Where did Arab Muslims get their tropes of hatred for Israel and “the Jews”? They got it from the Nazi Party – aka, Christian nationalists, aka, white supremacists. Where did Hitler’s Nazis get their tropes of hatred for Jews and their eugenics ideas from? They got it from the United States of America, the originator of modern racism and eugenics. Though the USA has a history of anti-Semitism, hatred for Jews began hundreds of years before in Christian Europe, and now resides everywhere these white empires have touched. (Ghettos first began in Europe to separate the Jews from society, before being imported into the U.S. to separate black folk from white society.)
The point I’m making is two fold: 1) Jews are not the reason for a society’s problems. And 2) until we admit the historical truths, archived and available for our viewing, people spouting conspiratorial hate will always seek to blame “the Jews” as the ultimate source. Only because we allow them to! It keeps repeating, with or without provocation by Jews.
The only solution is to reject religious fundamentalism, the source of and justification for anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia in this world. If a religion does not preach peaceful coexistence with people of other religions or of no religion in its very scriptures and in the mouths of its preachers, then it is a religion of separation, supremacy, and hatred for others who refuse to convert and obey. It is a religion that worships a false god of absolutism and hate. The violence and suffering of this modern world is intimately tied to human behavior, justified by such religious beliefs.
When will those who need to hear and understand begin to listen? Aren’t we tired of all this bloody and depressing suffering yet? It really is within our power to change this! We don’t need a human imagined “God” to do good unto our neighbors. We just need to behave this way! And it starts with a bit of faith and belief in the value of humanity.
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Listen! We must confront the religious fundamentalism of *every religion* in *every country* that is dressing itself up as nationalism and ethnic/racial supremacy. So long as religion influences politics and civil law, there will be no peace on this Earth! People … will … be … targeted … and suffer … at the hands of indifferent self-righteous humans, in the name of their religions’ gods. There is only one way to end the violence and oppression, stop worshipping and justifying hate with false gods!
“We know that it is not lost on people who follow this site that the threat fundamentalist Christians pose to the institutions of secular government in the U.S., and therefore to everyone’s freedom of belief, or worse, has its disturbing parallels around the world. It does not take that deep a look to see that much of the world’s most genocidal violence is motivated by and justified by, if not absolutely rooted in, the fundamentalist forms of many religions.
Look at the genocidal violence against Muslims in Southeast Asia led by Buddhist monks – Buddhist monks!; or the genocidal violence of the Sunni Islamist extremists of ISIS against Yazidi, Christians, Jews, Shi’a Muslims, and so many others in the Middle East, and Sunni Boko Haram against Christians in West Africa, Sunni al Qaeda against the West and the U.S. (9/11) — all driven by fundamentalist Wahabi movement of Sunni Islam. There is also a fundamentalist movement among Hindus in India, and the extremist views of Shi’a Hezbollah in the Middle East, energized and supported by the most militant form of Shi’a Islam based most centrally in Iran. We should also see clearly the role that fundamentalist Judaism plays in the settler movement and treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, and never forget that a not-entirely-earlier form of fundamentalist Protestantism was (is) a main engine driving the racist, supremacist KKK.
So, while our central focus is and will remain the U.S., it behooves us also to be mindful that the anti-democratic forces marching here are also marching elsewhere. There is a worldwide scourge of fundamentalist religions, especially where they ally as they so often do with nationalism and ethnic supremacy, and these have clear international connections. So, while we pursue our important goals here, it does behoove us to call on supporters of secular democratic governance worldwide, and moderate leaders of all faiths worldwide, to vigorously oppose the fundamentalists in their midst. Far more than our American democratic institutions are at stake.
We will have more to say on religious fundamentalism here in the U.S.” – Jews for a Secular Democracy, https://www.facebook.com/jewsdemocracy/
1 Comment
Joseph T Farkasdi · March 30, 2019 at 9:09 pm
What Do You Know About Modern Monetary Theory?
In 2005, Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman, told Paul Ryan:”there’s nothing to prevent the federal government creating as much money as it wants.” … Oh, really?! But, a question, then!
“If [as we are taught] creating new money [out of thin air] creates inflation, why was there no inflation when Ben Bernanke created $15 trillion in assets to save the banks during the [2008] financial crisis?”
The answer, according to Modern Monetary Theory: “It is the lack of goods – or labour, or capacity – that triggers inflation, not the creation of more money out of thin air.” Hence, Alan Greenspan’s explanation to Paul Ryan on how money actually works at the federal level.
“In 2009, former Fed chair Ben Bernanke was interviewed on CBS’s 60 Minutes about the federal government’s $1 trillion bailout of the banking system in the 2008 financial crisis. Bernanke was asked if the $1 trillion came from taxpayers. He said no. It was printed:
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing.” ”
Confused? Maybe it’s about time to learn how modern economics actually works – than being fooled by political pundits into thinking that there is not enough money to fix the biggest financial problems for citizens, and that somehow and ultimately tax payers have to foot the federal deficit bill. Neither of these postulations are actually true! So,…
“For MMT [proponents], that begs a question.
Why doesn’t the government increase spending until there is no more unemployment? A country could supply free college education, build a green power network, beef up its military, build hospitals, or rebuild its transport infrastructure if it knows that it can spend whatever it takes until it runs out of workers or resources to do the job.
Only when the supply of labour – or stuff – becomes restricted will the government find itself bidding up the price of everything, MMT argues.
In fact, this is exactly what MMT proposes that the government does: funnel money into the economy, driving businesses to hire more people and consumers to demand more goods and services.”
So, why is our federal government NOT doing this?! Could it be that it is because:
Creating “monetary assets” to address the financial inequalities in society would eliminate decades long stagnate wages among the working class – keeping labor cheap and profits high?
That the majority of citizens, who are working at or well below what is a livable wage, could actually receive a livable wage for their work contribution to society – and would no longer actually need to go into debt to pay for things?
That, across this nation, college education and healthcare could be free, thus allowing more people to financially succeed in life – no longer imposed with overwhelming lifelong debt?
That suddenly everyday citizens could have money in a savings, own a home and a vehicle, and so forth, without being dependant upon big corporate providing them a meager means to achieving this – like what was achieved by the 1950’s with FDR’s “New Deal” governmental programs?
Should we be demanding a new approach to national economics that rewards the workers for their participation in society, rather than just those few residing at the top, in the penthouses of corporate buildings?
This economics of the Industrial Age, which we are still living under, is a government-sanctioned pyramid scheme! And we are taught to believe that this ‘capitalism for the few by the work of the many’ is the only free and good way to run an economy. This teaching in itself is lie! There are choices that benefit the many without needing to resort to either corporate capitalist tyranny or communist tyranny.
Isn’t it about time that we as a nation embraced some of these alternate approaches? We can, if we stopped believing the socialized lie that doing so will “destroy our way of life.” Let’s ask the needed question here: Are we satisfied with our way of life, as it presently is?!
https://www.thisisinsider.com/modern-monetary-theory-mmt-explained-aoc-2019-3
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a fan of a geeky economic theory called MMT: Here’s a plain-English guide to what it is and why it’s interesting