Many conspiracy theories on the web just now. Obviously.
"The regime wants Donald Trump to save it" is one. The Republicans in the Senate are on the Chinese payroll is another. Hillary Clinton will become the Democratic candidate is perhaps the least nutty.
The most bizarre speculation is that Joe Biden isn´t really Joe Biden, but his fourth body double?! Yeaaaah, probably a troll.
We are monitoring the situation.
JMG´s conspiracy theory about Assange. Difficult to believe, tbh.
>>>That’s simple enough. The Democrats have realized that they’re likely to lose the upcoming election, and they wanted to cut a plea bargain with Assange that would force him to keep some of the most damaging stuff on the Democratic Party out of the public eye.
>>>If Assange had been pardoned by Trump, and had then been free to splash around all the ugly data he got from Seth Rich about just what the Democrats were up to, that would have been an absolute disaster for some very, very famous and influential Democratic politicians.
A Graham Hancock-related paper arguing that the Gunang Padang site in Indonesia is a 28,000 year old human-built pyramid have been retracted after conflicts with the wider archaeological community. Hmmm...
Excerpted from the website of Atlantis Rising magazine. Will probably become more common in the future!
The latest Atlantis drama. Mainline archeologist Flint Dibble (that *can´t* be his real name!) recently declared total victory over pro-Atlantis writer and documentary film maker Graham Hancock after a debate between the two on Joe Rogan Show.
The YouTube clip above is from the channel "DeDunking", which is more on the Hancock side. It´s almost an hour long, but could be worth watching if alternative history is your thing.
Maybe black magic can stop the climate crisis?
Maldives arrest climate change minister for using black magic on president
Is this evidence that an unknown megalithic civilization once existed in Montana, of all places? Probably not, but it´s fascinating (after a fashion). The structures shown are called Sage Wall and Tizer Dolmen.
The Atlantis crowd beats back. Note the section on the swastika! From the YouTube channel Bright Insight.
It seems everyone is talking about Terrence Howard. Some are more original than others. This Christian YouTube content-creator accuses Terry of self-induced demonic possession! Cuz, I mean, why not?
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| Credit: Lukas (Pexels) |
Not anymore, it seems. LOL. She is just another narcissistic celebrity asshole.
Ariana Grande wants to date Jeffrey Dahmer
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| Credit: Cottonbro studios (Pexels) |
"Jag var naiv". Det verkar ha varit en alldeles särskild sorts naivitet. Jag menar, den låter nästan som karriärism! Och hur troligt är det att en f.d. högersosse *egentligen* går åt vänster? Inte särskilt troligt.
Vad det antagligen handlar om är att kombinationen nyliberal högerpolitik och massinvandring inte längre fungerar, och då satsar man istället på en kombination av "vänster"politik och...gissa vad...massinvandring. Lägg också märke till Hamas-vurmen, undangömd i en eller två meningar.
Du kanske har varit naiv, tanten. Jag är det alltså inte! Det vi ser nu är Maktpartiets fejkade omvändelse under galgen.
The above clip from the YouTube channel MythVision is a somewhat speculative documentary about the goddess Ashera, often seen as Yahweh´s wife in modern critical scholarship on the Old Testament.
MythVision believes that Ashera, while first attested in Sumerian sources, was originally a Canaanite goddess seen as the wife of the high god El. Ashera reached Sumeria by way of Amurru (presumably Transjordan). Worship of Ashera is condemned in the Bible by post-exilic Jewish priests who wanted a strict monotheism around Yahweh. However, the scholars quoted by MythVision believe that Ashera-worship never quite disappeared. It was only hidden.
Ashera was associated with trees, specifically almond trees. Trees were depicted in the Jewish Temple. Also, the menorah is - according to this theory - actually a stylized almond tree. Aaron´s staff (a cultic object in the Temple) could be an old symbol for Ashera. The staff has an almond-shaped head and is adorned with flowers. Of course, it could also be a fallic symbol!
