Posted by pancho from customer-148-233-93-153.uninet.net.mx (148.233.93.153) on Friday, January 03, 2003 at 1:05PM :
Years ago in Turlock I met an Assyrian couple, both teachers. They'd worked up a proposal for an Assyrian language school to be run from some existing building, with plans for eventually constructing their own. They were there to make a presentation to the "Civic Bingo and Realty Club of Turlock" for a $10,000 grant to pay salaries, piddling ones, for a first year. This same club paid out $400,000 in cash to settle a lawsuit for defamation brought by two local Assyrians who'd the nerve to run for office at the Club and found themselves the subjects of a lewd cartoon placed on the windshields of a parking lot full of cars. I think the Bingo Club settled out of court because they didn't want to reveal anything about the crooked way they ran things, and still do. This same Realty Club has purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of land around Turlock, for what no one knows, and just added a bowling alley to their "Assyrian" purchases. It's their money, let them...just take the name "Assyrian" off of there, AND GET THOSE FRIGGIN "WINGED DOGS" off the building!!! Keep the "Martyred Monument" by all means. You people are a living monument to martyred decency.
Needless to say they were turned down. I can imagine the reasons given..."too much money", being the first. Several retired taxi drivers who serve on their "Steering Committee" probably questioned the teaching plan, saying they'd never seen one before and couldn't be expected to sign onto what was an "unkown" to them. Most of their members, having just barely managed to pay off the one piece of "wealth" they own, their homes, can only relate to buying up orchards and empty fields as the surest sort of wealth and riches there can be for Assyria in its Diapers. Other members probably suggested the couple go to the State, or the Armenian community, after all, they are wealthier than we are..."Simele", don'tcha know.
This same membership, as most other Assyrians in America, are the ones clamoring the loudest for Saddam to build us schools in Iraq...schools exclusively for us, so we can maintain our "dear" language. In reality, once an Assyrian leaves Iraq or the MidEast in general, his or her obligations towards "Assyria" cease. But guess towards whom they never cease? Guess for which entity our Assyrians work and scrimp and slave and save? The Church, of course...Holy Mother Church...who else. Ashur doesn't have those goodies to offer any longer, not to these people anyway, and he sure as hell doesn't scare them any...though you'd think there wouldn't be any better proof of his potency than the curse on us evidenced by the dismal spectacle we've made of ourselves without him...as Assyrians. No, since Jesus, the Jew, cured Abgar of the clapp, it's been, "Jesus get me a car"...and "Jesus get me into heaven" and "Jesus save Israel... and God damn BetNahrain...if it can't be yours, sweet Jesus", of the House of David.
It's not merely a matter of "religious freedom"...that Assyrians should be free to worship whatever they wish, (as long as it isn't that "ridiculous Ashur") because, "what does it have to do with being Assyrian"? Turns out that it has everything to do with any religion other than an Assyrian one, because these other religions bring with them divided loyalties...something we've paid dearly for in the modern, Christian, era...and still do. Even Muslim Assyrians, who don't "TALK" about being Assyrian, come in for their fair share of the blame, or would, if they didn't expend money and time protecting and promoting what is left of our ancient Heritage in Iraq. Something no Christian Assyrian spends a dime on. In America you can be whatever religion you want to be, for now. But in America you must also render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar FIRST. America is not yet a Theocracy, not yet a government in which the Head Priest and Politiian are rolled into one slimeball..."not yet Ashcroft, not yet, and wait a bit more... Falwell and Lott...not yet boys...not yet, Christian boys."
We Assyrians render nothing to Assyria and everything to Roly Poly Church, and when we feel really moved to tears, we demand a Muslim we insult and revile, "do something for us". There seems to be a prohibition that we do anything for ourselves where our Assyrian, not church, ancestry is concerned...like it would piss off Mar Dinkha and the rest of them if we did. As if Assyria was in competition with Christianity...ahem.
There isn't the slightest attempt at balance...not even an even distribution...not even a fraction, or pretense thereof..."Let's see, one hundred dollars to the Church, ten cents to our Heritage", except the Church wants that dime as well. Everything must go to God and we with it, in a handbasket to hell where this sort of god must hold court. And if "He" isn't the one decreeing it, then which of us is, cause baby...that's how it looks from here on earth, from Nineveh... NOT Bethlehem.
