For some. For others, it was stolen from the gods. Which might attest to the value they placed on it...
Posted on 10/25/2002 12:14:19 AM PDT by jennyp
The Recent Nightclub Bombings in Bali Illustrate Just What the "War on Terror" Is Really About
On the night of Saturday, October 12--the second anniversary of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole, a year, month, and day after the destruction of the World Trade Center, and mere days after terrorist attacks in Yemen, Kuwait, and the Philippines--two car bombs detonated outside neighboring nightclubs on the island of Bali, triggering a third explosive planted inside, and killing nearly 200 people (the majority of whom were Australian tourists), injuring several others, and redirecting the focus of the war against terror to Indonesia.
Also on the night of Saturday, October 12, the following bands and DJs were playing and spinning at several of Seattle's rock and dance clubs from Re-bar to Rock Bottom: FCS North, Sing-Sing, DJ Greasy, Michiko, Super Furry Animals, Bill Frisell Quintet, the Vells, the Capillaries, the Swains, DJ Che, Redneck Girlfriend, Grunge, Violent Femmes, the Bangs, Better Than Ezra, the Briefs, Tami Hart, the Spitfires, Tullycraft, B-Mello, Cobra High, Randy Schlager, Bobby O, Venus Hum, MC Queen Lucky, Evan Blackstone, and the RC5, among many, many others.
This short list, taken semi-randomly from the pages of The Stranger's music calendar, is designed to illustrate a point that is both facile and essential to reckoning the effects of the Bali bombings. Many of you were at these shows, dancing, smoking, drinking, talking, flirting, kissing, groping, and presumably enjoying yourselves, much like the 180-plus tourists and revelers killed at the Sari Club and Paddy's Irish Pub in Bali. Though no group has come forward to claim responsibility for the bombings, they were almost certainly the work of Muslim radicals launching the latest volley in the war against apostasy.
Whether the attacks turn out to have been the work of al Qaeda or one of the like-purposed, loosely connected, multicellular organizations that function in the region--groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah (an umbrella network that seeks a single Islamic state comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore), the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (led by the nefarious Abu Bakar Bashir), Laskar Jihad (which waged holy war on Christians in the Spice Islands before mysteriously disbanding two weeks ago), or the Islam Defenders Front (which makes frequent "sweeps" of bars and nightclubs, attacking non-Muslims, and violently guarding against "prostitution and other bad things")--will ultimately prove to be of little consequence. What matters is that the forces of Islamic fascism have struck again, in a characteristically cowardly, murderous, and yes, blasphemous fashion that must register as an affront to every living human with even a passing interest in freedom.
The facile part: It could have happened here, at any club in Seattle. It's a ludicrous thought, of course--at least as ludicrous as the thought of shutting the Space Needle down on New Year's Eve because some crazy terrorist was arrested at the Canadian border--but that doesn't make it any less true. That doesn't mean we should be looking over our shoulders and under our chairs every time we go to a show. It simply means that it could happen anywhere, because anywhere is exactly where rabid Islamists can find evidence of blasphemy against their precious, imaginary god.
Which brings us to the essential part: The Bali bombings were not an attack against Bali; they were an attack against humankind. In all the jawflap about the whys and wherefores of the multiple conflicts currently dotting our collective radar screen--the war against terror, the war on Iraq, the coming holy war, et al.--it seems worth restating (at the risk of sounding pious) that the war against basic human liberty, waged not by us but on us, is at the heart of the matter. Discourse has justifiably, necessarily turned to complexities of strategy, diplomacy, and consequences. The moral truth, however, remains agonizingly basic. We are still dealing with a small but indefatigable contingent of radicalized, militant absolutists who believe that every living being is accountable to the stricture of Shari'a, under penalty of death. As Salman Rushdie wrote, in an oft-cited Washington Post editorial, the fundamentalist faction is against, "to offer a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex." If these were fictional villains, you'd call them hyperbolic, not believable. But they aren't fictional. Their code would be laughable if it weren't so aggressively despicable.
