Posted by panch from customer-148-233-78-77.uninet.net.mx (148.233.78.77) on Monday, September 23, 2002 at 4:22PM :
Let's rise to the challenge for a change. A forum isn't a place you disinfect of all ideas you don't like or don't want to hear...or don't know how to answer. On our own thingie we have 13000 separate and distinct IP addresses reading and about five people writing. I find it awfully hard to believe that many peple are bothering to just sit aside and watch by choice...even allowing for the fact that 12,800 of them are FBI and other agents. Surely there are others out there who would share ideas or provide commentary if not for fear they will be ridiculed or accused of sleeping with a neighbor's grandmother.
We have people clamoring to go to the Mideast and join an opposition movement against what is supposed to be one of the most bloody tyrants ever...in the midst of a hornet's nest of pissed as hell Muslims...who ,at the same time they are supposedly seeking this most dangerous assignment, can't manage to deal with one or two ideas they don't like without yelling for help...for someone to intercede and protect them. And you guys want to run a postage stamp sized country in an ongoing war zone? Come on...let's get real...or maybe not. Maybe only by dwelling in these hothouses where what you say goes, can you maintain this bluster and bombast, while assiduously keeping out of harm's way...although you cause more problems for our people back home by carrying on with these foolish tirades, taking sides with a country that hardly acknowledges your existance and doesn't want your help with anything, letting the government of Iraq know that Assyrians are praying and paying for the downfall of the tyrant who has many of our people at his mercy. And, just as surely, you hurt us here by discouraging more thoughtful and deliberate Assyrians from joining in a meaningful debate that has real work as its goal, not empty posturing.
If we did get a country...someone would have to force someone else to give it to us. That someone would then have a claim on our allegence...much as the United States tells Israel what to do...all the while using our inbred anti-Jewishness to convince us it's them pesky Jews who order America around..."you know how JEWS are". If America makes an Assyria there it sure as hell wont be because it loves us. They will make of us a virtual extension of their foreign policy aims...which for the last 100 years have translated into, "Let's rob them and put the blame on someone else". We will be that "someone else"...we will be expected to follow America's lead...what the United States wants done over there...will have to become our policy as well. You know that's true...and you know where that would lead us...yes, yes...to gobs and gobs of more martyrs...the thing we die for, when we can't find a way to live for anything.
"LOOK AT US WORLD...WE'RE DYING"!!!
On these forums we have people so out of whack with what goes on in the world that they believe what they tell each other, pumping each other up in preparation to go do some terrible thing...yet don't dare go anywhere to even begin to think of implementing any of these ideas. We even have to demand not to be ignored. As if anyone would bother to listen to us if we were on any opposition council or what not. We aren't Players in any of these things...and we haven't been Players for so long...or tried to be...that we think WANTING to be Players is the same as being Players. The people in Iraq who matter to anyone are those with an active stake in what goes on...that means there on the ground with their necks on the line AND one hand on something explosive, besides their dicks. We barely have some villagers in the north, and at that we only recognize them because the United States makes it possible for us to see them alive for now...while we pretend there are no other Assyrians anywhere else in Iraq, because the United States doesn't protect THEM...hell no...it bombs them! So...how "dear" or important are Assyrians to the United States already?
These villagers and a few escapees from Baghdad and elsewhere have precious little support back here. As Assyrians we are not only divided among a whole truckload of Christian sects and sub sects...but we're also ready to fight over regions...the Assyrians of Iran seeing themselves as superior to those of Iraq...who probaby feel "different" than the ones in Syria or Turkey or Jordan...and let's not forget the Assyrians of San Jose who feel superior to those of Chicago who believe they are far more advanced than the ones in Detroit, who look down their noses at the ones in Flint...and they ALL laugh at the ones in Ceres.
We not only have no unity to speak of...but a vested interest in creating as much DISUNITY as we can...for we've concluded that the only way we will speak with ONE voice...is to pare it down to one TINY voice. Hence you get these organizations staffed by three men and a dog in a basement somewhere proclaiming up a storm that they are the real and true representatives of the Assyrians...while denouncing the three fellows in the next block who tell us THEY are the real and true spokespersons for the TRUE Assyrian people... accusing each other of being agents and traitors...of getting paid by Saddam or Ataturk's grand daughter to "betray" the TRUE cause. This mania we have for "true" things coming to us courtesy of our Christian thing which is all about who is the TRUE Christian...and then the TRUE Assyrian. Someone can't be TRUE if no one else is FALSE, so we spend days and years trying to figure out who is which...when we're all of us true and false in equal measure.
