Is Islam in accordance with rationality and science?

[bob x]

Hence the reason why the Quran is far from obsolete.

The Qur'an divides people based on what they believe, which is very destructive, much as the Bible has had a destructively divisive role; I am all in favor of minimizing religion's role, particularly religions based on archaic books.

You completely ignored the point about Chomsky not being the only one who had mentioned this strategy that the US had adopted. It is a FACT that American think tanks and policy creators have actively considered it their responsibility to control the world's resources.

Chomsky's analysis is just seriously misguided. Do you really think it is sensible to think we let Gamal Nasser take the Suez Canal from Anthony Eden because that helped us to control it? Rather the reverse. Do you really think the alliance with Israel, provoking an oil embargo followed by massive price spikes, served our economic interests in the oil trade? There were other factors involved, which Chomsky shows zero understanding of.

I asked you a simple question: why has your country divided the entire world into zones of operation for its military?

We are the greatest power in the world right now. We are damned if we do and damned if we don't: intervene in some ugly conflict and we will be denounced for "imperialism"; or stay out and we will be denounced for "allowing" it to go on. I would prefer we stay out of more things (the expense of acting as "world's policeman" is a drag on our economy) at the cost of more anarchy in the world, but this is not the direction we have chosen. After World War One, when it first became apparent that we held the balance of power, Wilson wanted to keep us involved in controlling everything, but the national mood demanded that we pull our troops out of Europe immediately and return to our old policy of "you stay on your side of the water and we'll stay on ours"; and what was the result? The other powers all blasted each other again until we were practically the last ones standing (the USSR created the appearance of being about as strong as we were, but their poor economic system eventually made this untenable for them).

Well then if Palestine was such a backwater (and it was) then why the hell did they pick to go there?

They have been continually exhorted to go back there for a thousand years before they were any Arabs there, as I pointed out before. Herzl did consider trying to relocate to Argentina; the British offered them land in Uganda; the Soviets tried a homeland in Mongolia; but to "herd cats" really the only option that everyone could agree on was to go back to the place where they had come from.

What about now? Do the Palestinians have an "over all organization" ?? Is it Hamas or the PLO>?? That was my point. It doesn't matter if you have an "over all organization" to qualify your issue for discussion.

MY point was that when there are multiple factions, it is important to specify which faction you are talking about rather than ascribing actions to the group as a whole, as I always try to do when talking about actions by "the Palestinians": it does, of course, matter WHICH "Palestinians". You say "the Zionists" were pushing for a breakup of the Ottoman empire back in the 19th century? WHICH Zionists are you talking about? I really have no idea who you are talking about, and you refuse to answer.

So if the Irish had money and started buying New York piece by piece, what would the other communities have done back in the "gangs of new york" days?

People infusing money into the city would never have been considered a problem. The problem with the Irish is that they came WITHOUT money, competing with the other poor for jobs, thus keeping wages down and unemployment up (the same factors drive anti-Mexican resentments now).

Your accusing me of making arguments from silence, but you're the one who has been assuming that the authors imply the elites were warriors because the don't specifically say they weren't.

I was just holding the mirror up to you. My point has been that those papers aren't addressing that topic so you need to look at other information that is available rather than relying on imaginative gap-filling. The Ubaid vs. Uruk papers don't even mention the weapons trade; the paper on the Syrian town mentions the elite preoccupation with obsidian and then copper, without saying what those substances are for, and the depopulation of the town in the early Bronze Age, without drawing the obvious conclusion-- because that source was only doing raw data presentation, not even going on to do artifact analysis.

What is YOUR source which says the elites of Ubaid were warriors? Give me some actual references and I will analyze the issue again. Preferrebly online ones that I can check myself. I dont have any access to a library here.

This is a matter of comparative anthropology: you need to look at how analogous societies elsewhere functioned, and at the residual customs seen in later societies from the same region. I really don't understand what you need to see beside what I have been showing you all along.

War games are generally conducted in the manner of real wars.

You are back-projecting from modern conditions again. With guns, you can use "blank cartridges" to achieve semi-realistic simulation, but there really aren't such things as "blank axes". Archers, whether Native American or medieval European, were drilled by target-shooting contests, not by shooting at each other. Mock wars for dispute resolution were highly stylized: the woodlands tribes had the ritual of "counting coup" in which members of rival groups would sneak up on each other to tap their enemy with a stick (indicating, "I could have hurt you if I wanted to") and the side which scored more points won the dispute (without the mutually devastating casualties from a real war; if a real war was required, it would be nakedly genocidal). The Papuans you saw with their sticks would probably at least be given heavy clubs in a real war, though the axe-wielder (either the chief himself, or his son and designated successor if he was getting old: the chief we saw on the tower looked to be pushing fifty, which is old for such people); but we really don't get much direct info on how Stone Age wars were conducted.

It is an ill-concealed secret that the Dani chiefs nowadays have guns, not just axes (when killings happen, nobody talks about what happened). Decades ago, Michael Rockefeller led a small anthropological team into Papua during a time of tribal upheaval: and disappeared. Chagnon did witness some axe-fights among the Yanomamo of Amazonia, and has been roundly criticized for his role in helping to stir up these conflicts: as among many primitive peoples, it is forbidden to speak the names of the dead, which made it hard for him to puzzle out how exactly different people were related and what all the various words for different kinds of "cousin" meant; so he asked members of rival clans for the names of each other's dead, provoking resentments which boiled over.

Can you prove that all the soldiers in that picture were the elites of the village? Because what you have been arguing is that the elite have some special privilege to fight (which makes no sense, frankly).

Their privileges are to evade the most unpleasant kinds of labor, and to commandeer food. These privileges derive from their ability to beat other people up: the "fat and lazy" would not get away with that. The existence of money is really required for a "fat and lazy" class. The Dani do have a cowrie-shell currency, so it is possible (I don't know) that there are some "elites" who get away with living on savings accumulated by their families, without having to remain physically fit enough to maintain their position by threat of violence, more so than we would see in the totally money-less Ubaidi society.

Why would commanders carry heavy weapons??? It makes no tactical sense.

When few have heavy weapons, because there simply aren't enough for very many to have them, everyone else has to be directed in accordance with their needs. In medieval times an army would have a few knights, with full armor, lances, and swords, and a lot of commoner hirelings with pikes and/or bows and arrows; the object of the game was to use your knights to destroy the other side's knights, so all the others had to do what the knights told them to do. These knights were also, not by coincidence, the lords who governed the society. What is not to understand here?

This was the pattern in all ancient societies too, going all the way back to the Stone Age. If a village only has one axe, its owner is certainly not going to "lend" it to someone else (how would he get it back?) and in a fight, the main aim is to get the axe-wielder to where he can do the most damage, so: everyone else has to take his commands. The axe remained vestigially the symbol of royal power in many societies until surprisingly late dates, in Crete until the Iron Age (the labruinti "palace" was named for the labrus "axe, as royal scepter") and in Rome into the imperial period (the fasces, a double-headed axe looking much like the labrus). (I am reminded of the classic fantasy story With This Axe I Rule! in the "Kull the Conqueror" series by Robert E. Howard, better known for the "Conan the Barbarian" series set in another period of the same alternate-world; I am not, of course, claiming a fictional story as "evidence" but his Hyborian Age, given as elaborate a history as Tolkien's Middle Earth, was based on extensive reading, and while his "pulp fiction" style was aimed at a low-brow audience, his stories are guilty pleasures for pretentiously high-brow sorts like me.)

The only dangerous rivals to the weapons-owners were the thinking classes, priests/administrators (overlapping, often identical). In India, Egypt, and the Celtic world they outranked the warriors; in the Greco-Roman world, somehow the thinkers were kept fairly marginal (Plato wanted "philosopher-kings" but had no chance of establishing that) until the Christian takeover saw the clerics taking the top rank; in the Chinese world, the thinking classes were kept subordinate to the warriors (except in Tibet where the society became thoroughly theocratic) but this was only managed by massive use of castration, as in the early Middle East. Pre-Neolithic societies did not have the same need for conflict between fighters and thinkers, as there was less property to be the subject of conflict: among Native Americans, as I mentioned, "medicine chiefs" and "war chiefs" co-existed with different types of authority, and similarly in Papua, I saw an abstract of a paper (unfortunately they wanted money to download the whole thing) about how Trobriand Islanders distinguished Chiefs (warriors) from Big Men, a kind of leader acquiring their positions through eloquence and a reputation for wisdom. Not all villages would have someone bright enough to be a Big Man, so they would seek out a Big Man elsewhere for advice or for dispute resolution: this reminded me a little of Medina inviting Muhammad. Among the Dani, I really don't know what kind of "spiritual" leadership, if any, they have.

Yet, the Palestinians didn't really have any authority to restrict the newcomers from buying up land, did they?

Exactly. Under both the Ottoman and the British regimes, the people were powerless; even more than the immigrants themselves, it was the knowledge that there was no control over how many more immigrants would come that led to fear and resentment. The advocates of ugly violence could never have acquired such a stranglehold over Palestinian leadership if they had not had genuine popular grievances to exploit.

By the way, can an Arab even buy land in Israel?

Oh sure, and they do. But there are practical obstacles to finding a willing seller: the Jewish Agency is still the largest single property-holder, and has an explicit policy against even renting to an Arab tenant, let alone selling to an Arab purchaser; and there are many others who will not sell to an Arab. Such private discrimination is illegal in the United States (not to say that it doesn't still sometimes happen), but while Israel has no de jure discrimination (except for the military exemption, which comes with no jizya tax), there is no anti-discrimination legislation either. Israeli Arabs resent this, and rightly so.

 

[c0de]

I am all in favor of minimizing religion's role, particularly religions based on archaic books.

The Quran is a book of religion, not politics. Religion should not have any direct role in politics. What people don't understand is that real Shariah law is actually a secular institution. I have provided links to a series of lectures on this before by a Shariah expert.

He states that no religious commandment can be enforced by the state as it is by definition an irrational principle and the legal system is based on laws which have to be defended via rationality. This is why most Islamic countries which claim to have a shariah law are not following the shariah.

Chomsky's analysis is just seriously misguided. Do you really think it is sensible to think we let Gamal Nasser take the Suez Canal from Anthony Eden because that helped us to control it?

This is the second time that you have ignored the fact that Chomsky and the lefties aren't the only ones who talk like this. There are think tanks who (without approving or condemning US actions) analyze American Foriegn policy in the sphere of the same paradigm of control and denial of resources to its potential enemies.

Also, by the way, it makes perfect sense if you look at the paradigm Chomsky is presenting. If the US wanted control in the region, their main rivals would be the former empires of Europe who were trying to reassert themselves, not the fledgling states of the region.

That is what happened. The US made it clear it would not allow Europe to regain influence and would have to play a subordinate role from then onwards. At the time the US was not sure about Israel, and played itself as an honest broker, which endeared it to the Arabs. Eventually though, as the Arabs themselves signed up with the Soviets and their rhetoric turned against the Saudis, the US picked Israel.

They have been continually exhorted to go back there for a thousand years before they were any Arabs there, as I pointed out before. Herzl did consider trying to relocate to Argentina; the British offered them land in Uganda; the Soviets tried a homeland in Mongolia; but to "herd cats" really the only option that everyone could agree on was to go back to the place where they had come from.

Why do you keep ignoring the objections to your arguments? I asked you, who were the Caananites that the Jews took the land away from? Where did the Jews get the idea that it was ever "their" land? They only got their due to a covenant with God that they broke.

People infusing money into the city would never have been considered a problem.

Again you ignored the issue completely. Its not about infusing money, as in investing it in the economy. It is about buying land. Why do governments disallow new immigrants to do the same today? Why were the jews allowed this in Palestine?

Why does Israel discriminate against Arabs in the same manner?

You say "the Zionists" were pushing for a breakup of the Ottoman empire back in the 19th century? WHICH Zionists are you talking about? I really have no idea who you are talking about, and you refuse to answer.

I DONT CARE what specific faction it was. I gave you a reference of book in the preceding posts which showed that the Jews were calling for independence since the 19th century. Combine this with the fact that they were buying up all the land and it would bring an obvious backlash in any locality, even New Yorkers would have behaved the same way.

I was just holding the mirror up to you.

And now I am doing that to you. I say that it is you who is making an argument from silence. Give me a proper reference which backs up your point.

These knights were also, not by coincidence, the lords who governed the society. What is not to understand here?

I knew you were going to bring up the knights of medieval times. Forgetting the fact that the Lords of medieval times were, for the most part, fat and lazy. Not all the lords and elite of the medieval times were Knights (very few infact, as it was not a desirable activity). And the top elite of the Medieval times was ROYALTY not the knights.

You are again supporting my point by citing the knights were NOT the actual elite of the time.

 

[bob x]

The Quran is a book of religion, not politics. Religion should not have any direct role in politics.

Religion, law, and politics are inseparable in the Qur'an. The commands to be charitable to the poor, to divide up an inheritance just thus-and-so, and to defend the Muslim state are all on the same footing. If you want to adopt a revised view of the Qur'an in which its spiritual teachings have eternal validity, but its particular guidances on organizing the society are considered as only applying to its particular time and place, this would be a good change for Islam; but a difficult one: we are still having to fight Christians who won't accept a similar detachment of the Bible from social legislation.

He states that no religious commandment can be enforced by the state as it is by definition an irrational principle and the legal system is based on laws which have to be defended via rationality.

And do you accept this view? You were exceedingly hostile when I tried to explain the rational principles underlying American law, and seemed to be expressing the view that no rational system could ever work. In the Qur'an, of course, all laws have only basis: "Because I said so."

This is the second time that you have ignored the fact that Chomsky and the lefties aren't the only ones who talk like this. There are think tanks who (without approving or condemning US actions) analyze American Foriegn policy in the sphere of the same paradigm of control and denial of resources to its potential enemies.

But few of them take as simple-minded and deranged view of how the motives play out as Chomsky.

The US made it clear it would not allow Europe to regain influence and would have to play a subordinate role from then onwards. At the time the US was not sure about Israel, and played itself as an honest broker, which endeared it to the Arabs. Eventually though, as the Arabs themselves signed up with the Soviets and their rhetoric turned against the Saudis, the US picked Israel.

Uh... Nasser was virulently anti-Western from before he took over the government (he was pro-Axis in WWII for that matter), and he was seen as an ally of the USSR right from the start. Kicking the UK out of the Suez Canal did not put the Canal under US control; quite the opposite. And the Israeli conquest of the Sinai in 1967 shut down the Canal completely for a decade, substantially increasing the costs of shipping oil. Our decision to ally with Israel did not give us control either of the Canal or of any oil (as Golda Meir famously put it, "Moses circled the desert for forty years to find the only place in the Middle East that has no oil"); on the contrary, after the Yom Kippur War our alliance with Israel caused even our "good friends" the king of Saudi Arabia and the shah of Iran to join in cutting off our oil supplies completely, and then jacking up the price.

Why do you keep ignoring the objections to your arguments? I asked you, who were the Caananites that the Jews took the land away from?

