Why Arabs Believe In Force Fields (Interesting!)

Strategy Page ^ | December 26, 2008

[aruanan]

Medieval Spain saw the origination of the world's first true industrial workforce ~ they are called Jews ~ they are still around. Some even have surnames that are readily understood in Ladino as being trade names, e.g. Schmidlapp (which has many spellings, means "sheet maker", that is, one who makes paper. Then there's "Bookbinder", a rather famous name in Jewish culture. And so on. For a variety of reasons Isabella and Ferdinand thought it best that they convert or be expelled. Kind of like telling NASA's engineering teams to become Scientologists to keep their jobs.

When I was planning to pursue a doctorate in Spanish and Latin American history, my thesis was that the similarities between Alumbramiento movement in Spain and the Protestant Reformation in Northern Europe would have had similar effects on attitudes toward physical labor, business, and science and that those members of the Alumbramiento escaping the Inquisition by traveling to the New World would, in places where they settled, start societies exemplifying more of the ideals of Northern Europe rather than the classical Roman mindset. In doing initial research and consultation, Michael Novak had me contact Mark Falcoff at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Falcoff had written an article contrasting Nicaragua with Costa Rica. He said that conquistadores were attracted to Nicaragua because of the gold but that gold-poor Costa Rica got the farmers and businessmen and that, as a result, their political systems have been permanently imprinted by the values of either group. In Nicaragua the system of government was of one party defeating another and seizing the government to enrich themselves. In Costa Rica, there was a more civil and democratic social ideal that has persisted into the present. He thought I should pursue this study. I didn't and went into science instead. I was interested to see, though, about 3 or 4 years later, that someone from the American Enterprise Institute published a book on exactly this subject. I read a blurb about it in National Review, I think. Oh well.

[Cronos]

The reason is two fold: 1. Most Muslim nations have a large % of their populations in the 25 and under age-group: some are nearly 50% of their population.

2. The UAE, like the other gulf states have massive amounts of migrant populations (they outnumber the locals by 3 to 1 or more)

and that would explain the low natural death rate per 1000 inhabitants

[Cronos]

Modern Iraq is 80% Arab; the rest are Assyrians, Kurds, Chaldeans, Turkomen, etc. Of course, the only reason the Arabs got there is by conquest. They were not native to the region that is now Iraq.

Ah, you were going by what people call themselves, sorry, I meant to say what their ethnic roots really ARE. Most of those calling themselves "Arabs" are really Assyrian/Mesopotamian or Irani. Ditto for Egypt and especially true for places like Algeria which used to discriminate against Berbers which was very strange since the people doing the discrimination WERE Berbers

The reason for this masquerading of people as Arabs is due to Islam. Islam basically is Arab (peoples of the Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia around Mecca and Medina) nationalism. Islam holds the Arabs as the superior people and Arabic as the superior language. That is why people from as far away as Afghanistan and Indonesia take up Arabic names and Arabic dress to "become Arab" as they believe that is the high order a human beign can reach -- higher than that is to be part of the prophet's tribe, higher than THAT is to be of the prophet's family

That is why you have Sunnis and Shias: because various people fought to become the leader of Islam after the prophet -- hardly any theological differences, all just leadership differences.

Anyway, so they say the prophet's family is the most superior and that's why you have people like the Ismailis who follow the Aga Khan (a descendent of Muhammad).

[Cronos]

What's your point?

I was saying that there were no Belgian bankers

We all know the various houses of Europe intermarried -- that was an outcome of the wars int he late Middle ages within each "country" when kings sons married barosn daughters etc and produced the Lancastrians and Yorks etc.

Nothing to do with Philippine gold (!) or American gold going to non-existent Belgian Bankers (especially since there WERE no bankers of any reput there -- the bankers were all in Italy)

Your entire post is a non-sequitor and doesn't answer your statement about If you want to follow the physical flow of gold from the New World to the Old World it's also understood you'll be looking at places like Belgium. If you get real specialized and want to follow Philippines gold, it comes across the Pacific to Mexico and across Mexico to any one of several Spansh port cities, then on boats that sail past Florida and then on to Europe (usually Belgium). The silver from Potosi takes a different route. in any way -- that's just incorrect points.

