Pity the groveling South Koreans on all fours

Pity the groveling South Koreans on all fours
April 22, 2007
Dale Han

Within hours after the AP dispatch has made public the identity of the culprit in the carnage at the Virginia Tech University, most of the South Koreans went panic, as a pack of frenzied lemmings run amok as if one of the US Generals during the Korean War ridiculed the Korean refugees, in an anxiety, dismay, shock, and fear that Uncle Sam, the neo-colonial global overlord, might impose several punitive sanctions against the South Korean interests, such as travel restriction, group reprisal, economic sanctions, and in worse scenario, mass roundup as the Muslims incarceration after the 911 and Japanese encampment during the WWII.

The South Koreans reeled and staggered in disbelief that a member of the Korean tribe committed the unforgivable killing spree in their honey and dream land, USA, and they felt all the South Koreans have collective blood-guilt on their hands.
And the Korean-Americans deeply and abashedly wanted to apologize to their host country, USA, by all manner of means, like kowtowing, prostrating, genuflecting, or groveling on all fours…if their apologia could purchase them an escape tunnel from the Lord’s fury.

The Korean Ambassador to the US proposes the Korea-American Communities to open the prayer meeting and take turns a 32-day fast for an apology and condolence.
A gaggle of infamous rah-rah Korean Netizens rants, raves, screams and demands the South Korean Government dispatching the special emissaries headed by the President to the US and seeking a graceful pardon from their half-century overlord, Uncle Sam.
The mainstream media in Seoul editorializes that the South Koreans should travel across the ocean and reach out the hearts of grieving overlord to ensure no harms fall upon them.
And the President of the South Korean Government who duly succumbed to the overwhelming gaga of the dimwit and obsequious people issues a series of condolence, regret, sorrow, remorse, penitence, and apology.

Like the frenzied lemmings run amok for survival, the South Koreans gather, tremble, argue and decide to circle their camp in order to escape from the group reprisal as they had experienced during the LA riot.
And due to their chauvinistic and ethnocentric tribal instinct, they made a fatal mistake here in the Virginia Tech incident…they did not realize that the culprit was not so much a Korean who happened to continue holding the Korean nationality than an American who had been living in the US for two-third of his lifespan.
In other words, he was more an American who was at ease with the US ambience of gun culture, societal violence, and individual identity than the Korean “LA Babies” whose mother delivers in the LA hospital for the laminated US citizenship card and snatched back home for the Korean upbringing.

When the culprit had left for the honey and dream land piggy bagged on his parents, he was a mere eight-year-old brat who had only two years of elementary education that hardly pollinated him with Korean culture and mores.
Without counting his genetic linkage to the Korean progeny, it is even hard to claim that he was a hybrid product of cross-fertilization between Korean and American culture, considering that he’s been formulated as “the culprit” in a 15-year course of nourishing, cultivating, disseminating, learning, and brainwashing process in the lonely, depressed, alienated, violent, emotionally discarded, and individually oriented segments of the American society.
It is extremely and unduly an exaggeration that he was to be considered a Korean except his genetic connection to the Korean ancestry.

We, the human, evolve through much of his or her life span via natural selection…one is biological evolution based on genes and the other is cultural evolution replicated by “memes”.
The term “meme” refers to an element of culture being passed on by non-genetic means from one mind to another mind, as examples of memes are: ideas, values, theories, beliefs, practices, habits, fashions, music, computer virus, etc.
While genes can only vertically be transmitted from parent to child, memes can horizontally be transmitted between two individuals that memes are more similar to parasites or infections.
In other words, memes are the conveyors of customs and traditions…all kind of cultural information passed down through repetition and imitation.

In this perspective, it was obvious that the culprit was open to the good or bad courses of the memetic (cultural) evolution in his new environment where he was exposed the two thirds of his life, and consequently, the society where he lived have to assume the blame or responsibility to be pardoned or reflected upon, not the genetic Korean blood that the culprit carried along. (It was anybody’s guessing game why he did not seek for the US citizenship…you may blame his parents, with a thousand “mea culpa”.
One wonder how the South Koreans react if he or his family happened to be holding the US passport…do they still claim the “Chos” were Koreans?

Records show that the South Koreans were very much selective in claiming the group credit or blame as the tribal identity.
In the first place, the South Koreans are obsessed with how it is perceived by the others…and worry about the backlash that any incidents by their compatriots might bring upon them.
Among several incidents of the Korean notoriety in the US, no South Koreans uttered an apology for the lobby scandal caused by Mr. Park, Tongsun or the Tax Fraud conviction by the Rev. Moon, Sun Myung, both resulted in incarceration in the Federal Prison. (Mr. Park and Rev. Moon held the South Korean passport at the time.)
In contrast, when a super bowl player was named for the most valuable player in 2006, they mobbed and feted him a national hero born from the Korean womb… even though he is nothing but an American Black.

Unbeknownst to many South Koreans, there was a Korean-American named John (Choon) Yoo who served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice in 2001-2003, where he wrote the substantial parts of the Patriot Act with a professor of the Vietnamese origin. (Mr. Yoo is now a law professor at UC Berkeley.)
He co-authored the forty-two page memo stipulating that since Afghanistan has no formal government to speak of, neither the Geneva Conventions nor any other laws of war apply. This breaks a fifty-year US military tradition of upholding those rules that the Americans adopted because the US expects them to be applied to US soldiers.
He also support the torture of enemy combatants as Jewish Professor in Harvard University did, and President Bush approved the policies in the memo, ultimately resulting in the Abu Ghraib fiasco and similar atrocities being committed in other Iraqi prisons as well as those in Afghanistan.

It is worthwhile for the moment to reflect the John Yoo’s life with the “Cho’s”…Mr. Yoo left for the US when he was a ten-year-old brat, two-years older than Mr. Cho.
He graduated from Harvard, and Yale Law School, followed by working as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
You could assume that John was schooled in the same ambiance and exposed to the similar cultural evolution as Cho had, and Yoo and Cho came out in an antipodal personality…one, a successful law professor and the other, mass murderer and cold dead. (You may consider Mr. Yoo’s career “cold dead” and rotting in the academia, since the colonial masters love to exploit the minority lapdog and then leave the collaborators in oblivion as many Koreans during the Japanese occupation helped out the policies of the Japanese Empire as a snitch, cop, soldier, teacher, or prostitute.)

Mr. Yoo worked under the guidance of the former Attorney General John Ashcroft who simply refuses to believe that any step taken to defend the United States can be called an evil at all.
In other words, he was a model immigrant to mainstream his every thought into the culture of “America the Beautiful”, accepting and endorsing all the alleged virtues of “my country right or wrong” theme, and taking up the lifetime blowjob at the academia.
In contrast, Mr. Cho, no matter how the mainstream media in the US depicted him a psychopathic, crazy, and sullen loner, clearly stated in his manifesto that he was sick at the social debauchery, hedonistic needs, and deceitful charlatans and he was doing the killings for his children, brothers and sisters…that is, he refused to become a kiss-ass cog in the moneyed wheel and defied the powers of authorities, wealth, and skullduggery in the society.

What has made Mr. Yoo a law professor and Mr. Cho a mass murderer?
Both kids came to the country where they grew up in front of television set that oozes violence, blood, and murder every seconds.
In the Korean immigrant community, there is no middle ground between success and failure… you are either a good or bad boy in a cutthroat competitive life.
And Mr. Yoo became a superb son of the immigrant parent, singing along his master’s tune of imperial march while Mr. Cho cried out desperately against social debauchery and nightmarish charlatans.

The US authorities have sifted through Mr. Cho’s computer hardware, books, emails and other personal files thoroughly, but are not able to find the evidence that began to explain why Mr. Cho committed the massacre…especially in terms of why he targeted to kill an unspecified, random, multiple, and amorphous group in the first place, in contrast to most of revenge-killings in the US involve the personal vendetta.
As if Americans have misconception about the suicide bombers in Iraq who love death as Americans love life, the Virginia Police would never uncover the Cho’s motives if they continue to search at the wrong address: “Mr. Cho is a crazy and psychotic maniac.”
For the South Koreans, who have been bowing, groveling, prostrating, and kowtowing on all fours at the altar of the Chinese, Japanese and now American imperium for two millenniums, they would chatter about Mr. Cho like a pack of crows on heat for some time, but you’d be sure to see that they are at work steam-pressing your shirts and pants in order to produce hundred thousands of “the Yoo”.
Pity the South Koreans!

dalehan@verizon.net

The Jeremiad of Comfort Women: Who Sold Us Down The River?

The Jeremiad of “Comfort Women”: Who sold us down the river?
March 1 2007

Author’s note: (A). “Comfort Women” refers to the groups of various ethnic women such as Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Burmese, Indonesians and Dutch during the World War II, who were recruited by the Japanese Imperial Army for serving the Japanese soldiers in the brothels throughout the Asian Pacific region.
(B). No Koreans, scholar, historian, professor, journalist, or politician, would dare to write or publicly say something that I write in the following article, not because they do not know it, but rather they know that they would be immediately attacked a liar, criticized a sellout, pummeled a traitor, and buried a has-been in the society. As a freelance journalist who values most the freedom of information, expression, and press, I write what I know is right and correct without the fear that other Koreans shudder to escape from.

