Tag Archives: kosher

What’s kosher for the goose should be halal for the gander

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If Israel can threaten to attack Iran, without drawing the unanimous rebuke of the international community, then it follows Iran cannot be criticized for warning of its imperative to make a preemptive strike. Except that both would be illegal, the United States being the reigning serial aggressor at large. Or maybe you’re of the opinion that Israel can have 200 nuclear weapons and Iran can’t have one, or that if US and Israeli agents detonate bombs in Iran it’s not terrorism.

In Israel you can catch the Mexican flu and still be Kosher according to the Health Minister!

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Yakof LizmanIn Israel, the Health Minister somehow is all upset at the name ‘Swine Flu’, so he renamed it the ‘Mexican flu’. See Making swine flu kosher: A symptom of the disease of Israeli politics by Benjamin L. Hartman/ Haaretz.

I found this portion of the article to be most of interest…

‘Such is the system that produces a government where a party representing a community whose media cannot print the word sex, airbrushes women out of photos, and binds them into a strict second-class status, can be put in charge of the Health Ministry, a ministry legally bound to protect the well-being of all Israelis, regardless of gender, race or religion. It also brings up the issue putting a man who can?t say the word “vagina” in charge of a ministry that supervises gynecological issues. How can a man whose usage of the Hebrew language is governed by his own interpretation of Jewish law deal with issues like teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, or post-natal care for women?’

Don’t you just love it when any of these religious fellows takes charge anywhere, whether he be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu? They all have such a great sense of humor, too!

When you don’t pay ‘war taxes,’ is it ‘peaceful nonviolence’ or more like smug self-righteous religious complacency?

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Pontius Pilate chief tax manMonday night I got asked out of the clear blue sky at a meeting of self described ‘Peace’ advocates if I paid taxes? I was kind of drowsy from shift work I had just finished doing, and didn’t really consider the fact that Jesus was asked just about the same question in his time, but by those he considered to be spies of the Roman Empire. I was being asked the question though from a self righteous and complacent ‘Quaker’ woman who was in the process of giving me her idea of a litmus test, for whether I would be allowed by her and her husband to be in one local antiwar grouplet here in Colorado Springs called the PPJPC?

I failed her test when I answered that I did indeed pay taxes (too much so IMO), and my statement that it was so was soon followed by a self righteous and complacent harangue about her opinion that the woman and her ‘leader’ husband did not pay ‘war’ taxes and that that was that and why did I not do as they do? The implication was that I should just shut up and let them run things in the group and keep my mouth shut up for good. Why? Well because I pay my taxes!

Further I was told at the meeting by the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission that I was not ever going to be considered a member of the group, no matter what. I was told that I gave neither time nor money to the group!, and that I was out of it in their eyes because I had written previously in the local press about how the leader of the group had called the cops on us for trying to hold a meeting to plan antiwar activities outside the locked doors of the group’s offices.

“All those bad things you said about us of the PPJPC!”

Locked out, because as members of the group we wanted some democracy inside an organization that has but one pretend membership meeting per year and is run by salaried office folk who want to be small business adminstrators instead of anything much else!

I have been told too that I must sign onto some sort of ‘adherence’ statement to the ‘non-violence’ aim of the group. Further the religious pacifists running the show have stated to the press that I and others, too, do not adhere to their Christian motivated ‘nonviolence’, implying to the police and press that we are time bombs about to go off! Meanwhile, they continually invite representatives of the police to ‘meetings’ with themselves so that they can supposedly make their events more ‘nonviolent’, I guess? A hug here, a handshake there, and let us know what you want us to do, Peace Officers?

So back to the question of whether it is peaceful nonviolence’ or self righteous complacency when one does pay taxes at this time of the year? Let us go to The War Resisters League and examine their understated list of the Consequences of War Tax Resistance some. What can happen if you just opt out and tell IRS to shove it? Here, these Christians tell you that you can go to jail but not to worry about it because almost nobody does (in the US). Go figure? To the feds it is more trouble to jail these few religious ‘resistoes’ than to just harass them in other ways. Why shoot down a gnat with an elephant gun?

However there are other consequences, including your right to travel freely outside the US terminated (one of local pacifist families has been confronting just such a restriction imposed most recently, as they were barred from visiting relatives in Canada). You can lose your income through a restriction coming about on licensing in the line of work you do. You can lose your property, much more of it than if you had actually paid those taxes to the government. That happens a lot per the War Resisters League, but they assure us that it all looks good on their own balance sheet of pros and cons! Well not on mine. Nor on Jesus’s balance sheet either! He was resurrected but I don’t know really whether that would happen to me if IRS decided to crucify?

