We Must All Become Prophets

Blessing the Bombs:
The Hiroshima Bombers' Chaplain Faces Christ
Sixty years ago, as a Catholic Air Force chaplain, Father George Zabelka blessed the men who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Years later, he left this message for the world...
By George Zabelka

George Zabelka a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force, served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and gave them his blessing. Days later he counseled an airman who had flown a low-level reconnaissance flight over the city of Nagasaki shortly after the detonation of "Fat Man." The man described how thousands of scorched, twisted bodies writhed on the ground in the final throes of death, while those still on their feet wandered aimlessly in shock-flesh seared, melted, and falling off. The crewman's description raised a stifled cry from the depths of Zabelka's soul: "My God, what have we done?" Over the next twenty years, he gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zabelka who died in 1992, gave this speech on the 40th anniversary of the bombings.

The destruction of civilians in war was always forbidden by the church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child's head, I would have told him, absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful. But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes a minute could take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of children and civilians—and I said nothing.

I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to the men who were doing it. I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind to protest publicly the consequences of these massive air raids. I was told it was necessary—told openly by the military and told implicitly by my church's leadership. (To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters is a stamp of approval.)

I worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights struggle in Flint, Michigan. His example and his words of nonviolent action, choosing love instead of hate, truth instead of lies, and nonviolence instead of violence stirred me deeply. This brought me face to face with pacifism—active nonviolent resistance to evil. I recall his words after he was jailed in Montgomery, and this blew my mind. He said, "Blood may flow in the streets of Montgomery before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood that flows, and not that of the white man. We must not harm a single hair on the head of our white brothers."

I struggled. I argued. But yes, there it was in the Sermon on the Mount, very clear: "Love your enemies. Return good for evil." I went through a crisis of faith. Either accept what Christ said, as unpassable and silly as it may seem, or deny him completely.

For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie.
War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ's way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.

The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.

So the world is watching today. Ethical hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the followers of Christ. What the world needs is a grouping of Christians that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs is Christians who, in language that the simplest soul could understand, will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving ones enemies.

For the 300 years immediately following Jesus' resurrection, the church universally saw Christ and his teaching as nonviolent. Remember that the church taught this ethic in the face of at least three serious attempts by the state to liquidate her. It was subject to horrendous and ongoing torture and death. If ever there was an occasion for justified retaliation and defensive slaughter, whether in form of a just war or a just revolution, this was it. The economic and political elite of the Roman state and their military had turned the citizens of the state against Christians and were embarked on a murderous public policy of exterminating the Christian community.

Yet the church, in the face of the heinous crimes committed against her members, insisted without reservation that when Christ disarmed Peter he disarmed all Christians.

Christians continued to believe that Christ was, to use the words of an ancient liturgy, their fortress, their refuge, and their strength, and that if Christ was all they needed for security and defense, then Christ was all they should have. Indeed, this was a new security ethic. Christians understood that if they would only follow Christ and his teaching, they couldn't fail. When opportunities were given for Christians to appease the state by joining the fighting Roman army, these opportunities were rejected, because the early church saw a complete and an obvious incompatibility between loving as Christ loved and killing. It was Christ, not Mars, who gave security and peace.

Today the world is on the brink of ruin because the church refuses to be the church, because we Christians have been deceiving ourselves and the non-Christian world about the truth of Christ. There is no way to follow Christ, to love as Christ loved, and simultaneously to kill other people. It is a lie to say that the spirit that moves the trigger of a flamethrower is the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is a lie to say that learning to kill is learning to be Christ-like. It is a lie to say that learning to drive a bayonet into the heart of another is motivated from having put on the mind of Christ. Militarized Christianity is a lie. It is radically out of conformity with the teaching, life, and spirit of Jesus.