Prior to delving into the matters regarding the “comfort women”, one should also note the past historical facts:
As prostitution is the world’s oldest profession in human history, the sexual trading in both Japan and Korea was thrived, accepted, and licensed as the legitimate business activity from the ancient society where many underclass and indigent people were forced to rely on selling their bodies as their one and only commodity. It was a means for low-caste people serving sexually high, privileged, and rich class in return for money or favor.
There is no way to determine precisely how many women were forced to served as “comfort women”, since there were no data or document available either in the military archives of Japanese Government or mama-san’s ledgers. It is estimated by historians that there were about 200,000 women worked for sexual laborers to enhance the morale of the Japanese military, and the ethnic background of sexual workers varies, waxing and waning depending on whom you ask: the South Koreans claim 80 percent of “comfort women” were Korean women. However, a Japanese researcher breaks down as follows: 40% Japanese, 20% Koreans, 10% Chinese and others like Filipino, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Dutch, making up the remaining 30%.
The annexation of the Lee Dynasty (Korea) to Japan in 1910 could be paralleled to the Hawaiian Kingdom’s absorption to the United States…the sovereignty of the Korean Dynasty was ceded to the Japanese Empire and Korea became a part of Japanese Empire and all the Koreans the Japanese subjects, though its legitimacy is disputed due to the Treaty was forced through by ministers threatened and bribed by the Japanese. Therefore, technically and legally, Koreans served comfort women, worked laborers, and drafted to the military as the Japanese subjects whether Koreans like it or not. (If the Japanese won the war, Koreans as Japanese alike were becoming the masters of Asian Pacific region as the soldiers of Hawaiian aborigines do fight in Iraq as the US occupation forces now.)
The export of women for sexual service to the war front was not the moral opprobrium committed exclusively by the Japanese Imperial Army…the South Korean Government during the Vietnam War in late 60s did the same thing what the Japanese have done during WWII, dispatching hundreds of thousands of their professional whores to the war fronts providing the sexual pleasures for their mercenary soldiers. There was no pathological distinction between the Japanese and South Korean rationale for the “comfort women system” other than a dispute whether the women were forcibly and coercively drafted as the sex slaves or worked voluntarily for money.
Some Koreans attempt to compare the “comfort women” issue with the Jewish Holocaust”…seeking help from the most powerful lobby group, AIPAC, in the US…but there is one and only symmetry between them: these two issues manifested only after two or three decades after the WWII ended, as the Holocaust manifested in the US in late 1960 and the “Comfort Women” began kvetching and went gaga in early 1982…in other words, “comfort women” incident was a non-issue immediately after the WWII through 1980, because the South Korean Military Government of Gen. Park CH did not raise the matter in public, because General was satisfied with the Japanese compensation in 1965.

The ghosts of “comfort women” recently have debuted again in the political arena of the North American Continent thousands miles farthest away from where it rests in peace, and they still reverberate dancing along the corridors and the hearing rooms of the US Congress choreographed by the various NGOs from the Korean-American community.
Though they gradually are becoming an endangered species as years go by, the remaining “comfort women” refuse to vanish in oblivion and keep yelping like a Jewish yenta.
And the apparitions have manifested in the form of HR 121 Resolution at the US Congress that requires the Japanese government formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Army’s coercive activities against the “comfort women” during the colonial and wartime occupation of Pacific and Asian islands in the 1930s through the duration of WWII.

Strangely, however, the Resolution exhibits the peculiarity…contrary to the fact that we are living in the world where every quid has its quo, the Resolution does not have a single word demanding compensation for victims, “comfort women” supposedly drafted for sexual slaves pro bono.
Bringing the “comfort women” issues to the US seems like Koreans searching their lost keys under the lamp post because the light is bright there, even thought they know that they lost their keys farther thousands miles away…an ingrained characteristics of colonial subservience and obsequiousness toward the hegemonic overlord, Uncle Sam.
And the Korean NGOs are eagerly avoiding any institutional intervention like the help from the Government or Corporate underwriting in order to gain access to the power circle in the Belt Way of the Washington DC.

Cui bono?

Aside from the suspicion why the US Congress involved in business that has got nothing to do with America, one would have an impression by reading the Resolution that the Japanese Government had never done anything, reparation or apology, on the issues of “comfort women”.
On the contrary, the record shows that the Japanese Government had issued over two dozens of statement during over three and half decades since 1972, expressing their condolence, apology, and regret in the name of almost every Japanese Prime Ministers (Tanaka, Suzuki, Nakayama, Hosokawa, Murayama, Hashimoto, Obuchi, Koizumi), Chief Cabinet Secretaries, and Ministers of Foreign Affairs.
And even two Emperors, Hirohito in 1984 and Akihito in 1996, expressed in the formal meeting with the South Korean Presidents that Japan regrets an unfortunate past between two countries and it should not be repeated again.
But the South Koreans have refused to accept these statements as the official documents because it was not ratified by the Japanese Diet (House of Representatives) or by the cabinet meeting.

On the matter of reparation, it was an open and shut case according to the international law… that the Japanese and the South Korean Government have reached an omnibus settlement in the 1965 Treaty On Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea (the South Korea)
According to the document that was disclosed in 2005, the South Korean Government in 1965 requested and received the compensation of $800 million in grants and soft loans from Japan, and agreed not to demand further reparation either at the government or individual level against the Japanese Government.
Among the $800 million, $364 million was specifically allocated in compensation for the 1.03 million Koreans conscripted into the workforce and the military during the colonial period, at a rate of 200 dollars per survivor, 1,650 dollars per death and 2,000 dollars per injured person.

The documents also revealed that the South Korean government claimed that it would handle individual compensation to its citizens who suffered during Japan's colonial rule while rejecting Japan's proposal to directly compensate individual victims and receiving the whole amount of grants on the behalf of victims.
During and after the Japan-South Korean Treaty, the contents of the agreement have remained in the foggy bottom of both Japanese and South Korean government archives for half a century…Japanese wanted to play dumb because they did not yet come to an agreement with the North Korea that demand a whopping $10 billion compensation, and the military regime of the South Korea was desperate getting money, any money, dirty, bloody, fake, fraudulent, or mafioso.

The Treaty was a godsend to the money-starved Military Government of Gen. Park CH who sent his nephew to the treaty negotiation--- Lieutenant Colenel JP Kim, then-Director of Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA)--- as an ambassador extroadinary and plenipotentiary.
Even the Korean Foreign Minister was out of the loop in the negotiation process that JP Kim reported directly to the President who kept the reparation money in his cookie jar disbursing as he deemed appropriate as an emperor gives out some gift to his underlings.
Few knew what the deal was except Gen. Park, KCIA, and some high-ranking lapdogs in the totalitalian regime.

Did the South Korean Government pay the $364 million for the 1.03 million victims according to the treaty?

Nope!

After paying only about $200 per death in compensating fewer than ten thousands of forced labor victims between 1975 and 1977, Gen. Park CH finagled the rest of money for the slush fund to buy out his opponents and other retired generals, and for seed money to build the major highways, industrial complexes, and Pohang Iron & Steel Co.
During the WWII period, General Park was the first lieutenant of the Japanese Imperial Army stationed in Manchuria serving voluntarily and faithfully as other many Korean collaborators did for the imperial military occupation in China and Pacific region.
They were obviously being provided with the “comfort women” for their R and R furlough and enjoyed their sexual services without any hesitance or compunction.

With this imperial hubris, General Park dispatched again in 1965 thousands of Korean women for the “comfort” of his fifty-thousand-odd mercenaries during the Vietnam War, stoled the money through banditry from poor Vietnameses, and used the hard currency to finance for the economic development of the present South Korea.
The notorious KCIA had the task force unit for recruiting prostitutes with the help of the local police who actively participated to solicit the whores in their beat, and in addition, the Navy chipped in for the transportation and the Military Police in the war front run the comfort station under the supervision of the KCIA case officers.
The taskforce unit also had an extra job to procure the sexual services of young college girls and women in entertainment business in order to accommodate the insatiable appetite of of the General’s libido.

Eventually, the blood money of “comfort women” during WWII and the Vietnam War had paved the highways, roads, and parking lots for the sake of all South Koreans whose Presidents sold the comfort women down the river.
In other words, thousands of the “comfort women” both in the colonial era and after the liberation have contributed their blood for the recovery and development of the South Korean economy.
And all the credits for the economic prosperity go to Gen. Park and his cohorts including his daughter, whose ambition to be a next El Presidente emanates from the blood-soaked hands of his assassinated father, an ex-Japanese Imperial Officer.

And voila!
The South Koreans are still barking up the wrong tree!

Instead of traveling a red-eye flight across the Pacific Ocean for appearing at the US Congress hearings, the “comfort women” should have a sit-in demonstration in front of the National Assembly in Seoul where General’s daughter flirts with their blood money.
Rather than pumping their wobbly arms into the air in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, they should make a protest visit to the residence of JP Kim whose agreements with Japanese have made them pennyless and dishonorable.
Before condemning the Japanese who pay tribute to Yasukuni shrine, they should go to their national cemetery where Gen. Park lies in comfort and demand their blood money for selling them down the river.

