QAnon for Guardian readers

 

Thomas Sheridan isn´t impressed by Julian Assange... 

Veckans Strasser tillbaka?

 

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... 

Breaking now

 

Credit: Marilyn Sourgose 

The locals are manning up to protect Julian Assange from ZOG abduction attempts. Just in from the Northern Mariana Islands!

Kidding...

The eagle has landed

 

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...

Avskedsbrev

 

Svenska Dagbladets reporter Malin Ekman slutar. Observera att förändringen i attityd inträffade hösten 2023. Alltså gissningsvis i kölvattnet på Hamas´ terrorattack mot Israel?! 

Avskedsbrev

Catacomb Christians

 

Carrier takes on various myths and misconceptions surrounding the Roman catacombs. 

Myths and Legends of the Christian catacombs

Lågprioriterat ärende

 

Credit: Onkel Ramirez (Pexels)

LOL. Några lemurer har rymt från Jonas Wahlströms kollektivjordbruk. 

Skansen-Jonas lemurer fria i Nynästrakten

Invasiva arter

 

Ni fattar att det inte är en mänsklig rättighet att drälla runt i Medelhavsområdet eller på Kanarieöarna och trissa upp fastighetspriserna, va?   

Värmebölja

 

Värmeböljan rullar in redan idag! Hurra! Wat me worry, jag kanske gillar robinia längs motorvägarna...  

Polysemic conspiracy

 

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...  

Frihetliga Rättvisepartiet

 

För ett ögonblick trodde jag att jag blivit avslöjad. Den som vet, han vet. 

World War III watch

 

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...  

Austro-Asiatic Buddha

 

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.   

Authentic sayings

 

“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 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.

Ett parti för extremister?

 

Credit: Carlos Spitzer (Pexels)

Han har fel om bostadsrätterna.

S, ni fortsätter att gå extremisters ärenden

Blasphemous rumors

Credit: Danish47

This is the nation that complained about some rando in Sweden burning Qurans...

Mob lynches tourist for blasphemy in Pakistan

Bomb Wikipedia?

 

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... 

Wikipedia classifies ADL as an unreliable source

Dyerwave

 

Jay Dyer loses it completely in this already classical clip. 

Blavatsky´s female baboon

 

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...

MIBs in Ireland

 

The Men in Black show up at the strangest of places...

Be careful what you wish for

 

Dude.  

GLAD MIDSOMMAR

 

Veckans nothingburger

 

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...  

Lägg ner arbetsförmedlingen

From the Atlantic to the Urals

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 

Not the magick I ordered

 

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.  

A path that abides

Jailbirds of a feather

 

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! 

Entitled

 

This is probably scripted, but it *is* quite funny. As in "don´t be a stupid entitled American tourist".  

Just a big freakin´ henge?

 

Overheard somewhere on X.  

Ahem, I have a question

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.

>>>

Titanic in outer space

 

There must be some kind of law against this...

OceanGate founder wants to go to Venus

Gratitude

 

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! 

Ultimate bromance

 

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 = Agent of Gaddafi?

 

Dick Harrison sprider rysspropaganda, rysspropaganda, rysspropaganda, rysspropaganda... 

Operation Bagration: Vägen till seger

Krigskrediter

 

Jag stödjer som bekant svenskt NATO-medlemskap. Måste ändå säga att anhängarnas pekpinnar mot V och MP efter att DCA-avtalet röstats igenom är rätt så töntiga. Tänker närmast på Aftonbladet här. 

Jag antar att det har något med svenskt koncensustänkande att göra. Alla ska med. Eller rättare sagt sitta ner i båten. V och MP fick sitt lilla roliga när de röstade mot NATO-medlemskapet förra året. Nu ska alla rösta för allt NATO-relaterat. För vi är ju redan medlemmar. Så det så!

