A Day to Remember

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the attempt in 1944, by a group of Wehrmacht officers, to kill Hitler and bring an end to his horrific regime. They failed, and suffered horrifically at the hands of the Gestapo psychopaths as a result. Their children were taken into children's homes, their names changed and then brainwashed into denying their own families. Nor were they alone. The Gestapo used the attempt as an excuse to round up and kill hundreds of 'suspects', sympathisers, political opponents and other 'agitators'.

It is fascinating to see that today is marked by memorial services across Germany praising those who made the attempt, and suffered and died for it. As I type the entire Bundestag is gathered at Bendler-Block in Berlin where Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Schenk, Graf von Stauffenberg, and his co-conspirators was killed. They are being remembered for their brave attempt to bring a swift and complete end to the suffering of their nation and people at the hands of the Nazis. Ultimately over 20,000 Germans of all walks of life would die or be condemned to Concentration Camps, among them Erwin Rommel and several other high ranking officers.

The memorial in the Bendler-Block.

One can only speculate on how things would have gone had they succeeded, or if the senior Wehrmacht commanders (who, like Rommel, were implicated and suffered for it) had acted swiftly and decisively instead of hesitating. I suspect that at the very least thousands of lives would have been spared, thousands of women would not have been raped and murdered, and we might even have seen more of Hitler's henchmen and supporters apprehended and punished for their crimes.

I suspect that, like me, most of those from outside Germany know only a tiny fraction of this attempt to depose the monster, and have even less idea how many Germans died as a result of its failure. Stauffenberg himself died by firing squad, but others died suspended from a meat hook, others were shot, gassed or hung. Col. von Stauffenberg's brother, Berthold, was strangled with a garrotte, revived and 'killed' again and again, all of it filmed for Hitler's viewing pleasure.

Perhaps we should all take time out to remember those within Germany who gave their lives and risked everything to work against the Nazis. Their story is all too often ignored.

A Century of Change ...

This year we will mark the start of an event that changed the world in ways we are still coming to terms with. The question being raised by many taking a fresh look at the events of 1914, is could it have been avoided? If it had not happened, what sort of world would we now inhabit?

Growing up in an English speaking environment, the son of an ex-serviceman, and grandson of other ex-servicemen, I grew up with the 'British' version that it was all caused by the Kaiser. That it was his ambitions, his desire to rule the world, and his desire for conquest that caused it all. As ever, the truth is a lot more complex, and a whole lot more convoluted than that. Sure this is what the British and Empire press pushed in a frenzy of patriotic fervour, but we must also remember that certain strong elements of that same Press had been whipping up anti-German sentiments since around 1890 when the Kaisers first began building an oceanic navy to defend their interests in Africa and the Far East. It spurred a naval building arms race that more or less made a war against Germany inevitable.

Recently published letters and memoirs of the British Prime Minister reveal that the Cabinet was split, and that the small government majority in Parliament meant that he couldn't afford to lose a single seat. So the 'War Party' within the Cabinet were able to hold him to ransom. What is seldom taught in the lesson I have encountered on this period, is the fact that the Kaiser, perhaps seeing the danger more clearly than those who thought a war would be quick, dashing and commercially advantageous, desperately telegraphed all the potential protagonists urging restraint. He undertook to refrain from military support of Austria if everyone else stayed out of the squabble - which Austria unwisely tried to settle by attacking Serbia. Unfortunately, the Tsar ignored the offer and mobilised his army.

I have often wondered why the Germans, with a war on the Eastern border, attacked France in the West, invading through Belgium and Luxembourg (the latter was actually an independent Grand Duchy of the Kaiser's Empire) which gave the British 'War Party' the excuse they needed. I have now learned that the attack was triggered by the French mobilising and threatening an invasion of Germany's southern states. As the Germans knew the French cherished ambitions of 'avenging' the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, they couldn't afford to leave that unchallenged. Interestingly, and despite latter Britsih and French historians putting it about that the Germans had been amassing weaponry and preparing for the war for ages, Germany was actually very unprepared. There was sufficient ammunition available for only a six week conflict, and it took an almost superhuman effort on the part of their industries to meet the demand once that was expended. Even their navy had so little ammunition available at the outset that a single engagement could have depleted their stopcks disastrously.

As ever, when you take a look at the history from both sides there is a lot of information revealed that makes obvious that there were a number of 'eminence grise' in the background on all sides. Britain did not need to get involved, but there were powerful voices within government, and in commerce and industry that wanted a war. Why? Some for altruistic reasons, believing it would strengthen the Empire to stamp firmly on the 'upstarts' in Europe who dared to challenge the British hegemony, others who were losing trade to German industries and hoped a war would give them an advantage, and there was the anger at the fact that, in Africa, Germany had prevented the creation of a continuous British presence "from the Cape to Cairo" with their colonies in South West Africa and Tanganika.

There were those in France who wanted to bring down the power of Germany, and restore French dominance on the Continent, and others, who, like their British counterparts, wanted German industry  and trade restricted. And then there was Russia. The last despot in Europe, the last real Emperor responsible to no one. Unfortunately, also a man given to whims of the moment who failed to see the danger of the beast he unleashed.

We have always been taught, by the history written by the 'winners' that the whole conflict was caused by 'German ambitions' and 'German aggression', but, as I said in opening, this isn't the whole truth. The 'War Parties' on all sides expected a quick and mobile war, the slogan 'all over by Christmas' was popular, but sadly ill-informed and based more on propaganmda than reality. And like most propaganda, it led to tragedy on a massive scale. In June we will mark the assassination that triggered the whole sorry mess - and launched a century of war that has all but destroyed the world and the society the men who marched across Europe in 1914 thought they were fighting to preserve.

The only victors, as ever, seem to have been those 'dark figures' in the background who saw profit in a conflict, and who are still present, at least in spirit, in our world today. It is something we should reflect on deeply.

It just gets funnier ...

I have to confess that I find the predicament of the 'climate scientist' and his team and supporters (See the Antarctic Ice Shelf Before Its Gone Forever tourists) amusing. Having had to be airlifted from a Russian ice-breaker by a helicopter launched from a Chinese ice-breaker, and flown to an Australian ice-breaker (remember the initial reports said they were just passengers on a 'cruise ship'), they are now facing a return to the pack ice because the Chinese ship is now trapped and the 'rescue ship' has turned back to attempt to free the Snow Dragon.

It is funny to see the BBC and Guardian both playing down the fact they'd sent journalists and a team to record the 'vanishing ice'. They were to play up the Global Warming scam, and 'show' how the AGW scares are 'true'. The whole thing now frustrated by the fact that, in defiance of the computer 'models' the Antarctic ice sheet is growing and is now at its greatest extent for more than a century. But the BBC and the Guardian are not the only ones now desperately playing down the real purpose of this 'expedition'. Just about the entire AGW community is trying to ignore it. After all, this is the Antarctic summer, the ice is supposed to be thin, retreating and vanishing - isn't it? A century ago, an Australian explorer was able to sail right to the coast, something impossible since, and this 'expedition' was supposed to repeat the exercise. The leader's 'models' had predicted no ice. Pity Mother Nature didn't agree.

What is even more noticeable is the total silence from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and all the other AGW scammers, regarding their contribution to the breaking up of these ice sheets by their own activities. Ice breakers are designed to smash their way through the ice. It follows - at least to my way of thinking - that if you keep ploughing channels through the pack ice, you are contributing somewhat more than your fair share of ecological destruction and damage. Or perhaps that doesn't count if you're doing it to 'prove' that everyone else is destroying the planet?