Now, brothers and sisters, on the anniversary of this terrible atrocity carried out by Christians, I must be the first to say that I made a terrible mistake. I was had by the father of lies. I participated in the big ecumenical lie of the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches. I wore the uniform. I was part of the system. When I said Mass over there I put on those beautiful vestments over my uniform. (When Father Dave Becker left the Trident submarine base in 1982 and resigned as Catholic chaplain there, he said, "Every time I went to Mass in my uniform and put the vestments on over my uniform, I couldn't help but think of the words of Christ applying to me: Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.")

As an Air Force chaplain I painted a machine gun in the loving hands of the nonviolent Jesus, and then handed this perverse picture to the world as truth. I sang "Praise the Lord" and passed the ammunition. As Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group, I was the final channel that communicated this fraudulent image of Christ to the crews of the Enola Gay and the Boxcar.

All I can say today is that I was wrong. Christ would not be the instrument to unleash such horror on his people. Therefore no follower of Christ can legitimately unleash the horror of war on God's people. Excuses and self-justifying explanations are without merit. All I can say is: I was wrong! But, if this is all I can say, this I must do, feeble as it is. For to do otherwise would be to bypass the first and absolutely essential step in the process of repentance and reconciliation: admission of error, admission of guilt.

I was there, and I was wrong. Yes, war is hell, and Christ did not come to justify the creation of hell on earth by his disciples. The justification of war may be compatible with some religions and philosophies, but it is not compatible with the nonviolent teaching of Jesus. I was wrong. And to those of whatever nationality or religion who have been hurt because I fell under the influence of the father of lies, I say with my whole heart and soul I am sorry. I beg forgiveness.

I asked forgiveness from the Hibakushas (the Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings) in Japan last year, in a pilgrimage that I made with a group from Tokyo to Hiroshima. I fell on my face there at the peace shrine after offering flowers, and I prayed for forgiveness—for myself, for my country, for my church. Both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This year in Toronto, I again asked forgiveness from the Hibakushas present. I asked forgiveness, and they asked forgiveness for Pearl Harbor and some of the horrible deeds of the Japanese military, and there were some, and I knew of them. We embraced. We cried. Tears flowed. That is the first step of reconciliation—admission of guilt and forgiveness. Pray to God that others will find this way to peace.

All religions have taught brotherhood. All people want peace. It is only the governments and war departments that promote war and slaughter. So today again I call upon people to make their voices heard. We can no longer just leave this to our leaders, both political and religious. They will move when we make them move. They represent us. Let us tell them that they must think and act for the safety and security of all the people in our world, not just for the safety and security of one country. All countries are inter-dependent. We all need one another. It is no longer possible for individual countries to think only of themselves. We can all live together as brothers and sisters or we are doomed to die together as fools in a world holocaust.

Each one of us becomes responsible for the crime of war by cooperating in its preparation and in its execution. This includes the military. This includes the making of weapons. And it includes paying for the weapons. There's no question about that. We've got to realize we all become responsible. Silence, doing nothing, can be one of the greatest sins.

The bombing of Nagasaki means even more to me than the bombing of Hiroshima. By August 9, 1945, we knew what that bomb would do, but we still dropped it. We knew that agonies and sufferings would ensue, and we also knew—at least our leaders knew—that it was not necessary. The Japanese were already defeated. They were already suing for peace. But we insisted on unconditional surrender, and this is even against the Just War theory. Once the enemy is defeated, once the enemy is not able to hurt you, you must make peace.

As a Catholic chaplain I watched as the Boxcar, piloted by a good Irish Catholic pilot, dropped the bomb on Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, the center of Catholicism in Japan. I knew that St. Francis Xavier, centuries before, had brought the Catholic faith to Japan. I knew that schools, churches, and religious orders were annihilated. And yet I said nothing.

Thank God that I'm able to stand here today and speak out against war, all war. The prophets of the Old Testament spoke out against all false gods of gold, silver, and metal. Today we are worshipping the gods of metal, the bomb. We are putting our trust in physical power, militarism, and nationalism. The bomb, not God, is our security and our strength. The prophets of the Old Testament said simply: Do not put your trust in chariots and weapons, but put your trust in God. Their message was simple, and so is mine.

