Such a need to learn from our dogs!
A couple of items that recently landed in my ‘in-box’ had me in pain; emotional pain that is. I agonised over republishing them but then thought it felt like a duty to promulgate this particular terrible aspect of life. Trust me, today’s post is going to generate a deal of passion (see reference to TIME magazine at the end of the post). Also it is not something that should be read by a young person under the age of sixteen.
The first item was an email sent to me by dearest Suzann and is republished here with Suzann’s kind permission.
(For those that may not know or recall, Suzann, and her husband Don, invited me to spend the Christmas of 2007 with them at their home in San Carlos, Mexico. Suzann and Jean, who then lived in San Carlos, had been good friends for many years working together to rescue the many feral dogs found on the streets in San Carlos and surrounding areas. Indeed, Suzann continues to rescue those needy dogs and find loving homes for them. Out of the 9 dogs here at home in Oregon, 6 are ex-rescue dogs from Mexico.)
This is what Suzann sent:
I am so sorry to have to send this to you, but it needs to get out there for people to know.
What can we do?
1. Make others aware of this atrocious and vile assault on innocent people, so people will WAKE UP to the evil that is happening in this world!
2. PRAY!
3. If you are not a believer, send to others that you know who are, so they can send it on.
The whole world needs to see this!!
Thank you.
suzannYOUR PRAYERS ARE THE NEED OF THE HOUR.
PLEASE SEND THIS TO AS MANY AS YOU CAN.
PLEASE LOOK AT THESE PICTURES. ISIS IS KILLING CHRISTIAN CHILDREN. ONE WAS CRUCIFIED. PLEASE PRAY.
Be sure to see the 4 photos below. The whole world needs to see what kind of people these ISIS terrorists are.
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Here is an urgent prayer request for all of us!!
She asked that it be forwarded ASAP to as many people possible:Dear Friend: Just a few minutes ago, I received the following text message on my phone, from Sean Malone who leads Crisis Relief International (CRI), We spoke briefly on the phone, and I assured him that we would share this urgent prayer need with all our contacts.
We lost the city of Queragosh. It fell to ISIS and they are beheading children systematically. This is the city we have been smuggling food to. ISIS has pushed back Kurdish Forces, and is within 10 minutes of where our CRI team is working. Thousands more fled into the city of Erbil last night. The UN evacuated its staff in Erbil. Our team is unmoved and will stay. Prayer cover needed!!!.Please pray sincerely for the deliverance of people of northern Iraq from the terrible advancement of ISIS and its extreme Islamic goals for mass conversion or death for Christians in this area.
May I plead with you not to ignore this email? Do not forward it before you have prayed through it. Then send it to as many people as possible.
Send it to friends and Christians you know. Send it to your prayer group. Send it to your pastors. Any one you can think of. We need to stand in the gap for our fellow Christians.
I was still struggling to ground, as it were, my emotional response to Suzann’s item when a second item came into my ‘in-box’. It was a new post over on Patrice Ayme’s blogsite. This, too, is republished in full with Patrice’s kind permission.
ooOOoo
Savage, The Franks? Islam Is Worse
Our friend the half-philosophers may start to huff and puff, as “Franks” were citizens of a federation (actually two of them, the one of the Sea, and the one of the River; the one of the Sea, or more exactly, Salt, is now known as Salian, or Salic).
Whereas “Islam” is a thought system, devised by some Arab warriors (PBUH), who got a good gig going for themselves.
To put in the same basket an ethnicity and a religion is what some half-philosophers would love to call a “category mistake”. The irony is that I know (the basics of) Category Theory, and they don’t.
In Category Theory, there is a concept called a functor, which allows to go from one category to another.
In other words, because I know of functors, I can mix and match different categories such as Franks and Islam, and be relaxed about it (instead of being all gripped and unimaginative, as is the average constipated half-philosopher. Notice in passing that the concept “functor” was invented by the philosopher Carnap in linguistics).
The historian Pirenne, long ago, suggested the thesis that the collapse of the economy in the High Middle Ages was caused by the Islamists (Islam confiscated most of the Roman empire, and imposed a total embargo, cutting not just the Paper route, but the Silk Road as well).
In other news, On Fascism, Russian & Islamist Edition, Feb 26, 2015, a plan surfaced for the invasion of Ukraine, written more than a year ago, by some major Russian plutocrats, who have influence on Putin and are best buddies with the leadership of the Russian “Orthodox” Church.
Don’t worry, anybody involved will soon die, and things will calm down; this is Putin’s way.