Furthermore, at the time of the 1400s to the 1600s, the throne of Spain was Hapsburg, not Bourbon. That was the reason for the War of Spanish Succession which is what pulled down Spain from being the top dog superpower. The ones that did the pulling were the French, English, Austrians etc. and THAT is when Spain really declined, not due to any expulsion in 1490 at the height of their power.

[Cronos]

No question of "tidiness" -- your "facts" are just wrong as pointed out.

The Portuguese under Joao Fernandes Lavrador WERE the first to spot Labrador in the 1490s, there was no real Portuguese colonial expansion in North America. Why bother with this cold and desolate land when Portugal had all of Brazil, the trade with India to itself -- both highly lucrative. Even the Spanish never really looked into any place north of Mexico.

[Cronos]

I do believe you've forgotten that the guys who invented writing in Mesopotamia were neither Indo-European nor Turcic, nor Semitic.

The guys who invented the first form of writing were Sumerian, correct. Other cultures not in contact with the Sumerians would have developed it separately and later on.

And, yes, links between Sumerian and Dravidian and Harappan are theorized, but is difficult to prove -- that doesn't mean it can't be true, just the links are difficult to prove or disprove right now

I've not heard of ANY proposed links with Sa'ami languages or any Tungushic language with Sumerian -- with Dravidian there are some voices, but the links are compeltely non-existent beyog a few similar soundign words.

If the Dravidians and Sumerians and Harappans are linked, then the best theory to explain that is by blam's book which hypothesises that they all came from Tamil Nadu/Indonesia -- since all the places setled by the Dravido-Harappan-Elamite-Sumerians are on the eastern sea coast route (the Dravidians never settled the north or central Deccan or the Gangetic belt, while the Harappans stuck to the south Indus, the Elamites to southern Iran, the Sumerians to the southern Shatt-al-arab)

Anyway, that's Dravidians, primarily southern India. The ARYANS (i.e. INDO-EUROPEANS) have their high points of culture in a crescent from Northern India, across Persia to Hittite territories (and interestingly, the Hittite initial deities were gods like Indra before they adopted Hattusa culture
BNone of this explains your statement about the Vedas where you said There's a time sequence that correlates with an Eastward movement. The oldest stuff was developed further West. or

[Cronos]

The Indo-Europeans were mostly barbarian nomads well into the first millenium of Sumeria, Egypt and Harappa. Their emphasis on rishis especially the saptarishis (analogical to shamans of the proto-Indo-Europeans) and the battle cult of indra versus Vrishta are really pre-Brahmanical Hinduism.

[Cronos]

Genealogists have been saying for years that 20% to 25% of Spanish ancestry (outside of Galicia and the Basque country) is of Jewish origin. These studies suggest 20% is right on target.

possible, so there WASN'T a mass-expulsion, eh :)

Another 10% is attributed to North Africans (Berber) and Arab ancestry.

[Cronos]

Well, the Moors (in terms of the religious group) DID go away. if you mean the racial group, they would of course have mingled — to go back further in history, why couldn’t the Celto-Iberians have been related to the Berbers? there’s only the narrow straits of Hercules separating the two.

[muawiyah]

Good grief are you dense. Family genealogy shows that there's just "one family" and it's been keeping things in the family for an incredibly long time. Whether you descended from Monsieur, or Orleans, or Beau-Jeau, the acorn wasn't falling far from the tree.

Wasn't a case of disparate families intermarrying, but a single family metastasizing.