Hosea says that Yahweh has divorced Israel, but some scholars believe that the real meaning of the prophecy is that the Lord had rather divorced Ashera, since it´s highly anomalous for a nation to be referred to as God´s wife! When Ashera´s devotees started worshipping Baal, Yahweh repudiated her. And in the Book of Proverbs, God´s Wisdom (personified as a woman) is described as a weaver. Some speculate that Ashera may have been the goddess of weaving...
MythVision ends with pointing out that Jesus is sometimes depicted with an almond-shaped halo.
Interesting.
See also here:
Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840) was a Belgian painter who spent most of his life in France. He managed to survive all the changes and upheavals of the French revolution and its aftermath, and has been (unflatteringly) called "the Talleyrand of the Arts"! More flatteringly, perhaps, he is also known as the Raphael of flowers...
Redouté´s most generous patron was Napoleon´s wife, the empress Joséphine, but he was also on good terms with the courts of Louis XVI, Charles X and Louis Philippe. I recently bought a small Taschen book containing reprints of the plates from Redouté´s magnum opus "Les Roses", published in 1817-1824. Yes, it shows roses.
While various reprints of the rose illustrations are readily available, the original water colors (bought by French king Charles X) are mostly unaccounted for and are apparently sold for crazy sums when they occasionally resurface. The earliest editions of the book itself are kept under lock and key in several European libraries, since art thieves have sometimes cut out some of the plates and sold them on the black market!
My kingdom for a rose?
Sabine Hossenfelder is trying to sort out the latest hyped bunk in science (and some old one). Is she Sisyphus or Hercules, I wonder?
The Amazing Atheist rants and raves about the end of the Amerikan dream. Seminal!
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| Credit: News Öresund |
Hörde jag rätt, eller föreslog Centerns vilse partiledare Demirok just tvångsarbete för "utrikes födda" som varit arbetslösa i mer än tre år? Ändå säger Aftonbladet att han fortfarande låter som en sosse! Blir snart något slags hedersomnämnande i Veckans Strasser-klassen...
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| Credit: Marilyn Sourgose |
The locals are manning up to protect Julian Assange from ZOG abduction attempts. Just in from the Northern Mariana Islands!
Kidding...
So apparently Julian Assange has landed in the mysterious "Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands".
I´m probably not the only one who wonders what will happen next. Will he be kidnapped by the CIA and taken to the US mainland? Will his flight to Australia explode, Prigozhin style? Will he be gunned down in Sydney under dramatic forms in front of the TV cameras?
Or will absolutely nothing happen...until Trump becomes POTUS and demands Assange´s extradiction from Down Under, or else?
His court appearence is apparently due in one hour, so stay tuned for further Wikileaks...
Svenska Dagbladets reporter Malin Ekman slutar. Observera att förändringen i attityd inträffade hösten 2023. Alltså gissningsvis i kölvattnet på Hamas´ terrorattack mot Israel?!
Carrier takes on various myths and misconceptions surrounding the Roman catacombs.
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| Credit: Onkel Ramirez (Pexels) |
LOL. Några lemurer har rymt från Jonas Wahlströms kollektivjordbruk.
Ni fattar att det inte är en mänsklig rättighet att drälla runt i Medelhavsområdet eller på Kanarieöarna och trissa upp fastighetspriserna, va?
Värmeböljan rullar in redan idag! Hurra! Wat me worry, jag kanske gillar robinia längs motorvägarna...
It seems everyone is talking about Terrence Howard! Sicilian wonderboy Metatron believes that Howard´s problem isn´t really with mathematics, per se, but with a weird inability to grasp language. Also, his "Terryology" is a monist philosophy and a conspiracy theory.
While I disagree with the Metatron on his blanket denial of conspiracy theories, he probably does have a point that Howard has a "Truther mindset" (my term), this being the deeper drive behind the actor´s new theory of everything...
För ett ögonblick trodde jag att jag blivit avslöjad. Den som vet, han vet.
