----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 5:18 AM
Subject: Local Faces of Big Brother
I've given up calling myself a Socialist, because that word has been
hijacked by One Worlders.
In the 1953 Federal Election, which was held in the wake of the Petrov
defection, Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies warned that Labor would
establish a Socialist Dictatorship.
At the time, much of Australia' economy was publicly owned. Yet, Menzies
left this alone; he did not consider it a mark of "Socialism". Nor was
it called "Socialism" at the time.
It was instead called a "Mixed" economy.
1. Local Faces of Big Brother (Peter M)
2. Why China will dominate Asia to become the world's most important
economy
3. Why China will dominate - high import tariffs
4. Two competing mutually exclusive versions of Apocalypse, a Judaic
and a Christian
1. Local Faces of Big Brother (Peter M)
I know a builder who lost his licence merely because his wife divorced
him.
She got the house. Because he no longer had any assets, the Insurance
Company refused to renew his insurance. Without Builders' Insurance, he
lost his licence.
He's building a house for someone, with that person obtaining an Owner
Builders' licence. These days, lots of "Owner Builders" are merely
customers subcontracting out the work to tradesmen.
The real Owner Builders, those who go bush and do all the work
themselves, often using second-hand materials, have been pushed to the
wall.
Council planners now dictate everything you can do on your own block.
Try asking whether you can use second-hand windows in your house.
"Provided it complies with the Building Code of Australia", they all
reply.
"But in practice," you persist, "Do you allow it?".
You won't get a straight answer. Pretty soon, you realise that you need
a Newspeak dictionary.
These are the local faces of Big Brother. They insist that these rules
are for our own good. The Nanny State claims that it's looking after us.
If there's no right to put a roof over your own head, on your own land,
then "Human Rights" has no meaning at all. It's just a slogan.
Similarly, if you can't give birth in a simple, low-tech way, avoiding
the hospitals (with their 20% cesarean rate), then you have no Human
Rights.
We fought Communist totalitarianism for 40 years, but did not notice the
variant growing up in our own backyard. George Orwell told us to look
there, and warned that Big Brother would pose as our benefactor.
You can't even use second-hand galvanised iron to build a shed. They
want you to build kit buildings - that's the only kind of shed it's easy
to get approval for. Standardised ugly monstrosities, with none of the
character of the shacks and sheds of the past.
The same Socialist pollies who have introduced these rules, also tell us
that they are saving the environment. Meanwhile, houses are being
demolished and thrown away at the tip, with hardly any recycling of
quite usable materials, merely because of these new "planning" laws
about "standards".
Safety is another excuse. A few bits of fibro in a house, and they
prevent you from salvaging any part of the house, for "occupational
health and safety" reasons.
I've heard of couples intending to owner-build, who started by
accumulating second-hand doors, windows, timber and other materials,
then finding that they can't be used, and their relationships breaking
up over intransigent Planners and Building Inspectors.
The Australia of Henry Lawson seems far away. In those days, you didn't
need approvals or inspections to build your own house or shed in the
bush. In many shires, e.g. in the Bega and Nimbin areas, and in rural
Tasmania, you could do this until about 10 years ago.
It all changed during the 1980s when the Socialists in Sydney and
Canberra brought in "Uniform Building Regulations". The Newcastle
Earthquake was the excuse they used to make all the states comply.
A real estate agent in the Newcastle area told me that extensive
underground coal-mining may have contributed to the earthquake damage.
It's the reason why weatherboard houses sell as dear as brick ones in
the Newcastle-Cessnock-Maitland area.
The consequence of the Newcastle Earthquake has been a doubling of the
volume of concrete & steel in house foundations across the country.
Engineers cover themselves from ligitation, by prescribing unnecessarily
big footings. This, even though cement is an energy-intensive product.
Pollies cry crocodile tears over these disasters, and follow up with
draconian laws that impact on us long after they have taken their
pensions.
