The folks over at Answers in Genesis recently tackled the question, “When exactly was the Flood?”. After consulting his Bible and with a little help from Bishop James Ussher, David Wright of AiG provides the answer:
Using the Bible, well-documented historical events, and some math, we find that the Flood began approximately 4,359 years ago in the year 1656 AM [anno mundi] or 2348 BC.
So there you have it. Only 8 people left alive on the planet in 2348 BC.
That got me thinking. What other “well-documented historical events” might have been going on in the 24th century BC? Let’s take a look …
Mesopotamia
It must have come as a real shock to Noah and his children when, in 2334 BC – only 14 years after the flood – Sargon the Great began establishing the powerful Akkadian empire. This task involved defeating in battle a variety…
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“We will never reduce sexual violence if perpetrators are allowed to hide behind language that implicitly or explicitly blames victims. The simple fact underlined by the list Silverman tweeted is that rape is a choice—one that the rapist makes.”
What’s the connection? Besides the obvious tank, of course…
How about both being extreme alpha males who display a comprehensive disdain towards what the rest of us consider to be common courtesy?
Then how come both of them enjoy the unflagging support of millions of fans?
“James May and Richard Hammond – who have refused to work without him despite the former calling him “a knob” – might be expected to stand up for their co-star and (presumably) friend. But even the Prime Minister has called him “a friend” and “a huge talent”. Meanwhile, a petition to “Bring Back Clarkson” now has more than one million signatures.
Maybe it’s because he (Jeremy Clarkson) represents a particular group in society: financially middling white people who feel under assault from wider issues which they do not understand and who are happy to buy into the scapegoats of immigration, human rights and health and safety. These are the people who are most likely to complain about “PC gone mad”, and in Clarkson they have someone who appears to rail against all of that which constrains them. As one signatory commented: “Jeremy is a bastion of light in a dark PC world.” Of course, it is hard to work out what they aren’t actually allowed to say, given the headlines the Daily Mail gets away with every day, and the police officers who walk free after asking their black colleagues about eating bananas. (Judith Wanga, The Telegraph)
Simetrically:
“I have lost count of how many nations my country has bombed in just the last few years. We bombed Afghanistan and the result is chaos. We bombed Iraq and the result is chaos. We bombed Libya and the result is chaos. We almost bombed Syria, but your President, Vladimir Putin, helped save us from that madness. Our policy seems to be that if we kill enough Muslims the survivors will believe in Jeffersonian democracy and wear bikinis.
I know it is tempting to think that the rulers of my country are evil, but they are not evil. It would be better if they were evil because it would be easier to unmask them and replace them. No, they genuinely believe that they are bringing enlightenment, modernity, freedom, and happiness to the world.
Of course, the United States government is not the same as the American people. There are many Americans, like me, who are dismayed by the arrogance and blindness of our government. Our voices are seldom heard, but we are there. And we support a strong and sovereign Russia that defends its traditions against all attacks. We support a Europe of nations and of regions, each with its own wonderful, irreplaceable traditions.” (Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, speaking before the Russian Conservative Forum, Sankt Petersburg, March 23, 2015)
So how come BBC dropped Clarkson despite Top Gear bringing in some 50 million pounds each year while Putin is still at the helm of the second most powerful nation, from the military point of view at least, in spite of the heavy economic hardships the Russian population has to endure as a result of Putin’s antics?
First of all BBC is a not for profit organization. So money is important but there are limits. “For me a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations.” (Tony Hall, BBC’s director general, the Independent). Besides that the wider public has sanctioned promptly Clarkson’s previous ‘slips’, preparing the ground for what had just happened.
Meanwhile ‘Russia’ is a country, not a company, so there is no such thing as a ‘wider public’. More over it is operated on a completely different set of principles:
““Even in its current inefficient form, Russia’s economy is sustainable as long as the citizenry is willing to live with hardship and lost opportunity,” Sucher points out. “History suggests that one should not underestimate the capacity of the Russian people to endure the unendurable.”