Fast ur en viss synvinkel har AB faktiskt rätt. Jag är tillräckligt gammal för att komma ihåg när V och MP var EU-motståndare. MP var först med att ge upp EU-motståndet efter att Sverige väl blivit medlemmar. De insåg nämligen att EU:s byråkrati kan användas för att driva igenom miljöregleringar i Sverige. Och i praktiken gav V också upp EU-motståndet några år senare. Minns en ganska bisarr debatt mellan Gudrun Schyman och Jan Guillou på den punkten...

Så varför skulle inte samma sak kunna gälla NATO? Varför skulle inte MP och V kunna sluta oroa sig och lära sig älska bomben? Det kan hända. Och då kommer MP att vara först. De kanske kan intala sig själva att NATO försvarar den där EU-byråkratin? Och V har redan röstat för svenskt bistånd till Ukraina. Fast ärligt talat har jag svårt att se hur *det* partiet någonsin ska kunna bli NATO-vänligt.

Om det inte får ministerposter, förstås. 

För nog är det väl *det* som får AB att bli riktigt irriterade på sina tjäbblande tvillingpartier? Socialdemokraterna behöver Miljöpartiets och Vänsterpartiets mandat för att komma tillbaka till regeringsmakten. Och det vore lite penibelt att regera med stöd av två USA-kritiska partier i DCA-tider. 

Så det handlar alltså inte alls om svenskt koncensustänkande. Utan om de sedvanliga inrikespolitiska apspelet. Om sanningen ska fram! 

Källtillit

 

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!  

Vi har fostrat en generation av små konspirationsteoretiker

Come and meet your replacement...not

 

Credit: Darya Sannikova (Pexels) 

HA HA HA HA. 

McDonalds ends AI experiment after mishaps

We are all Uniates now

 

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.    

A complex mystery

 

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?    

Shameless

 

"Why rich people don´t talk to poor people". LOL. Ridiculous. From some kind of "positive thinking" channel on YouTube.

Tilt or cope?

 

A Nibiru-level conspiracy theory? Or an attempt to reconcile the realities of climate change with climate change denialism?  

Objective history?

 

”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 19^th 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 20^th 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 19^th 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.

Okänd terräng

 

Forskarna vet inte varför det är så varmt. Egentligen. Och om inte temperaturen stabiliseras inom två månader är vi i okänd terräng... 

"Vi är i okänd terräng"

Reverse teleology

 

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....

Korstågen i våra hjärtan

 

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. 

Blott Sverige svenska jordgubbar har

 

Lite Al Capone över det hela. "They got him on a technicality". Fast Jordgubben själv verkar ha gått under jorden i NATO-landet Turkiet...

"Jordgubben" misstänks för bedrägeri med jordgubbar

Legal aliens?

Credit: Michael Anthony (Pexels)

He actually means space aliens. Not the first time the Don makes quasi-disclosure statements. Sure wonder what kind of voters he is angling for here? Still, it *is* interesting. Reagan flirted with creationists, Trump flirts with the ufology community... 

Donald Trump on aliens

The Subud Situation

 

Credit: YashiWong

In the unlikely case anyone is interested: Two short pieces on Subud, a lesser known NRM with roots in Indonesia. It seems to be a quasi-secularized form of Sufism, perhaps akin to humanistic psychology? It´s promoted in the Western world by some kind of wayward Fourth Way supporters. Pun intended, I suppose.  

Bapak: A necessary reappraisal

Whatever happened to Subud Vision?

Talisman

 

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! 

Marginality and apostasy in the Bahai community

Materialist minds in a godless universe

 

Atheist-materialist Richard Carrier on the war path again!  

The Crazy Idea of the Mind Radio

The Argument from Specified Complexity against Supernaturalism

Complications

 

From the X account The Fourth Way. Original credit holder unknown. A propos the previous blog post...

Free Göbekli Tepe!

 

The conspiracy angle is absurd, but otherwise, I kind of sympathize with this perspective...

Honungsmelon

 

Credit: Igor Starkov (Pexlar)

Pragmatisk fascism? 

Meloni på väg att bli Europas politiska drottning

Everything that exists, deserves to perish

 

Amazing that the "Karl Marx is a Satanist" meme is still going strong. Here endorsed by none other than Jordan Peterson!  

