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Menachem's Writings
The more things change, the more they stay the same
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." Last week's Torah portion relates the story of the Tower of Babel. Though perhaps the major event in the history of the world, the Torah dedicates a mere nine verses to it. The Midrash, the allegoric explanation of the Torah, comes to fill the enormous gap. These traditional interpretations, written by many Rabbis up until the sixth century, are not always meant to be taken literally, but rather they teach a moral message. Let me set the Midrashic scene for you. Historically, we are now 339 years since the Great Flood. Noah and his sons are assigned the task of reestablishing humanity over the entire earth. Noah himself still has ten years to live. Avraham is already 48 years old and has been spreading the true word now for many years. He is backed, academically, intellectually, by the renowned University of Shem and Ever. But Avraham's learned theories and reasoning are rejected by the masses with irrelevant arguments, even with insults. "How can we take him seriously?" they question, "he is sterile and barren, like a mule." Other experts, lesser knowledgeable professors, are consulted instead to explain reality. The government arrests Avraham for his views, finding him guilty of sedition. He is sentenced to death, but ultimately his innocence is revealed, but he is sent into exile. His brother, Ḥaran, is not so lucky. Though he did not accepts all of Avraham's beliefs, he is none-the-less thrown into a fiery furnace at the local brickworks. 339 years is a long time in human history. Much happens in such a timespan. Just think what the world looked like in 1670. Exploration, borders, population numbers and movement; industrial, scientific and technological advances. Language development. The Bible informs us that at this time in history, "the whole earth was of one language and of one speech." The verse is a tautology. And the Torah never wastes words. Seemingly superfluous words are there for a reason, they come to teach us something new. Some commentators prefer to translate the verse as "... of one language and of common purpose". This explains the situation a little better. Our populace is ideologically united. And our civilisation is technologically advanced. Past generations built their houses from stone. This limited possible settlement locations. However, our generation developed brick making, allowing building almost anywhere. Noah is credited with the introduction of the plough, allowing planned agriculture. Nomadic hunter-gathers transformed into urban dwellers, living in secure towns surrounded by farmland. The world's population is on the move, but united in cause. "They travelled from the [known Middle] East, [in Hebrew] kedem." But kedem also means 'what came before'. "They travelled from their past". They denied history, a history based on Divine intervention in the affairs of Man. They desired to define their unique identity and their own destiny. The purpose of their migration further to the east was to find a location large enough to allow all of them to continue to live together, in a permanent settlement. Though by now, tells us the Bible, they were already racial distinguished, they remained united. The descendants of Ham are black skinned and considered inferior. The sons of Shem are the intelligentsia, the leadership class. But this racial and class distinction does not seem to be of concern to them. Their harmony is maintained. Though Don Isaac Abravanel [circa 15th-16th century] was an international statesman and financier to the kings of Portugal, Spain and Italy, he and his fellow Jews were exiled many times by these Catholic countries to whom they were beneficial politically and economically. Perhaps basing himself on his political science experience, Abravanel says that devarim aḥadim as well as meaning 'one speech', also means 'singular things'. "Their possessions were one, held in common, without any private ownership." In our parlance, socialism, not in itself a bad thing if it is truly equal, truly altruistic, and everyone pulls their weight equally. "And they arrived at the plain of Babylon", the fertile crescent between the rivers. They recognised this location as ideal. Climate, geography, topography, ample water and fertile soil all came together in this place. But literally, "They found a plain". The mystical Zohar says the Biblical text should read "they saw a plain [as they approached it]". What is it that they discovered at this location? "They found a secret wisdom which allowed them to connect with the rebellion of the antediluvian generation." They would merely speak and their work was done for them. "And they settled there". Midrash Bereshith Rabba learns from this that they were affluent, as 'settled' means they ate and drank. "Wherever men eat and drink, Satan is active." They had found the easy life. In their new home, they decided to build a city with a tower. What is wrong with this desire? After all, God Himself tells us