As headlines about Bali cross-fade into news of North Korean nukes, and there are further debates about the finer points of Iraqi de- and restabilization, it's crucial to remember that there is, in fact, a very real enemy, with a very real will, and the very real power of delusional self-righteousness. How to remember? Consider the scene of the attacks (as reported by various Australian and European news sources):
It's a typical hot, sweaty, drunken, lascivious Saturday night. People, primarily young Aussie tourists from Melbourne, Geelong, Perth, and Adelaide, are crammed into the clubs, mixing it up, spilling out into the street. Rock band noises mix with techno music and innumerable voices as latecomers clamor to squeeze inside. Just after 11:00 p.m., a car bomb explodes outside of Paddy's, followed a few seconds later by a second blast that smashes the façade of the Sari Club and leaves a hole in the street a meter deep and 10 meters across. The second bomb is strong enough to damage buildings miles away. All at once, everything's on fire. People are incinerated. Cars go up in flames. Televisions explode. Ceilings collapse, trapping those still inside. Screams. Blistered, charred flesh. Disembodied limbs. Mangled bodies. Victims covered in blood. Inferno.
Now transpose this horrible, fiery mass murder from the seedy, alien lushness of Bali to, say, Pioneer Square, where clubs and bars are lined up in the same teeming proximity as the Sari and Paddy's in the "raunchy" Jalan Legian district, the busiest strip of nightlife in Kuta Beach. Imagine a car blowing up outside the Central Saloon and another, across the street at the New Orleans. Again, it seems too simple an equation, but the fact remains that the victims were not targeted at random, or for merely political purposes. They were doing exactly what any of us might be doing on any night of the week: exercising a liberty so deeply offensive to religious believers as to constitute blasphemy. And the punishment for blasphemy is death.
There is an ongoing lie in the official governmental position on the war against terror, which bends over backwards to assure us that, in the words of our president, "we don't view this as a war of religion in any way, shape, or form." Clearly, in every sense, this is a war of religion, whether it's declared as such or not. And if it isn't, then it certainly should be. Not a war of one religion against another, but of reason against religion--against any belief system that takes its mandate from an invisible spiritual entity and endows its followers with the right to murder or subjugate anyone who fails to come to the same conclusion. This is the war our enemies are fighting. To pretend we're fighting any other--or worse, that this war is somehow not worth fighting, on all fronts--is to dishonor the innocent dead.
BB, my source of endless delight! Permit me to offer my own unworthy opinion. I believe that I do indeed live entirely "within the time order of the physical universe." At least I have no evidence to the contrary -- and evidence is all I have to go on.
Mothers chemically bond to children because certain physical triggers--the first touch, the first cry, the first view of the face--invoke chemical changes that flood the body with enzymes copied off the DNA strands.
Similar chemical changes occur, in humans especially, regarding brother-love, filial devotion and respect, tribal honor and duty. Parallel developments in other large chordates are easy to enumerate, and to explain in terms of DNA optimizing its investments in the future. Altruism pays, because altruism gets more of your tribe's DNA into the future, and a healthy tribe is better at procuring your DNA than you alone are.
However conscience is entirely a thought process.
Obviously not. Merely thinking that you should, in theory, be altruist, fails the fallacy of the commons test. Rational self-interest dictates hypocracy. Your DNA will do best if you persuade everyone else to be moral, and that you are moral, when you are not. We buy altruistic arguments because we are inclined to--we have the sentiment for it. Not because they are outstandingly pursuasive. If we relied on logical pursuasion to institute morals, they, and probably we as well, would have died off long ago.
It also seems to get 'turned on' and off even by the same individuals at different times. Does not seem to me that if it was a material imperative that it could be done this way.
Ever the wabbling hand returns to the fire.
Your emotive genes do not lock you into anything. They give you an inclination. They are not iron God's of the universe. All DNA can do is provide capacity--it cannot make you use it. Even mother love is a choice, among chordates--there are many examples were it is intentionally sidelined. In hard times, your pussy cat chooses to eat more of her young as they emerge, for obviously good reasons, in a creature which invests considerable resources in raising fry.
The transcendental morality of Scripture will be used to judge the actions taken here on this planet. Justice will be done. No one is getting away with anything, they're just abusing God's mercy.
Well, I suppose I can't argue with that, since it not an evidence-based conviction. However, I believe the question before the house was more along the lines of why we choose to believe what we believe about what morals should consist of. This doesn't seem altogether responsive.
Well then, dear PH, it appears that some kind of insurmountable divide exists between your "take" on the meaning of experience and mine. That's O.K. as far as a problem at this level goes....
But I wonder, what are the qualifying criteria by which you classify/credit "valid evidence?"
Surely on your view, valid evidence cannot include oral testimony from the lived experience of actual human beings?
