Ireland and Rwanda

For the last few weeks I have been explaining the real roots of terrorism and how to fight it.
Ireland should be in the table below, I'll enter it later.  I would not be surprised to learn, as is asserted in some places, that the roots of Irish and Welsh are not from the Germanic branch of Indo-European, and not Indo-European at all

Rwanda must be brought up because it is the only example on the African continent of a country whose borders roughly match a single language.  A bunch of racists in America, all Americans in the media, called the Hutu-Tutsi conflict "ethnic."  They were speaking out their asses.  There is no such thing as an ethnic Hutu or Tutsi.  It's all a colonial legacy from when the Belgians ruled Rwanda.

In other words, the Rwanda crisis, like the terrorist problem defined below, is, in fact, a legacy of imperialism/colonialism.

You Only Need Bombs To Make Democracy

If any member of the intellectual classes of al-Iraq are unhappy with Iran-Contra-Drugs-John Negroponte, or see Allawi and Yawer as CIA tools, and decide not to help al-Iraq, democracy will still flourish, because we can simply kill anyone who resists. Forever.
There is no chance anyone could be offended by this, and that is why it only takes bombs to make a democracy.

There are no counter-examples

     One may have examined my last two posts and scratched their head and said to themselves "Well, what about..."  I can only find one serious counter-example, which I address here.  I will now address the most obvious examples which might lead one to wonder if there is a linguistic base to terrorism.  Before I get into the examples, please simply imagine how easily negotiations fall apart over small miscommunications, even when both sides are speaking the same language.

Country	Issue	Language
Israel	Palestinians	Most Palestinians speak Hebrew.  Few Israelis speak Arabic.  Palestinians have to know two languages just to get by in their "own" country.  Imagine having to understand a Russian immigrant in the IDF yelling orders in his accent-ridden Hebrew.  Remember, your life is on the line.  A tribe from Peru was also made honorary Israelis.  Their Hebrew must also be interesting.
Colombia	FARC & ELN	This case is mostly about the drug war, however, the concerns of indigenous populations, speakers of Native American languages, have been adopted by the "terrorists."
Mexico	Chiapas	Again, the Chiapas rebels adopted the concerns of local Native American speakers, who are most numerous, of all Mexican States, in terms of percentages, in Chiapas.
Switzerland	Four languages	The first three, and next eight, Swiss Cantons, spoke German. All but one of the non-German speaking Cantons were conquered by Switzerland, or attached by outside powers.  The law in Switzerland is published in German, French, Italian and Rhaeto-Romansh.  This is one of the more stable countries on Earth.

The Legitimacy of Government

  Following what appears below, we are left with the question "What makes a government legitimate?"

  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights attempts to solve this answer by creating a list of fifty items that all governments must follow.  This list is quite flawed, and includes many ideas which no government can support.  Was it designed with a one world government in mind?  Perhaps, but they still spent a long time crafting these rules, and their rules can be looked at for inspiration on these matters.  As an exercise, you can try to prioritize all fifty for yourself.

  I argue that there is one item, that does not appear in the Universal Declaration, that comes, for me, before any of the others, and it speaks directly to the issue of governmental legitimacy.

  If your government does not even bother to publish its laws in your language, can it expect you to follow them?

  If the judges, lawyers and jury, in your trial, do not speak your language, do you think you should expect justice?

  If the ultimate authority of your nation, for example, JP Bremer in al-Iraq, does not speak your language, do you expect them to hear you?

  There are, sadly, roughly 7,000 languages on Earth.  European imperial/colonial expansion has resulted in a system where only a dozen or so languages are, currently, particularly useful.  Science, which I believe is crucial now, is mostly done in my language, English.  Carving up nations based on linguistic (NOT ethnic, NOT "racial") groups is not going to create world peace.  But, it is important to note that the borders which carve up Africa, the Middle East, Southwest Asia, India, China, and Oceania, are all borders imposed by the ruling powers with NO consideration of local interests.  By comparison, when Europe redivided itself (Treaty of Westphalia (1648), Congress of Vienna (1815)) it was a SLAVE to the linguistic groups.

If it is good enough for "us," dammit, it is good enough for "them."

The Solution to the Problem of International Terrorism

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     PLEASE DON'T READ THIS VERSION This post has been updated and can be found here.

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   To pull up terrorism by the roots, we must know those roots.  Terrorism has three roots, injustice, phantom injustice, and insanity.  Thankfully the insane ones have an impossible time relating their insanity, but even one person can wield considerable life-threatening power nowadays, a la Ted Kaczinski.  Phantom injustice can easily be defeated with truth, but people don't always want to hear the truth, or might not trust the source.
  Instead of discussing categories of terrorists, I shall discuss actual terrorists, since the current incarnation of terrorism can not be solved until it is understood from all angles, in general and in particular.

