← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Jean West
Thread ID: 13824 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2004-05-21
2004-05-21 23:00 | User Profile
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To Look Again, part 1 2004-05-18
Sometimes the only way to the truth is by casting away fear, breaking taboos, and shattering ââ¬Ësacred' icons.
by David Mullenax (david@davesdiatribe.com)
THE GREATEST FREEDOM you can experience is the ability to think for yourself, and woe to the man who tries to take that freedom away, for he is the worst of criminals. He is a tyrant and an oppressor. To be disallowed to think independently, to contemplate your own thoughts, or to look at something in a different light is the greatest of evils.
Occasionally, we even prevent ourselves from pursuing intellectual liberty by occupying ourselves with trivial matters. A hectic and chaotic environment can prevent much-needed moments of reflection. Imagine all that we miss and overlook when we don't slow down to inquire and question.
Think about the quote from Timothy Leary below for just a minute. When you read it, read it slowly and allow it to sink in.
[INDENT]Think for yourself. Question authority. Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness; chaotic, confused, vulnerability to inform yourself. Think for yourself. Question authority.[/INDENT]
Powerful, isn't it? It stirs the soul if you really contemplate what he was saying. If you read it slowly, did you feel your mind trying to hurry through it and rush to the end? This refusal to slow down for a moment enables others to think for you.
Ponder how often people in the world try to control your thoughts and prevent you from questioning. It's the boss at work who is always right. It's the company that tells you all about its successes, but never its failures. It's the church you attend that tells you their side of the story, but never the other. It's the politician telling you what you want to hear, not what you don't want to hear.
Yet we are all guilty of doing it. We all have our issues, which we believe are perfect and true no matter what we hear -- but how would we know when we never examine it from the other side? How do we know we are right when we have only been shown one side of the story? Often we believe what we want to believe or what someone else tells us is correct without bothering to really investigate.
And then, when we are confronted with something new, we may find ourselves becoming angry, enraged and hostile. All of this because someone shared something different and new that challenges social norms or shows something in a different light. Our face becomes red, our blood pressure rises, and our teeth clench when our beliefs are challenged by hearing a different perspective.
Why do we resist new ideas with such force? It's because we spend our entire lives desperately seeking security and comfort. We hold on to things because we don't want to be wrong. If we are wrong, we're vulnerable, and if we're vulnerable, then we lose our security. When we lose our security, we lose our comfort. We so desperately want to be right, don't we?
This has gone on for centuries. There was a time when most everyone believed emphatically that the world was flat. To question that was heresy. It was criminal. But we know better now, don't we? It must have been frightening for the early scientists who tried to inform people of their discoveries, but they were courageous, and it is courage that leads us to the light of day.
What is important here is an understanding that we have the freedom to question, and that we celebrate the freedom of academic inquiry. When that is taken from us, when we are denied the pursuit of intellectual freedom, then all of us become enslaved.
It is imperative that we learn to searchingly analyze issues and events before we rush to make decisions, even when we've heard only one side of the story that seems so convincing.
There is one particular subject that academics have begun questioning - and that questioning has actually resulted in their imprisonment. That's right; those who dared to question, inquire and communicate their ideas are laboring in prison or are undergoing prosecution as I write this. Even worse, those who have criminalized these academics' right to question established norms are now advocating the use of physical torture as a means to squelch further inquiry. The subject is the Holocaust.
There is a diverse group of people consisting of academics, historians and others - from many different cultures, ethnic groups and political affiliations - who are asking some serious questions about this event. They have discovered new information and are looking at existing evidence from a new perspective that is very different than what we have been told in the past. Essentially, they are advocating that we take another look at history. That we look again.
I'm going to tackle the idea of freedom of inquiry on this topic in a series of writings that begins with this piece. We will look at this event under a different light in an effort to see it for the first time. We will examine what we know about it now, and we will question whether everything we have been told is true. More importantly, we will look at the motivations of those who wish to stop the exercise of intellectual liberty and freedom on this topic. And we'll find out why the Holocaust has been made into such an important icon in our society, and how it is now used as a political weapon to silence, censor and imprison.
Dear reader, don't be one of those who are scared to question. Embrace the idea of intellectual debate. Embrace the pursuit of academic inquiry. Embrace the freedom to agree or disagree without penalty. Embrace the ability to look again. Embrace the liberty and freedom to think for yourself as we examine this difficult subject.
To Look Again, part 2
THE HOLOCAUST has become one of the most widely accepted events in all of human history. Nearly everyone has seen countless films, historical documentaries and tear-jerking testimonies of concentration-camp atrocities. Today, many students are taught about it in school - some as early as kindergarten - and if you are fortunate to live near Washington, D.C., you can expect field trips to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
One really can't go anywhere without being reminded of The Holocaust. For example, my wife and I, on a trip to Baltimore, happened upon a memorial where the images of Jewish victims were entwined into a sphere that resembled the Earth, their faces grimacing in agonizing pain. The message: worldwide Jewish suffering.
On a recent trip to Boston, we encountered another memorial located in a park at the center of the tourist district, but this one was far more sensational than the last. Here, we discovered a glass monument where passersby could stroll through and read the names of Jewish Holocaust victims while simultaneously being subjected to a misty gas-like substance pouring into the glass enclosure. The message: Jews died by gas chambers.
