BONO’s Festival of Abraham

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Bono, in his latest column for the New York Times, laments our overindulgence in the end of year top 10 lists. (but I am not above plugging my top ten list of top news stories, top songs, & top movies)

What Bono gives us (and I smell a failure to make a deadline as a motivating factor) is his Top ten ideas to make the next decade more interesting, civil and healthy.

Gazing to the future through the rose colored glasses of an international rock star you will find ideas about, curing cancer, more non violent revolutions (or Sunday not so bloody Sunday’s to come) and his hopes for Nelson Mandella to kick off the opening ceremonies of the World Cup to be held in Africa later this year.

Then one stumbles on this:
Festival of Abraham

Bono writes:

The idea is an arts festival that celebrates the origin of the three Abraham religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Every year it could be held in a different location; Jerusalem would obviously be the best place to start.

Let’s get this straight, an arts festival that somehow affirms three separate and eternal Gods who created the universe, attended by members of three distinctly different religions whose membership requires the belief in one distinct and eternal GOD who created the universe to the exclusion of all others and who rules history,  sends prophets and angels to reveal the divine will through inspired Scriptures and- and this is kinda key, dontcha think? – demand that obedience to this SINGLE creator, and that one day the ONE God will unilaterally quail crush and conclude the course of human history and sequestered the vanquished souls to heaven or hell based on one’s ability to obey that one single GOD?

That kind of arts festival, Bono?

Knowing full well that his middle east Lollapalooza could well turn into Armageddon, Bono offers an early qualifier to his wish, stating this Festival of Abraham could only occur if there is a “breakthrough in the middle east peace process.”

Chew on this: the only hope for peace in the middle east is to stop believing in angels. To stop treating the old testament as a real estate dead, to render laughable the very idea of a GOD above.

In short, this festival of Abraham of Bono’s can only happen if the world wakes up from it’s stupor and removes the Bible, and the Qur’an from the religious section of the library and placing them on the shelves next to The Iliad and The Odyssey in the mythology section.

Abraham, meet Zeus. Zeus, Abraham. Now, can we get on living and avoiding the self fulfilling prophecy of Armageddon?

How is that for a wish for the next decade?

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The Eisenhower Doctrine ♦ This Day In The USA ♦ Jan 5

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The Eisenhower Doctrine ♦ This Day In The USA ♦ Jan 5
by Davis Fleetwood

Good morning scholars.

Questions for discussion today: How long has the United States been meddling in the Middle East? What is the difference between Pre-emptive and proactive? And what exactly are the limits the “fair use” doctrine of copyright law?

On this day in the USA, Jan 5 1957 the President implemented The Eisenhower doctrine. This was not the eloquent Dwight D Eisenhower many of us know from his most daring Presidential farewell address warning our dear ears about the military industrial complex, this was four years earlier, when Dwight D was addressing Congress. And he didn’t say preventive or pre-emptive, okay? He said proactive. Perhaps a westerner experiencing the proxy violence implanted under these various doctrines through the sterilized opinion pages of The New York Times could split those rhetorical hairs for us, but I’m not so sure a resident of Lebanon or the Gaza strip or Iraq or Pakistan could.

Here is how Dwight explained it: To meet the “increased danger from International Communism” new U.S. sponsored programs of economic and military cooperation that would “secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of friendly nations.” Soon thereafter, some 15 thousand U.S. troops were sent into Lebanon, and we have been there, in one form or another, ever since. Just to help. We are here to help. Be not afraid, says Uncle Sam, (sing it with me now:) We come before you always. Come follow me, and I will give you rest.

Truth is, we must have been meddling in the Middle East even longer than that, no?

Certainly the first coordinated covert action against the Middle East took place long before the United States was even born. I’m talking, of course about Western born artists “ “ the image of Jesus Christ and depicting him as a white man. A footnote: Sheppard Fairy, following a tradition established by such art world luminaries like Andy Warhol and Bob Rauschenberg, the artist Sheppard Fairy “ repurposed“ an AP photo of Barack Obama to create the posterized image of candidate Obama with the single word HOPE. This work of transformed an election and was thought to be protected under fair use copyright law. If so, changing the skin tone on the cadaver hanging from the cross to strike fear and guilt into a white race, is also protected, no?

A footnote to the footnote: Sheppard Fairy, sued by the AP for the use of the Obama photograph, lost in federal court. What are the implications for artistic rendering of a white Jesus? Discuss and get back to me.

And we’re back: As the United States of America come into power, defending the Holocaust they inflicted in the name of “manifest destiny” only to have history reward them, who could blame them for extending their reach? The Eisenhower doctrine was but the next logical step.

The U.S., self defined as both a Christian nation and as a Capitalist one (and while it is redundant to note the predatory nature of capitalism, this fact is oft buried and seems pertinent here) has an interest in the Middle East because of its connection to the book of revelations and the book of trickle down economics.

I’m Davis Fleetwood reminding you that history is based on actual events.

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