This is about as primitive as a people can become. Not even cannibals can afford this much infighting before sitting down to feed on someone. We have to admit right from the start that there are things we will never agree on, and let them go...as not even all Americans or Italians agree on everything...or even on very much. But, in our case especially and considering all the reasons and excuses we manufacture for dividing ourselves into ever increasing numbers of factions and sub-fractions...we have to find some basic common ground...never mind the details and fine points. If we don't begin to do that, then forget about it...for our children sure as hell wont bother when we set them such a rotten example. The absolute best we can hope to do for them and our Heritage is to first clear the ground of all the accumulated rotten timber and maybe, just maybe, set about creating a solid foundation. There is no way in hell we're also going to be the ones to live at the top. Leave it to succeeding generations, who hopefully wont have all this baggage we "adults" carry around wherever we go, to design the upper floors.
Whatever we might win in the Mideast...it wont be won there...or be secured there either. Without massive US assistance Israel couldn't survive a week...and indeed, if there was any prolonged peace, their own internal tensions would just about destroy them without any Muslim ever lifting a finger. The same would be true of us...and we would be even more economically dependant on the United States. And, unless we were able to secure a meaningful standard of living for our people back home...I doubt if any but the incompetant and disenfranchised over here and in Europe would be interested in returning to what would essentially be a Welfare State...maintained by the United States, an obvious nest of foreign agents plunked down in the midst of warring Muslims who will be given increasingly good reasons to hate Christians and anyone even suspected of being allied with the government of the United States. And would we be content? Wouldn't the same people who now talk about pride and "our rights" wish to see whatever borders we might be given expanded...isn't that human nature? Would we be content with a diminished Assyria...a shopping mall of a country "given" to us...as if to underscore how useless we have become at getting anything meaningful for ourselves.
As I said...if anything back there is possible, it will be won over here...in America and other Western countries. It will indeed be a gift because no country gives any part of its territory away for they all know everyone's land was stolen...so why should only one of them be expected to give back what it stole?
We aren't going to impress anyone here with any of the claims and demands and National Questions I've seen barely formulated. Try it. Call a press conference and try to explain yourselves to the American public. See if they understand you any better than I do. Tell the American people how anyone who disagrees with you is a traitor...is a sell out...should go bend over to the Mullahs, or go down on his knees to them...or is a prostitute. Go on...display yourselves and your politics and your world view somewhere else but in here to your admiring girl friends and dance partners and see what it gets you.
We are making a safe place from which a handful of insincere fools intimidate the rest of us, while spouting off about things they have no intention of doing...couldn't begin to try if they wanted to...with the end result that those with real ideas and the character or contacts and knowledge to really make a difference for us turn away in fear and disgust. How long can we go on with only fools and petty, self serving tyrants as leaders? This is not an atmosphere into which our better minds will dare venture...though one could wish they were a bit more forceful...for if enough of us came together at one time...we'd blow these blowhards out of the water.
We have astute, educated, brilliant and accomplished Assyrians and Chaldeans all over this country. You think they are eager to let themselves and their families be slimed by "patriots"? They simply refuse to join Assyria as long as it is run as a lunatic asylum...which leaves you with Bejans and Nimrods and Golanis for leaders...and Zinda for a magazine...with historians and scholars anyone else would be ashamed of. How many times you gonna run after Andre Aghassi...now that he's made a name for himself, only to have him say, "Asssyrian who"? We have created an atmosphere hostile to free and open discussion...where thousands watch but don't dare participate out of fear...or do so timidly under assumed names...because people even more timid than they, also with assumed names, are bashing those who would never dream of hiding their identities...who are not afraid to stand behind their words and suffer the consequences...if those consequences dealt with ideas and critiques...not personal assaults.
Rather than losing us customers for these thingies by raising our expectations or by not protecting those of us who can't seem to tolerate free expression...we might be pleasantly surprised at how many new and interesting voices join in and help us all rise to a far more meaningful place. Besides, who wants to be popular with the kind we now hear far too much from.
We are increasingly in danger making Assyria a place for clowns, fools and cowards. You are not by any means representative of what we are...you're just the ones with the bad taste to slime what you don't understand, to destroy what you fear is beyond your grasp...to denigrate what you think you might be unworthy of...like any gang or band of vandals smearing grafitti on the palaces you can't hope to inhabit. Only you shut yourselves out...we would welcome you if you would remove the bone from your hair.
I became crude...better, or worse, than you could ever hope to be, to show you I could easily match you...and to show how far you are from being able to match me and thousands of others like me. The best you have managed by way of a response is to call my children names...insult my wife, mother and father...my work...our Heritage...to make crude sexual innuendo an artform...and when all else fails, to beg and clamor for protection. And to their everlasting discredit, aina, "Ross" Jatou and Peter the Rabid have accomodated you so that any Assyrian scholar and fool is welcome there...safe.
You find pride in this?
-- panch
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