Sinister empathy

No idea what to make of this. Disturbing video about a deeply disturbing occult group, the Order of Nine Angles (ONA or O9A). 

The content-creator, who is some kind of ex-member, claims that the ONA was originally a good organization. Later, it was taken over by FBI assets, Internet edgelords and even paedophile rings. Not sure how this could be, since he also says that the founder of the ONA, David Myatt, was a neo-Nazi and perhaps an intelligence asset?! 

Make of this material what ye wish.  

Indirekta bidrag

 

Credit: Ashitosh U (Pexels)

Det här är ju inte en skvallerblogg, peppar peppar, men jag kan inte låta bli att länka till detta. Och det är faktiskt Tobias Hübinette som så att säga "skvallrar om sig själv"...

Har ingen aning om hur man kan dubbelkolla sådant här.

Än en gång om att indirekt ha bidragit till den kriminella världens ekonomi 

Just call your AIPAC handler

 

AIPAC assets Breitbart News complain about being on a pro-Ukraine lobby hit list. The irony! The second link is about Matt Gaetz´ hot takes on the Israel-Hamas War...

As you probably know by now, I´m in favor of US aid to both Ukraine and Israel, so this kind of infighting just makes me roll my eyes! 

J D Vance, Matt Gaetz seek answers

The GOP´s anti-Ukraine aid charade exposed

Cat-lady paganism

 

- Yeah, I used to be a Druid,
but I can´t stand the Green Island anymore, 
so I decided to stint as a Jewish archangel!

Some Neo-Pagan drama, mostly from Ireland.   

Churchy Paganism is not the way forward, and neither is cosplay

Irish Paganism is a farce

Franska vinare

 

Credit: Emmanuel Macron

Kan ingen förklara för Fria Tiders semestervikarie att nyvalet i Frankrike alltså *inte* gäller presidentposten, utan Nationalförsamlingen? LOL. Har de supit så jävla hårt på redaktionen efter valnederlaget för AfS att de inte längre kan läsa vanliga nyhetstelegram? 

Cosmic hot dogs

 

- Damn, that dude Dyson just discovered
our hot dog stand at Andromeda!

Of course there are no Dyson spheres. I´m sure the local skeptic community is all over this case, taking the scientists to task for their, ahem, pseudo-science.

Or no?  

Alien megastructures are not what they seem

Take that, ChiComs!

 

- Damn, the humans found our
secret stash of Unobtanium...

Geopolitical implications: yuge. 

Enormous deposit of rare earth minerals discovered in Norway

My fellow pachyderms

Credit: Pixabay (Pexels)

Elephants are people!!! More on the pachyderm situation. 

Elephants use names, new study shows

Populistisk gryning?

 

Hur många röster fick nationalister och populister i EU-valen? Från Hübinettes blogg. Vad som inte framgår är förändringar sedan tidigare val, samt valdeltagandet. 

Sedan kan man ju ifrågasätta Hübinettes definitioner i vissa fall. Varför kallar han slovakiska Smer eller tjeckiska CSSD för "höger"? Smer är snarast vänsterpopulister, CSSD är socialdemokrater. Visst, CSSD har anklagats för att vara pro-ryska, men i så fall är det tjeckiska kommunistpartiet rimligtvis också "högerradikala" enligt denna definition! Och om Smer är med på listan, varför är inte slovakiska Hlas det också? Hlas är en klon av Smer. 

Och varför är ungerska Jobbik med på listan? De är höger, visst, men de är mot Orbán. Och så vidare. Om CSSD är med för att de är pro-ryska, borde Jobbik således inte vara med eftersom de är anti-ryska...

That being said...still an interesting contribution.  

Valresultat för de högerpopulistiska och högerradikala partierna  

Arms for Azov

 

But can they rescue hostages held by terrorists among civilians? Asking for a friend named Bibi. Seriously, I´m surprised there even was a ban like this in the first place. Maybe the ban was lifted long ago, and this is just some kind of public signal to the Russians that the US are willing to continue fighting?

US lifts ban on weapons to Azov battalion