6.20.2007

A Beast With Two Faces

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What does it say about a political party that it opens its arms only to the downtrodden peoples from every country, whether they are legal or illegal, decent or indecent? Not because the party really cares about these people, as in Jesus's admonition about caring for "the least among us," but simply because these people represent a large influx of new voters. For it is he without any idea or means to lift himself out of the circumstances he was born into who will always vote for the person or party promising him not freedom but free stuff. He will always cheer upon hearing he will be rewarded for doing nothing but remain indebted to his enablers, and he will cheer all the louder when he hears the source of all the free stuff he's getting will be coming from the middle class and wealthy this party has brainwashed him into believing are the cause of all his misfortunes.

What does it say about a party which cares not who is voting for it as long as it stays in power? What does it say about a party which has sung this same "We are here to help the underclass" tune since I don't know when and yet has done not one thing to lift the underclass out of its malaise? Quite the opposite, this party only exists because of misery, and as a consequence if this party is to continue it must use every trick learned from history to perpetuate the underclass. It must increase the misery index in order to outpace the other party. The handiest source of misery is just on the other side of our southern border. Therefore this party will do everything it can, legal or otherwise, to get les miserables into the States and onto their voting roles.

Unfortunately, the other party does nothing to stop this. In fact the titular head of the other party aggressively encourages it, because this fellow's supporters see these same people as a source of cheap labor. So it works out just fine for both parties. Unfortunately it's undermining the very foundations of our country and culture. But such parties can't be bothered with trivia like country and culture.

It is difficult to see why any of the rest of us should support either party. They like to say we conservatives want a return to times past. Baloney. We don't like people ripping us off. We don't like seeing both parties throwing money - our money - at problems, problems that money can't solve - without even consulting us to see if we think it's a good idea. What happened to representative government? What happened to "The wisdom of the masses?"

What happened is that those in the parties have decided to represent not us but only themselves. Worse, the misery party has found itself another mass to turn to, not for wisdom but for votes. But how can they win elections when "the rest of us" are still, for the time being, the majority? They can only do it because there is a large portion of "the rest of us" which votes not with its brain but with its heart. That big center portion which seems to feel there are only two choices and will vote for one or the other based on their emotional loyalties, or to punish the other party for what they perceive to be past sins. Emotional loyalties? Yes, things like, well that party is for protecting the right of a woman to choose, or that party is concerned about healthcare for the poor, or maybe it seems "greener" to me and "green is good because I'm concerned about global warming" and all that claptrap. The parties have learned to play the emotions of the "moderate" voter like a Stradivarius.

I have seen the enemy. It is NOT we. It is they. It is, like Janus, a beast with two faces, one which constantly frowns, the other which slyly winks.
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6.02.2007

SUMER, THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION


Göbekli Tepe is a vast archeological site which lies at 2,493 feet atop a mountain in the Anatolia region of Turkey. Topographic scans reveal that nearby structures, still awaiting excavation, probably date to 14 to 15 thousand years ago, potentially as far back as the concluding millennia of the Pleistocene. One of the, if not the oldest archeological site yet discovered on Earth. The site baffles scientists, who have yet to discover the actual purpose of the massive and sophisticated site. Whatever it was, it was not a “city.”


The first and oldest true city on Earth was located in a region known as Sumer in what was the southern tip of ancient Mesopotamia, now Iraq.

The city was known as Eridu and dates to at least 4,000 BC. Older than Ur, older than Damascus, Babylon, Ninevah, even the biblical Jehrico stone fortress where Joshua and his army made "the walls tumble down." Eridu predates the building of the Great Pyramid.


In Eridu (note the obvious similarity to the word Earth), kingship - organized civilization - first appeared and flourished, making Eridu not just the first fully functioning city but one which can brag of truly amazing achievements.