2. Why China will dominate Asia to become the world's most important
economy
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 22:03:07 -0400 From: "David Chiang"
<chiang.d@worldnet.att.net>
Why China will dominate Asia and the world
Posted online: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 at 0000 hours IST
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=71190
Between September 25 and October 11, two international magazines carried
over a dozen major articles on China. The cover story of The Economist
in its September 25 - October 1 issue involved the change of guard from
Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. The special issue of Fortune for the fortnight
ending 11 October was entirely devoted to "Inside the New China", and
consisted of 11 articles covering topics as varied as the Shanghai Auto
Works, the rapid development of Chongqing, and the 100 million kids in
China - the country's Generation Next, who are called the "Little
Emperors". Then, the very next issue of The Economist carried a special
survey on China, written by its economics editor Pam Woodall, and all of
19-pages long. It prompted a perceptive but utterly irreverent friend of
mine to say, "It needs the someone like Narendra Modi for India to get
that amount of coverage in less than three weeks."
At a recent conference in Vera Cruz, Ronnie Chan, a much travelled
entrepreneur from Hong Kong, said that China has graduated to a new
game. According to him, after a decade and a half of scorching growth,
China is now set to attract all the foreign investments it needs;
accelerate the process of building world class infrastructure in the
western provinces; further strengthen its awesome manufacturing prowess,
especially in the interior; leverage its huge and rapidly growing
domestic market; showcase Beijing Olympics 2008 to highlight the
economic might of the country; further expand its trade with ASEAN and
APEC; develop both in-bound and out-bound tourism; and rapidly create
the platform for providing world class services, including IT and
business process outsourcing. Chen concluded by saying two things.
First, the best is yet to come. And second, that soon China will be a
major force in global geopolitics.
Facts speak for themselves. According to the IMF, China's GDP, measured
in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) was $6.5 trillion in 2003 -
second only to that of the US at $11 trillion. As far as PPP goes, India
doesn't do too badly with a GDP of a bit under $3 trillion, or 46% of
China's. However, the great differentiator is the growth rate. In 1978,
China's GDP was 28% higher than India's. Since the beginning of Deng's
reforms in the late 1970s, China's GDP has grown at an average annual
rate of 9.5%, versus an average Indian growth of 5.8%. Consequently,
China's national income today is almost 2.2 times that of India's. In
1990, China's share of world GDP growth (measured in PPP terms) was
under 10%. In 2003, it has increased to 32%. In other words, almost a
third of global income growth that one witnessed in 2003 was accounted
for by China. If that wasn't a serious index of economic power, then
nothing is.
The powers-that-be in China from Hu downwards realise that income
inequalities have widened rapidly between the eastern and southern
seaboard on the one hand and the interior. They also understand that the
greatest economic, social and political challenge facing the country is
to generate rapid employment growth, especially for the poorer western
provinces. Unlike our politicians, however, the Chinese don't believe in
empty employment guarantee schemes. They realise that employment
increases only with sustained economic growth - and are therefore
putting all the infrastructure and incentives needed to attract the
maximum possible private sector investment in the interior.
Consider just Three Gorges, the world's largest hydroelectric project on
the river Yangtze. When completed in 2009 at an estimated cost of around
$25 billion, it will produce 10% of China's electricity. But that's not
all. The country has embarked on a $60 billion project called "South
Waters North" - which will use a system of dams, canals and pipelines to
divert excess water from the flood-prone southern and south-eastern
parts of China to the arid north and west. Chinese policymakers also
realised long ago that high import tariffs are inimical to the growth of
manufacturing and infrastructure. In 1992, China's trade-weighted
average customs duty was 41%. Today, it is under 6% which, according to
The Economist, is the lowest average tariff rate among all developing
countries. Most key infrastructure inputs are imported at zero duty.
Unlike South Korea, Japan or India, China chose to grow manufacturing
through joint ventures and foreign direct investments. Last year, the
country attracted $54 billion of FDI. At a time when the Left and Indian
capitalists are arguing in favour of retaining Press Note 18, it is
worth noting that joint ventures with foreign companies are producing
almost 30% of China's industrial products. According to Fortune, the
CEOs of more than 40 major multinationals have already visited China in
2004.
Don't even think of the "hard landing" that is supposed to occur because
of "over heating". Here's my take. China will grow at an average of
somewhere around 8.5% per year right up to 2008 - and maybe at 8%
thereafter until 2015. By that year it will overtake Japan, at market
exchange rates and without any PPP adjustment. It will very gradually
tighten interest rates, but not at the cost of real economic growth. It
will not let the yuan float upwards and hamper its international
competitiveness. It will continue pouring money into infrastructure. It
will continue to attract over $50 billion of FDI every year in the
foreseeable future. At $851 billion, its trade in goods and services is
about 8 times that of India - and that will grow at double digits. And
it will be the world's number one market for mobile phones, coal, steel,
metals, television, personal computers, white goods, agricultural and
food products. The list is never ending.