Which would conveniently remove from due consideration such "authorities" as (just to pull a few names out of the "grab bag" of Western Civilization) the Prophets and Patriarchs of Israel; the Greek pre-Socratics; Plato; Aristotle; Augustine; Aquinas; Anselm; etc., etc., down to such modern exponents as Berdyaev, Solzhenitsyn, Havel, etc., etc.
What all these people seem to hold in common is the sense that choices we human beings make in our most personal, intimate life may well have public consequences.
Am I to gather this is the idea you hate? Please correct me here PH if I've got it wrong.
Sir, we are in the house, and your believing, thank you very much, is to remain exclusive. Please keep the temperature steady in the house. I felt a slight draft. And remember (the last memorandum reiterates) evidence-based convictions are still under a strict closed-door policy.
Ok, but I still have no useful understanding about what the Law actually is. I cannot find the detailed lists that put some of the Old Testement under the aegis of "ceremonial" law, and some not. Is there a version of the bible that puts the "ceremonial" (ie, invalid) parts of the bible in, say, green, so that I can know to ignore them?
On the other hand, evolution provides no rational basis for such moral restraints.
No, but reason does, and evolutionary theory has a good explanation, which I have just delineated to Gore3000, as to why we might, on a personal basis--where morals have to be implemented to mean anything--be sentimentally inclined to go along with these reasons.
Sorry, i'm dense. Still don't get it.
I had that sense from the start.
Valid evidence -- in the context of science -- is something verifiable. If I'm the only one who claims to have seen a flying saucer, this isn't valid evidence. It may indeed be something real that I genuinely saw, but without any way for you to verify it, like with a good photo, you would be correct in doubting me. The occasional claims of various individuals, unsupported by verifiable evidence, cannot be distinguished from hallucinations, delusions, or even lies.
What all these people seem to hold in common is the sense that choices we human beings make in our most personal, intimate life may well have public consequences. Am I to gather this is the idea you hate? Please correct me here PH if I've got it wrong.
Ah, BB, how little you understand me! (Or, as Hagan said in the Godfather: "Michael, why do you hurt me?") I entirely agree that our choices may well have public consequences. Whatever gave you the impression that I thought otherwise? Perhaps you have fallen for the creationist myth that those who accept the theory of evolution are all wild and crazy moral relativists? I assure you, my sweet, that I am among the most conservative of men.
For some. For others, it was stolen from the gods. Which might attest to the value they placed on it...
Aeschylus ;)
PROMETHEUS
True, mortals I made cease foreseeing
fate.
CHORUS
Having found what remedy for this ail?
PROMETHEUS
Blind hopes in them I made to dwell.
CHORUS
A great advantage this you gave to men
PROMETHEUS
Beside these, too, I bestowed on them
fire.
CHORUS
And have mortals flamy fire?
PROMETHEUS
From which indeed they will learn
many arts.
Ortega says reason was an invention.
By me were roused to reason, taught to think;
And this I say, not finding fault with men,
But showing my good-will in all I gave.
For first, though seeing, all in vain they saw,
And hearing, heard not rightly. But, like forms
Of phantom-dreams, throughout their life’s whole length
They muddled all at random; did not know
Houses of brick that catch the sunlight’s warmth,
Nor yet the work of carpentry. They dwelt
In hollowed holes, like swarms of tiny ants,
In sunless depths of caverns; and they had
No certain signs of winter, nor of spring
Flower-laden, nor of summer with her fruits;
But without counsel fared their whole life long,
Until I showed the risings of the stars,
And settings hard to recognise.
And I Found Number for them, chief devise of all,
Groupings of letters, Memory’s handmaid that,
And mother of the Muses. And I first
Bound in the yoke wild steeds, submissive made
Or to the collar or men’s limbs, that so
They might in man’s place bear his greatest toils;
And horses trained to love the rein I yoked
To chariots, glory of wealth’s pride of state;
Nor was it any one but I that found
Sea-crossing, canvas-wingèd cars of ships:
Such rare designs inventing (wretched me!)
For mortal men, I yet have no device
By which to free myself from this my woe.
You then imply the anti-Christian Nazis were humanitarians who killed Jews quickly.
In ovens.
I'm sorry, but I can't take you seriously. You are expressing strong opinions about subjects of which you have no knowledge.
The problem is, he is serious. He is oh so very serious.
Give him time to mature. When you're a liberal at 20 you have no heart etc.
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