Oh, the irony. The troops of 'Save the Planet' being the very people doing the most damage to the fragile ecological systems they claim to be preserving and protecting. The hypocrisy would be funny if it wasn't so blatantly fraudulent. The people behind this now have so much money invested in keeping their 'true believers' on board and on message they can't afford to admit any error. Like the 'leader' of this latest fiasco, their investment in 'alternative' solutions has to be supported - or any hope of profit will vanish. As it is most of these 'alternatives' only show a return as long as taxpayers can be compelled to continue to support them with subsidies.

And who is paying for this massive rescue operation in Antarctica? That's the biggest joke of all - you are. The taxpayers, in this instance in Australia, are paying for it, but everywhere the 'Greens' have railroaded their religion into the corridors of power and the populist media, we are all paying for it and every other stunt these clowns pull.

That is not so funny.

Feasts, Festivals and their significance

Since the dawn of mankind, as archeologists are discovering, humans have found reasons to celebrate certain events, or to mark certain seasonal changes. In recent years it has once agin become fashionable to re-invent, or in the words of some, to reclaim, the major Christian festivals, usually in the name of some 'original' religion, but often just for the sake of making it more 'inclusive' and secular. In recent days I have read several treatises on how Christmas was "stolen" from Nordic pagans, or some other group or people, so perhaps it is time to look afresh at why Christianity adopted certain dates in order to mark key events or beliefs.

The one festival we can be reasonably certain of is the Easter festival. Since St John tells us the trial, condemnation, crucifixion and resurrection all occurred "on the eve of the Passover". It made sense therefore to the early Christians to mark the Jewish Passover by commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. The problem is, of course, that it isn't a "fixed" feast in the sense that it may occur anywhere between March 21 and April 25. The Jewish formula, the Orthodox Church and the Western Churches all have slight variations on the way they determine it (Rome, responsible for the way we calculate Easter in the West, changed the formula at least three times between 325 AD and 700 AD) which means, of course, that while Easter and Passover often do coincide, sometimes they don't. It also means that the Western Easter and the Orthodox Easter often don't coincide either. Personally I don't believe this makes one jot of difference - the key is that we remember what Easter is all about - the fact that Christ died on the cross (forensic analysis of the accounts makes that clear!), and rose from the tomb in a renewed 'body' on the third morning. It is this 'resurrection' which is key to the entire Christian Faith. That is why Easter is so important to all Christians.

Having dealt with the reason Easter is 'moveable' and not 'fixed' let us look at some of the other major festivals. The obvious 'biggy' is Christmas, set as the 25th December by the early church fathers. It certainly didn't take its present form however until quite late, and it isn't, and never was, intended to mark the actual day of Christ's birth. Again, examination of the gospel accounts more or less tell us it was very likely in summer. Shepherds and sheep aren't out on the hills in winter, even in the Holy Land. So why did the early fathers choose this date?

The answer is simple. Many of their converts already celebrated the Saturnalia between 21 December and 1 January. Primarily the Saturnalia is a fertility festival associated with a fairly wide range of 'fertility rites' including public copulation as an "offering" to some local deity. Under Romano-Greek practice Bacchus, Satyrs, Pan and several other 'fertility' figures featured in the celebration which marked, as you've guessed, the gradual move out of the winter and into the Spring rebirth of fields, forests and animals. Theologically it does not take a great deal of effort to link the Birth of the New Adam - Jesus Christ - to a renewal of all life, and the renewal through the 'New Adam' of all humanity as well. As St Paul did with the Athenian altar to "the Unknown God", all that really happened was that the Christian converts found a new reason to celebrate the Saturnalia, though we may be sure they didn't continue with some of the more carnal excesses!

Over time, and with the spread of Christianity, the Winter Solstice celebrations in Northern Lands were 'converted' to the Christian message, again, largely because converts already kept these celebrations, and simply were given a new interpretation of them. Thus, Yule logs, Christmas trees, decorations and lights entered the celebrations. As the faith spread, each 'new' group of converts found ways to celebrate their new faith within the framework of the celebrations of their 'old' faith. Gradually these have been 'standardised' by the wider church, but still retain a lot of local and regional variations.

This is how some of the Imbolc customs have become associated with Easter, and how some of the Samhain customs associated with the Festival of All Saints. Imbolc, a festival celebrated by the "Celtic" tribes of Northern Europe and the British Isles doesn't coincide with Easter as some think and actually falls in February. It was originally a celebration of the increase of flocks and herds, since it marks the birthing of lambs, wild boar and deer - and the original cattle. Likewise Samhain doesn't necessarily fall on what has become "Halloween" (a corruption of "All Hallows Eve", the evening preceding All Saints) which is, again, an amalgam of several similar pagan festivals celebrating Harvest, honouring the dead, and invoking local 'gods' and spirits to tide one over the winter. By switching the focus to a commemoration of the "Saints" who set us an example, and adding a commemoration of all those departed this life, the early church created a moment for reflection on life and thanksgiving following the intense labour of the summer, the harvest and the preparations for the long cold, lean months of the winter.

There is a logic to the progression of the festivals and feasts the Church adopted and it has worked very well, by and large. Of course one could argue that some of the original focus has been lost - no one would, I think, disagree that since the 1850s at least, Christmas has been gradually turned into a shopping extravaganza. One could also be excused for wondering what some folk think they are really celebrating in their church/family traditions, and I will confess to being a little concerned at some practices.

What has always intrigued me, and which I have still not been able to find an answer to, is the question of the reason why so many very diverse cultures chose to mark similar festivals at very similar periods. Christianity has adopted largely northern and western European festivals, but one can find similar festivals and seasons in many other cultures. Some, obviously, are related to the 'cycle' of the agricultural year, while others are not. Answers on a postcard please ...

Middle East's 'Christian Winter'

It is rare for the BBC to post something that acknowledges the fact the Christians are suffering, so, when they do, it is worth getting it more widely read. In the article, "A Point of View: The long winter for the Middle East's Christians" the author, a resident of Delhi, India, makes a number of interesting points about both the seldom mentioned co-existence of Christians and Muslims, but how some of the 'sayings of Jesus' not found in Christian literature, can be found in Islamic books. It is that co-existence that is now threatened, and being systematically destroyed, by the hardline fundamentalists who have taken over the 'Arab Spring'.

In Egypt alone, some 14 million Christians are increasingly the target of attacks. Prior to the civil war in Syria, some 10% of the population were Christian, and to them must be added the Christians driven out of Iraq post the war on Saddam. Now they are being driven out again as al-Qaeda inspired Salafists take control of the revolution and target Christians as 'the enemy of the Prophet'. Turkey has a large Christian population and once, Iran had some 6% of the population as Christians. They were decimated during the war with Iraq, mostly used to clear minefields or lead suicide attacks on Iraqi positions. Today only about 1% of the Iraqi population is Christian, the rest have been driven out, forced to convert, or killed off. Nor is this unique. Pakistan has allowed the fundamentalist Mullahs to wage an undeclared and unacknowledged campaign against Christian communities since Independence - yet it is never acknowledged by the western media.

It is refreshing therefore to see it mentioned 'en passant' by William Dalrymple. The article is a fair one, though he does focus more on the fact that there was co-operation and mutual respect in the past - and not much on the realities of the present. Still, it is a start, and a glimmer of light being shone into a murky area the media - and the BBC in particular - usually try to ignore.

Attacking Faith?

It has been recently claimed that 100,000 Christians are killed each year, and that most 'qualify' as martyrs. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, a journalist writing for the BBC news, has questioned the numbers and the whole question of whether they can be called 'martyrs'. She attempts, in true media style, to reduce the numbers by excluding all those killed in civil wars on the grounds that 'they would have been casualties anyway'. She continues by attempting to argue that the presence of Muslim fighters on the 'other side' doesn't prove that the killings are motivated by an 'anti-Christian' movement.

