"...the army of Normans, Saracens, and Greeks from Sicily prevailed over the coalition." (pp. 325-326)
What an impressive alliance!
Normans: Western Christians;
Saracens: Muslims;
Greeks: Eastern Christians -
- although, of course, they had to be in conflict someone else, "the coalition."
Alliances change through history. Nowadays, religious believers and secularists make alliances. I spent formative years in both England and Ireland where loyalties were sharply divided. I heard about Crusades at school and have recently stood in a crowd in Dalton Square, Lancaster, where a majority of those present spontaneously shouted, "Allah Akbar!" A Muslim acquaintance got me to accompany him when he joined others in kneeling for prayer in a London street although I whispered, "I meditate!"
We must advance towards an alliance of all.
23 comments:
Alliances are made -against- someone.
We can face the universe together not on the assumption that it is hostile but on the understanding that it is vast and mostly unknown.
That would require the universe poised an immediate threat.
That could happen, though. First, there is the (man-made) ecological crisis. After that, the danger of an asteroid hitting the Earth. After that, God knows what: something hitting the Sun? Anderson and others have imagined a few different future disasters.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I would very likely support Reform in the UK. Massive, out of control "immigration" of people with barbaric beliefs has to stop. That "Allahu akhbar" gives me the chills!
Ad astra! Sean
Farage is spreading hate and encouraging violence. There is no out of control immigration. Our Muslim neighbors do not have barbaric beliefs.
Far right demonstrators chant, "Christ is king!" That gives me the chills!
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, everything I see about UK news convinces me immigration (sic) is out of control. The more people who think as you do stubbornly deny the right of sovereign nations to control immigration, the more you are going to drive them to extremes.
Christ is King of the Universe. Moreover, unlike Christianity, Islam is theocratic, the ideal is a merging of Mosque and State. Islam has nothing like Matthew 22.15-22 in its Koran.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Disagree. Immigration (what is wrong with this word?) is tightly controlled. And refugees who arrive in small boats should be welcomed and helped, not turned back. I deny the right of sovereign nations to wage wars, then turn away the refugees that they themselves create. Who is being stubborn here?!
Anti-immigration "extremes" are whipped up by politicians and the press who should oppose all hostility instead of encouraging it.
Christ is King? You do realize that that is a doctrinal statement confined to one religion? And these far rightists who shout it do so to be provocative, not because that want to propagate Christianity in any way.
Many Muslims accept participation in secular society alongside the practice of their religion. Traditions change.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Refused, millions of Britons don't agree with you about Muslim "immigration." They feel threatened, ignored, shunted aside by an Establishment refusing to take their views seriously.
That doctrinal statement is true, whether or not you agree with Christianity. And those rightists are reacting to MUSLIM provocations, such as "Islam shall rule the world" (from a photo I saw of Muslim fanatics standing next to a glum looking Bobby).
I don't care about the Westernized Muslims you know of, they can only speak for themselves, not for the vast numbers hostile to Western values.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Refused. (Can we stop expressing ourselves like this? I merely reply in kind.)
"Millions" is an exaggeration. Why do you put "immigration" in quotes? People migrate, emigrate and immigrate. This one issue of immigration is being stirred up to distract people from all the things that are indeed wrong with the Establishment.
You can't just state that your doctrines are "true," just like that! Alright, here is another "true" statement: there is no God. That statement is "true" in the opinions of many people. Those rightists are hate-filled fanatics. I have confronted them on the street.
You often say that you "don't care." You don't care about Muslims who do not conform to your preconceptions? Of course all of us can only speak for ourselves!
The world is in crisis and is full of hate as I think our discussion shows. What are "Western values"? Many people around the world have good reason to perceive Western powers in a very negative light.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I will put "immigration" in quotes if "immigrants" are in other peoples countries illegally and in opposition to their wishes. That kind of immigration is an invasion and rightly resented.
Yes, I care less and less as regards Muslims. After 9/11 I took a serious interest in Islam, reading 9 or ten books about it. The more I learned about the so called "religion of peace," the more revolting, distasteful, obscurantist, tyranny tolerating that religion and its culture is.
Western civilization, for all its many vices and flaws, is the best that now exists in the word. It alone, due to its Classical, Judaeo-Christian, and post-Roman origins has broken the world out of the kind of dead ends we see in stories like "Delenda Est," and "The House of Sorrows." It alone, due to a unique of many factors, developed both ideals of ordered liberty under limited states and a true science. I could go on and listing the many other ways Western civilization has been beneficially unique!
