead of lettiong fear becoming uncontrolable.
Also the above numbers for Spanish Inquistion group both heresy and witchcracy so for a valid comparison we would have to add executions of “heretics” (eg Miguel Servet in Geneva) and of catholics (Thomas Moore or archbishop Fisher) in Protestnat countries.
If he hadn’t caused so much death and destruction, this story would be hilarious.
A cranky old codger who can’t deal with change. A violent Muslim Archie Bunker who is mad that women aren’t subservient (or hippies have long hair). He decided to live in a cave and pout rather than deal with the modern world.
I spent time in Saudi Arabia in ‘90-91. The place gave me the creeps – empty streets and suspicious looks in every city and town. While we were there, Kuwaiti women who had escaped the Iraqis were causing problems. One day they all drove through Riyadh in protest – an illegal activity in Saudi Arabia.
twelve thousand persons in three centuries that makes 40 a year
uh, that’s the minimum but the maximum is nearly x 10 times.
If your dires were exact, then why so many Jews fled away from Spain ?
Hmmm….so Bin Laden became a mass murderer because he hates women? I appreciate that feminists at their core like to think that the world is all about “the sisterhood” but the premise of this article is just a little bit too much of a stretch.
Clearly he is mysoginistic but this is just a subset of his all round hatred of western values and western civilisation not to mention his fundamental islamic beliefs. He’s just a nasty little shit who lucked into having the financial backing to shoehorn his way into cahoots with demented terrorists such as Al-zawahiri.
After 9/11 Paul Wolfowitz said it was vital for the US to move out of Saudi Arabia and find another way to protect access to Saudi oil. Recall our troops were there to prevent Sadaam from taking the Saudi oil fields following his conquest of Kuwait. Since George Bush senior removed Sadaam’s forces from Kuwait but did not remove Sadaam from power it was necessary for US troops to stay. Post 9-11 the only alternative to protecting the oil fields from Sadaam while removing the American forces from Saudi Arabia was to remove Sadaam. Hence one more reason beyond all those listed in the Congressional resolution to topple the Iraqi dictator.
It is interesting to note the cultural ignorance of our leaders; we were concerned enough about the Saudi reaction (and demand) that no Jews belong to the force in Saudi Arabia and all the Jewish soldiers who served there downplayed their identities. Yet we didn’t realize how provocative sending female soldiers to the land of Mecca would be.
None of this is to say that 9/11 was simply a case of our provoking Bin Laden nor that the need to protect the oil fields from Sadaam in the Iraq invasion was simply a case of sending American soldiers to “die for oil”. Sadaam’s capture of the oil fields would have enriched him enormously and sped his development of nuclear weapons and led to his domination of the area.
Ms. Chesler,
Your psychological analysis which begins with bin Laden’s so-called “abandonment” is ludicrous on its face. It is also extremely dangerous in that it diverts attention away from the doctrinal Islamic basis of Arab/Muslim genocidal hatred of “infidels” into a cul de sac of mushy post-modern psychobabble bull shit. This isn’t about mysogeny, nor is it about the mind of bin Laden or his possible neurosis viz. women. It is about Islam and the way Islam sytematocally inculcates hatred in its votaries which have caused terrorism and tyranny and genocide across the entire 1400 year swath of Islam’s heinous history. Focusing on your feminist’s nutball theories that widdle IDDD biddy bin Laden missed his mommy and then decided to take his Islam seriously is a joke. In a Muslim family with a harem of wives and 56 children running around it is an asinine to assert that bin Laden felt “abandoned.” it is idiotic to attempt to apply your new-fangled theories onto a primitive family dynamic such as the tribal Arab milieu into which Islam’s latest super monster was born.
“Women! Defending Saudi men”
This is just an extension of the difference between their Neolithic culture and ours. We westerners see a woman in uniform and think “soldier”. Osama (and many middle easterners) see a woman in uniform and see “insult”.
Never mind that she is putting her butt on the line to protect their pansy ass, or that the reason their primitive culture is unable to defend itself is the lack of freedom imposed by their poor excuse of a religion.
They should be ashamed that they need defending in the first place (and probably secretly are) given their staggering wealth, but think of the rage that Osama (Mr. Big Strong Tough-guy) must have felt when we sent women to defend him. Women! How low (in his eyes) had they sunk when they needed to be defended by infidel WOMEN!
But, like a true psychotic, he decided to blame the West, not the primitive excuse for a faith that was the root cause.
I think the psychology/facts of upbringing are relevant to all kinds of evildoers & wackos, throughout history.
From the pressures & demands placed on Hitler by his parents, through the stories that Saddam’s mother wanted to kill him in the womb, a mother who placed him in the care of a sadistic uncle and Saddam first killed a human being at something like age 10, right through more familiar and mundane assassins like Ted Bundy & Jeffrey Dahmer.
After 911, I read some of Osama’s youth and upbringing, and how he and his Syrian mother were treated as outcasts in the large clan. One of his siblings remarked that Osama was pious, even as a child, and I thought, then, that there was a relationship between his (low) place in that large family and the direction his development took.
I read of a passage in Osama’s sister-in-law’s book where she answered his knock on their door, unveiled, and bin laden turned his face away in horror.