This ignores, as the organisation which produced the figure states, the fact that two-thirds of the world's Christians live in 'non-Christian' countries, many of them actively hostile to Christianity. That covers all Muslim ruled countries, despite the protestations that they 'allow' the practice of other faiths. The truth is that, from the moment a child enters the school system - if they are allowed to - they are under pressure to convert to Islam. As adults they are often excluded from holding any position of authority if it places them over Muslims. The practice of their religion is also proscribed, with rules forbidding them to discuss it with Muslims or to attempt to convert anyone to it. In at least one Middle Eastern country, even the holding of services in churches is structly controlled by the state - and services can be cancelled without notice. In one I visited, Christians met in the hall of a primary school - but their use of it depended on the man who held the keys, and he frequently 'went away' on the days services were due to be held, taking the keys with him.

Throughout the lands once Christian in the Middle East, Christianity is being driven out. Laws forbidding the appointment of Bishops or Patriarchs 'trained outside of the country' are in force - and so are the laws which closed down the training colleges for the priesthood. The current Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul) will very likely be the last, since Turkey has a law that makes it illegal for this post to be held by anyone from outside Turkey. The lands that were the cradle of Christianity are being purged of Christians. The world knows, the UN knows, the media ignores it.

Something I have noted the government, the Church of England  and the media fail to mention is that Israel has a growing Christian population, while the neighbouring Muslim States - and the 'Palestinian Territories' in particular, have a net exodus of Christians. This is due to several factors, the first is most likely the constant threat from their neighbours, certainly there are economic factors in play, but one cannot ignore the frequent attacks, and murder of Christians. What is not acknowledged by the various supposedly 'neutral' Muslim governments is that their laws against 'blasphemy' and for the 'protection' of Islam are frequently used to obtain the judicial mureder of Christians, their dispossession or to drive them out of communities.

The ignorant journalists are patently unaware of the fact that a Christian reciting any of the Christian Creeds, is committing 'blasphemy' according to the teaching of Islam. This is being used in Egypt, Syria and several other Muslim States by fundamentalists to kill Christians and seize their property. In Pakistan it is not uncommon to find Christians being accused of 'insulting the Prophet' or 'insulting the Quran'. One such case did get a mention, probably because it involved a young woman, but there are many more that don't get a mention at all. In Northern Nigeria Christians are the daily target of Islamic fundamentalists attempting to succeed from Nigeria and who wish to create an Islamic State there. Even in the UK, there is pressure, in predominantly Muslim areas on 'Christians', though this is not always obvious, and certainly not acknowledged.

Sadly it is not just in Muslim countries that the Christian Faith is under attack. 'Inclusive' religious education presents a very biased picture to children of what the major faiths teach and believe. In presenting them all as 'essentially the same', Christianity is reduced. Add in the onslaught of media promotion of the humanist and atheist mantra that all religion is 'just mythology' and you begin to understand the reason that the latest Polls give a picture of a country where those who admit a faith are equalled by those who admit none.

Whether the number of 'Christian Martyrs' per year is 100,000, 1,000 or 1 is, in my view, immaterial. That fact that there are any at all is a disgrace, that it is a situation ignored by politicians, twisted by the politically correct media, and denigrated as 'typical example of the stupidity of religion' by atheists is a scandal.

Ten Lords a' leaping ...

There is one Christmas Carol that always puzzled me. Sure, it was fun to sing, and has a nice tune to go with it, but what do leaping lords, French hens, swimming swans, and especially the partridge in the pear tree have to do with Christmas?

The answer is that it was a way to memorise the tenets of the Roman Catholic (indeed the 'catholic') faith, and was composed during the years of the Protestant 'Presbyterianism' of Cromwell and the subsequent attempts to suppress the Roman Church in the British Isles. From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in Britain and Ireland were forbidden to practice their faith openly. This carol was written as a catechism song for young Catholics, and its popularity among many 'Protestant' congregations has often amused me.

It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each of the things in the carol is a key word for a part of the Catechism which the children could remember. Thus -

• -The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.
• -Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.
• -Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.
• -The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.
• -The five golden rings recalled the Pentateuch or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.
• -The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.
• -Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit--Prophesy, Serving, Teaching,  Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.
• -The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.
• -Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit--Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness,  Faithfulness,Gentleness, and Self Control.
• -The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.
• -The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.
• -The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

So there is your history for today. I found it a fascinating way to teach something to children, right under the noses of the authorities rtying to prevent it. It is a lovely song, and it is a good choice for a Christmas Carol ... so pass it on if you wish.

Christmas is a Feast with an 'Octave'. It begins at sunset on the 24th December and continues until the Eve of the Epihany on January 6th. Now you'll be wondering how eight days (an Octave) became twelve. There are four 'Saints Days' in that period, starting with the Feast of St Stephen, followed by the Holy Innocents, then (for Anglicans) Thomas Beckett and the Circumcision of Christ. So, enjoy the twelve days of Christmas!

May I wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a fabulous year to come.

Out of the mouths of babes ...

Sometimes one stumbles across some little thing when you are reading, that leaps off the page and tells you more, in a small insight than all the learned history of a period even hints at. One such moment leapt off the page as I read a book of short biographic memories of women who lived through the war years in different parts of Germany. One woman, now in her 80s recalled getting into trouble for repeating a 'prayer' doing the rounds at her school in early 1942.

It goes -

Lieber Gott, mach mich taub,              (Dear God, make me deaf,
Dass ich nicht am radio schraub,         [So] That I won't turn on the radio,
Lieber Gott, mach mich blind              Dear God, make me blind,
Dass ich alles herrlich find.                  [so] That I think everything is good,
Bin ich taub, und bin ich blind,            If I'm deaf and if I'm blind
Bin ich Adolf's liebstes Kind.               Then I'm Adolf's most loved child.)

It speaks for itself that this was circulating among the children, and that it terrified their parents to hear it repeated in innocence. What it does show is that the fear of the Gestapo, or of informers, was a major factor in keeping the adult German population under control, but that there were still brave souls able to think up this sort of simple rhyme which children would learn and repeat. The line concerning the radio also tells a careful reader that the ordinary German wasn't only listening to the official channels controlled by Goebbels Propaganda Ministry as the lady who recorded this memory makes clear, describing how, have punished her daughter for repeating the above prayer, her mother would take the radio beneath the duvet on her bed at night, and tune it to the forbidden broadcasts from England.

From the memories of the women in this short collection, it soon becomes very clear that you had to be blind, and the majority certainly weren't, not to see that things were not the way Hitler and the media said they were. You had to be blind not to see the abuses around you, and to not be aware of the oppressive control exercised by threat, by punishment and ultimately by being sent to a Death Camp. Even so, some of the stories contain other little insights, of farmers hiding refugees, of priests and ordinary citizens hiding Jews in the full knowledge that, if exposed, they faced imprisonment or death.

That this little prayer was circulating as early as 1942 suggests also that it had begun circulating earlier than that. Sadly, as the stories make plain, many of the children who recited it probably didn't survive the bombing and destruction that followed.

So there's no archaeological evidence of the Jews as a people?

Recently there have been a number articles, statements and even books which make the claim that the "Jews" have no history and that there is no evidence of their historical presence in Jerusalem. Most recently the Palestinian Authority has issued a statement to the effect that Jerusalem has always been a Palestinian city, and was never the capital of any Jewish state. This comes on top of a new statement made by the Al Aqsa Mosque Council, who make the outright statement that the Temple of the Jews never existed on the Temple Mount.

This does rather deny the evidence of the Roman records of 70 AD, and the depictions and inscription on the Arch of Trajan, showing the looting of the Temple following the sack of Jerusalem. It also denies all the archaeological evidence still visible to those prepared to look, of the Temple itself. There is, despite the propaganda and the rather vague statement  that the Romans razed it, quite a lot of it still standing. The difficulty of course, is that any attempt to examine what is there on the main platform is continuously blocked by the Muslim hysteria that any such attempt is purely to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque or to desecrate it and the Dome of the Rock. According to them, the Prophet ascended into heaven from here - having flown here from Medina on a winged horse. The "Rock" the Dome covers has been identified as an ancient threshing floor, and is located in the position identified by Roman and other ancient accounts, as the site of the Holy of Holies, the sanctuary of the Temple. The Dome itself sits on the foundations of a Christian Church built there long before Mohammad was born.

