The Silence that Absolves
Philip Farruggio
Image source.
A few years after the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq, my 84 year old pal John and I would stand each Tuesday outside the local library with our protest signs. We had been out there, one hour each week, for over a year; and before that for six years on a busy street corner during rush hour.
One day, this German lady approached us. She thanked us for taking the time out and added “You know, Americans don’t like to get out and protest. If this was Germany, and our government did what yours did, we’d have thousands outside this library, not just two people.” How correct she was.
The Germans, the French and all the European peoples remember, or are taught, what it was like to be occupied and threatened by the Nazi police state. We Americans are lucky that our nation has never been occupied by a foreign power. Never! Thus, you would think that it might have been more difficult for us Americans to accept the propaganda pertaining to 9/11 and the phony wars that followed. The opposite was true, sadly.
From Mathew in the New Testament:
And Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all of them who sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of them that sold (sacrificial) doves, and said onto them ‘It is written, My house should be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.’”
Why did it take Jesus to initiate this action? How long had this process gone on in the Jewish religion? Why did not others, those who agreed with Jesus, take the mantle and challenge the powers that be? After all, this was not challenging the Roman Empire, which would have done harm to anyone who protested their edicts. This was not like a German in the mid 1930s challenging the Nazi regime. No, the similarities between the silence of those who agreed with Jesus and the silence of those who agree with we protestors now is striking.
Look at what occurred here in America before we invaded Iraq…and after. We had a group of so-called leaders and advisors to leaders who had a tattered track record on patriotism. Mitt Romney, in the late 1960s, supported the Vietnam War, yet refused to join up and fight the good fight. We have the infamous chicken hawks of the Junior Bush gang, starting with Junior himself. Bush supported the Vietnam War and chose to stay safely at home in the Texas Air National Guard.
Then we have Dick Cheney, who received at least five deferments, none of them medical by the way, yet he vociferously supported the war. When questioned on this his (arrogant) remark was “I had other priorities.”
Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and others connected with the Bush crew cheered for ‘War War War’ yet never would dare go and fight the “gooks” they hated.
How about all those 40 and 50 something right-wing Congressmen who could have signed up for Desert Storm in 1990 and chose not to?
Years later all of these people, along with a compliant mainstream media, railed about the “threat” that Saddam Hussein and his army presented to us here at home. How he was connected with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and how he had WMDS ready to use on us in America or our surrogate in the Middle East, Israel. All lies!
Factor out the one day in February 2003 that millions of Americans, along with millions around the world, stood up and spoke out, and after that…Silence! To this day…Silence! As with the Jews who agreed with Jesus about their religion being hijacked by liars, scoundrels and hypocrites, today we see the same thing here.
Imagine for one minute if all of the Americans who know deep inside that our nation has become a military industrial empire actually spoke up. Instead of a handful of us out there on the street corners and town squares, there would be thousands, as that German lady suggested. What truth could then be expressed as to the few who do the lying, cheating and conning? One simple hour a week of public protest is all it would take to peacefully initiate real and lasting change in the very fabric of our society.
We do not need leaders to tell us what to do; all we need is a ‘symphony of voices’ to shout down the hypocrites who are placed before us to hinder and confuse us. In a few weeks it will be the 16th anniversary of the most heinous act our government perpetrated, right up there with the truth of what transpired on September 11th, 2001. When will our decent, patriotic fellow Americans wake up and smell the coffee?
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I think it was a mistake to bring in the Jesus story and the Jews. It has derailed a lot of the discussion here.
There is no mystery about the complicity of the majority of the US population with the Washington Regime’s globalist imperialism…indoctrination and propaganda works.
“I think it was a mistake to bring in the Jesus story and the Jews. It has derailed a lot of the discussion here.
There is no mystery about the complicity of the majority of the US population with the Washington Regime’s globalist imperialism…indoctrination and propaganda works.”
Trew dat.
