On the Violence in the Middle East…

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Like most of the world, I have been considering the Israel / Gaza slaughter with fascination and a sense of dread.   Did Israel allow the events of October 7, 2023 to happen? It appears so. Were the savage acts of Hamas sickening? It appears so. Have the ensuing actions of Israel in Gaza been devastating? Yes.

Have the reactions of the general public in nations around the world, and on the internet, become increasingly polarized? Definitely.

Geopolitical expert and former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter has predicted Israel will lose this war, and deservedly so.

At the height of the hysteria during the build-up to Operation Desert Storm®, and in the jingoistic fever of the newly coined War on Terror®, Ritter claimed Saddam Hussein had zero Weapons of Mass Destruction®.  Ritter was right back then, so, now, I pay attention whenever he addresses global tensions.

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The Siege of Szigetvár

Originally posted at Dispatches from Reality, by Scipio Eruditus. dfreality.substack.com


“Arms and HEROES I sing! The might of the Turks.
Him who was willing to undergo Suleiman’s wrath—
That same Suleiman’s mighty arm,
He at whose saber Europe trembled.

The Siege of Sziget, Nikola VII Zrinski Zrínyi Miklós


 

What makes a man fight on when no hope is left?

What turns him into a lion when cornered, selling his life dearly; all so that his brothers may yet live?

What spurs a man onward, knowing death is certain; knowing his doom lays before him, and yet, he rides out all the same?

Battles such as Thermopylae, Masada, and Antioch; Tenochtitlan to Gandamak; Little Bighorn to the Alamo; all perfectly capture the essence of the last stand – a battle against all odds. All provide us timeless lessons, and not just on battlefield tactics and military history. Last stands provide a sobering and yet critical look into the heart of a warrior: a look at the caliber of men — fighting for causes both righteous and unrighteous — who carved out their places in history with bronze, iron, and blood. Today we will explore one of the most underappreciated battles in this category: The Siege of Szigetvár, or as Cardinal Richelieu stated, “the battle that saved civilization.”

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As the Games Begin: The One about the Jews, the Baby, & the Bathwater

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

 

Certainly any one who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

– Voltaire. (1765). “Questions sur les Miracles”.

 

This blogger has posted over 120 original essays since the fall of 2016. With topics ranging from politics to philosophy, I’ve strived to be true for the most part; and, at the very least, accurate.  In so doing, I would attempt to find three separate ways to vet source material – and, in my mind at least, I’ve built some trust with the readers and believe my essays, so far, have stood the test of time.  But if I ever wrote anything blatantly false, everything written henceforth by me, as well as my past articles, should be viewed with greater suspicion by the readers; and for good reason.

Accordingly, we are very fortunate to have the internet; at the very least, for its processing capabilities.  It is in the digital rooms of the interwebic blogosphere where intelligent people face-off in a virtual mixed-martial-arts cage fight where free thought and speech, link attributions, and interactive media, are traded like jabs, uppercuts, body-blows, and roundhouse kicks.  Using the ethernet to test ideas could also be compared to running software at the speed of light, with multiple programming variations, and zero real life consequences; until, that is, we choose to apply the computations. And this is when it becomes risky business.

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A Veritable Feast of Reality, Choice, and Consequences

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Someone I care about got into some trouble the week before Thanksgiving. They asked for my help, and I wasn’t raised to say “no” in such situations. What ensued were a series of unfortunate events that staggered my mind and challenged my previously naive vision of a moderately benevolent universe.

By any definition, any knowledgeable neutral party would say I did everything right, in spite of the dire turn of events that, fortunately, resulted in only a minor loss of time and money on my part; with a still positive outcome for the party I helped.

Even now, looking back, I realize I’d have made all the same decisions with the same information I had at the time. Yet, the mostly-positive denouement of the entire affair resulted in a conclusion I never dreamed possible at the start.