Well that's a whole other deep topic, which I have discussed with bananabrain before. In my view, the Jews basically WERE the Cana'anites: the participants in the Exodus were a much smaller band than later propaganda liked to portray them; they provided leadership and an underpinning ideology to a revolt by the country people against the city folk in Cana'an, a struggle that had been going on for a long time already and ended with most of the cities sacked. The original "Israelites" intermarried thoroughly with the existing inhabitants, and while the more prominent families were proud to be able to trace a genealogy through father's father's father's... back to the Exodus, the mother, and the father's mother, and the father's father's mother, were often of quite different genealogy; and most of the inhabitants of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel could not trace back through purely male lines anyway; in either case, the percentage of genetic contribution from the "Israelite" band was rather small.

Again you ignored the issue completely. Its not about infusing money, as in investing it in the economy. It is about buying land. Why do governments disallow new immigrants to do the same today? Why were the jews allowed this in Palestine?

I have not ignored that issue at all. Not all governments forbid newcomers from buying land: the US doesn't (you don't even have to immigrate to buy land here); and the Ottoman empire didn't.

I DONT CARE what specific faction it was. I gave you a reference of book in the preceding posts which showed that the Jews were calling for independence since the 19th century.

Your link does not include any pages talking about the 19th century; I took it to be substantiating your other statement that Palestinian nationalism did not exist until the Zionist immigration caused it to emerge in response. I do not see any substantiation that ANY faction of 19th century Zionists called for taking Palestine away from the Ottomans, and even assuming there was such a faction (not surprising, since a lot of factions existed saying a lot of different things), to ascribe it to "THE" Zionists is disingenuous when, once the Zionists did organize and formulate a unified consensus position, this was not it.

Gelvin's book receives a very negative review here for its slant:

The following excerpt epitomizes the book's blatant bias:

"when the Israelis attempted to organize the Palestinians of the occupied territories into collaborating "village leagues" in the early 1980s, the PLO could only react defensively, assassinating those who collaborated."

This novel notion of "defensive assassination" characterizes the overriding tenor that pervades Gelvin's portrayal of the conflict. For it stands to reason that if assassinations by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are to be denoted "defensive," they must be in response to an "offensive" of some kind. Presumably then, the offensive that precipitated the defensive assassinations was Israel's attempt to find collaborating—or should that be "cooperative"—Palestinians with whom it might be possible to reach an agreed modus vivendi against the wishes of the PLO. In other words, Israel's attempt to enter into dialog with Palestinians other than the PLO constituted aggression that could only be met with defensive fratricide?

This sums up Gelvin's approach to the conflict. Any Israeli measure, however peaceable, is objectionable, meriting censure or even sanction while any Palestinian measure, however brutal, is worthy of understanding, even support.

This bias in Gelvin's presentation of events runs throughout his book. Typically, he glosses over the gruesome details of Palestinian terror and, in dwelling on the Israeli responses, he gives the impression that these responses were unprovoked acts of callous cynicism and cunning. Thus, in describing Ariel Sharon's decision to launch "Operation Defensive Shield" in 2002, Gelvin neglects to point out that this was preceded by a wave of murderous Palestinian terror, culminating in the horror of the Park Hotel Passover massacre. Was it ignorance, shoddy research, or purposeful design that caused him to omit any mention of the incident, which was a seminal event in shaping public consciousness in Israel and in precipitating the demand for tougher measures against the Palestinian terror?

and for its lack of academic rigor:

But perhaps the feature of Gelvin's book that deserves particular note is the almost total absence of references. He makes far-reaching claims about contested events without providing source materials to indicate the basis for these claims. Virtually the only references are to obscure anecdotal texts or Palestinian poems, which Gelvin employs in an attempt to authenticate some of his creative versions of historical events. This lack of referencing is a grave defect for what is allegedly an academic endeavor.

although the book also gets friendlier reviews; see a balanced treatment here.

Combine this with the fact that they were buying up all the land and it would bring an obvious backlash in any locality, even New Yorkers would have behaved the same way.

There have been many cases of what is called "gentrification" of formerly run-down neighborhoods, when newcomers start buying up land, often with the result that poorer renters are priced out of their homes. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN AN OUTBREAK OF MASS MURDER OVER SUCH A THING. It is profoundly insulting to New Yorkers to say that they would ever behave as disgustingly as the Palestinians have.

And now I am doing that to you. I say that it is you who is making an argument from silence. Give me a proper reference which backs up your point.

I have given you tons of information, and referred you to the #1 source on primitive warfare. You just don't want to listen.

I knew you were going to bring up the knights of medieval times. Forgetting the fact that the Lords of medieval times were, for the most part, fat and lazy.

They were highly trained fighters who could easily tear you apart for saying such a thing.

And the top elite of the Medieval times was ROYALTY not the knights.

The royalty were the field commanders. In the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, king John I of France was captured on the battlefield; king Edward III of England survived many wounds, and when he became too old, his son and heir the Black Prince took over battle command, and was killed; this led to a crisis when the old king then died, leaving a child grandson as the next heir, so royal cousins had to take over field command, one of whom, of course, finally usurped the throne.

I think you are back-projecting again: the court of Versailles, with its useless lordlings in perfumes and wigs, was centuries into the gunpowder era, not at all like anything you would see in medieval times.

 

[c0de]

Religion, law, and politics are inseparable in the Qur'an.

Says who? The mullahs and the organized Islamic establishment?? To hell with 'em.

The Quran talks to men and women directly, to improve their condition and through that change bring about societal effects. This is how the Muslims under the Prophet progressed, not by imposing top down approaches like the Taliban or Iran or Saudi Arabia.

e.g. there was no actual "law" in Arabia at the time of the Prophet which forbade alcohol. But when alcohol was banned in the verse which was revealed, people voluntarily stopped drinking it. There was no "morality police" like there is today in Saudi Arabia. People were commanded to regulate themselves by God in the Quran, and that has not changed.

And do you accept this view?

I accept it as much as I accept the legal system of any country that I am living under. They are all exceedingly flawed in that they are all top-down approaches, as opposed to the Quran's bottom up approach.

In the Qur'an, of course, all laws have only basis: "Because I said so."

That has nothing to do with anything. All laws boil down to "I said so" rational or otherwise.

But few of them take as simple-minded and deranged view of how the motives play out as Chomsky.

His views are only "simple minded" with regards to how he actually believes (like most) that the problems can be fixed via the political process.

As for the paradigm, selfish interests are always simple minded. And the US is a selfish actor in an anarchic model of geopolitics. At the end of the day "game theory" is very simple, is it not?

Uh... Nasser was virulently anti-Western from before he took over the government (he was pro-Axis in WWII for that matter), and he was seen as an ally of the USSR right from the start. Kicking the UK out of the Suez Canal did not put the Canal under US control; quite the opposite. And the Israeli conquest of the Sinai in 1967 shut down the Canal completely for a decade, substantially increasing the costs of shipping oil. Our decision to ally with Israel did not give us control either of the Canal or of any oil (as Golda Meir famously put it, "Moses circled the desert for forty years to find the only place in the Middle East that has no oil"); on the contrary, after the Yom Kippur War our alliance with Israel caused even our "good friends" the king of Saudi Arabia and the shah of Iran to join in cutting off our oil supplies completely, and then jacking up the price.

Clearly, you are the one talking in overly simplistic terms. The fact that the US wants something doesn't mean it always immediately gets it, and is no argument to prove that it never wanted a thing because its actions to get that didn't cause the results that it wanted.

As I said, policy analysts know that the US wants control of resources and the ability to deny them to anyone else.

As for the Arabs, up till the six day war, the US actually had a good rep in the Mid East as being more neutral and balanced.

Well that's a whole other deep topic, which I have discussed with bananabrain before. In my view, the Jews basically WERE the Cana'anites: the participants in the Exodus were a much smaller band than later propaganda liked to portray them; they provided leadership and an underpinning ideology to a revolt by the country people against the city folk in Cana'an, a struggle that had been going on for a long time already and ended with most of the cities sacked. The original "Israelites" intermarried thoroughly with the existing inhabitants, and while the more prominent families were proud to be able to trace a genealogy through father's father's father's... back to the Exodus, the mother, and the father's mother, and the father's father's mother, were often of quite different genealogy; and most of the inhabitants of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel could not trace back through purely male lines anyway; in either case, the percentage of genetic contribution from the "Israelite" band was rather small.

>>> ?

Israelites were the Caananites???

Dude, what are you smoking ?

Sure, genetically, the Arabs and Jews are cousins, all the way back to Isiah and Isaac (peace be upon them), but your claim is stretching it a bit, don't you think?

I have not ignored that issue at all. Not all governments forbid newcomers from buying land: the US doesn't (you don't even have to immigrate to buy land here); and the Ottoman empire didn't.

Well, maybe if the US was under the threat of their entire continent being purchased away from them, im sure they would disallow it as well. Still, many other countries do.

It is profoundly insulting to New Yorkers to say that they would ever behave as disgustingly as the Palestinians have.

Nothing of the kind happened to NY as did the Palestinian territories. And it is profoundly insulting to the Palestinians to compare their plight to that of New York.

Gelvin's book receives a very negative review here for its slant:

and for its lack of academic rigor:

although the book also gets friendlier reviews; see a balanced treatment here.

Now that's funny... you give me a critique from a website which has this stated in its "about us" page:

The Middle East Forum promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects the Constitutional order from Middle Eastern threats.

LoLz

Talk about being "slanted"

and then as for the favorable review, you give me some user's opinion on Amazon?? dude, come on

I have given you tons of information, and referred you to the #1 source on primitive warfare. You just don't want to listen.

What source? You said "Keegan" and left it at that. Give me a source that I can check. I gave you quotes and references. Now return the favor.

The royalty were the field commanders.

Exactly, I am sure the elites of Ubaid were nothing more either. Not the ones carrying the heavy weapons.

I think you are back-projecting again: the court of Versailles, with its useless lordlings in perfumes and wigs, was centuries into the gunpowder era, not at all like anything you would see in medieval times.

It is a fact that the knights were not the elite of medieval times. So you can not use it to support your point, and it actually works against you.

 

[bob x]

Says who? The mullahs and the organized Islamic establishment?? To hell with 'em.

Good for you. When I speak of Islam as holding your part of the world back, it is principally the attitude of total deference to the authority "expert" interpretations of the old texts which I mean. Independence of thought is what is required, if the Muslim world is to move past its medieval rigidity.

All laws boil down to "I said so" rational or otherwise.

No, it is common for legal reasoning to be based on some first principles other than "I said so". The problem that I have with the Qur'an is that no reasoning is offered: just, "This is God speaking" and that's that. For example: in societies where large extended families often live in one big tent or household, it is a firm rule, for very good and obvious reasons, that the men should not go after each other's women; the laws against "in-law-cest", a brother seducing away his sister-in-law, are just as strong as those against incest. Muhammad took in and adopted a ward, and then was attracted to his wife, who returned his affection; this is precisely the kind of thing that cannot be allowed, regardless of how genuine the feelings of the two were, particularly since her husband was under Muhammad's power. This was abuse of a position of authority; as a teacher, I cannot have a relationship with a student, regardless of genuineness of feelings. But Muhammad gets a special revelation from God that it's OK: well, how conveeeeeeenient for him! No rationale is offered why this case should be different from any of the other cases that would still be disallowed; just "God says so" and that makes it OK.

The fact that the US wants something doesn't mean it always immediately gets it, and is no argument to prove that it never wanted a thing because its actions to get that didn't cause the results that it wanted.

It is irrational to think that Eisenhower was not perfectly aware that Nasser was an enemy of the West and that transferring the Canal from Eden's control to Nasser's was taking it from the control of an ally and giving it to an ally of the USSR. Of course Eisenhower had his reasons for doing this, but Chomsky shows, as usual, zero understanding of what these reasons were.

>>> ?

Israelites were the Caananites???

Dude, what are you smoking ?

Sure, genetically, the Arabs and Jews are cousins, all the way back to Isiah and Isaac (peace be upon them), but your claim is stretching it a bit, don't you think?

No, it's not a weird viewpoint of mine; it's quite mainstream among secular archaeologists, who have found that different books in the Bible have very different levels of reliability. The books of Kings are unvarnished records, whose accuracy has been verified over and over again, but the book of Joshua is all exaggerated propaganda: there was a burst of city-sacks around 1200 BCE, but the destruction of the old cities was actually a gradual process, many of the city-sacks happening either centuries before or centuries after 1200, and incomplete as well. The book of Joshua's picture that the whole population was wiped out and replaced is simply what the Jews would rather have believed; actually they were largely the descendants of the indigenous inhabitants with only a minor contribution from the newcomers.

Genetically, the kinship between Arabs and Jews is more distant than the picture of common descent from Abraham would indicate. I am willing to assume that there was actually such a person as Abraham, and that some of his descendants wandered down to Arabia and mingled into the people there, but that is a minor contribution to the Arab genealogy also. Look, if you trace your family back ten generations, you come to 1,024 eight-times-great-grandparents; singling out ONE of them whom you are most proud of as "the" ancestor is picking out only 0.1% of your genetic inheritance, and disregarding the other 99.9% from all the mingling with the people around. Linguistics gives a clue as to how major the newcomers' input was: a conquering elite, if sufficiently numerous, can overwhelm and replace the previous language, as the Romans in France completely replaced Gaulish with a Vulgar Latin, or if slightly less numerous can significantly impact the language, as the Normans in England altered Anglo-Saxon with heavy borrowings from French to create the modern English language, or if quite small, will vanish without a trace, as the Franks in France left no more than a handful of arguably Germanic words in the French language. And the last is what we see in Hebrew, which is simply a Cana'anite dialect scarce distinguishable from Phoenician or Moabite or Ammonite, a continuation of what had been spoken there before Moses, with nothing at all indicative of the Khashdic speech Abraham would have brought from Kurdistan. Arabic is of the West Semitic group, somewhat closer to Cana'anite than to Aramaic, indicative of a genetic relationship between those underlying peoples that goes back a few millennia deeper than the Abrahamic movements, which left no more trace on Arabic than on Hebrew.

Nothing of the kind happened to NY as did the Palestinian territories. And it is profoundly insulting to the Palestinians to compare their plight to that of New York.

You are mistaken. Large sections of New York City have experienced this same kind of thing, moneyed newcomers buying up the land and squeezing out the previous inhabitants. Now mind you, here I am only comparing to the "plight" the Palestinians were in during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which was not at all any worse than what many people have experienced all over the world at various times: it was only their resort to insane levels of violence (which is not at all like "what anybody else would do" as you were claiming; it was singularly crazed behavior) which led them into an even worse plight in 1948. That plight, obviously, can't be compared to New Yorkers: but it was not uniquely in the history of the world, either; the Palestinians weren't even the largest group of displaced people of that particular time in the late 40's, being outnumbered by the displaced Germans, Chinese, and Jews. The Germans, of course, did not insist on re-fighting and re-re-fighting the war they had decisively lost, swearing never to rest until the outcome of 1945 was reversed; that is why they are not still in such a plight. The Chinese who fled the mainland did, for a long time, hang on to the illusion that they could re-fight and reverse the outcome of the civil war they had lost, so perhaps that could be taken as an analogy to the Palestinians; but did they send raiders into the mainland to kill randomly chosen victims, and launch missile barrages all the time? If they had done so, Taiwan would have been stomped a long time ago, and deservedly so. The plight the Palestinians have been in since 1967 is indeed a singularly severe one, but it is one they have chosen for themselves.

