The blog to end all blogs. Reviews and comments about all and everything. This blog is NOT affiliated with YouTube, Wikipedia, Microsoft Bing, Gemini, ChatGPT or any commercial vendor! Links don´t imply endorsement. Many posts and comments are ironic. The blogger is not responsible for comments made by others. The languages used are English and Swedish. Content warning: Essentially everything.
Både kronprinsens och Mujahedins flagga. Tydligen.
Varför refererar SVT Nyheter till Reza Pahlavi som "kronprinsen" inom citationstecken? Alltså den *så kallade* kronprinsen. Varför detta väldigt tydliga avståndstagande? Varför inte helt enkelt kalla honom "Shahens son" eller något sådant?
I fredags visade TV-nyheterna bilder från en demonstration någonstans i Sverige mot den iranska regimen. Inget om vem som arrangerade den. Men det var Folkets Mujahedin. Porträtten på deras ledare Massoud och Maryam Rajavi var fullt synliga. Så varför sade inte nyheterna att protesten var arrangerad av "motståndsrörelsen" (inom citationstecken) Folkets Mujahedin? Eller varför inte "den ytterst kontroversiella väpnade och terrorstämplade ex-marxistiska shia-sekten Folkets Mujahedin som tidigare haft nära band till Saddam Husseins regim i Irak"? Vilket ju verkar vara en alldeles korrekt beskrivning.
Bryr jag mig? Nja, lite kanske. Jag undrar vem som sitter på SVT Nyheter och har åsikter om olika falanger inom den iranska oppositionen...
So Israel has officially recognized the independence of Somaliland. Apparently, the Jewish state is the only UN member-nation to do so. Somaliland is a breakaway republic in northern Somalia. They even have the Muslim confession of faith on their flag! Somaliland have always been Western "assets", as far as I know, so this might be the first move towards a broader recognition of the territory. Perhaps by Trump´s United States?
Swedish TV just showed the recent meeting between Keir Starmer and the Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever. The flag of Belgium was clearly visible behind the Belgian PM. But behind Starmer, there was an *English* flag rather than a British one. That is, the flag of Saint George rather than the Union Jack.
Why?
I´m sure there is a perfectly natural, reasonable explanation for this. Right?
När jag var ung brukade de politiska ungdomsförbunden syssla med den här typen av pseudo-frågor. Tydligen är det så fortfarande. Färgbytet gäller förresten nyansen på den blå färgen, inte själva färgen. Vad ska de hitta på härnäst? Unionsmärket åter?
Check the relevant Wikipedia pages for detailed credits. Well, it seems the Alt Right conspiracy theory about the new Minnesotan flag are true. At least I can´t see any evidence to the contrary. Yes, the state flag is inspired by Somali flags...
You learn new shit every day. I´m a notorious "flag nerd", but I completely missed this one! The coat of arms of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) includes the Latin motto "In tutela nostra Limuria", which is supposed to mean "Lemuria in our trust"!
Yes, Lemuria. The imaginary continent of Lemuria, here with the more unusual alternative spelling Limuria. The above illustration is from the website of the BIOT administration.
Just this Thursday, the UK announced that they will hand over control of the BIOT (a.k.a. the Chagos Archipelago) to Mauritius...but the large US military base at the main island of Diego Garcia will remain for another 99 years. So nothing really changed. Except, I suppose, that this peculiar coat of arms is soon history...
Interesting introductions to Nazi symbolism, including SS symbols. Note that the "rune of death" is identical to the later peace symbol used by the CND! Probably a co-incidence, right?
Kanske inte världens mest intressanta information, men eftersom jag ofta skrev om flaggor på Amazon (och ibland gör det här också) så kan jag väl dela med mig...
This must be the most original coat of arms in the world. The tiny island of Tristan da Cunha, a British overseas territory in the south Atlantic, adopted it in 2002.
Note the bizarre supporters: two Tristan rock lobsters! Or perhaps St Paul rock lobsters - apparently scientists now believe that the Tristan variety isn´t a separate species, after all.
The heraldic significance of the poor lobster haven´t saved it from apparently being the island´s most significant export product (for human consumption, obviously).
Longest night of the year. Cold as hell, too. Still, gives me a sense of normality. Of course it´s dark and fucking cold. It´s the Winter Solstice, after all! :-)
“Sons of
Abraham: The Secret Order of the Druze” is a relatively short documentary about
the Druze, a peculiar religious minority in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. The
documentary was originally released in 1984 and seems to be French, but in this
version the narrator speaks English.
Since the
Druze are organized as a secret initiatory order, we don´t learn *that* much
about their actual teachings. The Druze religion originated in Egypt during the
11th century. Its prophet was a man named Hamza, who preached
the divine nature of al-Hakim, a Shia Muslim Fatimid ruler of Egypt. Muslims,
Christians and Jews seem united in condemning al-Hakim as literally insane, but
in the documentary, his destruction of religious shrines is rather seen as a form
of theologically motivated iconoclasm.