that He created man to populate and build up the earth, becoming His active, creative partner. But our population wanted everyone to live only in this a place in which they could continue living together, under the rule of one supreme king, Nimrod. And who was this Nimrod and who was behind him? Was he a brilliant orator? handsome and presentable? No-one achieves leadership on his own, no matter how "mighty a hunter" or politician he may be. Nimrod was a grandson of Ham, thus both black and of the lower class. Who catapulted Nimrod to leadership? On this issue even the Midrash is silent. But we all know that there are always faceless, unknown men behind leaders, whether in a democracy and in a totalitarian regime. "A tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed across the whole earth." Here we learn that they denied the existence of God. Rabbi Samson Rephael Hirsch [19th century Germany] says that "they saw their desires as an end instead of a means, an attitude that must end in moral decay. They came to believe that they could dispense with God and morality". The Zohar says, "let us make a name", refers to creating an idol, a replacement for God. And the tower as a physical means of reaching to the heavens, to attack God in His own domain. At first, what they were doing, building a city surrounding a guard tower, seems OK, even altruistic. And that is probably why the whole world population went along with their leadership. After all, it was the right thing to do. But it's really all in the packaging. Our good people were baking bricks, building a city. What's wrong with that? They could not see what their (public and hidden) leadership were planning. And what were they plotting? They usurped the ideology with which God blessed them after the Flood, to build up the world, with an ideology of idolatry, self-centredness and sensuousness. Following the fine example of their leadership, the people lost its ability to care about the welfare of the individual. Only the collective was important, ideology was important, and I would venture to say, their leaders also saw themselves indispensable. And I am sure the leaders knew how to turn a nice profit for themselves. What about the rights of the individual? The tower project was efficiently designed and smoothly run. Two stairwells, one to carry bricks to the top, and a second to descend for more. There was unity of purpose, and there was total cooperation. One Midrash even goes as far as to say that it took a full year to reach the top of the structure. If someone fell off the stairs, to his certain demise, his fellow workers would weep bitterly, not at the loss of their comrade, a fellow human being, but at the loss of the bricks he was carrying. Let's sum up the Babel situation. Socialism coupled with affluence, a good life for all. A godless, immoral society. One world government, lead a by a known frontman, even a strongman, with strong, unrevealed, backing. Though human life is cheap, everyone is happy. _______________ I think my analogy to our times is apparent, but I continue. A quick look at world history, as accurately predicted by Daniyel. Following the Dispersion, humanity does reach the four corners of the earth. Civilisation, races, people, nations develop, each with their own unique language and culture. Then, about 2,500 years ago (1,500 years after the Dispersion) a change in the world order occurs. Babylon conquers the area around its domain. For years, Babylon and Egypt have been jockeying for control of the Near and Middle East, the "cradle of civilisation". Now Babylon comes out on top, forming the world's first ever empire — but not for long. After 69 years of domination, they are overrun by a coalition of Medes and Persians. The Persians greatly expand the Babylonian empire, at its height stretching contiguously from the southern Egyptian border with Nubia (Cush) to Indus Valley. Again, after a number of Persian monarchs, Alexander the Great of Macedon, moving too swiftly for the heavy Persian army, conquers the old empire, creating an even larger one in its place. Alexander dies young and his Greek empire is split into three amongst his generals. The split creates weaker, loosely connected entities, which are eventually taken over by the Romans. The Roman empire stretches across all of Europe and into parts of Asia. Greek culture spreads with its armies. And Rome becomes the longest lived of all ancient empires. Many posit, and this is implied by most commentators' understanding of the Book of Daniyel, that the Roman Empire continues until today, in continual self-redefinition. The Roman Catholic (catholic meaning universal in Latin) church is the direct descendent of the Roman Empire, spreading its ideology and practice to the entire globe, far past the reaches of the ancient Roman Empire. In the late 17th century, yes about 340 years ago, the widespread peoples of the world started moving back towards each other, not under military force, but of their own freewill, or so they believed. Two processes commenced. First, national central banks, not owned by governments, started