Posted by pancho from pool0007.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.210.7) on Monday, November 25, 2002 at 9:41AM :
In Reply to: Clarifications: Lesson on Assyria #1 posted by sankho from CPE-203-45-1-117.vic.bigpond.net.au (203.45.1.117) on Monday, November 25, 2002 at 3:17AM :
: Had a counseling session with Tiglath yesterday. It was good. Learned a lot. Here are some of the things I learned.
: The Iraqi Arabs are not Arab. They are Assyrian. Because they live in a land most of which was once part of the Assyrian empire. Most of them just became Moslem and so can be confused with the Arabs from the Saudi Arabian desert.
++++Okay I'll bite...take pity on a poor dumb beast...what are you gonna do...put it out of it's misery.
+++There were Arabs in that invading army...but to claim that every Muslim in Iraq today is a direct descendant of those Arabs is silly. This is the Christian invention...a way of "proving" that Muslims in Iraq are usurpers and foreigners all...that not one single Assrin converted to Islam...and that if they did, they became somehow Arab...so I suppose all Muslims in Mongolia are Arabs...as are all Indonesian Muslims Arabs...from Saudi. This is our fond wish...makes no sense.
The Assyrians who belong to that other religion think they are the only true Assyrians because they are hopeless. The Arabs are just as Assyrian as the ‘Assyrians’, who have really just adopted a Jewish religion.
+++++They are not Arabs...your nonsense only holds if you assume every Muslim in Iraq today is an original Arab..that no Assrin would EVER have converted to Islam...our Christians insist that HAS to be true...it is silly.
+++But...if you are going to maintain that anyone Muslim in Iraq must be from Arabia, then anyone Christian in Iraq MUST be Israeli. Neither RELIGION is indigenous to the region...BOTH were foreign exports. Believing like this, and we do it about lots of things...makes you need therapy over the centuries.
The Arab Assyrians
+++They are not Arab Assyrians...if Assyrians move to Arabia to live, you could call them Assyrian Arabs...like Assrins who move to America call themselves Assrin Americans.
+++They are Muslim Assyrians. Stop hoping back and forth between religion, ethnicity and those who conquer nations. No wonder you're nuts.
act more Assyrian than the Assyrian Assyrians
+++An Assyrian Assyrian, in this silly context you're struck in, would be an Assyrian who remained Assyrian in religion. They are Christian Assyrians...or Israeli Assyrians if you want to remain literal.
because they stay in the land and defend it from the bad people in the West. They just CALL themselves Arab, that’s all.
+++The Iraqi people are Iraqi...the Egyptian people are Egyptian, Syrian people are Syrians...the Arabian people are Arabs. You're dragging in a term that was used to unite the people of the Arab speaking and Islam worshipping world...to try to unite them in the face of the kinds of tactics the West was using against them...sort of like we've been divided among all sorts of denominations. Nasser wanted to present a united front...the West has been glad to make a Monolithic force of the Arab SPEAKING world...it backfired on Nasser. You can't unify Arabs in Arabia let alone across the MidEast.
+++Instead of being willfully stupid try being deliberately clear.
Whereas the Assyrian Assyrians like to mix with the bad people. They’re real arse-kissers. Yuk.
+++No sir. Assyrian Assyrians don't tend to kiss ass. They refused to go hunting up religions that had the kind of utility that a good dose of pennicillin can provide...they didn't want promises of goodies...they remained true to Ashur and don't talk like you do today. You are describing Christian Assyrians...and yes indeed they do seem to kiss an inordinate amount of ass...and yes indeed they are STILL on the look-out today for those goodies...that's why they keep siding up to the West...not that it's offered them anything but that they HOPE it will throw them a bone if they look up weepingly and adoringly enough...even offer to kill their own people for it...well, pay for it at least...we're too "Christian" to do it ourselves.
: For example Saddam. He is a true and good Assyrian. Because he built a museum for old Assyrian things and has a picture of the Ishtar gate on paper notes he prints. His mum puts a cross on the nice hot cross buns they make. They converted from that other religion to Islam about two hundred years ago. He likes to compare himself with the old Babylonians and expand his territory.
+++He did try to expand his territory...he tried to get back what Iraq has always felt belonged to it...what the Brits cut away. No one said Saddam is a nice guy...that his family converted to islam is a well known possibility...as we know of many Assyrian families who did so.
+++You boys are so offended by this notion, because you love your Jew religion so much, you twist yourselves in knots insisting every Muslim in the world has to be an Arab from Arabia.
He really hates Jews, just like the old Assyrians. Wants to take over Judea and Israel again and send even more tribes packing.
