Friday, September 29, 2006

Virtue

Virtues for Today


http://www.novaroma.org/nr/Roman_Virtues

Above is a pretty good list of virtues. If you don't have any of these, you are lacking. If you don't have at least half, you need to look at yourself in the mirror, and make a plan to improve.

New background material on the War on Terror.

Al Queda- Iraqi terrorists launched the first World Trade Center Attack. Terrorist passports were provided by Iraq, stolen from Kuwaitt during the Saddam's investigation. The explosives were ammonium nitrate (fertilizer), but cyanide was included in an attempt to create poison gas.

That means, during Clinton's administration, long before his well deserved impeachment, Islamic Fascist terrorists launched an attack on the WTC, and attempted to use Weapons of Mass Destruction. No need to connect the dots.

And Clinton did..............................................................(crickets chirping!)

Clinton launched attacks against Serbia, a nominally Christian (Orthodox) country. Ladies, that is worse than "appeasement", more like being flipped.

Kind of puts his fact free temper tantrum into perspective.

Of course Hillary isn't ashamed. She is proud of his lying. He does it so WELL!

If she does run for President, what gelded wonder will admit to being her Vice President, when Bill is around. Another term of "co-presidents"won't leave much room for him/her. If she selects a female VP to run with, can women be gelded? Feinstein, call your office!

Sure, Clinton didn't do enough in his 8 year presidency to stop Al Queda.

Sure, Bush didn't do enough in his 8 month presidency to stop Al Queda.

The guilt for terrorism is primarily that of terrorists.

Negligence for permitting terrorist activities is spread widely. Before 1979, every pilot of every aircraft that carried mail had to carry a gun. Rather than have terrorists get shot, the (Democratic) Congress changed the law to forbid pilots from carrying guns. Rather than permit passengers to fight with terrorists, Congress changed the law to make it a felony for any passenger to interfere with a hijacker. All this happened long before Clinton was elected.

It is true that the "Path to 9-11" initial cut showed Sandy Berger unable to approve a commando operation to capture Osama Bin Laden, and that this image is false. The sad fact is PotUSA Clinton, SecDef Cohen, SecSt Albright, DCI Tenet, and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger never let the planning for such an operation get even that close.

Day-by-Day, an interesting cartoon, suggests that it is a bad thing for Clinton, who lied to nearly everyone, for the most base of motives, to complain about other people not adhering to the Truth. http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2006/09/09/#003788

Lileks has it right. http://www.lileks.com/bleats/index.html

"Just so you know: 9/11 reset the clock for me. All hands went to midnight. I’m interested in what people did after that date, and if the movie shows that before the attack one side lacked feck and the other was feck-deficient, I don't worry about it. It's like revisiting Congressional debates about Hawaiian harbor security in November 1941. Y'all get a pass. The Etch-A-Sketch's turned over."

The Treaty of Augsburg. A long time ago, limited the priviledges and immunities of WAR to princes, and nations.

A long time ago, the Geneva Convention granted prisoner of war status only to people who fought by the rules and customs of war, avoided damage to civilians, wore uniforms recognizable at a distance, and had a chain of command. Terrorists do none of these. Still the Supreme Court extended POW protection to terrorists in 'Hamadi'. I don't know how anyone, much less a Justice could make such a decision.

Bush Derangement Syndrome. It seems to affect far too many of those who oppose GW Bush on the left. Bush wanted to be a Uniter, not a Divider. He may be the only one who is supported in at least a lukewarm manner by everyone in the US that is not insane.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Letters to My Children

Letters to My Children

So Pope Benedictus quoted Manual II, the second to the last Emperor of the Romans on the Muslim practice of territorial aggression as a means to the end of propagating the Islamic faith.

So the Islamic troublemakers ignored the plain meaning of his words, and rather seized upon Manual II's offendingly accurate characterization of the Islam of his day.

One wonders, what in fact in the world would not offend the Muslims? How could one follow the heresy of Mahomet, the child molester, the oath breaker, the murderer, the thief, the blasphemer? If Mahomet was non-fiction, then he was surely one of the most evil people ever. If Mahomet was fiction, then he is certainly one of the most evil fictional characters ever, and a great deal of evil has been done in his name.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Letters to My Children

Letters to My Children

Visiting!
A call from the Ex-Wife reveals:
Andrew and Devin may be visiting in Phoenix at Thanksgiving.

