Contemporary history-war on terror

The planners of the attack on the airliner on Xmas day assumed that the US has learned nothing from the Sept.11 disaster. They assumed correctly. A few points to keep in mind
1 Each segment of the anti terror bureaucracy is as secretive as it always was, regarding the other segments as its main rival. This atmosphere of mutual suspicion hasn't changed even though a Department of Homeland security has been formed. I am reminded of the interservice rivalries of the cold war. Who was it that said that the Third world war would be fought between the American army and the American air force? Perhaps the war on terror will be fought between the FBI and the CIA.
2 The system is still as stupid as it always was. A man on a watch list who boards a plane with no luggage arouses no suspicion. This is reminiscent of Massoumi who blithely enrolled for flying lessons requesting that he be exempted from those that taught taking off and landing.hapless local FBI agent couldn't persuade his superiors that this is strange behavior.
3.There are however some new developments:
a. The authorities were alerted by the terrorist's father.Is this part of a new development Parents also alerted authorities in U.S about Somali young men who were raised as American citizens who were recruited for Somalia El Qaeda. The "snitching" of the parents may be tip of the iceberg of a wider phenomenon of Moslem abhorrence for El Qaeda.
b. Bush's first pronouncement that any state that harbors terrorists is a legitimate target for US reprisals needs to be reformulated. At the moment there are several states that fit this escription: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq,Somalia and Yemen. Are the Americans going to invade all of them? But this doesn't mean that his critics had it right. These (Rick Salutin among them) claimed that Al Qaeda should be treated as a criminal gang like the Mafia and the proper response to them is to set up an anti gangster unit such as that of Eliot Ness in Chicago of the thirties. This makes some sense. After all it could be argued that Hamburg and London were as important for the plotting of terror attacks as any of these countries. This seems not to be so.Police work is mandatory, and its seems to have been reasonably productive. But El Qaeda can't operate as a focal point for scattered enraged individuals. It seems to need home bases and safe havens to solidify community.
cIt is clear that Muslim cooperation is essential to defeat Al Qaeda. Evidently the government of Yemen is very determined to crush them .This opens th questions ,What are te Islamic fault lines.To say that it is between liberal and fundamentalist Muslims is too simplistic. The Sunnis who were so important for the American surge in Iraq were not liberals. Neither is the government of Yemen. Paradoxically the government that is most hostile to Al Qaeda is that of Iran. New thinking is called for

Bible,Religion

When I was young I treated the Bible as absolute truth:I explained contradictions,redeemed absurdities and applied much ingenuity in reconciling massacres,the deceitful behavior of the patriarchs (and the matriarchs)and God's often bizarre ways to men,e.g the almost sacrifice of Isaac with the Biblical demands for moral uprightness. (I had admit that the almost sacrifice of Isaac must have required exceptional sessions of family therapy .) This approach almost gave me a nervous breakdown I was cured by two pieces of irreverence, that quoted by Mark Twain above,and the skit in "Beyond the Fringe" in which the clergyman offers a pompous commentary on "Esau was a hairy man and Jacob a smooth one"

Later, at the age of 19,when I went to israel as a Zionist youth leader, I read the Bible as the Isrealis do, as a national epic such as the Iliad, or Beowulf. This was far more satisfying. The Kibbutz I was working on was was adjacent to the Mountain of Gilboa ,the battle where Saul and Jonathan fell.I walked in the footsteps of prophets ,in the wilderness of the Dead Sea,the parched lands of the Negev and, most inspiring of all I interpeted the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel through the prophecies of Ezekiel especially those of the ingathering of the exiles and prophecy of the dry bones were elctrifying. In later years I found that this nationalist reading of the epic began to lose its electricity. First most of Jewish Israel,Tel Aviv etc.was on the coast,the Land of the ancient Philistines, secondly the religious literalism of the settler movement turned the Bible into a political ideology that is distasteful to me. Ariel Dharon once demanded that the educational system feature the Book of Joshuah, that is he saw the Bible as a military manual. I prefer the prophcies of social justice. In any event the archaeologist Finkelstein told me a few years ago that the Biblical narrative, up until the era of King Solomon was a poetic invention.
When I came back to Dalhousie my teachers read the Bible as theology. I was very impressed by this I became interested in Hegel and tried to read the Biblical phrases as philosophical propositions. AS we know there is a long tradition of such commentary.Philo Judaeus, who live din New Testament times is often said to have initiated this enterprise.called the allegorical interpretation of the Bible. Some of his commentaries e.g Abraham's cruel expulsion of Hagar for the sake of Sara signifies his abandonment of mathematics and his rise to philosophy. Really! This in turn reminds me of those seventeenth century clerics who explain the absence of scientific discussions in the Bible pertaining to newton's physics as proving that the the Biblical figures took Newtonian mechanics for granted.One of the most gripping writings on the Bible by a philosopher is Hegel,who in his early theological writings provides a powerful portrait of Abraham, the lonely figure, whose monotheism broke the bond between humanity and nature(which Hegel, unlike contemporary environmentalists ,thought was a good thing) he goes onto say that Christianity restored the bonds with nature. He says this before Weber wrote on the connection between Protestantism and Capitalism.
How should we reead the Bible? I love it but this is a good question?