You mention Mohammed Atta. He and his Cairo lawyer daddy had deep, longstanding interpersonal issues which couldn’t help but affect the direction of his development & the turn of his thought & ideas.
The weird post-death instruction Atta left that no (unclean) pregnant woman should touch his dead body was extremely telling as to personal psychological makeup.
Although…”Counter-terrorism experts are not comfortable in talking about psycho-dynamics of family life”, such psychodymanics are fundamental to how all these individuals are shaped.
President Obama must do everything in his power to help free Middle Eastern women from illiteracy, poverty, forced veiling, forced, arranged marriages to first cousins, polygamy, purdah, etc. Alas, thus far, he has flattered their jailors and crowed about America’s support for the hijab. Perhaps our President should talk to the brave Kuwaiti parliamentarians.
Maybe Obama is of like mind with the jailors.
It is not our job to “free” Middle Eastern women from anything. They are as human as we are. If they choose to reject their slavery, they are entirely capable of doing so.
I agree with this sentiment.
And I wouldn’t be calling on this US “Izz-LAM paying obeisance” President to be accomplishing jack sh!t in the area of diminishment of female oppression in Islamic culture. He’s too busy trying to flatter Islam and convince people he has special insight due to his 2 Muslim daddies, life in Indonesia and so forth.
(besides which, the more the US is seen as meddling, the more entrenched and dogmatic the ridiculous applications of shari’a can become.)
And for the record, were I Israeli, I wouldn’t be counting on past US relationships and loyalties to be continuing under this President either.
Maybe it’s best if freedom protesters in Iran (Khamenei is, reportedly, in a coma), Israelis and repressed Muslim women around the world aren’t depending on “western” countries for anything related to their futures.
Taking matters into your own hands for what affects you, personally, is really the only way anything is ever effectively solved in the long run.
“Why Bin Laden Really Turned to Terrorism”
Uh……what? Bin Laden was a known terrorist when we were giving him financial and material support. But since he was fighting the evilz Russianz, we really didn’t care. Of course, just like with our support with Saddam, now we do care that they have turned against us and require our attention. Here is a thought. How about not supporting terrorists to begin with? That way, we just may not have to fight them a decade later.
I don’t care what he thinks or why he thinks that way. I’m against hate crime legislation as well. There are no acceptable excuses. The deeds speak for themselves. They demand punishment.
I knew that he always had a “mommy issue”.
All of these killings because of women?
“I must admit that I don’t much care how people become evil and/or deranged: that they are evil and/or deranged and therefore must be stopped is enough for me.”
But it’s a valid inquiry in this case, simply to refute the Lefty gibberish that somehow blames Osama and his ilk on some evil we have perpetrated.
Instead we just get a rerun of Muslim Brotherhood founder Sayyid Qutb, who was radicalized by hatred of jitterbugging and bare legs.
Phyllis, get a grip: your liberal roots are showing.
Osama bin Laden is a terrorist because he is a religious fanatic. There is no deep psychological reason why he is a terrorist; he’s just a fanatic. Read the Quran, he takes it literally. To him, it is the inerrant word of God, and it instructs him to kill infidels. He wants to slit our throats because he hates us. God has told him we deserve to die.
Because most Leftists aren’t religious, they can’t conceive that an unimportant idea like ‘religion’ would motivate anyone to action; it must be the fault of some deep-seated family trauma or the result of financial deprivation in childhood. When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
We already understand him. He’s evil and he must be stopped.
JFM
For Spanish Inquistion it killed twelve thousand persons in three centuries that makes 40 a year. In the menatime in Protestant Europe panic stricken mobs burnt fourty thousand “witches” in just 40 years
uh, your source is very euphemist for Inquisition, 12 000 persons are the minimum, but you have on the other side some other sources which would advocate much more, as the cases weren’t all registred. Also thousands converted into catholiscism and or were expelled from Spain.
Otherwise, why would so many of them had escaped to Bordeaux, Holland Thessalonic, and Istanbul ?
a few decades ago I read this interesting book
http://www.bibliomonde.com/livre/senora-824.html
uh, got my first try swallowed, hope this one will get through
Bin Laden was a known terrorist when we were giving him financial and material support.
I don’t think so. Although he instructed his mujahideen to stay away from CIA influence, his current reputation and leanings had not been established at the time he was cooperating with the US in expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan.
As for Saddam, at the time the US had better relations with Iraq, Saddam wasn’t (known to be) engaged in mass murdering Iraqis.
However, given how Saddam seized power & him literally eradicating through slaughter any actual or imagined opponents, the US shouldn’t have engaged with such a guy in the first place.
Sayyid Qutb, who was radicalized by hatred of jitterbugging and bare legs.
I have a theory (fortunately, I keep it to myself, oops) that ole Sayyid, who developed many his ideas in during a stint in late 1940′s Colorado !) that the American girls found him a little weird and the bobby soxers rejected him.
So he went back to Egypt and spawned all these crazy notions of FFE (foul female enticement) that form, literally, the “thinking” of Ayman al Zawahiri’s repressionist ideas which have, literally, been infused into Osama bin laden’s head during their long relationship.