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Three (3) Reasons Why Elections Don’t Matter

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In so many ways, elections in America have become just another manifestation of bread and circuses; like watching a reality TV show when your house is on fire.  It’s why this article was almost named:

“The Inevitableness of Reality Requires Honesty and Acceptance”

Of course, the 2018 Midterm Elections will be analyzed ad nauseam, with other writers and pundits parsing it better than this blogger.  However, suffice it to say:  There was no Blue Wave and Trump has now solidified leadership of his Republican Party; at least more so than during the last two years of his administration.

In a raucous press conference the day after, Trump claimed victory and said his party “defied history to expand our Senate majority”. The president also said his focus in the days prior to the election remained on the senate and pointed out that most of the candidates for whom he campaigned had won their respective races.

Now, with Never-Trump  Republican senators like Bob Corker (R-TN) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), along with Democrats Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) all gone  – Trump has solidified the senate so as to be in a much better position to navigate any cabinet and court appointments.  Obviously, the bloodletting has already begun, starting with Mr. Magoo himself, Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

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Ten Ways the Democratic Northern Hemisphere Nations Became the Orwellian West

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In his book, “1984”, George Orwell envisioned a future crushed by the iron grip of a collectivist oligarchy. The narrative told of the INGSOC Party which maintained power through a system of surveillance and brutality designed to monitor and control every aspect of society.  From the time of the book’s release in 1949, any ensuing vision of a dark dystopia depicting variations of jackboots stomping on human faces, forever, has been referenced as being “Orwellian”.  This is because Orwell’s narrative illustrated various disturbing and unjust conceptualizations of control, crime, and punishment.

For example, “Newspeak” represented the language of mind control, whereas “crimethink”, “thoughtcrime”, and “crimeface” manifested as transgressions against the state.  Guilty citizens were captured by the “Thought Police”, and the ultimate punishment consisted of “vaporization”; which eliminated every last vestige of a person’s existence.

In the horrifying world of 1984, the nation of Oceania was divided into three concentric groups:  The Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles, or proletariat.  The Proles constituted 85% of the population and lived in extreme privation.  The Inner Party represented the elite powerbrokers who led lives of comprehensive luxury compared to the minions in the Outer Party.

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President Treason

President Trump: Do you have any idea of what America First means?

Mr. President:

Your decision on Jerusalem, and the speech in which you announced it, are as far from any form of an America First foreign policy as it is possible to be. Your speech was a grab-bag of tired rhetoric, earnest platitudes, and wishful thinking, much like your earlier speech on Afghanistan. Your citing of the Congress’s near unanimous support for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, moreover, suggests we elected the wrong man to go after and eliminate the corruption that has engulfed the national government. The near-unanimity of Congress, as you must know, is bought by the bribes disguised as campaign contributions paid to the so-called representatives of the citizenry by the disloyal political, social, and financial leaders of the Jewish-American community, and their enforcers in such propaganda outlets like Commentary, the Weekly StandardForward, and others.

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A Nonviolent Solution To The Mooslim Problem

Long article so, sue me. From time to time some brilliant thinker will challenge us dummies with “What’s your solution?? We need solutions, not whining!!”. Well, this guy does exactly that. And, imho, they’re damned good ones.

That being said, his idea to show mooslims the true nature of Mohammed, that he is flawed, and seriously so — well, I guess the chances of that tactic being successful are slim to none. And, Slim left town. Many mooslims have attempted reform. They all wind up being ignored, ostracized, or dead.

It’s no different than trying to convince a staunch Christian that the Bible contains errors. Not one in a hundred Christians will be convinced.

But, most of his other mooslim-problem solutions seem reasonable, and doable, if only we had the will.

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Shipwrecked in the Sands of Time: Lessons from History

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Today, across the globe, there remains a clash of cultures as ancient as religion; as violent as tides crashing upon the shores of nations; islands separated within seas of humanity.  Ongoing wars rage on in the middle-east as democracies fight theocracy, and waves of Islamic immigrants flood onto the shores of western nations like tsunamis.  Although oil and water will not mix well, there are those who perennially hope to try; and, if history serves as any right measure, the blending will continue to roil and boil like ships on fire in perilous ports.

Will the captains in the Western nations lead us safely on our journey?  I think not. To know where we’re going, we must first understand where we are, and where we’ve been.


