Bah, Hanukkah

The article Bah, Hanukkah was written by Christopher Hitchens. In this article he basically slams the holiday of Chanukkah, which isn't much of a surprise as he has written a book called "God is not Great- How religion poisons everything." This anti-religious stance also makes him very much in favour of the War on Iraq although he is a social liberal. Any ways let's get back to the article.

Hitchens starts by saying that Chanukkah is, "to celebrate not the ignition of a light but the imposition of theocratic darkness." He says that the Seleucid empire had taken a hold in Israel and had started to wean people away from practicing Judaism. He of course doesn't mention that most Jews were being brutally forced to go through these changes, and couldn't practice Judaism if he wanted to. He then falsely says that the name Alexander is a Jewish name because Hellenism was so popular amongst the Jews. He says instead of celebrating the highly advanced Greeks, we celebrate the no good Maccabees who were just trying to spoil this enlightenment. He then says that maybe the Hellenists were a bit brutal, but the Jews also did terrible stuff amongst themselves after and during the war. He then said if we had just submitted to the Greeks, Christianity and Islam would have never been created, and we have brought all of our suffering onto ourselves because of this. I guess he prefers people practicing polytheism over monotheism. He then if the miracle happened it just shows that G-d loves extremists and religious thuggery.

He then goes on to talk about how dumb Christmas is, because it just takes pagan practices and puts them into the holiday. Of course some of these customs probably came from the beloved Greeks who he so widely lauds. The rest of this article continues in this manner, and he says when we look into the flames of the Menorah we should be saddened, as this is the first case of extremism winning over modernity.

Basically this article is very mean spirited and it is made even worse due to the lose facts that he uses. If you make up facts and talk in such a nasty tone you can either make your point very well or just disgust the reader. I'm going to go with the latter feeling

Here's the article
http://www.slate.com/id/2179045/

You can read my other blog from Tuesday if you want

News from Iran

In the last couple of days U.S intelligence has issues a new report stating that Iran stopped its nuclear program back in 2003 and probably hasn't started it up yet. In a lot of the articles I've been reading it's been pretty easy to find a lot of ironies in how people are reacting to the news. In recent Democratic Party debates some candidates had bashed Hill-Dawg for voting to classify th Revolutionary Guards as terrorists, and are using this new report to beef up their statements. But wait a second. Why are they listening to this new piece of intelligence, but were ignoring the past ones? It would seem to suggest that only reports that fir their political motivation have truth in them, and all other reports are lies. Unless these other candidates sincerely believed that Iran was making nukes before this report, and were willing to serve up Israel as an expenditure. And if these other candidates do believe in all intelligence documents, then surely they have seen the intelligence showing the Rev. guards have supplied terrorists in Iraq, but I guess they can probably say it's just war-mongering Bush up to his old tricks again. You at least have to respect Hillary for actually taking a stand on foreign policy, and not just blaming Bush for tricking them into going into Iraq.

Then today Israeli intelligence said that they have grave concerns about this new U.S intelligence. Frankly, I'm gonna take Israel's word over the U.S.A's. Also the report still said that Iran can make nukes between 2010-2015 so it's still a serious threat. This report also fails to mention all the rhetoric coming form Iran, their constant lying to the U.N, their supplying of terrorism. Even if this report is true th world can't suddenly say let's leave them alone. They are still the biggest threat facing the U.S.A and Israel, and we shouldn't let this report cloud our judgment.

Also the year 2003 potentially has some significance. This of course is the year that the Americans went into Iraq, and easily defeated Saddam and his army. Perhaps this show of military force did stop the Iranian missile program, as they were afraid of being invaded to.

I hope a new report comes out contradicting this one and see how some people in politics respond.