(eventually, the Egyptians put Sayyid to death, which certainly contributed to Zawahiri’s foul evolution, his mentor, hero and role model killed by the Egyptian gov’t)
I don’t think the plight of women and children should be covered up with the blanket word “custom” anymore. If western governments are to have diplomatic ties with countries such as Afghanistan, a condition for talks should be that the United States stands by it’s core belief that all men/women are created equal endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Any negotiation will have that umbrella protecting talks.
The horrific plight of people all over the world is partly due to our willingness to deal with those who continue to oppress large majorities of their citizens just for being female. Along with that automatically comes the suppression of little children, who are a direct product of the union between men and woman. If men do not think that woman deserve the same dignity and freedom they do, it always translates to children also.
We have not gained any peace in our dealings with the devil. We give up more and more of our souls while the pain and suffering continues to fester and grow. Talk today about negotiating with the Taliban is another indication that this Administration will not take the bold step of change that would require we once and for all stand up for all the men, women, and children caught up in this cycle of oppression and violence.
When Obama gave his speech in Cairo and talked about the hijab being a “right” of Muslim women, my countenance fell knowing that he disregarded women in favor of winning favor with the tyrants. I do not have much hope that things will change and am noting the maniacal joy that the Taliban is showing the world knowing that once again the people are afraid that good will not conquer evil. We are unsure and hesitant and weak, where good should always win out over evil, we have cowered before it.
There is an enmity between women and the deceiver. All the psychological profiles will not speak to it, but it is their since the beginning. It is not surprising that in this world, this enmity has proved to overshadow all relationships between men, women, and children.
if your dires were exact, then why so many Jews fled away from Spain ?
“Threat is stronger than execution”. Aaron Nimzovich.
Now seriously, the Jews didn’t flee Spain due to Inquisition. They were expelled by the King and Queen. In first case they would have had the choice to stay.
12 000 persons are the minimum, but you have on the other side some other sources which would advocate much more, as the cases weren’t all registred
No tehre are other sources who say it was still less but they look less reliable. About those who say that a significant number of cases weren’t registered they fail to give any proof that say, 50% of cases weren’t registered. Basically they assert that it was much more and when confronted with evidence from Inquistorial archives they say “oh but they weren’t registered” and don’t tell us why teh Inquisitorial courts didn’t do what courts have ever done since they were invented: keep records.
Thus, the experience of naked-faced women in positions of power (in the American military or in the Kuwaiti Parliament) as “shaming” men, is one major component of Islamic terrorism.
==========================================================
LOL
Although he instructed his mujahideen to stay away from CIA influence, his current reputation and leanings had not been established at the time he was cooperating with the US in expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan.
I have heard a differnt story: Bin Laden didn’t need or want any aid or cooperation with Kafirs since he had all the funding he wanted from Middle East. In fact it would already been very dangerous for an American to come near his compound.
And he barely set a foot in Afghanistan. Well, perhaps a couple yards beyond the border. For the Afghans they were unimpressed by bin Laden’s goons and kept them as far of combat as possible. For that reason the US wasn’t eager to cooperate with them.
Also teh US didn’t handle the aid directly. It handled it to Pakistan and Pakistan handled it not to the groups who were doing the best job (aka Massood’s men) but to the most islamists (eg Hykmatyar) since in teh name of Umma’s unity those were less prone to make fuss about the Durand Line nad more likely to allow Afghanistan join Paksiatan in a conflict with India.
14. Marie Claude:
“twelve thousand persons in three centuries that makes 40 a year.
uh, that’s the minimum but the maximum is nearly x 10 times.
If your dires were exact, then why so many Jews fled away from Spain ?”
Marie Claude, ma cherie, que dites-vous? Oooopss, pardon my French, Phyllis verbotene mich mit anderen sprachen!
Them Jews did not fly Spain in 1492, they were spelled, OK. [11. JFM] is right, and, as a person of the finest Spanish blood, I take issue that people ascribe all medieval ills to the Spanish Inquisition when in fact they were learned scholars from Salamanca.
Sounds like he is in for some mandatory counseling as a condition of probation . I can see how some might think Sharia law has a place here . They are mostly Raiders fans .
JFM: Thanks for your well written Inquisition rebuttal. You said it better than I would have.
Miamia, hey weren’t you a Buddha bar tender lately ? salsa du deamon
Sadly this kind of propaganda and two bit psycho analyzing really puts Americans at a disadvantage in trying to understand the forces that Ossama Son of Ladin is a part of. It is the equivalent of saying that the Kamikazes of WW2 were all drug/booze crazed and Japanese were all buck teeth.
It is ironically the same sort of thinking that followers of OBL state about us…ie propaganda.
Robert G. Oler
Thank you Ms. Chesler, for giving us a look into the psyche of a serial killer of the islamist variety.
One needs to examine the standards and practices prevailing in islamic societies to realize how lucky we are to benefit from the blessings of the judeo-christian heritage. Our hard core secularists in general (and the ardent apostles of atheism in particular) are professing their magical and serendipitous morality, unable to recognize its origins in the religious traditions they vociferously claim to have nothing to do with.