The last time the platform itself was properly examined was shortly after the 1967 war, when an American archaeologist was able to do a complete survey. He and his team were able to identify a number of features, some of which need further investigation, which are associated with the Temple. Among many things they identified were some now walled up entrances, a colonnade that dates to and resembles a colonnade described in the accounts of Solomon's Temple (Second Temple) as being part of the main entrance to the Temple enclosure. This was further enriched by Herod in his rebuilding. What is known, and has been for a long time, is that the so-called Wailing Wall, once the Western side of the Temple platform, is not the only part of the original that remains. Parts of the walls of the other three sides are also extant, one part built into the later city wall on that side. Like the western wall, the present walls are actually built onto earlier walls which have only been partly examined - largely because of the religious sensitivities of both the Muslims and the Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Between them they are preventing any examination of a site which is of huge importance to the whole world, not just their own narrow interests.

Unfortunately, the Temple platform, and the other sides of it, are controlled by a group known as the Waqf. They strenuously resist any examination of the platform itself, and have embarked on a number of projects which have destroyed early Jewish and possibly older archaeological structures in order to create several huge subterranean mosques. It is claimed that the Dome of the Rock, which stands separately to the Al Aqsa, is the second oldest Muslim structure in existence, but an excavation in the 1930 found a Byzantine mozaic floor beneath it and traces of earlier foundations belonging to a Christian church or monastery. Both are built over the site of the Holy of Holies of the Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70AD.

Despite what is often stated concerning the Jews and the Bible with regard to the historic truth of Jewish history, there is a wealth of archaeological evidence for its being factual. The earliest existing depiction of a "Jew" is found on an obelisk dated to 841BC. It shows an Ambassador from the Jewish king to Shalmanesser III, the Assyrian. Sennacherub's siege of Jerusalem is confirmed in a six sided 'prism' in the British Museum. These are things mentioned in the Bible specifically in Chronicles, Isaiah, 2 Kings and Daniel. Other artifacts confirm many other people mentioned in Biblical accounts of events, but, much of this remains unadvertised as it would undermine rival claims and alternate histories more in keeping with the current ideologies of the Middle East and supporters of the anti-Israel factions. 

Quite a large body of evidence and related artifacts exist, stretching back to 2000BC correlate with events described, obviously from a Jewish perspective, in the Bible. An ancient papyrus dated to 1500BC describes a range of natural disasters suffered in Egypt at this time, and some scholars translate one such as "the river is blood" something that is mentioned in Exodus - though some Egyptologists reject that relationship and even dispute (there's a surprise) the translation. It has to be said, that for those disputing it, it is a matter of protecting the Islamic belief that the Jewish accounts are entirely false and a 'modern' creation to deprive the Arabs of their rightful place as the Chosen of God. A full-ish list of these artifacts can be found on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artifacts_significant_to_the_Bible.  

A Day of Infamy

Today marks a day of infamy in Germany, one not much mentioned by socialists, and when it is, it is always with the excuse that it was done to "protect the rights of the workers from fascist exploitation." What am I talking about? No, I'm not talking about the similar event in Hungary three years later, I'm talking about events in the so-called German Democratic Republic on this day in 1953.

First, a little history. When the Nazi gvernment finally surrendered in 1945, Germany was occupied by the Allies in the West and the Russians in the East. The western powers tried to get a democratic process into place, and to hold 'free and fair' election, but Stalin wanted complete control and a "soviet satellite" to include the whole of what remained of Germany. Many of Germany's pre-war eastern provinces, including both East and West Prussia and parts of several other eastern "lands" were summarily transfered to Poland, or, in the case of East Prussia, the Russia herself. Stalin's plan to gain control of the rest of Germany required the imposition of "socialist" government in what remained, including the western occupied sector.

Carefully orchestrated riots, demonstrations and intimidation disrupted elections in a number of western occupied, sectors, including Berlin. In the east, the Soviet army made sure there was no opposition to the German "Socialist Unity Party" in any election, but they failed to gain their objective. Even Stalin's attempt to starve West Berlin failed, thanks to the "air bridge" which kept it supplied.

In 1949, Germany was partitioned, the Western Lands becoming the Federal Republic of Germany, while the remaining six Lands and East Berlin, became the German Democratic Republic, a "one party state" firmly under Soviet control. The Socialist Unity Party set about nationalising all major industries and activities, brought in laws restricting private enterprise and property ownership and the rebuilding of their military and police "to defend socialism." By 1952 they were running out of money, but still pushing ahead with their legalising of confiscation of people's businesses, property and homes. It was this that triggered the events that began on the 17th June, 1953.

It started with the passing of a resolution to intensify "Sovietisation". This was to be achieved by forcing small businessmen, traders, craftsmen and farmers to pay higher 'fees' for 'services' from the State. People owning property were to be forced to "rent" spare rooms, or, if they owned a second property, to accept tenants at a rental determined by the state, but which made no allowance for the land tax, maintenance or service - all of which remained to the charge of the owner.

On the 16th June, 1953 builders in East Berlin went on strike after the 'employer' announced that their pay would be cut if they failed to meet the 'quotas' set for their 'output'. Word spread quickly, and on the morning of the 17th 25,000 workers with homemade placards and banners assembled outside the House of Ministries to protest. As the day went on the crowd grew, despite attempts to disperse them by the Police and State Security. A small number of determined demonstrators actually managed to storm the seat of the government itself and it was clear the unpopular Socialist government was in danger of being overthrown.

The Chairman of the Central People's Committee of the Socialist Unity Party, Walter Ulbricht, called on the Russians for help. Within hours, Soviet troops and tanks were on the streets. Over 20,000 soviet soldiers were turned loose with their tanks under orders to suppress the revolt. Ulbricht's propagandists went on the offensive, branding the strikers and protesters "dupes of the western capitalist imperialists" and so began the reprisals. How dare the "masses" challenge the "leaders"? In the immediate intervention, 513 people were killed, a further 106 were executed for 'crimes against the people' and 1,838 were injured and 5,100 arrested. Of these last 1,200 were sent to prison for five years or more - all in the name of "protecting" the very workers who wished to reject the socialist "Utopia" Ulbricht and his cronies wished to impose.

A fascinating little footnote is the fact that some 16 Soviet soldiers were subsequently executed by firing squad for refusing orders to fire on unarmed civilians. Ulbricht and his cronies were saved, and went on to build a wall and a death zone in their efforts to imprison the people they purportedly 'served' in the name of their socialist paradise. The 17th June, 1953 must stand as a day of infamy, a day when an unrepresentative government, driving an unnatural economic philosophy was saved from its just desserts by an even greater oppressor. It locked the people of Germany's eastern provinces into a further 36 years of hardship.

Unbelievably, the Party that caused this is still in business as "Die Linke" and still refuses to admit that not only is their ideology false, but that their efforts to impose it led to nothing less than the murder, false imprisonment and misery for the millions of people trapped by the Russian occuppation. Only when the Soviet troops were finally withdrawn in 1989 did this evil government fall.

Their example of a socialist paradise is something every socialist today should be compelled to study - including the use of force to impose their twisted, unworkable and worthless ideology.

Restoration of the Monarchy

On this day in 1660 Cromwell's "Commonwealth" officially ended with the Restoration of the Monarchy by Parliament. Charles II Stuart became the King of England and Wales and of Scotland. For his corontaion, the Scottish "Honours" had to be used as Cromwell had broken up the English Crown jewels and given some of the precious stones - like the Black Prince's 'Ruby' - to cronies. The ancient crown of Edward the Confessor (St Edward's Crown) was melted down at his command and the money went to pay for his military campaigns against the Scots and the Irish Catholics.