There is a clear self-censorship going on throughout the West right now, because people are scared of these fanatics, the Putinists, and the Islamists. This, in turn, is deleterious to any critical mood, thus discourse, thus adverse to fixing any problem.
One cannot have a sane public discourse if one cannot even draw a human being. Having public insanity in place of public discourse will affect the Republic, to the point it will die, and that is why it died in all and any nation that submitted to Submission (aka “Islam”).
TODAY’S ISLAMISTS: MORE BARBARIAN THAN THE FRANKS, SIXTEEN CENTURIES AGO:
As it rose, Christianism destroyed the Roman Republic (or what was left of it). In 363 CE, under fanatical emperor Jovian, an ex-general, a systematic policy of burning libraries got started (Jovian may have been behind the assassination of laic emperor Julian; I am speculating). In 381 CE under ex-general Theodosius, then emperor, laws were passed to enact a “War Against the Philosophers“. Heresy (“making a choice”) became punishable by death.
The Roman empire, which still had many characters of a Republic (which officially it was… Now a “Christian” Republic) exploded.
However, in the next century, in the West, the Franks took control and build a Catholicism so moderate that it made Paganism, Judaism, and Apostasy all legal (and conversions in all directions).
Interestingly, the Franks, who soon built what they called “Europe”, as an empire, have the reputation of uncouth savages. “Frank” means Ferocious, not just Free.
But the Franks had no problem with Catholics becoming Jews, entire villages converted, until the priest was the only Christian in town. Charlemagne himself, four centuries after the Franks acceded to power, had his friends call him “David”, because he wanted to be like Israel’s King David (not a friend of God, according to the Bible).
Compare with the savagery of Islam: Somebody who leaves Islam is to be killed, say the Hadiths.
So what of the supposed great intellectual tradition of “Islam”? That sounds strange, on the face of it. What about the great intellectual tradition of Christianism? Well, the answer is that there is no such a thing. As soon as he became a fanatical Christian, Pascal produced nothing. All great “Christian” intellectuals are intellectuals first, and, second spent the reminder of their mental capabilities avoiding the fire in which the church wanted to throw them.
In France alone, around the year 1530 CE, three major philosophers were burned alive for having contradicted Catholicism. This explains why Descartes, a century later, preferred to live in the Netherlands.
Contrarily to repute, the situation with Islam was even worse. At least, in the West, intellectuals could engage the Church in full combat, and they often won. This is a direct consequence of the Frankish leadership submitting the Christian leadership, starting in the Fifth Century. After that time, the Church was never again the government of the West (except inside the Papal states, a gift of Charlemagne, later de facto rescinded).
Famously, around 1300 CE, Philippe IV of France and his vassal the English king engaged in full submission of the Pope and his army. The Pope and the Templars both ended judged, dead, and, more importantly, taxed.
So what of these great Muslim thinkers? The answer is that most of them were, truly Jewish or Christians, or very recently “converted”, or then did not finish too well.
ISLAMIST SCHOLARS WANT TO KILL YOU:
The fact is, the greatest Muslim university, Al Azhar in Cairo, is definitively founded on what the Franks, 15 centuries ago, would have viewed as barbarian principles. It actually refused to condemn the “Islamist State” as not conforming to Islam.
Al Azhar has decided that those who renounce Islam and their children ought to be killed:
“In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful
Al-Azhar
Fatwa Committee
A question from Mr. Ahmed Darwish who presented the question through Mr. (Blanked out) of German nationality:
A Muslim man of Egyptian nationality married a Christian woman of German nationality. The two spouses agreed that the aforementioned Muslim man would enter the Christian religion and join the Christian creed.
What is the ruling of Islam regarding this person’s situation?
Are his children considered Muslims or Christians and what is their ruling?
The Answer:
All praises are due to Allah, lord of all the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the greatest of all messengers, our master Muhammad and upon his family and companions all together. As for what follows:
We inform that he has apostatized after having been in a state of Islam, so he should be asked to repent. If he does not repent, he should be killed according to the sharia.
As for his children, so long as they are small they are Muslims. After they have attained maturity, if they remain in Islam then they are Muslims. If they leave it, then they should be asked to repent. If they do not repent, they should be killed. And Allah knows best.
President of the Fatwa Committee of Al-Azhar
Seal of the Committee
September 23, 1978”
http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=24511.0
Our civilization was founded on rejecting this sort of savagery on the part of Christianism. When the Islamists appeared, the Franks considered them to be a Christian sect, the Sons of Sarah (Saracens). Let’s persist in rejecting the savagery.