Russians’ presumed endurance, combined with their capability to put up with hard times and losses, are among the reasons why some experts don’t believe that social protests will happen in the foreseeable future.
However, the problem appears to be more complicated than it does at first glance. Even though Russians might have stamina to deal with economic hardships, will they trust the authorities in the future?
Trust in the government and the president remains crucial for maintaining a country’s social capital, as Ngaire Woods, dean at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Public Diplomacy, and her counterpart from China’s Tsinghua University, Xue Lan, agreed during the Gaidar Forum. So far, Russian President Vladimir Putin approval ratings are robust. But it remains to be seen if that will be the case in two to three years….
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After all, some of Russia’s prominent sociologists and historians believe that the Kremlin manipulates the mentality of Russians to legitimize its regime. For example, Lev Gudkov, director of Russia’s Levada Center for public opinion polling, points out that Russians are experiencing a deep inferiority complex and a sort of psychological trauma after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of which makes them easier to manipulate.” (Pavel Koshkin in Russia Direct, relating about what has been discussed at the Gaidar Economic Forum in January 2015)
So, while Clarkson – no matter how brazen he is as a person or adulated as a TV personality – is not high enough above the rest of the world to be impervious to the effects of his own deeds, Putin stands, at least for the moment, atop a very tall pedestal. So tall, in fact, that I’m afraid he no longer sees clearly what’s going on at the street level.
Only this pedestal is made of the flimsiest of construction materials – popular sentiment. When the Russians will finally understand that ‘the emperor is naked’…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frTBy4My9Qc
http://persephonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/clarkson-bird.gif
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2M5l__vCwo
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11482655/In-Jeremy-Clarkson-BBC-bosses-have-created-a-monster.-Now-its-their-job-to-slay-him.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/176f7c04-d2f9-11e4-a792-00144feab7de.html#axzz3VUKcO3GQ
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/clarkson-sacked-piers-morgan-writes-open-letter-to-extop-gear-presenter-10134437.html
http://www.russia-direct.org/analysis/here%E2%80%99s-why-russia%E2%80%99s-economic-problems-won%E2%80%99t-lead-social-protests
Also, did you know that it covers a lot more than ‘divide and conquer’?
For instance, a rather successful computer game and a problem solving methodology that recommends the original problem be divided into smaller, and hence easier to manage, sub-problems.
Going back to the original meaning I must admit that both the ancient Macedonians and the ancient Romans made ‘good’ use of it. Alexandre the Great had conquered everything between Greece and India while the Ancient Rome had been, for a while, the most powerful empire known to man.
In more modern times the same strategy had been used by Germany, among others. Again, with relative success. During WWI the Kaiser had facilitated Lenin’s access to Russia and by doing so he had split the coalition he was trying to defeat – as a result of this manoeuvre Russia had asked for a separate peace treaty, eventually signed at Brest Litovsk. During WWII Hitler took great care to keep Russia at bay while he conquered the Western part of Europe.
Now the same strategy is being used by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the current Czar of Russia.
On Sunday, March 22, 2015, Sankt Petersburg – Putin’s birth place and political trampoline – hosted the Russian Conservative Forum. It was attended by a “a motley crew of representatives of fringe right-wing political organizations in Europe and the United States” which “including Hitler apologists, Holocaust deniers, apartheid fans, and a Russian skinhead who once decapitated a puppy as a publicity stunt, gave it an air of dark surrealism. Speakers condemned the U.S. as the enslaver of Europe and sang the praises of Russian President Vladimir Putin, holding up Russia as the last fortress of Christendom in the war waged on it by liberalism and multiculturalism.
“In the West, we are brainwashed to hate Vladimir Putin,” said British anti-abortion-rights campaigner Jim Dowson. He went on to say that Russia is blessed to be ruled by “a real man” while the U.S. is led by the “feminized” Barack Obama.”
On Tuesday, March 24, “The UN General Assembly’s budget committee … rejected a proposal submitted by Russia that called for withdrawing a July 2014 administrative ruling by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He ordered the world body to recognize same-sex unions of any of its 60,000 global staff who wed in countries that legally recognize such partnerships.