China has been the only semi-exception to what I wrote above. But it never quite succeeded in "taking off," probably for the reasons Anderson has Manse suggesting in "Delenda Est," on why the Carthaginian timeline was so intellectually backward.
I believe in being loyal to my country and civilization, including the UK for that matter! The UK was the mother of the US, after all.
Ad astra! Sean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
We as a species need to acknowledge the contributions made by different traditions and to move forward urgently instead of remaining caught up in the present US-China power conflict and the destructive insistence on retaining control of oil in the Middle East.
Kaor, Paul!
I only wish the US had been more consistent and successful in engineering regime change in hostile nations!
There has always been rivalry between contending tribes and nations. To expect anything else in a species as bellicose as mankind is hopeless unrealism and naivete. And since somebody is going to eventually unify the world, I would vastly prefer it was something like a Western oriented Solar Commonwealth that did it, not the brutal Maoists in China!
The only realistic alternative to oil, for the forseeable future, is nuclear power. So, until people stop ignorantly opposing nuclear, oil is going to be used.
Ad astra! Seam
Sean,
Regime change in hostile nations! You would rightly complain if any other great power took that line.
I did not say don't use oil. I meant don't make the Middle East suffer because the oil is there. The US will not back any regime in that part of the world when the oil runs out.
I do not expect anything else just to happen. A lot of us will have to struggle to make something different happen. And a lot of people are struggling, world-wide. You are just taking sides in the present US-China conflict. That approach just perpetuates the problem. You would be on the other side if you had been born on the other side! The West is challenged and in decline. To expect it to unify the world, and on an sf model at that, is hopeless unrealism and naivete.
Mankind is not inherently bellicose but often lives peacefully when material and social conditions permit.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The US has been the guarantor of the post-WW II settlement, with a hostile USSR trying to undermine and subvert it. Now that a ruined Russia is unable to nurse global ambitions the regime in Peking now challenges the US. If, to thwart the intrigues of such hostile powers, the US has to oust regimes in certain countries, so be it. You would not like a world dominated a la Anderson's "The High Ones," or one divvied up between Maoist China and the USSR, as in another Anderson story, "The Pugilist."
Who has been causing that suffering in the Mid East? Fanatical jihadists propped up by Iran. And both Iran and Russia had been propping up the late, unlamented Assad regime in Syria.
I will take sides, the US and pro-Western side. And I say it is too soon to write them off! I'm glad to have been born in the West, and not either a brain washed jihadist or a Maoist.
Your last comment is flagrantly untrue--peace is only possible because of the State, with its monopoly of violence. That alone is what keeps many, many people from being as aggressive and bellicose as they would like to be.
Ad astra! Sean
Correction: "...not like a world dominated by the USSR a la Anderson's "The High Ones,"...
Sean
Sean,
Of course I would not like a Stalinist or Maoist world order! (As a matter of fact, if a state capitalist dictatorship conquered the whole Earth, then it would immediately cease to be a form of capitalism because it would lack an external competitor. It would become like an ancient Eastern despotism.)
What has been causing that suffering in the Middle East? Imperialists wanting oil. Jihadists resist them. Resistance fighters are an effect, not a cause.
Are we not brain washed by advertising and "news"/propaganda? The real powers that be in Britain used the BBC and the newspapers to vilify active anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn as "anti-Semitic" because he was anti-Zionist and because they wanted to find some pretext to vilify him in any case.
The US has no right to "oust" regimes, sometimes democratically elected! No other power has the right to do that and the US has no moral superiority making it an exception. Effectively, you are arguing that might makes right. So be it not.
My last statement is flagrantly true. People often treat each other with courtesy and respect, not because there is a State but because people naturally are that way. The kind of competitive economy that you support certainly causes corruption, poverty, crime, violence and a need for a State.
The US cannot be written off yet but its capacity to dominate the world is definitely declining. This is a natural process. History has been a succession of dominant powers, not a single dominant power.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Marxist-Leninist, not merely "Stalinist." I will not agree to any whitewashing of the role played by Marxism and Lenin in the horrors of these regimes. I disagree with the oxymoronic "state capitalism," because socialism inevitably becomes State Socialism, a centralized autocracy incompetently trying to run an economy from the top down by politicians, bureaucrats, and secret police.
State capitalism is an oxymoron because it is nothing like free enterprise economics, which works thru individuals and firms of all sizes trying to earn profits by providing goods and services at prices their customers are willing to pay. With no need for coercion by the state.