We must all become prophets. I really mean that. We must all do something for peace. We must stop this insanity of worshipping the gods of metal. We must take a stand against evil and idolatry. This is our destiny at the most critical time of human history. But it's also the greatest opportunity ever offered to any group of people in the history of our world—to save our world from complete annihilation.

This article was originally compiled and published by Bruderhof.com, and is reprinted with their permission. The main text is an excerpt of a speech George Zabelka gave at a Pax Christi conference in August 1985 (tape of speech obtained from Notre Dame University Archives), and the first two paragraphs are from an interview with Zabelka published in Sojourners magazine, August 1980.©1980, Sojourners. All rights reserved.

Alice In Wonderland

The Walrus & The Carpenter

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

US Failing In Iraq

Protector of The Gauls

In 59BC, Julius Caesar declared he was so shocked by the incursions of the dangerous Helvetii tribe into Gaul, and the suffering of the Gaulish peoples, that he had himself appointed 'protector of the Gauls'. By the time he'd finished protecting them, a million Gauls were dead, another million enslaved and Julius Caesar owned most of Gaul. Now I'm not suggesting there is any similarity between George W Bush's protection of the Iraqi people and Caesar's protection of the Gauls.

For a start, Julius Caesar, as we all know, was bald, whereas George W Bush has a fine head of hair. In any case, George W Bush is not personally making huge amounts of money out of it. The money-making is all left in the capable hands of companies like CACI International, Blackwater Security and Haliburton.

It's true that Vice-President Dick Cheney's stock options in his old company, Haliburton, went up from $241,498 in 2004 to $8m in 2005 - that's an increase of 3,281 per cent. But then Dick Cheney is bald.

The point I'm trying to make is that there is absolutely no comparison to be made between Julius Caesar's invasion of Gaul in 58-50BC and George Bush's invasion of Iraq.

I mean, Julius Caesar had the nerve to pretend that the Roman state was being threatened by what was going on in Gaul. He claimed he had to carry out a pre-emptive strike against the Helvetii in the interests of homeland security. In reality, his motives were political. He desperately needed a military victory to boost his standing in Rome and give him the necessary popular base to seize power.

George W Bush, on the other hand, was already in power when he invaded Iraq and, in any case, he didn't need to boost his popularity, because the popular vote had nothing to do with his getting into power in the first place. Julius Caesar was also a very adroit propagandist who made damn sure that his version of events prevailed. He even wrote eight books about his wars in Gaul to make sure it did. George W Bush doesn't need to go to such lengths. He has Fox News.

When Julius Caesar claimed his glorious victory over the Helvetii, he made it sound as if he had destroyed a vast army of 'wild and savage men'. Julius Caesar reckoned he had slaughtered more than 250,000 'insurgents'. In fact, documents found in the remains of the Helvetii camp showed that out of 368,000 people, only 92,000 had been capable of bearing arms.

In other words, it wasn't an army that Julius Caesar massacred, but a whole population including women, children, old and sick, which, I suppose, is one thing that George W Bush and Julius Caesar do have in common: pretending civilians are armed insurgents.

But there the similarity ends. One of the most fundamental differences between Julius Caesar and George W Bush is that Julius Caesar counted his dead, whereas George W Bush can't be bothered. It seems that, as commander-in-chief, George W Bush instructed his soldiers not to count the enemy dead. So the fact that he still sticks to an estimate of only 30,000 dead Iraqis, even when a recently published study in the Lancet suggests he's slaughtered at least 655,000, can only be the result of his extraordinary modesty.

Why else would he dismiss the study as pure guesswork or claim it had used a 'methodology [that] is pretty well discredited', even though the US government has been spending millions of dollars a year to train NGOs in this exact same methodology? Julius Caesar would have seized on the figures with alacrity.