Scenario in 2025? China attacks Taiwan, North Korea attacks South Korea, Iran attacks Israel, Russia attacks Ukraine even harder than before.
Will the West be able to defend itself? Will it even *want* to? With all the pro-Russian right-wing populists and Stalinoids, the "Woke" left-liberal Hamas-lovers who want collective suicide anyway, and the BAU centrists who think "war" means banning some troll accounts on Twitter...
“The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts” by Bhikkhu Sujato and
Bhikkhu Brahmali is a text available free on the web in PDF format. It´s
undated, but seems to have been published in 2013. The two authors are probably
supporters of the Buddhist Association of Western Australia, a Theravada group with
a mostly White membership. The association in turn is inspired by the “forest
tradition” in Thailand, of which I know very little (but I suspect they may be vaguely
heterodox). The point of the text is to prove that important portions of the
Pali Canon can be traced back to the Buddha himself or his immediate disciples.
The question is important, since the earliest preserved manuscripts of Buddhist
scriptures have been dated to perhaps 500 years after the Buddha´s death (give
or take a few centuries). Even the Buddhists themselves admit that the Buddha´s
message must have been transmitted by oral recitation for at least a few centuries.
Modern scholars can therefore ask: how do we *know* that the material was transmitted
without changes until it was written down hundreds of years later? Indeed, how
do we know the scriptures weren´t tampered with, too? Add to this that
Buddhists can´t even agree among themselves on when the Buddha lived…
The Pali Canon (a.k.a. the Tripitaka or Tipitaka) is divided into three
sections: Vinaya Pitaka, Sutta Pitaka and Abhidhamma Pitaka. Sujato and
Brahmali argues that there is a good scholarly case for most of the Sutta
Pitaka being spoken by the Buddha or his closest associates. Most of the Vinaya
Pitaka and all of the Abhidhamma, by contrast, is later. So are Buddha
biographies, historical chronicles and the Mahayana sutras. The jataka tales
are somewhat anomalous, for while some of them might even predate the Buddha,
their Buddhist forms are late. The authors refer to the texts containing the
spoken message of the Buddha as “Early Buddhist Texts” or EBTs. All others are
non-EBTs. The theological implications of the EBT/non-EBT distinction are never
spelled out in the essay, but I assume there must be one. Note that the
distinction privileges one “basket” of the Pali Canon (the Suttas or discourses) from the two other “baskets” (the monastic code and the theological treatises).
Note also that the Buddha´s biography and the jataka tales about the Buddha´s
previous lives aren´t part of the EBTs in this scenario. Are they less reliable,
non-canonical, or what? I suppose a deep dive into the worldview of the
Buddhist Association of Western Australia might be in order here.
That being said, I admit that the essay is relatively well written and
sounds convincing enough. For instance, the authors point out that the EBTs
describe a political situation that must predate the Magadha kingdom of the Nanda
dynasty (which unified the middle Ganges plain) and the even later Mauryan
empire (which united most of India). There are 16 smaller warring states, and
most of the world outside their territories is poorly known or unknown. Magadha
is depicted as fairly important and expansionist, but the united kingdom is
still in the future. The royal and imperial capital of Pataliputra is described
as an obscure village. Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka are never mentioned in
the EBTs, despite being extremely important figures in Indian history, the
latter also in Buddhist ditto. This would have been impossible had the material
in the EBTs been changed during their respective reigns.
Another clue is the language used. The authors believe that the Pali
Canon was first committed to writing in Sri Lanka. Yet, the EBTs contain no
legends about the Buddha visiting the island (an important part of Singhalese self-identity),
nor is the Pali used in the texts influenced by Singhalese or the Dravidian
languages. Other Pali texts composed in Sri Lanka apparently are so influenced,
suggesting that the “purist” Pali of the oral tradition must be older. The fact
that the EBTs never reference non-EBTs, while the opposite happens frequently, also
suggests that the EBT material is older. The authors also use the “criterion of
embarrassment”. The EBTs depict the Buddha and his monks as very human, even
including some foibles, while later generations rather elevated them to a more
superhuman/supernatural status. That the “human” stories weren´t revised to
suit later understandings suggest that they must be early (it also implies a
very exact and conservative mode of oral transmission). A more piquant difference
between EBTs and non-EBTs is that the former never mention the art of writing!