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The Reconquest

Guest Post by The Zman

Anthropology tells us that early modern humans slowly populated what is now sub-Saharan Africa and then began to migrate out into the rest of the world. Whether this was out of curiosity, the search for food or population pressure is unknown, but it was probably some combination of all three. The most likely route was along the western coast of the Red Sea and then into the Eastern Mediterranean. From there, humans slowly fanned out across the globe. It’s all speculation, but that’s the logical route out of Africa.

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Will Christianity Perish in Its Birthplace?

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)” Those are among Jesus’ last words on the Cross that first Good Friday.

It was a cry of agony, but not despair. The dying Christ, to rise again in three days, was repeating the first words of the 22nd Psalm.

And today, in lands where Christ lived and taught and beyond where the Christian faith was born and nourished, the words echo. For it is in the birthplace of Christianity that Christians face the greatest of persecutions and martyrdoms since the time of Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.

President Donald Trump, outraged by pictures of infants and children who had perished in the nerve gas attack in Syria, ordered missile strikes on the air base from which the war crime came.

Two days later, Palm Sunday, 44 Coptic Christians celebrating Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem were martyred in terrorist attacks in Egypt. The first bombing was at St. George’s Church in Tanta, the second at St. Mark’s in Alexandria, where the Coptic Pope Tawadros II was at Mass.

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Breakfast Club: Dining with Friends

by Uncola via TheBurningPlatform.com

There is a group of us who meet on Saturday mornings for breakfast.  We are four white men; college educated professionals who know each other through a shared involvement and patronage of a community organization.  Our group is comprised of one in their mid-thirties, two in their forties and me as the sole quinquagenarian of the group.

During our weekend morning meal encounters, I will usually try to steer clear from political conversations. However, more often than not, it seems our discussions do drift into politics.  The thirty-something and one of the fortyish gentlemen identify as liberal and the other quadragenarian claims to be a Republican, yet he seemed to favor Hillary Clinton in the last election.  All of them hate Donald Trump, so, this leaves me as the lone racist, fear-motivated, close-minded, privileged, conspiracy-oriented, and deplorably conservative Caucasian at our table.

The following is a condensed summary of my recollection of our conversation from this previous Saturday and it is predominately paraphrased.   As a final qualifier, and as a matter of course, I will admit the ensuing review is recapitulated through the lens of my personal perspective.  This means, although my breakfast companions would likely reject my forthcoming conclusion(s) below, at the same time, I believe they would agree that the subsequent dialogue is narrated accurately, and with the topics arranged (for the most part) in the correct consecutive order of our actual conversation.

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Chatham NJ public school teaches Islam — but no other religions

Why does the town of Chatham NJ seem so familiar? Well at least this ridiculous issue will take the focus off of Stucky when he threatens to beat someone up again. 

Via EAG News

CHATHAM, N.J. – Parents of students at Chatham Middle School are calling on the board of education to eliminate lessons on Islam from the 7th grade social studies curriculum they believe proselytizes the religion.

Several parents attended a board meeting Monday to take aim at materials distributed to students through a “World Cultures and Geography” class they believe cross the line, Tap into Chatham reports.

The parents emailed board members copies of the lessons they believe violate the district’s policy that “no religious beliefs be promoted or disparaged” and handed copies to others in attendance at the meeting, as well.

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LIBERTARIAN ISLAM

“I am in love with every church and mosque and temple and any kind of shrine, because I know it is there that people say the different names of the One God.”

Hafez

By

Sculpture of the Prophet Muhammad at the United States Supreme Court.

A commonly used epithet to describe Islam is ‘The Religion of Peace,’ but this is inaccurate and confusing. The phrase became more commonly used after 9/11 by politicians. The Quran never describes the faith in these terms. It is more accurate to describe Islam as a religion of non-aggression and justice. The Non-aggression principle (NAP) is considered to be a defining principle of libertarianism. Many libertarians today like to bend, or flat out break this principle, however, a Muslim can be a Rothbardian libertarian, like Ron Paul, who manages to encompass economic and sociological theories while using the NAP as an axiom.

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