But back to the case of the Quaker woman and her ‘leader’ husband who don’t pay taxes as they assured me that was the case. Her husband actually was in the military and supposedly gets some special pension for that, that I guess I am stupidly paying taxes for them to then lecture me about what a supposedly moral cretin I must be? Kind of a weird situation, ay?

But then again, let’s say that I’m wrong about that, and that these 2 Quakers get no income for that military ‘service’ at all? Where do they get their money from then? Stocks and bonds? Social Security? God? Plus, how can you draw a line between taxes for the military and taxes for other things, since Quakers do most often pay taxes for ‘other things’ and actually most just subtract some percent away (43%) from the taxes they in fact do pay to the government? Does that make it all Kosher then???

It really does not do anything at all from an individual angle, since the government just ‘garnishes’ the wages with interest added on directly from the salaries of religious protesters. However, non religious tax ‘protesters’ are often time not even given such benign treatment at all, since the government has codified well the idea that all ‘conscientious objection’ comes mainly about because ‘God forbids Believers to do something or other?’

No belief in God? Then you got no ‘Right’ to state morality coming from God as motivation, and no Right to really object, you damn atheists!

Does erecting this artificial accounting wall between supposedly taxes for good purposes and taxes for bad purposes help grind the War Machine down and then out? The AFSC (Quakers/ Friends) thinks it does, and is pushing to have 2 tax barrels put into Federal Law, where their religion’s membership can deposit funds into a ‘Peace’ Barrel, while the other religious folk can get the War Barrel! Is this really all that ‘peaceful non-violence’ comes down to in the concrete? Like it makes some dimes bit of difference to the government to separate ‘war taxes’ from a ‘Peace tax’?

Let’s say though, that you do not pay a cent to the government and some how keep them from garnishing your income with interest added in on top? That’s nice, and some few actually do just that and get away with it without being jailed. That is about as effective a route to fighting war as doing nothing though. To stop the war mass action is necessary, and not just becoming the one or two individuals here and there who sneak by the IRS.

So where does this Quaker couple now get their income from? Due to a successful career perhaps from stocks, and not a dime from military pensions or social security, they’re living off corporate dividends and previous savings not garnished by the government for ‘nonpayment’ of taxes? I can only speculate, however, I don’t think they have accomplished much at all, other than to make themselves smug in their religious complacency, as they drape themselves in flag and ‘peaceful’ Christian mantle for cops and other agents of the Roman Empire.

There are ways of resisting the War Machine but I do not think that trying to withhold tax monies is one of them? Neither did Jesus from what I gather from rather unreliable documentation, but he did try to evade the question of whether one should pay taxes with tricky ‘sayings.’ Ultimately that cleverness and not paying the tax are maybe the issues that got him the death penalty? I wasn’t there so I cannot really say.

The Germans have their shepherds

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I was watching the Westminster Dog Show and learned about the most improbable breed of dog. It’s Jewish.

Anti-anti-semitic hundWould you believe it? It’s called the Canaan Dog. It’s named after the biblical lands, and it shares the mystical stewardship connection the Jews have with the Holy Land. Only they are fit to look after it.

Who knows why, or who knows if it’s really true. The Bedouin keep these dogs, as have the Druze, but because the Kelef K’naani is the official dog of Israel, the exclusive lineage, which we are informed is deserving of preservation, excludes the Arab connections like they were pariah.

(Exclusive- Do you think you might have a Canaan dog? Well you don’t. They’re that exclusive. And the Canaan Dog Rescue is only interested in saving real ones.)

In spite of the Westminster Kennel Club’s waspish ambiance, the voice-over description of the Canaan was similarly Kosher, which is what caught my attention.

Bred in Ancient Judea to be shepherds and watch dogs for the Israelites, the breed suffered a setback when the lands were overrun by the Egyptians. When the Hebrews were scattered in the Great Diaspora their dogs were left to go feral in the Negev desert. There they lived in the wild for, are you ready for this, 2000 years! When Zionism brought the Jews back to Palestine, master and faithful hound were reunited. The Canaan was re-domesticated again in the 1930s [to protect their unpopular owners from their historic rivals]. Bracketed notation mine.

