With friends like Clinton, Israel don’t need enemies.

Mike Ghouse, Dallas, Texas

According to a new report from the US State department, Anti-Semitism is on rise.

Nick Mackenzie writes in the religious intelligence report. "Today, more than 60 years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is not just a fact of history, it is a current event," the report, presented to Congress on March 13, read. "The distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Israeli policy that whether intentionally or unintentionally has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel's perceived faults to its Jewish character," the report stated.

The anti-Semitic attacks continue to occur in Europe and the United States. Just recently two Jewish commuters were beaten up in the subway for wishing happy Hanukkah.  A few years ago a council person referred to the other as “you people” in the Dallas City Hall referring to “Jewish people” as though they were cause of a discrepancy. What is the point in throwing in religion in a civic transaction, unless it anti-Semitism?

Every now and then I read disgusting anti-Semitic comments in stray emails I get from groups all across the world; oddly it is not from Muslims but everyone else.   I continue to speak out against such acts and point out the unrighteousness of it. There is a growing perception that Israeli Lobby buys and manipulates our law makers to do things that are detrimental to American as well as the Israeli interests.

Equally disgusting are McCain and Clinton’s comments; one wants to bomb, bomb and bomb Iran and the other wants to “obliterate it’. Give two minutes to John McCain on the TV, he shoots the Anti-Islam rhetoric. I have not seen McCain’s mouth spew out anything but hate and war. Give the same two minutes to Clinton; she wants to be the commander in Chief from day one. It sounds downright stupid to the community of nations that a Democratic America talks about Commander in Chief’s as though we are a dictatorship.  Most Americans realize the cheap gimmick to gain votes.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” said Edmund Burke.  It is time for the moderate majority of Americans of all hues to speak out and discourage the rhetoric of Clinton and McCain.

With friends like Clinton, Jews don’t need enemies. Her words fuel the anti-Semitic repressed sentiments among average Americans and certainly evoke anger in the Middle East; where as McCain’s Islamophobic attitude fuels terrorist outfits like Al-Qaeda. Do we need these two to run our nation down?   

To be fair in the media, Clinton’s Obliteration and McCain’s bombing should be looped 24 hours on CNN and Fox like the Wright sound bites.

We need our President who talks and brings peace to the community of nations that is true leadership. We certainly don’t want an eager beaver to sacrifice our men and women and bent on destruction of others.  

Mike Ghouse is a writer, speaker, moderator, pluralist and a peace thinker based in Dallas. The list of his Blogs and websites are listed at www.MikeGhouse.net and he can be reached at MikeGhouse@aol.com

OBAMA, THE SHEPHERD
Mike Ghouse, February 27, 2008

This is the first time in our nation's history; some one is speaking the needs, wants and voices of a majority of the people. He is neither a right winger extremist, nor a leftist but a moderate right down the middle embracing and bringing every American together to participate and contribute towards the success, safety and security of America.

An overwhelming majority of us are moderates, people who want to get along with all and focus on living the American dream; education, employment, family, children, car, home and a safe retirement.  Thank God for Obama, he mirrors the dreams of millions of Americans and is our new shepherd on the political spectrum. He will lead us to a safe, secure, strong, and respectable and a healthy America.

Obama is for a strong America, where our economic and military strength is leveraged to persuade nations to follow the policy of live and let live and imbibe the democratic principles of honoring the voices and acknowledging the validity of every voice. It is in our interest to have peace around us, it is in our interest to create a just world, when others are at peace, and we reap the dividends as well. It is economical to pursue peace than bully around and frighten others. When others are frightened, our peace and safety is on the line as well.

Barak believes in talking with enemy, rather than frustrating the enemy to a point where we have to guard our selves every moment of the day watch the destruction of our own peace, safety and security. Mother Teresa had once said "If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies."
A healthy America is not a social medicine, as my fellow Republicans are brainwashed to believe. Our investment in the health of our people ensures that we have a reliable and productive work force, the healthier we are, the lesser the loss of time on job, more income produces more revenue. Where as an unhealthy America makes us lose on productivity and the expense they go with it.   A healthy America is a productive America and it is in our national interest to preserve and strengthen it, this is the other side of coin of a strong America. It is not a charity; it is the best investment a nation can make. The money we blew in Iraq could have done so much good for us at home.

The core of the Republican Party is focused on manufacturing fear, building empires and relentlessly making enemies. Neither of one of us in the world would live in peace with those attitudes. They frighten the public and create false security.  The Chinese philosopher Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King meant to pass the following wisdom to our War mongers in the Republican Party “Conquer your foe by force, you increase his enmity; conquer by love, and you will reap no after-sorrow.” It is time to stop keeping the idol of an imaginary enemy and cursing it every minute of the day. Until the Republicans come down from their high horses and believe in humility, compassion and peace, the Americans hopefully will keep them frustrated.

A strong America, A healthy America should be our goal and Barak is the one who will lead us into achieving it.

• Please register your attendance at: http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=43583
• Two part event: 1) Learn and share about Obama and 2) Make phone calls from your cell.
  