Andrew is studying Physics and Economics. It may seem an odd combination, but before we have functioning space colonies, we need to have some assurance that the society there will be founded on realistic principles, to assure we do not have a repeat of the Roanoke Colony disaster. That will require some economic models that makes use of the unusual environment.

Letters to My Children

Comments on Pope Benedict

So, Pope Benedict, speaking on the subject of Faith and Reason, asserted that compulsion in religious belief was NOT A GOOD THING. As he did this, he mentioned a statement by a 14th Century Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, delivered to an Persian/Islamic philosopher, to the effect that some upstart named Mohamet had gone back on his earlier "Direct Word from Allah, which must never be changed" to encourage his followers to conquer, and to murder the men they conquered, to put to the sword all non-believers, or to force them into the "dhimmi" status where they had to pay tribute, and submit to beatings when they paid said tax.

I think it is rarely disputed that historically Islam was promulgated by the sword during the later life of Mohamet, and later that example was followed by his early followers. There are some "liberals" who assert that Mohamet was an entire fiction, invented by some Caliph or another, to provide religious justification for his agressive wars. That puts the authoring of the Qu-ran somewhat later, which explains well its lack of what would be expected variation. During the putative time of Mahomet, there was NO written Arabic. The later Arabic script was written using the Syrio-Aramaic script, just as English is normally written with Roman script.l

My silly question is that if Mohamet went back on the "Direct Word of Allah, which can never be changed" was he an apostate? Or just a liar who made it all up? Or a fiction, who some other liar made up?

Well, the Pope, being the Pope (aka Pontifex Maximus relating to the pagan Roman position who was responsible for the college of priests, as well as for upkeep on a particular bridge across the Tiber) has Muslim trouble makers who routinely go through his every word with a fine tooth comb. They found that he quoted said Byzantine Emperor, and rather than find fault with what he said, (aka, assert that Mahomet was opposed to extending Islam by fire and sword), they asserted that Mahomet, being dead now for 1400 years, was somehow insulted by said comment.

"How dare anyone assert Islam is not tolerant. We must behead any infidel who is not so oppressed that he would speak the truth!"

The Pope asserted that logic and reason was a basis for understanding between different faiths. That any faith which did not begin with respect for reason could not gain G-ds approval, or humanity's approval. (In Greek, Logos, is reason, or Word, or Meaning, per the first phase of the Gospel of John "In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with G-d, and the Logos was G-d")

If the "liberal" Muslim scholars are correct, that Mahomet was a fictional invention to justify the Caliph's agression, there are some interesting consequences. Christianity was an odd little religion in the shadows until the Council of Nicea. Said council, convened by Constantine the Great, had each of the books of the Bible expounded, and a decision was made to keep the book as part of the new official Christian faith, or to reject it. Rejected were the Gospels of Thomas and Peter among other books. After the Council, the books that were rejected were sought out and destroyed, with all the thouroughness that a new convert could muster, if the new convert happened to be the Emperor. We only recently found what what those rejected gospels said (a copy being found in Ethiopia in 1948, written in a Coptic script). The books are available to non-scholars now in an English translation called "The Gnostic Gospels". I have seen it in Barnes and Noble.

Islam moved out of the Desert, and was stopped cold by the Roman Empire. Mere aggression was not enough to defeat the resources of a large nation, and where conquered, the established Roman church provided a locus for opposition to the despotic Arabic rulers.

The Islamic solution was to create a religion, with a prophet safely in the past, and to prevent any new prophets by asserting he was the last prophet, the "Seal of the Prophets" or even, by some translations, the "Witness of the Prophets". This did several things:
1. It gave a reason for the Caliph's own religion to steal all Christian Churches. The Al-Asqua mosque in Jerusalem was one of the most famous churchs built by the Byzantines, and stealing it removed the reproach of having the competition with finer architecture.
2. It gave a reason for the Caliph's own religion to ban all competing religions.
3. It gave a reason for a tax on the conquered people, that would not be levyed on the Caliph's soldiers and supporters.
4. Wiggle room written into the Quran to permit soldiers to rape, pillage, and enslave. Since rich and powerful men had many wives, the only chance that the poor man had to find a woman of his own was to join the Caliph's army, and as a fighter, take what he could. Wiggle room is also written in to permit homosexual rape.

The funny thing is the sites of Pilgrimmage were rich, and powerful, with their own soldiery to protect that wealth. Their bone was the continuation of local pagan pilgrimmage practices, initiated when the Sindoo/Hindus conquered Arabia. Mecca still has Hindu Idols inside the smallish square building that is the center of Haj/Pilgrimmage.