Actually, an animal behavior specialist was recruited from Austria in 1934 by the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization protecting the Zionist settlements in Palestine since 1907. They needed a working dog for what would become the Unit Oketz, the Israeli K-9 special forces. Bred from the pariah dogs which attended the Bedouins, the Canaan dog, actually a Spitz, is noted for its alertness, its bark and its distrust of strangers. I’m reminded of the attack dog trained to be racist in Sam Fuller’s 1982 film White Dog, banned in the US.

Canaan, by the way, encompassed an area which covered present day Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, and parts of Lebanon and Syria. Who is dragging politics into the dog show?

Saying grace

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Is grace recited before meals anymore? It seems the bigger the dinner, the more preparation or participation that goes into the repast, the greater is the sense that something is missing if we omit the prayer to dive into our food. A private reflection might be payed during the erstwhile silent moment but a word spoken of spiritual thanks seems no longer apropos in this secular thinking child’s age. Religiosity abounds still of course, but it is separated less from state and education than from the other aspects of daily life with which it also conflicts, such as buying and selling, lending and consuming, trading upon the disadvantage of others. End of the lineI too wonder if giving thanks for our abundance need be directed to God or divine provenance in appreciation of our predatory advantage, before a meal or after. For myself I have found a better occasion.

Driving on the highway every once in awhile I encounter a cattle truck, the trailer sides simple sheet metal grates behind which one can see the fur of livestock. You can only see the bodies standing steadily at the edge in semi darkness and apparent silence. I search to catch their eyes but the metal bands seem positioned to obscure our visibility or more probably theirs.

I used to entertain fantasies of derailing their voyage, stopping the driver to offer the animals a reprieve, however futile. But we’ve got a pretty principled meat processing company on our side of town, and I have come to accept the inevitability that mankind wants to domesticate some mammals to eat them.

When you see those large cattle trucks in non-rural areas, there’s little question as to where they are going. It is rare that cattle would be traded between ranches, or taken to the veterinarian, or sent to a State Fair to be exhibited as 4-H pets, or being put to pasture, as happens to horses no longer either. As much as you would like to think otherwise, the cattle in those trailers are being delivered to the slaughterhouse. When you see the unfortunate cows, they are only hours -perhaps minutes- from the ramp which leads to the aboitoir, to a violent ignoble death at the hands of a harried production line.

I remember reading about traditions surrounding the slaughter of pigs. The human-like cries of pigs have always wreaked psychic damage on the men who have to kill them. Some farming villages have ceremonies to ritualize the process. In many cases, a single person is given the responsibility of dealing the fatal blow. The Kosher tradition of food purity comes not from concern for regulating the quality of a meat source, but insuring rather that the animal was properly killed. Again, not by public health standards but spiritual.

When I find myself passing a truck carrying cows or domestic buffalo to their demise, I try to linger beside the trailer for a moment, long enough to give a thought to the beings inside. But I lack for what to say. To hope that their death will be as painless as possible, to pray for their understanding, to give thanks for their stoic, if involuntary, contribution, to thank them.

Corporate America’s micro-management addiction

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Decades ago, while working as a Seattle garment cutter where Jimmy Hendrix’s brother once worked, I observed with awe and amazement a White man, overly dressed in coat and tie, stand directly behind the seated rows of bent over Oriental women with stopwatch in hand.

He was measuring each and every fraction of a second their motions as they sewed together cut parts of skiwear. He was part of the management team’s effforts to micro-manage the workers at this factory. He would write down his observations and then they would be mathematically calculated to squeeze these women out of every ounce of their energy, for the least pennies to be paid. My thoughts back then were, Good God Almighty! This micro-management of people is sick, sick, sick!

Today, I am a proud parent of a District 11 school kid. Everyday she comes home at 2:45, angry, hostile, and upset. Why is this? The kids at this ‘excellent’ facility are being micro-managed, that’s why . No time for recess, no time for play, no time for socialization. Every second is to count.

If you might ask, I am voting for recall. My only wish is that the whole bunch of them were being recalled on that School Board. Their micro-management of kids is sick! There is no kid left behind from it, either. At the school my kid goes to, the teachers don’t even much get the chance to teach. They have a computer called ‘Success Maker’ supposedly doing that. Computers can micromanage little kids better than humans can, I guess?

All the teachers and principals are part of this micro-management, too. Even their cheerleading for the school seems totally forced. Like a Toyota production circle almost! And the kids conduct in this repressive setting becomes quite coarse. Another manifestation of the US corporate zeal for micro-management of others. Little kids even! Every second must count. We must ‘rationalize’ education! Speedup the teachers!