China is and will be Asia's prime and, after the US, the world's second
most important powerbase. If we tried hard enough, we could be the
second in Asia. But for that we need to stop debating antediluvian
nonsense and start adopting the Nike slogan: "Just do it". China has.
Why can't we?
The author is the founder of CERG Advisory
3. Why China will dominate - high import tariffs
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 14:04:53 +0200 From: "Arno Mong Daastoel"
<amd@daastol.com>
I find the most interesting part of that article to be this:
> Chinese policymakers also realised long ago that high import tariffs
are inimical to the growth of manufacturing and infrastructure.
> Unlike South Korea, Japan or India, China chose to grow manufacturing
through joint ventures and foreign direct investments.
However, this is nothing new - almost....: Russia did the same under
Sergei Witte until 1905 and combined it with import tariffs, with good
results.
It seems that China has been able to do this because of and
extraordinary growth of capital mobility which was not present when the
above mentioned countries industrialised. This is not due to declining
nationalism with capital owners (whose low nationalism 'always' has been
present) but rather due to the declining nationalism of politicians in
the industrialised countries, of course due to pressure from the same
capital owners in the 'mature' economies. In particular the US has been
leading here, reaping the huge gains from cheap labour in China. And
when one nation changes its policy the rest must follow. The politicians
of the industrialised countries soon but too late find that they have
ben shooting themselves in the foot. When the genie is out, it cannot be
put back.
But again, this is not really new either. Britain was perhaps an
'innovator' here and practiced 'the same' freedoms for capital before WW
I - and reaped the loss of empire.
Concerning John Craig's point of view that China's growth is a bubble, I
think this will be proven wrong, as long as China continues to balance
growth in production, infrastructure and a domestic market.
4. Two competing mutually exclusive versions of Apocalypse, a Judaic
and a Christian
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 11:54:37 +0200 From: "Israel Shamir"
<shamir@home.se>
Here is a draft of a yet unpublished piece - and I am very interested
in
your opinion. Shamir
Second Coming
(a positive view of fundamentalism)
By Israel Shamir
What is the proper Christian attitude to the Jewish state? Nowadays it
varies from "warm support" to "indifferent", i.e. from support of Israel
on the grounds of an apocalyptic belief to the view that the Jews and
the state of Israel have no more meaning for Christians than Inuit.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams offered a compromise affirming
the need for a Jewish state and the state's duty to be good to its
neighbours. A Palestinian Christian, Jonathan Kuttab of Sabeel wrote him
an open letter bitterly complaining that he "ignored the Palestinian
people on whose land the Jewish state was created" but "was satisfied
that the Archbishop did not support eschatological or prophecy-driven
interpretations". However this discourse is missing the fourth leg: the
rejection of the Jewish state on the ground of an apocalyptic tradition;
and so we shall supply this leg.
Indeed, the "eschatological or prophecy-driven interpretations" are
unavoidable; millions of Americans express them openly and millions of
Europeans feel them acutely. No amount of empathy with the Palestinians
has been able to change the widespread feeling that was well expressed
by Lord Balfour: "The fate of the world, the millennia-old plan of
Redemption and the Second Coming, is more important than the immediate
concerns of local inhabitants". Balfour, probably the Archbishop of
Canterbury, other shepherds of the Catholic and Protestant Churches, and
many, many ordinary folks feel about the fate of Palestine as [Egyptian
President Gamal Abdel] Nasser felt about the fate of Nubian villages
when he built the Aswan Dam: 'tis pity but they'll have to suffer for
the greater good of the land and its people.
Let us follow this simile a bit farther. If the Aswan Dam were to flood
the Nubian villages, Pharaonic temples and Coptic monasteries, but will
provide Egypt with water and food -- fine and good; we shall just
compensate the poor Nubians and relocate the monks. If the Dam were to
create zillions of mosquitoes and bilharzia man-eating worm, arrest the
inflow of fertilising Nile ooze and disrupt harvests, we shall regret
the folly of building the Dam but stick with it hoping for the better.