  First, we shall focus on some of the world's largest nations internal terrorism problems, then pull the focus back, to show that their problems are, in fact, precisely analagous to our own.  Of less interest to the powers that be are why these problems exist today, so maybe you should just try a flurry of guesses.
NOTE: Not being a linguist myself, and understanding that the field is in flux, I sometimes link to information that will disagree with other linked information.  I can't say which is right, I don't know who can.  Ethnologue.com is fairly complete, so I regularly referred to it (Logue).  List of source web pages, giving full contexts, at end, and later.

	Terrorism	Languages	Maps	Trees	Random
China	Uyghur (*) One, Two, Three
		Chinese:	One, Two, Three	Logue, Humphries	Word Comparison
		Uyghur:	One, Two,, Three?	Logue	Uyghur History, Historical Map, Learn More
Russia	Chechen (*) One, Two, Three
		Russian:	Indo-Euro, Slavic, Slavic2	Logue
		Chechen:	One, Two, Three	Logue, Humphries
India	Tamil Tigers One, Two, Three
		Indic:	Indo-Euro, Indo-Iran, India	Logue, Creighton,	Comparing Languages, Ignore Religion
		Dravidian:	One, Two, Three	Logue
Spain	Basque Separatist (*) One, Two, Three
		Spanish:	Indo-Euro, Romance, Romance2	Logue
		Basque:	One, Two, Three	Logue	ETA Demands

(*) indicates alleged al-Qaeda connection I know about.
I found this page to be one of the best overall web pages on the topic, in English.  Unfortunately it is missing some maps, having split Indo-European into four parts, and only mapping three, for example.
I-E Global Map

  Easy then, I hope, it is to see how this parallels with the tension between the English and Arabic speaking worlds.

After Action Report

I didn't have any plan, but I started posting on Olasky's blog.  For those who don't know, in 2000, Mr. Olasky wrote the book Compassionate Conservatism, and the president wrote the forward.

They brought up their usual boogieman, George Soros
Banning gum, a liberal conspiracy?!?
biodiesel
Reagan's death and misogyny
All of us die
The gossips
What do you know, and who told you?
Turkey I
Schwarzenegger, frontman for another scam
Turkey II
Adam Smith is supressed, today
A sideblog, with some guesses on the origins of man
The Olympics
A sideblog, what to do with your eyes
Real Analysis I
Turkey III
I'm not saying you should skip to the end, but I liked the way it turned out.

The comments I made are as JSN, Hi, Josh Narins, and finally Joshua Simeon Narins.

Five days in June.

Bad News for Democrats

Did I already blog this?

Charlie Rangel, and some other leading Democrats, have decided to sign a letter declaring that Sun Yung Moon is the Messiah.

The Bad News for Republicans is that GHW Bush and RW Reagan have been linked to this guy for years.

Accuracy in Religious History

Christianity is based on the idea that Jesus was the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy.  Until 1947, the oldest copy of ancient Jewish prophecy dated from the a few texts printed around 950 years ago.  The Dead Sea Scrolls date 800-1200 years older.  60 years hasn't produced an "official" translation. One college class of ancient language scholars has done a clearly defended translation of one chapter of one of the most important prophetical works in the Jewish canon, Isaiah, specifically, Isaiah 53.  They say, specifically of Chapter 53, "In fact, perhaps no other chapter in Tanakh has such density of ambiguous and rare words."  In other words, it is the chapter which likely had the most errors.  Jewish scholars who translated the texts, 950 years ago, did not leave their defense of their translation.  Nikolay Bondarchuk and Vadim Cherny deserve your well wishes.

US hires Terrorist to Run al-Iraq

This is simply surreal, originally reported in the NY Times. Yawar is the President, Allawi, the subject of this post, is the Prime Minister.

The Iraqi government at the time claimed that the bombs, including one it said exploded in a movie theater, resulted in many civilian casualties, the Times said.

Neat Quote

Adam Smith is not absolutely perfect, but he's good enough that some of his writing gets suppressed.

To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, page 267, Glasgow edition

The Truth About Jesus, Part II

Luckily, future authors will have more source material to work with.  He certainly never was resurrected.  Since the Gospel of Thomas is a collection of the sayings of Jesus, without a narrative or context, a likely story emerges, however unpalatable.  Thomas appeared so close to Yehochua that they could have been twins.  After Jesus was got in trouble with the powers that be, Judas informed on the double, who was killed in his place by an unwitting Roman guard and judicial system.  Appearing in the evenings by the light of fire, Jesus could pass as both men, the man and the resurrected, as promised.  Thomas was the physicality of the false resurrection.  Similarly, in any false story of "proving" that the Lake Galilean was in fact resurrected, Thomas would have had to been there.  In the story (John 20:19-29), Thomas sticks his fingers in the wounds.  "What a pal!"  Still, he could never get close to the people who knew the difference between them, and was against him, i.e. anyone with authority..

  What, ask ye, of the Saduccee, the Jewish Temple Scholars, the scribes and historians?  They are the authors of the New Testament of the Christian Bible, as it is known today.  The problem with the writings of the Galilean and his associates was that, by the standards of the Temple Scholars, it simply wouldn't do.  We have thousands of years of experience with this stuff.  Look, why do you think the Tanakh, the Laws of Judah, the Old Testament, has held together all this time, simply because it the perfectly candid representations of the truth?  Don't be daft, Mark.  Look, I'm probably taking a big risk, talking to you at all, tell me the story and I'll produce the version that will pass the sniff tests you simply know the guys back in the Temples and the Towns will be applying. 