Well it is mistaken to frame it as Jesus AND the Jews for a start. And appealing to a perceived moral authority – at least to some sections of a readership – is to invite the consideration of the nature of such authority. Because the lie of self-authorship is the denial of that which Author’s being – and MUST appeal to external gods or idols and powers to seem to exist. The nature of Jewish identity politics – whether worked by Jewish elites or any other power class, is a current sore point for many – as a form of terrorism directed upon the mind – or the use of thought to defeat itself. This is no more the intent of Jewish people than is the export of regime change the intent or desire of the people of the USA. The nature of a deep psyop is like a many… Read more »
Larry Silverstein is a lucky man indeed. He also managed to schedule a dermatology appointment for the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, so he wasn’t in his office (in WTC 1) on that fateful morning. The gods really smile upon him, don’t they!
You are an antisemitic conspiracy theorist, self-hating, racist bigot. Larry was a shrewd business man who combined luck with acumen. And I am Cleopatra.
Somewhat off point re the Farruggio piece (except for the fact that many are afraid to say it) but on point re the comments – what is not seen by those pushing the conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel in the definitions of anti-Semitism being promulgated and speeches made can and has led ultimately to actual anti-Semitism in those convinced not to know the difference.
zionism is nationalism, not Judaism. The current strain of zionism led by the Likud Party is a nasty right wing version that sees palestinians and all arabs as subhuman. Racist. To depict critics of the racist, militaristic Israeli government, including anti-zionist Jews, as “anti-semites” or “self-hating Jews,” is the height of hypocrisy. But, as the author correctly illustrates, hypocrisy goes with being a neocon. Ditto for the right wing zionists
If you can be a German fascist – Hitler, or an italian Fascist Mussolini, of a Spanish fascist Franco, or a British fascist – Sir Oswald Mosely, why on earth can’t you be a jewish fascist, Menacham Begin for example. Fascism is no respector of nationality, religion or creed. It is a political/social infection that can strike anyone. Oh, I forgot about the Batlics, and the Bandera scum in the Ukraine, they were the worst of the lot.
Jewish fascists committing genocide against the Palestinians.
The truly weird thing is the fascists which many of these posters claim to loath had a very similar spiel about jews all being commies starting with K Marx himself and Trotsky and a big chunk of the pre uncle joe politburo. Many of these posters will also correctly rant against identity politics which seeks to distract mental midgets away from class warfare by slicing and dicing em into lgbt, latino, african american, asian, women or whatever cadres. Yet what is judeophobia if it isn’t identity politics? People are people tjhat is what and for the longest time most jews were not zionist, but a deliberate intensive camapign aimed at jewish kids attending hebrew class kicked off in the late 1960s and has been as effective as the flagwaving stars n stripes nonsense fed to american kids. If someone ran a line that all americans were arseholes I betcha there… Read more »
The Jews I;ve known personally (the ones I knew were Jews) have mostly been professional musicians – good ones. What’s not to like about that?
I hope they weren’t Jazz musicians.
One of the best comments I’ve read here, no pretentious waffle.
Jesus teaching demonstration in clearing the temple of selfish and coercive intent such as to let it BE a temple of a true devotion, was not aimed at a worldly kingdom – at the level of Jewish or Roman power – but at re-establishing an alignment with ‘Source’ – the Father’s Will – given us in our true being – and lost to our awareness in our subjugation and entanglement in a false will – or rather a mind-substitution for true desire. This is not to say that Jesus did not love or recognize himself (the gift of the Father) in those he met – particularly in those whose poverty in spirit brought them to a thirst for truth – and not just for what their society or circumstance denied them. Insofar as Jesus encountered hypocrites (actors) he had no time for them – and even from those who loved… Read more »
I was shocked to learn todays crypotfascists talk the talk but are too frightened to walk the walk. I’m sure the Führer would have been appalled to learn his acolytes are in fact a bunch of mummy’s boys who would sooner hide behind family wealth rather than go into the trenches the way their spiritual forefather did. At least you knew where you stood with Adolf – he made no bones about who and why he was going to crush a weaker nation but the constant dissembling from the cowardly neocons must make it hard for American volk to embrace their leaders in the way Nazis supporters did in ’33 (because I’m afraid that’s where this analogy leads – uncomfortable paralles between the attitudes of pre-war Germany and post-war America). So come on neocons, get yourself some shiny boots, get yourself some better speech writers, get your over-indulged arses into… Read more »
Be more explicit. You are talking about the pro supra-nationlism, pro-EU ‘progressive’ Blairites here. Why is the answer to banal nationalism – supranationalism? Why not go the other way and have smaller more democratic entities and communities which we have a better chance of comprehending and understanding.