It took some time to restore the Crown Jewels, starting with the recreation of the Confessor's Crown in1661, and still used today for the coronation of the Monarch, though it was often carried rather than worn. The original was believed to contain parts of Alfred the Great's crown and it was worn at the coronation of every King or Queen until Cromwell. The famous 'Ruby" (it isn't actually a ruby, but a spinel weighing 170 carats) is now restored to the Crown Jewels, and can be seen at the front of the Imperial State Crown worn for the State Opening of Parliament and other "State" occassions. St Edward's Crown weighs a whopping 4 lbs 12 ounces (2.2 kg) largely because it is solid gold and set with 444 precious stones.

It is perhaps ironic that on this day in 1453, the last Byzantine Emperor died at the hands of the Turkish invaders, bringing to an end the Eastern Roman Empire. This event did trigger the exodus - begun in in 1326 - of the philosopher's, artists and thinkers who would bring the flowering of science and art to the west.  It brought the Renaissance into fruition, and the refugees brought with them copies of all the ancient texts from Greece, Egypt and the East long available only to a restricted few from the west.

I will tonight raise a toast. To my Queen and Sovereign and her heirs and successors. Long may they continue, and may their enemies reap only frustration and defeat.

God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our noble Queen!
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen.

Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour,
Long may she reign.
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause,
To sing with heart and voice,
God save the Queen.

A Date to Remember

Today marks the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, fought in 1805. Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson led a fleet of 27 ships-of-the-line into the definitive naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars. He tackled a combined French and Spanish Fleet numbering 33 ships-of-the-line including the giant Santissima Trinidade with her 136 main guns. They also had two 112 gun ships, the Principe de Asturas and Santa Anna.

Nelson's tactics were revolutionary and extremely risky, but they worked. His two divisions of ships cut the Franco-Spanish line into three sections and his ships then proceeded to annihilate the centre and rear of the enemy fleet while those in the van, mainly Spanish, could - or wanted to - do little to help.

One reason for this was that HMS Victory, herself a big ship with 104 main guns, passed directly across the stern of the French Commander-in-Chief's flagship. Her first savage broadside, preceded by the lethal fire of the 68 pdr Carronades on her forecastle, rendered the Buccentaure unmanageable with her steering shot away and her gun decks turned into a carnal house. Worse, for Admiral Villeneuve, most of his staff died in the fusilade - and as a result, he was more or less cut off from his fleet and unable to pass his orders, or enforce them. Nelson's second-in-command, Rear-Admiral Collingwood led the second division in the 100 gun Royal Sovereign. One can only imagine what the conditions were like - even the exhibition at the Museum in Portsmouth can only convey a very basic idea of it.

In a battle of this sort, individual ships found a target and hammered away at it until one or other could no longer continue. At Trafalgar the carnage was appalling, but worse was to come. Having captured around 10 French and Spanish ships when battle finally ceased, the British found themselves compelled to anchor and attempt to patch up ships and rigging so they could sail to Gibralter for more permanent repairs. The weather, however, had other ideas. In the storm which blew up, a number of ships sank, many more were driven onto the rocky Spanish coast and wrecked. The storm killed more men than the battle with the French losing over 13,000 men, killed wounded and captured to the British 1,666 killed and wounded.

The battle put an end to Napoleon's ambitious plans for an invasion of Britain, and he turned his attention Eastward instead. A move that led directly to his abortive invasion of Russia and Waterloo. I shall be raising a glass to Nelson, Collingwood and all the brave men (and women) who took part in this momentous battle, setting us on the path to our present. A pity our current crop of so-called leaders have forgotten all the lessons of history - if they ever knew them.

Right to Exist?

It has become fashionable in recent years, particularly, I note with some sadness, in Britain, to question the right of the Jewish people to a homeland or to the land centred on Jerusalem. The arguments against it range from "there is no ethnic difference between Jews and Arabs" to "there were no Jews in Palestine before 1890." The first is questionable, especially in the light of the genetic diversity of the Jewish diaspora, and the second is patently false. There is a third "proof" often advanced, which suggests that there were Jews in 'Palestine' but that they were a tiny minority. The 'proof' for this comes from Ottoman Turk records which are deeply questionable in themselves, since, again contrary to modern propaganda instilled belief, Jews and Christians were not "free" to practice their religion. They were heavily taxed for refusing to become Muslim and a raft of laws forbade land ownership or circumscribed its being sold, inherited or developed. The laws also proscribed their holding certain positions of authority and the public practice of worship - and forbade attempts, on pain of death, to 'convert' Muslims.

Modern Israel is often described as a 'rogue' or an 'apartheid' state ruled by 'terrorists' or as the creation of 'Zionist Terrorists.' What is probably closer to the truth is that modern Israel is the creation of centuries of genocide which culminated in the Holocaust of 1936 - 1945, plus British double dealing between the Jews (oranges and fruit) and the Arabs (Oil, oil, oil ...) which culminated in the war of 1947 - 48. The UN boundaries recognised in the final 'Peace' settlement included the 'West Bank' and 'Gaza' which were carved out of the settled boundaries by a sneak attack from Jordan and Egypt before the ink had even dried on the UN Treaty, and the Jordanian Amed Forces were, at the time, under the Command of British Officers ...

Clearly, there is a great deal of mistrust on all sides here, and some very deep seated grievances. But what is the 'historic' fact here? As I was reminded yesterday in an excellent article in the Huffington Post, there is a huge amount of archeological evidence for the Jewish claim to the land as their historic home. Even post 70 AD, the Jews remained in 'Palestine' - which, as a Roman Province, included Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and a part of the Sinai. The modern boundaries are a result of French and British 'diplomacy' post the First World War when they carved up the Near East to suit their own ambitions and alliances with various tribal leaders as the Ottoman Empire was dismembered.

The truth is that the Jews never left. Yes, their leaders and nobility were expunged - much as the Russians did in Poland during 1940 and post 1945 - but the ordinary folk kept their heads down and carried on. Under the Romans, under the Byzantines, under Saladin and eventually under the Ottomans. They have survived this way for millenia, since the same thing was done to them by successive conquerors including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians and the Greeks. They have always suffered for the fact they stand, as one writer has put it, "in the cross-roads of history" and the proof of their presence lies in the names they have developed, in the records of those who have done business with them, conquerored them or passed through on their way to somewhere else.

Recently I read of a new 'school' of archeologists who want to 'downgrade' David and Solomon, Israel's two greatest Kings, to 'tribal chieftain' status and play down their place in history. The reasons are, apparently, that by so doing they can undermine centuries of Jewish belief and de-legitmise Israel's right to exist. After all, if Jewish history can be deconstructed by writing Solomon's 'kingdom' out of history, you write the Jews out of it as players in the region. I suspect that a lot of what drives that is 'sympathy' for the 'Palestinian' people (who are really the creation of the post-1960s politics of the Cold War - they were simply refugees before Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organisation) and a desire to undermine religion - even if that means playing into the hands of genocidal extremism among the Arabs.

I suspect too, that there are some very political arguments for not allowing anyone to properly examine the archeology of the Temple Mount and the Old City of Jerusalem - or any of the other sites of historic importance to the Jews. After all, it just might turn up evidence that would blow the whole Arab claim, plus a number of more recent pet arguments against Christianity, out of the water completely. That said, I would not wish to see any of the 'holy' sites completely destroyed or disrupted by digging, but, sooner or later, someone will have to undertake a full and proper survey of some of the many sites and objects we suspect may be there, but are not accessible at present. The famed Al Aqsa Mosque stands on the site of the Holy of Holys - the Sanctuary of the Temple, rebuilt by Solomon and again by Herod. We know that much, because the Knights Templar built the original structure that became the much more ornate mosque after the Islamic conquest.

