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Archives
The New Cult of the Temple
by Uri Avnery
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But when the Zionist community in Palestine established a state, something happened to Judaism there. The connection with the territory, the soil, changed the face of the religion, as it did to all other parts of national life. It is no exaggeration to claim that the Jewish religion in Israel underwent a mutation, which has become more and more extreme in recent years.
A religion with a universal message became a tribal cult. A religion of ethics became a religion of holy places. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a Jew of the old kind, defined the religion of the settlers as a pagan idolatry cult.
The new cult of the temple is the climax of this process. The practical preparations for the destruction of the mosques and the restoration of the temple, together with animal sacrifices and other temple cults, constitute a break with the last two thousand years of Jewish religion. It is a religious revolution of historic dimensions.
If this tendency becomes dominant in the state of Israel, it will not, I believe, lead to the building of the Third Temple but to the destruction of the "Third House." The Second Temple, together with the Jewish people in this country, came to a violent end because a small minority of fanatical Zealots, who were very similar to today's extremist settlers, came to power in the Jewish community and dragged it into a mad, hopeless war. That can happen again.
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photography
SIVAN LEWIN
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thanks to coincidences
fascism
Part 1: The Morphing of the Conservative Movement
[Beginning a six-part series.]
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The "conservative movement," in the course of this mutation, has become something entirely new, a fresh political entity quite unlike we've ever seen before in our history, but one that at the same time seems somehow familiar, as though we have seen something like it.
What's become clear as this election year has progressed -- and especially in the wake of the Republican National Convention -- is the actual shape of this fresh beast.
Call it Pseudo Fascism. Or, if you like, Fascism Lite. Happy-Face Fascism. Postmodern Fascism. But there is little doubt anymore why the shape of the "conservative movement" in the 21st century is so familiar and disturbing: Its architecture, its entire structure, has morphed into a not-so-faint hologram of 20th-century fascism.
It is not genuine fascism, even though it bears many of the basic traits of that movement. It lacks certain key elements that would make it genuinely so:
-- Its agenda, under the guise of representing mainstream conservatism, is not openly revolutionary.
-- It is not yet a dictatorship.
-- It does not yet rely on physical violence and campaigns of gross intimidation to obtain power and suppress opposition.
-- American democracy has not yet reached the genuine stage of crisis required for full-blown fascism to take root.
Without these facets, the current phenomenon cannot properly be labeled "fascism." But what is so deeply disturbing about the current state of the conservative movement is that it has otherwise plainly adopted not only many of the cosmetic traits of fascism, its larger architecture -- derived from its core impulses -- now almost exactly replicates that by which fascists came to power in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s.
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photography
With the eyes of the other
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Interfering in one’s eyes and reconditioning them in the other’s eyes, she questions our existence – who am I.
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be all you can be — dead
Army Adventure Vans
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They're Flashy. They're Dangerous. They're Targeting 500,000 students. They're Coming To A School Near You.
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The U.S. Army and Navy Recruiting Commands are deploying a powerful recruiting weapon -- and they're using America's schoolyards and classrooms to do it. The Army Cinema Vans, the Army Cinema Pods, the Army Adventure Van and the Navy Exhibit Centers are crisscrossing the country as we speak, with high-tech "educational" shows that glamorize military life.
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thanks to Yolanda Flanagan
I would call them Death Vans.
album cover art
Blue Note: Over 1000 great jazz album covers
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thanks to J-Walk Blog
blogs
Kevin Hayden, at The American Street, has a list of progressive blogs. This blog is even on it. So, when I get distracted and my blogging interval gets a bit long like it has recently due to a family crisis and a family celebration and work and a photography project I hope to blog about later today, you can check some of these out. But don't forget to come back.
States Writes: a Progressive Peer Directory from The American Street
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Research links to mass media & blog sources in all states. Swing states - won by less than 55% of the popular vote in 2000 - are highlighted, with cumulative Gore and Nader vote totals defined as Dems. State newspapers are generally listed in order of city size, but capital city papers and highly regarded publications may supersede that order. Blogs without postings after 1 July 2004 were screened out.
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thanks to Political Animal
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