At both memorials, I wondered to myself, "Why are these things here?" Really, why are Jews specifically given countless remembrances - not to mention a national Holocaust Remembrance Day - whose sole purpose is to remind the world of Jewish suffering?
Members of all ethnicities and religions have suffered tragically at one point in time or another. The Japanese living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were consumed in an atomic firestorm - man, woman and child. In Germany, 130,000 innocent civilians died in an Allied firebombing campaign in one night leveling the entire city. The invasion of China by Japan in 1938 produced what is now known as "The Rape of Nanking," where 369,000 Chinese were beheaded, disemboweled or burned alive. The Communists murdered 25,000 Poles - execution style - in Katyn, Poland.
Yet these events and others do not receive comparable attention or anything demonstrably close to the media campaign towards Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. The supply of movies, books, documentaries, educational materials, museums, memorials, etc. is endless.
Yehuda Bauer, Jewish professor and historian at Hebrew University in Jerusalem noted
[I]"Whether presented authentically or in authentically, in accordance with the historical facts or in contradiction to them ... the Holocaust has become a ruling symbol of our culture ... Hardly a month goes by without a new TV production, a new film, a new drama, new books, prose or poetry dealing with the subject, and the flood is increasing rather than abating."[/I]
Most importantly, Bauer acknowledges the irrelevancy of the factual or inaccurate presentation of Holocaust material. Instead, the flood of information has transformed an at-times misrepresented historical event into a religious and social dogma.
The Holocaust does not drive itself, rather it is steered and guided by political and media forces. This campaign for universal awareness of intense Jewish suffering has resulted in special political considerations and financial rewards for Israel.
According to the [I]Washington Report on the Middle East[/I], since 1949 Israel has received 84.85 billion dollars in U.S. aid and yearly receives one-third of all U.S. aid to foreign countries. The total cost to U.S. taxpayers is a staggering 134 billion dollars. But the U.S. is not alone in its handsome payouts to the Israeli government and other Jewish groups. Germany, for example, has paid 40 billion dollars in reparations payments, and Switzerland $1.25 billion.
Jewish professor Norman Finkelstein detailed in his book, [I]The Holocaust Industry[/I], that Israel and organized Jewry have used the event to "extort billions of dollars." And he predicts that the industry "may yet turn out to be the 'greatest robbery in the history of mankind.' "
Interestingly, Finkelstein remarked that Holocaust promotion is also an effective hammer in silencing and condemning all criticism of Israel and Jewry, thereby preventing the questioning and investigation of current or historical events. "Organized Jewry has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel's and its own morally indefensible policies."
On a similar note, South African Bishop Desmund Tutu observed that because of the "pedestal" the Israeli government is placed on in the United States, "to criticize it is to be labeled anti-Semitic."
The extortion of funds, whether in the form of U.S. foreign aid or reparations payments, isn't possible unless organized Jewry is a powerful force in government and media. Exclusively Jewish perspectives are presented through effective media ownership resulting in unwavering support for the Israeli government and social sensitivity for Jewish interests.
This type of influential power was commented on by two prominent Jewish writers, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, in their book [I]Jews and the New American Scene[/I].
[INDENT]"During the last three decades, Jews (in the United States) have made up 50 percent of the top two hundred intellectuals ... 20 percent of professors at the leading universities ... 40 percent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington ... 59 percent of the directors, writers and producers of the 50 top-grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982, and 58 percent of directors, writers and producers in two or more primetime television series." [/INDENT]
However, Stephen Steinlight of the National Affairs of the American Jewish Committee commented that Jewish power is extremely disproportionate in media, notably television, news and Hollywood. With effective ownership of the media, a specifically Jewish perspective of popular culture is painted. This media power is able to promote what it wants, when it wants and how it wants, but more importantly, what the audience sees and doesn't see.
Jewish author and film critic Michael Medved stated, "It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture. Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names."
Jonathon Goldberg, editor of the Jewish weekly [I]Forward[/I], confirmed, "In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation ... Virtually all the senior executives at the major studios are Jews. Writers, producers, and to a lesser degree directors are disproportionately Jewish - one recent study showed the figure as high as 59 percent among top-grossing films. The combined weight of so many Jews in one of America's most lucrative and important industries gives the Jews of Hollywood a great deal of political power."
However, Jewish media dominance expands beyond the Holocaust industry into an equally distorted view of Middle East affairs. A recent report shows that American media coverage of victimization in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is remarkably pro-Israel. For example, in a crisis that has resulted in far more Palestinian casualties, 70 percent of Israeli deaths receive American press coverage as compared to 3.6 percent of Palestinian deaths.
Political power is achieved through the manufacturing of opinions and ideas. Worldviews, ideologies, philosophies, thoughts and feelings can be easily manipulated through control of the press. But those same manufactured views are turned into votes for political candidates, and many politicians and political insiders understand this.
Undeniably, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, courageously expressed his personal and shocking experience with Jewish power in Washington when he publicly proclaimed, "I've never seen a president - I don't care who he is - stand up to them (the Israelis). It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."
David Mullenax resides in Fishersville, Virginia. His column, "Dave's Diatribe - Unfair and Unbalanced," appears every Friday in The Augusta Free Press.
Source Augusta Free Press
http//www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=2903 http//www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=2926