And after the Revolt of the Jews against the Romans was put down, and their temple was destroyed, some of the temple scholars fled. The Official center of Jewish Temple Scholarship went to the Qumran site, meaning that became the center of the religious government in exile of the dual branched system of the Judans. And I believe that is where apostolic, friends of the Galilean community fled, as Galilee was closer to Rome than even Jerusalem.

The Truth About Jesus

The Kingdom of Judah, on the south east coast of the Mediterannean Sea, existed for a couple hundred years around three thousand years ago.  The rulers put themselves, and their descendants, in charge, forevermore.  The Syrians, the Assyrians conquered them.  The Persians, the Iranians, having the greatest kingdom the world had ever yet known, who conquered the Assyrians, set up their children, to rule over them all, forevermore.  The Iranians nee Persians let the Jews follow their own religion, and have their own priests of it, as every tribe had a religion, and they were all different.  Then Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, but quickly died, and his Generals created separate countries.  And Jerusalem was sacked, and the Jews were robbed and killed.  The Hasmoneans, the Maccabee family, led a revolt against the Syrian nee Assyrian, Iranian nee Persian peoples and were victorious. Having restored the Judan Kingdom, the Kingdom of Judah, the Maccabees decided they should rule it.  The priestly class from days of Persian rule, to wit, the collaborationist government, insisted it was in charge, because it held the true blood lines, just as their book said, and after all, they had all the scribes and scholars behind them, and became an internal opposition  The central book, or laws, of this ancient Judan Kingdom, which, after all, now had been restored is called Tanakh, or Old Testament.  No matter, said the Maccabees, we shall put ourselves in charge of both branches.  Under the two branch theory of government there are, representing the interests of God and Man, respectively, the Clergy and the Royalty, or, the Priests and the Kings.

The Maccabee family put itself in charge of both branches, and arranged to have it managed by heredity, so all of their children would be in charge, forevermore, and the priests are called Pharisees.  There was infighting, assassination, pillage, rape, massed forces religious conversions.  Worthless, undeserving grand children and great grand children began weilding their influences.  So, an enterprising person noticed this weak state, on the border of the expanding Roman empire, and convinced the Romans to lend them some troops and conquer this land in the name of Rome, to annex, to invade and keep the peace, and leave him in charge, and he, Antipater, could leave his children to rule, after that, forevermore.

By the time Yehoshua ben-Yosef, aka Jesus, was born, everyone with power exercised it because some distant relative had, for example in Rome a relative of Gaius Julius Caesar was now sole Emperor, and GJ Caesar had gotten his power from his uncle, Marius, who had been among the richest people, with his own private army.  

What is family values?  A $300,000.00 dollar unsecured loan from an uncle?  An army from an uncle?  Is it the ancient's philosophy of bloodlines, hereditary rule, and monarchy?

Am I saying they should have said nothing, because they did not know the truth?  Is it even reasonable to ever expect people to shut up about what they don't know about?  It would certainly imply infallability on the part of anyone who tried to lay down the law deciding what could and couldn't be said or written.  THE ANSWER, of course, is to increase efforts to dig up new sources.

Bad News for Democrats

Sun Yung Moon has gotten prominent Democrats, including C Rangel, to sign a document declaring he is the Messiah. This murdering, drug-running, gun-running terrorist billionaire hatemonger is the Messiah? Good News for the Democrats. Almost all the top Republicans have been in bed with this guy for decades.

Knowing

Published all through my teenage, I have always felt great fondness for Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch. A fifth book appeared, The Urth of the New Sun, which is almost an epilogue, and was also interesting.  He also published an explanatory volume, The Castle of the Otter, which I saw one morning spending some time on the grounds of the library at Huntington Beach, California, America.  I remember five short stories and a play in the work.

In case you missed it

When Arthur Andersen was engaging in all its mendacity that it thought it was going to get away with, it was basically accused of using its consulting wing to do one job and its accounting wing to do the other. It's consulting wing became a new company, Accenture. Accenture has officially moved off shore, to Bermuda, owned by the United Kingdom. Would you trust them? Accenture just won about 10,000,000,000.00$, over five years, representing thirty companies. How many consultants will Accenture hire to figure out how to divvy up the funds? I am a consultant now specializing in figuring out that number, I will charge 700,000,000.00$ to figure it out for you. Did Bush's DoJ do a better job than Clinton's, since they caught all these crooks? Is Clinton's Treasury/SEC better, since it was fighting for corporate reforms that might have helped limit the scope of the crime? Quite possibly, and yes.

:Latvia's Ethnic Russian Population Policy

The President explained why Russians, who invaded and took Latvia for close to 50 years, need to take citizenship exams to become citizens, and I am sympathetic.

But the Kids? The Kids didn't invade anything! Hitler's many children didn't invade Poland, you know.