Now that's funny... you give me a critique from a website which has this stated in its "about us" page:

The Middle East Forum promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects the Constitutional order from Middle Eastern threats.

LoLz

Talk about being "slanted"

and then as for the favorable review, you give me some user's opinion on Amazon?? dude, come on

I don't have a research library available to me either, and you are asking for online rather than book-form sources, so what I could Google is all I could give you. But instead of ad hominem attacks on the source of the remarks, can you dispute the information itself? Gelvin does systematically ignore the brutalities of the Palestinian actions, as if they were irrelevant to the hostile reactions against the Palestinians; and does make dubiously accurate claims about how the history came down, without sources to back him up.

What source? You said "Keegan" and left it at that. Give me a source that I can check. I gave you quotes and references. Now return the favor.

I thought, since you have so frequently referred to the dates of publication, that you had been able to find the literature for yourself. Here is a Google page of links; I see that I was conflating two different books, History of War by Keegan with War Before Civilization by Keeley; both are highly regarded, as you can see.

Exactly, I am sure the elites of Ubaid were nothing more either. Not the ones carrying the heavy weapons.

Field commanders in the pre-modern era were not like General Eisenhower, back in the city communicating with the front lines by radio and telephone. Nor is General Lee, in a headquarters tent behind the lines, dispatching written orders by messenger on horseback, similar to the style of command even as recently as medieval times. The kings were right in the thick of the battle, surrounded of course by guards with the best training and heaviest armor, but quite often having to engage in hand-to-hand combat themselves, not infrequently ending up wounded, killed, or captured.

And back in Ubaidi times? Look again at that Dani "army": eight guys with sticks. In a real war, they could field eight guys with clubs and one with an axe. Even in the Uruk period, the largest "cities" had populations of a couple hundred, fielding armies of a couple dozen; national armies numbering in the thousands, drawn from empires covering hundreds of settlements, are a phenomenon of a much later time. An Ubaidi army would consist of about a dozen men with clubs, of whom maybe two or three would have an obsidian blade. Who gave the orders? And who was at the forefront of the fighting? I'm thinking "the guy with the biggest blade" is the correct answer to both questions; I really don't understand what it is that you are thinking.

It is a fact that the knights were not the elite of medieval times.

??? That is the DIRECT OPPOSITE of the fact. The lowest-ranking knight would be the second or third son of a minor baron, hoping to achieve enough military prowess to be rewarded with a grant of some territory to rule over; the highest-ranking would be from the family which ruled the entire country. Take a look at this fellow and tell me whether he was a "knight" or an "elite". Obviously he is both: the Crown Prince of England, depicted as he was dressed when he was mortally wounded on the field of battle.

The "homes" of the elite were also the "fortresses": the castles were the military bases, and also the capitals, of the surrounding regions. The political and the military were absolutely inseparable at the time; I thought this was common knowledge that went without saying, but apparently it isn't. The mass manufacture of gunpowder weapons would change the nature of warfare and the army considerably, vastly reducing the role of individual valor and fighting skills, and rendering it silly for the political rulers to take the field personally; this is the situation which you are back-projecting on to very different times.

 

[c0de]

Good for you. When I speak of Islam as holding your part of the world back, it is principally the attitude of total deference to the authority "expert" interpretations of the old texts which I mean. Independence of thought is what is required, if the Muslim world is to move past its medieval rigidity.

It is my contention that the Muslims suffered a psychological regression in the medieval times. The secularists think that the Muslims didn't progress enough.

That's the difference. Our so called "scholars" are mostly idiots and I have said this in my debates with other Muslims like Abdullah here many times.

No, it is common for legal reasoning to be based on some first principles other than "I said so".

Philosophically, in any reasoning, you have to use induction at some point. Therefore, technically, everything does come down to "I said so".

The problem that I have with the Qur'an is that no reasoning is offered: just, "This is God speaking" and that's that.

... and that's the beauty of God's word. Sheer, sublime poetry! That's a whole different level of "power" no constitutional lawyer's argument could ever approach. Have a listen to the Quran recited in Arabic, and you'll know what I mean.

Muhammad took in and adopted a ward, and then was attracted to his wife, who returned his affection; this is precisely the kind of thing that cannot be allowed, regardless of how genuine the feelings of the two were, particularly since her husband was under Muhammad's power.

That is a complete falsification of the facts. First of all, the Prophet arranged the marriage of his adopted son (Zaid ra) to a wife who (and her family) always wanted her marriage to take place with the Prophet. In fact, they proposed her marriage to the Prophet when she was still a virgin. So if what you are saying is true, then why would the Prophet not married her then, instead of waiting until she had gotten married to have her divorce and then marry her?

The fact is that Zaid was stigmatized due to his being sold in slavery (from which he was rescued by the Prophet and then adopted). Her marriage with Zaid (ra) was not a happy one and both of them wanted a divorce. Zaid himself asked the Prophet to marry her so he could divorce her, and that is what she and her family wanted.

The story which you are narrating is a fabrication that has been used as a false attack against the Prophet before.

It is irrational to think that Eisenhower was not perfectly aware that Nasser was an enemy of the West and that transferring the Canal from Eden's control to Nasser's was taking it from the control of an ally and giving it to an ally of the USSR.

EXACTLY!! Why would Eisenhower knowingly help an "enemy of the west" if he did not gain any advantage from it?

Think about it! Obviously because he was hoping it would serve his own nation's interest. You are the one claiming irrationality on Eisenhower's part by not accepting that he forced the Brits and Israelis to withdraw just to help an "enemy of the West".

No, it's not a weird viewpoint of mine; it's quite mainstream among secular archaeologists, who have found that different books in the Bible have very different levels of reliability. The books of Kings are unvarnished records, whose accuracy has been verified over and over again, but the book of Joshua is all exaggerated propaganda: there was a burst of city-sacks around 1200 BCE, but the destruction of the old cities was actually a gradual process, many of the city-sacks happening either centuries before or centuries after 1200, and incomplete as well. The book of Joshua's picture that the whole population was wiped out and replaced is simply what the Jews would rather have believed; actually they were largely the descendants of the indigenous inhabitants with only a minor contribution from the newcomers.

I am well aware of the issues in the bible,

nothing of this actually helps the Jewish argument

that it is "their" land though. Whatever the case

may be, it can not be claimed that they were just

"coming home" even if you employ the "covenant" argument.

You are mistaken. Large sections of New York City have experienced this same kind of thing, moneyed newcomers buying up the land and squeezing out the previous inhabitants.

Did these same people want to create a new country within New York?

The plight the Palestinians have been in since 1967 is indeed a singularly severe one, but it is one they have chosen for themselves.

Yes, but I can say the exact same thing about Israelis.

But instead of ad hominem attacks on the source of the remarks, can you dispute the information itself? Gelvin does systematically ignore the brutalities of the Palestinian actions, as if they were irrelevant to the hostile reactions against the Palestinians; and does make dubiously accurate claims about how the history came down, without sources to back him up.

But this attack you are lifting from your own biased source! You haven't even read the book yourself.

I thought, since you have so frequently referred to the dates of publication, that you had been able to find the literature for yourself. Here is a Google page of links; I see that I was conflating two different books, History of War by Keegan with War Before Civilization by Keeley; both are highly regarded, as you can see.

Okay, and where in these books does it state that the elites during the Ubaid's time period were specially "privileged" to take part in war?

Field commanders in the pre-modern era were not like General Eisenhower, back in the city communicating with the front lines by radio and telephone.

Neither were field commanders in the medieval age, but they weren't carrying heavy weapons either, were they?

An Ubaidi army would consist of about a dozen men with clubs, of whom maybe two or three would have an obsidian blade. Who gave the orders? And who was at the forefront of the fighting? I'm thinking "the guy with the biggest blade" is the correct answer to both questions; I really don't understand what it is that you are thinking.

I disagree as it would be an error of EPIC proportions. You say the elites traded in obsidian. Which means they would have enough of it to equip 12 men, surely. And if you have enough to equip 12 men, then they would, or risk losing the battle and their heads.

??? That is the DIRECT OPPOSITE of the fact.

Because you did not understand my point. I already told you that NOT ALL NOBLES were knights. It was a paltry minority which applied for knighthood as it was a bitch of a job. It is true that the lowest classes could not become knights, but this also means that you did not have to be too high up on the ladder to be one.

Most of the nobles would have been fat and lazy. The knights as a social class, was NOT the TOP ELITE. Most of them would have been moderately wealthy at best.

You really think that during the crusades, those knights (many of them who were from monastic orders) would be the "elite" of Europe ???

 

[bob x]

Philosophically, in any reasoning, you have to use induction at some point. Therefore, technically, everything does come down to "I said so".

Perhaps we are not using the word "induction" the same way? I know it as meaning recourse to observation and experience, the exact opposite of "because I said so".

... and that's the beauty of God's word. Sheer, sublime poetry! That's a whole different level of "power" no constitutional lawyer's argument could ever approach. Have a listen to the Quran recited in Arabic, and you'll know what I mean.

I've heard it, perhaps not by the best reciter; it doesn't do a thing for me.

The story which you are narrating is a fabrication that has been used as a false attack against the Prophet before.

The story as I told it is how it appears in the Qur'an. Your supplemental facts, presumably from some hadiths considered reliable, do not address the question: the Qur'an gives no moral justification for treating this case differently from any other case in which taking a wife away from someone under your power would be disallowed; it just says "God allows it" and leaves it at that. If it should be justified in terms of the mitigating circumstances, the Qur'an ought to say so.

EXACTLY!! Why would Eisenhower knowingly help an "enemy of the west" if he did not gain any advantage from it?

Of course there were upsides: my point was that Chomsky has no idea what they were, instead presenting the serious downside (transferring the Canal from an ally to an enemy) as if that was the upside.

it can not be claimed that they were just "coming home" even if you employ the "covenant" argument.

They WERE coming home. What you think about the circumstances under which they had lived there before and why they were expelled doesn't change that basic fact. I had this argument with a Palestinian once, when I was suggesting that maybe the Palestinians should just try to get past it and make a new home elsewhere: "If you are kicked out of your house," he retorted, "it doesn't matter how many years go by, it is still your home."
"So what if it wasn't you, but your grandfather, who was kicked out? And he isn't still alive? And the one who kicked him out isn't either, but someone else lives there now?"
"IT IS STILL YOUR HOME!"
"And if a couple thousands years go by?"
"IT IS STILL YOUR HOME!"
I pointed out that he had just made the Jews' case.

Did these same people want to create a new country within New York?

I was comparing the New Yorker case to the late 19th century when nobody, so far as I know, called for detaching Palestine from the Ottomans (you have claimed that somebody did call for that, but won't say who), and to the early 20th century, when the call was for a unitary state in which all citizens regardless of religion were to have equal rights. The notion of partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states arose in the late 30's, after the Arabs had made it clear that they were unwilling to accept the unitary state.

Yes, but I can say the exact same thing about Israelis.

I wouldn't argue with you that the Israelis have created a lot of their own problems (by going back to Palestine in the first place, and by their frequently excessive "retaliations" over the years). But they are managing; it is the Palestinians who are more in need of a change in the situation, and I repeat: the keys to their prison are in their own hands, and always have been.

But this attack you are lifting from your own biased source! You haven't even read the book yourself.

Yes I have, the pages that are available through your link at any rate. I find exactly the same problems (ignoring Palestinian misdeeds; unsourced dubious claims) as the ME Forum did. Let us look at how Gelvin handles a particularly egregious case:
In August 1929, for example, rioting broke out in Jerusalem.
Is rioting just some kind of "weather" which "breaks out" for no particular reason? He says nothing about the Mufti's decade-long habit of inflammatory speeches on a "Nabi Musa day" devoted to re-telling how Moses really taught pure Islam and the wicked Jews just distort the Torah to disguise that; this time he added that, not just Zionists, but all Jews everywhere were enemies of Islam, and had been ever since they attacked Muhammad in Medina; and he concocted an absurd historical revisionism, repeated by Yassir Arafat to his dying day, that no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem had ever existed, the Western Wall having been built by Caliph Omar to commemorate the place where Muhammad had tethered the baraq-beast, and the Jews then "stole" it from the Muslims. So Muslims on top of the Temple Mount started the habit of throwing rocks down on the heads of Jewish worshippers at their #1 holy site.
Rumors that each community was attempting to restrict the other's access to their holy sites inflamed tensions...
Hold on a minute here. It was a fact not a "rumor" that the Jews were being denied access to the Wall; and the "rumor" that the Jewish use of the Wall was a theft of a Muslim holy site was utterly baseless, since Pagan, Christian, and Muslim regimes alike had always acknowledged it as the Jews' site (back in Roman times, when Jews were still disallowed from living within 100 miles of Jerusalem, they were charged a special fee for the right to visit the ruined Temple, in a case of "adding insult to injury").
...and a demonstration organized by Betar demanding Jewish control over the Western Wall-- a site that abutted the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif-- seemed to prove the worst to Muslims.
This is like saying, "Demands that Muslims control the city of Mecca seemed to prove the worst."
The ensuing riots spread to Hebron, Jaffa, and Safad.
I don't know what happened in Jaffa, but Hebron was a slaughter of unarmed civilians, a sneak attack wiping out a community which had been there for centuries and was on peaceful terms with Arab neighbors (Muslim and Christian alike), many of whom hid Jews, some of them being killed themselves for doing so.
Overall, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs died in the violence.
The number given for Jewish dead is smaller than I have seen for Hebron alone (and he omits any mention that the survivors of Hebron, as well as the inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem, lost their homes). The number given for Arab dead is very high, since only in Tzefad did armed Jews fight back: perhaps he is including Arabs killed in clashes with the British police, and those killed by other Arabs, to make it look as if Jews and Arabs were killing each other in roughly equal numbers? It would be good to see his source for these figures-- oh, right, he doesn't give any.

Okay, and where in these books does it state that the elites during the Ubaid's time period were specially "privileged" to take part in war?

Their "privilege" was to evade hard labor and commandeer food. Their fighting was what made it possible, and tolerable to the commoners, for them to seize such privileges.

Neither were field commanders in the medieval age, but they weren't carrying heavy weapons either, were they?

If they wanted to live, you bet they did. The kings' guards and the kings themselves always had the absolutely finest armor and weaponry: they need it, since they were the #1 targets on the field.

You say the elites traded in obsidian. Which means they would have enough of it to equip 12 men, surely.