lending money to their own kings and princes. Faceless, unappointed bankers control national finances from behind the scenes. Even today, most people do not realise that the U.S. Federal Reserve (and many other central banks) is not owned by the government and that the government owes them billions. And second, the small European medieval city states start to combine into larger, national entities: Italy, France and last of all, Germany, combine under national governments. Europe and North America enter the twentieth century divided into large nations, whose finances are independently controlled. Kings and princes were largely replaced by constitutional monarchies and republics, all supposedly democracies. Individuals now seem to have rights and freedoms as never before. They seem to have control over their own destinies. The fickleness of the system is not yet apparent to most. The world comes out of the second world war with two new blocks dominating the world, vying for the control of the entire globe. We understood that the Russians were the black hatted cowboys, while the Americans and their allies were the good guys in the white hats, retaining communism at bay. However we did not notice that there was a new order emerging in the West as well. Starting as an economic agreement between six countries, the heirs of the E.E.C. today dominate Europe, overriding more and more national laws. New Trade agreements also take precedence over local laws. Multinational corporations, richer and more powerful than many governments, are run by faceless, unknown and unelected leaders. They rely on the various trade treaties to push governments aside, or they use their capital to convince governments to allow them a free hand. The world seems to be governed by a network of connected think tanks. These are multilayered. But the top level seems to be the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Council and the Trilateral Commission. There are also supra-government groupings, making decisions on behalf of everyone. The G7 and the G20 for example. Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, stated on 15th September, 2009, in the Canberra parliament that "it was not yet certain that the G20 would turn into the basis for global government". The G20? Whose mouthpiece is Mr Rudd? The world has never seen the level of immorality we experience daily. For example, when the R rating for movies was first introduced in the sixties, it designated movies with a few swear words. Today, R means erotic, with open sex scenes, over 70% depicting relations between other than a woman and her husband — between a secretary and her boss, between a girl and a man she met at a bar, a man and a man, a man and his dog — all is now acceptable. Our moral senses have been diluted in the name of free expression and free speech. Discipline has ended. You may not even hit your own kid, let alone a pupil in your classroom. Hit!? It is now illegal in Australia and the U.K. [these two and Israel are the countries about which I know the most, so excuse my bias in examples] to tell a child that he "could do better if he works a bit harder". You are embarrassing him, you are lower his self esteem! Listen to Shimon Peres, the president of Israel and the man pushing the concept of a borderless middle east stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. At a conference last week in Jerusalem, he had the following advice for our youth (my loose translation). "Be careful of your teachers, your parents and your friends ... parents just fix your mistakes, friends are jealous ... steer your own course ... you will find the world is a great place ... only technology is worth pursuing — it represents the future ... ignore history, the past is irrelevant ... what was, was ... the world is an now an exciting place ... don't be afraid to be different to your peers ... borders and countries are unimportant ... science deals with what will be ... we're in a new age, a new era." Where is all this parent-child friction leading? If parents cannot control their children, the government will have step in. Control is on the increase. Yes security cameras are ubiquitous. Sure there are a lot of bad guys out there, but now everyone is trackable. Car insurers want a GPS unit in everyones' car, so they can "find your car when it's stolen", but in fact you are traceable wherever you drive. There is opposition to chipping people, so instead your drivers license, id card, credit cards, passports all have little chips in them containing every piece of data about you. And scanners track where you are. _______________ 1975 saw the Lima Declaration. If you have ever wondered how it happened that all the developed world's manufacturing facilities have moved from the first to the third world, the Second General Conference of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (the all have such bombastic titles to make you think that without them the world could not exist) called for the redistribution of world industry so that developing countries would have 25% of it by the year 2000. I think they may be