But were we to recognise the Dam as a new Damocles sword hanging over
Egypt, allowing its neighbours to blackmail the country by the treat of
nuclear targeting the Dam and turning the Lake of Nasser into the Sea of
Doom for this ancient country ? we would change our view about the setup
rather radically and begin gradually dismantling the project.
In other words, we (as opposed to many friends and enemies of Palestine)
may agree that prophecies are coming true, but which prophecies? There
are two competing mutually exclusive versions of Apocalypse, a Judaic
and a Christian. According to the Jews, after Jewish sufferings, God's
rage will be awaken and he will avenge the shed Jewish blood and restore
their good fortunes: the outcasts will become the leaders. Theirs will
be the only spiritual centre of the world in Jerusalem, they will outlaw
or kill believers in Christ and other idolaters, demolish churches,
de-spiritualise and disarm the nations, will get seven gentile slaves to
a person, collect all material and spiritual riches, and will live
happily ever after shepherding the happy gentile flock.
In the Christian narrative of forthcoming events, before the new
spiritual awakening of Christendom (described as Second Coming), the
Christian world is to sink slowly into the abyss of de-spiritualisation
and Mammon worship; its nadir is described as "Antichrist rule", the end
of Kali Yuga, as they say in India. The prophets connected this dramatic
development with the return of the Jews and with re-establishment of
Judaic cult in Jerusalem. This was supposed to be the lowest point of
spiritual descent, the darkest hour before the sunrise, for Judaism is
based on rejection of Christ. This mass apostasy will cause a horrible
war; in its aftermath, the survivors will return to Christ.
The prophets and fathers of the Church did not determine whether the
Antichrist was to be a Jew (or even a person), but the intricate
connection between the Jews, restoration of their cult and the Doom of
Christendom was a universally accepted dogma, East or West. In the West,
as long ago as the seventh century, Isidor, the bishop of Seville, knew
of the "Antichrist who will take Jerusalem and re-establish the Jewish
temple and the Jewish kingdom" before taking over the Church and the
world. In the East, St John the Damascene prophesied that the Antichrist
will come to Jews and for Jews, against Christ and Christians. The
Church Fathers considered the Rise of the Antichrist as the rise and
temporary triumph of Judaism. In the Tenth Century, St Andrew prophesied
that the kingdom of Israel will be restored, and that it will be the
launching-pad of the Antichrist.
The secret of this confluence of two narratives is hidden in the idea of
de-spiritualisation: the Church fathers were aware that the Jews seek to
remain the only sacral unity within profane mankind, while they wished
the world to overflow with sacrality like a jar with good wine.
When a Christian observes the US Army and its auxiliaries being sent to
subdue the Middle East and establish a Judaic ruler on the throne of
Solomon; when the Jewish state declares its supreme sovereignty upon
earth by assuming right to judge and doom anyone, anywhere; when prime
ministers and presidents gather to deliberate whether they are doing
everything they can for the Jews; when princes of the church are begging
forgiveness of the Jews, and when practical steps are being taken to
renew the sacrifices in Jerusalem ? one can't but recognise that
prophecies are being fulfilled. One also can't but recognise that
whoever supports this prophesied "rise of Jews" sides with Antichrist.
One may also find comfort in knowing that the dark night of Antichrist
will eventually bring the great spiritual awakening, or 'Second Coming',
but may one then hasten the darkness of the night while wishing for
sunrise?
In the Bolshevik tradition, this is called "the worse, the better"; i.e.
the worse is the situation, the better are chances to bring forward the
desired revolution. It is a legitimate view; many good people feel that
Bush the Worse is also Bush the Better, as he is so obviously evil that
he antagonises even groups liable to support an equally bad but cunning
politician. In Israel, a Jewish Ultra-Orthodox authoress wittily
explained her antizionist community's support for Benjamin Netanyahu the
Zionist: The Ultra-Orthodox realize that Netanyahu will surely destroy
the Zionist state.
This attitude ceases to be legitimate when it is transformed into a
positive action of supporting evil. One may passively find comfort in
knowing that a nasty situation will be soon over, but one may not
actively provoke the nasty situation "to have it done with", by, say,
campaigning for Bush or Netanyahu. Such a Machiavellian action is
perilous for the soul.