Antique Greece was not just defined by what it built, but what it rejected: the Barbarians (those whose talk sounded animal-like: barr… baa). One cannot be positive all the times, otherwise positivity itself loses meaning.
Patrice Ayme’
PS: After publishing the preceding essay, it came to light that the Islamist State, applying literally the savage texts that guide them, destroyed Mesopotamian art more than twice older than the invention of Islam by the raiders (Muhammad and the father of his six-years-old child bride, etc.).
There is no savagery but savagery, and Islam is its prophet?
ooOOoo
Not to have upsetting reactions to these items from Suzann and Patrice would be abnormal. Both Su’s item and the post from Patrice had me going round in emotional circles. Ranging from seeing our species as cruel, barbarous creatures to thinking that maybe there are times when the only proper course of action is to take up arms against savages. Along the lines of that quote about the only thing that evil needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing.
Finally, it was the editorial in the latest (March 9th.) TIME magazine, written by the Editor, Nancy Gibbs, that had my head nodding. Here’s a little of what Nancy Gibbs wrote:
Analyzing a threat as complex and diffuse as ISIS requires a global effort, and so our special report reflects the work of dozens of journalists on three continents with decades of experience reporting on the Middle East.
………
We invited Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations and Karl Vick, our former Jerusalem bureau chief, who is now based in New York City, to argue the case for and against the U.S.’s sending ground troops into the fight.
It was the next sentence that underlined for me why I had so many conflicting emotions (my emphasis).
“The hardest thing about confronting a group like ISIS,” Karl observes, “is seeing past the fear they delight in projecting to discern the threat it actually presents. But they make dispassion really difficult.“
Makes our dogs look like profoundly straightforward, loving animals! Why, oh why, can’t the human race essentially be as straightforward and loving!
Learning from Dogs 
The latest news, courtesy of the BBC, about, “Nimrud: Outcry as IS bulldozers attack ancient Iraq site.” only serves to inflame my emotions and, without doubt, thousands of others.
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Yes this too got me riled Paul.. seems Ancient monuments are more precious than lives that are lost..
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Here a (nasty) question asked by Daniel C. Dennett in the book “Thinking” (2013) edited by John Brockman.
“Suppose that we face some horrific, terrible enemy… and here’s two different armies that we could use to defend ourselves. The Gold Army and the Silver Army: same numbers, same training, same weaponry. They’re all armored and armed as well as can do. The difference is that the Gold Army has been convinced that God is on their side and this is cause of righteousness, and it’s as simple as that. The Silver Army is entirely composed of economists. They’re all making side insurance bets and calculating the odds of everything… Which army do you want on the front lines?”
And Dennett has introduced the question by citing William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) with: “Far better is it for an army to be too savage, to cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness”.
So now you ponder on that for a while.
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Thanks Per. On the face of it, one doesn’t need to ponder too long to see the logic of the choice. If one has to go to war then the quicker that the ‘enemy’ is defeated the better it must be.
And as a child of the Second World War (I was born in London in November, 1944, six months before the end of the war in May, 1945), I would be the first to acknowledge the benefits of growing up in an open and civilised society.
One does sense that the growing outcry against the activities of ISIS will come to a head soon. If I had to vote today on the subject of military action against ISIS, then my vote would be in favour of such action.
Really appreciate you taking the time to post a reply!
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Thanks Per, for mentioning Daniel Dennet, a well-known philosopher.
Like a giant Black Hole at the heart of a galaxy, I need to swallow stuff, so I can make light. Dennet will do for now.
First, let me say that I approve Paul’s answer 100%.
The big mistake in World War two was to realize too late that Nazism had to be physically destroyed, with maximum savagery.
The French Republic understood it: by January 1938, the French War Ministry launched a hyper secret NUCLEAR bomb program (Irene Curie, daughter of Marie, had not already a Nobel Prize, but she also had discovered the nuclear chain reaction, and taught it to Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, both German, who, fortunately, had not understood too well what the much smarter Irene had found).
The aim of the program was to atom bomb Berlin: Nazis were to get what they deserved (the project fled later to England, and then MANHATTAN, becoming the project by that name).
Morality? Against those who have none, but the Dark Side, only darker ways win.
The British followed the French example (Churchill of course knew about the nuclear bomb project): against the Nazis, only a deeper darkness would do. So they prepared a strategic bomber fleet. The idea was to eradicate Nazi cities, if it had to come to that. The British were ready for the worst.