ahead of target. This is nothing other than redistribution of wealth and jobs. And biggest one of all, carbon trading. The green movement [possibly] started for altruistic reasons. Save the earth. But it was infiltrated by socialists, who saw in it a vessel for pushing their socialist agenda. Following fall of the iron curtain, funding seemed to become more freely available. Founding members of Greenpeace left in disgust. Yes, carbon monoxide output from cars is poisonous. The air stunk back in the sixties. CO is a poisonous gas. But we now have catalytic converters on our cars. CO is dead issue. So the new enemy is CO2. CO, CO2, all sounds the same. But carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas. It is not a pollutant. Humans and animals produce it when they breathe out. Plants breathe it in. Yes we do need a balance between plants and animal life on this earth. But excess carbon causing a greenhouse effect in the world! Junk science. Scare techniques are being used. The sea level is rising — FALSE. They have been higher at other times in our history, and they have been lower too. The data is well known, but experts, like Avraham, are ignored. Cows and sheep produce carbon gases, polluting our world. FALSE. Actually farm animals are "carbon neutral" to use their language. They eat grass, which the animal converts to food and carbon exhaust. This carbon goes into the air, from where grass (and trees and flowers) breathe it; and the cows again what have to eat! The 2nd November, 1922, edition of The Washington Post headline: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt". According to NASA, the hottest year of the last hundred years was 1934! Simply put — the world goes through cycles: weather, sea level, polar ice caps. But were all the ice in the north polar icecap to melt today, sea levels would not rise 1 mm. Why? because the volume of this ice is water and it is already in the ocean. The real experts are ignored. Scientists from other fields are consulted and quoted. The latter are rewarded with grant money, the former punished by leaving their research projects unfounded. True debated is squashed. We have a new financial tool in our world today. It's called Carbon Trading. Countries which produce too much carbon have to compensate those that do not. How? With money. In fact carbon will replace money in the new world order. A carbon exchange is in place. A carbon proposed treaty to be signed in Copenhagen in December will cede powers to the U.N. body responsible for implementing the treaty obligations. Again national governments further cede powers to unelected, unknown bureaucrats. Again, wealth distribution from the first to the third world. And carbon is not a product. It is just a derivative. A global stock exchange is being set up to trade in carbon permits. You have to pay for the right to 'produce' carbon. Capital is thus shifted from the rich countries to the poor. As increased population leads to increased carbon usage, the West has a further incentive to reduce population. Europe has already well exceeded zero population growth, making it ripe for eventual takeover. Though they are talking about CO2 gas, they use the word carbon, making people think in terms "dirty", choking, black coal. But trading is not in carbon, but in the right to emit carbon. This derivative product will be biggest traded commodity in the word, even though it has no intrinsic value. It is now being revealed that the shift in the flavour of the British population is not a coincidence, nor a product of the end of the Empire. It appears that New Labour intentionally flooded England with foreigners. Melanie Phillips, Mail Online "But the most shattering revelation was that this policy of mass immigration was not introduced to produce nannies or cleaners .... It was to destroy Britain's identity and transform it into a multicultural society where British attributes would have no greater status than any other country's. A measure of immigration is indeed good for a country. But this policy was not to enhance British culture and society by broadening the mix. It was to destroy its defining character altogether." The is also happening in Australia (boat people) and in Israel too (foreign workers). And guess what? We are moving to a world of one language: English. In what form will the Lord manifest his appearance on earth this time to confound the wicked? Perhaps this time, rather than confuse our language, He may confound our technology. Postscript: There are other players. A leading pretender is China. China is quietly creeping around the world. Less aggressive, the Chinese are buying up the world and moving populations under the pretence of providing labour for their projects. And another, Islam, who first attempted the conquest of Europe (via Iberia) in the tenth century, and who reached the gates of Vienna in the 17th, finally see themselves fulfilling their aspirations of world domination. Or are these 'friendly invasions' part of the overall plan for one world government?
3rd November, 2009
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