Feast of Purim: Esther performs a subversive transformation of identity and power; she compasses simultaneously contradictory positions; she both submits and presides; she makes an eloquent plea against enslavement and violence [Esther 7] - she calls for liberation; external identity is a "mask" for her internal being; she is what she did not seem to be, a Jew, at the same instant, Esther "comes out" as a woman - just as she unmasks the truth of herself as Jew, she unmasks the truth of herself as woman; having masqueraded as a submissive being, she manifests herself as a potent, commanding leader who imminently takes the king's authority in her hands, legislates, and makes royal appointment - the Jews in Persia are transformed from oppressed people to empowered self-defenders - ESTHER TRANSFORMS HERSELF FROM OPPRESSED OBJECT TO STRIDENT COMMANDING SUBJECT; Esther's indomitable humane compassion [vs. a self-absorbed power like the king and Haman] drives her to risk her own life to oppose narrow and violent evil ["If I perish, I perish" (Esther 4:16)] -- Esther's solution respects the integrity of the body by deconstructing the text [repeal the order of annihilation], yet the king has no power to revoke his own seal; the only recourse is to issue new orders giving the Jews permission to defend themselves; the monarch's solution destroys the body while maintaining the text intact: the outcome of the story enacts the horrific consequences of the displacement of integrity from human life to text -- Esther affirms her humane kindness, by contrast, the violent outcome is a perverse inversion, a mockery of divine immutability, and a displacement of the sacred from our texts and table !! -- TEXTUAL ACTIVISM IS A CHRISTIAN DUTY, A REASONING TOGETHER !! - Esther was an activist whose potent insurgence foiled a plot of global proportions; the Fast of Esther (preceding Purim, the Feast) is a day of strategy, a day to steel our resolve to foil all roots of evil: IT IS TIME TO UNMASK AND DISMANTLE, TO DECONSTRUCT THE PERVERSE, THE WICKEDNESS OF THIS WORLD !! -- [based on "Unmasking the Scroll of Esther"; Tikkun (Mar/Apr 2002 edition)]
The Road to Armageddon
By Paul Craig Roberts article link
February 26, 2010 "Information Clearing House'
Complexity and Collapse
Empires on the Edge of Chaos
By Niall Ferguson article link article link
Summary: - Imperial collapse may come much more suddenly than many historians imagine. A combination of fiscal deficits and military overstretch suggests that the United States may be the next empire on the precipice.
February 26, 2010 "Foreign Affairs" - March/April 2010 Edition
CFR Foreign Affairs issues
Information Clearing House home page
Twenty-First Century Breakdown
by Jim Quinn article link
02.24.10
SilverBear Cafe home page
21st Century Strategy: Militarized Europe, Globalized NATO
by Rick Rozoff article link
Global Research, February 26, 2010
Global Research home page
The Military Conundrum: Follow Orders, Or Follow The Constitution?
by Giordano Bruno article link
Neithercorp Press - 02/18/2010
Neithercorp Press web page
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