I thought these two ‘History by Maps’ videos were illuminating to me.
I have always wondered why Israel, whom I regard as an illegal state, can’t just give the land back to the Palestinians, as it was always their land from the dim memories of time. It has never been anything other than Palestine until the meddling of Britain.
But things, as they stand now (see ‘map’ movie two), are so complex, I cannot see how this thing can possibly be resolved!
This is a direct spinoff, of Western meddling which continues worldwide as we know.
These videos offer no opinion – only history…….enjoy.
I am going to join a Philosophy class. They sent me a quote from Bertrand Russell. In it he says in Chapter XV The value of Philosophy
If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it. It is in these effects, therefore, if anywhere, that the value of philosophy must be primarily sought.
He was writing in 1912.
I think he grew up!
In The Impact of Science on Society. Bertrand Russell wrote in 1952:
” The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray . When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”
I don’t know enough about Bertrand Russell – yet – but his words are prophetic. It seems to me that philosophy makes problems; it is not just the ‘effects upon the lives of those who study it’ but the effects on the rest of society when it is imposed ON us…..
Here is some information that might enlighten further…
I have ties with South Africa. As I have said on this blog, I taught at an ANC school many years ago when the ANC was outlawed. I listened to the “old guard” ANC and their plans for the future. And I have written about how, in their manifesto, the original idea was that ALL peoples in South Africa were necessary for a robust and prosperous nation.
The old guard ANC are NOT the same as the new, young EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters), whose leader Julius Malema, is savaging at the heels of the ‘old guard’ to change.
But, as in the West, White Culture is being overcome by the very left of left “No Peace Without Justice” victim socialism, so it is flourishing in South Africa too. Anything ‘white’ is rejected – Shakespeare, Literature, Art, History, Music etc are being spurned in universities and young black South Africans are growing up ignorant. Malema’s education is minimal, but his ideas are finding foothold in the victimised minds of the left of left socialists; the young people.
So, we see the old guard ANC in a crises. Malema alleges Quote –
Cape Town – EFF leader Julius Malema has blamed the Democratic Alliance (DA) and president Cyril Ramaphosa for US President Donald Trump’s tweet on South Africa’s land reform.
In a tweet which sparked social media outrage, Trump said he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures” and the killing of farmers in South Africa.
Malema speaking during a media briefing accused the DA and Ramaphosa’s “Group” (faction) of being responsible for the utterances by Trump.
“We’ll not engage government about Trump, this is a government of cowards. Our suspicion is that the DA is involved in this thing. Our suspicion is that Cyril’s group is involved in this thing.
“They do not believe in the expropriation of land without compensation, including Cyril himself. So they want to use these types of threats to get out of this thing. We must never be fooled here, we’re not kids,” said Malema.
During an answer and question session in Parliament, Ramaphosa hinted that land will be expropriated, but was mum on whether without compensation.
Ramaphosa also rejected a proposal by the EFF that all land should be under the sole custodianship of the state.
Malema said South African Communist Party and Jeremy Cronin, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan did not agree with the view that land should be appropriated without compensation.
“Our suspicion is that Cyril’s group, the DA are involved in this thing. They don’t believe in land expropriation of without compensation. They are lobbying for international support against this. (My bold) At least Afriforum is doing it in the open,” said Malema.
Lobby group Afriforum has claimed credit for Trump’s tweet, saying that its work in the US has led to his tweets on land expropriation and murders on farms.
I became interested in Consciousness as an unexplained phenomena in about 1998 when we came to the UK.
Before that, I simply believed, like most people, that consciousness was me in my soul – my spiritual aspect.
But the UK made me question that. The UK had a negative attitude to things spiritual and growing atheist attitudes everywhere. Atheism was rapidly becoming fashionable. Instead of simply experiencing my observer self as the experiencer experiencing being alive – my soul, so to speak, I found everything had to be ‘proved’ by science.
Someone on an Atheist forum I was following suggested I find answers to my questions by researching Michael Persinger. So I did.
It didn’t really help me, as I have had spiritual experiences of my own, ones not triggered by magnetic fields. I don’t think real experiences can be induced – they are spontaneous, ‘given’ really. Other people who had a negative effect on me were Susan Blackmore and Richard Dawkins both of whom I consider spiritually ‘locked’. They were at the height of their brief fame.
Dawkins sat in Persinger’s God Helmet and NOTHING happened to him. Say no more! So did Susan Blackmore (video below).
Anyway Michael Persinger has just died. He was persecuted for his use of swearing in lectures by the rise of the very far left fashion of thinking that pervades universities today. Read here…
“One of my techniques is to expose people to all types of different words,” he told CBC Sudbury in 2016.
“Silly words, complex words, emotional words, profane words. Because they influence how you make decisions and how you think.”
Persinger said he had used the form for more than 10 years, but later in 2016, he was told he was no no longer teaching the course. His union filed a grievance against the school for violating Persinger’s academic freedom.
Some students also started a petition at the time to have Persinger reinstated to teach the course.
How the mighty fall nowadays, not for the challenging ideas they offer, but for the way they behave. Death is a natural way to get rid of old academics whose time is over. I liked Persinger. He should have been better cherished.
I am a vaper. I have been vaping for seven years. A friend has been vaping for ten years. We feel great! We think we feel better than if we’d stayed smoking.