It is at least bizarre and unconscionable to bring the “comfort women” issue to the US Congress where Americans endorse, finance, and execute the imperial policies of world dominion as if Japanese Empire had strived for the colonization of the Asian Pacific region.
It’s like the infighting two Capos in the Mafia family seeking favor from their boss…in other words, the boss (USA) was asked by a Capo(South Korea) to pass a toothless and non-binfing fiat ostensibly punishing another Capo (Japan), the boss’s favorite son, and the boss has been refusing to do so six times in the past, and the chance are absolutely nil to pass in the Congress and endorsed by the US Government.

In a nutshell, the matter should be dealt in the UN jurisdiction, as in the International Criminal Court, Human Rights Commission, or UN commission on the Status of Women.
Or let the remaining “comfort women” live in peace comfortably, providing them with sufficient fund from the national coffer.
But please stop doing stupid things like sending their Toy Soldiers to Iraq and Iran, bringing the “Comfort Women” issue to your overlord, USA, or electing the General’s daughter a next El Presidente.
By doing so, you are announcing loudly to the world that the South Koreans are still playing a role of lackeys in the service of the US imperialism as if their General served for the Japanese Emeror a first lieutenant who enjoyed the sexual services of “Comfort Women” in his stint in the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII.

The Contemplative Prayer

The contemplative prayer
February 28, 2006

In his lecture at the Gillbott Church, the Director Paik, a staff member from the Agape Christian Healing Center, has addressed that the Center seeks the healing process in search for “true self” via “contemplative prayer”.

After an hour-long lecture, there was a session of question-and-answer, in which I inquired about the glossolalia that the evangelical churches strongly advocate their membership in their prayer meetings.
Frankly speaking, I was at the loss when Mr. Paik replied that the glossolalia is one of the forms of contemplative prayers, contrary to his introductory paper that the contemplative prayer is not achieved by talking but by observing self, true or false.

It seems bizarre to me that the “speaking in tongue” has anything to do with the word, “contemplation”…I do believe you could not possibly achieve to observe, think, reflect, or consider thoroughly about anything at the same time when you were in a trance state or an episode of religious ecstasy.
I would rather consider the contemplative prayer in relation to the philosophy of silence, Buddhism or Christian monasticism.

It is true that Buddhist chants and Benedictine monk sings in their ritual as Christians sing hallelujah at the service.
But both monks are called “contemplative orders” that engage in the ascetic life in search of nirvana and a state of grace, committing themselves to poverty, celibacy and obedience challenging the secular culture of money, sex, and power.
In our modern time, people are fed up with the excessive consumerism and reflect dissatisfaction toward the mainstream religious practices.

In response to these tendencies, the mega churches have sprang up like the wild flowers in the spiritual desert, where glossolalia plays a major role enticing the like-minded people in the gated spiritual community.
Contrary to this communal fellowship of mega churches, some intellectuals began to show interest in the “contemplative life”, the possibility of individual consciousness apart from the communal whole.

Some says that life is like water: it takes the shape of the vessel into which it is poured; remove the vessel and it is lost.
What we are seeking are vessels into which to pour the chaos of life.
If we could pour the chaos of our life into the vessel of contemplative life, we might shape our future life quite contrary to the contemporary life of money, sex, and power that we have now.

In this perspective, Mr. Paik’s assertion that glossolalia is within the boundary of contemplative prayer is simply a misstatement or a disservice to the contemplative life.

I expect your clarification.

Pepe Sojourner

Paik Sanghoon replied
March 2, 2006

Thank you for your bringing up the question again for a better apprehension of the part of what had been said in the lecture, the relation of contemplation and glossolalia. And I also appreciate your fine understanding of the relation of Christian meditation and Buddhist practice and of great values of monasticism that speak critically to the contemporary world.

First of all, I have to acknowledge that my use of the word “contemplation” in my lecture had to be limited to an aspect of contemplation, that is, the way in which one sees into thing as they are, and this inevitably limited use might cause confusion and bewilderment in you and/or among others attending.

As I then said, the word “contemplation” has been variously used in the Christian tradition depending on the employers of the word. I would like to trace its first form back to the desert fathers that first appeared around 3-4th centuries in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. The way of their meditation is called “prayer of heart,” since their primal focus was on the inner, individual communication with God through their hearts. They tried to introspect with keen awareness of God’s presence and aspired to get in touch with God going beyond human words and language, because they were well aware that God could not be fully grasped with human words and language. This is why they prayed not with their heads but with their hearts, and how their way came to be called “prayer of heart,” which has definitely been considered a way of contemplation.

When I am willing to put “glossolalia” into the category of “contemplation,” I have the desert fathers and their “prayer of heart” in mind. Glossolalia is the phenomenon that comes as one goes beyond one’s words in his or her communication with God, despite the fact that he or she is actually speaking something with his or her lips. In other words, the person in speaking in tongues is praying not with his or her head, but with “heart.” Say, one’s lips are vibrating and yet his or her heart is touching upon God or God’s presence. In this sense, glossolalia can be, I assume, a way of contemplation. And, as such, contemplation belongs not only to the Catholic Church tradition but also to the Protestant tradition where some sort of different types of spirituality are preferred to those of the Catholic tradition. (My idea that glossolalia is part of contemplation is original.)

I hope this will be a help to you.


Pepe replied with the following disputation:
March 3 2006

Emphatically, I would like to dispute against your notion that “speaking in tongues” is within the category of “contemplation” even though I would not argue against the origin or the nature of glossolalia that you mentioned.
In short, an act of “speaking in tongues” is, I think, an antithetical to contemplation per se, and I would rather go further defining “glossolalia” an antonym of contemplative practice.

In the first place, two words, glossolalia and contemplation, are, by nature and by definition, describing utterly opposite means…in their attempted desire to meet a god, the former is demonstrated by an unintelligible words and unrestrained display of ecstatic movement and the latter is almost and always non-active and without words.

As glossolalia is derived from Greek, glossa (tongue) and lalia (to talk), a person engaging in glossolalia relies constantly on foreign, gibberish, meaningless, or unintelligible tongues “in order to aspire to get in touch with god” (to borrow from your words).
On the contrary, the contemplatives employ the form of meditative prayer like a close relationship between two friends who can sit enjoying each other’s company.

It seems utterly bizarre to read that you are eager to incorporate glossolalia into the realm of contemplative life…why?
You may put “speaking in tongues” as one of the components of worship traditions, as contemplative prayer, flagellation, fasting, and other physical pains have been accepted to various religious groups a modus operandi to achieve a goal to meet god.
Would glossolalia become more respectable, honorable, intelligent, scholastic, or civilized methods in search of god, if it were classified a contemplative prayer?

In the secular society, gibberish utterance is referred to self-hypnoticism, schizophrenia, hysteria, or dementia that require the engaging person receiving the clinical treatment if he or she shows psychopathic symptoms. In other words, an extraordinary level of engaging glossolalia may be construed an act of craziness possibly harming others life.
I personally witnessed long time ago that one of my friends had gone in delirium after attending the two-week sessions of Christian revival service, destroying all of his belongings and finally tried to harm his sister with a sharp object, and he was placed into the psychiatric ward permanently.

Imagine two groups, one sitting on a hemp mat dressed in white robes or saffron meditates opening their mind without any preconceptions to the truth, while another jumping and gyrating up and down with no constraint, hollering the gibberish and rolling on the floor along the guidance of a charismatic leader…it’s beyond anyone’s imagination that two are on the same boat.
Yes! They are on the route to meet a god, but their paradigms to achieve their goal are quite different from each other.
Therefore, I think that an attempt to incorporate glossolalia into the category of contemplation is like “spiritual arm-twisting” in order to elevate and exalt “gibberish” up to a pedestal where the contemplatives have been enjoying for centuries.

Paik replied
March 4, 2006

I am with you that speaking-in-tongues may go to the extreme of fanaticism which sometimes results in some sort of destructive, unreasonable behaviors. This is often observed, as you pointed out, in the circles of the excessive charismatic movement. In this case, glossolalia may only be an effort on the part of the person praying made to speak what is inside out. That type of glossolalia cannot be construed as a true communication with God and as such a form of contemplation.

What I have seen, however, is that there are some who are speaking in tongues in a very quite mood. Kneeling down or sitting on the floor they are murmuring or whispering in a small voice. Their voice, then, is only a means through which they reach out toward God. Some of them show very humble characters with profound insights into spiritual things. Hence, what I want to argue is that glossolalia is more variously practiced than some people normally assume, and that it can be, if rightly practiced, a way of contemplation in that it goes beyond human words.

The Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence

s아래글은 "역사가 아닌 구약은 아무것도 증명하지 못한다" 라는 제목하의
모 기독 토론사이트 의 글에 대한 반론입니다.