  ---

Reflections on Holocaust

Mike Ghouse, January 15, 2008

AUSCHWITZ

MACABRE

GERMANY

BOSNIA

DARFUR

CONGO

GAZA

GUJARAT

HADITA

KASHMIR PANDITS

RAFA

RWANDA

SRI LANKA

NANKING MASSACRE

ARMENIA HOLOCAUST

SABRA

GASSING KURDS

FALUN DAFA

TSUNAMI

KATRINA

9/11

NEVER AGAIN YOU MUST SPEAK OUT

The United Nations has designated January 27th as the Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this day, in behalf of the Foundation for Pluralism and the World Muslim Congress, I request us to reflect upon the human sufferings inflicted by humans through out the world.

We may start out by scribbling a title for each one of the small and large injustice we have witnessed or learned through news. What did we do with that information and how did we feel about ourselves? The conflicts emanating from injustices are rife in Congo, Darfur, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Pakistan and other places. Please take a moment to reflect upon the viciousness of the humans, the vulgarity of the few that has engulfed the innocent bystanders. We have to work towards the idea of “saving a life is like saving the whole humanity,” says God in Torah and Qur’aan. You and I exist because someone believed in it before us.

Six Million Jews were brutally murdered simply because of their faith. Imagine if we were in that situation, ruthlessly packed in a rail car along with 100 other humans to be thrown in gas chambers. The helplessness and the humiliation should have been palpable, but the world stood by silently finding bliss in self designed ignorance. If it happens to us we feel like tearing the world apart.  

The world reacted belatedly, thank God; the evil plan of the Nazis did not materialize. We said, never again and we keep falling short on our own promise. It is time to reflect if our hearts can feel the pain and if our minds can do something about it. We should visit the holocaust museum in our area; it will upload humanity into us, it is good to be a human again and again.

Our hearts and minds are endowed with a sense of justice, and whenever we see that balance disturbed, we react to it with anger, helplessness and distress. Religion and common sense have taught us to regain that balance by taking an action, least of which is to speak up.  Our minds work mysteriously, the act of seeking balance and justice relieves us from the anguish and gives us a sense purpose in life that we stand for something.

If my actions and words aggravate a conflict, then I have become a contributor toward chaos, on the other hand if my words and actions mitigate the conflict, I become a peace maker.  Peace has got to be unconditional without any score keeping, “do your duty without the greed of results”, says the Bhagvad Gita.

No one is an island; we have to develop an open mind and an open heart towards each other in the process of healing and repairing the world. We should short change our humanness by thinking that we were not responsible for it. 

We should honor our divine instructions to demur and honor the suffering of others.  It will be a day for all of us to reflect upon and promise ourselves "never again" and hope each one of us makes a commitment to oneself to speak out against any injustice. 

If we can learn to accept and respect the God given uniqueness of each one of the 7 billion of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge. The healing and recovery for Humanity can only occur when we each examine our own hearts, our own cultures and our own faith traditions to discern where seeds of prejudice, cruelty and even genocide remain hidden. 

A Good deed is creating peace, security and balance for all creation. The wisdom of Bible is crystal clear “do unto others as you would want others to do to you”. Indeed, that is essence of all religions.

This is an invitation to people of all backgrounds to reflect upon the tragedies humans have endured, and bring about a change, however little we can. The least we can do is to speak up whenever we see injustice or words and actions that promote chaos.

In 2006, the United Nations proclaimed January 27th as a Holocaust remembrance day to commemorate the worst atrocity the world had ever witnessed. In support of that, the Foundation for Pluralism and the World Muslim Congress organized an event on Thursday, January 26, 2006 to accommodate the Jewish Sabbath as January 27 fell on a Friday in 2006.  For more information please visit:

 http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Images_HolocaustDay/HMD2006_ProgramReport.asp

I request you to pray and mourn for the massacres and deaths of all human beings. I beg you to forgive me if I have missed a tragedy that you are familiar with. I admire you if you could send me a 100 word description or a link from a news paper to be included in the comments.

If you felt sorrow for some and not for the others, please check out your peace meter for your bias and prejudices against groups, nations, ethnicities, religions, cultures or races. Higher the prejudice lesser the peace and vice versa.

You can increase your peace and happiness by repenting in your solitude for your biases and see the meter start rising, and when you actually do not feel any bias toward any human, see the mercury miracles. Finally if you can volunteer one hour a week for people you don't know or you did not like in the past, you can be the happiest person on the earth.  God guarantees that and I will underwrite it. Ha! Try it, it is effortless and won't cost you a dime but gain you happiness.

May God help us become prejudice free,

May God give us the guts to speak up when we see wrongs,

May God remove arrogance from us and

May God bless us with the humanness to feel the pain and sorrow of others.

Please pray (wish it, if you are an atheist) and invoke the goodness in each one of us.