The Druze
seem to have a Neo-Platonist view of God or the Divine, and venerate Greek
philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras as divine
manifestations. Biblical characters also play a prominent role. The documentary
shows Druze pilgrimages to the supposed tombs of Jethro and Job, the former
being seen as the “initiator” of Moses. We also get to see a Druze marriage and
a funeral. The Druze are most well known for their belief in reincarnation, explored
more in detail in another documentary also available at YouTube, “To the ends
of the Earth: Back from the dead”.
A curious
fact about the Druze is that their community in Israel supports the Jewish
state, even to the point of doing military service in the Israeli Defense
Forces, while the communities in Syria and Lebanon are pro-Arab and
pro-Palestinian. “Sons of Abraham” claims that this is all a ruse – the Druze
actually practice a higher-order form of taqiyya (the Shia tradition of
protective dissimulation), all of them really being a single community mostly loyal
to itself. The narrator claims that the supposedly pro-Israeli Druze mourned
the death of Kamal Jumblatt, the prominent anti-Israeli Druze leader in
Lebanon!
In passing,
we also get to know the symbolism of the Druze flag. Its stripes symbolize the
Universal Soul (red), the Logos (yellow), the cosmos (blue) and the material
world (white), all united by a green triangle symbolizing Universal Reason
(presumably God). I admit that the symbolism is pretty neat.
Since the
Druze don´t accept converts, you will probably never learn the secrets of their
religion. Nor will I. Nor, I suppose, did Soviet spy Stig Bergling. Unless, of
course, we will be reincarnated as members of the Secret Order in some future
life of ours…
This is the
so-called Buddhist Catechism, written in 1881 by Henry Steel Olcott, mostly
known as Colonel Olcott. While the Catechism is apparently still used in Sri
Lanka by Theravada Buddhists, Olcott himself was not an orthodox Theravadin,
but a co-founder with Madame Blavatsky of the controversial Theosophical
Society.
While the
Theosophists did promote Buddhism in Lanka and elsewhere, their own ideas were
really quite different and distinct from the Buddha´s religion as traditionally
understood. Little of this is visible in “The Buddhist Catechism”, though. Most
of it is standard Theravada Buddhism (“the Southern Church of Buddhism” in
Olcott´s words), with all the usual contradictions of this creed.There is an ecumenical attempt at bridging
the gap between Theravada and Mahayana.
There are also
some modern traits in the Catechism: idolatry and superstition are condemned,
women´s equality promoted, while Buddhism and science are said to be
compatible. Indeed, Buddhist parents are admonished to give their children a
scientific education. The former Spiritualist Olcott believes that miracles,
including those of the Buddha, can be explained in terms of parapsychology.
Some occult
ideas have sneaked in too – the Buddha´s strange ability to remember his past
lives (strange since Buddhism holds to “anatta” or “no-soul”) is explained in
terms of accessing the Akashic Chronicles. Olcott designed a Buddhist flag,
which is still widely used today, and since the flag´s color stripes symbolize
the colors of the Buddha´s aura, a section of the Catechism is devoted to
expounding on this theme.
In sum, “The
Buddhist Catechism” is a relatively good introduction to Buddhism, but with a
few Olcottian additions. Well, at least he didn´t mention the root-races,
rounds and Stanzas of Dzyan…
My review of a very curious and narrow Amazon product.
This is the flag
of a small Icelandic group which promotes something dubbed “High Icelandic” or
“ultrapurism”. Foreign loanwords have long been de facto banned on Iceland (at
least until the advent of the modern computer age), but the High Icelanders
want to go even further, purging even perceived Latinisms and Germanisms from
Old Icelandic or Old Norse. The flag of the ultrapurists, Thorsfronve, shows
Thor´s hammer (a “Viking” symbol) rather than the Christian cross, suggesting
that this movement might have pagan revivalist traits. I´m not sure how active
the High Icelanders are today, but old websites suggest that this really was
their symbol. Based!
Yes, fam. Heligoland (Helgoland) has its
own flag! That's ironic on so many levels. For starters, Heligoland is a cliff
in the North Sea, about 1 square kilometer large (or small). Population: about
1,000. Imagine living on a cliff in the North Sea…
At the moment, Heligoland is controlled by Germany.
Historically, it has also been Danish and British. Ethnically, however, it's
Frisian. And now, the best part: when the island was British-controlled, a
German bloke on holiday wrote “Deutschland über alles” there.
So the most notorious nationalist anthem in Great
German history was written by a tourist on a visit to a British-controlled
Frisian spa.
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