+++Iraqis don't hate Jews. Jews have lived comfortably in Iraq since it was Assyria. The people of the Mideast would have hated anyone who stole their lands and treats them the way Israelis do today, and threatens them with weapons of mass destruction. They would have hated the French if they had stolen Palestine...as they hated them for stealing Algeria...as they hated the British for attacking Iraq repeatedly...while we dumb Levies helped the Brits. The Americans would hate anybody who tries to steal Florida. Americans hated Americans for trying to end slavery.
So the ‘Assyrians’ who are embarrassed by this and being Iraqi are stupid.
+++It is understandable that Christian Assyrians would think and feel this way...after all, if people can reject Christ...it makes it look less than "inevitable" that he HAS to be the son of god with all them goodies to hand out. Same reason they hated the Jews...who had not only the bad grace to dismiss his religion, but got him killed as well. We don't like that. People who say they don't WANT to go to a Christian heaven...don't find any compelling reason to believe in it...to swoon at the thought of being resurrected...are bad for Christian morale. To entertain the possibility that Assyrians could have refused to accept it...could have opted for another religion with other goodies to offer, means it was exactly what it was...a case of Assyrians of wavering faith or shattered hopes shopping around for them goods...not a pretty picture...so they prefer to claim ALL Assyrians just HAD to turn Christian, and by the way, "there wasn't that much difference between them"?
++++Gonna ask Andreas if they have an extra socket at that clinic in Germ.
And after all, Assyria is a verb, not a noun. You have to DO things for Assyria rather than just TALK ABOUT IT A LOT.
++++Of course...and if you would do Assyrian things, rather than Christian things...we would get a lot farther. Assyrian Muslims of Iraq DO a lot of Assyrian things...like preserve the heritage, Assyrian and everyone else's there. Christian Assyrian Americans DO things like encourage even more attacks against BetNahrain/Iraq...while they TALK about how much they love the stones of Ashur.
: He has hung, shot, executed, electrocuted, liquidated, and poisoned with Thallium people who don’t agree with him.
+++Of course he has...you think the United States would support freely elected governments in those countries whose resources they want to steal? Bush and his pappy have done all that...as other presidents did worse in Vietnam...and our CIA did in Latin America. On top of that the United States is drifting towards being a dictatorship with Star Chambers and secret trials...and Lindh wasn't treated all that differently. It is far more alarming that the United States would adopt these kinds of tactics...because we started out from a very different place. Saddam is just being true to the qualifications that got him America's support in the first place. The Shah refused to go along any longer and he was gone...Noriega is in prison, Mossadeq was tried in Iran and turned over by the CIA...and Saddam did something to displease Washington...though it is more likely he was used when ready, for another policy shift in the MidEast.
+++No one that I know of is praising Saddam...if anything we are saying take pity on his people...if what you say about him is true...then how will starving the children of Iraq to death "inspire" their parents to overthrow a man who would use the tactics you describe...and has all that capabillity?
He likes to protect his country from fuddy duddies. There are many fuddy duddies who look hungrily at Iraq’s lands. Like some people who said they want to call themselves ‘Assyrian’ or Jews. He said no you have to say you’re A-rab (and later he said Kurdish is ok too). But that doesn’t matter really because Arab is really the same as Assyrian! (Didn’t help the poor Jews hanging in Baghdad’s streets. But Jewish people are ok now. They have a place where people can’t tell them they can’t call themselves Jewish otherwise they will be hung, shot, executed, electrocuted, liquidated, and poisoned with Thallium).
+++His efforts to call people Iraqi and minimize their ethnic differences come about because Muslim leaders in the Mideast know full well the sorts of divide and rule tactics the West has used so effectively in a land of diversity. They used our strengths against us. Yes indeed Christians and Jews and Muslims have lived in the greatest harmony ever in the lands of the Mideast because Islam is a religion of tolerance. It is easy to be united when the government just kills all those who are different. The Mideast has tried unsuccessfully to present a united front to face the West with.
+++I doubt if any Christian site would feature synbols of Islam...the Iraqi cultural site does...and it calls the Assyrians "Assyrians"...doesn't mince words at all. If he insists that Assyrians of TODAY renounce any claims to Assyria, it is ONLY because the Christian Assyrians have demonstrated in the past that they will work for those who attack Iraq...as they did for the Brits and now for the Americans. We don't have a good track recordof loyalty to ANYBODY...Ashur most of all.
(At any rate, apparently America does the same thing to people IT doesn’t like, just that they know how to make it sound good with all their cool news channels. Like when they killed those people in the middle of the Yemen desert without a trial.) After all, Assyria is a verb not a noun. And those ‘Assyrians’ who got hung, shot, executed, electrocuted, liquidated, and poisoned with Thallium were probably just the type who LIKED TO TALK ABOUT IT A LOT.