Surely not: it was a rarer substance in the area than gold (this is not Mexico, where they built a capital by active volcanoes to assure a steady supply of volcanic glass; there are no currently-active volcanoes in the Middle East) and does not retain its edge indefinitely. Small chips were useful for various purposes, but large worked pieces were hard to come by, and I don't know of an excavated village that had more than a couple.

Because you did not understand my point. I already told you that NOT ALL NOBLES were knights.

I did indeed understand your point, and have repeatedly told you YOU ARE DEAD WRONG.

It was a paltry minority which applied for knighthood as it was a bitch of a job.

"APPLIED"??? "JOB"??? Are you imagining some kind of Human Resources Department where you took your resume' and filled out a form??? It was a RANK, into which you were BORN.

Most of the nobles would have been fat and lazy.

They would quickly lose their territories to more vigorous neighbors if so. I'm afraid you have no clue how things operated at the time. For nicely readable accounts, try Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror or Sharon Kay Pelman's While Christ and his Saints Slept.

You really think that during the crusades, those knights (many of them who were from monastic orders) would be the "elite" of Europe ???

MONASTIC ORDERS??? The ranking knight in the First Crusade was Robert Longsword, then Crown Prince of England as the eldest son of William the Conqueror: but he obtained such a reputation for cowardice on the battlefield that William partially disinherited him, leaving him Normandy but giving the crown and scepter of England to a second son. He was replaced as overall commander by Godfrey of Bouillon, who ruled only a moderate-sized county but traced back to the old Merovingian kings of France so that his family had always felt entitled to more; it was his fighting reputation which enabled him to leap-frog over count Raymond of Toulouse and Languedoc, the ruler of a large section of southeast France. The Second Crusade was personally led by king Louis VI "the Pious" of France, and the Third Crusade had an all-star cast, kings Richard Lionheart of England, Phillip Augustus of France, and Frederick Barbarossa of Germany.

 

[c0de]

Perhaps we are not using the word "induction" the same way? I know it as meaning recourse to observation and experience, the exact opposite of "because I said so".

We're both using the right definition. Any recourse to one's "observation and experience" is a flaw as it becomes subjective.

This is what Popper was talking about, only unlike Hume, he didn't realize that ALL reasoning at some point requires induction, because deduction eventually leads to nothingness.

Therefore, all human reasoning comes down to "I said so"

I've heard it, perhaps not by the best reciter; it doesn't do a thing for me.

Just as your self-negating rationality does nothing for me.

The story as I told it is how it appears in the Qur'an. Your supplemental facts, presumably from some hadiths considered reliable....

So you are guilty of taking verses out of their proper context. The same thing Hamas does to justify suicide bombing. Those hadiths are not contradicting the Quran and therefore are perfectly admissible as supplemental fact.

I was comparing the New Yorker case to the late 19th century when nobody, so far as I know, called for detaching Palestine from the Ottomans (you have claimed that somebody did call for that, but won't say who),

How about Moses Hess, in Rome and Jerusalem. The Last National Question, written in 1862.

The Labor Zionists might have been a minority, but clearly, this is right before the first wave of major immigration to Palestine and setting up of the Kibbutzim and land buying campaigns. So now, your point that no Jews were talking about independence and separation in the 19th century is conclusively refuted.

"If you are kicked out of your house," he retorted, "it doesn't matter how many years go by, it is still your home."
"So what if it wasn't you, but your grandfather, who was kicked out? And he isn't still alive? And the one who kicked him out isn't either, but someone else lives there now?"
"IT IS STILL YOUR HOME!"
"And if a couple thousands years go by?"
"IT IS STILL YOUR HOME!"
I pointed out that he had just made the Jews' case.

RECAP:

I was the one who used the same argument against you. And after back tracking yourself into a corner, you said the "canaanites" were Jews... to which I was like ???

Getting back to that point, so are you saying there is ZERO difference between the people the Jews kicked out of the land and themselves?If that's true, why did they have to kick out anyone out in the first place?? And what right did they have to do that?

"APPLIED"??? "JOB"??? Are you imagining some kind of Human Resources Department where you took your resume' and filled out a form???It was a RANK, into which you were BORN.

Wrong. (Or as you would say "dead wrong")

It seems you are suffering from a confusion with regards to nobility and knighthood. Knighthood was not hereditary, but nobility was. Even the son of a knight had to be enrolled as a page, and then become a squire, and then (if he made it) was entitled to knighthood. As I said, it was not a job that was very attractive and fit for most of the fat and lazy nobles.

Up till now, you have been assuming that all nobles are knights. This is not the case. And since you have based your argument on this, your entire argument is now going to be refuted: because All knights were nobles, but not all nobles were NOT knights. In France for example, the militaristic nobles were known as "Nobles of the Sword" but were one of 5 classes of nobles and the only ones who engaged in war.
This is a fact of history and is true all over the world (consider Japan where the Samurai class was separate from and subservient to the Damiyo class.)

It was a very bad idea for you to start talking about the medieval age dude... you totally screwed yourself on this one.

MONASTIC ORDERS???

err... yea, monastic orders, indeed.

Such as:

• Knights Hospitaller, founded during the First Crusade, 1099
• Order of Saint Lazarus established about 1100
• Knights Templar, founded 1118, disbanded 1307
• Teutonic Knights, established about 1190, and ruled the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia until 1525
• the Order of Aviz, established in Avis in 1143
• the Order of Alcántara, established in Alcántara in 1156
• the Order of Calatrava, established in Calatrava in 1158
• the Order of Santiago, established in Santiago in 1164.

The kings' guards and the kings themselves always had the absolutely finest armor and weaponry:

Irrelevant, since they weren't the ones doing the fighting.

Their "privilege" was to evade hard labor and commandeer food. Their fighting was what made it possible, and tolerable to the commoners, for them to seize such privileges.

I asked you for REFERENCES that these elites were specifically the warriors of their society. Present them, or withdraw your claim.

Of course there were upsides: my point was that Chomsky has no idea what they were

rite...

 

[c0de]

because All knights were nobles, but not all nobles were NOT knights.

Typo:

All knights were nobles, but not all nobles were knights.

 

[bananabrain]

think about what would have happened if the Irish who landed in New York started raising the Irish flags in their neighborhoods and started talking about separation from the United States.

it's not the same, as the irish were not returning to the states after a centuries-long exile, as you very well know.

imagine what would happen if suddenly the Hispanic population in the South West starts talking about taking back California and the other states which the United States conquered.

they're already living there, aren't they? surely the way they are doing that is by democratic representation? i have no objection to arabs doing the same.

It was, after all, SOMEONE ELSE'S land.

not according to the people who owned the deeds, at least the bits that were purchased. i need to understand what you're trying to say here:

Well then if Palestine was such a backwater (and it was) then why the hell did they pick to go there?

i know you're not an idiot, c0de - but this can't possibly be a serious question. the land (and jerusalem specifically) are mentioned all the time, three times a day when we pray, we pray for the "ingathering of the exiles" to israel. we've been doing this at least since the time of the destruction of the Temple. this is where we're from. we says so. the Torah says so. our language says so. our genetics say so. the historians say so. of course, that doesn't give us an excuse to be dicks about it, but it is at the core of who we are, just as the punjab is at the core of who the sikhs are, china is at the core of who the chinese are and will, presumably, be so in 2,000 years.

The fact is that Israel is, and always has been, a total contradiction. Just like my own home country of Pakistan which was also founded on the basis of religion alone, and then ended up committing genocide against the same people it was founded to protect (i.e. Muslims in the place now known as Bangladesh)

now here, i agree with you, except that what the israelis have done, unpleasant and brutal though it may be in many ways, is in no way comparable to the deaths squads and gang-rapes of 1971; i'm not having a go at pakistan here; in many ways i do think that arguments about israel are similar to ones about pakistan.

I asked you, who were the Caananites that the Jews took the land away from? Where did the Jews get the idea that it was ever "their" land? They only got their due to a covenant with God that they broke.

they never left, despite the wishful thinking of the books of joshua and judges - but both of those also clearly indicate that conflict with other tribes was an ongoing affair. like bob_x says (although of course we differ on the degree of importance of the exodus) history, as well as later jewish texts and law, if you understand the issues they're dealing with, clearly indicates having to deal with people of canaanite origin and the offspring of intermarriages; look up the "gibeonites". religiously speaking, the covenant being broken, incidentally, was punished by the destruction of the *first* Temple and jewish commonwealth, as well as the destruction of the northern kingdom by the assyrians in 722, but that doesn't translate into "and that's it for you, guys" - G!D still Kept the Divine end of the bargain, even if we broke it on a regular basis. there are also exilic covenants (ezekiel springs to mind) which speak of our return to the land; the promise of the land to abraham's descendants through isaac was never dissolved by G!D.

Sure, genetically, the Arabs and Jews are cousins, all the way back to Isiah and Isaac (peace be upon them), but your claim is stretching it a bit, don't you think?

i was also of the distinct impression that the palestinian arabs, genetically as well as linguistically (although correct me if i'm wrong), are far more closely related to jews and hebrew than the rest of the arabs; i don't think bob_x's claim is stretching it at all, although he, unlike me, does not derive any authority from religious sources.

What you think about the circumstances under which they had lived there before and why they were expelled doesn't change that basic fact. I had this argument with a Palestinian once, when I was suggesting that maybe the Palestinians should just try to get past it and make a new home elsewhere: "If you are kicked out of your house," he retorted, "it doesn't matter how many years go by, it is still your home."
"So what if it wasn't you, but your grandfather, who was kicked out? And he isn't still alive? And the one who kicked him out isn't either, but someone else lives there now?"
"IT IS STILL YOUR HOME!"
"And if a couple thousands years go by?"
"IT IS STILL YOUR HOME!"
I pointed out that he had just made the Jews' case.

quite! and c0de, if you want to object to this on the grounds that the canaanites could use the same argument, then introduce me to a modern-day canaanite. the trouble is that the only evidence that the jews dispossessed the canaanites is from the Tanakh, which means that accepting that as a source of authority means you also have to deal with its other claims, which you've previously dismissed. you're trying to have your cake and eat it. either the biblical record is true and the jews kicked out the canaanites (which not even we maintain), or it isn't and THEY NEVER LEFT, in which case it is hard to identify how they are being currently dispossessed by the present occupants, arab and jew alike. that means the oldest identifiable group who can say for definite that they used to own it is the jews. now, i'm obviously aware that having used to own something doesn't exactly entitle you to take it back off someone who acquired it honestly in the mean time, but we can at least dispense with the "the jews have no connection to the land" argument, because it is a) unsustainable and b) offensive.

while Israel has no de jure discrimination (except for the military exemption, which comes with no jizya tax), there is no anti-discrimination legislation either. Israeli Arabs resent this, and rightly so.

especially as "where did you do your military service?" is the first question at job interviews - it's also one of the reasons (but by far not the most important) for low employment in the ultra-orthodox sector.

(I am reminded of the classic fantasy story With This Axe I Rule! in the "Kull the Conqueror" series by Robert E. Howard, better known for the "Conan the Barbarian" series set in another period of the same alternate-world; I am not, of course, claiming a fictional story as "evidence" but his Hyborian Age, given as elaborate a history as Tolkien's Middle Earth, was based on extensive reading, and while his "pulp fiction" style was aimed at a low-brow audience, his stories are guilty pleasures for pretentiously high-brow sorts like me.)

and me too!

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[c0de]

now, i'm obviously aware that having used to own something doesn't exactly entitle you to take it back off someone who acquired it honestly in the mean time, but we can at least dispense with the "the jews have no connection to the land" argument, because it is a) unsustainable and b) offensive.

Far be it for me to deny a Jew (or any one for that matter) their emotional attachment to any piece of land. But this applies BOTH ways.

A) The Jews claiming they have some special ownership of Palestine is also not going to work because according to our narrative, the covenant God made with the Jews is null and void.

B) The argument about the Canaanites (and I don't have any real problem with that, as it doesn't contradict the Quran, afaik) it still doesn't give any claim to the Zionists like Hess to be raising calls for independence in the 19th century.

 

[bob x]

We're both using the right definition. Any recourse to one's "observation and experience" is a flaw as it becomes subjective.

I am talking about reference to everyone's shared observation, not to one's; this is the exact opposite of recourse to a private revelation given only to a "prophet".

Just as your self-negating rationality does nothing for me.

"Self-negating"? You are the one depicting the universe as all a puppet show in which nobody can really do anything.

So you are guilty of taking verses out of their proper context. The same thing Hamas does to justify suicide bombing.

Oh come on now, I am just reading the text as it stands.

Those hadiths are not contradicting the Quran and therefore are perfectly admissible as supplemental fact.

Yes, but my point is: why does the Qur'an need supplementing? Why does it contain no moral reasoning at all?

How about Moses Hess, in Rome and Jerusalem. The Last National Question, written in 1862.

I had never heard of him, but found him in Jewish History in Modern Times, Joseph Goldstein (NYU Press 1994), p. 105: "A few rabbis and activists joined Lorje's society [Colonisation-Verein fuer Palestina], but they accomplished little. Among his supporters were the socialist writer Moses Hess (1812-75), whose book Rome and Jerusalem admonished Jews 'to rise up and go forward,' for 'the ancient homeland' was calling them... But their fervor and readiness for action was insufficient to further Lorje's ideas, and he soon gave up his activity." Goldstein does not mention Hess among those calling for an actual independent Jewish state, but does cite others with such views, mostly seeking an enclave within Poland or Rumania (those looking for a Polish state had to stay way underground, as the czarist regime brutally repressed all nationalists); others hoped to find some vacant spot: the "Am Olam" group toyed with the idea of buying some Western territory from the United States for this purpose (they were too late, as the West was already homesteaded fairly thoroughly and the 1890 census would famously conclude "a frontier line can no longer be traced"), although the large group of Jews who emigrated to the US found the political equality there a sufficient solution to their problem in Europe and mostly just wished to assimilate.

Herzl proclaimed the need for "a land without people for a people without land" (Palestine had both too many and too few people: too many to ignore, but too few to feel secure in the face of mass immigration; and this was what caused the tragic outcome), explored the idea of purchasing a portion of Argentina, and died of a heart attack during bitter recriminations over his deal with the British Colonial Office to resettle the Jews in a section of Kenya and Uganda depopulated by tribal warfare (that would probably have ended up even uglier than the move to Palestine). The Hovevei Zion who were actually conducting colonization into Palestine had a very different motivation from the nationalists: that "productive activity" was what the Jews needed, to get them out of the bad habits which reliance on the money-lending and spirits-distilling trades had emplanted in them by returning to agricultural labor. Some of the religious among them did hope that once Jews had "redeemed" themselves and re-gathered in sufficient numbers in the old homeland, this would induce the Messiah to come and bring out a revival of the old nation; but this was a distant pie-in-the-sky; no-one at that time was imagining a military seizure of Palestine. Negotiations with the Ottomans for large-scale purchasers were hobbled by the Turkish suspicions (well-founded of course) that the newcomers would scarcely feel any loyalty to the regime and would want more local autonomy than the sultanate would feel comfortable in granting; the Rothschilds offered to purchase all the "sultan's land" in Palestine (the tracts with no landlord in between the sultan and the peasantry; ironically, this was mostly what we now call the West Bank), or to lease it if an outright sale was going too far, but the sultan replied, "I could not cut a piece of the heart out of my empire". Less dramatic but still large-scale purchases were, however, negotiated without any concept that this would lead to compromising the Ottomans' political control.

you said the "canaanites" were Jews... to which I was like ???

