Christianity v Islam

Post Information
Print & pdf

The Pope’s remarks were dangerous, and will convince many more Muslims that the west is incurably Islamophobic

By Karen Armstrong

koran-bible_large.jpg In the 12th century, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, initiated a dialogue with the Islamic world. “I approach you not with arms, but with words,” he wrote to the Muslims whom he imagined reading his book, “not with force, but with reason, not with hatred, but with love.” Yet his treatise was entitled Summary of the Whole Heresy of the Diabolical Sect of the Saracens and segued repeatedly into spluttering intransigence. Words failed Peter when he contemplated the “bestial cruelty” of Islam, which, he claimed, had established itself by the sword. Was Muhammad a true prophet? “I shall be worse than a donkey if I agree,” he expostulated, “worse than cattle if I assent!”

Peter was writing at the time of the Crusades. Even when Christians were trying to be fair, their entrenched loathing of Islam made it impossible for them to approach it objectively. For Peter, Islam was so self-evidently evil that it did not seem to occur to him that the Muslims he approached with such “love” might be offended by his remarks. This medieval cast of mind is still alive and well.

Read more



Comments

Who says this is our war?

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Ayaz Amir

mushy-1.jpgIt isn’t and never was and if our newly-inducted political leadership is dumb enough to swallow all the fiction about the so-called ‘war on terror’ that our American friends (friends?) seem keen to push down its throat, God help us.

This is George Bush’s war. This is the war, or a front in the war, orchestrated by those strategic crazies going by the name of neocons, the same geniuses who wanted to reshape the world - beginning with the reshaping of the Middle East - and gave their own people, the American people, two un-winnable wars: in Iraq and, wait for it, Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was supposed to be the more ‘doable’ affair, the one they thought they had wrapped up in 2001. But it is proving as tough and intractable as Iraq, with the Taliban, alas, not finished and the war, far from being over, stretching into the remote distance.

Read more



Comments

Cry Tears of Blood

Post Information
Print & pdf

blooddripping-1.jpg

Watch the massacre of Fallujah. What monsters, what beasts could do this to their fellow human beings? Watch and cry tears of blood.

When your tears dry up, then look at the face of this man and join me in my prayer for humanity.

I invoke Thee, O Lord, who resides in high heavens in the glow and mist of rainbows. O Ye the Master of the celestial and the terrestrial. O Ye, who extinguishes falsehood, who dissipates the evil influence of Satan and wicked apparitions.

O Ye, who is the Lord of the thrones of the universe, the oldest Existence, ancient of heaven, support of all things, the Lord of truth, Maker of men and beasts and plants, Maker of all things above and below, Deliverer of the sufferer and the oppressed, the all Hearer, the all Seer, the all Knower.

Read more



Comments

Is Bush the worst U.S. president ever?

Post Information
Print & pdf

Historians might argue over ranking, but there’s no doubt he has been an unmitigated disaster

By Thomas Walkom, Columnist, Toronto Star

gb.jpgHistorians will argue over whether George W. Bush is the worst president the United States has ever endured. But that is not the point. Five years after Bush’s ill-starred invasion of Iraq, three years after Hurricane Katrina and seven months into the unravelling of the U.S. financial system, the point is that the 43rd president of the United States - regardless of his ranking in the pantheon - is a unique and unmitigated disaster.

Whether Bush is more of a warmonger than James Polk, who in 1846 manufactured a crisis with Mexico in order to seize what is now California, more tolerant of cronyism than poker-playing Warren Harding (1921 to 1923), or more unlucky than William Harrison (he died after catching cold at his 1841 inauguration) is interesting but irrelevant. What we do know is that this president, this “decider” (to use his favoured term), decided his way into a war that has destroyed the nation he was allegedly trying to free, destabilized further an already rickety Middle East and given Islamic terrorism a whole new raison d’etre.

Read more



Comments

Hope, Change, and Pissing in the Wind

Post Information
Print & pdf

“Of Obama, Democrats, and the Power Elite”

By Patrice Greanville and Jason Miller

obama1.jpgCHARISMATIC, ARTICULATE, SMOOTH, AND INTELLIGENT, Barrack Obama is the living embodiment of his vague, ethereal, and tantalizing messages of “hope” and “change.” To the millions upon millions of US Americans desperate to purge the naked imperialism and blatant criminality of the Bush administration from the White House, Obama IS hope and change. Yet like many establishment liberals before him, Obama is no cure for the malignant creep toward fascism plaguing our nation. If elected, at best he will merely serve to postpone the inevitable a bit.

To understand why Obama and the ilk he took with him to DC would be little or no better than the human excrement currently occupying the tangible, visible positions of power in the US, let’s examine various facets of Obama(1) and of our rotten-to-the-core sociopolitical and socioeconomic systems.

Read more



Comments

UFOs and Time Travel

Post Information
Print & pdf

Prof Michio Kaku on the science behind UFOs and time travel

Book extract

ufo.jpg In 1600, the former Dominican monk and philosopher Giordano Bruno was burnt alive in the streets of Rome. To humiliate him, the Church first hung him upside down and stripped him naked. What made the teachings of Bruno so dangerous? He had asked a simple question: is there life in outer space? Rather than entertain the possibility of billions of saints, popes, churches, and Jesus Christs in outer space, it was more convenient for the Church simply to burn him. For 400 years the memory of Bruno has haunted the historians of science. But Bruno has his revenge every few weeks: about twice a month a new extrasolar planet is discovered orbiting a star: more than 250 such planets have now been documented. Bruno’s prediction of extrasolar planets has been vindicated. But one question lingers. Although the Milky Way may be teaming with extrasolar planets, how many of them can support life? And if intelligent life does exist, what can science say about it?