The British were ready for the worst, the Nazis were not: it would have meant, for the later, to look deep in their ugly souls.
So they did not look.
So they did not anticipate that they ugly souls would lead them to be at war, again, with France and Britain. Or, maybe in 1945 (some of them, including Hitler, planned, secretly). But not in 1939. Thus the Nazis did not prepare with a bomber fleet and enough anti-aircraft defenses. Britain did, because Britain anticipated the ugliness of what could follow: as the British soul was pure, it could look into the possible consequences of Nazi evil. So Britain prepared for the worst, all-out war (something the ex-director of Mi6 just suggested may happen with Putin).
To fight evil, one has to draw the line somewhere. Thus, in 1939, Britain followed France, which had a defense treaty with Poland, and told Hitler that invading Poland was out of the question.
Hitler, stuck, made his hyper secret alliance with Stalin official.
France and Britain, and Poland were undeterred. Poland refused to concede any territory for its Prussian tormentors who had occupied her for centuries.
Hitler attacked. France and Britain declared war.
At that point, it was clear Hitler had lost. It was just a matter of time. The Nazis tried to get lucky, and they were, in May 1940, after several inconceivable blunders by the French and British commands, who had not anticipated how insane the Nazis were. And Lady Luck was Nazi in May 1940.
When the Nazis had to turn to air war against Britain, though, they were not ready. But the Brits were. Nazi attacks against English cities met the wrath of the RAF. Ultimately savage city bombing at night reduced Hitler’s Reich to smoldering ruins. One million men manned the anti-aircraft guns, but still, British bomber inflicted war hindering damage.
Later the USAF joined, and the Nazis ran out of everything.
Was it rough? Sure. But there was no other way to win the war.
And if that war had been lost, the Nazis, in the end, would have simply killed most of humanity.
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Patrice, what an incredibly informative reply; thank you. I have a strange emotional view of WWII, having been born in North London on November 8th, 1944, that turned out to be six months to the day before the end of WWII. The number of bomb-damaged buildings was vast, but to me, and my friends, it just seemed normal! The signs of bomb damage were more-or-less removed by the time of the present Queen’s coronation in 1953.
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Dear Per: I have pondered the quote above, and I cannot figure it out? Are you suggesting that, because the Islamist State is more savage, barbarous, and convince that dog or god, is on their side, we “want them on the front lines”?
I am writing a follow-up essay on my site, still pondering…
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Patrice, of course I am not suggesting “we want them on the frontline”
My father in 1940, as a Polish soldier (or by that time just more as a young Polish troublemaker) was on the first train to Auschwitz and stamped with number 245. He would clearly have understood entirely the need of fighting violence with more violence.
But I, born on this side of the war (1950), and having grown up sort of accustomed to turning a blind eye towards Russia and China, have never ever, until now, been confronted with challenges that make me feel that I should probably better temporarily suspend my well-behaved Sunday School-member of Christian Civilization ways of acting and thinking, and become somewhat barbarous myself, in order to defend my constituency, my children and grandchildren, and my beliefs.
Just have patience with me. Churchill had had plenty of experiences to draw upon when it was his time to act. But for an “All you need is love” Woodstock child, to suddenly wake up at 65 and realize that you’d better think and act fast as a Churchill, is not the easiest thing to do. But don’t you fret… If I am not already there I’ll get there somehow.
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Per, was your father on that Auschwitz train as a soldier or as a prisoner? Either way, he must have passed on some incredible stories to you.
As with Patrice, I appreciate so much you opening up with your memories and feelings. Thank you!
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Paul… he was of course a prisoner and would stay so until April 1945 when he was liberated by the Allies from Buchenwald… he did not pass stories to us his kids… as most that went through it they preferred not to talk about it… and we not to ask
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I was fairly certain that would have been the case but didn’t want an assumption to cause potential upset. And I have heard of others who have not been able to articulate their experiences. They were dark times.
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Oh Paul……….. I wish I had not scrolled down and heeded your warning.. What the ….. is wrong with PEOPLE…. WHY … I just can not comprehend How another Human Being does these kind of barbaric acts… What is it with the HUMAN RACE???? WHY do we KILL, SLAUGHTER, MAIM, TORTURE!… and CHILDREN!!! CHILDREN for Christs sakes… what harm can they do anyone..
War in all its EVIL it has to end Paul.. How I do not know.. We have not learned anything And those who commit these monstrosities can not call themselves Human… they are Monsters..