[Cronos]

There is no “one family” — ever hear of the Bourbons versus the Hapsburgs? Also there are multiple sub-families. There is no “single family” of royalty, otherwise you’ll find that John Smith next door is a descendent of Rollo the norman and a distant cousin, many times removed, of William the Conqueror

[Cronos]

And reminding you -- you made some strange statements like:
1. The gold in the Philippines was shipped across the Pacific and then to Spain - which is illogical as Spain had a better and faster route via the Cape of Good hope

2. That Spain was bankrupt in the 1500s and decaying -- absolutely false as their decline didn't start until the late 1600s

3. The discovery of gold in the Americas circa 1521 allowed their bankers in Belgium to pay their bills, -- what Belgian bankers? The bankers in the 1500s were in Italy

4. By 1600 Portugual (a more enlightened place) was seizing back its independence Portugal was only joined in a PERSONAL union (same king, not same country) in 1580 to 1640. Only in 1640 did the Duke of Braganza declare independence and fight with the Spanish

the key point about Spain going into decline in the 1500s is wrong.

[muawiyah]

I said it wasn't all that much ~ and it wasn't ~ and yet you are carrying on like a nut case about it. The Spanish Empire controlled access across the Pacific (for what it was worth), but they didn't control access around the Cape AFTER the Dutch took Indonesia, the Brits took Malasia, and the French and Brits started absorbing India.

As late as the late 1700s the Spanish priests were provisioning their chain of missions on the far West coast (now California) from their operations in the Far East of Asia. You should visit San Luis Rey (where I have some ancestors buried) to check out what the archaeologists have been doing ~ they've dug the place up and found robes from China, lamps from Japan, and so on. Virtually nothing came from Mexico ~ for a variety of reasons (e.g. no good roads from California to Spanish settlements in South, Central and Eastern Mexico).

The gold shipments followed a different route, more like Cabrillo's in reverse. But basically it connected Manila to a port on Mexico's west coast on the Eastern Shore of the Gulf of California.

Now, regarding when Spain began decaying, that happened when they discovered gold in America. It suddenly became easy to import what they needed. At the same time their best people were going to the colonies or the Philippines.

Regarding Portuguese independence, they lost it in the 1530s, personal union or not, and their North American operations were SHUT DOWN. No one's done a good archaeological examination of the sites so they are still there to work with. Might find interesting stuff. And as far as regaining independence, I didn't put a date to it, just that the URGINGS began, and it can take quite a while after the urges hit you to getting it ~ the Irish took about 900 years (on and off), and Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Sapmai/Sapma definitely had a rocky road on again off again for a good thousand years, particularly the part where the Mongols held Finland.

But we digress.

Now, to your strange belief that the ONLY bankers in Europe in the 1500s were Italians, I think you are simply not differentiating between what's known as "deposit banking" and a variety of other forms ~ for example, pawn operations, private notes (one knight who played off the Brits and the French against each other during the 100 years war built a facility called "Le Vault" ~ when the Duke of Brittany was seized by the Duke d'Boulogne, this knight paid the equivalent of $15 million in gold as the King's ransom - it didn't make a dent in his supply ~ he was also given permission to purchase royal lands for his use). Then you have pledges against crops (or other commodities), such pledges being bid up, or down, and constituting a sort of hedge fund that could be monitized in terms of notes, and there were always the Moslem traders around ready to tap into the Islamic Caliphate's system to do whatever business needed to be done.

Obviously Europe wasn't terribly wealthy in the 1400s so money wasn't as important as it became in the 1500s, and then gold money became common and could serve as a stable reserve for nationstates, wealthy cities, or nations ~ and was much sought after.

To say there were no bankers, nor banks, nor systems creating effects such as banks might perform, is wrong.

[muawiyah]

I don't think you understand the part indoor living and the diseases pertaining thereto played on the royal and noble houses of Europe.

The death rate was appalling. and the number of royals appropriately limited.

As far as being a Bourbon is concerned, that's just part of the picture. The Capetians (descendants of Hugh Capet) include all royal houses in existent in Europe from about 1100 to right down to today.

They didn't marry closer than four degrees of consanguinity, and rarely beyond that.

Rene d'Anjou, mentioned earlier, was a Capetian, plus, his great aunts and uncles were the royal house of Savoy, Siciliy, Jerusalem(in exile of course), Italy, Spain, France, Britain, Scotland, etc. I haven't found anyone this guy wasn't a descendent of, or an ancestor to except maybe Ghengis Khan.