So the denial of the perils of islamofascism comes as a side-kick of the denial of our cultural inheritance, by a deadly combination of ignorance and projection! Roughly one generation after our children were first shielded from our cultural virtues, our adults are responding to islamism as the proverbial deer in the headlight.
It’s a if there was an unspoken doctrine of preemption, but one that applies to dhimmitude by secret anticipation! And out of this, we put a sacrificial lamb in the white house, who immediately receives a peace prize!
I hope and pray we wake up before it’s too late.
37. Marie Claude:
La salsa du démon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-BoMozYXng
That tells us how dysfunctional you *** are.
tanstaafl – who are you and why are you using my nom de plume?
Miamia, you know your classics, BTW, did you notice tha that was Coluche in deamon character ?
Uh, I’m Ok, derision is quite “bon pour le moral” (cherche
)
Cat, as you said, It is not our job to “free” Middle Eastern women from anything. They are as human as we are. If they choose to reject their slavery, they are entirely capable of doing so.
It *is* our job to prevent Muslims from enforcing Islamic ideas about humiliating clothing (hijab — no matter how fancy — abayah, burkah, etc.), gender apartheid, physical beatings, “uncovered meat” rape, and the like on free women in free societies. That should be our focus.
The prevention of Muslims from these unsavoury details results in freedom.
Very interesting article, Phyllis. Previously I have called both our wars not “Overseas Contingencies” but the “Wars for Women”. I read one account that Al Qaeda lost the Sunnis because these foreigners started demanding wives and tribal leaders were so offended they switched allegiances. In Afghanistan, soldiers are winning over elder tribesmen with Viagra! The rights of women in both countries have been substantially buttressed in their new constitutions.
Even a local KKK guy from Georgia, when asked why he hated Jews, Catholics and N’s, he said “Cause, they want our women”. The point being that proprietary feelings about women easily enrages men.
The practice of polygamy creates extra men, so there was a need to invade other countries to get a wife throughout the history of Islam. Now that they are militarily incapable they wage jihad and kill each other.
I believe we will need to kill off their extra men for as long as they practice polygamy. And, polygamy will forever condemn them to poverty and illiteracy because few families can possibly hand down jobs or property to dozens of progeny.
Dear Phyllis
Once again you astound by your ability to see clearly to the nub of the problem, to synthesize diverse points of view, and to articulate a powerful and persuasive argument.
Though the documentary evidence lies in Nancy Kobrin’s forthcoming book, your extrapolation of the key psychohistorical crises in Bin Laden’s life and that of his family is striking–and should provide a way into discussions that will lead towards an effective and sensible way to respond to his threats.
The psychohistorical analysis moreover indicates that explanations for the massive spread of terrorism cannot be adequately dealt with by conventional, positivistic social scientific methods, political ideologies that recognize only superficial behaviours, and moral handwringing in the face of an inexplicable, unstoppable force. Psychohistory begins to uncover the hidden forces of history–the effects of infant trauma, childhood abuse, adolescent anxiety and adult fears and humiliations. This exposure of the emotional life of nations (to use Lloyd de Maus’s expression) means that we no longer have to approach the problem of terrorism using the wrong conceptual frame, as though it were a response to colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, globalism, poverty, climate change and a zillion other politically correct causes. The core of the mental disease–a collective psychosis–lies in dysfunctional family life, disrupted emotional maturation, and culturally-induced fantasies and dreams.
Bin Laden the Leader of Al-Qaida emerges not so much a perverse individual but as an extreme instance of long-term social deformations, exacerbated by political and economic conditions, but above all in the cultural paradigms of Islamicist myth.
I hope and pray your words have a positive effect.
Norman
Marie Claude:
Now seriously, the Jews from Spain and Portugal were expelled by Isabel and Fernando. They could only stay if they converted, which some did, and as such, not even happy with that, the converts were then called “Marranos”, which in Spanish means pigs.
I ain’t checking any sources, but I believe Soliman the Magnificent from Turkey invited them all in (I guess at that time Jews and Muslims were friendlier towards each other). They were high quality people, educated, money-lender and financiers. Thus they went, as you mentioned, to Istanbul, Thessaloniki, Sofia, Corfu. In Thessaloniki and Corfu, unfortunately, they were caught up by the Eichmann maelstrom in 1943, under the name of SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner, an Austrian Nazi (who escaped justice hiding in Syria, only losing an eye and a few fingers when the Mossad sent him a nice letter-bomb), and many perished in Auschwitz. Still some of them nowadays speak Ladino, which is a type of Spanish dialect that stopped evolving in 1492, so if you listen to them speak, it is as if Don Quijote is talking straight from a book from that time. These Sephardi Jews have peculiar, and usually recognizable, Spanish-sounding last names, such as Alfassa, Barocas, Peres, Laredo, Toledano (from Toledo), Fargion, Abenabas, Abiles.
Well OBL looks like a monster, even worst than Saddam according to the author’s description. How comes that nobody among the special skilled US forces couldn’t catch him with enormous technical means that can locate an unknown pingouin in the artic ?