They must therefore have their origins in an oral culture.
Archeological evidence is harder to use, since there is relatively
little of it from the Buddha´s own time. Most of the early evidence for
Buddhism comes from the time of Ashoka, several centuries after the Buddha. Still,
it does seem to confirm that the material in both the EBTs and some of the
non-EBTs must have existed during that time. To take just one example, the EBTs
mention five earlier Buddhas who supposedly appeared before Prince Siddharta
Gautama. Non-EBTs expand on their number. An inscription from a stupa from the
Mauryan period only mentions the legendary Buddhas from the EBTs. Sometimes the
authors are a bit overenthusiastic. I mean, how do they know for sure that the
relics discovered at Piprahwa in northern India (one of two sites identified with
the ancient Kapilavastu) really are from the historical Buddha? Just because
some inscription says so? Dude!
The essay ends with some chastising words to those scholars who are
skeptical about all or most of the above, whom the authors dub “denialists”.
They somewhat uncharitably compare them to climate change deniers and
creationists. The authors also believe that these scholars are experts on later
Buddhism (including Mahayana and Vajrayana), rather than on the earlier
material. Since later Buddhism is obviously based on well-crafted myths, these
scholars presumably tend towards skepticism about the “EBTs”, as well. Not sure
if the denialists ever bothered responding to the dear monks…
With that, I end this review.
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| A Munda woman Credit: Ramesh Lalwani |
“Cultural Remnants of the Indigenous Peoples in the Buddhist Scriptures”
is an interesting scholarly article available free on-line. It´s written by Bryan
Geoffrey Levman and was originally published in Buddhist Studies Review in 2013.
The author tackles a question I assume is somewhat contentious: the Buddha´s
exact ethnic origins. Siddharta Gautama is said to have been a member of the
Sakya or Shakya tribe. But who exactly were the Shakyas? I assume most see them
as Indo-Aryans. Indeed, their name is similar to that of the Sakas, a Scythian
group. However, there were obvious cultural differences between the Shakyas and
the Indo-Aryans to their west. Simply put, the Shakyas were less “Brahmanized”
and existed at the periphery of Vedic civilization. One possibility is that they
represent a different wave of Indo-Aryan migrations, perhaps an earlier one.
Another, explored by Levman, is that the Shakyas were of mixed ethnic origins,
deriving a substantial portion of their ancestry from pre-Aryan indigenous
peoples, specifically the Munda-speaking tribes. The Munda languages form a
subset of the Austroasiatic language family (which also comprise Vietnamese,
Khmer and Mon). Judging by all-knowing Wiki, at least currently the Munda are
very dark-skinned.
The author points out that the Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda languages
form a “Sprachbund” or linguistic area, since they mutually influence each
other (despite being unrelated) in ways that make them distinct from languages
outside the Indian subcontinent. If there is linguistic borrowing, there should
logically also be cultural diffusion. So already on methodological grounds, we
should expect Buddhism to be at the very least influenced by indigenous
cultures. However, the later Buddhist sources make a sustained attempt at “Brahmanizing”
him. The Shakya polity is described as a kingdom (according to Vedic norms),
Buddha´s father (the king) is a kshatriya and has a retinue of prominent Brahmin
priests, the Buddha himself is said to hail from a long line of Brahmins and
other Vedic ancestors, he bears the marks of a Great Man known from Vedic
mantras and is initiated with Vedic rituals. Apparently, even “Gotama”
(Gautama) is a Brahminical clan name. But a closer study of Buddhist and Vedic
sources paints a very different picture...