The dispute turned an internal UN personnel policy into a microcosm of the differences that pit the U.S. and EU nations against more socially conservative countries over recognizing rights of those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.”
If we put two and two together and then add the result to what has already become evident – that the Russian (more exactly Putin’s) Propaganda machine has been revved up in a massive way for quite a while now – the pattern becomes visible.
Putin is ‘doing his worst’ to convince those uncomfortable with the spread of ‘liberal values’/globalization that if they want to ‘preserve their national traditions’ they have to ‘unite closely around’ the only leader that can save them from being engulfed by the ‘decadence of the West’. Around him, that is.
In fact this is exactly what the ’emperors of old’ I mentioned at the beginning of the post used to recommend. Instil as much fear in your opponents, individually, as you can and try to rekindle the smallest differences that ever existed between them.
There is a small problem though with this line of thinking.
No matter how much we respect/admire some of them or hate/despise the others none of those who had used this strategy ended up in a ‘comfortable’ manner.
And all of them had brought great misery to the people under their rule. Including Caesar. A civil war is no small thing, not now, not then!
While we ponder what to do in order to counter this nefarious propaganda, we need to keep in mind that Russia is not Putin and that the Russian people has never had a taste of what real democracy feels like. Blaming the entire people, wholesale, for what Putin does in their name ‘is worse than a crime, it’s a mistake’.
PS. Same counter-strategy should be applied to all would be ‘dividers’ who try to become ’emperors’.
http://scarlet.unl.edu/scarlet/archive/2008/02/28/story9.html
http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royinterface/12/104/20141335.full.pdf
http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/14608/did-the-germans-purposefully-arrange-to-send-lenin-to-russia-to-start-a-revoluti
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/treaty_of_brest-litovsk.htm
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-hateful-sort-of-love
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/world/europe/right-wing-groups-find-a-haven-for-a-day-in-russia.html?ref=europe
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-23/is-russia-against-fascism-or-isn-t-it-
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-24/russian-bid-to-block-same-sex-benefits-for-un-workers-rejected
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/17/crimea-crisis-russia-propaganda-media
http://www.unrv.com/fall-republic/caesars-civil-war.php
For the eco-friendly multi-millionaire. (NanoFlowcell)
OK, this is not a technology blog.
And yet. As an engineer I have a ‘natural knack’ for this kind of things.
Where most people see a really beautiful car I see a huge breakthrough in energy storage.
These guys at NanoFlowcell AG have invented a technology that stores electric energy in two tanks filled with a ‘salty’ solution. The way I see it very soon, as soon as prices will make sense, each of us will have a solar panel mounted on the roof and a device in our basement that will store the electricity produced during the day into those two liquids developed by NanoFlowcell AG so that we’ll be able to light up the house (and refill the car) when we come home in the evening.
Nice job guys!
The humble legume, savior of humanity.(Neil Palmer, CIAT)
What?!?
An agricultural break through that doesn’t involve ‘invasive’ genetic engineering?
Somebody that still cares about biodiversity?
It seems that we still have a fighting chance to survive decently!
http://qz.com/369495/scientists-have-engineered-the-food-that-could-save-a-starving-warming-planet/
“Portrayed like this things start to make sense.
The artist who had put this together deserves an Oscar for lucidity and synthesis.
This picture says it all!
One type of civilization advances behind a mask while the other refuses to see what is going on.”That’s one way to interpret this image.
Another one, among many others, could be:
‘Those who do not feel free are actively looking for a way out of their predicament while those who have grown careless are no longer aware of what is going on around them.And, dear reader, when considering any of these interpretations, please bear in your mind mind that each of them has been put forward by a human being, animated by a specific set of beliefs and convictions which have been heavily influenced by his personal set of life experiences.
Le photographe qui a réalisé ce montage devrait recevoir l’Oscar de la lucidité et de la synthèse !
TOUT est dit, dans cette photographie!
Un type de civilisation avance à visage masqué…
Et l’autre, les yeux cachés ne voit rien venir.