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

역사적 근거는 사실의 증명에 쐐기를 박는 역할을 합니다.
그러나 모든 사실에 역사적 근거가 100% 존재하는건 아닙니다.
한단계 더 나아가 우리는 100% 역사적 근거가 없더라도 간접적인 증거들를 통해 믿을수도 있읍니다.
제가 어릴적 개인적으로 목격한, 한 청년이 5명을 제압하는, 역사적(?) 사건은 신문이나 역사책에는 기록되지 않았지만 엄연한 사실이란는건 제가 누구보다도 더 잘 압니다. 또한 제말을 통해 그사건을 알게된 몆몆 친구들도 조금은 과장이 (예를 들면 주인공은 상처 하나 안나고 한방에들 5명을 다 눕혔다 등) 있을수도 있을것이라고 생각은 하겠지만 지금도 그 사건 자체는 의심치 않고 믿고 있읍니다. 그리고 그사건은 사실입니다.
님께서는 말씀하시기를 아담과 하와, 카인과 아벨, 노아와 그 세 아들, 아브라함과 이삭 야곱등 아브라함의 자식들, 롯, 여호수와, 모세, 사울, 다윗 솔로몬, 삼손, 이사야, 엘리야, 다니엘등등에 대한 역사적 근거가 단 한줄도 없다고 하셨는데 성경 이외의 일반 고문서에서 위에 열거한 인물에 대한 직접 간접 reference 는 꽤 있는 편입니다. (시간을 줄이기 위해 또 형식적인 cut/paste는 삼가기 위해 reference 링크들은 생략합니다)
한걸음 더 나아가 신약에서는 예수를 비롯하여 많은 저자들이 구약의 인물에 대한 직접적인 인용을 하고 있읍니다.
만일 예수를 포함한 이들이 구약의 거짓기록을 바탕으로 신약의 역사를 이어갔다면, 이처럼 허수아비 신앙이요 종교는 없을것이며 모래성 같은 결과가 나왔을법도 합니다.
우리가 모든 역사적 사건에 대한 명백한 증거와 사실적 근거를 요구하는것은 옳바른 자세이며 또한 지극히 당연한 태도 이겠지만 눈에보이는 (tangible) 증거가 없다고 하여 실제적 사실일수도 있는 사건들을 증거 불충분으로
부정적 결론 지을수 만도 없습니다.
우리가 잘 알고 믿고 존경하는 이순신장군도 그가 태어난것을 본 사람은 없으되 그 역사적 사실을 의심치 않음은
그에 대한 기록이 남아있기 때문인데, 그 기록한 저자들이 허구인물을 만들어내어 오늘날까지 우리들을 기만하고 있다고 공박하지 않음은 저자들및 기록에 대한 integrity 와 그 인물로부터 파국된 일련의 흔적들에 대한 beyond the reasonable doubt 에 입각한 신빙성 때문이 아니겠습니까.
고로 위에 열거한 인물들을 기록한 성경도 바로 이러한 standard 의 눈으로 보았을때 더 나으면 나았지 결코
열약한것은 아닙니다. 물론 이 모든것이 직접적으로 사실을 증명하는것은 아닙니다. 그러나 어느정도 지식수준을 가진 사람이라면 충분히 결론을 낼수 있는 정황입니다. 우리는 어디까지 직접적인 증거를 제시하여야만 이순신장군에 대한 기록을 1%의 의심도 없이 믿게 되는것입니까. 여기에, 성경은 당연히 영적인 요소도 있기에 개인적인 <믿음> 에 따라 결론이 쉽게 도달할수도 있는건 당연합니다. 제가 말씀 드리고자 하는것은 성경에 기록된 사실들을 볼때 지극히 closed 된 종교집단의 기록이라고만 보기 이전에 우리가 일반 역사책을 대할때의 기준과 같은 눈으로 판단해야 하는것이 합리적이요 객관적인 독자들의 태도라고 생각하는 것입니다. 허구를 사실로 기록했다면 아무리 고도의 치밀성을 가진 종교집단의 fraud 도 모든 사람의 진실의 눈을 속일수는 없는게 .. 역사에서 배우는 사실이 아닙니까.
고로 결론은 "역사가 아닌 구약은 아무것도 증명하지 못한다" 라는 말에 "역사의 정의 가 무엇인가" 라는 말로
여운을 남긴채 소견을 맺을까 합니다.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence?
December 29, 2005

It appears that Steve sounds like one of card-carrying born-again/evangelical Christians in the US (40 percent in the Gallup Poll in 2001), who cut his teeth on evangelicalism at the mega-church.
The term “evangelicalism” originated in the Greek word evangelion, meaning “the good news” or more commonly “the “gospel”, and later Martin Luther during the Reformation adapted the term as his breakaway movement “evangelical church”.

A British historian, as we entered the 21st Century, described briefly the specific hallmarks of evangelical religion as follows: 1. Conversionism: the belief that lives need to be changed. 2. Activism: the expression of the gospel in effort. 3. Biblicism: a particular regard for the Bible. 4. Crucicentrism: a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
Steve here focused on the historical veracity of the Old Testament: Biblicism.

Steve argued in a nutshell that we should read the narratives of the Bible as comparable as if we read, understand, and validate the events of the secular history, even though the tangible evidence is hardly come by in the ancient history as if “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence;”

In short, Steve wants us to read the Bible in historical perspective…therefore, he advised us that all the narratives in the Bible were warranted to being occurred in the practical events in human world history…that is, Creation legend, Jesus walking on water, virgin birth, et al occurred historically in the ancient Palestine as if George W Bush today lied to lead Americans to the Iraq War in 2004.
I wonder loud how Steve reconciles with all the horrible stories in the OT of debauchery, massacre, rape, infanticide, incest, and violence sanctioned by Yahweh, the father of Jesus?

Did it occur really and was it accepted by God?

To prove his argument, he raised two episodes: first, he talks about his personal experience that most of people hardly believe about the scuffle, in which he witnessed a superman reducing five men to pulp without any scratch to him…To Steve, the scuffle occurred with 100 % accuracy even it did not enter the historical record.

Secondly, he brought out the saga of Admiral Lee Soon Shin, a legendary hero during the “Im-Jin-Wae-Ran”, whose identity was recorded in the historical book…To Steve and most of Koreans, it is the historical fact “beyond the reasonable doubt’ that Admiral Lee existed and fought against Japanese invading forces.

In the first case of his personal experience, I agree with him that the scuffle really occurred in front of him, but when I talk about the scuffle to Mr. A, the scuffle becomes a hearsay…and it all becomes the hearsay when A talks to B, B to C, or C to D.
In other words, Steve can live in his personified world of events without any prejudice, but he cannot argue that others should live by the same world of his stories, whether it is spiritual or historical because the story is only true to him but others.

Again, the Admiral Lee’s story is surely authentic for Koreans, but there were allegations by the scholars that he exists only in the Korean folklore because there was not an iota of historical residues of his famous and erstwhile turtle ship.
In other words, for Steve and most of Koreans, Admiral Lee existed in history “beyond the reasonable doubt”, but for others who doubt the authenticity of the turtle ship, could also raise the issues of historical authenticities about Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Iusa (Jesus), Musa (Moses), Saul, David, Samson, Isaiah, Elijah, Daniel, et al.

In order to counter his argument, we should look at the question of how the Bible came into being…specifically in the historical perspective as our Steve wishes.

The word “bible” is from the Greek word biblia, the plural of biblion, “a little book”, and it is an anthology that was canonized over several centuries by the institutional church and state after a collection of disparate manuscripts was composed, edited, copied and translated by multiple human hands.
In other words, the narratives of the Bible are NOT a record of the human history or the news stories that we read in our history class at school or hear in radio or TV at the dinnertime every evening.

In addition, we should not forget to understand that the Bible was written solely for the audience in the early centuries who thought the earth is flat and you fly into heaven when you die, and the KJV, one of the Bibles (there are many Bibles unbeknownst to most Christians) was translated, compiled, and redacted for the society where people believed that a unicorn, one-eyed and horned horse, really exists.
Obviously, we, the 21st Century people, were not the “target audience”, when the ancient authors introduced their knowledge into the narratives of miracles, myths, and other phenomena in their social, cultural, and political ambiences specifically.

Most importantly, the Bible was canonized by the bishops, archbishops, and Roman Emperor, who decided which book is palatable or heretical ideas to them; in this canonization process, many books were discarded, destroyed or burned to ashes
Again, the narratives of the Bible were arbitrarily selected according to the pleasures and whims of bishops and Emperor, and others like the Gospel of Thomas or Q were ordered to be destroyed by the church.

Since Thomas’s Gospel ignores the virgin birth, miracles, or the Trinity, it became a non-entity in the collection of the Bible.
Thomas’ was not palatable to the institutional church because its narratives butt head with John’s Gospel (incidentally, John’s was least historical among the canonized Gospels)…in John’s, Jesus is a divine savior who could forgive sins and promise the eternal life, while Thomas’ Jesus is a wandering mystic who was harsh on the rich and called for voluntary poverty.
In other words, John’s was more attractive to the society of early Christians than Thomas’s, so that the church and state selected John’s Gospel and destroyed the Thomas’s.
And we, 21st Century men, were forced to accept and blindly follow the ideas of early Christian bishops and emperor as the words of God and the wisdom of daily life.

Probably now, we, “ the Joe Blows who have an average level of knowledge” as our Steve indicated, may be able to come to the conclusion how we read the narratives of the Bible: should we read it literally and historically as a record of history or metaphorically and allegorically as a collection of the ancient episodes.
Centuries of blissful ignorance about the Bible went by due to our pastors, priests, and bishops who “cherry-pick” the narratives of the Bible and hide the absurdity from their pews of multiple errors, contradiction, debaucheries, massacres, and violence in it.