When you get what passes for education crammed into you from the age of two...when your sleep is broken so you can be hauled off for a "treat" to McDonalds at six A.M., consisting of a soggy bun and dusty egg, then rushed to "school" where you "learn"... when that's to be your routine for the next 20 years, with never a chance to step back and look at what you're really being subjected to, driven from soccer practise, driven to karate practise, driven to organized play practise until you're driven just about crazybored and witless...and when your parents and everyone else tells you that a lifetime spent between teletubbies and computer games is the best of all possible worlds...when and where and how are you ever going to get the slightest hint or clue that something is terribly wrong...except perhaps through those Classics that no school has a budget for any longer? And now that the Pharmaceutical companies are politicians as well and legally push every drug you'll ever need to, "remove that nagging doubt"... because, "relief is just a swallow away"...when will you EVER live?
There is no precedent, no basis... legal or moral or historical for anyone to give back a country that ceased to exist 2500 years ago In fact doing so would set one of the worst examples ever, unleashing a storm of demands for restitution no country could afford. And don't mention Israel, whose creation was a crime from the start, a crime committed to further another crime and cover it over; the ethnic cleansing committed by Christians of the Jews of Europe, whose next act in the "Final Solution" involved taking the survivors the Christians hadn't managed to cook and eat, to Palestine... "let them kill each other".
There is a hysterical motive, certainly, in demanding a Christian enclave in Iraq. It figures that's just what we lunkheads would do. Only how can you openly ask for a Christian State from Muslims who have every reason, increasing by the hour, to detest Christianity and all Christians? Who else would step in among dying Muslims, done in by the United States and Britian, two Christian powers any Cannibal would be proud of, and DEMAND a Christian ghetto? Christianity has given us a deservedly black eye in the MidEast...not because of anything objectionable in its original doctrine...but in the way the doctrine is used to mask over every crime imaginable...that utility in being a cover for murder and rapine which has preserved Christianity and made such a powerful force of those countries well armed with it.
And are we serious, do any of us expect to see a small Christian corner ripped out of any Muslim country over there?...of course not! Even Hanna and Peter, even NIMROD, know better. What Peter and Hanna and the Boys want is increased hatred for Islam and Muslims. In other words, Revenge. Making these ridiculous demands as if there was some basis of legitimacy to them makes it appear, they hope, that Iraqis are being "unfair" to the little dears. And what John wants is legitimacy...the whore that prefers a legal brothel so he can feel "clean". He's supposed to be the head of this Nayshun in its National Diapers when his just reward lies at the other end. If Saddam could get his hands on them, they'd get at least what John Walker Lindh got...though they deserve far worse. Hell, if I could get my hands on them they'd smart for it, though I wouldn't lay a finger on them...you don't have to, these guys are running scared from birth, pinning their failures on whatever is most handy, in this case Islam...making a National Question issue of what amounts to their own personal shortcomings...like Francis "The Talking Mule" Sarguis taking such an "objective" interest in Narsai's education when he just wants to bring the man down in any lying, theiving way he can because he suffers from a well earned sense of inferiority.
The people who're clamoring the most for this Christian enclave, temptingly packaged and presented to us as "Assyria", have no intention of ever living there...are you nuts? Instead of spending their time and energy to do something positive where it counts, where there is peace and wealth and no barriers...they travel round the world cussing and spitting at each other when not begging for recognition...as what? Assyrians, or The damfools they are? As much as they claim to "work" for us in all of this...it's a far, far easier thing they do than tackling a problem that has some hope in hell of resolution.
Nimrod never has to get to any implementation stage, let alone deal with the consequences of any of his brainless notions...neither does ZOWAA or Zinda or any of them. All they do is make preposterous demands of people who are as startled as can be that these demands could even be formulated let alone broadcast about...then, when they receive the non-recognition they deserve, these self-delegated delegates call rallies and appear at conventions and present forests of "papers" outlining all their demands and all they would have done if someone would just Let Them! "But gosh gee willakers, Toto, nobody ever does", so back to Kansas they go...and there it ends. Till the next "Binary-Tri-centenial-of-a-Plenary-Session-of-
Quadrupeds-Armed-With-the-Formal-Obligations-of-The-Grand-Opposition-to-the- Tri-Partate-Protocols-for-the-Doo-Recognition-of-The-Stated-Demands-of-The National-Question-for-Assyria-Hereinforth-Set-Forth"... and you can add your own extras...a "National Question Pizza" to which any ingredients can be layered on... cause whose gonna swallow the damn thing anyway.