Getting back to that point, so are you saying there is ZERO difference between the people the Jews kicked out of the land and themselves?If that's true, why did they have to kick out anyone out in the first place?? And what right did they have to do that?

The conflict was between the country folk and the city people, and had been going on for over a century before the Exodus brought leadership to the country. The religious cults in the cities, with their child sacrifices and sacred prostitutes, were particularly disgusting, and this is what made the uncompromising monotheism of the band that came out of Sinai such an effective rallying point; but the country folk had no real wish to give up their own religious cults (as the books of Kings and the prophets continually record), which involved nature worship, an equal role for a feminine as well as masculine deity, and maintenance of local shrines outside the control of the "tabernacle" and later "Temple" monopoly. But the disdain for the city folks' ways went deeper than religious issues only, analogous in fact to your own disdain for excessive materialism in the West, as well as to present-day internal conflicts in the US between the mostly rural "red" voters and those "blue" voters perceived as "elitist" and heathenish. The burning of the cities involved, of course, mass slaughter with few survivors, but to think that the whole nation was depopulated is far from the fact of the matter.

Two peoples in the south were only loosely brought to heel as tributaries, at best, totally independent when Israel was weaker: the Philistines who had immigrated from the Aegean a little after the Exodus, and the Edomites who had established a sparsely-inhabited but sizable state well before (the story of Jacob and Esau encodes this: calling Esau the "elder" acknowledges that the Edomites were there first, while claiming that Jacob had the "birthright" is an insistence that G-d loves Israel better). They were not forcibly converted to Judaism and incorporated into the state until the Hasmonean regime (a couple generations after the Maccabean revolt), and even then were not accepted as "real" Jews, so they tended to intermarry with each other and with the Arabs who were already infiltrating; Romans used the names "Palestinian" and "Idumean" interchangeably for them, and Herod's genealogy, 50% Arab (his mother was a princess of Nabatea in modern south Jordan), 25% Palestinian (his father's mother was from a mercantile family in Ashkelon), 25% Idumean (his father's father was from the old Edomite royal line), was probably typical. After the Romans destroyed the Temple, they stopped calling themselves "Jews" as the price of being allowed to remain in the country (which was renamed "Palestine" for them at this point), and became Christians under the Byzantines, mostly converting to Islam after Caliph Omar.

Even the son of a knight had to be enrolled as a page, and then become a squire, and then (if he made it) was entitled to knighthood.

Yes, all the members of the ruling class had to undergo lengthy apprenticeship; military skill isn't something that anybody has from birth. Some did wash out, but this meant a loss of social status (Thomas Becket's grandfather was a knight, but his father gave up and went into the cloth-import business, eventually making enough money to buy rental housing in London and live off his property like a "gentleman" again) which even members of royal families were not immune to (I mentioned Robert Longsword, who lost his claim to the throne due to deficiency in military skills; Edward II was definitely a "lover not a fighter" and Richard II was suspected of the same: both lost their thrones and their lives).

In France for example, the militaristic nobles were known as "Nobles of the Sword" but were one of 5 classes of nobles and the only ones who engaged in war.

Those were the nobles racielles (meaning "ancestral"; "racial" would be a bit of a mistranslation) or anciens (those who could trace back to the medieval nobility). Of the other classes, there were a few appointed and a few elected offices which carried non-hereditary life peerages: this was found in England too, where the chancellor was always called Lord Chancellor (regardless of dubious social background: see Becket, above) and the mayor of London (who was likely to have been a grocery wholesaler or some such) was Lord Mayor; in England, I believe London was the only town with this distinction, though France had almost a dozen such towns, and a similar number of "ennobled" bureaucrats. But even in France we are only talking about a couple dozen people: to prevent further dilution, there was a fourth category of nobles en robe who were not even ennobled for life, but only entitled to deference during their tenure in office.

But then there were the nobles en lettre. The "letter patent" (again, the same institution is found in England and elsewhere) might grant nobility hereditarily or only for life, and might or might not grant land to rule over or exercise some judicial and administrative control in (with lucrative opportunities for corruption). Originally this was the way of recruiting promising newcomers into the "nobility of the sword" (they were expected to intermarry with the old families), but starting from Francis I in the early 1500's there were massive sales of such titles for fund-raising purposes. The advent of the gunpowder era required large mercenary armies as the "sword" became less militarily relevant, and this was a way to satisfy the desire for a political role on the part of the upcoming mercantile class, while squeezing money out of them. Taxes could only be raised by the Three Estates, which was like the English Parliament (except for having the Church as a separate House from the Lords and Commons) in its dangerous free-speech rights to denounce the government, demand ouster of bad officials, and enact new statutes; so to avoid the whittling-away of royal power as seen in England, the French kings convoked the Estates more and more rarely, not at all after 1614 until it was reassembled (with fatal consequences) in 1789.

So many "seneschalities" (noble offices without land-grants but with lucrative rights to hear court cases-- and collect the taxes) were granted by Francis that the central government lost effective control of much of the south, with dire consequences in the Religious Wars that followed. And it didn't even raise enough money to compete with the Habsburg empire (which was raking in gold and silver from Mexico and Peru); France should have given up on expansionary warfare, but persisted in trying to conquer northern Italy until Francis was captured on the battlefield of Pavia (that cost a "king's ransom" literally), and in trying to take the Low Countries all the way until Louis XIV. All during this time the nouveaux riches were buying titles until they seriously outnumbered the anciens whose "swords" were just vestigial anyhow: this is how the nobility became transformed from an effective military caste into the "fat and lazy" useless parasites that the Revolutionaries wanted to exterminate. You are thoughtlessly back-projecting this situation into medieval times, which were not at all similar.

consider Japan where the Samurai class was separate from and subservient to the Damiyo class.

The daimyo were fierce swordsmen who would behead you in an eyeblink if you dared to call one of them "fat and lazy". Haven't you even read James Clavell's Shogun?

It was a very bad idea for you to start talking about the medieval age dude...

Yeah right, I'm really scared to talk about medieval times with somebody who started Googling information about it, like, three days ago?

err... yea, monastic orders, indeed.

The military orders were very different entities from the orders of St. Benedict or St. Augustine. The Templars and Hospitallers did, famously, take a vow of chastity, like the monks, as well as the vow of obedience common to any kind of "order" but, of course, not the vow of stability (remaining in one place permanently) which is the hallmark of a monastic order. You really thought the Crusaders were a bunch of Benedictines who got tired of rising at dawn for Gregorian chants and decided to take up swordplay?

The reason for talking knights into taking vows of chastity has to do with the basic cause of the whole Crusader movement: the military caste was simply breeding too much, and not killing each other off fast enough, for there to be any hope of all their second and third sons getting a tract of land to rule, and even the church was getting too swamped with these castoffs to absord them all, so there was a serious problem with downward social mobility. The hope was that a bunch of them would conquer new lands for themselves in the east (as a lot of them did) and the rest would get killed (as a lot of them did). The expectation that every son of a knight should become a knight was strong, but incapable of fulfillment; this is how Europe exported its excess.

I asked you for REFERENCES that these elites were specifically the warriors of their society. Present them, or withdraw your claim.

I have provided you references talking about Stone Age, ancient, and medieval societies from all over the world. Your inability to understand that they were all ruled by their warrior classes, in collaboration with religious establishments, is a singular blindness.

rite...

Yeah, , very right: Chomsky can't even tell the advantages from the disadvantages, which is why all his predictions about how things would go in the subsequent years have turned out 180 degrees opposite to fact.

 

[c0de]

I am talking about reference to everyone's shared observation, not to one's; this is the exact opposite of recourse to a private revelation given only to a "prophet".

You have no idea what you are talking about. It seems this is another issue that you are not familiar with. Do you know who Karl Popper is? And why he was striving so hard (unsuccessfully) to rid science of all induction? (which is an impossibility, by the way).

There was a time when EVERYONE believed the earth was flat. it didn't make their "shared observation" any more objective.

Since you are talking about law specifically, here is a video which explains the issue in terms of how statistics have falsely convicted people because our "shared" observation is usually far from objective:

Peter Donnelly shows how stats fool juries | Video on TED.com

Here's more from one of the preeminent economists
of today about "shared observation and perception" actually means for human behavior.

Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions? | Video on TED.com

Dan Ariely on our buggy moral code | Video on TED.com

"Self-negating"? You are the one depicting the universe as all a puppet show in which nobody can really do anything.

No, I am depicting the ultimate consequences of empiricism, which you, apparently, have never explored.

Oh come on now, I am just reading the text as it stands.

Yea, just as the lunatics take one verse which tells Muslims to fight and assume it means offensively, disregarding the other verses and the historical context in which it was revealed.

You are doing the exact same thing as them.

Yes, but my point is: why does the Qur'an need supplementing? Why does it contain no moral reasoning at all?

I didn't give you "reasoning". I gave you the context.

I had never heard of him,

I had been taught about Hess in the course on Israeli Identity that I took. But had forgotten about him until this discussion. Thanks for refreshing my memory.

I already told you their view was a minority. But you claimed that NO one (as far as you knew) was claiming it. The fact that I studied this guy and he was taught by our professor as an influence also stands against you.

I have now provided you with someone who was saying exactly that. Which also implies he was (obviously) not the only one. So your point on the issue is refuted.

Herzl proclaimed the need for "a land without people for a people without land" (Palestine had both too many and too few people: too many to ignore, but too few to feel secure in the face of mass immigration; and this was what caused the tragic outcome), explored the idea of purchasing a portion of Argentina, and died of a heart attack during bitter recriminations over his deal with the British Colonial Office to resettle the Jews in a section of Kenya and Uganda depopulated by tribal warfare (that would probably have ended up even uglier than the move to Palestine). The Hovevei Zion who were actually conducting colonization into Palestine had a very different motivation from the nationalists: that "productive activity" was what the Jews needed, to get them out of the bad habits which reliance on the money-lending and spirits-distilling trades had emplanted in them by returning to agricultural labor. Some of the religious among them did hope that once Jews had "redeemed" themselves and re-gathered in sufficient numbers in the old homeland, this would induce the Messiah to come and bring out a revival of the old nation; but this was a distant pie-in-the-sky; no-one at that time was imagining a military seizure of Palestine. Negotiations with the Ottomans for large-scale purchasers were hobbled by the Turkish suspicions (well-founded of course) that the newcomers would scarcely feel any loyalty to the regime and would want more local autonomy than the sultanate would feel comfortable in granting; the Rothschilds offered to purchase all the "sultan's land" in Palestine (the tracts with no landlord in between the sultan and the peasantry; ironically, this was mostly what we now call the West Bank), or to lease it if an outright sale was going too far, but the sultan replied, "I could not cut a piece of the heart out of my empire". Less dramatic but still large-scale purchases were, however, negotiated without any concept that this would lead to compromising the Ottomans' political control.

We all know Herzl was more of a moderate and was not seeking succession from Ottomans. But the fact remains, others were, and you have to admit that.

So there was talk about independence (way back in the middle of the 19th century even) which directly contradicts your position that the Jews only raised the call for independence only due to the actions of the Arabs who "started it".

... so go ahead, raise another white flag.

Two peoples in the south were only loosely brought to heel as tributaries, at best, totally independent when Israel was weaker: the Philistines who had immigrated from the Aegean a little after the Exodus, and the Edomites who had established a sparsely-inhabited but sizable state well before (the story of Jacob and Esau encodes this: calling Esau the "elder" acknowledges that the Edomites were there first, while claiming that Jacob had the "birthright" is an insistence that G-d loves Israel better). They were not forcibly converted to Judaism and incorporated into the state until the Hasmonean regime (a couple generations after the Maccabean revolt), and even then were not accepted as "real" Jews, so they tended to intermarry with each other and with the Arabs who were already infiltrating; Romans used the names "Palestinian" and "Idumean" interchangeably for them, and Herod's genealogy, 50% Arab (his mother was a princess of Nabatea in modern south Jordan), 25% Palestinian (his father's mother was from a mercantile family in Ashkelon), 25% Idumean (his father's father was from the old Edomite royal line), was probably typical. After the Romans destroyed the Temple, they stopped calling themselves "Jews" as the price of being allowed to remain in the country (which was renamed "Palestine" for them at this point), and became Christians under the Byzantines, mostly converting to Islam after Caliph Omar.

Refer to my response to BB

B) The argument about the Canaanites (and I don't have any real problem with that, as it doesn't contradict the Quran, afaik) it still doesn't give any claim to the Zionists like Hess to be raising calls for independence in the 19th century.

Yes, all the members of the ruling class had to undergo lengthy apprenticeship; military skill isn't something that anybody has from birth.

Now you are trying to change your point!!
You said it was a "rank" that you were born into.

It was NOT! You had to earn knighthood.

Yeah right, I'm really scared to talk about medieval times with somebody who started Googling information about it, like, three days ago?

Yea, and I'm really impressed by a guy who thought knighthood was a hereditary rank, until yesterday.

this is how the nobility became transformed from an effective military caste into the "fat and lazy" useless parasites that the Revolutionaries wanted to exterminate. You are thoughtlessly back-projecting this situation into medieval times, which were not at all similar.

I am not "back projecting" anything. It is a FACT that not all the top elite or nobles were actually knights, ever.

The daimyo were fierce swordsmen who would behead you in an eyeblink if you dared to call one of them "fat and lazy". Haven't you even read James Clavell's Shogun?

Ignoring the point is becoming a bad habit of yours. Some Kings of Europe might have been good warriors too, it does not mean that they were the SAME as knights.

They were ROYALTY. The Damiyo class was SEPARATE from the SAMURAI. There were hierarchies. The peasants, the samurai and the TOP ELITE=Damiyo.

The military orders were very different entities from the orders of St. Benedict or St. Augustine. The Templars and Hospitallers did, famously, take a vow of chastity, like the monks, as well as the vow of obedience common to any kind of "order" but, of course, not the vow of stability (remaining in one place permanently) which is the hallmark of a monastic order.

Yea whatever. Point being: they were all knights and also monks. So they didn't stay in one place, so what? It has nothing to do with my general argument whatsoever.

You really thought the Crusaders were a bunch of Benedictines who got tired of rising at dawn for Gregorian chants and decided to take up swordplay?

No, I thought they were NOT the top elite of Europe.

And they weren't.