Though, one discret info in a swiss paper said in 2006 catched my attention, I had to look for it :
Recently, a documentary almost unnoticed stated twice, that the French sniper’s Special Operations Command (COS) had the leader of al-Qaida in the lines of their sights, but that the order required to fire at him never come from the U.S. command HQ. This information is confirmed by more than three members of the COS…
this report wasn’t allowed on french channels, our army “the mute” didn’t comment too.
So, me think that OBL has a f*** a*** bordered with noudles !
well William Casey had good relations with the pakistanese Zia,that he needed for his big project of undermining the Russian communists, that he hated the most. Also because Cia under Carter was ruined, and that he was the new boss of the “Company” in need to make it regain its ol glory, he thought that Afghanistan could become the right opportunity.
This arms supply to the Mujahideens (and to the Talibani) isn’t clear, as it was supposed to be a secret help from the State Department.
This was also a Poles connection that supplied the US with russians arms, so that american firms could analyse and determined which arms were the best to destroy them. Idem, The Poles were the ones that shipped the american Stinger missiles, or were the covert.
Well this wasn’t a benign affair it costed $ 250 millions, each Stinger missile $ 30 000, five of the kind were delivered with the whole lot of diverse lighter ars and electronics, and, indeed this was effective, at least 3 russian Helicopters were shot, and that made the decisise turn of the war for the Russians, they were demoralised and on the way to loose.
problem when Russians left Afghanistan, Mujahideens and Talebani still had their modern arms and were likely to trade them to rogue countries where other muslims were at war, interethnical wars but also against western interests, such as in the Balkans, HBZ in Lebanon…
Now, how do I know that, I was a fan of Robert Littell and Gordon Thomas books
MiamiMan, thanks, though I read that in the book (the above link), also from Thessoliniki, Sarkozy’s mother has her origin from there !
tanstaafl – who are you and why are you using my nom de plume?
You can’t be the original tanstaafl, I am the original tanstaafl.
It’s not really a nom de plume or, even, moniker. It’s a philosophy of life
there (really) ain’t no such thing as a free lunch
Every apparent free lunch the gubbmint would throw at your feet is going to be, guaranteed, extremely costly in terms of the integrity of your being.
And (trying hard here to return to the subject at hand) every Muslim woman who goes along with (even says she prefers) being shrouded inside a black bug suit when venturing into public (maybe a fashionably blue bug suit) gives away another small bit of her soul each time she puts the damn thing on.
46. MiamaMan:
Interesting comments on the 1492 expulsion of the Jews and the conversos. There were a good number of converso families that came up with Onate and settled in New Mexico. Some say Onate himself was a converso. Their descendants in northern New Mexico are quite aware of their ancestry and some are coming back to Judaism. Here is a web site dealing with the subject:
cryptojews.com
The Taliban did not exist during the Russian attempt to conquer Afghanistan. It was formed in the mid-90s in reaction to the state of chaos that Afghanistan had fallen into after the Russian withdrawal and the eventual fall of the Communist government.
The Taliban were formed more or less as a client of the Pakistani Interservices Intelligence Bureau (ISI). The ISI intended to have control over Afghanistan in order to provide more strategic depth to Pakistan in its struggle with India, which had been a Soviet client state up until the fall of the USSR.
There was very good reason for fighting the USSR in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Did we in the US ally with some dubious characters to bring down the USSR? Yeah, just like we allied ourselves with mass murderers in the USSR to bring down Hitler. International relations does not work by Marquess of Queensberrry rules, no matter what idiots like Obama think or the UN pretends when it is denouncing Israel for the heinous crime of defending its people against threatening genocide.
Oh, and Saddam was always a client of the USSR, as Iraq was from 1958 when Qassem overthrew the Hashemite king until the fall of the USSR. The US tilted towards Iraq at some points during the Iran-Iraq War (and towards Iran at others), but Iran was an enemy of the US, self-proclaimed and proven by its attack on our embassy in Teheran, which was an act of war under international law (real law, not the fake stuff we hear so much about nowadays).
50. Mike2:
Thanks you for the webpage, very interesting.
51. Michael Lonie:
Right on the money, thanks for the clarity, and the summary of realpolitik. I have never paid attention to inflated claims by lefty windbags that the US created the Taliban and this and that. You work with what you have at the time, as the example you used of using evil Stalin to defeat evil Hitler.
BTW, the Parliament of the World’s Religions will be held this year in Sidney from 3-9 December, 2009. Many interesting presentations will be given, and several prestigious performers will play their music.
This event was first help in Chicago in 1893!
The center of the event that first time was the tremendous presentation by the great Swami Vivekananda, who caused a sensation among the attendees.
Vivekanadaji wrote many books, among them Raja Yoga, a book in which there is an excerpt where Swamiji describes the Prophet Mohammed for the nutjob he was.
http://www.amazon.com/Raja-Yoga-Swami-Vivekananda/dp/091120623X
This will make it very hard for the folks at this site…………
# 30 Lynn
Obama must not think very highly of his daughters. Patting evil on the head is going to be one of his historical trade marks. The moment I was seized by was the bow to the Saudi King. The delight on his face, the King’s, was my epiphany. I haven’t trusted Obama since then.
Osama sounds like a FLDS Mormon.
