What’s Behind Coffin Number 3? Ch 6 pg 14

Some of the vandalism did fall to the local inhabitants. As a result of shortages on construction material they pilfered the metal fences and grave markers to use on their farms. Others stole anything that might be of value to sell – good granite and marble lay around for the taking. And then there were the actual graves, the bodies and what lay with them. Grave robbers looked for jewels, gold teeth, anything that maybe had a resale value. They dumped out the bodies and plundered the coffins. Maybe it is good that the forest now covers what once was the old cemetery of Gnieballen. Perhaps what remains now lies there in peace, reclaimed, never again to be disturbed.
These tactics of abolishing cemeteries not only served to destroy and cleanse the land of previous inhabitants, but it served as a warning to the current liberated citizens. The Soviets were know as atheists, but is it right to say that as a result this made them more brutal say than the Spanish Inquisition, or the Puritans burnings witches in Salem , Massachusetts? The degree of brutality or savagery is rather irrelevant. It does however seem a rather unique approach to ethnic cleansing by getting rid of those already dead. It perplexes me, this act of taking out vengeance on bodies long dead. More than anything it violates a long standing human taboo about corpses, for whatever reason.
Yet there is something that puzzles me yet, something relating to the current day. So many Germans go back, so many want to reclaim their land, so many have formed these pseudo political organizations to take back lost lands. Do none of them want to ‘rebury’ the dead? Is there no one to even gather the bones in an act of respect for ancestors, burying the past in a deeper sense?

Bless His Heart

Watching part 2 of The Atheism Tapes, I took in the interview Jonathan Miller had with Richard Dawkins, famed biologist. My personal revelation is shared by others! It is shared with Richard Dawkins – I am very flattered. Yeah sure, deep down I know his conclusion came earlier and without any input from me.
Here’s the point at which he saw the light: in adolescence he realized that religious beliefs are a result of an arbitrary accident. Your religion is a direct result of your place of birth. Born in northern Germany, you are a Protestant; born in the south you’re Catholic. Born in the U.S. deep south, you’re gonna be a Baptist. Born in Republic of Ireland, you’re Catholic. And it was worse, more black and white, years ago. Parents actually change their religion now, and children will follow that religion or lack thereof.
Further how can there be so many religions all of which are right? And they maintain they are the only true and rightful path in that they condemn all other religions.

The Lovely Quotes

Typical morning listening to NPR. Once again, discussion of the New York City proposed mosque. They were interviewing a Moslem American who said this controversy made him feel like Camus’ stranger in a strange land.
Well Camus wrote The Stranger, which I have packed away somewhere in my boxes sitting in the storage unit.
And Heinlein wrote “Stranger in a Strange Land”, also sitting in those same boxes.
Me – well I just increasingly feel like a protagonist in a Kafka novel. I’ll need to find an appropriate quote.
But I got to hear a great quote yesterday watching classic movies on Public Television. “Badges. We don’t have no badges. We don’t need no stinking badges!” Said with great conviction and a sneer by the bandito in “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, lovely film, even though it is only black and white, and stars actors long forgotten by most of the population.
And about putting up a mosque ‘near ground zero’? Wish everybody had more common sense. We will end up very much in a precarious position similar to what has happened to Europeans. Offering extremist groups our hard won rights and liberties will only serve to endanger the same. They come to this country and in the guise of religious beliefs force their people to perpetuate conditions akin to slavery. They will undermine the tenets of our societies.