The reason for talking knights into taking vows of chastity has to do with the basic cause of the whole Crusader movement: the military caste was simply breeding too much, and not killing each other off fast enough, for there to be any hope of all their second and third sons getting a tract of land to rule, and even the church was getting too swamped with these castoffs to absord them all, so there was a serious problem with downward social mobility. The hope was that a bunch of them would conquer new lands for themselves in the east (as a lot of them did) and the rest would get killed (as a lot of them did). The expectation that every son of a knight should become a knight was strong, but incapable of fulfillment; this is how Europe exported its excess.

The military cast is NOT royalty. And so all of this has nothing to do with the point that they were not at the top of the food chain.

The fact that they were considered expendable is itself proof of that, (and thank you for pointing that out yourself.) The top elite is always composed of a small minority that is never expendable. Unless it gets replaced by another after it loses a war or revolution, in which case it is usually killed of in entirety.

I have provided you references talking about Stone Age, ancient, and medieval societies from all over the world. Your inability to understand that they were all ruled by their warrior classes, in collaboration with religious establishments, is a singular blindness.

Yea whatever. You provided NOTHING which says that the ruling class of Ubaid were not exactly like the royalty (which was SEPARATE from the "warrior caste").

I asked my Kiwi room mate the other day, who is a Polynesian by birth, about how his society functioned in antiquity. He also confirmed my point that the Tribal chief's family was SEPARATE from the "warrior caste". In fact, he said that the farmers were the warriors (exactly like I told you) and there was no actual "warrior caste" back then. The only hereditary privilege to rule was the Tribal Chief's and his progeny. So fighting was NOT a special privillege of the elite, and the only hereditary position was the TOP elite.

So that's another source of mine, and you still have nothing.

Yeah, , very right: Chomsky can't even tell the advantages from the disadvantages

ahan, sure, whatever you say... elijah.

im sure your precious audience is very impressed

( )

 

[bob x]

You have no idea what you are talking about.

I know exactly what I am talking about. I admit I have no clue what you are talking about.

Do you know who Karl Popper is?

Yes I do. What on Earth do his ideas have to do with the question? I am not claiming that shared observations are infallible; I am claiming that it is entirely different from deferring to one man's judgments, even if (or especially if) he claims to be getting direct revelations from God.

Yea, just as the lunatics take one verse which tells Muslims to fight and assume it means offensively, disregarding the other verses and the historical context in which it was revealed.

I was not disregarding any "other verses" of which there aren't any. If the Qur'an is useless except in a particular context, then why do I care what this guy in 7th century Arabia had to say?

I didn't give you "reasoning". I gave you the context.

And what about the context is morally significant? I might draw the lesson "women who are unhappy in an arranged marriage should be allowed to leave it" but that is not what the Qur'an gives; it just says "men should be allowed to marry the wives of their foster sons," which hardly seems a good lesson.

But you claimed that NO one (as far as you knew) was claiming it.

As far as I knew, yes. You had made the assertion before; I had asked you who you were talking about, and you refused to answer multiple times. So OK, you came up with the name. My source says he was a member of a small faction which disbanded in a couple years without getting a single person to Palestine; my source discusses what a variety of people were thinking, about the possibilities of moving to Palestine and becoming a more normal people, or about the possibilities of finding some empty spot and establishing a state there, but nobody at all seems to have been talking about militarily overthrowing the Ottoman regime in Palestine: that was just not even on anybody's radar.

The fact that I studied this guy and he was taught by our professor as an influence also stands against you.

In what respect? So the professor knows about more obscure people, within his area of specialization, than I do. You are expecting that I am an omniscient being?

I have now provided you with someone who was saying exactly that. Which also implies he was (obviously) not the only one.

??? Quite obviously it does not imply anything of the sort.
In a discussion of the anti-Mexican legislation recently passed by Arizona, somebody claimed there was an "Aztlan" movement which seeks to have Mexico take back all the lands the US annexed in 1848; some on the boards refused to believe that any such movement existed, since they'd lived among Hispanics, including political activists, for decades without ever having heard of such a thing. It turns out there really is an Aztlan group, and it possibly has as many as a dozen members-- so? That is not "the Mexicans".

We all know Herzl was more of a moderate and was not seeking succession from Ottomans. But the fact remains, others were, and you have to admit that.

At that time? No, I don't believe there was anybody expecting such a thing to be even possible.

You said it was a "rank" that you were born into.

It was NOT! You had to earn knighthood.

It was a rank you were born into-- and if you lost that rank, you would sink in the social scale. And all the members of the military class, whether a third son of a petty baron with little hope of getting land of his own, or the king of one of the major nations, were in the same boat: perform, or be degraded, or die.

I am not "back projecting" anything. It is a FACT that not all the top elite or nobles were actually knights, ever.

Some were of the "thinking" class instead of the "fighting" class; which in medieval Europe meant: the Church. Becket, despite his grandfather, would never have risen from son of a cloth-merchant to Lord Chancellor except through the Church, and was then moved from Lord Chancellor to Archbishop of Canterbury. Not that bishops never took to the battlefield: some did, carrying maces since they were not allowed swords.

Ignoring the point is becoming a bad habit of yours. Some Kings of Europe might have been good warriors too, it does not mean that they were the SAME as knights.

They were ROYALTY. The Damiyo class was SEPARATE from the SAMURAI.

The Daimyo (not "damiyo") had the same kind of weapons, except of finer quality, trained in the same way, and fought in the same battles, except surrounded by guards; just as the European kings had the same kind of weapons, except of finer quality, and trained in the same way as the knights, and fought in battle with them, surrounded by guards. Daimyo, like European kings, often died in battle; they were less likely than European kings to be captured on the battlefield because they would rather die than surrender. European kings who failed as warriors would often be deposed, if they had not been disinherited before reaching the throne, whereas Daimyo in such circumstances were expected to commit suicide and spare everyone the trouble.

There were hierarchies.

Yes of course there were. The Japanese, too, had their equivalent of "third sons of petty barons, with no hope of land of their own" but everyone from those, on the bottom, to the Shogun, at the top, were all part of one military caste, interrelated by tangled marriage alliances, obeying the same code of honor, very much as it was in medieval Europe.

Point being: they were all knights and also monks. So they didn't stay in one place, so what?

That's what the word "monk" MEANT, somebody who stayed in their monastery, for life. The Templars were not "monks": I don't know what you think the word means.

The military cast is NOT royalty.

The royalty WERE from the military caste. I mentioned Robert Longsword losing his shot at the throne due to insufficient valor: his father William the Conqueror, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy, became Duke by killing all the rival claimants in battle, and then became King because king Harold Godwinson of England, after killing king Harald Hardraade of Norway (who was also trying to seize England) at the battle of Stamford, then was killed himself on the battlefield of Hastings, shot right through the eye and then hacked to pieces. That was how kingship was acquired and maintained in those days, and I am astounded that you do not know that.

And so all of this has nothing to do with the point that they [the Crusaders] were not at the top of the food chain. The fact that they were considered expendable is itself proof of that, (and thank you for pointing that out yourself.) The top elite is always composed of a small minority that is never expendable.

Well I don't know how much higher on the food chain you could go than the kings of England, France, and Germany who all went on the Third Crusade. Every rank in the hierarchy of the military caste was represented, from the totally expendable barons' lesser sons to the rulers of major nations, who were not readily expendable (the death of the king of Germany and capture of the king of England were major blows to their countries) but went anyway, because the entire military caste was bound by the same code of honor from top to bottom.

You provided NOTHING which says that the ruling class of Ubaid were not exactly like the royalty (which was SEPARATE from the "warrior caste").

They were like medieval royalty, who were INSEPARABLE from the warrior caste. And I have provided you TONS of information, about how ancient societies operated all over the world: Mesopotamia was not different from the general pattern of the human race, nor do you seem to be arguing that it was; instead you have some bizarre picture of what human history was like. "Fat and lazy" elites living off their money without having to fight to maintain their position can only exist in times of relative peace and prosperity, which few parts of the ancient world knew until the "classical" flowering of Rome and China (and to a lesser extent Persia and some states in India); the medieval breakdown then ended this peace and prosperity in Europe until the Renaissance (although at that same time, some parts of the Islamic world were enjoying more stability than they had ever seen before).

I asked my Kiwi room mate the other day, who is a Polynesian by birth, about how his society functioned in antiquity. He also confirmed my point that the Tribal chief's family was SEPARATE from the "warrior caste". In fact, he said that the farmers were the warriors (exactly like I told you) and there was no actual "warrior caste" back then.

I Googled "Maori chief", got this article about the most famous of them:
Wiremu Kingi
Born Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitake, 1795
Died 13 January 1882, Kaingaru near Waitara
Nationality Te Āti Awa Māori
Occupation Chief of the Te Āti Awa iwi and warrior

plus pictures of Maori chiefs, every one of them holding a spear or a battle-axe, and more articles saying things like "In 1845, Hone Heke, a Maori chief, headed an uprising on the North Island," and "Pōtatau I, Māori King (Pōtatau Te Wherowhero) (circa 1800 – June 25, 1860) was a Māori warrior, leader of the Waikato tribes, the first Māori King and founder of the Te Wherowhero royal dynasty." I find that there were two words for "chief", Ariki and Rangitari, which may represent two different kinds of chief, like the "war chief" and "medicine chief" in North America or "chief" and "big man" in Papua.

[/I]ahan, sure, whatever you say... elijah.

im sure your precious audience is very impressed

( )

Chomsky said the ADVANTAGE was taking the Canal from an ally and giving it to an enemy; you have already agreed that was the DISADVANTAGE and that the advantages must have been elsewhere. Chomsky PREDICTED that Israel would use the occupied territories as a source of cheap labor, and Israel now practically FORBIDS laborers from the occupied territories. His perceptions of what motivates people are stark stone blind.

 

[c0de]

I know exactly what I am talking about.

Clearly, you do not.

Yes I do. What on Earth do his ideas have to do with the question?

They aren't HIS ideas! The fact that ALL human reasoning requires induction, and is therefore flawed, is not Popper's idea! It is a philosophic reality which Popper was trying to deal with by trying to make science only use deductive reasoning (he failed). Hume, one of the fathers of empiricism already knew that induction had to be involved in any and all human reasoning.

I am not claiming that shared observations are infallible;

No, you are claiming that because your rationality is "shared" and the Prophet's is not, yours is therefore automatically superior. You fail to realize there is nothing especially valid about your rationality either.

And what about the context is morally significant? I might draw the lesson "women who are unhappy in an arranged marriage should be allowed to leave it" but that is not what the Qur'an gives; it just says "men should be allowed to marry the wives of their foster sons," which hardly seems a good lesson.

What it actually did was cement a distinction between adopted and blood relatives, something that was not present in pre-Islamic Arabia.

So OK, you came up with the name. My source says he was a member of a small faction which disbanded in a couple years without getting a single person to Palestine; my source discusses what a variety of people were thinking, about the possibilities of moving to Palestine and becoming a more normal people, or about the possibilities of finding some empty spot and establishing a state there, but nobody at all seems to have been talking about militarily overthrowing the Ottoman regime in Palestine: that was just not even on anybody's radar.

Who cares about your source? Some no name dude you found on google??

Cuz here's mine, Shlomo Avineri
this guy was part of our course readings
and he says:

"Moses Hess was the founder of Israeli National Socialism, the inspirer of the kibbutz movement and of the Histadrut as a vehicle for social ownership of the economy"

Moses Hess - founder of Israeli National Socialism

So there you go. The entire Kibbutz project was INSPIRED by him. Also, by the way, according to the "Jewish Agency for Israel":

"Although his work was forgotten for some time, its importance was revived with the birth of the Zionist movement. Articles on Hess and early translations of his works began appearing in the 1880s."

Moses Hess (1812-1875)



OH SNAP !

That had 2 hurt

;-)

In what respect? So the professor knows about more obscure people, within his area of specialization, than I do. You are expecting that I am an omniscient being?

rite... the "obscure" dude who "inspired" the kibbutz movement.

It was a rank you were born into-- .

NOT IT WAS NOT !

No one was "born" a Knight !!

You screwed up, MAJORLY dude.

Some were of the "thinking" class instead of the "fighting" class;which in medieval Europe meant: the Church. Becket, despite his grandfather, would never have risen from son of a cloth-merchant to Lord Chancellor except through the Church, and was then moved from Lord Chancellor to Archbishop of Canterbury. Not that bishops never took to the battlefield: some did, carrying maces since they were not allowed swords.

The idea that in Europe there were only Knights and the Clergy is a joke.

Also, it doesn't save your point that the Knights were below ROYALTY!

The Daimyo (not "damiyo")

LoLz

so it's come to this eh?

That's all u got now?

had the same kind of weapons, except of finer quality, trained in the same way, and fought in the same battles, except surrounded by guards; just as the European kings had the same kind of weapons, except of finer quality, and trained in the same way as the knights, and fought in battle with them, surrounded by guards. Daimyo, like European kings, often died in battle; they were less likely than European kings to be captured on the battlefield because they would rather die than surrender. European kings who failed as warriors would often be deposed, if they had not been disinherited before reaching the throne, whereas Daimyo in such circumstances were expected to commit suicide and spare everyone the trouble.

Do you ever actually write to make a point that matters?

Cuz my point was that the Daimyo was ABOVE the samurai (a FACT, not an opinion), just as royalty was ABOVE the nobles and knights and everyone else. Royalty is hereditary, knighthood was not.

Yes of course there were. The Japanese, too, had their equivalent of "third sons of petty barons, with no hope of land of their own" but everyone from those, on the bottom, to the Shogun, at the top, were all part of one military caste, interrelated by tangled marriage alliances, obeying the same code of honor, very much as it was in medieval Europe.

--

The royalty WERE from the military caste. I mentioned Robert Longsword losing his shot at the throne due to insufficient valor: his father William the Conqueror, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy, became Duke by killing all the rival claimants in battle, and then became King because king Harold Godwinson of England, after killing king Harald Hardraade of Norway (who was also trying to seize England) at the battle of Stamford, then was killed himself on the battlefield of Hastings, shot right through the eye and then hacked to pieces. That was how kingship was acquired and maintained in those days, and I am astounded that you do not know that.

If the King died in battle, that meant he lost a WAR! It wasn't as if he was dueling in the front melee lines!!

It doesn't matter where they were "from" !

My point is what they WERE.

The top elite of EVERY society was not the "warrior caste" it was ROYALTY!

That's what the word "monk" MEANT, somebody who stayed in their monastery, for life. The Templars were not "monks": I don't know what you think the word means.

Military orders like the Templars were monks with special privileges. For example:

"The State of the Teutonic Order, (German: Deutschordensland), also Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights or Ordensstaat[1]pronounced [ˈɔɐdənsˌʃtaːt] "Order-State"), was formed during the Teutonic Knights' conquest of the pagan West-Baltic Old Prussians (Latin: Prutenii) in the 13th century in 1224 during the Northern Crusades."

because the entire military caste was bound by the same code of honor from top to bottom.

So they started the crusades... without thinking they would be dragged in unwillingly due to a code of honor???

LoLz

good one.

They were like medieval royalty, who were INSEPARABLE from the warrior caste. And I have provided you TONS of information, about how ancient societies operated all over the world:

You have provided nothing to support your point that the top elite (i.e the rulers) was the "warrior caste".

