Love to Learn, Learn to Love.

JuicyLesson 271: Fear and Loathing in the Middle East; Absorbing Pics and How Should Ignorance be Combatted … These Two Women Really and Truly Believe That Their Sons are in Paradise … The Als are a Pathetic Excuse for a Football Team ..

In viewing this relatively short clip of two Palestinian mothers discussing their sons’ martyrdom, it becomes obvious that any kind of lasting peace in the Middle East is an impossibility as long as ignorance expressed as religious fervour continues to reign in that part of the world (or anywhere else for that matter.

Historically and anthropologically speaking, there appears to have been an inverse relationship between religious belief on the one hand, and let’s just use the word “education” on the other, in the sense that the first declines as the second takes root. Thirty thousand years ago, Cro Magnon Man must have prayed for the sun to come up every day just like the Egyptians were heavily invested in and indebted to Amon-Re, the Sun God – or so they thought – as well as in and to the rain god, if there was one – and I’m betting that there was one, or some facsimile thereof – while the man who “discovered” the calendar became a worshipped one straight off.

If ancient man had known about science in general and astronomy in particular, and had the Egyptians been aware of meteorology, there would have been no reason to put one’s faith in the supernatural, when the “natural” takes care of everything well enough, thank-you very much. A knowledge of climate and the weather allowed the Egyptians, farmers who depended on the annual Nile floods for sustenance, to take a giant step forward as far as successfully dealing with natural phenomena like rain, or drought was concerned.

So knowledge and religious belief are polar opposites, apparently, and hence the trouble in the Middle East. These two mothers are representative of a common thread among Palestinians there – the belief that martyrdom is good and great and pleases God. Therefore, even though one of the women in our video states that “motherly feelings” still comes into the equation because she “loves (her) son”, she still unequivocally states that her motherly love is subordinate to the love she feels for Allah, not to mention the fact that her suicide bomber son had taken four innocent Israeli teen-aged bikers with him involuntarily, on his fucking death trip.
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The first woman speaking says that she had promised her son “Paradise” and that if she had one hundred sons that she would give them all to God, beginning with, apparently that armed with an automatic, camo-kid, the next son to go, Mr. Muhammed – who, by the way looks a little uncomfortable before smiling at the mention of his name by his poor, misguided, mother. “What is precious becomes cheap” in the service of God, she says.

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Above: A suicide bomber’s vest

In other words she has cheapened life on this earth, thus in one fell swoop not only justifying but actually encouraging violence thus making murder, suicide and death in general much easier to deal with, handle, and ultimately assimilate. A religious fanatic who is happy to surrender her children’s’ lives to certain sudden death – how fucking sad but more importantly what does that situation say for the region’s future as far as peace prospects go? Not much. At. All.

For that first mother to say that the day her son martyred himself was the happiest day of her life is a major reason for my belief that there will be no end in sight to the troubles in the Mid-East and in any other part of the world where religious fighting has taken hold. Do you think that these two women care that Netanyahu has said that the Israelis have tried to avoid causing civilian casualties in their bombings of Hamas targets in Gaza? They and people of their ilk, men and women alike, ignorant to beat the band, don’t really give a shit about that and neither does the terrorist group, Hamas. As a matter of fact as far as Hamas is concerned, the more death, destruction and havoc wreaked on the Gazans by Israel, the better, for they are in two wars against Israel simultaneously – one on the “battlefield” and one in the media.

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Above: A trip-wire triggered pipe bomb mock-up used to train US military service personnel.

Above: A suicide bomber, the man with the pink ribbon, has fun with his kids on the eve of his “mission”.

It was while viewing Wolf Blitzer of CNN interviewing the above-mentioned Israeli Prime Minister and not in a non-prejudicial manner, I might add – that I realized that the prognosis for peace in the region is not positive. Here was Netanyahu explaining how careful Israel was being in ensuring that civilian casualty numbers among Gazans were kept to a bare minimum, and there, among the Palestinians themselves, you have women like the two in our clip, seemingly at peace with their sons’ deaths, saying things like Allah must be happy with them for giving up their sons’ lives and that their sons were now in “paradise” and therefore that they were happy that their sons chose “martyrdom”.