The Shakyas were not organized as a kingdom, but rather as a tribal republic.
Buddha´s father Shuddhodana wasn´t a “king” but an elected leader. Nor did Siddharta
ever refer to himself as a “prince”. Indeed, the Buddha never calls himself a “kshatriya”
either, although he does say that the kshatriyas are higher than the Brahmins,
thus inverting the Vedic position. Buddha praises the democratic system of the
Shakyas and neighboring tribes, proscribing a similar procedure to govern the
sangha (the monastic order). He resents the tributary status of the Shakyas vis-à-vis
a more powerful neighboring tribe and seem to dislike wars of conquest in
general. This is interesting, since it means that Buddha´s “egalitarian” and “democratic”
traits weren´t somehow more “modern” than the Vedic ideals, but rather more traditional,
harking back to a tribal past.
The Shakyas mythological ancestor, Ikshvaku, seem to have a name of
Munda origins. The sage Asita, who predicted Siddharta´s future Buddhahood, is
said to have been “black”, perhaps a reference to his actual skin color. Buddha
himself supposedly had curly hair, something many Munda males still have today.
The marriage customs of the Shakyas were non-Vedic, and even included incestuous
marriages between brother and sister, or between parents and children. The burial
customs were also non-Vedic, with round burial mounds rather than square burial
places. Note that Buddhist stupas have round bases! In the Brahminical tradition,
relics were considered impure and buried outside the village, while the relics
of the Buddha were treated as sacred and placed inside prominent stupas.
According to orthoprax Vedic-Brahminical sources, the territory of the
Shakyas was outside Aryavarta, the homeland of the Aryans. Shakyas and other
groups living to the east of Aryavarta were considered “mixed caste” and
therefore non-Aryan. These were the areas in which Buddha´s ministry took
place. Even visiting the unclean eastern borderlands made it incumbent upon the
Aryan to carry out purification rituals. The eastern peoples were referred to
as demons (asuras), slaves, lower than shudras, and literally cursed. Several
names of eastern tribes in the Vedic corpus seem derived from the Munda
languages. One of the distinct poetic metres used by the Buddhists is non-Vedic
and known as the ghost or goblin metre, probably a reflection of the supposed demonic
nature of the eastern borderland tribes!
The author further believes that there are traces of tree and serpent
worship in Buddhism. Serpent worship is distinctly non-Vedic and may have been
introduced to India by an early Mongolian or Tibeto-Burmese migration. The
snake-spirits or nagas are depicted as the protectors of the Buddha or as
Buddhists themselves. They are to be worshipped. The Buddha is even referred to
as a “naga” as a token of respect. The Buddha´s association with trees is
obvious. The Sal tree was the sacred totem of the Shakyas. Buddha was both born
and died close to such trees. Still today, the Mundas worship Sal trees. The
Buddha refers to himself as a yakkha and preaches to literal yakkhas, a class
of nature-spirits often associated with trees. In the Jataka tales (stories of
the Buddha´s previous lives), he is often a tree-spirit. The sacred fig tree under
which Buddha attained enlightenment is also important, the Buddha often being
depicted as a tree in early Buddhist art. Sometimes, snakes and trees are
evidently combined, as when the Buddha experienced bliss under a mucalinda tree
(the name “mucalinda” being non-Aryan) and was protected against a sudden storm
by a naga-king named Mucalinda…
We all have our agendas, and I suppose one purpose of de-Aryanizing the
Buddha is to make him more “Woke” or “anti-imperialist”. The Buddha lived in a non-Aryan
culture that was being Aryanized, trying to find a strategy of resistance
against such colonialism. And it surely isn´t a co-incidence that the author
emphasizes the “Black” aspects of the Mundas, coming across as a
crypto-Afro-centrist. I suppose the tree worship could be tied to modern
environmentalist sensibilities, and so on. That being said, it´s nevertheless an
interesting contribution. And it could be spun in a completely different way:
if the Buddha was just a tribal preacher in a one-horse-town in northern India 2,500
years ago, why should he be of any concern to us? I´m neither a Munda nor an
Indo-Aryan, and I probably never met snake-kings either…
With that, shall we say, heteroprax reflection I end this review.