Read more



Comments

I Am Become Death - The Destroyer Of The Worlds

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Anwaar Hussain

TS Admin : On this fifth anniversary of Iraq invasion, George Bush said, “Because we acted, the world is better and the United States of America is safer.” With a million dead Iraqis, more than 30,000 dead and wounded American soldiers, the world now teeming with a new breed of America haters and more than 3 trillion dollars blown to achieve all that, the US president sits atop an economically crumbling America and happily crows his mantra. George W. Bush indeed seems far removed from reality.

The essay below was written in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of Iraqi city of Fallujah. At the time, the article ricocheted across the cyber space and refused to die down. Every word of what was written has now been proven true. Here it is once again lest we forget.

fall-2.jpg

Known as the “city of mosques” for its more than 200 mosques, Fallujah is also known for refusing to add Saddam’s name to the call for prayers from its ancient minarets. It is located on the banks of river Euphrates, the largest river in Southwest Asia. The 1700 miles long Euphrates is linked with some of the most important events in olden history.The city of Ur, found at its mouth, was the birthplace of Abraham. On its banks stood the city of Babylon. In the past, the army of Necho was defeated on its banks by Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus the Younger and Crassus perished after crossing it. Alexander traversed it and continued his journey eastward. Presently, George Bush’s forces are crossing and re-crossing it making its waters redder each time with the blood of Fallujah’s citizens.

Fallujah has been laid waste. It has been bombed, re-bombed, its citizens gunned down, its structures devastated by powerful weapons. It is a hell on earth of crushed bodies, shattered buildings and the reek of death. In addition to the artillery and the warplanes dropping 500, 1000, and 2000-pound bombs, 70-ton Abrams Tanks and the murderous AC-130 Spectre gunship that can demolish a whole city block in less than a minute, the Marines had snipers crisscrossing the entire town firing at will at whatever moved outside the buildings. For those inside, the US troops were equipped with thermal sights capable of detecting body heat. Any such detection was eagerly assumed to indicate the presence of “insurgents” inviting a deadly salvo.

Read more



Comments

The war that changed us

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Neal Ascherson

mission-accomplished.jpgIt began with a blinding flash and promises of speedy victory. Five years on the mission far from accomplished. Neal Ascherson opens this Iraq Special

The show began with blinding flashes, heart-stopping thunder, sparks which had been palaces and hovels soaring up to decorate the night sky. The Shock and Awe military tattoo had started. It was only a few weeks until its climax as the great black evil one, suddenly floodlit, bowed to the crowd and fell slowly forward on his face.

Author, director! In flier’s kit, backed by a chorus line of cute American sailors, the boss advanced downstage to harvest the cheers. “Mission accomplished!” But the noise was not all applause and was not coming from the audience and seemed, improperly, to persist. Something was wrong. Would the audience please remain in their seats until a technical problem with the exit was sorted? We are still there.

Read more



Comments

Stopping the Suicide Bomber

Post Information
Print & pdf

We have to condemn with loud voices, open speech and fearless thinking as much the terrorists as the system that spawns them

By Anwaar Hussain

bloody_hand_print.jpgYoung men, full of youth’s vigor, pumped up and brainwashed by patriotism or religious zeal always have, and always will, kill and be killed. That is a no-brainer. The question is why such sudden spates come in nations’ histories in which atrocities spike up sharply tainting every denizen of that state.

In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty. According to recent studies done by political researchers however, the data does not support this fact any more. Why rich Saudi young men would blow themselves up, they ask. Political researchers now agree that terrorism is more linked to levels of political freedom a nation allows to its citizens, especially in those countries that are experiencing transition from autocracy to political freedom.

There is a flaw in this argument.

The researchers forget that it is in the soil of these politically repressed societies that the seeds of want, ignorance, squalor, disease and idleness sprout. A single factor of these by itself or any combination thereof can trigger the birth of the hydra-headed monster called terrorism. Pakistan is a case in point.

Read more



Comments

Ignorance Is The Mother Of Philo-Semitism

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Patrick Grimm

ashkjewsek004179.jpg Tom Waits lends his macabre vocal to a memorable little carnival-like dirge that has the master singer/songwriter growling menacingly “Misery’s the river of the world! Misery’s the river of the world! Everybody row, everybody row!” Of course Waits’ gravely singing, a quite generous term for what he does with his voice, has all the subtlety and grace of a man gargling with razor blades. Misery, according to the dark and ghoulish mind of this storyteller, is the very river humanity is afloat upon. Any struggling against this river then resembles rowing in some sort of faint flail for survival in whichever craft we so choose.

If pessimism and existential angst demands the adage “misery is the river of the world” from Mr. Waits, then I would formulate that the reality of side-by-side sleepiness and wakefulness smattered amongst all human minds on the problem of Jewish extremism requires another saying, perhaps not as doleful, but just as empirically observable. I declare here and now that “Ignorance is the mother of philo-Semitism.” Philo-Semitism here would be most simply defined as an ideology or way of thinking sympathetic to Jews, the interests and the well-being of the Jewish community, Jewish “self-determination” and the Zionist state of Israel.

Read more



Comments



Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
.: ARTICLE BLOCKED :.
ON MARCH 2008
Who links to my website?