I think the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are two separate things…you can have the latter, mystic Christ, without the former, the earthly Jesus, likewise as millions of people become Christian when they were baptized being held helplessly in their parent’s arms or brainwashed and implanted in a sea of academic, social, cultural and political ambience that sanctions and promotes both the history and the faith of Jesus Christ are one and same.

Doubt is a great weapon for the emphatic seeker of truth.
You don’t have to toe the line with the traditional, popular, orthodox, and official version of the truth all the time, since there is no absolute truth in human society where truth evolves according to the wavelength of human knowledge.
Carl Sagan, the late physicist said: if the ascension of Jesus Christ to Heaven is real, he must still be traveling in the millions of light-years in the space.
You can be either a doubter, living a life as an incessant truth-seeker who unlearns the conventional wisdom or a ditto head institutional Christian who lives, eats, procreates, prays, wishes, and the next day you are gone and never seen again.
Be alert!

P.S. (In John’s Gospel, “Doubting” Thomas doubted Jesus’ resurrection until he saw the scar on Jesus’ hands, and Thomas claims to be Jesus’ twin as Thomas is Aramaic word for twin. It is a question that this Thomas is the same Judas Thomas, whom Mark and Matthew mention as the brother of Jesus or the author of the Gospel of Thomas.)

Santa Claus is coming to town

Alas! Alack-a-day! Ban-chusa is coming to town
December 22 2006

“Santa Claus is coming to town…. I am making a list…checking a list twice…going to find who’s naughty or nice…Ban-chusa is coming to town.”

Author’s note 1: Ban, Ki-moon, the newly elected Secretary General of the United Nations, has been carrying an appellation, “Ban-chusa”, during the 35-something years of his bureaucratic life in the South Korean Government…the loose translation of “chusa” refers to a low-level mandarin in a duty of an administrative clerk who generally lacks of charisma and is chockfull of uninspiring character that only concerns about one’s tenure as a dull, bland, faceless, inoffensive, unexciting, and run-of –the –mill errand boy. Most typically, the “chusa” plays a role of an official lapdog to bark in behalf of one’s master whenever boss yells “sic’em!”

Author’s note 2: You may find a live video here where Ban-chusa mutters, fumbles, and croons in a foolish and botched manner. Watching the video first and then reading my article later may help considerably in understanding the main pillar of my argument, the duck principle: if it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it is a duck, period. )

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ifs_news/hi/nb_rm_fs.stm?news=1&nbram=1&nbwm=1&nol_storyid=6181719


“America with other members (of the United Nations)…have been making a great contribution to restore peace and stability…to the Iraqi people. We have a high admiration for all that the United States has been doing…we hope that the Iraqi people will be able to enjoy genuine stability.”

That was the exact words, Ban-chusa told the anchorman Bill Weir during his interview in Good Morning America’s weekend edition in October 15 2006 after he shot to super stardom, the Secretary General, shamelessly telecasting his “chusa-character” to his future master, USA, and butting head with current Secretary General Kofi Annan’s statement that the US invasion of Iraq was illegal and Iraqi people are suffering from the daily onslaughts of civil war brought on by the US military occupation.

Even the stray dogs in the street of New York City where Ban-chusa begins his new UN career in 2007 know well that the US military occupation in Iraq is not “making a great contribution to restore peace and stability” in the region and the Iraqi people are not “admiring highly for all that the US has been doing,” while the incoming Secretary General profusely thanked the American people for exporting democracy and bringing stability to Iraq.

What’s up, Doc?

How in the world do we expect Ban-chusa doing his job of a strong and unbiased arbiter, trouble-shooter, and problem-solver for the delicate and intense international conflicts like the Middle East conflicts, World Food Program, Refugee Programs, Human Rights and Atomic Energy Issues?
How in the world do we hope that Ban-chusa stands up against the big powers in favor of the weak member state, when he kowtowed 90 degree genuflecting on the mat squeaking “halleluiah America”?
Isn’t the job of the Secretary General just too big for a little known “chusa” whose main function is more a milquetoast secretary than an assertive General?

Nothing in his past indicates that Ban-chusa would function as a powerful statesman in a rule-setting international body like the past Secretary Generals Dag Hammarskjold and U Thant… he rather works a backroom boy as he’s been doing all in his public life, serving his masters from the Military dictators to the political hacks.
During the brutal totalitarian regime of despotic General Park CH when most of his friends in the university converged in the street for mass demonstration to gain freedom and democracy and were arrested, tortured, jailed and exiled from the country, he hid cowardly in an attic closing his eyes, plugging his ears, gagging his mouth, and studied hard in 24/7 fashion in order to become a “chusa”.
In other words, from the beginning he has carried a quintessential characteristic of “chusa” class-consciousness that borders on total obsequiousness toward his master.

In his academic years during the sixties, the South Korea was embroidered with massive student demonstrations that a majority of university youngsters poured out into the street day in and day out, demanding the rights of free speech in the campus, petitions of habeas corpus for jailed students, and the abolition of military dictatorship.
In response, General Park CH released a coterie of hundreds of goon squads armed with iron pipes and baseball bats against the demonstrating students, beating and cracking the skulls and bodies of unarmed youngsters, arresting en masse and corralling them in temporary holding pens and administering the torture of water boarding to the student leaders.
The prisons were flooded with students, professors, labor leaders, and ordinary people who valiantly protested against his tyranny and hundreds of detainees were met with various forms of tortures and long-term jail sentences that resulted in suspicious deaths of dozens of innocent people and in the judicial killings of dissident groups.

In this social ambience, Ban-chusa was warming up his ass glued on a chair, studied hard fueled by his desire becoming a “chusa” and then passed successfully for the state exam ignoring the desperate cries from his fellow students…and then he has cut his teeth on 35-something years of his public service as a kowtowing yes man toward the iron-fisted, torture-maniac, and tin-pot military dictators (Gen. Park, Chun and Roh), an enchilada of a corrupt political hack (YS Kim), an opportunistic and venal comprador (DJ Kim), and a plastic and tubby bullfrog (Roh MH).
In other words, he, like the all-season tire, appeared to be talented with accommodating the various wishes of any type of bosses, a perfect character of a loyal, bootlicking, insipid, spineless, and weathervane milquetoast “chusa” and he had a gall cum nicety to say sorry sheepishly to his “senior-chusas” when he was awarded unceremoniously with getting promoted ahead of them.

Contrary to his admirer’s accolades that he was fastidious and laborious in implementing rules and regulations with fine details, he once goofed up the international treaty with Russia and was booted out from his ambassadorship until the foreign minister of the South Korea ratcheted him up from the street for his excellent (?) skill in English and French language…that is, his execrable English skill is obviously good enough in Korean standard among the diplomatic bureaucrats at the Foreign Ministry where scores of malapropistic “chusas” huddle picking some lunch leftovers between their teeth with a wooden toothpick in the corridors of cafeteria.
As “Ban-chusa” himself admitted frequently that he learns English by rote as most of Koreans do, he, in the live interview, often mumbles or mutters in English with no intonation like a parrot and spews out a series of monotonous vocabularies like a robot with his squinty eyeballs desperately rolling to search the memorized words or phrases he prepared in his rehearsals for press conference.

There is also a disturbing press report that he might be a member of the Unification Church because he quoted himself a “non-denominational Christian”…it is possible he might briefly be joined with the Moonies during his school years, because it was a heyday for the Moonies to recruit and brainwash the Korean youngsters, considering Ban-chusa was somewhat a loner, a wonk, and a farm boy with little money away from his hometown…a desirable target for Moonies.
It also bodes evil if it were proven that he was a Moonies, because the notorious Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) at the time employed Moonies their agents in Korea for the domestic surveillance against the dissident group, in Japan for the covert operation to disrupt anti-government movement, and in US for a major conduit to distribute the hush money toward Korean resident sleepers who lobbied for the dictatorial South Korean military government.

In the academic sense of moral and political standard, the qualities of “Ban-chusa” squarely remain in the lowest rung of promotional ladder in the bureaucratic system.

Strangely, for Bonkers Bolton, the boneheaded US envoy to the UN, “Ban-chusa” became first an accidental, second a sought-after and then a god-send candidate for the UN Secretary General in his pursuit of reforming the UN organizations palatable to the US foreign policies of imperial expansionism…Bonkers Bolton has long dismissed the legitimacy of the UN, quipping that “If the US secretary building in New York lost ten stories, it would not make a bit of difference”, and he needs someone a “chusa”-class bureaucrat who loyally follows the orders of the superpower nation unlike Mr. Kofi Annan who frequently irks the US interests in the international arena.

In other words, Bonkers Bolton wanted to make the UN an unworkable organization only as good one as it dances according to the tune of US foreign engagements and “Ban-chusa” provides the choreograph for the tune accordingly.
And “Ban-chusa” appears to be carrying all the ingredients to a fault in his bureaucratic genes executing the US intention to make the world organization a spineless, wobbling, and “impossible” institute.

Luckily for the time being, “Ban-chusa” was spared from the barking orders by the abrasive, infantile, and boorish Bonkers Bolton when the US envoy failed to get the confirmation from the US Senate and was forced to resign, as “Ban-chusa” was about to move in to take the seat in the UN building
However, Ban-chusa’s honeymoon in town won’t last much long, since Uncle Sam would breathe down on his neck closely so as not to let him stray too far away from the peg that the South Koreans were tethered in the puppet/puppeteer relationship with the US occupation forces for over half a century.