[Cronos]

I said it wasn't all that much ~ and it wasn't ~ and yet you are carrying on like a nut case about it. Really? A nut-case is more like a person who makes variegated statements saying that the Vedas originate in Sumeria and then provides no proof for such easily disprovable statements.

As I've repeated over and over again, the belief systems in indo-European mythos and those in sumerian or akkadian/amorite/semitic forms differ quite a bit and yet you seem to have the notion that Indo-European religion came from Mesopotamia.

[muawiyah]

You're trying to claim the Vedas couldn't have originated anywhere else because, alas, all those other places are NOT INDIA.

Hardly a way to argue.

Then, to compound your error you go on prattling about the semitic and Indo-European nature of Mesopotamia (forgetting, of course, that the Indo part of that Indo-European left Western Asia and traveled to India.

But, alas, that's not enough, you went on and denied they could have developed any of their peculiarly "Indian" ideas while in the West and must simply have been converted to the true light once over the mountins and into India.

Which is all nonsense.

The people who first occupied Mesopotamia were NOT SEMITIC. In fact, those old boys were still in North Africa in those days. Plus, they weren't Indo-European because those old boys were living on the South shore of the Black Sea.

An earlier people speaking, and then writing, what appears to all current top end philologists to be a language cognate to the Dravidian languages, occupied the area, built cities, and did such neat things as invent writing.

That all happened a good 2,000 years BEFORE the Aryans found themselves on the way from Anatolia to the Indus.

It is inconceivable that the people who invented writing, the Sumerians, failed to pass on their cultural and religious values to "others" who fell within their shadow.

[Cronos]

The Vedas couldn’t have originated elsewhere because they refer to the geography of north-west India — to the punjab and the five rivers of the punjab (Panch Jab — get it?). You would understand that if you had actually read the Rig Veda or an interpretation of it. Have you actually read it or read any details ON it? Or have you just watched one discovery show and are now an expert?

[Cronos]

Then, to compound your error you go on prattling about the semitic and Indo-European nature of Mesopotamia (forgetting, of course, that the Indo part of that Indo-European left Western Asia and traveled to India.

If you would read a little bit about Mesopotamia, you would realise that there were no Indo-Europeans in that region until the Persians in 500 BC.

[Cronos]

Then, to compound your error you go on prattling about the semitic and Indo-European nature of Mesopotamia (forgetting, of course, that the Indo part of that Indo-European left Western Asia and traveled to India.

"Western Asia" -- by that, you mean Mesopotamia? As archaeology and history proves, there was no Indo-European presence there. The closest Indo-Europeans got was in the Mitanni and Hittite federations/Empires that were in Anatolia. Both of these were invading forces who invaded in 2000 BC. In contrast you have the written evidence of the Vedas -- the oldest Indo-European books that refer to geography in north-west India. you also have the centers of Aryanic civilisation and their most advanced civilisations in the region of North-west India - southern Central Asia and Eastern Iran

[muawiyah]

Hmm, I thought I told you what was said on that show the evening before ~ that in fact there is geographic information in the very oldest of the Vedas regarding lands far to the West.

Look, here's a modern example of how that happens. There's a York in England. Settlers here created a York or two (New York, York PA, etc.). The same with rivers ~ there are places here where the rivers have the same names as rivers in Europe ~ one of the favorites is "White River".

Cities, towns, places, geographic points (Pillars of Hercules exist in two places, one near Greece, another at Gibraltar). My own personal favorite is Seymour Indiana. Used to be called Mules Crossing. It was known locally as Amaroosia (with no fixed spelling suggesting an origin among illiterate people). More recently I've been able to identify it with the capital city of Lappland county in Finnland ~ in either Skolt or Inari Sa'ami. If John Mellenkamp ever writes a song about Amaroosia he will be inserting Finnish folk information from thousands of years into a relatively new framework.

Plus, specialists in the field have done detailed and critical analysis and have identified anomalies that demonstrate outside information.

So you can accept my word that I read all about it, in some depth too, or you can use older sources that did not benefit from the more critical analyses.

I know you want real bad for India to be the font of all religious knowledge, but you're too late by over 5,000 years ~ it wasn't then, and it isn't now.