The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> I don't remember ever seeing this......

I don't remember ever seeing this......
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Wednesday, September 18 2013, 3:29:40 (UTC)
from *** - *** Commercial - Windows NT - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

Marcello wrote:
>I read your letter, and you were on-point. I just read Ross's piece and aside from the Hitler part, he makes a good argument. But then I read this and had to laugh. Fuck Kelly Ross!
>
>"Curiously, in the debate Mr. Parhad admitted that people might not have liked ancient Assyria because it was an Empire -- like the "Empire" that the United States now has. This is a little odd, since Mr. Parhad does not seem to like the United States and appears to hope that its power will founder in military action against Iraq,


...I prefer justice. I wouldn't have liked the Assyrian Empire any better, but not for being "savages" as Ross states...I wouldn't have liked it for the same reasons I don;t like the American Empire...however, let's remember that these first empires actually beneftted human development...yes, they were cruel and grasping and all of that, but the alternative was city-states in constant warfare where you couldn't travel, you couldn't engage in trade...weights and measure were different as was money in each city...civilization progressed so far and could no no further till someone forced everybody under one rule, one standard..and it worked...science, medicine, the arts all progressed....an empire to day is quite another beast...the American Empire isn't serving humanity, it'ss erving a few billionaires and it destroys far more than it builds or creates...again I'm talking about what benefits most people.

..of course I hope America will lose the war it never should have started in Iraq...but these aren't wars to be won..no one WANTS to win them, in the traditional sense...I want America to FAIL at making money by picking on weaker people and demonizing them so the rest of us will be afraid and vote our taxes into the hands of warmongering businessmen...I want what Eisenhower wanted: an America rid of war profiteers.....Ross was thinking to intimidate by calling me out as a "hater" of America and non-patriot....the usual dirty trick these people pull.

while protesting that someone like me should talk about how contemporaries didn't like ancient Assyria. One would think that if ancient Assyria was enlightened, likeable, and popular, then now the United States, if it qualifies as an "Empire" by his definition, would be enlightened, likeable, and popular also. But this does not seem to be the case, and at least Mr. Parhad, disliking the United States so much, has acted on this by moving to Mexico.

....huh? No empire is popular with those it conquers...does he think Hawaiians are happy to be a part of this empire...or Alaskans....?
>
>Another curious feature of this debate was something that to me was rather surprising, and which I could not take into account in my original treatment of the issue, and that is the rejection of some Assyrian nationalists, like Mr. Parhad himself, of Christianity. I was aware of attempts to denigrate the Old Testament and to virtually de-Judaize an Assyrian nationalist Christianity, but it can go far beyond this, with an abandonment of Christianity altogether and a desire to revive the ancient worship of the Assyrian national god, Ashur.


...silly. I was saying that if assyrians had to worship a god, why not stick with their own, whop was far more enlightened and hood for them than this Jewish god they picked up...all gods are silly inventions...byt at least the Assyrians did better when they had their own god...yahwe was a brute compared to Ashur...for some reason the Jews stuck with him, but we gave up on our god.


Unfortunately, if this is supposed to it fit in with a modern Iraqi nationalism (e.g. an Assyrian Iraqi rather than an Arab Iraqi identity), there is the difficulty that such neo-pagan worship is not something that Islām is under any obligation, by its own laws, to tolerate. If Mr. parhad, a sculptor, provided a statue of Ashur to Iraq, good Moslems would be duty bound to destroy it.

...that would be now, after the United States has trashed the country and unleashed fundamentalism...under Saddam a statue of Ashurbanipal would be welcome as indeed there were many statues in Baghdad.

Saddam Hussein may be a completely cynical Moslem, but he is presently trying to take advantage of radical Islām. The worship of Ashur is not going to fit in with that. Mr. Parhad might want to confer with Saddam before getting too carried away. I suspect the truth is that Mr. Parhad's views, however conformable in their anti-Americanism to Saddam Hussein's, are otherwise idiosyncratic and have little to do with Hussein's actual beliefs or purposes.

...I don;t advocate ANY worship of any god or person....as far as being "anti-American" I say it is patriots and shallow thinkers like Ross who are really operating contrary to America's better side...people are SUPPOSED to protest when they see their government fuck up..and it DID fuck up in Iraq..or does he think that was a success?
>
>Since September 11, 2001, of course, a pro-Iraqi anti-Americanism, whether Assyrian or Arab, Ashur-worshipping or Islamic in origin, is not going to sound good to most Americans or, I hope, most Assyrians. If the Assyrian community stayed away from the Valley College forum for fear of attacting hostile attention from Americans, this was a wise response indeed, when the presumably pro-Assyrian speaker was identifying himself with the enemies of America and could barely conceal his own anti-American animus.

...oh Jesus! What a cheap shot...I am anti-American, he says, so don;t listen to anything I say....


Since many Americans may be unaware that there even are Christian communities in the Middle East (an Egyptian Christian, a Copt, perhaps mistaken as a Moslem, was murdered in San Gabriel soon after September 11), and Arab Christians are at pains to dissociate themselves from Islam (as many Moslems are at pains to dissociate themselves from radical "Islamist" ideology), the last thing the Assyrians need is an ideology to dissociate them from Christianity and associate them with, of all people, Saddam Hussein."

...who said that? I said that all Iraqis were better off under Saddam than they were going to be after America got done with them...according to Ross any time you criticize America you are "against" America...a true Fascist position.
>
>~K.Ross

...fucker...I'd like to go back and debate him NOW!



---------------------


The full topic:



***



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9