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| Credit: Danish47 |
This is the nation that complained about some rando in Sweden burning Qurans...
Obviously an attempt at pandering to the SJWs. Time to declare Wikipedia an unreliable source? And why is the anti-Israeli editor named "Loki"? Sounds like a Nazi Neo-Pagan, LOL! But sure, Loki has also become a LGBTQ trope, so who knows...
LOL. This YouTube clip c/o some Christian fundamentalist has the titles "Feminism´s Satanic Dark Cult" and "The Dark Religion of the Women´s Movement".
You´ll never guess which religion it is...
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| Credit: Viktoria Slowikowska (Pexels) |
Översättning: SAP vill *inte* lägga ner Arbetsförmedlingen, utan bara förstatliga verksamheten.
Att erbjuda arbetslösa bättre utbildning är förstås bra, men om det ändå bara finns "skitjobb" på marknaden så kommer den utbildade arbetskraften tvingas ta dem. Frågan är alltså: Hur vill SAP lösa *det* problemet?
Det skulle kräva en riktigt hård vänstersväng...
I kind of like Hungary´s new EU slogan "Make Europe great again". What a pity it comes from a people historically allied with the Ottoman Empire...
:D
My man John Michael Greer covers a *lot* of ground in this relatively short essay.
How about the astral light, hippies, entitled pseudo-occultists, the dangers of necromancy, medieval Neoplatonism and its influence on C S Lewis, "Woke" attacks on people staying fit, the similarity between Christian fundamentalism and angry atheism, and the inevitability of imperial decline! And yes, somebody has been trying to troll him lately...
The medieval Neoplatonism thing was (perhaps) the most interesting.
Have I linked to this before? Jolly heretic Edward Dutton argues that criminality is genetic, not social. Note the discussion on medieval and early modern Venice!
This is probably scripted, but it *is* quite funny. As in "don´t be a stupid entitled American tourist".
I wonder if public schools in Louisiana will display *all* of the Ten Commandments? Including the part quoted below (Exodus 20:2-11)...
>>>
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.
>>>
I would like to thank the climate activists who vandalized Stonehenge. You have made me even more convinced that we need thorium reactors, rare earth mining, and geoengineering!
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| Credit: The Kremlin |
A fitting picture, I´m sure. So if North Korea attacks South Korea, will Russia come to its aid?
"This is the world the Alt Right wants". It began with Gamergate, and it ended like this. What a journey!
Dick Harrison sprider rysspropaganda, rysspropaganda, rysspropaganda, rysspropaganda...
Översättning: de jävla skitungarna fattade inte att "källkritik" betyder "etablissemangets källor har alltid rätt". Så nu måste vi hitta på ett nytt sätt att hjärntvätta glinen!
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| Credit: Nir Hason |
Here is a conspiracist rumor overheard on the proverbial internets.
Pope Francis will soon make an official proclamation in effect annuling Vatican I and the dogma of papal infallibility, in favor of a more collegiate understanding of Church leadership.
This will then pave the way for unity with the Orthodox Churches, or rather with the politically pro-Western ones, including the Ecumenial Patriarchate of Constantinople (which supports Ukraine against Russia).
I find this hard to believe, since these Churches are in general more conservative than Pope Francis seems to be. Still, I suppose it would be an interesting "geopolitical" development.
We are all Uniates now.
I have no idea whether the paper Sabine is referencing "solves the mystery of complexity" (probably not LOL), but at least this is an admission that there is a mystery in the first place. That is, "emergence" isn´t an explanation of anything, but rather a description of the problem that needs to be explained...