++++Unfortunately they were the ones who made noises about how they were going to take back the land that belonged to them since before Christianity...as would happen in any country if a portion of the population decided to talk and act in that fashion. These kinds of Assrins have made us suspect in Iraq. Saddam is just behaving in the time honored tradition of despots...as we are behaving in our time honored tradition of being pig-headed and eager to die "martyrs".
: So, people in Iraq are Assyrian because they live in the land once called Assyria.
+++I'm sure you were eager to be called Australian...as most of us in America weep with joy when we can legally call ourselves American. The people of Iraq are descendants of the people of Assyria, Babylonia and the Iraq of Haroun. They are descendants, that is all. The Assyrians weren't "pure" 4000 years ago...they hardly are pure today.
And they are doing things to defend that heritage.
+++Indeed they are. A heritage is something you inherit...it is passed on to you. The Assyrian history of Iraq was passed down to those living in the land today...a heritage AS Assyrians, not just as Christians. As such it is an ethnic and cultural heritage and yes, it belongs to all of the people of Iraq...whether born there or just recently moved there.
+++You are mixing religion in again. It matters not all if today all of Iraq becomes Buddhist. They would still be the descendants of the ancient people, mixed in now with the RELIGIOUS heritage of the Buddha...and possibly the ethnic culture of whoever brought Buddhism to Iraq....Hindu or whatever. This ethnic cultural stuff is dicey and very complex...safest to say and BEHAVE with great respect and a sense for preserving all of the ethnic heritage in the entire world...screw the religions. let's help Iraq maintain the Assyrian Heritage...and the Abbasid Heritage...let's stop helping people who happen to share a religion with us in their attempts to steal the land. Makes us unpopular over there...as it would make us over here.
But the people OUTSIDE Iraq who build museums for old Assyrian things and who speak and teach Akkadian or Syriac in universities aren’t really Assyrian – like the British or Americans or Germans or Finnish who have built the best Assyrian museums and same of who speak Akkadian and Syriac better than many Iraqis. That’s because they don’t actually live in the land called Iraq, which in any case is really Assyria. (Besides which, all that museum stuff is hot). So there is no such thing as an Anglo-Assyrian. Or Assyro-American. Or Finno-Assyrian. There are however plenty of Assyrian Americans who mix with these bad people and LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT A LOT.
+++Said before....I will accept Japanese as Assyrians depending on what they DO. And if Assrins encourage attacks against Betnahrain...by that same standard, I would not consider them very Assyrian.
++++In the back of that cavern where your mind used to be is the notion that Assyrians have to be Christians. There is no reason to believe that...it is a prejudice, an article of faith, that's all. Live on with that belief...but religion has no part to play in the Assyrian identity of the modern era...not since the original religion was dumped in favor of a better one. You people are just trying hard to insist it was the right thing to do...the "Assyrian" thing to do...and you go screwy trying to prove an article of faith.
: So people who call themselves Assyrian (and who probably just LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT A LOT) and live outside Iraq – Assyria – are in a quandary. If they call themselves Assyrian and do stuff to conserve their heritage
+++Conserve what heritage...the Assyrian heritage or the Christian heritage? They are not the same thing...not unless you insist there is really no difference between being a follower of Ashur or a follower of the jew carpenter. I wish Assyrians outside of BetNahrain WOULD do something to preserve the Assyrian Heritage instead of the Christian religious heritage AMONG the Assyrians.
they are no different to the British who build nice Assyrian museums, because they don’t live in Iraq – Assyria. Which is a problem because in Iraq there are many, many Arab people who just live there and don’t do anything to defend a heritage they don’t know or care about.
+++They are not Arabs...Arabs live in Arabia...Americans who moved to Italy in 1678 are no longer called Americans...they become Italians. Just as people in Iraq converted to Christianity...so too did others in Iraq convert to Islam. Both religions were brought to that region by non-Iraqis...non-Assyrians. That Assyrians converted to Christianity and thereafter infected other Assrins...is similar to what happened at the Muslim Conquest...some Assrins converted to islam and infected others.
+++It is not the people of Iraq who have imposed Sanctions on themselves...that is Western nonsense...like the Israelis saying the Palestinians are responsible for Settlements...because they wont accept Israeli thefts of the land they turn into Settlements. Iraq had every right...as all nations do...to attempt to take back what it has always asserted was a part of it. Just how did Hawaii become a part of America...or Puerto Rico...or Alaska? The United States even gave him their approval...though he didn;t need it. It is the time honored tradition for countries to steal whatever they can. If they can hold on to the theft, no power on earth can talk them out of it. As far as Iraq is concerned, Kuwait was stolen from IT...and they were simply correcting that theft. Not nice...but not illegal either. Countries do nasties all the time...in fact the nastiest countries, the United States chief among them, break all sorts of resolutions and international laws all the time.