We know too, that there are other sites, now occupied by Christian churches and shrines, which stand where Jewish synagogues once stood. A prime example is the 'great' mosque in Damascus, originally a Christian cathedral Basilica built on the site of the synagogue in which St Paul is reputed to have preached. We also know that the Byzantines found the Jews living in and around the Holy Land a nuisance, but, for the most part, left them to their own devices. So, to say they 'weren't there before 18??' or whatever is patently false. That there was an influx of immigrant Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe following the Russian Pogroms (justified by the creation of that vile book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, by the Tzarist Secret Police) in the 1890s, and we also know how they were forced to pay exorbitant bribes to the Ottoman governor and then down the heirarchy to every petty official and bureaucrat. It even continued under the British 'Protectorate' Mandate post 1919.

One thing no one can do to a Jew is patronise him or her. Perhaps that is why so many so-called 'Liberals' hate them. The Jews are a pragmatic people, they have at least 2,500 years of practice at surviving oppression, suppression and hatred. It has made them strong, it has given them steel backbones and it has made them self-sufficient. We could learn a lot from them ourselves. You can't patronise someone like that - but you can patronise those who have made themselves victims by their own ceaselessly self inflicted injuries.

So the modern propagandists make the Jew once again the 'vile, evil, greedy and oppressive Jew' and the 'Palestinians' the 'poor downtrodden victims.' The problem is that the real evidence simply doesn't support it. And the truth will, in this instance, eventually triumph.

Saving civilisation

I was reminded today that it is now popularly believed that all the work of the Ancient Greek philosophers and scientists - if not all the 'civilised' knowledge of the west, would have been 'lost' if the Muslim invaders from Arabia had not preserved it. While it is certainly true that they carried it back into Spain and copiously copied every document they found in each of the major centres they overran between 800 and 1300 AD, it is false to claim that these documents had been 'lost' in the west.

In a fascinating book entitled "How the Irish saved civilisation," one is reminded, of the explosion in Irish literacy following Christianisation of that land between 429 and 500 AD. The Irish discovered writing, better, they discovered reading, copying and recording. Everything they got their hands on, they copied. And they shared it. We are often told how the Abbot of the Notre Dame community had a 'library' of only 16 books while the Caliph of Cordoba had hundreds, but what is ignored is how documents copied by the Irish were populating monastic libraries all over Northern Europe at this time. I was surprised to learn that one of the oldest extant copies of a work by Aristotle came from an Irish monastery and fetched up in a University collection in Germany.

Much is also made these days of the destruction, by one of the more ignorant 'Christian' governors of Egypt, of the library of Alexandria. What is forgotten though is that much of its content was shared between all the other great libraries, in Rome, Byzantium, Damascus and elsewhere. Nor was this 'Christian' the only destroyer of such libraries. A later Muslim governor would do it again, more thoroughly. We can only be thankful, I suppose, that copiests had already copied and distributed almost everything it contained.

We should not ignore the fact that the libraries of Byzantium contained all these works and much, much more. They were 'lost' the Christendom when the Arabic invaders finally conquered the city in 1453. But 'lost' is perhaps the wrong word. Many of the intellectuals who had found a home there fled to Italy, Austria, Romania, Hungary and other western lands - taking a great deal of the library content with them. Copies of these 'lost' documents have turned up in some rather remote places - like Poland and Russia.

It is popular to claim that "Christianity believed the world was flat" and "Islam taught it was a globe." Peasants in western Europe might have believed in a flat earth, seamen certainly didn't and neither did Christian intellectuals and monastics. They'd read Ptolemy's treatise on astronomy - or at least heard of it. Likewise the claims that "Christian doctrine dictated that the Earth was centre of the Universe, based on the Bible" are false. Christian teaching was based on Aristotle and Plato - until Copernicus (Polish monastic and priest) worked out that we moved around the sun. He, realising the implications, didn't make a big fuss about it - that fell to Galileo who had to "make a point" to prove his genius. In part this mythology is the product of both anti-Roman Catholic propaganda generated by the more rabid anti-catholics and the later Victorian "scientific" community's desire to take science out of the "Arts" in the universities.

I have always found it fascinating that this major conquest occured at a moment in time when Islam was already turning against intellectualism and in retreat elsewhere. Spanish Al-Andalus was less than 40 years from its demise (Granada surrendered in 1492 to the Spanish king) and the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1326 had led to the death of the last Caliph in the Middle East (They claimed direct descent from the family of the Prophet) and a rising tide of fundamentalist thinking. This seems to be forgotten by many of the promoters of the idea that Islam is the preserver of science and peace and Christianity the retarder to progress.

The Mongol conquest in 1326 traumatised Islam, turning it inward, but also making it more fundamentalist and martial in nature. The Ottomans didn't rest on their laurels after conquering Byzantium, they almost succeeded in subjugating Europe via the back door of the Balkans, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. It was a long and bloody campaign, but it was turned back. The legacy, however, continues to this day. Almost all the problems in the Balkans can be traced to the attempt to forcibly impose Islam on the conquered lands. Nor does it end there, much of the fundamentalist nature of the more extreme forms of Islam which have emerged in the last sixty years also have their origins in the reverses suffered between 1326 and 1600.

Its a fascinating study, but, unfortunately, not a popular one with our current politically correct educationists and anti-religious propagandists.

Some Interesting Insights

Over the last couple of days I have been helping a friend who is writing a biography for her sister. This has meant doing a lot of reading from a variety of sources of different perspectives on the brief history of the country once called Rhodesia. The reason is quite simple, my friend's father was probably the first clear victim of the terror campaign and her mother and youngest sister, then aged 4, were in the vehicle when it happened.

What I have found fascinating about the documents and different perspectives I've read on the history of the country, the events leading up to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence and the subsequent Bush War, Lancaster House Agreement and the handover to the best worst candidate who has done exactly what the much maligned white "settlers" were afraid would happen, has been enlightening to say the least. As one political commentator put, Ian Smith was not as cynical as those on the British side. He believed that an agreement had to be honoured, whereas the people he was dealing with would offer and agree anything - then calmly deny everything and tear the heart out of their discussions as soon as they faced a different audience.

What also became very clear as I read - and I was reading accounts from both sides of the fence - was that the British negotiators didn't give a brass farthing about the legitimate fears and concerns of the "settlers" (most of them second or third generation), had no intention of offering them any kind of lifeline and saw them merely as a nuisance to be thrown to the lions of political expediency as quickly as possible. This certainly becomes very clear as the media propaganda campaign wound itself into high gear and reads emotive words like "treason," "rebellion" and "illegal government" or, best of all, "corrupt kangaroo courts" as a description of the murder trial proceedings involving my friend's father's murderers. What became very clear was that the UK regarded the white population in Rhodesia (and this carried over against the white South African population) as a small handful of rich, parasitic individuals who had stolen the land, the infrastructures and even the cities from the poor downtrodden indigenous population.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The first white settlers entered the country that became Rhodesia in the 1880s and found - by the British government's own estimates -  a few hundred thousand people, members of warring tribes. The British South Africa Company, chartered by Westminster to settle and develop the land, found itself with a major problem right from the start. The Matabele, a break away of the Zulu nation in South Africa, had arrived barely a decade before the BSAC and immediately set about subjugating the indigenous Shona. The first task the Company had to tackle was to bring peace to the tribes. That uncovered another problem - a thriving slave trade with the Arab held ports in Tanganyika and Kenya. It took 10 years and Regular Troops from Britain and India to eventually suppress this ghastly trade and put an end to the genocidal wars between the tribes. The Royal Navy even had to send three small gunboats overland to patrol the waters of Lake Nyasa and keep the peace.

