Jonathan On Passover (From The Comments)

[Jonathan's comments frequently deserve more air than they get in the comment fields of my posts. --BG]

Passover makes me think of the black slave experience in contemporary Sudan. Thursday evening I met a terrific man named Simon Deng who works for a group called iAbolish [www.iabolish.com] (I actually introduced Mr. Deng before he spoke to the Amnesty International club here on campus). Mr. Deng (a former enslaved child in Sudan) spoke to me about Arab slavers who are still killing and enslaving black Africans today. This is form of genocide in the lush jungles of Southern Sudan is equally as disgusting as the problems of mass murder in the desert of Darfur. Mr. Deng was taken as a boy from his village of Tonga in Southern Sudan and brutally enslaved and scarred on all levels before he escaped with the aid of an international buy-back force of anti-slavers.

I have often thought of what it means to be a independent American voter who rejects all parties (and therefore often cannot vote in primaries and other such twisted affairs) and a socialist (for lack of a better word) but the more I learn about the virulent permutations of capitalism, the more I strengthen my intellectual and sociopolitical resolve.

THAT is why your posts on the election fraud are so important to me because that willful debacle equals $-fiending. Many of the guns used to gather slaves in Southern Sudan are German-made and this equals $-fiending. The UN fails to intervene in Sudanese slavery because of pressure by the Arab oil magnets and this equals $-fiending. Condi Rice is pet of power who goes inside the big house, unleashed, when she is called and that is an example of $-fiending too. But I digress, forgive me.

Passover made me think of this world problem.

I am with you in recognition of this crucial, crucial time of Jewish observance.

Comments

[Ol Cranky]

Jonathan isn't the only one who thinks of things like these during Passover. The Seder is supposed to be a feast of freedom and we have obligations to the hungry and oppressed. There are loads of ways to incorporate reminders of these into the Seder (as well as other Pesach observances and preparations). Whenever I do searches to find ways to add to my holiday observances and see these things/suggestions, it makes me a little more proud to be a Jew.

[SectionNine]

Okay, this guy Johnathan is lecturing me about Darfur, most of the victims of whom are Christians and Anamists, and he starts lighting in on Condi Rice?
WTF is going on here? For Johnathan's information, most of the weapons used by the SUDANESE ARMED FREAKING FORCES, WHO JUST HAPPEN TO BE MUSLIM, are ANTONIN KALASHNIKOV 47'S AND AKM-74'S, as well as your garden variety RPG's, MI-8 and MI-24 helicopters. In other words, Ivan made them, not Karl the Kraut.

German made weapons are very expensive and hard to maintain. Sudan's armed rabble, otoh, can maintain the AK models. The AK is dust and grime resistant, and can take a licking and keep in ticking.

When he can get his fundamentals on the order of battle in Darfur right, I might just start listening to him about Condi. However, I seriously doubt it, as I suspect that Johnathan is one of those Birkenstock types.

[Ben G.]

SectionNine,

What do the respective religions of the of the perpetrators and victims have to do with whether one cares about modern slavery? The stories remembered on Passover have been meaningful to people of many cultures for ages.

Can't vouch for Jonathan's knowledge of armaments. If he got it all wrong, well thank God for that. I'd be a little worried about him if he were as obsessed about weapons as you are.

Seems to me his opinions of Condi Rice can stand or fall independent of his knowledge or ignorance of weapons.

I haven't seen Jonathan in a while (I'm sad to say), so I don't know what shoes he's wearing these days.

If you don't like listening to what Jonathan (or I) have to say, it shouldn't be too hard to just ignore this site.