And that is the biggest difference of all: Julius Caesar was an ambitious, vainglorious, would-be tyrant. George W Bush is a modest and self-deprecating one. Observer-Guardian: Comment

Society - Outward Expression of Our Inward state

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.
~ A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"

What does the present have to do with the Roman Empire? Well, western societies are still following that line and are suffering the consequences. Hundreds of years have passed and nothing has changed. People today are making the same mistakes for the same reasons, even though these mistakes lead to disaster and collapse. You cannot build a society on a swamp, unless you intend the society to sink.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. ~ Plato
At the end of the Roman Empire the Roman coins began to lose value, the silver coins contained less and less silver, and eventually the coins contained practically no silver. Money exchanged rapidly lost its value across the Empire. No society can grow from ongoing military conflict as a tool for colonisation. The Roman economy depended on conquest, and as a result more capital was needed to pay the military. Across the Eastern and Western Empires the Romans were hated. People were simply waiting for a chance to get rid of them. The military campaigns gradually changed from conquest to defending the Empire, and as a result the economy (Empire) collapsed.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. ~ Plato
The Roman Empire justified it's aggressive behaviour and military conquests by claiming that Rome was civilised and the rest of the world were animals in comparison, barbarians. The civilised world was spreading civilised behaviour into the rest of the world. Freedom, democracy... Well, not freedom - as the Romans had slaves. Not freedom, as military might triumphed over cultural diversity. Democracy? The rest of the world chose to get rid of them, but they had to do it by fighting back. Why did the occupied territories fight Rome? Because the Romans had occupied their lands.

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. ~ Sun Tzu
When society is built on a swamp, is the road to failure and collapse built in? Yes, it is. The process of building a system to collapse, conditions the psyche to rebuild in a specific way. In other words, failure and distress are the tools used to form the next unit of social behaviour. Collective 'mind control', is a form of social and cultural programming of the worst kind. In physical terms each succeeding unit will increasingly weaken the probability of continuation. In a way these methods could be described in terms of DNA strands copying an increasing load of defective information leading to the demise of the species.

A conspiracy? No, it is stupidity and arrogance that leads the greater body to self-destruct. Any society that builds its own success on a wider destruction of surrounding habitats, will inevitably lead itself to destruction. It is a Cosmic law, a law of nature. A violent society will self-destruct. A society based on war and violence cannot sustain itself. Overall destruction does not lead to a growth pattern, it leads to destruction. Essentially because we are spiritual beings in a physical environment. The physical environment is simply the medium through which the spirit expresses itself. If the expression is to destroy the surrounding physical environment, then the core meaning of why the spirit is inhabiting matter is also being destroyed. Therefore the society self-destructs together with the degraded environment. It has nothing to do with religion, which itself has led countless wars. It is a basic law that regulates everything seen and unseen in cosmos.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.
~ Lao Tzu

What few researchers understand is the extent to which the ongoing internal struggle and killings undermined Rome, essentially destroying the Empire from within. This inward deterioration took place over hundreds of years, and the effect was to bring an end to the despotic system. The Empire collapsed, as does any body when it destroys its own vital health. Political and ideological groups secretly fought for power and control, key oppositions were eliminated. Truth and justice advocats were silenced, often brutally. Healthy critisism and discussion of the Empire were labled unpatriotic, and it was a crime to question the motives and therefore the greatness of Rome. The Empire stood above the laws of man, and above the laws of nature and cosmos. Rome was a lawless state, a law unto itself, able to silence all opposition through punishment and death.

Questioning something does not automatically create opposition, but the freedom to question can be labled a crime by whoever controls the legal system and the military. The state signals to the citizens that it is no longer heathy to question, when in fact the opposite is true. It is healthy to question, and in silencing that option Rome effectively destroyed itself. Human beings do not have a hive mind, and they never will function under the control of a hive mind. When challeneged with such an option, either they will become extinct, or they will overcome it to express the unique force most commonly described as free will. When combined with compassion, freedom of action is elevated to its most powerful state. It is the Alchemy of turning base metal into gold.