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Sue, I feel your pain and I feel your incomprehension about what makes elements of the human race behave in such ways. I have no answers over and above what all good and true people feel. Thank you, Sue, for sharing your feelings in this place.
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Paul those images lasted well into the night… I cried as my heart reached out into the hearts of those children …
But I am pleased you shared them.. We have to become more aware, we can not shut ourselves off from reality and suffering..
I wrote a poem at 3am, a long one… it helped vent what I felt.. And I will post it as it came.. It may also upset some people… but some people need to wake up from their bubbles….. I will leave a link to your post with a subheading of content..
Sending Love and Light as I know both you and Jean must feel the pain also x
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Dear Per:
Your answer is very interesting and touching. I have been too busy to answer you in a timely manner. Sorry.
Churchill himself changed enormously. Churchill was pro-Nazi to the point of threatening the French Republic in 1929 with the… RAF… If the French kept of harassing Germany’s Second Reich (official name of ‘Weimar’!) about its secret re-armament, which violated the Versailles Treaty. This went on until 1936 (in 1935, the British gov. organized a Versailles Treaty violation with Hitler; the UK aligned itself behind France only in 1939… Hence the fiasco of Munich in 1938, when France was made understand she had to go alone against fascist Germany and Italy).
Churchill turned around completely by 1939… But then he became hysterical and did not want to wait for the new planes to reach mass production (he wanted to mass produce obsolete types).
However, Churchill did not allow the assassination of Hitler (many top German generals would have been happy to help, and had actually contacted Brits and Americans… who then betrayed them!)
“All You Need Is Love” was, with all due respect, mental masturbation of the worst type.
The Beatles (Lennon, PBUH) put “All You Need With Love”) to the sound of the Marseillaise, playing in the arms, the embrace, of the Pitts, who launched a 25 year war against “Liberty Equality Fraternity”, while getting the MBE.
Make no mistake, I love the song, but I despise, and condemn the message.
As I have explained in all directions, Britain was certainly at fault in 1789-1792. As the British armies and Navy, plus the Prussians, Austrians, Russians who invaded France at the call of British plutocrats, invaded France, All The French, And Humanity, needed, was the Marseillaise, and spill the blood of the invaders as happened at Valmy (September 21, 1792) and soon Toulon…
More to come soon
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I agree with you Patrice, though for that type of mental exercise “All we need is love” works better than “All we need is order”.
Jest aside, I am very concerned that my generation has been lulled into a false sense of security… and that a society needs to continuously exercise some of its violent animal instincts, less it be taken down by the next truly non-societal beast that appears.
As an example, I feel utterly ashamed of belonging to a generation of financial professionals, capable of coming up with bank regulations which allow banks to earn much higher risk-adjusted returns on equity when lending to the safe, than when lending to the risky… totally ignoring that it is only by lending to risky risk-takers that we can in the long run have a chance to avoid the bike from stalling and falling.
As a result we now have placed a reverse mortgage on our economies, extracting value from the risk-taking of the past and denying our children our banks to take the risks needed in order to finance their future.
I live in Maryland USA… and if you would just have a look at the safety instructions for pool usage, which among other require metering the water each hour to make sure it Is clean… you could perhaps understand why I lower my eyes so as not be looking into theirs, when I hear Americans singing about their home of the brave.
By the way the Washington Post published some time ago a letter I sent them along these lines.
http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2013/01/handcuffed-by-triple-rating.html
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I unfortunately have to rush right now, Per, and I cannot stay Internet connected let alone thinking about all these difficult questions. I just put on my site a long essay expanding a bit what I wrote above. I am looking forward for your critique of it. And I will come back to what you said above, ASAP.
😉
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Per and Patrice, what an incredibly interesting dialogue between you both. Want to let your ideas and views settle on me for a while before adding my two-cents worth.
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The images brought tears streaming down my face. War in any name whether it be religion or the search of acquiring oil, or any in between, are wrong but when it comes to executing children, innocent children, it has to be stopped. I can’t help but wonder what the final outcome will be. The children who survive will have scars we can’t even imagine. PTSD won’t come close to describing what these children will carry with them. Many days I sit here in my house or on my property contemplating the good I can do here, but nothing I do can help those children and their families. I wonder how we would react should this horrible killing come to our towns.
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Dear Lois, just been across to your place and signed up! I couldn’t agree more with your reply and the only thing we can hang on to is that eventually mankind will learn the truth about living together; or we will perish and return the planet to Nature!
Thank you so much for dropping by, and welcome!
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