Religion,Bible

I have read the Bible many times and never succeeded in bringing it into focus.I am the son of a Rabbi and in my younger days, when I didn't understand a passage, I exerted myself heroically to cook up interpretations of the obscure ,to give life to the bland and to find profound,underlying meanings to the offensive and the absurd.I became so proficient at interpretive fraud that I might have applied to become one of Bernard Madoff's accountants. Eventually Mark Twain's admission that unlike those who are upset by the passages they don't understand , he was upset by the ones he did understand,came to me as breath of fresh air. This is mantra that has never left me. It is relevant to many subjects.
And yet I love the Bible. It is often wise(tower of Babel);moving(Elijah in the desert,the loneliness of King Saul);
lofty(for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt);but also barbaric,(the genocidal commandments concerning the Amalekites,The Akeda)
I also love biblical commentary when it is not enlisted as the inspiration for dubious political enterprises.
This morning I attended the Torah session at tne temple where we pored over a passage from the prophet Ezekiel In that passage Ezekiel ,speaking in the name of God(as prophets are wont to do),promised that he would bind the two segments of the people together, restore them to the land and ,after they had demonstrated their commitment to His Laws would make a covenant of peace and unite them under David
Comments;(1) I was struck by the reference to two segments. Who are they? It slowly dawned on me that the two segments referred to the tribes of Judah who remained on the land and the tribes of Israel that had been dispersed by the Assyrians and disappeared. These have never been found though there are a lot of claimants,including at one time the British.Evidently DNA has shown that the most plausible heirs to these lost tribes of Israel are the PASHTUN .What next?
Still it is significant that by "the people "the prophet intends even those who have are lost.Thus even if all the present Jews in the world go to Israel we have to intensify the hunt for those who are still dispersed.
2What is Ezekiel's "covenant of peace" which will make us one people. This week an Israeli minister announced that he looked foward to the time that Israel would be ruled by Divine Law, just as Ezekiel wanted.One of our group asked whether this could ever happen as the law has many interpreters... so many that Israel is closer to a tower of Babel than to a unified congregation(that's why I like it)
3 We discussed the afterlife in Judaism and concluded that though it isn't ruled out it is never very central.I have never been at a Jewish funeral where the afterlife is even mentioned.4. Messiah. WE got on to the Messiah and why the Jews had not accepted Jesus.Finally Rabbi Cohen said simply that Jews could not accept the Trinity, that is the son is equal to the father.
A Christian minister takes who joins our sessions, and who,until now has been silent but who, as it turned out knows the BIble by heart, finally informed us that "The Trinity is never mentioned in the New Testament" I blushed. I didn't know that.

Religion,film,ritual, Rachel Getting Married

A loving portrait of Middle America and yet another illustration of the power of ritual The action: a wedding party in mid America,including arrival of guests, a pre wedding banquet,cumulative revelations about the substantial skeletons in the closet finally the wedding itself . In the hands of a Tennessee Williams or Eugene Oneill the skeletons would loom larger and larger until they exposed the warm family feeling ,the ritual of the wedding, as hypocrisy and escapism Not Demme! He is unsparing in presenting the ritual itself including all the speeches at the pre wedding feast(often trying in real life the constant expressions of esteem ,love and affection ans equally unsparing in presenting the furies of the underworld. Most of these focus on Rachel's sister Kym, who has come to the wedding from incarceration.She is an addict,has killed her little brother,pours venom on her mother and almost kills herself. Yet she is saved by the deep affection of her family and the gentle warmth of the wedding.No high drama or love of ten kind only saints can offer Just the healing power of accepatnce and ritual
I am reminded on Durkheim and teh association of religion with the rituals of every day life and I am reminded the last play of AEschylus' Agammenon trilogy where the furies are reconciled to the power of law.

Film ,Religion,"Departures"

A Japanese film about a musician Daigo(he plays the cello) who is forced into unemployment when the orchestra he plays for goes bankrupt. Misreading an ad, he is alarmed to find that he has accepted a position in a firm that prepares dead bodies for burial. His job is to perform the exacting procedure of washing the corpse, applying makeup until each cadaver looks human a job made more demanding because in this Japanese ritual every stage is conducted in front of the family This calls for impeccable skill(no family member must actually see the skin that is being washed) and consummate diplomacy because of the tense emotions on display.SEE Ebert review
The drama of the film consists first in the transformation of the leading figures:the man Daigo,his wife Mika(who leaves him for a time, his friends who warn him that he has accepted a loathsome occupation, from revulsion(he is hysterical after his first job) acceptance and finally to a sense of real accomplishment and fulfillment ;in the responses of the families which range from uncontrollable grief as in the case of violent deaths of young people,warm farewells to grandparents and outbursts of recrimination on the parts of members who blame one another;and finally in the ballet of the ritual itself preformed with consummate skill and tenderness. The compassionate expression of the head of the firm,Mr. Sassaki,is a triumph of actor's art(as are all te other roles.. Throughout Daigo plays haunting music on the cello implying that he is an artist in both of his professions. I found that "Departures" sometimes strained remain disciplined so as not to fall into a tub of Schmaltz
I loved the film and keep thinking about it.The issues that it raised for me were around tne power of religious ritual. I grew up as the son of a Rabbi. The film reminded me that in this position I encountered people in the great passages of their lives: birth death and even bar mitzvahs, saw them in joy and in despair. Now I am aware that there is more to pople that what I find in Hobbes or Adam Smith.
Many critics, myself included have pointed out that the film is about life rater than death. It shows tne power of religious ritual but says nothing about God or the afterlife.