For 35 something years, “Ban-chusa” has been sitting by the same peg so long that he might have no sensation of a leash around his neck, playing antics comically about 007 James Bond and singing boyishly a Christmas carol “Santa Claus is coming to town” at the press conference as the video shows.
He alluded to the similarity between Ban and Bond, and replaced lyrics with “Ban Ki-moon is coming to town” as if he were a Santa bringing gifts to the international community.

Some say “Ban-chusa” deserves to be seen as well a good administrator of the world organization as he claimed a harmonizer and bridge-builder among member nations…
But how on earth could world people have an image of “Ban-chusa” a man of integrity when he is as blind as an owl in daylight, shouting that “We thank America for all that they have been doing in Iraq”? He doesn’t follow the daily news of bombings, killings, and massacres that Americans have brought down to the streets, towns, and homes of Iraqi civilians?

Then, obviously, as the saying goes that “if it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck”, there are only two possibilities: “Ban-chusa” must be either an idiot when he says totally opposite images of catastrophes in Iraq that even the stray dogs in the street can attest easily his falsification. Or he is a liar wearing the pairs of USA-made goggles that show always Alice-in-Wonderland of incomplete projects and wishful thinking for freedom and democracy in the Islamic country of Iraq.

In either way, there is no attic to hide in his new playing field at the UN building as if he hid cowardly playing a game of peek-a-boo during his school years.
History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes,
Sadly, my bet is that “Ban-chusa” would be monikered more of a pipsqueak Secretariat who almost always kowtows to his master as he has done for three-decade-long career than an assertive General who stands up in his bully pulpit and barks back against the growling Superman, Uncle Sam, since “Ban-chusa” has neither intellectual mettle and temerity nor moral fiber and commitment to deal with the worldwide conflicts.

A Pensee on The Holocaust

A Pensee On The Holocaust
(Review on Sue’s Book Review “Dry Tears”)
November 26 2006

***Author’s note: I write this review to provoke discussion about a Holocaust paradigm that views it only as a Jewish monopoly classifying other holocausts as illegitimate and inconsequential and denying other non-Jewish survivors to share the term Holocaust: “your catastrophe is less unique, comparable, comprehensible, and distinctive than ours.”
However, my review is not designed to discourage reading the book, “Dry Tears”, but remind the readers every saga has always two-sides story and the Holocaust story should not be hijacked by the vested interests like the Jewish organizations in America.***

Plato: “you cannot compare any two miserable people and say that one is happier than other,”

First of all, I am pleased to find that Sue Choi reads a book…I mean I thought most of youngsters nowadays would spend most of their times watching TV, playing games, chitchatting in chat-room or driveling on cellular phone day in, day out instead, sometimes, of perusing some books, any books except for the SAT. (Do you still have a history class in your curriculum?)

In her book review in November issue of the Church News Letter, Sue categorized the autobiography of the Holocaust Survivor, “Dry Tears”, an appropriate, excellent and good book for anybody of any age who would like to learn more about the Holocaust.
She also praised the book as it tells “all of the informational facts” about the Holocaust “to let other people re-live the Holocaust”.
Since I have not read “Dry Tears” written by Nechama Tec, I cannot give a detailed review on the book but critique about what Sue wrote about in her review.

The term holocaust derives from the Greek, meaning a completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering to a god, and it has been used to refer to disasters or catastrophes. (Jews call the Holocaust “Shoah” meaning calamity in Hebrew.)
I assume that Sue understands the Holocaust exclusively as “Shoah”, the systematic Nazi state-sponsored extermination of 6 million Jews excluding millions of other victims as most of Americans accept it as well…that is, “The Holocaust” always or almost always refers to a Jewish genocide of Nazi murder program, “The Final Solution” by the Nazi regime.

Frankly speaking, I am very much skeptical that Sue would know there were about 5 million non-Jewish victims (Gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses, Slavs, Polish Catholics, disabled peoples, etc) added to the 6 million Jewish Nazi victims in the 11 million rosters at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I cannot help but sympathizing her for not knowing it, since the Museum operates under the principle: “if you did not die as a Jew…6 million Jews, you died differently,” marginalizing the sufferings of other victims of The Holocaust.

Therefore, I believe Sue’s review on the book, “Dry Tears”, merits to be reviewed again, since the story is related only to “The Jewish Holocaust”, the only historical reference that resonates in the classroom in the US. (Many college professors testify that compared to Civil War, many more college undergraduates are able to place the Nazi holocaust in the right century and to cite the number killed.)

In other words, “The Holocaust” was such heavily Americanized that it became an American memory and as American as an apple pie, even though it had nothing to do with Americans…I mean it occurred in other country thousands miles away across the ocean.
However, “The Holocaust”, curiously for two decades, has not evolved becoming the American consciousness right after the World War Two. (The sad stories of the Holocaust did not spring up in American psyche until 1960s, as the New York Times did not even publish the first story of The Holocaust until 1959.)

Memories, like “Remember Pearl Harbor! Remember 911!”, has no sense of the passage of time; it denies the “pastness” of its objects, and insists on their continuing presence.
And “Remember the Holocaust!” is no exception…after another two decades of silence and the following memorialization through TV drama series about the Holocaust, it culminated in the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Museum and first screening of Spielberg’s Shindler’s List in 1993, institutionalizing the memory permanently in the heart and mind of American people.

Cui bono?

Some argue that the Americanization of the Holocaust allows a foreign trauma becoming a central position in American consciousness in order to cover up the national tragedies like the genocide of Native Indian Americans and 200 years of the African American Slave System…that is, it is much easier, for Americans, to deplore the crimes of others than look at their own holocaust,
Others contend: the American Jewry put the Holocaust on the American agenda when they discovered that Holocaust memory seemed desirable and appropriate to acquire the victim status in the course of establishing the Jewish State of Israel in Palestine.

Aside from the American guilty feeling about their atrocities against the Native and Black people, the Jewish American leaders in postwar years did not look highly on the Holocaust survivors in the first place, saying that “those who have survived are not the fittest…but are largely lowest Jewish elements, who by cunning and animal instincts have been able to escape the terrible fate of the more refined and better elements who succumbed”, according to the Holocaust historian Peter Novick.
Even David Ben-Gurion, the father of the State of Israel, depicted the survivors in negative view: “they were people who would not have survived if they had not been what they were…hard, evil and selfish people.”

In other words, the Holocaust survivors right after the War were not termed in honorific way evoking sympathy, admiration, or even awe.
They were marginalized by the American Jewish elites who feared of recurring anti-Semitism in the US after the war, and the Holocaust victims were generally depicted in news media as DPs (Displaced Persons) in universal terms.
Then, how this European event, Holocaust, sprang up in the center stage of American life? And why the Jews decided to upfront the Holocaust stories in the American culture?

The partial answer on this query is that Jews in America play a major and important role in Hollywood, TV industry, newspaper, magazine, and book (comic book too!) publishing sectors, and they were eager to get help from the ordinary Americans in the establishment of the State of Israel, casting itself a “victim” state.

The idea of victimhood has been a core of Jewish identity that formed by historical persecution and the Holocaust, and it became a sort of cult among Jewish people.
And this Holocaust victimhood became a beneficial ideological weapon to ward off all criticism and to justify the criminal policies of the Israeli government against the Palestinian Arabs.

In essence, what I want to argue here is that we seemed to have an incongruous, disfigured and distorted version of Nazi genocide, “The Holocaust” that serves the ONLY interest of the State of Israel...an ethnocracy of the Jewish State in which both 1.3 million Israeli Arabs inside the Israeli proper and 3.6 million Palestinians in occupied territories have been subjected to another holocaust of ethnic cleansing by, ironically and obscenely, the Judeo-Nazi-The-Holocaust-Victims.

The fact almost unknown to the world is that there are Israeli Arabs (one-fifth of Israeli population) who live as the Israeli Citizens but hold no nationality…they are guests in their own motherland, trespassers in their own hometown, and they are even NOT the second class citizens like blacks, Asians or Muslims in the US but the non-resident visitors destined eventually to go somewhere to live, when Jews find ways to kick them out permanently in order to make room for a Jew living in Brooklyn, New York City. (Even dying is a problem if you are an Arab in Israel, because almost all land, 93%, is owned by the State, there is no new cemetery available for the dead Israeli Arab citizens.)

In Gaza Strip where Israeli Government “disengaged” unilaterally from the military occupation, the Palestinians were corralled into an “open-air” concentration camp sans ovens by the Jews, summoning the “inverted” memories of The Holocaust.
For decades, these people have been terrorized on a daily basis by the Israeli Occupation Forces in roadblocks, incursions, checkpoints, and walled environment, they are subjected to air raids, artillery and tank bombardments, and the economic strangulation tantamount to slow pace of total extermination.

Of course, it is inspiring and amazing, as our Sue reviewed, that the Holocaust is examined through the eyes of survivors and it was a horrible and despicable historical event we all endeavor never to repeat it again.
However, if Jews show paranoia in insisting the uniqueness and distinctiveness of the Holocaust compared to other holocausts, it is a moral travesty that Jewish lives are more precious, beloved, esteemed, and valuable than others.
In other words, the claim of Holocaust uniqueness is equivalent of claiming the Jewish uniqueness, special status, and a distasteful secular version of chosen-ness.