The USA was born out of invasion and theft and will never be at peace with itself let alone the rest of the world.
You know, it’s sad to say, but I often wonder if once you take away the red white and blue bunting and hype, how much of USAmerica is actual and real. It was really the sons and grandsons of the same minds that founded the nation that prestidigitated the ad culture, that massive business propaganda campaign that is responsible for all the hypnosis about the country. GK Chesterton saw it when he came here a hundred years ago, and saw deeply into the fakery that promoted the business construct that I call USA, Inc.:’ “Only among people whose minds have been weakened by a kind of mesmerism could so transparent a trick as that of advertising ever have been tried at all.” He was shocked, at the barbarous assault on basic dignity that is the venal cult of “advertising”. Of course, it was more easily defined and identified when he… Read more »
The US doesn’t have a monopoly on crass materialism and mass hypnosis.
Europe, Japan, China, even India, have been, or are being, swallowed by the same hungry Hydra.
“illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq” : true. A secular regime that treated women equally (bad- good) was destroyed on fake WMD grounds.
By the Bush family & business partners the Saudi royals, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Tony Blair etc. all non Jewish.
So who is blamed for 2x Irak here: the Jews. Makes sense if your are twisted – or paid by the neocons.
Antonym, I think you’ve misinterpreted the reference to Jews in this piece. There is an analogy between the complicit silence of members of the Jewish religion when Jesus overturned the tables of the moneylenders, and people now who let others protest against war but don’t speak up themselves. It takes a fair bit of mental gymnastics to turn that analogy into an anti-semitic slur.
Maybe. But why again a reference to Jews? There are zillions more Christians, Muslims, Buddhists.
And why in connection to money(lenders)? Bezos, Gates, Buffett, Slim, Ortega etc. are not Jewish but lend plenty of money https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#30296d23251c
Not clever.
Their are only 15 million Jews in the world and they run every major institute and one the media and own entire governments these are facts but facts are anti Semitic. Boo fucking hoo you keep bringing in the wrath of people you fuck with and you’ve done it for at least 1700 years. Kicked out of every single country you’ve set foot in yet somehow it’s our fault and irrational hatred not your actions that got you kicked out?! Yeah right
@Antonym: Binra is right. “It wasn’t against Jews – for Jesus and his disciples were Jewish, but to illuminate a corruption of truth in the use of a Temple for false devotions (revenue stream capture and using the law as a means of exploitation). We all have and are a living Temple and can no less be deceived by a corrupt template-mind to forms of presenting ourselves self-righteously but blind to our own hypocrisy or double standards.” But. The article could be compared to the false Anti-Semitism row in as much as the Zionists have hi-jacked the Judaic faith for political goals… the invasion of Iraq was a prerequisite in the Oded Yinon Plan: According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, “The Promised Land extends from the River of… Read more »
The latest ‘selfie’ from the Israeli space flight is probably the understatement of the century. There is a whole conversation as to the abuse or manipulation of identities – be they religious, racial, ideological, gender or whatever. It is the corruption of something that makes the news and seeks the news to propagate itself – and so buy the Media (one way or another) to use to pursue a manipulative agenda – on its ‘own’ funding and support sources as much as anything else that can be marketized or weaponized. I am not unaware of the way deceit is used for power – and the cost to those that think thereby to be vindicated. But I am also aware that deceit is by nature a mind-trap that works every kind of ‘temptation’ to the like sense of vengeance, grievance and self-vindication. The corruptions of true meanings pollute the mind –… Read more »
It wasn’t against Jews – for Jesus and his disciples were Jewish, but to illuminate a corruption of truth in the use of a Temple for false devotions (revenue stream capture and using the law as a means of exploitation). We all have and are a living Temple and can no less be deceived by a corrupt template-mind to forms of presenting ourselves self-righteously but blind to our own hypocrisy or double standards. And we can join in attacking this in others as special hate objects so as to feel better about ourselves. However, it is hateful to witness to such betrayal of life and so I do not deny the temptation – so much as the investment in equal and opposite reaction. The lie and the father of it cannot be stamped out upon others – but that it usurps the mind of the wish to do so. In… Read more »
“It takes a fair bit of mental gymnastics to turn that analogy into an anti-semitic slur.”