The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all. ~ Tacitus

Fall of The Roman Empire

The current world wars being played out, are similar to the fall of the Roman Empire, and in some way give us hope that we will be able to establish a world based on peace and mutual cooperation after the Empire has fallen into ashes. The similarities between the old and the new Empires are astonishing. I watched some of the Google video's on the Secret Nazi UFO's, and old footage of the Third Reich. People carrying the Roman battle standards, the architecture, the beliefs, the pagan gods and the occult lodges. In one video it was suggested that Von Braun was also working for the Americans very early on during the war. Apparently the Ultra-Secret German and American projects shared the same scientists, the same plans and the same manufacturing base, while the war was going on... The money earned from the sale of weapons to all sides financed the secret projects.

The ideals of the Nazi Occult Empire were transferred to America after the war (Project Paperclip), and the continuation of occult ideologies were perpetuated in hidden forms throughout all areas of American commerce, government, and financial institutions. It is clear that the global elite behind the destruction of Germany are behind the current destruction of the United States. Today, no one disputes that the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin was carried out by the Nazis in order to seize political power. The government buildings were burned down shortly before the German elections. This is a clear occult symbol, the old was burned, destroyed in fire (Agni) - and the new Phoenix (Hitler's Nazis) were to arise from the ashes.

The German people did not vote Hitler and the Nazi party into power after the burning of the Reichstag. The Nazis did not get the political majority they desired. The Catholic Centre party and the Conservatives joined with Hitler to pass the legislation giving Hitler dictatorial powers (the SPD socialist party was outlawed). Knowing the German people, I doubt that Germany would have become a communist slave society, as happened in Russia. For the Nazis the fire portrayed evidence of a convenient enemy.

At the time of early Rome Augustus defeated Mark Antony (27BC) and reorganised the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Some historians argue that Julius Ceasar's appointment as perpetual dictatorship (44BC), was the beginning of the Roman Empire. The fall of the Roman Empire came as the Eastern and Western Empires fought to establish dominance of their own territories. At every corner of the globe Rome had to exercise military power to try to maintain control of its resources. Until then the Empire had existed only because widespread struggles and wars were not breaking out.

At the end of the Roman Empire regions not only began to resent being controlled by the Romans, they rebelled. And the rebellions spread to every corner of the Empire. Local military commanders rebelled, as will happen in the Middle East. The Americans and British maintain a military presence in Iraq today to prevent the Iraqi government aligning itself with Iran. It is the same in Afganistan. The soldiers of the Romans legions did not want to endlessly live in lands far from home, and so the local populations were used to police the various regions by creating Roman soldiers out of the indigenous populations. This meant that local populations eventually had command of Roman armaments, supplies, military styles and strategies. These well equipped armies later turned against their masters as commanders and regional strategists conspired to get rid of the Romans.

Why pay taxes to Rome? The taxes would be paid to local government leaders, to local regional leaders and used for regional military governments. It is the same question in the Middle East. Why be economic slaves to the West? Why should western powers control local and regional resources? Why should they control governments? Who are they to come into another sovereign state and control what goes on there? It's the fall of the Roman Empire all over again, and as the Empire falls it becomes increasingly violent, it attempts to do through military might what it cannot do through mutual agreement.

American and British soldiers will eventually get annoyed at being deployed overseas for longer periods of time. They will want to go home. The clock is ticking, time is running out. When the western military powers finally hand over control to the local forces, the local forces will rebel, they will ask: Why are we being controlled from the West? They will turn around and seek to establish local and regional control of the resources. Exactly as happened during the last days of the Roman Empire.

The barbarians who fought their way to Rome were well trained by the Romans themselves, and they knew how to payback what was due. There was no way the Roman Empire could maintain ongoing control through expensive mililtary campaigns across the Western and Eastern Empires. The regional powers had simply waited, built up their powers and had prepared for the rebellions, that soon spread like wildfire from region to region.