Therefore, it is also despicable and abhorring claim that Jews have every right to protect themselves, however they see fit as in case in dealing with their archetypal enemy, the Palestinian Arabs, employing almost analogous Nazi-tactics that The Holocaust victims had been subjected to.

Unless Jews begin to realize that the sufferings of “The Holocaust” victims are no more painful, sorrowful, and abominable than other holocaust victim’s as they refuse to think of Palestinians as victims, they do keep committing the inhumane crimes against the helpless Palestinian Arabs.

Unless Jews begin to stop thinking that they possess solely a two-thousand-year-old title deed to the Palestinian land ordained by the Great Realtor, in other words, without the abdication of Jewish uniqueness, distinctiveness, and chosenness, they would not be able to listen Other’s voice or to take responsibility for their role in Other’s sorrow, pain, agony, misfortune, and sufferings.

In this perspective, the narratives of “The Holocaust” could not possibly and arbitrarily be monopolized by the Jew-only survivors, but its saga should be analyzed, shared, examined, disseminated, and memorialized by all of us, since we all are victims of holocaust.

PS: I recommend readers a book, “The Other Side of Israel” written by Susan Nathan, who moved from her comfortable home in Tel Aviv to an Arab Town in Israel and lived as an only Jewish woman among the oppressed indigenous Arab population of 25,000 Muslims. I promise that this book would bring you an eyewitness, live, and true story you’d never get from the mainstream media and help you to better understand what I wrote about here.

The Commercialization of Education

The Commercialization of Education
by Daniel Hong

In his 1993 movie "Indecent Proposal," Robert Redford, luring Demi Moore to spend one night with him for $1 million, showed the cultural zeitgeist by stating that "Yes, everything is for sale." Today, this includes college education.

Every year since 1983, U.S. News & World Report publishes "America's Best Colleges," showing merely the tip of iceberg on how much education has been commercialized as the weekly treats higher education as a thing to be measured and weighed. In those hands, college education becomes a commodity like cars or computers that have been rated by consumer magazines so that students and parents can buy accordingly.

In choosing a college, many students and their parents are swayed by the rankings without questioning the methodology behind the report. Here are several questionable formulas in their methodology.


The report assumes that the quality of education can be quantified in numbers. But, how do you translate the quality of discussions between professors and students into numbers?


They use the weighted formulas such as freshmen in top 10 percent of high school class, alumni giving rate (5 percent) and peer assessment score (20 percent). Do all high schools have their class ranking system? Do all students care about the alumni-giving rate? Do all so-called "top academics peers" really know other institutions inside and out well enough to evaluate their quality?


What's the difference between the schools ranked No. 1 and No. 10? Not much in the statistical sense from the report. However, by listing the ranks arbitrarily in hierarchical order, the report creates an illusion of a huge gap to the uninformed readers.


What about such invaluable criteria as access to faculty, social climate, financial resources, quality of academic resources (library, labs and computers), housing and food service quality, sports program, job placement, advance studies in graduate and professional schools, and fostering of students' lifelong intellectual and psychological development?

To acknowledge the shortcoming of the rankings, therefore, the news magazine needs to put a warning sign just like the surgeon general's caveat for cigarettes: "It has been determined that reading these rankings may cause quick and uninformed choices concerning the colleges you think are right for you. It contains misleading data which may not be helpful in identifying the real quality and character of a college in which you are interested."

Just as people still smoke by their choice in spite of the warning label, the report will shine through and be meritorious for some people who choose to believe it. It is the perfect fodder for the pliable with herd instincts who are obsessed with status and prestige, and for those who need a therapeutic session that soothes their egos.

The ranking report indeed is a sad commentary on our society, in which many are infatuated with lists and rankings. It shows we care too much about what is outside and too little about what is inside. Hence, we need to rethink about the real purpose of college education. Students and their parents shouldn't be swayed by the ephemeral rankings but rather listen to what John Dewey said: "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

So, do you want to measure your life according to the indecent proposal filled with spurious formulas provided by the weekly?

Pastor Chang HJ replied

제 생각은 ‘대학교육’에 대한 환상은 이미 깨어진지 오래라는 것입니다. 그 말은 이제 더 이상 대학은 ‘상아탑’으로서의 기능을 갖지 못한다는 것이며 오직 ‘기술교육’의 장소일 뿐이라는 것입니다. 그러므로 보다 비싼 값을 낸 학교가 보다 좋은 기술을 가르치고 보다 좋은 취업의 길을 열어 주는 것이 당연한 수요 공급의 원리라고 생각합니다.

마치 빵을 만들기 위해 밀가루를 얼마나 넣어야하고 계란과 버터의 비율이 얼마이며 오븐의 온도를 얼마에 맞추어야 하는가 하는 것을 배우는 것이나 많은 열매를 맺게 하기 위해 가지치기를 하는 시기와 사용하는 비료와 약치기를 하는 방법을 배우는 것과 다를 것이 없다고 생각 합니다.

이는 어떻게 배심원들의 마음을 움직여 재판에서 이기는가를 배우는 것이나, 어떻게 멈추어 버린 심장을 다시 뛰게 하는가 또는 어떻게 학생들에게 플라톤과 모택동을 이해 시키는 가 하는 방법을 배우는 것과 비교 해 볼 때 이미 대학은 꿈에 그리는 ‘교육’의 장이 아니라 삶의 기술과 방법을 가르치는 곳일 뿐이라는 것입니다.

‘교육이 곧 삶’이라는 말은 교육자들의 자기 과대 평가일 뿐 과연 진정으로 누가 누구를 참 ‘교육’ 시킬 수 있겠습니까?

오늘의 대학 교육은 그저 상업화된 삶의 기술을 가르치는 곳이라 생각 합니다. 마치 어떤 이는 새를 잡기위해 돌을 던지고 그런가 하면 어떤 이는 고무줄이 달린 새총을 사용하고 그보다 더 많은 것을 투자 한 이는 엽총을 사용하는 것 정도의 차이 뿐이라고 생각 합니다.

‘진정한 교육’, ‘삶으로서의 교육’ 그것은 학교에서 가르치는 것이 아니라 세상에서 자신이 자신에게 할 수 있는 것 뿐이라고 생각 합니다.

해서 저는 교육의 상업화에 별 염려하지 않습니다. 물론 기대하지도 않지만 그보다도 하나님은 사람에게 스스로 자신을 ‘교육’시킬 수있는 능력을 주셨다고 믿기 때문입니다.


Yes, Everything is for Sale”
September 2, 2006

Frankly speaking, I was initially amazed, secondly dismayed, and lastly disheartened by your remark on the “commercialization of education” that you are less concerned and worried about the our college education system being run commercialized like the free market system of the supply and demand principle, and you would like to leave the matter in the invisible hand of God.

For the worse proposition, you’d like to take the commercialized education for granted a fait accompli, as you get more in return if you pay or invest more, and you disparaged educator’s buzzword, “education is not preparation for life; education is life itself”, as a tall catchphrase, adding that “a real life” begins at the society where we are becoming the self-made man.

It is true, I admit, that we live in a society that fathoms life in terms of numbers, like polls, statistics, ranks, percentage, dollars, Dow john’s averages, etc., and our education institution manufactures years after years a massive number of robotic technocrats who value a thing only in terms of numbers not in terms of humanity.

When you wander along the bustling street of the Fifth Avenue in the New York City, you’d find that a majority of pedestrians, drivers, deliverymen, and messenger boys on a bike, talks incessantly on a cellular phone with someone invisible on the other end of line…they are inattentive to or not interacting with their physical proximity.

Among the whole enchilada of diverse groups, you don’t have difficulty finding a gaggle of school age youngsters attached to iPod, CD cassettes, Cell-phones, or other gadgets in their own world…It’s a universe of “my space” where gadgets that are made to enhance greater communication only serve to separate us from humanity.

It is no wonder why we do not care about Others, those not in “my space”…we could not fathom how someone lives with one dollar a day at the opposite side of the “my space”, because we live in the world where one dollar does not bring much or many things to us.
As long as they do not infringe on “my space”, they are irrelevant and not being counted as numbers.

When we reflect on the purpose of education, one may say that it trains youngster’s mind in the facts, rules, formulas, numbers, and precepts in curriculum.
Other may say that it stretches the mind of students giving them skills to inquire and discuss ideas and beliefs that they can participate with their neighbors.
The bottom line is how we can balance above-mentioned reflections in its implementation…

And I find that we tilted our system too much toward the former case that weighs more on numbers and formulas: and the latter case is more harder to be implemented, because it is a process, not a formula that can be compressed into a book or reflected with numbers.

In which term do you wish your sons and daughters after the school year being portrayed by your neighbors in the community?
A robotic technocrat with a prestigious diploma who lives only in his space? Or a man of intelligence whose ideas and beliefs encompass for the betterment in the entire world of humanity?

Probably, I gather that you appear to reflect the money-grubbing characteristics on behalf of the ugly Korean immigrant community, in which a majority wishes to see their kids to be a dumb family doctor, an ambulance-chasing lawyer, an ever-squabbling stock, insurance, and mortgage broker, a spurious financier, an egotistic and Hispanic-bashing “deli-CEO”, a swaggering and unconscionable Church elder, etc., whose training had more to do with numbers and less to do with humanities.