I am absolutely sick of all the bullshit we keep hearing in the mainstream media quoting bad science to prove vaping is harmful. To find out if vaping is helpful for smokers we have the millions of anecdotal stories from delighted smokers themselves: such as stories from smokers like me, who smoked for fifty years, and who stopped (accidentally) seven years ago by taking up vaping and not had a cigarette since.
The press are doing smokers a terrible dis-service by putting fear into society about “the dangers of vaping”. First of all, they put the fear of god into the families of those smokers who try to switch from smoking to vaping; secondly, fearophobics stop smokers trying something to replace smoking – with vaping – which is SIGNIFICANTLY safer.
Please stop reading the fear stories about vaping. The fact that Australia has banned vaping has nothing to do with questioning the health benefits of vaping, but everything to do with the control the Anti Smoking Industry has got over the government there. The Anti Smoking Industry is an example of totalitarianism gone wild. It is criminal to withhold beneficial technological progress from the people because YOU disapprove.
Thank goodness, the United Kingdom has more common sense.
South Africa was saved from the dreadful shame of mass slavery by the abolition (in Britain) of slave trading on 1807 and completely in 1834. Up to then, the Portuguese brought slaves TO the Cape, and the Dutch brought Malay slaves TO the Cape. The indigenous population of the Cape were never enslaved by White people. Though Black tribes had slaves enslaved to them through conquest.
The 1820 White settlers to the Cape were not allowed slaves by Britain, who won the Cape as spoils from the Napoleonic wars, and who settled ex-soldiers there. This group of settlers acted as the ‘filling’ sandwiched between the Xhosa Tribe to the East and the Dutch in the West. The ‘filling’ was supposed to stop the cattle raiding that the Xhosa’s were expert in and the Dutch endured.
White people generally had servants, not slaves.
When the Malay slaves became free men, they stayed in the Cape producing a rich culture of foods, music, art and ‘stories’. They naturally spoke Afrikaans, a derivative of Dutch.
“Hier kom die Alibama” is a song about Malay slaves reaping reeds for weaving and thatching from the Berg River. The boat they loaded their harvest on was called Die Alibama. When fully loaded, it would ply to the harbour and offload the reeds at the dock. Reed Mats for their own Malay weddings were also woven from the reeds they had cut. Reeds were used for thatching weaving and many other uses. Slaves had only reed beds themselves, presumably whilst their owners had more comfortable sleeping arrangements!
People mistakenly think this song is about CSS Alibama, an American Confederate raider that docked in the Cape during the Amercan Civil War in the 1860’s.
But it is not. It’s a Cape Malay song – from slaves, passed down by many generations of Cape Malay Coons or Minstrels, through the annual carnivals they hold in Cape Town. Here’s a flavour….
Daar kom die Alibama,
Die Alibama die kom oor die see
Daar kom die Alibama,
Die Alibama die kom oor die see.
Nooi, nooi, die rietkooi, nooi,
Die rietkooi is gemaak,
Die rietkooi is vir my gemaak
Om daarop te slaap.
Nooi, nooi, die rietkooi, nooi,
Die rietkooi is gemaak,
Die rietkooi is vir my gemaak
Om daarop te slaap.
Die Alibama, die Alibama,
Die Alibama kom oor die see.
Die Alibama, die Alibama,
Die Alibama kom oor die see.
TRANSLATED
There comes the Alibama,
The Alibama that comes across the sea
There comes the Alibama,
The Alibama that comes across the sea.
Invite, invite, the reedmat, invite,
The reedmat was made,
The reedmat was made for me
To sleep on
Invite, invite, the reedmat, invite,
The reedmat was made,
The reedmat was made for me
To sleep on
The Alibama, the Alibama,
The Alibama comes across the sea.
The Alibama, the Alibama,
The Alibama comes across the sea.
South Africa is a strange country. When white people first arrived in the Cape, the inhabitants were the KhoiSan (Bushmen). Bantu tribes, assimilating and overcoming the smaller San, were moving down the East Coast but hadn’t yet reached the Cape, only the Xhosa had reached the edges. Together, White and Black people subsumed the original indigenous people.
The Zulus on the north-east coast of Southern Africa launched the M’fecane and practised genocide in the interior, so that when the Whites trekked North, they found NO inhabitants, except piles of whitened bones.
The M’fecane pushed the Matebele North into what is now Zimbabwe. So when White Colonists arrived there it WAS populated. But the interior of South Africa was not populated because the Zulus had cleaned it.
The North Eastern Cape and Kwa Zulu were populated by Xhosa and Zulus – enemies (still).
The story of South Africa is that the White Man has been there for over five hundred years. They never practised genocide and believe they have contributed much to the country, despite colonisation and the shameful years of apartheid.
The old guard of the ANC – the ones who fought for freedom are NOT the same as the young ignorant politicians like Julius Malema who are demanding the removal of land from White people without compensation. Young Blacks are the same ilk as our ignorant far left young people – victims of terrible wrongs done to them by others. I think Malema is dangerously attractive to young South African Blacks.
I want to ask Mr Malema WHICH land is he talking about, considering history?
And can he guarantee the next generation that South Africa will do better than Venezuela or Zimbabwe who now both import 70% of the food after land expropriation. And poverty is WORSE!
Here is the EFF (Malema’s party) representing itself at the Government consultations…and the original KhoiSan…and others each making their own case.