He’s half Syrian, half Yemeni, much like the French Corsican and the Austrian corporal, he struggled for authenticity in his homeland. Add to that his absorbtion of the jihadist mindeset at the hands of Syed’s brother Mohammed, and the Palestinian radical
Al Azzam, the result wasn’t too surprising
“much like the French Corsican and the Austrian corporal”
olright, you can’t prevent that some obsessed militants put a “french” allusion on whatevever BS they imagine.
Now, OBL has no corsican look, you surely never saw a corsican, but rather the yemeni Ceylan look ! Besides he is too tall and too thin for having a supposed corsican look
Vamos, Marie Claude, get a grip and a Pastis.
The gentleman was using Napoleone Buonaparte as an example, but your Cartesian French mind must catalog everything: this here that there. The same with the corporal from Branau-Am-Inn in the Warviertel. It has nothing to do with the look, actually Napoleon and his brothers and sisters did not look your average Corsican either.
Voilà!
Thank you, the point I was trying to make was an outsider becoming a national chauvinist
56 – 58
The problem is a grammatical one. Grammatically narciso is saying (if it makes sense at all) that Napoleon is half Syrian and half Yemeni, too – but this is absurd. So MarieClaude thought he was saying that bin Laden looks Corsican. But this is also absurd. MiamaMan comes closer, but why bring Descartes into it? (He is too much maligned. He was a brilliant man. Do you know, MiamaMan, that it is quite in vogue now, here in the West, to criticize him as you do. This is very sad. I would have hoped (had I thought of it) that you would consider him a guru. Aside from his mathematical contributions his philosophy is brilliant. He has not been equaled by anyone since, though Adam Smith provided more practical benefits.) He must have been saying that they both struggled for authenticity in their homelands. I come at this as a logical necessity if all of the facts are known, as they should be. So for this we want a period and not a comma after “Yemeni.” I’m not the language police and am certainly not perfect in this area, but sometimes something must be said. At any rate all this psychoanalyzing Evil is beside the point even when it is right. We should focus on knowing and doing and fighting for the Good rather than trying to “understand” Evil. I mean what about the Devil? Did he lose his mommy, too? Poor widdle Lucifer (Lucifito?) – what happened to him? Boo hoo!
And every time I’ve gotten distracted and forgotten to make this most essential point (perhaps Lucifito is interfering with me, but don’t blame him – he misses mommy and is only trying to PLEASE God!): what of all those who’ve lost or been rejected by one or both parents and DON’T become psychopathic weirdos. The bottom line is we each make a choice, and that from moment to moment, for Good or for Evil.
So far as humanity as a group is concerned the only common denominator of its improvement or degradation is the strength or weakness – or perversion or ABSENCE – of the nuclear family; not poverty or wealth, or freedom or tyranny, or peace or war. The most degraded and debased societies (once referred to as savage, then primitive, then pre-literate (when they’re more likely post-literate – the detritus of disintegrated civilizations) and I’ve no idea what the PC crowd is onto now (who can keep up)) have no family structure whatsoever. And I think the upshot of all of our observations since they have been studied is that these groups do not perpetuate themselves indefinitely: that they were in fact dying out when we discovered them. When the data is looked at objectively the conclusion is that these groups have not existed perpetually from prehistoric times and that the human race in fact CANNOT SURVIVE AT ALL without the nuclear family structure at the root of its society.
Now I wrote 60 before 59 was posted so, I’m glad my logic was correct on narciso. But, really, we shouldn’t need a secret decoder ring to figure out what you’re saying: that’s what GRAMMAR is for.
60. logos1j1:
Descartes, like Augustus McCrae from a little farming town in Southern Texas, Lonesome Dove, was one of a kind.
It is fashionable now to bash Descartes for even highschoolers are being taught to recognize the rigidity inherent in the Cartesian and Newtonian systems, not to diminish them, but it is probably a sign of the times. Knowing Madame Marie Claude, I advanced an incipient case of Frenchism, together with hardheadedness from La Bretagne. It is obviously, very obviously now, that “Cogito Ergo Sum” (I think, therefore I am) is not tenable, for Descartes inverted the terms, as it should be “EGO sum, proinde EGO reputo” or I am, therefore I think. Bishop Berkeley, not as well known as Descartes, but his contemporary, had it right all along, when he enunciated: “Esse est percipi” (“To be is to be perceived”), and for that you can read Paul Brunton, who admired and recognized the Bishop as an scientist of mentalism, for from mentalism, you must arrive at the essence of everything: CONSCIOUSNESS, being this creation no more no less than an idea in the Godhead, and for that the great Swami Krishnananda from Rishikesh, with whom I had an epistolary interchange, used to repeat that everything happens in the Godhead at the same type, so even now Krishna is advising Arjuna on the plain of Kurukshetra, near Delhi, Achilles is fighting Hector, and Napoleon is maneuvering his cannons too late in that fateful and rainy morning at Waterloo.
MiamaMan
You two had a separate dialogue of which I knew nothing so I didn’t understand, but you’ve answered it as well as it can be. I’m unfamiliar with La Bretagne.
