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"...Like the Talents and Terrors of our Times"
Amritas quoting Jack Kirby PART 2 
The above image is in Devanagari script (Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit and other languages) for Amaravati, the name of Amritas' blog as it appears there. Below is the full Jack Kirby quote Amritas brought to cap his post which I commented on in part 1, The Creators' Party: We'll do it together! You and I shall stay with it! And watch a giant image grow - like the talents and terrors of our times!
The following quote is from The Comic Book Creator's Party website: Politically, our biggest challenge is the situation in the Middle East - which has been exasperated by the inability of Western leaders to understand the Arab world and the spirit which drives them. This essential issue, reaking havoc in the world today, is of great concern to both Amritas and I. His Creators' Party item has been followed by this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this - all on the Islamic threat to modern civilization. What makes Amritas an authority? He's a languages expert with clear and true insights as to cultural differences and crossovers. He understands people and cultures by their languages, which reflect on their behavior. This gives us insights into cultural differences which can help us understand and resolve conflicts. Western leaders, however, don't appear to be interested in understanding anything about Islam. They wish to simply pretend that Islam will fall in step with the Western ideology, while ignoring simple evident facts. Amritas' friend Lawrence Auster commenting on Londoner Alice Miles: A typically pathetic post - 7/07 column by Londoner Alice Miles, focusing, as most of these columns do, on "How are we doing in the aftermath, how do we feel." We'll be seeing endless amounts of this sort of therapeutic trash from now on in place of a serious response to the jihadist threat within. True, Miles ends on a quasi hardline note: No one should stigmatize any community, the police said yesterday. But those bombers have stigmatized the communities that made them, and we should spare a thought for the devastation wrought on those communities; but then we should insist that they cannot continue in a state of alienation from the rest of society. That is a challenge for them, and for all of us. They, too, must become ordinary.
But, my dear (I feel like saying to Miss Miles), what if our Moslem friends don't become "ordinary"? What will you say and do then? This is the interminable trap of the various "peace" processes, the "moderation" processes, with the seemingly insistent statement by the Western partners to the process that the non-Westerners "must" do something, but with absolutely no sanctions and no plan B in place in the event that they don't do what is demanded of them. It is like your typical contemporary mother saying weakly and detachedly to her child, "Don't do that, honey, don't do that," and the child does it anyway, and the mother doesn't react to the disobedient behavior but continues her unserious promptings as before. Columns such as Miss Miles' seem virtually designed to trigger more terrorist attacks, to express the sheer contempt that Moslems must feel for Westerners who, instead of cracking down on the Moslems and throwing them out on their collective rear, plead with them to "change," pretty please.
More Auster: Unless all Moslems were converted to the belief in democracy, an impossible outcome, millions of Moslems would continue to resent and hate the alien system - the antithesis of their holiest beliefs - that had been imposed on them, and they would fight it with ever renewed fierceness and terror. So BushÂs democratization strategy, even if it succeeded on its own terms, is a recipe for an unending guerilla terror war waged against every democratic regime in the Moslem world, a campaign that America would be responsible for suppressing, forever. Amritas, a wide awake liberal, agrees that a military showdown with Islam is doomed to failure. One solution proposed recently is the expulsion of all Mulims from the West - the containment of Islamic Jihad (the devastating majority of the Arab and Islamic cultures) in a fenced off Middle-East where they can do no harm to the West. I also question our intestinal fortitude in being able to carry out such a task. Perhaps it's time to face what we're dealing with. I'll step into questionable territory here; the religious background fueling the conflict. For all it's worth to all who dismiss the power inherent in the world's religious infrastructure, here's an eye opener. The writer(s) of the book of Genesis foresaw this quagmire more than 3000 years ago. They were writers, like Lawrence Austere, James Hundall, Amritas and myself with a passion for recording their insights and leaving them to the winds of history. The original linguistic essence in the story of the sons of Noah, after the flood, tells everything about this conflict today. Noah's 3 sons were Shem, Kham and Yefet. According to the narrative, they became the fathers of modern civilization, first separated into 3 large nations and then into the myriad of others we have today. Shem, in Hebrew means Name, those who call on the name of God. His children were Ever, meaning across or wander the root of the word Hebrew, meaning Wanderer. Ever's children, Terach and Avram-Aberaham father of the Jewish people. Kham = Hot. Hot tempered and hot blooded. His children: Egypt, Kanaan, Arabia. Father of the Arab/Islamic people. Yefet = Beauty. Beauty as in the arts and culture. His children: Greece, Ashkenaz and Gog. Father of Western civilization - Christianity. The narrative tells a story after the flood. Noah became drunk with pleasure from surviving the ordeal and fell