OznAsia

On Sunday night I watched the BBC's review of the week's news. It showed the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan along with Barack Obama showing their solidarity and talking about the need to suppress the Taliban in these two countries. And of course there is the suggestion that is so often raised that if the Taliban take control of Pakistan they will have access to Pakistan's nuclear weapons. The thought is planted in our minds but no one seems to want to take this suggestion any further. We are left with the thought to do what it will in our minds.

I want so much to give Barack Obama a chance. He talked about the need for change and he talked about withdrawing from Iraq. Is this man sincere? I hope so, but...

And then it dawned on me. Change? Nothing has changed.

I cast my mind back to the late 60s and early 70s, to the time of the Vietnam war. The justification for that war was the domino theory—if one country fell to communism all the others would fall too like a row of dominoes. We were inculcated with the fear of communism to entice us to accept that war just as now we are inculcated with the fear of al-Qaeda and extreme Islam so that we support today's wars.

Did the communist dominoes fall as we were told they would after Vietnam won the war?

'If you want to shrink something, you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something, you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something, you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception of the way things are.'

Ajahn Sumano Bhikku
Monk in the Mountain

Labels: Barack Obama, Buddhism, Islam, propaganda, religion, terrorism, US, Vietnam

How do you feel about Germans? Personally I have found those I've met to be honourable people. Yet, in WWII Germans were able to commit atrocities against millions of Jews. How could normal, good-living people bring themselves to do this? Hitler's propaganda campaigns were largely responsible for turning good German people into monsters. An example I found in Wikipedia is that "Der Stürmer, a Nazi propaganda newspaper, told Germans that Jews kidnapped small children before Passover because 'Jews need the blood of a Christian child, maybe, to mix in with their Matzah.' "

I would prefer we could forget all this and move on but sadly it is still happening today. Someone quite close to me recently forwarded an email with a story of an Imam who was alleged to have admitted that all Muslims have been commanded to kill everyone who is not of their faith and by doing so they will go to heaven.

I challenged the person who sent the email and asked if they knew any Muslims, 'Yes, two,' she answered.

'And do they believe this?'

'No, they're not that sort of person.'

But somehow the sender of the email insisted that most other Muslims—the ones she's never met—are that sort of person. I cannot understand the logic.

If we believe stuff like this, doesn't it help to justify (to some people) otherwise unjustifiable acts like the invasion of Iraq and atrocities committed by America and its allies in that invasion? Let me state my position.

The torture and killing of innocent Jews in WWII is unjustifiable.

The 9-11 attacks are unjustifiable.

The American wars against Muslim countries are unjustifiable.

And for the record, the email I got was shown to be false by snopes. Check it out for yourself.

Labels: Islam, propaganda