Theos-Talk Archives (October 2001 Message tt00473)

I couldn't believe people actually booed Richard Gere until I read this
Eldon.

Nos



|-----Original Message-----
|From: Eldon B Tucker [mailto:eldon@theosophy.com] 
|Sent: Tuesday, 30 October 2001 1:27 AM
|To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
|Subject: Re: Theos-World human rights
|
|
|At 04:05 AM 10/29/01 -0800, you wrote:
|>Seems the subject of human rights has come up. Since the 
|watch-word of 
|>Amnesty is: don't complain of the dark, light a candle, I thought - 
|>I'll find the human rights on the web and share them. Seems a 
|bit more 
|>useful than political bickering.
|>
|>Katinka
|>[found at http://www.hrweb.org/legal/udhr.html ]
|
|The principles mentioned in the declaration that you've
|quoted are good. Even so, they represent Western values.
|Many of the rights we assert that people should have are
|denied under various countries and in fundamentalist
|Islamic countries. They are not considered rights, but
|rather thought of as evil, sinful, and a violation of
|religious standards.
|
|In Saudi, women are not allowed to drive cars. The
|Taliban do not allow women to have an education, and
|have a death penalty for teaching other religions.
|Theosophical books and classes would likely receive
|the same hostile reception.
|
|We cannot move forward towards universal rights in the
|world until fundamentalism loses its power. That's
|something that may take many years, decades, or centuries
|to come into effect.
|
|In the short run, the world is not safe, due to groups
|like Bin Laden's where they're seeking weapons of mass 
|destruction with the serious intention to kill large numbers 
|of civilians in western countries. This is in an attempt to 
|bring about a world war where we'd be plunged into the Dark 
|Ages again, perhaps under fundamentalist Islamic rule.
|
|Until this threat to the safety of the world is contained,
|we cannot focus on the important long-term goal of
|doing away with fundamentalism and the denial of human
|rights under various oppressive governments in the world.
|
|Until the murderous religious fanatics are contained,
|capturing them and rendering them harmless should be the
|number one national goal of all western countries.
|Then when our lives are not in immediate danger, we can
|turn and concern ourselves with treating our citizens and
|the citizens of other countries better.
|
|Fortunately most or all of us are not politicians nor in
|the military. We don't have to make the hard decisions
|and directly risk our lives. But we can support their
|efforts on our behalf. They're not just working for
|themselves; they're doing it for our benefit as well.
|
|They're operating, I think, on a dangerous timetable. If
|they don't contain the terrorism soon enough, millions of 
|civilians could die in the next major attack, when deadlier 
|weapons are obtained by Bin Laden's group.
|
|People seeking to stop or delay our defensive efforts
|should think again what they're really doing. If their
|efforts cause a delay that allows another strike against
|the west, and millions die, they'll share in the
|responsibility for this happening. They'll have some of
|the blood of the millions on their hands. Instead of
|being peace activists, they'd end up being accomplices
|in mass murder.
|
|-- Eldon
|
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|
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