Disagree, jihadists are not "resistance fighters," they are fanatics obeying Mohammed's command to expand Islam by force, including terrorism. You also overlook how the rise of OPEC took actual control of Mid-Eastern oil fields from private companies to ownership by regional states.
Disagree, I read enough about Corbyn to convince me he is an antisemite. "Anti-Zionism" is often code for Jew hating.
In this age of contending states, I am going to prefer that the US be strong enough to do what it needs to do to survive. That is the first and prime duty of any state. Better that than Maoist China or jihadist Islam dominating the world!
Disagree, some of us are nice, but by no means all. It is the existence of the State which enables some people to behave as you say. No State and we get Haiti.
That "competitive economy" you dislike is exactly how new technology becomes practical and new wealth is created. The bad things you listed springs from our innate flaws and imperfections, our Fallen nature.
I think the Terran Empire and Technic civilization--oops, I meant the US and Western civilization! -- will survive far longer than its enemies desire!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We go on and on forever.
Stalinism was a dictatorship using Marxist terminology as its ideology just as a dictatorship can use any terminology, including Christian. Marxism is the theory and practice of proletarian self-emancipation. It is a philosophy of liberation and motivated the Bolsheviks but the mostly peasant Russian economy needed support and solidarity from the German Revolution which was defeated. Being devastated by White armies and multiple armies of intervention certainly stifled any chance for the new system to grow in Russia.
The two features of capitalism are exploitation of labour and competition. Stalinist bureaucrats exploited Russian workers in order to compete militarily against Western powers. Therefore, the state was running a form of capitalism different from private capitalism. Democratic workers' control of production for need, if firmly established in countries with technologically advanced means of production, distribution and communication, will not necessarily or inevitably degenerate into what you call "state Socialism."
There is probably more but that is enough for one comment.
We are merely repeating ourselves, aren't we? Do you really think that all this repetition is going to settle anything?
Paul.
Disagree. Jihadists are resistance fighters. How have I overlooked OPEC? That has not been an issue.
Disagree. You have read nothing but propaganda about Corbyn. I have heard him speak. "Anti-Zionism" is not often code for Jew-hating. You are talking about people that I know. This accusation is completely absurd.
In this age of contending states, the US is just one of the contending states. Many people around the world want and campaign for something better. The prime duty of any state is not to survive at all costs by interfering in and overthrowing other regimes. I do not choose between the US, Maoism and jihadism. These are false choices whose purpose is to maintain the entire status quo indefinitely.
You have talked about Haiti before. I do not say abolish the State and we will have paradise. I say build harmonious material and social conditions and the need for a State will diminish. People who may still be personally unpleasant will not suddenly attack strangers on the street for no reason. They do not do it now.
I do not dislike the competitive economy. I assess and criticize it. I have acknowledged before that economic competition WAS necessary to generate technology and accumulate wealth but have then argued that advanced technology WILL make competition redundant. We say all this as if we had never said it before.
We do not have innate flaws and imperfections and have evolved, not Fallen.
Our present civilization is systematically destroying its environment and thus also itself.
Have we said anything at all that was new here?
Anti-Zionism is merely opposition to Zionist philosophy and policies. That is no more anti-semitism than opposition to Putin's policies is hatred of Russians. There are large contingents of anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews, including rabbis, on the regular Palestine Solidarity Campaign marches through London. I shook hands with one and said that I was a Gentile and that he and I were brothers.
I mount these arguments to demonstrate yet again that such arguments can be put, not in the expectation that any of them will be accepted! I know, for example, that Haiti will be cited yet again if there is any suggestion of a stateless society in the completely different high tech conditions of a potential future.
Sean,
When you wrote that you have read enough about Corbyn to know that he is anti-semitic, that showed me very clearly how effectively the disinformation machine works. He is not, any more than the many other anti-Zionists that I know are anti-semites. I know enough about Corbyn and about people associated with him to know that. I have just joined a new organization to which he is giving a lead. Corbyn stands for a kind of politics to which you are opposed. Stay with that fact. Do not buy into unnecessary and misleading lies as well.
My mother relied on the BBC and was also consistently misled on issues that I knew something about. She thought that a major industrial dispute was about a closed shop, not just (as it was) about union recognition. When I informed her of this, she suddenly wondered why the dispute had become such a big issue! (Because the employer did not want an even partially unionized workforce.)
Paul.
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