The reason the British foreign office are tearing out their hair, is because they know control cannot be affected through brute force, bombing, killing, genocide... Bush and Blair have done more in the past month to destroy diplomacy than all the Middle Eastern wars combined. Silently, the whole Arab world have decided this cannot continue. The effects of these decisions will be seen across the Middle East over the next two generations as the small children who survive the brutal killings bring up their children and their grandchildren. It is over this time that the greatest changes will occur. The Romans never considered that their brutality would bring its own natural fallout. They simply assumed that they would continue to rule as the most powerful global force. Whereas the most powerful global force is cooperation, not military might. Fall of The Roman Empire

Doris Lessing: On Dreams & The Ending of Empires
BILL MOYERS: But dreams are not rubbish.

DORIS LESSING: They're rubbish if they lead you to very unrealistic actions. That's what's bad about them. If you're dreaming about wonderful Utopias, and great horizons, and great dawns and all that, you're not really seeing what's there, and what could be done.

BILL MOYERS: Well, of course, you spent a lot of time trying to undo the British Empire. And I would say that you were successful. You and history.

DORIS LESSING: You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires. You know, when people talk about the British Empire, they always forget that all the European countries had empires. You know, the French, and the Portuguese, and the Dutch, and you name it, excepting Germans, because they lost theirs. But they all had empires. And that's one of the themes of the BILL MOYERS: The sweetest dream?
Do you ever stop writing?

No State Without Water

Humans have lived from the earliest times, before Greece, until today inside collective group enclaves. "A country or part of a country lying wholly within the boundaries of another." In real terms we are a collective of cultures living within the collective boundaries of a greater shared culture. In essence we are the human race. The smallest enclave (a village) lies at the center of ever increasing circles. There is the land surrounding the village, beyond that are agreed upon human territories, there are larger interests identified as 'a nation', and there are whole continents shared by the enclaves of different national and cultural identities. There is the whole earth, and we all share that as a human collective. What is done in one part of the greater body of the earth effects the whole. The planet earth is an enclave within a shared system of orbiting planetary bodies. The sun lies at the center. The earth's solar system is an enclave within a much larger galaxy, to which the sun and planets are intimately connected. The galaxy we are a part of is and enclave within a much larger universe.

From the smallest local farm, to the village, to the local territory, to the state - all parts need water. There is no food without water. It is obvious to state that all life on earth depends on sunlight, including plants and animals. However, sunlight cannot be divided up amongst people and owned by a single party in the way that water resources can. Sunlight is what it is, and it is beyond the control of local and national boundaries. Water, is a much needed and valuable resource that can be controlled by local and/or national enclaves. Water is a territorial resource for those who depend on it for their existence.

All states at every level depend on water for their existence. The state can be defined in terms of 10 people, or 10 thousand people, or 10 million people. Large or small, they all depend on water for their continued survival. Water is food, water is life. If you do not have water you cannot grow food, and you yourself cannot live. There is no state without water, there is no national identity without water. This is a fact. Water flows through all local, state and national boundaries. It is the elixir of life.

You can have any nation in the world making any kind of claim, and they can be the most powerful in terms of military might; but only because they have water. If the most powerful military nation in the world rapidly lost its water supply, all the oil in the universe would not help it to survive. If you sit on top of billions of tons of oil and you have no water, you are dead. If you have enough weapons to destroy the world ten times over and you have no water...

It is the most valuable resource, people cannot live without it, communities cannot exist without it and states are totally dependant on it for their future existence. So, if you have a group of people sitting in the middle of a dried up desert and the water exists all round them, but outside the area they are sitting in the middle of... Then that group will have to secure the distant water supplies if they are to continue. Water is the state. It is only unfortunate that water is unable to transmit its nature to humans, that of a free flowing nature devoid of national and territorial boundaries. The nature of a free mind.

I was born in a water rich country: Scotland. Obviously, if I were part of a group enclave who were discussing where to build a new community, the first thing on my mind would be the water. Where is the water resource, where do we get the water from? otherwise there is no community. If someone said to me that we go a few hundred kilometers North and East for the water, I would say to them: "You are kidding! Right!" If I was part of establishing a new cultural center in the middle of a desert and my advisors told me that our future water supplies lay far to the North in a land inhabited by people who also need that water. Then I would look at my advisor and say: "You are kidding me, right!"