Every point you have brought to support that has been refuted.

I Googled "Maori chief",

My room mate is not Maori, is Niuen (spelling?)

got this article about the most famous of them:
Wiremu Kingi
Born Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitake, 1795
Died 13 January 1882, Kaingaru near Waitara
Nationality Te Āti Awa Māori
Occupation Chief of the Te Āti Awa iwi and warrior

plus pictures of Maori chiefs, every one of them holding a spear or a battle-axe, and more articles saying things like "In 1845, Hone Heke, a Maori chief, headed an uprising on the North Island," and "Pōtatau I, Māori King (Pōtatau Te Wherowhero) (circa 1800 – June 25, 1860) was a Māori warrior, leader of the Waikato tribes, the first Māori King and founder of the Te Wherowhero royal dynasty." I find that there were two words for "chief", Ariki and Rangitari, which may represent two different kinds of chief, like the "war chief" and "medicine chief" in North America or "chief" and "big man" in Papua.

I love it when you do all this work to prove my point. Notice how he STARTED as a warrior, and then founded a DYNASTY, and became royalty.

It doesnt matter how Kings Start. They end up Kings! And Royalty is absolutely separate from "warrior castes" always!

Chomsky said the ADVANTAGE was taking the Canal from an ally and giving it to an enemy; you have already agreed that was the DISADVANTAGE

Quit twisting my words. I said it was MORE important to maintain superiority over European "allies" for the US then subvert fledgling states like Egypt.

His perceptions of what motivates people are stark stone blind.

Whatever u say... elijah

: P

 

[bob x]

They aren't HIS ideas! The fact that ALL human reasoning requires induction, and is therefore flawed, is not Popper's idea!

Who said it was??? You are the one bringing Popper's name (irrelevantly) into the discussion.

No, you are claiming that because your rationality is "shared" and the Prophet's is not, yours is therefore automatically superior.

Indeed I am. I do not claim that observation is infallible, or that any humans (especially those claiming to speak for God) are infallible. You pointed out cases where shared observations had proven mistaken-- but how did you prove that they were mistaken? By recourse to further shared observations: even you would see the weakness of saying "They were mistaken, because I say so, and God revealed it to me!"

What it actually did was cement a distinction between adopted and blood relatives, something that was not present in pre-Islamic Arabia.

For good reason. It is the inherent tension of living under one roof, or in one tent, which made it a wise practice for the men to avoid seducing away each other's women, and whether they were related by blood or not had no relevance to the wisdom of that practice. Treating the adopted as second-class relatives was a backward, not a forward step.

Who cares about your source? Some no name dude you found on google??

It is a BOOK, on the BOOKSHELF in my apartment, a book written by a respected academic and printed by a major university's press. I have been reading books (you've heard of books, haven't you?) for a half century, since long before the intertubes were invented.

"Although his work was forgotten for some time, its importance was revived with the birth of the Zionist movement. Articles on Hess and early translations of his works began appearing in the 1880s."

That had 2 hurt

On the contrary, I enjoy learning new things. Goldstein spoke only about his role in the 1860's, when his impact was nil, as your source Avineri acknowledges: "Rome and Jerusalem, subtitled The Last National Problem, appeared in l862. At the time of publication, it made little impact and was soon forgotten. Hess's socialist friends considered the work a personal idiosyncracy and did not take it seriously; Reform rabbis criticized it violently and Orthodox rabbis could not but approach it with a great deal of skepticism." [emphasis Avineri's, not mine] Goldstein does not mention his revival in the 1880's, but sees the kibbutzim as outgrowths of the Hovavei Zion movement's moshavim, which differed in lacking the socialistic emphasis on communal ownership, but shared the emphasis on "redeeming" the Jewish people by returning them to productive labor (instead of the largely parasitic trades to which European anti-Semitism had confined them); any dreams of statehood were to be deferred until the coming of the Messiah: the Hovavei Zion leader Achad Ha'am ("one of the people") spoke of Palestine as a "cultural center" for the Jews, and others used the phrase "Jewish homeland" which made its way into the Balfour Declaration.

Avineri puts Hess in the context of Hegelians who spoke of the Jewish "nation" in the language of Volk (more or less, "ethnicity") rather than Staat, and explained the Jews' persistence without any need for a state in terms of a peculiar historic role, universalist rather than particularist in nature. Hess was the first among such thinkers to aim at political revival of the state, in partnership with the Arabs: "Another aspect of Hess's project for a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine, concerns his awareness of the future needs of the Arab population in the area. Given his radical philosophy, Hess realizes that the whole Levant, as it was then called, would soon be in the throes of national movements that would dismember the Turkish Empire in Asia and Africa just as they had already diminished Turkish hegemony in the Balkans. Hess draws encouragement from French support, under Napoleon III, for Italian nationalism ... He hopes that a similar combination of spiritual and material considerations will move France not only to support Jewish independence in the Middle East but also to help the re-establishment of Arab states in Egypt and Syria. Thus decades before the emergence of an active Arab national movement, Hess's universalist nationalism leads him to become one of the first to call for both Jewish independence and Arab national self-determination." [Avineri's emphasis]

The Labor Zionists continued to maintain the Enlightenment hope for a unitary state in which all people would have equal rights regardless of religion or ethnicity: "The object of Zionism is to establish for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law... It has been said and is still being obstinately repeated by anti-Zionists again and again, that Zionism aims at the creation of an independent 'Jewish State' but this is wholly fallacious." (General Secretary Sokolow of the Zionist Congress, addressing the Paris Peace Conference) Balfour's declaration wanted it "clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" although privately he had serious misgivings: "The contradiction between the letters of the Covenant [of the League of Nations] and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the ‘independent nation’ of Palestine than in that of the ‘independent nation‘ of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose to even go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it."

A "Jewish state" aiming to exclude the Arabs first emerges as an aim, not of the Labor Zionists, but of the Revisionist Zionists, whose leader Jabotinsky wrote cynically: "So little Mohamed doesn't like us coming into the country? Of course not: why should he? We shall have to spirit him out of the country, by denying him economic opportunities here." But this was in the 1920's, after the Mufti had already started his campaign of violence and the notion of a unitary state with Jews and Arabs co-existing equally was already starting to look untenable.

 

[bob x]

No one was "born" a Knight !!

That's exactly like saying that no-one was "born" a King, and denying on that basis that kingship was hereditary. A king's son had to go through the same apprenticeship as any other knight's son and would be degraded in rank if he proved to lack military competence. Of course, the consequences of washing out were more severe for someone already at the bottom ranks, who would have to go out and work for a living; when Robert Longsword was busted, he only fell from heir to the kingship to heir to a duchy.

The idea that in Europe there were only Knights and the Clergy is a joke.

Hardly. It was not until the mid-13th century that there was any representation in government for the "Commons" (or "Third Estate"; these were the merchants with substantial property, not the peasantry); until then, yes indeed the clergy ("Lords spiritual" or "First Estate") and military ("Lords temporal" or "Second Estate") were the entirety of European government.

Also, it doesn't save your point that the Knights were below ROYALTY!

Royalty was a sub-type of knight: of course there was a hierarchy, ordered by amount of property controlled, from the landless extra sons at the bottom, up through the holders of little manors and baronies, to the rulers of great counties and duchies and finally to the kings. But all of these were one interlocked family, with even the lowest-ranked knight not too many links of blood or marriage from the king. And while you seem to think the term "knight" only applied to the low ranks, at the time it was perfectly natural to refer to the heir of England, Edward the Black Prince, as "the finest knight in Christendom": his training, armor, weaponry, and horse-equippage were of the same general kind as any knight's, if considerably more expensive.

so it's come to this eh?

When you mis-spelled it once, I assumed it was a typo. Dai or tai is the root (borrowed from Chinese) for "great"; myo is "renown; glory". From a Japanese encyclopedia: "In the Tokugawa period, the Daimyo were all the samurai whose revenues were superior to 10,000 koku of rice (or about 50,000 bushels or 1,510,000 liters - one koku of rice is enough to feed one person for one year)." [empashis added: as European "royalty" were a subtype of "knight", Japanese "daimyo" were a subtype of "samurai", the hierarchy in both cases being ranked by amount of property]

That's all u got now?

I gave you considerably more, if you cared to pay attention.

If the King died in battle, that meant he lost a WAR! It wasn't as if he was dueling in the front melee lines!!

Oh yes it was. Haven't you paid any attention to anything I've said? King Harold Godwinson was shot in the face and knocked off his horse at Hastings, whereupon William the Conqueror's guard cut down Harold's guard (which included his two surviving brothers) and hacked Harold to pieces (it is debated whether William took part in this personally), so thoroughly that the Saxons were unable to identify his body in the aftermath until his mistress, Edith Swansneck, noted a distinctive mole on his privates.

Harold and his men were not at their best because they had just been on a forced march half the length of England to get back from a bloody fight with Norway, during which his men had cut off the head of king Harald Hardrade and nailed it to Stamford Bridge. The English Harold's other brother, Tostig Godwinson, had been sacked as earl of Northumbria for showing cowardice in a battle against the Scots, and fell fighting for Hardrade's side: legend has it that in parley, the night before the battle, Tostig asked Harold how much land he would be willing to give to settle the matter, and Harold told him, "To you I will give six feet of ground; to Hardrade perhaps a little more, since he is so tall, though I mean to shorten him."

King John le Bon surrendered (he ended up having to cede half the territory of France for his ransom) when he took a sword-cut to the arm at Poitiers, after his guard-unit the Order of the Star, the pick of the knights of France including the rulers of some major counties, were wiped out. But I believe (I would have to look it up) that at the same battle the Black Prince, leader on the other side, got a mace-blow to the head and never recovered, although it took six years for him to die.

Nor were kings spared the harsh living conditions of military campaigns, and the resulting accidents and illnesses (which have always claimed more casualties than combat itself). King Frederick Barbarossa drowned on the Third Crusade in a treacherous wilderness stream. King Louis IX ("St. Louis") caught a fatal pneumonia while besieging Tunis, when a nasty turn of weather swamped his tent in mud.

Military orders like the Templars were monks with special privileges.

Like the privilege of not being a monk? A "monk" was someone who lived in a "monastery"; the Templars' chapter-houses and temples were not called "monasteries" because they weren't. A "monastery" is a place that you don't leave. The Templars were knights with special oaths.

"The State of the Teutonic Order, (German: Deutschordensland), also Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights or Ordensstaat

Orden does not mean "monastic"; these were the Teutonic Knights, not the Teutonic Monks. The author of that Wiki is simply making an error.

So they started the crusades... without thinking they would be dragged in unwillingly due to a code of honor???

There was nothing UNWILLING about it. Knights of every rank, from the landless seeking their fortune all the way up to the rulers of nations, participated enthusiastically from the start (enthusiasm would wane as the project went sour). The First Crusade was initially led by the Crown Prince of England and included close family members of every other king; the Second Crusade was personally led by the King of France; the Third Crusade was led by the three most powerful kings.

You have provided nothing to support your point that the top elite (i.e the rulers) was the "warrior caste".

Every point you have brought to support that has been refuted.

Ignored, rather. Are you going to ignore all of the above again?

My room mate is not Maori, is Niuen (spelling?)

I see. Well that is one way to avoid the need for a warrior caste: live on an island hundreds of miles from the nearest speck of other land, with little shoreline even accessible to boats, supporting a population barely over a thousand. The Niuean participation in World War I appears to be the sum total of their military history: the high chief "volunteered" 200 men (indeed, he did not go himself) and the offer was accepted because the non-cooperation of the "King Country" caused a shortfall for the New Zealand recruiters; NCO ranks were given to those with any English, not on the basis of any social rank at home; they were found unfit for anything but support roles, and were supposed to be kept with Middle Eastern units for reasons of climate, which would have sent them to Palestine-- but a bureaucratic bungle sent them to France where they all got sick.

Notice how he STARTED as a warrior, and then founded a DYNASTY, and became royalty.

Uh, the actual story is that he was acclaimed by the other warrior-chiefs at the end of a distinguished fighting career (he only lived a year and a half after his coronation) in the hope of inducing his son to continue providing unified leadership in the war against the whites, but the son was then derided as having "lost his mana" when he declared that further fighting was pointless; this undercut his diplomatic effort to obtain recognition from England of the "King Country" as an independent sovereignty, and it was folded into New Zealand (not happily). The "kingship" of further successors has been a meaningless honorific.

Quit twisting my words. I said it was MORE important to maintain superiority over European "allies" for the US then subvert fledgling states like Egypt.

Oh. Then you are as deluded as Chomsky. The damage to relations with Britain and especially with France, which pulled out of NATO for the duration of de Gaulle's reign and built a separate nuclear arsenal, was the DOWNSIDE of Eisenhower's decision; the upside lay entirely elsewhere.

 

[bob x]

double post; won't let me delete anymore

 

[c0de]

.

@ Bob


u know, u are making me reach levels of boredom now that i thought i was totally incapable of reaching.

Thanks (<< sarcasm)

Who said it was??? You are the one bringing Popper's name (irrelevantly) into the discussion.

The only reason you think it is irrelevant is because you have no idea what is going on here. You know what you are now? Like a prohibition era gangster spray firing a Thompson with a drum mag, hoping to hit whatever you can.

As Mr. T said: "I pity the fool"

Indeed I am. I do not claim that observation is infallible, or that any humans (especially those claiming to speak for God) are infallible. You pointed out cases where shared observations had proven mistaken-- but how did you prove that they were mistaken? By recourse to further shared observations: even you would see the weakness of saying "They were mistaken, because I say so, and God revealed it to me!"

Are you aware of Plato's Cave Analogy? Cuz you just stepped out from one cave, and into another. Congratulations. How's the view?

For good reason. It is the inherent tension of living under one roof, or in one tent, which made it a wise practice for the men to avoid seducing away each other's women, and whether they were related by blood or not had no relevance to the wisdom of that practice. Treating the adopted as second-class relatives was a backward, not a forward step.

wait Wait WAIT !!!

Am I getting a lecture on sexual morality

... from a homosexual ??

i.e. a deviant heathen !!

LoLz : P

(j/k don't get ur panties in a knot)


Anywayzzz, It's about calling a spade a spade. Consider the case of adopted children who are never told they are adopted. Their identity is their RIGHT and only causes complications for them later on in there life when they do find out.

As for going after each other's women, that's a funny comment coming from a Westerner. Last I checked, well over half of all married individuals have admitted to cheating on their spouse in the US in scientific studies.

so spare the moralizing elijah...

It is a BOOK, on the BOOKSHELF in my apartment, a book written by a respected academic and printed by a major university's press. I have been reading books (you've heard of books, haven't you?) for a half century, since long before the intertubes were invented.

Calm down grandpa... better watch your blood pressure eh?