But I’m sure he can do it. Indeed these gymnastics are now the MSM norm.
@Antonym: “By the Bush family & business partners the Saudi royals, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Tony Blair etc. all non Jewish”.
Typical Anglo Zio Capitalist mix. TB.Liar and Saudi royals work for Rothschild: fanatic Christian B.Liar as director in House of Rothschild, and fanatic Muslim Saud as CEO of Rothschild oil company KSA. Cheney and Rothschild directors of Genie Oil visited Rothschild’s Jerusalem-office to discuss stealing Syrian oil from Israeli occupied Syrian Golan. Bush crime family financed the Nazis, as did Rothschild’s flagship bank JP Morgan. It’s all in the family; religion means nothing to these people: their god is Mammon.
These wars are fought for the Jews for their greater Israel project their are pictures of you and your chosen people having a nice chat with al nusra on the Palestine Jordan border and no shits being fired and to top it off isis apologised for accidentally firing rockets into occupied Palestine. We know who and what you are and I keep meeting old ladies young teens middle aged men young mums etc who now know the Jew is the problem while just a few short years ago they wouldn’t have even thought of the heebs and now they do and that’s excellent because we will have to sort something out then
John – I would have said this post hit the target, except for ”we now know the Jew is the problem.’ Which should have said the Zionist Israeli is the problem. Even Jewish people themselves are saying the same.
And as you say, the people are now awake.
This was one of a series of wars for Israel. Not for the oil companies, or the Freemasons, or the fairies.
The Ziocons had Iraq in their cross hairs from the 1990s.
One of a group of 7 countries targeted for destruction to serve Zionist interests, with the dumb goys providing the muscle, the money and the blood.
Just like the Ziocons are now plotting an action replay with Iran.
Who do you blame when the pit-bull rips apart innocent person on walking on the street? The dog or his owner?
We have never been occupied by a foreign power? Well, true. But the flip side of that is that we have long been occupied by a domestic foreign power: CIA, and known associates,and all the transnationals, foreign powers amongst them, that own our Intelligence. The amount of state-sanctioned crime, such as the murder of the Kennedy bros.and King, has had Uncle Sam burying so much forensic evidence with billions of coverup funds burning holes through his pockets as fast as he can spend it. Hacks and flacks are hired and deployed, with money as no object, to disinform the public about such crimes, expecting dissent to eventually tire and go away. Well, guess what? It’s only caused it to grow stronger in the last twenty-five years. And I am delighted that younger people are signing on to the importance of understanding the events, many 50 years ago, that brought about… Read more »
Let’s not forget this…………
http://www.iadllaw.org/newsite/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Crime_Reports_1.pdf
OMG Axisofoil – I knew NOTHING about this! It was obviously a dummy run for Vietnam?
What was the outcome?
What in God’s name are they breeding in America?
Maggie, the troops are pretty butalised through their training before they are posted; after that they are stuffed full of drugs – then, as now. They are encouraged to be “bloodied” (from a fox hunt when the torn apart fox’s blood is wiped on a child’s face as a sign of acceptance (manhood?). From what I understand, most of them have a photograph/selfie of an atrocity they were involved in – as a souvenir.
AxisOfOil, right, let’s never forget who kicked off “The New American Century” — a Lunatic in a Business Suit. President Harry S. Truman, the Voice of the U$ Empire.:
1. Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
2. North Korea, “We bombed until there was nothing left to bomb”.
3, Wasteful and perilous Nuclear-ready Cold War against the Soviet Union.
4. McCarthyism and relentless Cultural Genocide against Communists.
‘Decent’ and ‘patriotic’ are at opposite ends of the behavioural spectrum.
Our first allegiance/priority is to Life, then our lovers, our children, our families and our neighbors.
When ones brain functions at the dark end of that spectrum, somnambulism becomes ones normal state.
Some Jews made out like bandits from the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. Where is Dov Zakheim now?
Such asinine comments give a clue to why many Americans can’t stand to be with fellow citizens any more than necessary. Much of the country never recovered from Reagan’s infamous “dumbing down of America.” The mindless anti-Jew idiocy of today’s bourgeoisie is evocative of a European era a century ago that sane humans must never allow to be repeated.
The anti humanity of the One Per Cent, whatever God they pretend to worship, leaves all other ignorance in it’s wake.