Anthropologists tell us that it took roughly eleven million years for humans to evolve from our first man-like ape ancestors to primitive stone-era man. Then, suddenly 35,000 years ago - almost “instantly” in anthropologic terms - just like stone-age men in Arthur C. Clarke's "2001" a new order of “thinking man” evolved. Even more amazing, these ancestors of ours at about 5,000 BC went from declining groups of regressing cavemen – to a full-fledged civilization centered about Sumer.


How is it possible that these same people suddenly" began practicing advanced astronomy, mathematics, agriculture, had the first written language on Earth, were master builders and architechs, had the first written code of law, domesticated animals, practiced medicine, preventive medicine, performed surgery when needed, established art, poetry, music and most of the things we today take for granted?


Most astounding was their knowledge of celestial mechanics. They knew the movements of the sun, stars and planets, and were able to predict eclipses and celestial precession with computer-like accuracy. They built soaring temples aligned along east-west axes - equinoctical alignments which were responsible for fixing the seasons. They are the people who first established the three vaults of the sky, divided the celestial sphere into 360º, and established the twelve constellations of the zodiac. They knew other esoterica – of the planets not visible to the naked eye, planets not “discovered” by modern science until after The Civil War! – and many other things so incongruous that were I to list them, you would have a difficult time believing them. We know this because scholars have been busy at work translating the prolific Sumerian historic records discovered as they unearth more and more of the ancient cities.


All this was lost when the Mesopotamian civilization, for reasons equally mysterious, dispersed. One branch of this once highly-advanced culture spread east into India and China, the other west to Europe. They are known by some as the Aryan race.


Millennia subsequent to that, mankind entered a dark age when it was believed that the world was flat and that the sun, moon, planets and stars revolved about the Earth. A few Greek philosophers had heard Sumerian legends and so believed the earth was spherical and not the center of the Universe. But by the time of the Romans, that kind of thinking was frowned upon. It wasn't until hundreds of years later that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and others dared to contradict these wrong-headed ideas, some not publishing their theories until their dying day. Only then did Renaissance thinkers begin grappling with what the Sumerians had known millennia earlier.


Almost shockingly, it wasn't until the mid-1920's (just eighty years ago!) that scientists gathered to finalize the modern vault of the sky. They agreed on the constellations of the northern and southern hemispheres, and the central band which houses what we know as the constellations of the zodiac. They settled on the Sumerian divine number - twelve. The star configurations correspond almost exactly to what the Sumerians calculated at least six thousand years earlier. This was no coincidence, any more than the name “Eagle” given to the first human-controlled ship to land on the Moon was a coincidence. Eagle was a word used by Sumerians to describe their lords, men who came down from the sky riding in winged ships.


Sumerian mythology claims the lord Enki and then Enlil were the Eagles who first came down to Earth. Enki landed by chance or by choice on the ancient shores of the Persian Gulf, establishing there Eridu and eventually kingship on Earth. Their father and supreme leader was Anu, who on occasion would come to Earth to visit his sons. It was they and their people who in their own self interests created the first modern Earthman. They called him "Adama," showing him the secrets - some, not all - of their advanced civilization. There are too many similarities between Sumerian mythology and the much later Old Testament - the Garden of Eden, Adam's eating of The Forbidden Fruit and being cast out, Noah and The Flood, the Nefilim and so many more - to be mere coincidence. Our Bible is a clever re-write of older Sumerian writings.


There are secrets still to be uncovered, buried beneath the sands of the Middle East, particularly in what once was Mesopotamia. These secrets may be so shocking that I seriously doubt they will be widely released. But with today's internet, let's hope these secrets won't stay buried long.


One is left wondering how it is that the once-fertile regions of Mesopotamia, today's Iraq, the cradle of civilization on Earth, descended into an endless series of terrible wars spanning the last six thousand years. Some believe that, consciously or otherwise, we are even today involved in the same mighty struggle with the peoples of that region because somehow we each are influenced by the ancient struggles among those earliest gods for domination over the human race.


There is something mysterious and unknown, something of enormous importance, buried neath those ancient drifting sands. No, it is not oil. But to its discoverors, domination of the world may pass.
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