The rise of the Antichrist as the last stage before the Second Coming
may be compared with the betrayal and the Crucifixion before the
Resurrection. Thus active aid and abet of Antichrist, in order to speed
up Second Coming, equals to the deed of Judas if he betrayed Christ in
order to quicken the Redemption. A mad theologian Nils Runeberg, a
character in a Jorge Luis Borges story, admired Judas for his deed, as
without him, the divine plan would not be fulfilled. Such approach is
called "antinomian", and Christ foresaw it when he said: "the Son of Man
will go as it has been decreed, but woe to that man by whom the Son of
Man is betrayed" (Mat 26:24). Indeed, for Christians, Judas is the
symbol of the worst in human nature; Dante planted him in the Ninth
Circle of his Inferno, while a Jewish author made him a national hero in
the Toledoth Yeshu.
Lurian Cabbala is decidedly antinomian; Sabbatai Tsevi, a post-Lurian
Cabbalist messiah of 17th century, believed that sins lead to
redemption. His adversaries claimed he would sodomise a boy while
wearing phylacteries and singing hymns. The spiritual leader of the
Israeli Cabbalist school, Rabbi Kook, also believed that mass murder,
rivers of blood and a sinful life are the harbingers of salvation,
though he never called for direct antinomian action ? this was a later
addition by his disciples.
So-called Christian Zionists are antinomians as they side with the
Antichrist in order to quicken the Second Coming, but woe to that man
who helps Antichrist to destroy the world. Whether they believe in the
Second Coming of Christ or not, people who knowingly implement
antichristian plans are better called "Antichrist Zionists". Rise of the
Antichrist Zionists is a part of the prophesied Apostasy of the Church.
But our feeling towards them are like that towards misled brothers. They
were ensnared by their spiritual longing for Christ. We do not mind that
they are fundamentalists ? we regret that they are not sufficiently
fundamentalist.
II
A fundamentalist is one who follows the traditional teaching of the
Church. There are no stricter fundamentalists than the monastic
community of Mt Athos in Northern Greece, where I write these words.
Athos is a great reservoir of spirit, and many people come to partake of
its waters. (Charles, the Prince of Wales stays here in an abbey, too.)
The monks keep the fire of Christian faith as it was kindled by Christ
and his apostles. They do not expect their salvation will come from
Jews, as it already came in the person of Christ. They feel no need to
seek Rupture for they were given a plan of their own: to try and bring
the Second Coming by means of prayer and spiritual enlightenment. For
them, the Second Coming is the mystic experience of seeing Christ in his
glory, and it is attainable by divine grace.
The roots of the Greek Church go beyond the first mission of St Paul to
Athens, for he recognised the religious zeal of the Hellenes. They did
not need to be converted, but enlightened. Even today, Greeks are
devoted to Christ, to His Mother Our Lady Mary and to her earthly
manifestation, their own Mother Church established by SS John and Paul.
Their church stays out of politics, but exercises moral influence.
Guided by her church, Greece does not participate in the Iraqi war, her
sons do not die on the streets of Baghdad; and this most religious, most
Christian nation shares the view of good Muslims and ours, that the
world including Greece is threatened not by Islamic terrorism, but by
the US fight against terrorism. Their Archbishop Christodoulos correctly
stated that terrorism is caused by the "injustice and inequality that
pervades the world."
In The Wall Street Journal, a Zionist Greek Takis Michas, in a piece
called Is Greece a Western Nation? writes with horror: "Such views seem
to have more in common with public opinion in Cairo or Damascus than in
Berlin or Rome." So much for the silly concept of conflict between
Christendom and Islam promoted by these guardians of the Christian
faith, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times!
As opposed to the West, the Greeks knew neither hatred nor fear of Jews.
As they had their own national church, they did not transfer their
spiritual values to Jews for safekeeping; and thus had no reason to
bewail the loss of them. Where is no guilt, there is no fear, either.
Where is no fear of Jews, there is no automatic support for the US,
either, and Theodorakis' view that "the root of evil today is the policy
of President Bush" rather than the Muslim world is shared by many
Greeks.