asleep naked, covered with a blanket. Kham, being the hot blooded portent of ridicule, uncovered his father and laughed at his nakedness to the eyes of his brothers. Shem and Yefet then took the blanket and walked backwards to cover their father without seeing him naked, causing Kham to reel back in shame and cease his disgusting laughter. For everyone who sees, as I do, the inexplicable fervor of religious worship, I suggest we consider this fable. Three major religions stand in the midst of civilization today. Their characteristics inexplicably echo those of Noah's 3 sons. The West and Israel are locked in a struggle with Islam, in the same way Shem and Yefet joined hands to reconcile Kham's hot blooded, hot tempered, and destructive ridicule of his father. We are not simply amidst a cultural clash between East and West. We are part of a conflict driven by forces beyond the grasp of the political proponents who appear to wage it. We can't subdue Islam, not by force and not by isolation. We need to pierce its heart and cause it to reel back in shame. The way to Islam's heart is through its own religious creed. We need a diplomacy which challenges Islam's claims to religious supremacy. This is possible because Muhammad left such a failsafe in the Koran. We simply need to understand how to communicate this to the Muslim leaders and fanatics - in their own language, through their own books and with rigorouss debate. We need to lay our arms down and pre-occupy them with the one thing which interests them. Their religious and cultural standing within the family of nations. I've done this countless times here in Israel in heated discussions with Muslims. It needs to be done as a spearheading of a diplomatic initiative. It's the only way to stop the destruction they wish to bring on the world. If not, then we will suffer the fate of Jack Kirby's childhood friend, Leon Klinghoffer. From a Twomorrows interview quoted by Amritas. [At this point, there is a break in the recording, and it resumes with a discussion of the Achille Lauro incident. In October 1985, members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a member-organization of the PLO, hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro while it was at anchor in Port Said, Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea, and held its passengers hostage. Many American tourists were on-board, including elderly, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, who was a boyhood friend of Kirby's. The terrorists shot Klinghoffer in cold blood and threw his body overboard. To rub further salt into the wound, PLO officials repeatedly mocked the victims, declaring at the United Nations that Mrs. Klinghoffer had probably murdered her husband "for the insurance money." Abu Abbas, head of the PLF and mastermind of the hijacking, when asked about the killing of Klinghoffer, replied, "Maybe he was trying to swim for it."]
GLENN: The guy who jumped on the terrorists was in a wheelchair?
JACK: He was in a wheelchair, yeah. When I knew him, his folks owned the mini-store on my block. He was the only one that went after the terrorists. ROZ KIRBY: He went after them verbally. He talked back to them. MIKE: They shot him in the head. JACK: Nobody said a word to the terrorists; they did as they willed. Klinghoffer was the only one who talked back to them. He died. They threw him overboard and he died. A guy from my block would do it. He wouldn't stand for it because there were women on board and he felt that... GLENN: Where was that? In Brooklyn? Bronx? JACK: No, Lower East Side. And that's why I say they turned on him. [People on my block] were people that were just becoming Americans. I felt I was an American because I was born here. All the guys felt that. And, of course, Captain America came out of that kind of a feeling. We need to engage the Muslim world with the one issue it does care about. For that we need new inspiration and leadership which The Creators can forge. As Amritas said, we don't sit back waiting to be saved. That's why we take advantage of this incredible communications medium. Joining forces with others and spreading a collective growing awareness and understanding of what we're dealing with. A growing awareness of how to capture the hearts and imagination of the world through a pop culture and the entertainment world phenomenonn with a messianic vision, inexplicable as it is, for turning the tides. Amritas: Creators like James Hudnall and Kirby's former assistant Mark Evanier are already disseminating such ideas through their blogs. (You can find many more Creator sites by looking at the links on the right-hand side of Netzer's own blog.) But that's just the beginning. Yes, prose can be powerful, but well-formulated theses and thoroughly researched statements are not enough. It will take a Kirbyesque blend of reality and imagination to awaken the public - stories that are more 'real' than the news, plots that parallel our struggles, characters that could be us. What if The Creators as a whole don't deliver? Then what? Are we just a passive audience waiting to be saved? Would they have doomed us? No, for if linguistics has taught me anything, it is that we are all creators. Each of us has built our own personal language - our idiolect - and our own worldview. The Creator has made us in His image. The Maker has begat more makers. We are not powerless. In our own small ways - e.g., this blog - we too try to express ourselves. I can't wait for others to speak for me. In the 1984 reprint edition of New Gods, the King of the Creators said to us readers - the little-c creators - We'll do it together! You and I shall stay with it! And watch a giant image grow - like the talents and terrors of our times!
Permalink Posted: 6:24 AM EST
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