The atheist-materialists who claim that this is all just a brute fact are trying to cope with the fact that the next step in the explanatory chain might be a certain G-d. A bit like when they told us not to ask what happened before the Big Bang cuz blah-blah?
"Why rich people don´t talk to poor people". LOL. Ridiculous. From some kind of "positive thinking" channel on YouTube.
A Nibiru-level conspiracy theory? Or an attempt to reconcile the realities of climate change with climate change denialism?
”De kristna i Mellersta Östern” (The Christians in the Middle East) is a book by Ingmar Karlsson, published this year. The author is a Swedish diplomat who used to work in Syria. He published a classical book on religious minority groups in the Middle East already in 1991, “Korset och halvmånen” (The Cross and the Crescent), which is available in many Swedish public libraries. In his new book, Karlsson tries – the best he can – to retell the history of Christianity in the Middle East (here also including Egypt) as objectively as possible. I think he succeeds remarkably well, except in the last chapter, where he retells his mostly negative experiences from Syria. He also touches upon the more general history of the region.
Thus, Karlsson points out that Monophysite Christians played a leading intellectual
role in the medieval Muslim world, collecting ancient Greek or Roman
manuscripts, and then translating them into Semitic languages. In the “multi-culturalist”
pro-Muslim propaganda, this is often credited to the Muslims themselves. The Catholic crusader states were multi-ethnic
and multi-religious (except for the city of Jerusalem, where only Christians
were allowed to live). Medieval Muslim historians considered the crusades to be
a minor nuisance, instead viewing the Mongols as the larger threat. When a
German emperor during the 19th century wanted to pay homage to
Saladin, it took considerable time to locate the tomb of the legendary Muslim
leader, since it had been almost forgotten! Muslim obsession with the crusades
is mostly a 20th century phenomenon, a kind of counterpoint to the
*modern* Western encroachments on the Middle East (and, of course, Israel). It
works in tandem with Western obsessions about the same thing, positive or
negative. The roots of the present situation in the Middle East are in any case
to be found in the aftermath of World War I, and has nothing to do with the Middle
Ages.
Karlsson does consider the Turkish/Kurdish massacres of the Armenians to
have been a genocide, but also points out that the Armenians supported Russia
during World War I (which technically made them traitors, since the Ottoman
Empire was allied with Germany), that Armenian terrorist groups existed long before
the genocide, and that they often targeted Kurdish civilians. One Armenian group
even massacred Kurds in the hope that they would retaliate and the ensuing
chaos provoke a British intervention (which never materialized). The Turks are
often cast as evil oppressors by liberals and leftists in the West, but were
just as often on the receiving end of violence and ethnic cleansing, for
instance in Greece and Bulgaria during the 19th century Balkan wars.
The Greeks began their liberation struggle against the Ottoman Empire by large
scale massacres of Turks in the Peloponnese. I get the impression that Karlsson
has a (perhaps involuntary) admiration for Kemal Atatürk, the authoritarian Turkish
nationalist who managed to stop the dismemberment of Turkey in the aftermath of
World War I.
More recent alliances in the region are often extremely confusing. Thus,
the pro-Israeli South Lebanese Army (SLA) during the Lebanese civil war was led
by an Eastern Catholic and mostly consisted of Shia Muslims?! The Armenian Churches
outside Armenia are part-Arab, since affiliating with these Churches gives you
a higher social standing. In Iraq, about half of the Christians belong to a
Shia-dominated pro-Iranian coalition. The Iraqi gentleman who spent most of
last year burning Qurans in Sweden have a background in this milieu. One thing
not mentioned in the book are the weird alliances of the Druze, a peculiar
minority religion found in both Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Maybe the next
edition can fill us in?
The most controversial chapter is probably the last one, in which
Karlsson makes negative comments about the “Assyrian” immigration to Sweden
from Syria during the 1970´s and 1980´s. He wonders why nobody was surprised
about the fact that a people who disappeared from history 2,600 years ago
suddenly re-appeared…in the Swedish town of Södertälje! Most of the “Assyrians”
were members of the Syriac Orthodox Church and hence didn´t identify as Assyrian.