Greeks know Muslims not from books ? they lived in close quarters with
them for a millennium. They are aware that their long and troubled
relationship with their Turk neighbours reached its nadir under the
anti-Islamic rule of Kemal Ataturk, while Islamic Sultan Selim the Grim
spent a fortune restoring the monasteries of Athos.
Now, both the Greek Left and the Greek Right are united in their
rejection of the American drive to conquer the East, to enforce
multiculturalism and to separate Church and the State. They support the
Palestinians and wish the Jews to come to their senses. They are a good
example for US fundamentalists. Indeed, Greece is the proof that
fundamentalist Christianity is not that of George Bush, and that the
alternative to him is not monopolised by the First Lesbian Synagogue of
New York.
Mt Athos, this green wooded island stretching into Aegean Sea, an
independent Christian nation under Greek protectorate and home to twenty
massive abbeys, a place where hundreds of monks and thousands of lay
pilgrims pray to Lord, work the land, grow heavy olives and red apples,
is a good place to recognise an unacknowledged victim of the Iraqi war:
Christianity. Its reputation has been besmirched by people who take the
name of Christ ? and of fundamentalism ? in vain. From the New York
Times to FrontPage magazine, various Judaic publications provide an
outlet for anti-Muslim rant, for calls to war in the name of Conflict of
Civilisations. As a result, some Muslims began to answer by
counter-attacking Christianity; and European and American youth learn to
think of their faith as of danger to mankind. However, this victim is
innocent: true Orthodox Christendom, as fundamentalist as it can be,
firmly rejects the creed of Mammon and the US war on Islam.
Why were the Greeks better than the Western intellectuals at recognising
these media lies for what they were? The reason, in my view, is the
traditional character of the Greek Orthodox Church and of its connection
to the people and to their state. Separation of Church and state, this
much vaunted accomplishment of the French revolution and even more of
the US founding fathers, cut off the anchors of the Western society and
it drifted straight towards the rocks. While in France the national
Catholic church still occupies an important and exclusive place, the US,
the country without a state church, became a victim and a servant of
Mammon. The small, independent churches of the US had no ability to form
the mind of the nation; they competed for an outlet in the Jewish-owned
media; they were forever threatened by tax authorities; they broke with
tradition and became prey for the wolves.
This absence of one church further undermines the underlying concept of
unity-in-God, elaborated by T S Elliot in The Christian Idea of Society
(1939). People live together united by an idea; this idea may (or indeed
should) be their common worship and uniting communion, thus the need for
one national church that unites its people by a single communion.
The US was a first experiment of a large scale: what will happen to a
society that is built on the quicksand of profit, instead of the rock of
faith. Given this background, one can understand the US churches'
vulnerability to the Jewish influence and their readiness to support the
Judaic Doomsday script. But this should be called heresy ? not
fundamentalism!
III
Fundamentally, the church always believed that the Jews will be
eventually saved by coming to Christ. This important event will
accompany the defeat of Antichrist, as part of the Great Reawakening
(metaphorically called the Second Coming). Then the sheep will be
separated from goats, and those who accept Christ will continue into
future life. As the Rise of Antichrist occurs in our days, we witness
the first fruits of this sifting.
Our brother Mordechai Vanunu is one of the first swallows. This holy
man, a scion of a learned Sephardi Jewish family, was horrified by the
Jewish persecution of the native Palestinians and came to Christ. As a
Christian, he denounced the Armageddon weapons of Antichrist,
manufactured in Dimona, in the South of the Holy Land, within sight of
Sodom. He was severely punished by the Antichrist and suffered 18 years
in jail; but by God's will he survived it like Daniel survived the
Lions' Pit.
There are many others: Neil and Gilad, Daniel and Menachem, Jews by
birth who denounced the Judaic cult of Death and accepted the Living
Christ. In every case, relationship to the Palestinian suffering was the
sieve: whoever disregarded it followed Antichrist; whoever denounced it,
began his way to Christ.
Though modesty precludes me from referring to myself, I have a duty to
witness. A vain and suffering man, I was granted the grace of Christ and
was reborn in his glory. Though the ways of God are mysterious, I
believe that it was my compassion and love to the native people of the
Holy Land that made me worthy of His Theophany. A poem by the Greek
Alexandrian poet Cavafy helped me to recognise my way:
For some people the day comes
When they must say the great Yes
Or the great No. He who has the Yes
Ready within him, says it
And goes by the path of honour, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
He'd still say no. Yet that No ? the right No ?