I disagree that Descartes’ theorem is incorrect: it simply states the obvious truth that if something (himself) is thinking then therefore that something (himself) must exist; and it is self-evident that he is thinking, otherwise the question could not be asked – but it was. I agree that Berkeley was quite brilliant and has much to teach us with the inverse. The inverse does not disprove the obverse, however, but rather is its reflection; not its opposite but its counterpart. This is clearly seen.
In sum: I agree with Descartes. I do not agree with Berkeley, but I also cannot disprove it, and there is much of value there and in his other writings.
I admit, with my Abrahamic roots, that I have trouble believing that a rock has consciousness, but I acknowledge that logically I cannot say that it doesn’t. Even from a scriptural standpoint it would be difficult given Psalm 98:8 and Luke 19:40, “…if these should keep silent, the stones would immediatly cry out.”
Agreed that all times are present and the same with God: Christ is yet and always on the cross dying for our sins.
Napoleon did not lose Waterloo because of his tardy cannons; it’s doubtful they could have saved him in any case. But rather his general allowed Blucher’s army to escape and return to aid Wellington, and additionally by his arrogant cavalry commander kept charging without infantry backup (or orders) in ,a foolish attempt to gain the glory of victory for himself. Meanwhile Napoleon himself was almost completely debilitated by the stomach cancer that would ultimately kill him. That Napoleon lost Waterloo is the most amazing military fact in history (in my humble opinion (and of course given what I know – I’m no military historian)): everything had to go wrong for him to lose – and everything did.
63. logos1j1:
On Napoleon: I believe Victor Hugo’s thesis, that the Almighty Himself told Napoleon: Enough! So, like you say, everything went wrong for him. But indeed the rain was the key, for he always started positioning his artillery early in the morning, and in Waterloo towards noon, and if he would have done that, the appearance of von Blucher later in the afternoon around 6 PM would have had no effect, as the battle would have been over by then. On Blucher, it was the mediocrity of Grouchy that allowed Blucher to faint him and return to Waterloo, and for that Grouchy has been skinned alive in history books. The cavalry commander you mentioned was red-haired Marechal Ney, a while back he had promised the king to bring Napoleon in an iron cage, but succumbed to Napoleon’s charm, according to Victor Hugo, he was trying to commit suicide on the battlefield, when he realized things were nor going well (he was shot by the king later for treason). Finally, failure to scout that trench in front of the British was not a show stopper, but another show delayer. The Irish Opportunist (Lord Wellington) had chosen this battlefield years ago.
According to the Bhagavad Gita definition of a Vibhuti, Napoleon, like Caesar, was a Vibhuti. Krishna in the Gita defines an Avatar as a direct incarnation of God that occurs only when things are going in the wrong direction. A Vibhuti, on the contrary, comes to set a course in a given theater, is often an atheist, like Caesar and Napoleon, is also often not even aware of the great picture, but it is usually imbued with tremendous will and charisma. Another recent important Vibhuti was Churchill (he was no atheist though).
Descartes, and Newton, were partially correct, as they described well a portion of reality. That science has gone around them “schwerkpunt” style is not their fault. However, “cogito ergo sum” is flawed, for you can definitely “be” without thinking. This is a fact that escaped Descartes, however brilliant he was.
A question: can the electron exist without being perceived? According to Bishop Berkeley it could not, for he said “Esse est percipi” (”To be is to be perceived”), this is a cryptic statement well ahead of his time. According to Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the electron position and momentum is only a statistical probability that coincides with the exclusion principle of Pauli where an electron, for example, behaves either as a wave or as a particle, but not both. Actually, the electron behaves as “he is asked to”. If you ask from a particle point of view, that he answers; if you ask as a wave, he answers like that too. However, the famous paradigm, take 2 electrons way apart, so far apart as, let’s say five minutes-light, as one turns his spin up, the other answers down. Even Einstein could not divest himself from the Cartesian scenario on this one (after shattering Cartesian and Newtonian physics with relativity), for Einstein thought the information would travel at, at least, the speed of light, but THOUGHT is instantaneous, consciousness is instantaneous, and the 2 electrons were never, really, apart. Likewise, the perceiver of the electron is never, really, outside the electron, and vice versa, so it proves the fact that to exist you must be perceived. So, the Pindanda is the Brahmanda, and every part of the universe is also its front, and contains it, nothing is unrelated, everything within the Matrix.
I had intended to mention Hugo but forgot. He got it exactly right. God chose to give the future to the British. I thought that Ney was the man but without certainty and the ability to check my sources I didn’t want to say so definitely and risk looking a fool. Grouchy’s name had simply escaped me for the time. Again, I had thought that Blucher’s forces had arrived somewhat earlier, but if you are right (and I now think you are) then the cannon may well have made the difference: they would have made Wellington’s position untenable. I had never heard a serious theory that Ney was trying to kill himself, only that someone on the battlefield had said something to that effect upon observing his behavior. But his two-facedness got the better of him: he was made the scapegoat by both sides so that while Napoleon was virtually pampered in St. Helena and many others received lesser punishments or none, he was executed.
Descartes’ famous theorem does not say that nothing could be without thinking, only that the fact that he was thinking proved that he existed. One would have to come up with another proof to show that something that was not thinking did exist – and he did this, too, quite well.
