Giving thanks the bird

oh turkey... delicious turkey... how we love you.

The holiday is all about comfort i think. There is not the stress of presents and gift wrapping, there is not the comercial push of the holiday buying insanity. Simple food, football and pie... oh the pie. It's a holiday of comfort found that connects us to the feeling of security and family. A tie. When you change the holiday traditions there are ruptures because our sense of stability is shifted, we suffer a tiny mental earthquake in that bridge to our pleasent momories of our childhood.

I wonder how many people do the "i'm thankful" ritual around the dinner table. How may in a week forget how lucky they counted themselves. It's the same with any holiday i guess. We create a pocket of emotion for that one day as oposed to creating a time within the day that will remind us of the feeling of the holiday the rest of the year. We have the full gamit of emotion in a year of we could be in touch with them all the whole year long. Patriotism, thankfullness, joy, awe, resurection celebration, new beginings, old memories, remembrances of those passed away, and on and on and on.

Do we create these holidays in our traditions so that we will continue to have a place for those emotions? Is it more convenient to have them tucked away on their own days, as opposed to dealing with the emotions daily and year round?

So much of our holidays are driven by commerce (for instance the posting of Thanksgiving by Roosevelt in order to give christmas it's proper shopping time) it's nice to just ignore that and concentrate on the emotions that sometimes go overlooked.

I think i'm going to celebrate Christmas on the 6th of Jan instead of the 25th... The presents would be cheaper...

Might as well get to know it

by Charlie Reese

Now that our president has embedded us in the Middle East for an indefinite future, you might as well start trying to educate yourself about the area and its conflicts. As one can say about so many problems in this world, it all began with the British Empire.

When you look at a map of the Middle East, you are looking at a map drawn by two Europeans by the names of Sykes and Picot. This map represents the betrayal of the Arabs and the Kurds. Before this map was drawn, the area had been part of the Ottoman Empire. (That's Turkey, for those of you who hate history and geography.)

The British, with their usual perfidy, had promised everything to everybody. Help us overthrow the Turks, they said to the Arabs, and you can have an independent Arab nation afterward. Help us overthrow the Turks, they said to the Kurds, and you will get an independent Kurdistan. And for some reason historians still argue about, they also promised European Zionists that they (the Brits) would establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. They betrayed them, too, because what they did was establish the Palestine mandate — or, in plain language, British occupation of Palestine.

Britain and France divided the Middle East between themselves, and this basic fact set off the conflicts we are still dealing with. The problem with establishing a Jewish state was that Arabs already occupied the area chosen. While they initially had no quarrel with Jews who wanted to immigrate to Palestine (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with religion and never has), as soon as they figured out that European Jews were not coming to be Palestinians but to take their land away from them, the Arabs revolted. The British crushed this.

It wasn't too long, however, before Jews became impatient with British occupation and so, to drive out the British, did what Palestinians are doing today — used terror. Two of the premier Jewish terrorists — Menachem Begin, who led the Irgun, and Yitzhak Shamir, who led the Stern Gang — would later become prime ministers of Israel. It is the political parties these terrorists started that rule Israel today. Begin is famous for blowing up the King David Hotel, Shamir for reputedly ordering the assassination of Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, who had been sent on a peace mission by the United Nations. Both of their groups joined forces to commit one of the most infamous massacres in history at the little village of Deir Yassin, where more than 200 men, women and children were slaughtered. Much of modern terrorist methods were pioneered by Begin. You should read his book "The Revolt."

Sometime in 1947, the British had had enough of Palestine and announced they were going to end the mandate the following year and dump the problem in the lap of the United Nations. The Zionists fiercely lobbied both Harry Truman and Joe Stalin. The deal was to get a vote to partition Palestine. The Jews would immediately proclaim the state of Israel, and, as preplanned, the United States and the Soviet Union would instantly recognize it. This was the first instance of the United States using a combination of threats and bribery to round up votes at the United Nations.

Jews and Palestinians were already fighting, and in the course of that fighting, the better-organized Zionists decided to expand beyond the boundaries set by the partition resolution and to do a little ethnic cleansing, since Arabs still outnumbered Jewish residents 2-1. Despite some volunteers coming in from other Arab countries, the Zionists had accomplished both goals by the cease-fire in 1948. In a 1967 war, the Zionists took the rest of Palestine, and Palestinians, who stubbornly insist on self-determination (once, but no longer, an American value), are fighting them the best way they can.