Anyone interested in Assyrian Heritage would support the Iraqi government's valid efforts in that direction, efforts underway for years now while we in the West have been starving them. We wouldn't support what is wrong and brutal in Iraq any more than we should countenance what is wrong and brutal in America, where we yet have people in power who think Jim Crow was okay, that America was better when Blacks were second class citizens (not to mention women), though they laid the foundations for much of the wealth here.
You hear this bullshit all your life...starting with the grandest dispenser of bullshit there ever was...that same church that would have burned Galileo and had the nerve to put a match to Giordano Bruno, that labored mightily to keep the world in darkness and still feels in its black heart, as Lott does, that things were better back then. You go on hearing it and hearing it and in the absense of any competing voice, what can most us do but believe it? For just as long as we remain in our National Diapers that is. It takes some distance, you have to be able to walk away from your shit, not carry it around with you tied up in a cloth at your "National Bottom"...you have to step away and back from the thing...go around it to understand it's made of cardboard, tinsel and spit...like the chariot they parade down King Sargon Block in Chicago to the clamoring pride of three people and a dog.
Our ride through History is far from over. Empire was a grand and wonderful thing, and we did it better than most. We gave more than our fair share to what constitutes civilization today...today when we're faced with the disgusting prospect of the youngest, stupidest and most militaristic country on earth waging a war of infanticide against the oldest and richest culture ever...a schoolyard bully using a club to batter an aged and should-be revered ancestor who gave this punk whatever sophistication he has, even down to the club he now uses to batter his benefactor whose ancestry hails back to a small but mighty region between two ancient rivers that produced greater intellectual and spiritual riches, meter for meter, than any other plot of land on earth, all so that a Frat kid and his rich pals can get even richer, while impoverishing the rest of us..and with our own boys leading the cheering section.
Those sorts of glory days are over for us. We have been wandering through our own, Christian, Dark Age for at least the past 1000 years. Just as our ancestors stood at the dawn of a new beginning while most around them were still in the primitive stages of development...so do we now face an entirely different challenge...one which the boys at aina and beth haven't the least inkling of...for they occupy a place today those barbaric nomads of the deserts did back when we Assyrians took on the challenge of civilized society. For us, today, armies and walled citadels and tanks and missles are passe. When it was a time to subdue the barbarian, to defend the scientist and artisan and philosopher, to build the arts and institutions of civilized culture, we did it and did it wonderfully well. Today the civilized man is the barbarian...it is not the people living in want and poverty, driven to desperation by the rapacious greed of a few who threaten all of humanity and this frail planet we live on, but the powerful and wealthy ones. Where Hammurabi declared he would protect the widow and orphan, our leaders today rob them first of all, just to whet their appetites.
We Assyrians have to reclaim our pride, without beging for it, or robbing or killing anyone...without stirring our blood with martial curses whose final victims will be our own children, making our heads as weak as those of the Great People today who are committing the great crimes. Instead of heating the air with calls for Saddam to build schools to preserve our language and its Heritage, we could do it in America and Europe and anywhere else in the world...if the point was to save our Assyrian Heritage and not merely foment hatred towards Islam because we lost the religious war for the MidEast. We have Christian Assyrians who wish to travel backwards, to right the wrongs their Jew religion suffered at the hands of Islam, and do it by either killing them back, or getting more of us killed so there might be an increase in the one commoditiy we value; Martyrs.... Christians who pine for a country, for an army, for international recognition as a postage stamp sized ghetto existing through the sufferance of the same people who've killed more of us per month than anyone ever did. These people and their leaders are dinosaurs...what they envision is a farce contained in a sarcasm dripping blood from yet another cross.
It is a tremendous challenge facing the modern Assyrian...and no more than the one our ancestors faced four and five millenia ago...when there were less barbarians than there are today.
The Assyrian will look elsewhere for fertile soil to plant the seed we carried out of BetNahrain for then, as now, Assyria's greatness was never confined to one spot but ranged over this wide earth.
It's the children stupid.
-- pancho
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