Well said.
“The real argument against aristocracy is it always means rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work.”
Ditto, for American nouveau riche plutocracy. Like the Kochtopus. Or Trump. Actually, double ditto. It has even last traction with realities.
Father forgive them, they know not what they do.
Mother, forgive them, they know not how.
DHFabian, perhaps this has something to do with what you call “The mindless anti-Jew idiocy of today” ?
Maureen Murphy @ maureenclarem
Israeli snipers killed 200 Palestinians protesting in Gaza over the past year, targeting children, women, medics, journalists, UN report states
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-investigators-call-arrests-over-gaza-war-crimes) electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-…
How many Jews have protested these war crimes committed in the Holy Land, in the name of A National Home for the Jews?
@vexarb: got a message that I should check out your blog. Tried but WordPress tried to sell me enhanced services. I am an old lady on a fixed income and I don’t voluntarily pay for anything on social media except membership in OpEdNews. I am Brenda Schouten Beckett. Thanks anyhow for liking my comment.
@Auntie Buna: “I am an old lady on a fixed income and I don’t voluntarily pay for anything on social media…” Vexarb, being himself an old gent on a fixed income, shares Auntie’s view. And finds her testimony interesting: Testimony of Brenda Schouten-Beckett to the United States Congress “Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all absorbing, and for the time being putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is not struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the… Read more »
Today’s bourgeoisie is anti Semitic? Fuck right off
@dhfabian, I was also shocked by several of the anti-Jewish comments and because I criticize the toxic leadership of Israel in particular and Zionism in general, I am often called an antiSemite. What these people fail to realize is this is CLASS WAR and they are still lying in the intellectual gutter of looking for a scapegoat. Finding an easy scapegoat with plenty of loathsome individual examples like the Rothschilds is easier than organizing a worldwide socialist revolution.
Auntie, that was also Hitler’s great mistake. Instead of going after the real villains — Anglo Zio Capitalists who had destroyed both the German Empire and the Weimar Republic — he went after a soft target, the Jews. Hitler had a Jewish banker run the finances of Nazi Germany. I do not know if that was the same banker who was threatened with prosecution at Nurenberg, and laughed, ‘They don’t hang bankers’.
I was also shocked by several of the anti-Jewish comments and because I criticize the toxic leadership of Israel in particular and Zionism in general, I am often called an antiSemite. I can’t speak for anyone else, but my anti-Jewish comments are certainly not directed against persons such as yourself. For a long time, I defended the standard left-wing “anti-zionism IS NOT the same thing as anti-semitism” position. But in the course of Palestine liberation activism, I was continually struck by the enormous disproportion between zionists and anti-zionists, among people who self-identify as “Jewish”. Everybody who is paying attention knows this, but it is one of the many anti-semitic hate facts that you are not allowed to mention in the left, on pain of expulsion. (as members of the British Labour Party are now discovering through their own experience.) I eventually concluded that there was something going on that I… Read more »
The mindless anti-Jew idiocy of today’s bourgeoisie is evocative of a European era a century ago
@m – re the video
NettheNut is a vile creature, but so are those who stood up and applauded his speech, their complete contempt for Palestinians is as monstrous as Hitler’s hatred of the the Jews.We counted over 20 million dead trying to destroy Hitler only to open the door for other worthless lower forms of life.
Who elects to judge unworthy in terms of life – has set themselves over life in a mind to kill whoever fails the measure. Do not the abused often become abusers – or suppress it to then come up in the generations that follow? Why not address behaviours and the ideas and beliefs running those behaviours? If there was more illumination of the way the deceits operate – and less on venting personal hate – we would all see differently. Not that I don’t meet hateful feelings in relation to hateful acts – but then I own what is mine and seek integration and undoing (in myself) rather than reinforcement in reaction. All life is of Life – and yet all minds are free to follow along the line of their own thought – such as they accept to be true of them. AND meet the consequences. Human thinking is… Read more »
“Lucky Larry” Silverstein made quite a few shekels out of it 5 billion. Lucky he doubled the insurance policy, wasn’t it?
Pity Larry’s crystal ball was destroyed in the explosion in his office on 911.
Lucky that Larry decided not to go to the office on 911.
Not so lucky, the guy with an appointment to meet Larry for a job interview on 911.