Inshallah!!

The Samson Option: Nuclear Strategy for North Korea

The Samson Option: Nuclear Strategy for North Korea
October 25, 2006

“Samson said, let me die with the Philistines…so the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life” (Judges 16:4-30)

1. The Perception Gap

For the month of October this year, there has been vociferous gaga among nations over the nuclear test of the North Korea that panjandrums of pundits, scholars, anchorpersons, and analysts of every colors pitched in their high opinion about what to do with the pariah state.
In other words, the Western mass media constantly tell us how Americans see the nuclear proliferation in the Far East region in their own perspective and the same outlet rarely tell us much about how others living in the region see it.
The gap between perceptions on the issue is so enormous that people are confused and misinformed of the situation that might develop into the nuclear brinkmanship and eventual nuclear conflagration in the Korean peninsular and vicinity.

For the better understanding of the situation, we have to wear two pairs of shoes from both sides on the equal footing, the US and the North Korea, not like the Western mainstream media that propagate and spin only the one-sided story from the US government, depicting the North Korea an unstable, irrational, and rogue regime ruled by crazy man, Kim Jong-il.
Now let’s begin putting ourselves into the Uncle Sam’s shoes…

The United States want the North Korea to stop immediately the nuclear programs, because the regime of Kim Jong-il is one of the axis of evil that threatens the world peace. In addition to economic sanction against the North Korea, Uncle Sam immediately exercised the piracy on high seas under the PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative) that violates the international law, and the US Defense Secretary strongly demanded his counterpart from the South Korean Government that the South should take part in the PSI operation against the North, that is, the US want their lackey regime joining to escalate in war footing against their Northern brother.
In sum, the US determine this time not to engage in peaceful negotiation but to bring about their ultimate objective of another “regime change” operation against the sovereign country as they exercised, for years, against many countries numerous times around the world, various Latin American countries, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, et al.

From North Korea’s perspective on the other hand, its nuclear program is a fundamental element in their national defense and security.
Therefore, there is little likelihood that Kim Jong-il would give up the weapon of last resort.
Just for a moment imagine what you would do if you were put in the North Korean shoes…for them, scrapping the nuclear program is like throwing out the life jacket from the typhoon-wrecked vessel in the middle of the ocean that would be one and only tool to save them from drowning in the sea of enemies, Japan, South Korea, USA et al.

Would you give up one and only bargaining chip before sitting down with the 800-pound gorilla with megatons of nuclear, hydrogen, and chemical bombs who has been historically harassing, sanctioning, shooting, bombing, killing, and “regime-changing” at will the poor and weaker nations around the world?
Thinking from more rational perspective, you’d be quite easy to comprehend why the North Korea decided to possess the nuclear bombs, if you turn your attention toward the Israeli decision to become the member of the Nuclear Club in early 60s when Israelis felt its survival was on the line. (The media rarely compare Israeli situation with North Korea’s because they for decades conspired to remain silent on Israeli’s nuclear arms.)

The Israeli Government in early 1960s adopted the Samson Option as their basic defense policy against the Arab enemies, realizing that nuclear weapons are one and only equalizer in order to survive in the situation encircled by Arab Muslim nations.
“Never Again!” reasoning that Holocaust occurred in part because Jews in Europe did not resist became a zeitgeist that Israel would never be passive in the face of its enemy attack even though they face total annihilation.

2.The Samson Option: 1st Edition

The Samson Option refers to Samson’s choice, the Biblical namesake in Judges 16:4-30, who brought down two main pillars of a great temple when he was cornered by the Philistines, killing both his enemy and himself.
The basic defense policy of Israel since its birth was to build the strongest military power in both conventional and thermo-nuclear arms, and it would not hesitate to flex her muscle when dealing with her neighbors, Arab countries.

According to Seymour Hersh, the author of “The Samson Option”, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in the 60s pondered about the Dimona nuclear programs the practical ones because the Dimona project was costing upward of $500 million a year, more than 10 percent of the Israeli military budget.
He was initially worrying about the money not being spent elsewhere: “I don’t have the money for it. How many children will go without shoes? How many students will not go to university?”

But for Ben-Gurion’s eye, the Father of Israeli State, “the nuclear project was holy”, assuming sacred dimensions…and the American Jews, from the billionaires to the father of H-bombs in the US, led a secret campaign for the Israeli to acquire the atomic bombs, raising billions of dollars and providing the nuclear technology.
Above all, it was an undeniable fact that the US, Great Britain, and France were conspired to provide Israelis with materials, money, technologies, and acquiescence, in order to position a teeny small Jewish nation a nuclear gendarmerie in the region.

Ever since Harry Truman’s support of the birth of Israel (there is an episode that two Jews delivered two suitcases of cold cash, 2 million dollars, to the Truman campaign train), the US government, Democrat or Republican, turned the blind eyes on the Israeli nuclear ambition and behaved like a cat that swallowed the canary when they were pushed to the limit.
During the 1973 Yom Kippur War when Israeli defense was in danger of total collapse by the invading Arab forces, the Israeli Government threatened both Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon with the use of nuclear weapons against the Arab countries.

In the Gulf War in 1991, the US Government had provided the Israelis the batteries of the Patriot Missiles against the incoming Scud missile attacks by Saddam Hussein, fearing that the Israeli Government might engage in pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Iraq.
On the issue of Iranian attempt to develop the nuclear capabilities, it is rational, putting in terms of the Samson Option, to think that Israelis strongly feel compelled to strike first, before Iran has the ability to make its own first strike.
In sum, the fact that the nuclear capability empowered the Israel providing the leverage in regional conflicts has offered an attractive logic for other countries considering the nuclear option: the United States has never attacked a country with nuclear arms.

3. The Samson Option: 2nd Edition

Since Israel was known a country holding the nuclear bombs in the basement, India and Pakistan officially declared to join the Nuclear Club, making total eight countries membership nation.
For Kim Jong-il’s North Korea, it is apparent and logical to join the Nuclear Club that would guarantee to protect them from the Yankee harassment and insult.
It is bizarre to see why the Western nations cannot understand the North Korea’s situation while they can understand the fear that forced Israelis to hold the nuclear option.

In case of Pakistan, Uncle Sam initially regarded it as a rogue nuclear state when it test fired missiles capable of carrying the atomic warhead with North Korea’s Rodong technology.
It is also known fact that the North Korea had acquired the bomb making techniques from the Pakistan in return for exchanging missile technology, designating both Pakistan and North Korea the violating countries of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty).
And voila!
Pakistan is a great friend of Uncle Sam, getting billions of military aids from the US and North Korea became an evil nation that threatens the world peace.

Imagine for a moment that Kim Jong-il does not have nuclear deterrence against his enemies…the street of Pyongyang flares up frequently, at Uncle Sam’s whim, with cluster, napalm, and 500-pound bombs lobbed by Tomahawk missiles and a squadron of B-50 bombers launched from the Guam Air Base.
Imagine for a second how many North Korean men, women, and children would perish without any recourse to counterbalance the barbaric and cowardly bombing raids.
One does not need to imagine the scenario in case the North Korea with a lack of nuclear capability…the world already and abundantly experienced how Uncle Sam punished the weak countries at random in order to shape world in his own image.

Now, is there still anyone to rebuke Kim’s rationale holding the nuclear bombs in his bosom while accepting Israelis Samson Option?

4. Conclusion

In essence, the Samson Option adopted by various weak nations upset the cold war model for nuclear strategy…during the Cold War, the more you hold nuclear weapons, the more you have power and deterrence against your enemies.
Not any more!
You don’t need piles of atomic bombs to deter the enemy attack but how and when one or two bombs strategically position to strike and disrupt the core area.

Ariel Sharon, an Israeli General and ex-Prime Minister, once said: “Arab may have the oil, but we have the match.” (Since January he is in a vegetative coma state peeing and pooping in his pants devoid of his arrogance and chutzpah.)
Kim Jong-il brags: “We don’t have a luxury of cell phone, I-Pod, or HD TV, but have an A-bomb to take you to Inferno together.”
However there is a slim hope that we, if logical, sane, and reasonable, could prevent any nation to initiate the suicidal attack, since the Samson Option requires preparing for the total annihilation of the launching nation.

Kim may behave like a sewer rat, but he still has a choice of biting you when you corner him with no escape route.
On the other hand, Kim is poised, contrary to the Western media spins, no threat of launching the Samson Option on its neighbors, Japan and South Korea unless he feels otherwise no other choice.
How a nation that cannot feed its own people three-meals-a-day could engage in a war against the enemy whose conventional and nuclear arsenal could annihilate the whole population on the earth?

Don’t let the spin-doctors (the stupidity of Mr. Cho-Joong-Dong in South Korea and the arrogance of the Neo-Con warmongers in US) dictate your life!
Sanctions and other efforts, like “Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” US imperial diplomacy, to isolate the North Korea are not the most effective way to deal with nuclear-armed “madman”, Kim Jong-il.
I tell people you only live this life once, whether you are an American, North or South Korean, Jew or Japanese! We all are on the same boat.
The choice is with us…and jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.
Let us resume to talk again.

Peace! Insh Allah! Shalom!
pepesojourner@verizon.net