With the United States loading the Israelis down with both modern arms and billions of dollars, however, the Palestinians are having a hard time. This issue has made the United States hated in the region and the king of hypocrites because we have vetoed 35 U.N. resolutions to prevent the international community from giving any justice or help to the Palestinians.

Now, our president has included Palestinian organizations that are not international terrorists (Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah) on our list of enemies. Originally, they were just aiming their attacks at Israel, but I suppose this might change since George Bush has become the puppet of the Israeli government.

Hang on to your hats, folks. You're in for a violent next 50 years or so.

© 2004 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

seriously

no one has left a note about the guac recipe at the bottom?
You have to try it... no i mean it... try it.

the rantless rant

It's easy to be angry. It' s easy to be angry and loud and belligerent and hop up and down and be filled with emotion...
You know what's hard? Being peaceful.Dang, I know that must sound like a pretty big wad of pap to everyone, but honestly. The easy road is being angry. The cowards way out is stamp and pout. The heros forgive. The strong surrender...

It's such a simple to thing to be angry. The world at large doesn't insist I give people second and third and fourth chances. It asks only that I buy, consume, watch, worship... There is no "Haters Anonymous," no support group that I can attended to help amend and mend my ways. We depend only on one another as understanding Christian brothers and sisters to say, "yeah that sucks. Forgiveness is hard. How can I help?"

Yet, what do we do when we don't get that? So often our turn to the church turns into a finger pointing fest, or we smacked down with the scriptures...

Brother Christ can usually find us in the end of our aggression. When our rage is spent and our hearts are still empty and we turn and ask, "Is that all there is?" What does vindication get us? What if our rage were fulfilled? The one we hate crashes and burns their life in ruin, their spirit in agony--what is there for us there? We watch at first with glee... and then?

Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy... Ole JC hits us with a list of 9 paradoxs once of which is this little gem. How can we receive mercy if we have no idea what it is, or what it means to receive it. It's like giving a vegan grill prime rib. They just won't know what to do with it. In theory it's painfully obvious and simple, in practice it is the hardest of God's instructions.

Even the disciples, man and women who followed Jesus for three years, struggled with the practice... "how many times? Seven? Seven times Seven?" The reply comes that there is no set number or order the we have in forgiveness. We cannot say to each other you have 4 more, 3 more, 2 more chances and then you are stricken from my record. Christ knew the price that was about to be paid, he knew that in the face of that deficit our sins to one another could never again be counted in the black.

So what i am i doin? The conscious daily desicion i guess. I force my heart to forgive. I instruct my mind and mouth to pray good things for my enemies. I purposefully count them as friends in my heart. I still burn with the hurt and rejection, but i allow that to evaporate under the knowing of the greater debt that was paid. . .

The last voice of sanitly departs...

The disengagement of Colin Powell

BY Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent, BBC News website

Colin Powell never quite found his place in a Bush administration dominated by neo-conservatives.

Powell and Bush: opposite directions

Nor did he make the transition from general to statesman.

His weakness was that he lacked the vision of the world held by his rivals. Colin Powell was no dove. He too believed in US power and influence but where others saw certainty, he saw complexity. This slowed him down and gave them the edge.

He seemed to find it more natural to follow an order than to give one.

And in the end, he lacked the ear of the president, without which a secretary of state is powerless.

The result was disengagement.

Marginalised

The confident figure who led the United States military in the war against Iraq in 1991 became something of a marginalised figure in the war against Iraq in 2003.

The one internal battle he won over Iraq - that the US should go to the UN - was soon overtaken by events as the United States went to war anyway.

He was all but humiliated when the aggressive briefing he gave in February 2003 to the Security Council about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction turned out to be based on wrong intelligence.

It has also emerged that he was told of President George W Bush's decision to go to war after the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

wow. Iraq declared a state of emergency today. I'm sure looking forward to four more years of this.

Democracy at its finest hour

2 Peter-- 2:1-3

"1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2 And many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled. 3 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words; from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not been asleep...

14 They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! 15 Forsaking the right way they have gone astray; they have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Be'or, who loved gain from wrongdoing, 16 but was rebuked for his own transgression; a dumb ass spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. 17 These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for them the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved. 18 For, uttering loud boasts of folly, they entice with licentious passions of the flesh men who have barely escaped from those who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved. 20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22 It has happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire."

... hail to the cheif...