Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
This week, about two hours drive due west of where I live, two police officers and a helping neighbour were murdered by a trio of “sovereign citizens” — for the “crime” of entering their property. The father of two of the trio, two brothers, had not heard from either of his sons in twenty years. … Continue reading “Sovereign Citizens, ISIS and Moonies — the common thread that binds them all”
And their author seems to have gone out of his way to try to pull the wool over our eyes. In the previous post we saw that Tacitus’s account of Nero’s persecution of the Christians is, given the ratio of number of words analyzed to the number of words published about them, this handful of … Continue reading “Rome Burning – Difficulties with the Tacitus Passage”
And I thought we were just getting nicer. Nope, the data seems to point to another reason. According to an article by Penelope Edmonds and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘The whip is a very contagious kind of thing’: flogging and humanitarian reform in penal Australia, the reasons for the declining use of flogging were complex but two … Continue reading “Why We Stopped Flogging”
It’s as if the Project for the New American Century never existed. The reason that the U.S. ever “entered” Afghanistan in the first place was that they were stunned at what happened on 9/11 and, quite understandably, like a dazed and confused giant, felt compelled to wage war on Al Qaeda and the tactic of … Continue reading “Propaganda Time (Again)”
For anyone wondering why I have not posted anything for a little while, — I’ve been in catch-up mode. When I posted something about the Gospel of Mark in relation to Vespasian and the Serapis cult I became focused on finding more about the Serapis cult, where and when and in what modes it functioned. … Continue reading “Vridar posts delay”
Peter Neumann is in my library (The Strategy of Terrorism, Radicalized, Bluster) and I have briefly referred to his words in earlier posts (Radicalisation and On how to be completely wrong…). I’ve mostly found him to be right, though. Hope he’s wrong about the future, though.
This is my second post on Charlie Kirk’s “manifesto” of the “Trump movement”, The MAGA Doctrine. My first post was a broad overview of the prism through which Kirk sees the world. Towards the end of his book Kirk reflects on how it all started, on what set him on “the road toward conservatism”: Who … Continue reading ““Why I Became a MAGA Conservative””
Hypotheses: “in times of crisis, individuals regress to a state of delegated omnipotence and demand a leader (who will rescue them, take care of them)” and that “individuals susceptible to (the hypnotic attraction of) charismatic leadership have themselves fragmented or weak ego structures.” Jerrold Post believes the above hypotheses find support in clinical studies of … Continue reading “Dangerous Charisma, Cults and Trump”
Back in 2015-2016 I was trying to understand the emergence and character of Islamic State and ended up purchasing and reading four books in particular that appeared to be authored by researchers whose credentials indicated that they should know what they are talking about: Cockburn, Patrick. 2015. The Rise of Islamic State: Isis and the … Continue reading “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi”
I’m making some sort of progress towards some consistency in the blog’s categories and tags (well into the categories right now having reduced them from around 50 million to a tenth of a million; but have yet to start seriously on eliminating overlaps in the tags). Here are some questions that are bugging me at … Continue reading “Vridar Housekeeping”
I like Scott Atran‘s work on terrorism so was looking for his viewpoint after Christchurch and Colombo. I just hope to hell that what he had published in The Guardian — From Christchurch to Colombo, Islamists and the far right are playing a deadly duet — will be proven wrong: How should we make sense … Continue reading “Deadly Duet: Islamists and the Far Right”
A recent Haaretz article discusses controversy over a special issue of the Israel Studies journal that criticizes terms such as occupation and genocide used to refer to Israel vis à vis the Palestinians, as well as references to the Israel Lobby and claims that criticism of Zionism is not to be equated with anti-Semitism: Maltz, … Continue reading “Word Crime: War Breaks Out Among Israel Studies Scholars”
Some readers protest when I attempt to convey a Palestinian perspective or concern that I think deserves to be more widely known and respond by stressing the official Israeli version of events as if that is the real truth and all we need to know. Sometimes I try to respond by explaining that their knowledge … Continue reading ““It would never happen the other way around””
Everything else feels unreal after trying to take in the news from New Zealand this afternoon. I looked at my collection of books that I had acquired in order to understand Islamist terrorism. No doubt there will be overlapping factors with white supremacists. I am also mindful of the many people who have over the … Continue reading “The Heaviness of Christchurch, New Zealand”