Voila: World War Three | James Howard Kunstler

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James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

June 30, 2014

Whoever really runs things these days for the semi-mummified royal administration down in Saudi Arabia must be leaving skid-marks in his small-clothes thinking about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his ISIS army of psychopathic killers sweeping hither and thither through what is again being quaintly called “the Levant.”

ISIS just concluded an orgy of crucifixions up in Syria over the weekend, the victims being other Islamic militants who were not radical enough, or who had dallied with U.S. support.

Crucifixion sends an interesting and complex message to various parties around this systemically fracturing globe. It’s a step back from the disabling horror of video beheadings, but it still packs a punch. For the Christian West, it re-awakens a certain central cultural narrative that had gone somnolent there for a century or so. ISIS’s message: If you thought the Romans were bad…. Among the human race, you see, the memories linger.

ISIS has successfully shocked the world over the last two weeks by negating eight years, several trillion dollars, and 4,500 battle deaths in the USA’s endeavor to turn Iraq into an obedient oil dispensary. Now they have gone and announced that their conquests of the moment amount to a Caliphate, that is, an Islamic theocracy. In that sense, they are at least out-doing America’s Republican Party, which has been trying to do something similar here from sea to shining sea but finds itself thwarted by hostile blue states on both coasts.

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[Diclotican]

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I'm afraid religion would be one of the big issues in our century - as political ideology was it in the last religion - but where we in the last century do had some sense of where to step - and not to step, I doubt that would replay to our century as religion is far worse explosives than political ideology can ever be - and goes way back in the past... The grogde between christianity and islam is not new - it goes back to when the first arabs was doing hit and run attacks the Byzantine empire... The Empire looked down at it as something they do not was thinking to much about - it had other ideals and means than hit and run from ragtag bandits...

But the african and Levant part of the empire was then lost - by 700 most of the area who was once part of the Byzantine empire was lost - forever - to the muslims - and even though the Byzantine empire survived for more than 1000 years until 1453 (It was in April the history tell us) and for most of that time was some of a defense for the rest of Europe against enemies - that be mongols or muslims - or others who was in its wake - the end of the Byzantine empire really shocked up europe - even up to our little corner of the world, who by mid 1400s was rather poor and desolate - after the devastating blow from the black death in the mid 1300s - and the union between Norway and Denmark in the late 1300s (1380s)

And between then - and the late 1600s religion was very much a part of our history - between Catholic, Protestant - and the different eastern churches like the greece orthodoxy - the russian orthodoxy and the rest - It was a mess for a long time with a lot of hatred between the different churches.... It calmed down after WW1 somewhat - a century of common sense since the late 1700s had made it possible to calm it down in most of europe - even though it was an exploding factor for wars all up to the 1990s - when the war in Yugoslavia was showing how brutal an religious teemed war could be....

Now as the political strife is not there anymore - religion have in many cases started to do a comeback where it once was not a part of it - specially between Christianity in its different forms - and Islam who have been somewhat of an enemy in most of Europe since the conquest of Northern Africa, The Levant and the rest of the Byzantine empire in 1453 - not to say the wars who was fight in the Balkans all up to our own time between muslims and christians - who often was seeing them self as the defender of the rest of Europe against the enemy...

It is symbolic - that this new entity are using crucification as a form of executing people - it is a gruesome, horrible way to kill people - and even the romans for all its violence had some doubt about using it against everyone - it was mostly used in cases where it was seemed approbate to use executive violence against people they believed to be a danger for the roman STATE... And in the eyes of the roman Governor of what is now known as Israel - a jew named Jesus was indeed a danger to the roman State - as he had acted against the will of the goods - even the weird good of the Jews... This area was teaming with more or less extremists - violent - or non violent ones - and a few years in a row - the local leader- a roman named Pontus Piltatus had doing a few wrong moves against the jewish people in the most holley of their holly days - the easter - and put himself in a pickle with the Roman Emperor - Who at that time was a somewhat weird man named Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus Mostly known under the name Nero.. who was less than pleased by his actions - as Piltatus had overstepped his boundaries a few times in the past - and had no goodwill by the emperor for the moment... And you had very wide boundaries if you was in charge of a territory in the roman Empire - you was responsible just for the Emperor itself - not for anyone else (Back in the days when Senate had a word - a civil servant could be censored by the Senate - but by the end of the Republic - the Senate was little more than a club for the extremely wealthy - and the system Augustus was smart enough to build up in the ashes of the Republic he summited command of the civil service - and was in many forms an absolute leader, military dictator, an king, and emperor and so one... where the Senate was made submersible to the emperors will... And by the time of Nero - the Senate was indeed just there for old times sake - and was handsomely rewarded for not doing much - even if the public service still was second to non thanks to the education most of them had - and many was indeed member of the Senate - or was given it after doing service to the empire...

ISIS is indeed a terrifying group - who would do horrible damage before they are destroyed - not just in the middle east - I fear it will do a lot of damage over a far larger part of the earth - before it is stopped...

Diclotican