Last week in the New York City metro area, ecoli@TacoBell.com shut down 6 stores. But what is the New York City municipal health inspectors concerns per another article online last week? That there were sales of armadillo meat and other exotics at ethnic markets going on that were not kosher enough for them. The ethnic markets are not being micro-managed by the Health Dept. like they should supposedly be. In city across city in the US, it is next to impossible to vend food like is done in every other country around the world. The food cannot be micro-managed like at McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Burger King by the ‘health’ bureaucracy. No way to stand stop watch in hand and measure productivity, etc. Uh, I meant sanitary conditions.

Pretty pathetic is it not? All those fast food joints have kids working without sick leave, and no health inspector ever is there to micro-manage the snot coming from them onto the food while at work sick. Got to spend more time micromanaging armadillo meat instead, and I guess cuy (guinea pig), too, which is available to South American immigrants in a park of one of their barrios in that city. In other cities, just try to vend even hot dogs around town! Food not Bombs gets harassed if they give away cooked food on the streets. Unhealthy. You guys are not going to get away from being totally micro-managed by corporate America! It’s for health reasons, the authorities will all announce. Shut up and eat your triple fat burger, Buddy.

Everything is micro-managed these days. The Iraq Study Group was micro-analyzing how they could micro-manage those savage Arabs and Kurds? How can ‘our’ oil be micro-managed in that faraway land? Bipartisan unity now. Democrats and Republicans all 100% behind the idea of corporate America micro-managing other peoples. Can they not micro-manage other people? No, they are addicts, are they not? They need Micro-Managers Anonymous.

At Safeway, the clerks are told what to say. At the hospitals, nurses are told what to say. At Wendy’s, management is taking away what to say and micro-managing that from the Exit 42 Corporation located in New Hampshire. At America On Line, what to say is not micro-managed on line by Americans on line, but by micro-managed Indians on line micro-managed in Quien Sabe, India! This corporate micro-management addiction is sick!

The in thing for business, is to violate labor law and micro-mange your break time, take it away, destroy it! It’s WalMarts specialty, and ask any nurse how management micro-manages them at the hospitals? Haven’t seen your nurse come by? They’re being micro-managed over at the desk by management. To see you in person they would need to have skates on. That would go with their bundle of equipment (cellphones, buzzers,sensors, etc.) that they have to carry around, like US soldiers on patrol. All a result of micro-management of their time by the corporation. Management must always be in contact!

Computers are used to program nurses these days, as they are other workers. Aw sure, those poor machines get programmed, too. But believe it, the machines program far more people than the other way around. Cash registers force the pace. Cameras are everywhere. Micro-management is in, big time. Satelites taking down your conversations on the ol’ cell phone even. All part of micro-management addiction by the business community. Real patriots, them! And it is sick, sick, sic, is it not? These efficiency and organization nuts need some major political metamucil!

Notice the headline this week? America is NUMBER ONE in the world in number of citizens in jail. Highest in per capita percentage, too. 5% of the world’s population, with 25% of those micro-managed in jail. Oh, and it really is micro-management in US jails! See Jose Padilla? See those guys at Guantanamo? It’s no aberration, either. Go to jail, and they will micro-manage your ass. And I mean that literally, too. Go to the airport and pray, they’ll micro-manage you there, too. They got you coded, Dude. And in jail, well they got ot watch your ass. You might have some palmed Tylenol tabs up your rear a foot or two. Wouldn’t want you to get high from smoking the stuff! Now that’s true micro-management, is it not?

So what is the first thing that corporate America will say to you if you want to stop their addiction to micro-managing you? They will scream and whine and shout!

“That is socialism! Keep your liberty. Socialists want to micro-manage you, and you won’t have the freedom we allow you here! We’re against micro-management!”

Comical, is it not? Despite corporate America’s micro-management addiction, all this micro-management is to be done on you. Try to ask for it to be directed their way, and they scream and squeal like the pigs they are. They are pigs, too. They not only will micro-manage your ass, if they get a chance, but if perhaps you fall by the road side in illness or old age, they will micro-manage your processing down the conveyor belt and into the hole in the ground the funeral micro-management industry has prepared for you. They will micro-manage the prayer said in your last behalf, want it or not! Yes, the last prayer before God will process you, and then you will get micro-managed for eternity. Corporate America is just obeying God on this matter.

Corporate America is addicted to micro-management of your life, from birth to graveyard. The Christian’s God gets you then.