My question is this: what would these women think if their sons dead bodies were right now being eaten by maggots while lying in the cold, cold earth and that’s it, that’s all – no “paradise”, no virgins, no souls, no nothing (I’m wondering if female martyrs get a similar reward in paradise, i.e. male virgins?) – what would they think then? But that kind of reasoning requires an education which goes sadly lacking among Gazans specifically, and among Arab youth in the region in general, especially among Muslim women.

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Above: An Afghan man examines the remains of a car after three suicide bombers were killed before they reached Jalalabad airport, which security forces say was their target, in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Sunday, April 15, 15 2012.

My final summation is this: until education takes hold and supplants the ignorance and fanatical religious belief which presently serve as cornerstones of Palestinian society and culture, there is no chance for peace. None. Zero … and who knows when that will happen, and, I hate to say it, if.

Below: What it comes down to, very unfortunately, with no one side having a monopoly on it.

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I would say to the Palestinian youth – boys as well as girls – stop throwing rocks and go to school, I would say that but I don’t. A future JUICY will deal with how little kids are schooled – to make fists to punch Jews so that their faces are made “red like tomatoes”, to shoot Jews, to ensure that Jews fear coming into their neighbourhoods, etc. There thus seems to be no way out of the quagmire of violence, bloodshed, and death which is still the Middle East today, and, most unfortunately and very sadly, this is the way things will continue to be, in cycles, for a very, very long time to come.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH.

READ ON.

The Alouette Debacle
Now to add insult to injury. I have just watched a pathetic Alouette offense that saw Troy Smith complete a measly two passes in the first half as the Als head to the locker room down by seventeen points. The score at halftime: BC 20; Montreal … Freakin’ 3.

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Above: Montreal Alouettes quarterback Troy Smith passes — well, tries to anyway — against the B.C. Lions during the first half in Vancouver on Saturday July 19, 2014. Smith went 5-for-17 for 45 yards.
Photograph by: DARRYL DYCK , THE CANADIAN PRESS

In his summing up of Smith’s night, The Gazette’s Jack Todd has this to say in today’s (Monday’s) paper:
The numbers are gruesome. Smith was 5-for-17 for 45 yards — and 29 of those yards came on one play. Subtract that pass and Smith was 4-for-16 for 16 yards, an average of one yard per pass attempt. The miracle, given how many times his passes were closer to B.C. defenders than they were to his own receivers, is that he threw only one interception.

Despite having pretty good protection throughout, Smith threw for zero yards on zero completions in the first quarter. He was so bad, the turning point was the first series. Smith went two-and-out. Two missed receivers and take a seat, meat. When the Als needed to make a statement, when they needed to say, “we’re here to play, dudes,” all they said was, “maybe we should just forfeit next time.”
Courtesy of Jack Todd

Me:
The defense didn’t look much better, allowing veteran Kevin Glenn, the Lions’ quarterback, to throw for approximately 245 yards in the first half alone. As my friend and old student – one of my first at Bialik – Eric K. has stated, it’s gonna be a long season for the Als as their quarterback struggles continue to plague the team’s progress. It’s been two and out, two and out, and two and out for the offense. Hopefully, things will improve in the second half. They can’t get much worse.

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Above: B.C. Lions’ Emmanuel Arceneaux, right, makes a touchdown reception as Montreal Alouettes’ Billy Parker “defends” during the first half of a CFL football game in Vancouver, B.C., on Saturday July 19, 2014.
Photograph by: Darryl Dyck, THE CANADIAN PRESS

I was wrong. Final score: Lions 41; Als 5. A real drubbing. Troy Smith continued to struggle before being relieved by Marsh in the fourth quarter. Alouette coach Tim Higgins, seems lost out there. He challenged two plays and wrongly, as it turned out.

The defense sucks too. One can perhaps make the excuse that the offensive ineptitude forced the defense to be on the field too long but that would be an example of faulty reasoning. From BC’s initial possession on which they put up a field goal, the Alouettes consistently failed to adequately cover receivers. The only positives in Saturday’s game were the Alouette run defense and Sean Whyte’s right boot.

That’s it. That’s all.

Peace out.

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