Mass immigration of Syriac Orthodox from Syria to Sweden mainly took place from
the Qamishly district, where no Syriac were persecuted by the Assad regime,
many of the regional officials and officers were Syriac, and a Syriac church
stood next to the building of the secret police. One of the first persons from
Qamishly to get political asylum in Sweden as a refugee was a local boss of the
ruling Baath party! Many of the “refugees” regularly returned to Qamishly (even
greeting the Swedish “refugee coordinator”), forged and strangely uniform documents
proving “persecution” were legion, one of the “banned Assyrian organizations”
was actually legal and complained about the exodus, and so on. Delegations of “refugees”
often visited Syria in order to construct new “native languages” which were
then taught in Swedish schools (at the tax-payers expense) to Syriac children. The
Syriac Christians referred to Sweden as “Ammo Djebbo”, a naïve and stupid
character who tries to become popular by giving everyone money, while people
laugh behind his back…
Karlsson claims that the political parties in Sweden each had their own
favorite refugee/immigrant group during the 1970´s and 1980´s. The Social Democrats
promoted Latin Americans, the Left Party the Kurds, the Center Party the West
Saharans (!), the Conservatives anti-Communists from the Soviet bloc, and the Liberal
Party “Christians from the Middle East” – actually, mostly the Syriac Orthodox.
However, at the end of the book, it becomes obvious that Karlsson doesn´t really
oppose immigration. *Today* the Christians in the Middle East are more
persecuted than ever (he blames one George W Bush for this), and presumably
wants the Western world to give them asylum. Instead, Ammo Djebbo has suddenly
become jaded and cynical, and now doesn´t want to let anyone inside.
With that, I end this little review.
Forskarna vet inte varför det är så varmt. Egentligen. Och om inte temperaturen stabiliseras inom två månader är vi i okänd terräng...
Overheard on YouTube: There is a speculation (speculation, I say) that viruses were originally alive, but then evolved (devolved?) into the non-living entities they are today. Thus, natural selection can turn the living into the non-living, making evolution go backwards?! Can evolution cancel itself???
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....
Fanns det något kristet rike under medeltiden där muslimerna hade lika vidsträckta rättigheter som de kristna hade i den muslimska världen?
Ja, det verkar så...
>>>Korsfararnas kungarike Jerusalem och de tre övriga korsfararstaterna var under sin korta existens inte några apartheidregimer där kristna med järnhand kontrollerade en underkuvad muslimsk majoritetsbefolkning. I stället var de en kosmopolitisk blandning av araber, turkar, kurder, armenier, italienare, franker, normanner och provencaler med flera, och i religiöst hänseende var de uppdelade i shiiter och sunniter, alawiter, druser, katoliker och ortodoxa och monofysitiska kristna.
>>>Korsfararna tog inte bara till sig den lokala klädedräkten utan också muslimernas sätt att regera. Så länge skatterna betalades lämnades lokalbefolkningen i stort sett i fred och kunde leva enligt sina egna sociala och religiösa regler. En muslimsk krönikör skriver att de lät muslimerna tillbe Gud som de ville och att de "inte ändrade en endaste lag eller religiös sedvänja".
>>>Krönikören Ibn Jubayr (1145-1214) beklagade sig över att muslimska bönder föredrog kristna jordägare.
Från Ingmar Karlssons "De kristna i Mellersta Östern", Historiska Media, 2024, sid. 49, 53.
Lite Al Capone över det hela. "They got him on a technicality". Fast Jordgubben själv verkar ha gått under jorden i NATO-landet Turkiet...
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| Credit: Michael Anthony (Pexels) |
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| Credit: YashiWong |
A pseudo-scholarly paper written by a Bahai, attacking "marginals and apostates", once again confirming my suspicions that Bahai might be a cult. Note the dread of the Internet!