Drags him down all his life.
I do not regret my Yes, and the attacks of enemies do not break my
spirit. I am daily grateful to Christ who saved me from the Judaic
paranoia of hating and being hated, and brought me into the world of
loving and being loved. And every Jew who has come to Christ by the way
of rejecting the Judaic ideas, by upholding love to the nations, is a
portent of Salvation.
Now I have received good news, great news from a great man, Alfred
Lilienthal, an American Jewish author of many books including famous
What Price Israel? published in 1953 and republished last year. Alfred
Lilienthal was one of the first Jews who renounced Zionist separation
and mistreatment of Palestinians.
Now Suzanne Nicole, his webmaster, secretary and assistant wrote to me:
"At age 90, Alfred is quite frail and too blind to read, his short-term
memory is severely impaired, so he has to be asked short questions (in a
loud voice since he is also growing deaf), or he forgets what he is
being asked. His long-term memory is still quite good, so he is also
able to discuss concepts such as the difference between Judaism and
Zionism. He understands current events when he first hears about them
but quickly forgets the details. I did paraphrase one of your statements
from The Pardes to him:
"Thus, this discourse should help an individual to decide whether he
wants to be a Jew, or not, in the same way one may choose whether one
wants to be a communist or a Quaker, for it is my deep conviction that
to be or not to be a Jew is an act of free will."
He replied, "And that is what I have finally done." He was baptised
sometime shortly before last Thanksgiving. Even in What Price Israel? in
1953, he had referred to Jesus as a prophet of Israel. One day a couple
of ministers had come by to see him at the urging of a Christian friend,
and he made the decision in what seemed to some perhaps as a senile
moment. But Friday afternoon, he said, "What is today? Is Ned coming to
take me to church today?" So, it has stuck. He may not remember what day
it is, but he does remember each day that he has chosen to become a
follower of Christ like you."
This conversion of Alfred Lilienthal is an important event, for it tells
us that Christ's grace is available to Jews and not only in the physical
Holy Land: It is enough to renounce the separation of a Jew and a
Gentile, to give up hate and to accept the love that is Christ.
Christian faith is not compatible with Jewish exclusivity. The mission
among Jews can be successful only if the whole complex of Jewish
separatism is removed, when their hearts are circumcised and they are
brought into full communion with the people they live amongst. I have
met in Israel with some 'messianic Jews', who were full of hate to the
native people of the Holy Land. Not surprisingly, they thought Jesus
Christ came just for Jews, and the Holy Land was theirs, too; they
worshipped the Israeli Army and the flag of Israel. For them, the
pivotal moment of history was not the Resurrection, but the Destruction
of the Jewish Temple. In other words, they only pretended to be
Christians, or not even that, as they preferred to be called 'messianic
Jews'.
Indeed, the plans of Almighty include the Jews; like the plans of the
Ring included the hobbits; but some will play the role of Frodo, while
others will take the part of Gollum, some will support Antichrist, and
some will stay with Christ.
The Antichrist Christians may revert to real fundamentalism, reject
Antichrist and his drive to destroy the last enclaves of spirit still
hidden in the high mountains of Asia. Instead, they may campaign for
strengthening and uniting the American churches and eventually bringing
them into full communion with the Apostolic Churches of the East and the
West. They may campaign and undo the extreme separation of church and
state in their country; for sacred and profane must be reunited. They
may reintroduce worship of Our Lady, as the way to connect to nature.
She made a miracle in the neighbouring Mexico, and healed the wounds of
the native people; she can repeat it in the US. Then you will be blessed
by all those who damn you today; and the Americans will be met as
friends by friends wherever they go. The plans of Antichrist will be
ruined, as happened before; and mankind will resume its noble path of
striving to discover its divine qualities. For the main message of the
Orthodox Christianity is that God became Man so Man can become God; this
is the true meaning of the Second Coming.
See other articles of Israel Adam Shamir on the site
www.israelshamir.net and in the
http://shamireaders.yahoogroups.com
--
Peter Myers, 21 Blair St, Watson ACT 2602, Australia ph +61 2 62475187
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