In 1896 a Lord Carrington drew up the original documents dividing the land between the tribes and the settlers and drawing the boundaries for what would become the colonies of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi). One of the ironies of the tragedy that unfolded between 1960 and 1974 is that it was another Lord Carrington that paved the way for the psychopath Mugabe to take control of the country. It is another common fallacy to state that the black population were , as in South Africa, excluded from the ballot box. They were not, but ZANU, ZAPU, the ANC and the "Patriotic Front" enforced a boycott of every plebicite the government held and promoted the idea that they could not take part as this would "legitimise" the "regime." The truth, again. is even more complex. They were not interested in any compromise, or in any settlement which protected the rights of the white minority to security, property ownership or citizenship. For them it was everything or nothing. No compromise, no accommodation - hand it all over and get out.

My friend's family became the first casualties in the political game played out over the trial of the murderers. In the UK Press they were portrayed as abusive farmers and it was even suggested that the victim had beaten and evicted people from "their" land to "steal" it and add it to his farm. These lies have never been withdrawn. The Crown even "pardoned" the murderers (The Rhodesians ignored it and hung them anyway.), but at no time was any expression of sympathy, regret or condolence offered to the family.

What no one on the anti-Rhodesia side has ever acknowledged or addressed is what did they think the white population, admittedly a minority, a mere 250,000 individuals in a population of 3 million would do or where would they go? Remember, they were there because the forefathers of those in Westminster and Whitehall saw a chance to make money out of them and the land.

It does strike me that there is a very similar campaign being waged quietly against Israel. Poisonous reporting in the UK media is driving some serious anti-Jewish feeling. Every dead Palestinian terrorist brings forth masses of column inches and hours of coverage on television - but the daily bombardment of Israeli civilians is never mentioned - unless it happens to hit something they can't avoid reporting. The same thing went on against the Rhodesians. They were all painted as brutal killers, devious white supremacists and land grabbing thieves. Every time the "talks" they were enticed to collapsed, it was reported that they had refused to compromise. When you actually look at some of the real documents that are in the Public Records and available from a number of sources now, you quickly discover that the British Government was looking after its own interests very nicely, playing both sides off against the middle to keep the African members of the Commonwealth happy and the white Rhodesians made a convenient whipping boy. A classic example was a new Constitution for the country which would have increased Black representation in the legislature and received the approval of the populace in a referendum. When it reached Westminster, instead of accepting and approving it - Westminster altered it, entirely without consultation with the people it affected.

The truth is that Westminster never has liked dealing with people who want a say in how they are governed. The same pattern can be found in their dealings with the American colonies in 1776, in Ireland in the 19th Century and early 20th, in Israel and India in 1945 - 47. Promise things they know they can't or won't deliver, place a "final solution" on the table with a take it or leave it and then walk away leaving a trail of victims they've demonised and pilloried behind them. Only the Americans, the Indians and the Israelis seem to have succeeded in salvaging their countries from the potential wreck. The Rhodesians are and were the victims of the forces of demographics, changing ideologies in the corridors of power and the "new morality" of those whose wealth was built out of the labour and efforts of those they shipped off to the colonies in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Like the 6 million white South Africans now, they are the casualties in the philosophy that drives our political masters - "Some must always lose out so that others can benefit." Funny how its never those who utter this who are among the losers.

There does seem to be a bit of irony in the fact that the same activist groups who campaigned to have the white minority in Rhodesia and South Africa thrown to the lions, now campaign tirelessly to protect any and every "minority" - except any white minority - from "oppression" or "persecution."

A century ago ...

White Star Line's brand new flagship, RMS Titanic, struck an iceberg south of Newfoundland at 21 knots (roughly 35 mph for landlubbers). With 44,000 tons of ship and several hundred thousand tons of iceberg meeting with all the forces in play at that speed (To give an idea - a 2lb tin of jam on the parcel shelf of your car at 35 mph will, if the car stops dead, continue to travel at that speed with a "kinetic force" of 2,200lbs behind it. A bit of a shame if your head gets in the way of its flight.) something had to give, and it wasn't going to be the iceberg.

Much is made of the fact the ship was "said" to be "unsinkable," a claim made in the news media of the day and in fact never made by the builder or the designer. Their statement was that the ship was virtually unsinkable and further qualified by adding the technical information that she could remain afloat with four of her compartments flooded. As ever, the news media lost the crucial word, and it's one researcher after researcher seems to skate past without thought in more recent times. 

It was very unfortunate that the officer on watch attempted to turn the ship. He'd have done better to throw the outer engines astern, stop the centre turbine and ram the iceberg head on. Yes, he'd have lost probably two bow compartments, but the ship might have stayed afloat a lot longer. Attempting to turn the ship away was bound to fail, a ship like that travelling at that speed would need a far greater distance to make the turn than she had available. 

A new book makes some very sweeping claims about the sinking, most of which I think will be dismissed as "crackpot" by the vast majority. Unfortunately it will be picked up and eagerly promoted by the conspiracy theorists as "truth." Let's look at some of the claims. First it claims that the designer, builder and the owners all agreed to compromise safety by cutting costs and using substandard steel. That one has already been refuted, there is no doubt at all that she and her two sisters were built using the finest steel then available. In fact RMS Olympic, her sister, survived two collisions and served under the Cunard house flag until broken up in 1934 and her steel was then recycled into new ships. It is claimed that the original design called for more compartments - again rubbish, the original proposals are freely available and in fact Titanic's design was changed and improved upon with lessons learned from building the Olympic and both Olympic and Britannic were further modified after the sinking to raise the height of the compartmentation to the Upper Deck. The author continues, dragging in the politicians and even accusing Sir Winston Churchill of complicity in what he regards as a "plot" to cut safety. His reasoning is that, as "President of the Board of Trade" (Secretary of State for Trade and Industry), Winston Churchill "blocked" the fitting of more lifeboats.

As I said, patent garbage, but it will, no doubt, feed the egos of the conspiracy theorists.

I am always more struck by the fact that, though mortally damaged, the Titanic still took a little over four hours to sink. This does rather suggest that her design was, at least in part, sound. It must be said, at that time, very few ships had watertight compartmentation, even the great Cunarders, Mauretania and Lusitania had to be brought home and extensively modified after this disaster. Nor were they the only ones. I cannot help but wonder what the outcome might have been had an immediate attempt been made to "fother" the gash along her plating. This is a process by which tarpaulins - usually used to weatherproof the hatches - are drawn down the side of the ship and over the damaged plating. By allowing the inrushing water to push the tarpaulin into the openings, the inflow can be reduced. It may well be the officers thought of doing this, but then decided it was too big a task. We don't know. 

The real tragedy is that she did have enough place in her boats for over half the people on board, but only a third of those places were filled. That led to changes in the requirements for training in abandoning ship and to the provision of lifeboats and life saving equipment, but, as we have recently seen with the Costa Concordia, even that is no guarantee of complete safety.

The Titanic caught the popular imagination and it led to numerous changes and the first Safety of Life at Sea agreements, but it wasn't the worst ever maritime disaster and nor, I suspect, will it be the last.

(RMS = Royal Mail Steamer. A ship belonging to a company contracted to carry mail for the Royal Mail from the UK to everywhere else in the world. White Star and Cunard had these contracts for the Atlantic, P&O for the Far East and Union Castle for the South African run. There were others for the Caribean, South America amd elsewhere. They usually also wore the Blue Ensign and were commanded by Royal Naval Reserve officers so they could be taken into service as Armed Merchant Cruisers or Troop Ships in time of war.)

  

David the King?

Picking up from my articles of the last couple of days, I was reminded of the new controversy surrounding King David and his successor, Solomon. This was covered in an article in the National Geographic in which they discussed the argument between a small group of atheist Jews (Yes, there are some) who are determinedly rewriting everything their predecessors and quite a number of the contemporaries have done to uncover Israels past and the history of the Jewish nation. This is a major challenge even without the "nay sayers" rewriting everything.