----------------- 

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator.  He is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing Pluralism, politics, Islam, Religion, Terrorism, India and civic issues. His comments, news analysis, opinions and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com or (214) 325-1916

Our Mission is to encourage individuals to develop an open mind and an open heart toward their follow beings. If we can learn to accept and respect the God given uniqueness of each one of the 7 billion of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge.  We believe that knowledge leads to understanding and understanding to acceptance and appreciation of a different point of view.

To be religious  is to be a peace maker; one who constantly seeks to mitigate conflicts and nurtures goodwill for co-existence of God's creation to be in peace and harmony,  indeed that is the chief purpose of religion, any religion.

Workshops | Seminars | Education | News Letters

2665 Villa Creek Dr, Suite 206, Dallas, TX 75234

www.FoundationforPluralism.com

Senator McCain in his lust for power looses the basic American decency and courtesy to show respect for his fellow Americans who number 6 Million and I am one. It is an ironic number to remember.

Will John McCain have the decency to apologize?

Mike Ghouse, Dallas

I turned the TV off on McCain this afternoon.

Every TV appearance I have watched in the last two months, even if it was for two minutes, Senator McCain unfailingly delivered his vitriol, "The greatest danger facing the world is Islamic Terrorism" and Governor Romney, who is off the radar now, used "Islamic Jihaad" to appease the right wing of the  Republican party.

Senator McCain in his lust for power looses the basic American decency and courtesy to show respect for his fellow Americans who number 6 Million and I am one. It is an ironic number to remember.

When I turned the TV off, the words of Edmund Burke's quote came alive as a sad image, which was pointed out by a speaker at the Holocaust Museum recently. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Well my friends, I am doing my part. Indeed the world needs to be informed again and again about the Holocaust and how it began. Martin Niemöller's poem (first they came for the Jews…) resonates with me every day, when I see the eerie silence on the part of Media when a linguistic atrocity is committed right in front of their eyes.

When our President claimed they hate us for our freedom, not one media person asked for the proof or the polls, they consumed it gullibly. They, whoever they might be, do not hate America or Americans. Just as we do not hate any people but their governments, others do the same.

Manufacturing hate and fear to earn the support is shameful, but unfortunately that is the reality concocted by the Bush administration and the rightwing Republicans have imbibed it.

I am a Muslim and I am for America like 6 million other Muslims. We are Republicans and Democrats, we are religious as well as not religious, we are conservatives and liberals but mostly moderate just like most of the Americans.

Each one of us is contributing towards the peace and prosperity of our nation. We are taking the initiatives and putting in our efforts for one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.

On 9/11, I manned a Radio station for eight hours getting the Dallas community on the air, grieving with fellow Americans, organizing blood drives, wrote articles to prove to the enemies like Osama Bin Laden that all Americans are on the same side, irrespective of personal faith.

Since then every year, with the support of the Muslim community, I have dedicated my time on 9/11 to unite people, to bring people of all faiths, races and ethnicities to come together and pray for the safety and security of America, and rededicate our pledge to one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.  To call Islam or Muslims as terrorists is offensive to me; I am not one, neither the six million of us are. If there is one, we are going to turn them over to the FBI, safety and security of our nation is as important to the 6 millions of as it is to the 294 Million others.

The fear mongers manufacture enemies to polarize the electorate for crass political advantage; Native Indians, African Americans, Jews, Wicca, Atheists and now Muslims are being targeted by them. Such short term gains are deleterious to peace and long term prosperity. As Americans, we need to stand up for each other for the good of every American.

Our leaders should demonstrate their leadership in building goodwill among all Americans and make America a model nation for coexistence and harmony. We need to make peace and prosperity as our goal and our leaders should take that pledge to mitigate conflicts and nurture goodwill.  Every one will win at the end.

I expect Senator McCain to drop the hate rhetoric and apologize to Muslims in America, or at least have the decency not to use the words "Islamic Terrorism" or "Muslims Terrorism". Call Terrorism for what it is, do not suffix or prefix or hang my religion to the evil acts; fear mongering is also evil. I am a Muslim and all the Muslims that I know in America are working hard to keep us safe and secure. If you do not have moral courage to apologize, the least you can do is restore decency in your language.

Two decades ago, when I chose to become an American, I found myself in tune with the Republican party; liberty, less government, fiscal responsibility, capitalism, security and peace through strength. Today, the party is not the same and it does not reflect those values any more. When the Presidential candidate and a few (or more) Republicans resort to this divisive rhetoric, it puts many Republicans like me to re-evaluate being Republicans.

References:

http://www.mikeghouse.net/Articles/Republican-or-Democrat-which-way.asp

http://www.mikeghouse.net/Articles/John-Mcain-the-Bush-lite-Neocon.asp

http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/UnitydayUSA_2007.asp

http://www.mikeghouse.net/Articles/Did-Senator-McCain-Betray-America.asp

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator.  He is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing Pluralism, politics, Islam, Religion, Terrorism, India and civic issues. His comments, news analysis, opinions and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@aol.com or (214) 325-1916

YES WE CAN BRING PEACE TO GAZA
Mike Ghouse, March 8, 2008

America Bragging
Mike Ghouse, January 4, 2008