But I am told they are more Assyrian than the other ones just because they live in the land.
++++You were told no such thing. As you demonstrate here, you don't know WHAT you are told...or what you are saying either. I really think you have been designated as the next White Hope...or have taken on the mantle because these ideas are too provocative...and thanks to the internet are being spread far too far and wide...and as our Christian brethren are the scared shitless type who would never venture out in public, who slam their "forum" doors shut...there really isn't anyone to argue these points...so you've turned yourself into a spokeperson for these idiots with the dire consequences we see before us. Swallow a whole bunch less bullshit and call me in the morning.
: Then there are people like the non-Moslem Lebanese. They were pretty happy to call themselves Arab
+++Yeah, I know what you mean...like Gibran...whom you'll all nonetheless insist didn't know what he was talking about...that he REALLY meant to say he was Assyrian. Sheesh.
when a lot of oil was first being pumped up in the “Arab” countries and it looked like the Arab-speaking world had a good future.
+++Conspiracies too?
But now they are saying we are not Arabs and many people are beginning to relearn Syriac (Syriac is not a church language, it just means the Assyrian language, Sureth,
+++Oh give it a REST alright already. Is that all this was? An excuse to start in again with your various models and brand names?
but that’s too confusing because apparently Arabic is Assyrian and Assyrian is Arabic), which they stopped speaking only a couple hundred years ago.
+++So sad. A slightly promising and staunchly mediocre mind has been lost to us. Thank god we have an abundant supply. At least Assrins know where to stick their dicks...should be no end to the supply.
They don’t like being called Arabs anymore because it’s pretty daggy now – the Arabs look like cornered animals fighting the homicide bombers with suicide bombers. They haven’t managed to get organized despite the fact that there are so many of THEM and so few of their enemy and they have all that oil for free. But they like to blame the West because it’s always easier to blame someone else rather than take responsibility for your own cock ups. But this is all ok because their heritage is the greatest and it civilised civilisation.
+++No comment...poor dear.
: There are more nations now who don’t like to call themselves Arab anymore, like people in Africa; Libya for example: the leader was on Al Jazeera the other day saying ‘we are not Arabs’.
++++They understand it was a political move...they know they were never Arabs.
: But these people are obviously crazy. Just like the ‘Assyrians’ – the ones who LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT A LOT. They should realize that by saying they are not Arab they are blowing hot wind and making trouble with their neighbours and they should all just shut up and work to preserve a heritage that is Arab. Only… it’s really Assyrian.
++++Arabs are from Arabia...Assyrians are from Iraq...and a few other Muslim nations. Islam is the dominant religion in that area...obviously not all Muslims came out of Arabia...and just as obviously many people there opted for Islam instead of Christ. get over it. Their changes of religion don't change who they are...something you insist HAS to be true in the case of the Christian Assyrians...well it's true for everyone there who changed to a foreign religion...Islam or Christianity. Didn't change the people's ethnic roots. There is every good reason in the world for Iraqis to embrace ALL of the heritages in that blessed land...just as Christian Assyrians embrace all of church history...as well as ALL of the heritages of ancient BetNahrain...only stopping when another "new" religion came to the region...like that made them "pure"...pure and real idiots is what it has reduced us to...look at yourself you poor fellow.
: The point of all this, I am told, is that by saying Arabs are really Assyrians in an Arab’s dish-dasha, you are Assyrianising things and that’s the only way we can survive.
+++Arabs can't be Assyrians...not unless they move to lands of Assyria and became Assyrian over time. We are talking about Assyrians who became MUSLIM...as opposed to becomming Christians. And, since Islam started out as a religion in Arabia...and was brought out from the place of its birth by Arabs initially...you poor dumb clucks insist that every Muslim in the world today, or in Iraq, HAS to be an Arab from Arabia...like all the Arabs in Mongolia and the Phillipines and Indonesia and England and America... are ALL Arabs!
+++By what you call "logiquek"...the same would have to apply to Christianity...which was brought out from the place of its birth, Israel...disseminated by Jews...from Israel...which would make every Christian in Iraq...or Canada, an Israeli following Judaism.
+++Is it any wonder you're babbling this way?
So that when a Chaldean in Iraq says he is Arab and has Arab blood flowing in his veins he really means Assyrian. Just a Catholic one…
++++You're jumping between religion, ethnicity and nationality...even including a bit of political skulduggery...no wonder you don't make any sense. A Chaldean is a Chaldean...he too dumped his original religion...he too has tried to indentify with his modern nation...and he too has to show political unity by joining this united front of ARAB...to counter the Western front of EUROPEAN...and now the just plain THE WEST.
: Done. I’m glad I sorted all THAT out…
+++Sorted it out??? I suppose when you vomit, you're "sorting out" your lunch?
-- pancho
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