So, what would I do? Plan a future occupation of those lands far to the North in order to ensure my little group in the middle of the desert has water? How many people do I need for this? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many years of wars? How many thousands of deaths so that my little group can supply itself with water form lands inhabited by other people? Do I have that many soldiers? Do I want that many soldiers? What am I creating? Am I creating a cultural center or a military camp for future wars? I guess I would decide not to go down that road, unless I was insane and then maybe I would not care?
A Journey Through The History of Water

Caves of Illusion

I was reading somewhere that Israel's bombardment of Lebanon aims to force the Lebanese Government to send troops south to guard the border between Lebanon and Israel. Apparently, until the Lebanese Government can act, the bombardment from Israel will continue. Fortunately, the UN decided today to begin the process of deploying UN peacekeepers along the border between Israel and Lebanon - in order to help meet the war demands of Israel. The border would be secure, attacks would be prevented and Israel could stop bombing Lebanese towns, cities, roads, bridges, petrol stations, airports, power stations and civilian vehicles. At the moment it sounds like a valid move to stop the escalation of an already overheated, war... But, strangely no! Israel have made it clear that there will be no deployment of UN forces in the south of Lebanon. Reading this caused me to go do some research. Apart from the fact that Israel most probably have their eye on the waters of the Litani river, I discovered that this present conflict could possibly be part of a cave dweller type plan to fool the International community and secure the borders of a 'greater Israel.' Who Knows?

This is the Map of Greater Israel submitted by the World Zionist Organization soon after the end of WWI. The "Jewish state" was founded on an ancient Biblical map, and Israel still refuse to declare its borders in favor of future expansion.

The Biblical map, extends its borders around the occupied West Bank (including occupied East Jerusalem), occupied Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, the western parts of Jordan, and southern Syria including the occupied Golan Heights.

Ben-Gurion "had a dream" to annex southern Lebanon to the "Jewish state", and to establish a Christian state north of the Litani River. 'The Muslims rule of Lebanon is artificial and easily undermined. A Christian state ought to be set up whose southern borders would be Litani River. Then we'll form an alliance with it." In the coming years he repeated this idea, and according to Moshe Sharett, Moshe Dayan (who was Israeli's chief of staff in the early 1950s) responded favorably to this idea and who according to Sharett said: "In his [Dayan] view, all we need to do is to find a Christian Lebanese officer, perhaps no higher than a captain, and win him over or buy him with money, so that he would declare himself the savior of Maronite population. Then the Israel army would enter Lebanon, occupy the territory in question and establish a Christian government which would form an alliance with Israel." Sharett himself considered this an "awful" idea.

Ben-Gurion clearly never believed in static borders, but dynamic ones as described in the Bible. He stated during a discussion with his aides: "Before the founding of the state, on the eve of its creation, our main interests was self-defense. To a large extent, the creation of the state was an act of self-defense. Many think that we're still at the same stage. But now the issue at hand is conquest, not self-defense. As for setting the borders - it's an open-ended matter. In the Bible as well as in our history, there all kinds of definitions of the country's borders, so there's no real limit. No border is absolute. If it's a desert - it could just as well be the other side. If it's sea, it could also be across the sea. The world has always been this way. Only the terms have changed. If they should find a way of reaching other stars, well then, perhaps the whole earth will no longer suffice."

Well, maybe I am missing something? But from my own observations of life many of us may want many things; but we cannot always get what we want - especially when it is unrealistic in terms of everyday life. What are they going to do? Wipe out all the people living in Lebanon and Syria? Nuke them? Bomb them? Poison them? Drive them into the sea? Because, it seems the people already living in Lebanon are getting in the way of an unrealistic cave dwellers impression of what one can and cannot do in terms of living with ones neighbours in a country facing future severe water shortages. Nuke the water supply and who can drink the water?