Again, I disagree with the way Berkeley approaches being and perception, but it now brings to my mind the creationist argument that if there is a creation there must be a Creator. And indeed everything that exists IS perceived – by God.
Newton was not wrong (nor Descartes) and this is easily provable by any experiment that you want to conduct here on earth. I don’t think Einstein disproved him, I think he discovered something important that is not fully understood yet, and this is why quantum mechanics has come up with all kinds of wild theories that contradict Newton – and each other. In the end I think the answer is as Einstein envisioned a Unified theory that explains everything without contradictions, and quite simply, too, so that we will say, “How could we have missed it for so long!” It would be as if we went back in time to show the ancients that the earth moves and circles the Sun: the evidence would redden their faces – and yet it had escaped them.
65. logos1j1:
“I had never heard a serious theory that Ney was trying to kill himself, only that someone on the battlefield had said something to that effect upon observing his behavior”
This was Victor Hugo’s idea in Les Miserables, as Ney had 3 horses shot under him and was apparently courting death. He was executed for his big mouth, promising to bring Napoleon “in an iron cage”.
[And indeed everything that exists IS perceived – by God.]
There also exist the ability for humans to increase their perception to include the Cosmos, which some call Cosmic Consciousness. A certain Dr. Bucke wrote in 1900 that Walt Whitman had that quality. Whitman was certainly one of a kind.
I don’t say that Newton or Descartes were wrong. You can apply them to most things nowadays still, but it is a fact that relativity shattered the Euclidean, Cartesian, and Newtonian systems, incorporating time to space in a continuum, so, since then the famous fact that the shortest distance between 2 points is a curved line became reality. This independently from the possibility of a Unified Field theory.
MiamaMan
So, yes, “…incorporating time to space in a contiuum…” and “… the shortest distance between two points is a curved line…” – this was the brilliance of Einstein, and certainly Newton and Descartes knew nothing of this; but too much has been said about Newton/Descartes being “proved wrong” by quantum mechanics which is absolutely false, and it makes me angry; so perhaps I improperly read this into what you were saying. Newton and Descartes were right so far as they went: they did not go the whole way, but neither did Einstein. When I read quantum theories, whether plasmaverse, multiverse, string theory, etc. by Greene or Hawking or whomever, there is clearly something missing which leads them all astray, but their great minds seem unable to acknowledge this. This is very frustrating to me. More frustrating still is sometimes I feel that I can almost see what is wrong – “…as if through a mirror, dimly…” (I Corinthians 13:12) – but no, I can never bring the idea fully to my mind. I fear these things are too far above me; yet the high-school student of the future may well understand them just as today’s students (if they’re in the right school) can understand Newton’s theorem which took no less a mind than his to discover, or even understand, in his day.
Whitman was most certainly a profound thinker.
67. logos1j1:
[there is clearly something missing which leads them all astray, but their great minds seem unable to acknowledge this. This is very frustrating to me. More frustrating still is sometimes I feel that I can almost see what is wrong...]
This is a normal feeling, this, what they try to capture, is only an aspect of reality, and it is always receding, moving away. The Divine Law is based on progression; it exists by movement and would be dissolved by cessation of it. This creates the opposites of unity and multiplicity, cleavages of time and space, different circumstances and causality.
The Isha Upanishad, verse 5, states:
“That moves and That moves not; That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That also is outside all this.”
They see the many without seeing the One. The Unified Field Theory would be the comprehension that every object in the universe is its front, verily the whole universe, a holographic universe. Creation is not the making of a universe out of nothing; but a self-projection of Brahman into the conditions of space and time.
If you want a kernel of truth concerning Osama Bin Laden and his son Omar, (poor guy,) who seems to be so very obviously lost between his ancient Middle East and the money-seeking, money-greedy modern West, who is in dire need of money, (that’s why he participated foolishly with the book GROWING UP BIN LADEN, putting his trust foolishly in natorious American, so called ‘author’ JEAN SASSON,) try to talk to any politically ‘NEUTRAL ARAB’. He/she will gladly tell you (free of charge, the true circumstances concerning OSAMA and OMAR BIN LADEN’ Take it from the horses mouth: “The GROWING UP BIN LADEN book is just another titalising literary ‘hear-say scam’ written by the West about the Middle East to exploit and cash in on the Bin Laden Name, and make a hell of a lot of $ollars” in return. (before it comes to light that in reality Osama Bin Laden is long dead) Fullstop! Problem is: Omar, poor guy, is a mere tool, and has no idea what’s going on. He is dwelling between the devil and the deep blue sea. Let’s hope he wakes up. For Allah’s sake, there must be one well meaning Arab out there who comes to Omar’s rescue. The problem is: THE WESTERN MEDIA LOVES THIS KIND OF B.S.stories TO DISTRACT FROM THE EVIL THAT IS REALLY GOING ON IN THIS WORLD.
In The Looming Tower, Lawerance Wright said; Osama allowed his sons to play nintendo. He also said Osama loved and knew everything about horses. Nazi’s loved dogs. Who cares.
However, this is very contradictory.
I’ll have to go with the closer source which is his family.