I gave you the link of a source who is much more respected then this no name dude you pulled out of a hat. His research was taught in the course I took two years ago in my last year at UofT. My professor (who is an Israeli) runs a very respected Political Science journal (whose name escapes me) out of the Monk Center in Toronto. We were taught about the motivations of the Kibbutzim and the whole effort. It was always about independence.

On the contrary, I enjoy learning new things.

I have been educating you considerably over the past months... I think I should start charging tuition... it's only fair, rite?

Goldstein spoke only about his role in the 1860's, when his impact was nil

The waves of immigration started in the late 19th century. And when the did, Hess had become an inspiration for the kibbutz movement. That's all that matters here.

one of the first to call for both Jewish independence and Arab national self-determination." [Avineri's emphasis]

although privately he had serious misgivings: "The contradiction between the letters of the Covenant [of the League of Nations] and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the ‘independent nation’ of Palestine than in that of the ‘independent nation‘ of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose to even go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it."

[emphasis MINE]


By the way, this intell even backs up the original point about Zionism being a trigger for Palestinian nationalism.

And for Hess to say that he wanted everyone to live in peace has nothing to do with the actual reality of how the Jews went about it. They started buying up all the land in the spirit of building an independent state. Ideally, they might not have wanted any problems with the inhabitants, but what the hell does that matter when the land that they wanted to take was NOT THEIRS??? That's like sayin, hey, I'm gonna take over your house, but no hard feeling, k?

give me a frekkin break.

Clearly, the Jews started it.

And they know it!

That's exactly like saying that no-one was "born" a King,

(LoLz)

Actually, no, it isn't.

Knighthood had to be EARNED through a series of trials. First you're a page, then a squire, and after years and years, you might become a Knight.

The first born prince is in line for the throne. His only contribution was being born.

nice try though...

(not really... u still fail)

Royalty was a sub-type of knight:

ha!

that was almost funny...

Hardly. It was not until the mid-13th century that there was any representation in government for the "Commons"

overly simplistic view of medieval society.

When you mis-spelled it once, I assumed it was a typo. Dai or tai is the root (borrowed from Chinese) for "great"; myo is "renown; glory". From a Japanese encyclopedia: "In the Tokugawa period, the Daimyo were all the samurai whose revenues were superior to 10,000 koku of rice (or about 50,000 bushels or 1,510,000 liters - one koku of rice is enough to feed one person for one year)." [empashis added: as European "royalty" were a subtype of "knight", Japanese "daimyo" were a subtype of "samurai", the hierarchy in both cases being ranked by amount of property]

like i said b4... u have waaaaaaaay 2 much time on your hands dude...

don't people your age go out and feed the ducks or something???

I gave you considerably more, if you cared to pay attention.

whatever gramps...

most of what you have given is drivel, plain and simple. Half of the stuff you write doesn't even relate to anything. its like you just like to type and read your own words so much that you just start blathering on and on... (and on and on and on)

Oh yes it was. Haven't you paid any attention to anything I've said? King Harold Godwinson was shot in the face and knocked off his horse at Hastings, whereupon William the Conqueror's guard cut down Harold's guard (which included his two surviving brothers) and hacked Harold to pieces (it is debated whether William took part in this personally),

Actually, Harold was shot by an ARROW that was shot OVER the front lines of the English and into the rear guard (even this is a "legend").

And the fact that the Norman King was brave enough to lead from the front is an EXCEPTION, not the rule. Doesn't prove anything.

Nor were kings spared the harsh living conditions of military campaigns, and the resulting accidents and illnesses (which have always claimed more casualties than combat itself). King Frederick Barbarossa drowned on the Third Crusade in a treacherous wilderness stream. King Louis IX ("St. Louis") caught a fatal pneumonia while besieging Tunis, when a nasty turn of weather swamped his tent in mud.

Has nothing to do with the fact that ROYALTY is fundamentally a different class than all the rest.

Like the privilege of not being a monk? A "monk" was someone who lived in a "monastery"; the Templars' chapter-houses and temples were not called "monasteries" because they weren't. A "monastery" is a place that you don't leave. The Templars were knights with special oaths.

Well, everyone seems to think they were warrior monks.

Warrior monk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

if you wanna argue semantics, fine, whatever.

doesn't really matter at this point.

There was nothing UNWILLING about it. Knights of every rank, from the landless seeking their fortune all the way up to the rulers of nations, participated enthusiastically from the start (enthusiasm would wane as the project went sour). The First Crusade was initially led by the Crown Prince of England and included close family members of every other king; the Second Crusade was personally led by the King of France; the Third Crusade was led by the three most powerful kings.

You seemed like you were suggesting they were unwillingly dragged into it, not me. I know it was a political action by the elite to satisfy their ends, to which they dragged their populations in.

Ignored, rather. Are you going to ignore all of the above again?

yea, i am the one doing the ignoring here... (ROLLING EYES ABOUT TO FALL OUT OF SOCKETS!!)

I see. Well that is one way to avoid the need for a warrior caste: live on an island hundreds of miles from the nearest speck of other land,

Great argument... I guess by that reasoning, America has no need for a military, since it is bordered by Canada and Mexico.

Wherever human societies exist, there was warfare. And there was war in Niuean society as well, over things as little as the theft of cattle between villages.

Have you seen the Hakka traditional dance of these people? (similar to the Kiwi rugby team's?) I saw it up close and personal recently after my room mate drank two bottles of Chinese wine and did it in front of our hosts. I was impressed especially by the part where he pulled out an imaginary heart from his enemy's chest and ate it.

Uh, the actual story is that he was acclaimed by the other warrior-chiefs at the end of a distinguished fighting career (he only lived a year and a half after his coronation) in the hope of inducing his son to continue providing unified leadership in the war against the whites, but the son was then derided as having "lost his mana" when he declared that further fighting was pointless; this undercut his diplomatic effort to obtain recognition from England of the "King Country" as an independent sovereignty, and it was folded into New Zealand (not happily). The "kingship" of further successors has been a meaningless honorific.

Kings lose their influence when they start losing control over what they claim to control. No mortal is above disaster.

The problem with your argument is that you are trying to show that there is no distinction between classes when there clearly is and always has been.

Oh. Then you are as deluded as Chomsky.

this coming from the guy who thought he was a prophet...

The damage to relations with Britain and especially with France, which pulled out of NATO for the duration of de Gaulle's reign and built a separate nuclear arsenal, was the DOWNSIDE of Eisenhower's decision; the upside lay entirely elsewhere.

Of course the Europeans were gonna be pissed!

Duh!

But so what? Since when do the yanks give a crap ??

This was their geopolitical reality! They considered it
their right to shape the world. No influence
by the French and the Brits would be tolerated in that space.
Especially when their entire reconstruction was financed
by the US.

Can you seriously expect to have an independent
foreign policy after your entire society is rescued and
rebuilt by someone else? All you have the right to do
at that stage is act snooty... something the europeans
have been doing for half a century, with little actual
affect.

The only real power in Europe is Germany.
And guess what, Russia is lookin' mighty
attractive for them right now.

The brits and the french will always tow the
american line, and the yanks know that.
Without America, they can never contain Germany.

 

[bob x]

u know, u are making me reach levels of boredom now that i thought i was totally incapable of reaching.

Nobody forces you to read or to reply.

The only reason you think it is irrelevant is because you have no idea what is going on here.

I certainly don't know what is in your head, or what point you think you are making. We were talking about the difference between shared observation and private revelation as sources of truth, and I agree that neither is infallible, but certainly trying to find out the truth by taking as our first principle, "Believe whatever somebody says if he claims to speak for God," would only lead to contradiction, since you would have to believe the Book of Mormon and the Bhagavad Gita the same as the Bible and the Qur'an. You would need some prior principle to decide which prophet you were going to rely on. Most people who rely on some spokesman for God make their choice on the principle of believing what their parents told them, but of course we all learn that our parents are just fallible people, not the gods they appear to infants.

I have heard, for example, Muslims defend their reliance on Muhammad by saying that even before he started getting revelations, he was known as al-Amin "the truthful" because of his honesty: this would be a recourse to shared observations, making the induction that since he had told the truth on many things, we should infer that he tells the truth on everything. Abdullah started this thread saying we can confirm the Qur'an as a true revelation by checking it against scientific observations, an approach you deride. I don't find that examination of the Qur'an gives the impression that Muhammad knew any more than anybody else of his time. Your reply, apparently, is that no human reasoning leads to perfect truth: well, who said it did? We are always dealing in greater or lesser probabilities, not in certainties; we are finite beings after all. Do you have anything to say that would defend the Qur'an, make it seem more probable that it is a source of truth?

wait Wait WAIT !!!

Am I getting a lecture on sexual morality

... from a homosexual ??

Indeed you are, from someone who does not sleep around and does not interfere in the affairs of others. I consider my own conduct more moral than Muhammad's in this respect.

Consider the case of adopted children who are never told they are adopted. Their identity is their RIGHT and only causes complications for them later on in there life when they do find out.

What does that have to do with the topic? We were talking about what justification there could be for giving lesser rights to the adopted than to blood kin.

Calm down grandpa... better watch your blood pressure eh?

If you're just going to be nasty, why don't you just go away? You seem to have ceased taking any enjoyment in the conversation a long time ago.

I gave you the link of a source who is much more respected then this no name dude you pulled out of a hat. His research was taught in the course I took two years ago in my last year at UofT.

University of Toronto is a perfectly respectable school. So is New York University, which is somewhat larger. I did not disrespect your source, why should you disrespect mine? I did not "pull him out of a hat" for this discussion, it was the book on modern Jewish history that I happened to already have on hand.

I have been educating you considerably over the past months... I think I should start charging tuition... it's only fair, rite?

I do enjoy learning new things, which is my principal motive for engaging in such conversations. I'm not sure what the motive is on your side, since you show zero willingness to learn, and little taste for debate.

"The contradiction between the letters of the Covenant [of the League of Nations] and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the ‘independent nation’ of Palestine than in that of the ‘independent nation‘ of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose to even go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it."

[emphasis MINE]

No, actually that was MY emphasis: out of a lengthy piece on Balfour, I picked out the most relevant sentences. What made the Zionist immigration different from other immigrations was that the inhabitants had no self-governance, no sway over the decisions of the Ottomans or British about how many newcomers there would end up being; I am certainly not arguing that the Palestinian decision to turn to random violence came out of nowhere, with no grievances to drive it. I am simply saying that choosing the path of violence was a poor decision on their part, which has made their situation much worse than it needed to be.

By the way, this intell even backs up the original point about Zionism being a trigger for Palestinian nationalism.

I thought we had both agreed on that.

And for Hess to say that he wanted everyone to live in peace has nothing to do with the actual reality of how the Jews went about it. They started buying up all the land

Yes, well, when you spend money and buy a home, one of the things you are supposed to get for your money is the right to live there. They didn't buy "all" the land, only from those who were willing to sell.

in the spirit of building an independent state.

Which would have been good for the Arabs as well, if they could have accepted it. Should it have remained an Ottoman province forever?

Ideally, they might not have wanted any problems with the inhabitants,

Ideally, if I buy the house next to yours, I would hope that you would not try to burn me out just because I am not "your kind" of person (wrong religion, wrong skin-color, wrong sexuality, whatever). If you liked the old neighbors better, fine, you don't have to invite me to your parties, but it's no business of yours who the neighbors chose to sell to.

but what the hell does that matter when the land that they wanted to take was NOT THEIRS??? That's like sayin, hey, I'm gonna take over your house, but no hard feeling, k?

Uh... Jews weren't TAKING anything, at that point.

Clearly, the Jews started it.

And they know it!

You are claiming that, just by living there, they were committing a crime that justified murdering them.

Knighthood had to be EARNED through a series of trials. First you're a page, then a squire, and after years and years, you might become a Knight.

The first born prince is in line for the throne. His only contribution was being born.

No, succession by the first born was not an automatic thing until quite late; I keep trying to point out to you, but you don't seem to hear, that kingship, LIKEWISE, had to be earned through military prowess. The English throne, for example, was elective not hereditary until the Plantagenet dynasty: the choice usually fell to a close relative of the old king, but not necessarily his firstborn son; Aethelred the Unready ("unready" actually meant more like "ill-advised; rash") was passed over in favor of his younger but more valorous brother, whom he then rebelled against and managed to kill; the witan (leadership council of the military class) accepted him under duress, but then invited Sven of Denmark (who already held land in the English north) to take the throne instead; Aethelred was killed in combat, Sven by illness from the rigors of the campaign. The English succession continued to be disputed, every generation, for 300 years. From Plantagenet times onward, succession by the first-born son did become more automatic: except that this was actually worse for them, for if they did not prove military competence, they would then be deposed and killed.

overly simplistic view of medieval society.

You have ZERO understanding of medieval society. The kings were not a separate "class" from the knights: it was all one extended family, tied together by blood and intermarriage, all dedicated to military pursuits with similar equipment and codes of conduct; like any military, it was strictly hierarchical, and the kings were the top rank.

And the fact that the Norman King was brave enough to lead from the front is an EXCEPTION, not the rule.

No: although the kings were always surrounded by guard units and their chances of getting killed were less than that of lower-ranking soldiers, they often ended up in the thick of it.

Well, everyone seems to think they were warrior monks.

Warrior monk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Didn't you even read your own link? It is just a pointer elsewhere: it says, if you find somebody talking about a "warrior monk" this or this is probably what they really mean. The Shaolin monks are genuine monks, who live in monasteries, as well as teach martial arts; the Templars were genuine knights, from military families often of high rank, who did take some religious vows.

An "order" was any group with an oath of obedience to a superior: there were purely military orders (some just honorary, like the Order of the Garter; some special units, like the Order of the Star) as well as religious orders. Many religious orders, but not all, had an oath of stability, promising to stay in one place: those were the "monks". Most religious orders, but not all, had oaths of chastity and poverty: those who swore to chastity and poverty, but not stability, were "friars"; those who did not take these oaths either (like the Augustinian order) were "lay brothers". The Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonics were unusual in taking the oath of "poverty", though this would better be understood as an oath of "communism": they renounced private property, giving everything to the Order, but lived quite well, since many who joined were of high rank and donated quite a bit on entry (jealousy of their wealth was the Templars' downfall). The Templars, quite unusually, took the oath of chastity: and this is what moderns mean by thinking of them as "monks".

My objection was originally not about the fine semantics, but about your implication that most of the crusaders were monks in origin, when they were from the class of knights (often of high, even royal rank) some of whom did later take religious vows reminiscent of monks.

And there was war in Niuean society as well, over things as little as the theft of cattle between villages.

But defending from invasion by outsiders was not one of their concerns, so the need for a military dominating the governance of Niue as a whole never existed.

The problem with your argument is that you are trying to show that there is no distinction between classes when there clearly is and always has been.

Perhaps we are just not using the word "class" in the same way. There was always a sharp distinction of "rank" within the military caste, but I call the whole caste ("caste" in the Indian sense of an extended family with a shared occupation) one "class"; the medieval term was "estate".

The brits and the french will always tow the
american line, and the yanks know that.

The French almost never toe the American line. That rupture has never really healed.