One reason is that much of the archeology which supports the Jewish accounts - most contained in the Old Testament - lie in land controlled by Muslim governments. A second reason is that, in the course of the history of this region, things have been torn down, rebuilt, destroyed, buried and built over during the last 2,500 years, starting with the Babylonians, the Assyrians and on through Alexander the Great, the Romans and eventually the Arabs, the Crusaders and the Turks. Nearly all of them intent on erasing everything about the Jews for one reason or another. All the Jewish records that survived the Hellenic invaders and the Maccabean revolt were finally destroyed by the Roman Army in 70 - 73AD.

So, one can understand the frustration of one of Israels leading archeologists when she is forced to confront one of her own students who is telling tourists that everything she has written or uncovered in her life's work - is rubbish. The problem is in the dating. The chief anti-Bible archeologist is a Dr Finkelstein who has redated everything his companions found, asserting it is all at least 100 years younger than David or Solomon. He is following the common tactic of so many in the anti-religion camp - cast doubt on the source book, and you undermine everything else. By calling into question the status of King David, he calls into question all claim Israel has to an illustrious history. All Jews look back to the Kingdom of David and Solomon as the Golden Age of their people and it is the fact that the only comprehensive record of this is in the Bible that annoys the likes of Finkelstein. He and his supporters want to pull the rug out from under the Orthodox Jewish community - so they attack the root of their faith. The encyclopedia gives the following on David ...

His life is conventionally dated to c. 1040–970 BC, his reign over Judah c. 1010–1003 BC, and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1003–970 BC. The Books of Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles are the only sources of information on David, although the Tel Dan stele records the existence in the mid-9th century of a Judean royal dynasty called the "House of David". David's life is very important to Jewish, Christian and Islamic culture. In Judaism, David, or David HaMelekh, is the King of Israel, and the Jewish people. Jewish tradition maintains that a direct descendant of David will be the Messiah. In Islam, he is known as Dawud, considered to be a prophet and the king of a nation.

The dating is supported, but the argument revolves, as the article in the National Geographic suggests, around the status of the "king" - was he a jumped up hill tribe chief, or something more? Finkelstein and his faction can't get rid of the Stele, it is far too well known and far to authentic, so now they play with the dating.

One has to recognise, as any true Biblical scholar will tell you, that the books of Chronicles, Kings and Samuel are fragments reassembled after the Babylonian exile. The original Court Records of Israel and Judah having been destroyed by the conquerors as was the custom in those days. The books are the remembered records and may not be entirely accurate, but they are a record.

It can only be hoped that the Finkelsteins of this world will, eventually, be exposed and discredited. Until then the likes of Dr Mazar and her supporters must continue fighting. More than just some dusty ruins and shards of pottery depend upon it.

Roman traces ...

Visited Trier last Saturday. It is a fascinating place and was, for about 200 years, the Imperial City of the Western Roman Empire. A number of major Roman buildings have survived the centuries, the wars and the various invasions (Not least the French!) and the pictures below show - 

The Amphitheater ...

 The Basilica built by Constantine in 330AD

 A drain beneath the Amphitheater

 The Trier DOM, a triple cathedral building started in the early 400s AD ...

 The Porta Nigra (Black Gate) and the original North Gate in the City Wall in Roman times. The wall measured almost 7 km in total and had five gates like this one. Trier was a very important city by any standards at that time ...

Hannover's Münden ...

Is a very ancient town south of Hannover, just off the A 7 Autobahn. We stopped on the way our way home on Sunday.

The old Town is filled with lovingly restored "Fachwerkhauser" - a description of half-timbered buildings of three and four storeys. The facades are decorated very artistically (and would probably send English Heritage into a complete tailspin over "originality" and "conservation not restoration"), yet all of them are original and the restorations have used replica tools, original techniques and, where original materials are not available, replica bricks made in the same manner as originals.

The town is located on the conjunction of two rivers, the Fulda and the Werra
which together become the Weser River from this point on. There is a famous poem about this, the German equivalent of a "tongue-twister." I'll try to get Mausi to give it to me so I can post it later for those who are interested.

Flat Earth Faith?

I have often wondered at the assertion, usually directed at Christianity, that people thought the world was flat. This seems to be based on the 18th and 19th Century misrepresentation of artefacts such as the Mappa Mundi which were 'Spiritual Representations' of the world of faith, and never intended as representations of the "world." It even says so on the Mappa Mundi!

Christianity's scholars and philosophers followed Aristotle, Plato and Ptolemy and believed the world to be a sphere, Copernicus argued that Aristotle was wrong in placing us at the centre of the universe and Galileo initially got into trouble for contradicting what Copernicus had actually proved, not for heresy as is commonly believed and misrepresented. The evidence is there - for those who want to see it - in the form of documents in monastic libraries across Northern Europe - until the 'enlightened' French destroyed many of them when they pillaged the mpnasteries. Fortunately, many of the ancient documents survived in private hands and they include a remarkable canon of scientific writing, much of which dates back to the so-called "Dark Ages" another Victorian 'Enlightened' label.

I recently found a link, posted, I suspect, by someone wishing to promote Islam as the 'faith of enlightenment' which promotes all the achievements of Muslim scholars in the European "Dark Ages or Middle Ages period. The suggestion was that the Islamic society alone is resposible for all the advances which moved society forward. But this is far from accurate, copies of Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy and others filled the libraries of Irish monasteries and those of Northern Europe during this period. Many scholars also studied the sciences and made some important discoveries. The film clip also failed to mention that during this period Europe had to fight off the Viking invasions, repeated attempts at invasion and forced conversion from the Muslim world and from the East in the form of the Mongol invasions which left little opportunity for purely scholarly pursuits. In the same period, Islam flourished in the comparative peace of a world made secure from invasion by conquest of its neighbours and rivals.

It is currently popular among some sections of the intelligentsia to paint Christianity as backward, corrupt and untrue and to try to portray every other culture as 'enlightened.' Comparisons are made between the state of medicine in Europe and that of Muslim Spain, yet the examples picked are always the best from Islam and the worst from Christianity. What this also overlooks is that the 'Golden Age' of Islam came to an abrupt end in 1258 with the fall and sacking of Baghdad by the Mongol invaders. The last Caliph was publically humilated and kept as a slave for the amusement of the conquerors and the faith turned in on itself, suppressing the liberal pursuit of the arts and sciences and Europe, at ;ast secure began to use its own scholars and scientists to build on the scholarship refugees from the east brought with them. This paved the way for the Rennaissance and the Age of Exploration from the West.

Again, proof of the fact that our society was already aware of much of this comes from the first transatlantic explorers. John Cabot, the 15th Century explorer hired by the Corproation of Bristol to seek out a new source for the beaver fur rapidly vanishing from Britain. He even wrote that his voyage to Nova Scotia was simply following in the wake of fishermen who regularly fished the Grand Banks and sometimes over wintered in America and Columbus was well aware of similar voyages.

Simple peasants may have believed the world flat, but no man of intelligence did, and it was never the 'doctrine' of mainstream Christianity, 'Enlightenment Propaganda' notwithstanding!

NOTE:This comment on the impact of the Fall of Bagdad from Wikipedia -

"Iraq in 1258 was very different from present day Iraq. Its agriculture was supported by canal networks thousands of years old. Baghdad was one of the most brilliant intellectual centers in the world. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which Islam never recovered. Already Islam was turning inward, becoming more suspicious of conflicts between faith and reason and more conservative. With the sack of Baghdad, the intellectual flowering of Islam was snuffed out. Imagining the Athens of Pericles and Aristotle obliterated by a nuclear weapon begins to suggest the enormity of the blow. The Mongols filled in the irrigation canals and left Iraq too depopulated to restore them."