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Menu There is no diplomatic solutionIsrael should declare three nos;
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
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Thank you for the mention of Baen Free Books, as I have not thought of them in several years. I have not been there in some time. I had a PC that crashed unexpectedly(and by that I am referencing a laptop that my dog pulled by its power-cord to an untimely early death) and I lost many such online book sites. The ability to hold so many valuable volumes in the size of an oversized comic book(I am referring to the laptop) is a seductive attraction that I have paid into with more of my finances than seems just. I really am a bibliophile at heart but the reduction of space that has accompanied my endlessly growing library has placed limits to the viability of new additions to the collection…fortunately ebooks renders this difficulty moot. Speaking of which, I have never read to any great extent on the Chashmonai, much to my shame. Is there a text that you recommend on the subject?
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@ Edgar G.:
“Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht” I can still recall that phrase uttered in my grandmothers loving voice from my youth. I recall at a young age thinking it was a cynical and dour saying to be spoken by a woman who was quite flighty and always happily natured. I naturally came later in life to understand my youthful estimation of this phrase was a mix of inexperience/hubris.
Belisarius against the Mauryans, that would be an interesting contest to see play out, but my money would be on Belisarius – though the Mauryans were as clever in their tactics as they were ruthless in their victories – it worked to undermine the will to resist them with great success. I read some time ago something related to the comparison of the greatest warriors of history given each pre-gunpowder societies tactics and technical abilities. It was deduced by “experts” that should each era place its forces against one another in a one-on-one contest as it were, the last group left standing would actually be the Franks. The Franks were quite ferocious, usually massing large forces for battle with their spears, arrows chain-mail and of course the devastating short axe(which the experts felt gave the Franks their edge against any on-comers). Still, they would not have been the choice I would have expected. They moved like a mob lacking order from my recollections in anycase, but that was what the experts agreed upon. But as interesting as the subject might be, any decided winner would be necessarily based on quite an arbitrary argument, so I guess maybe the Franks.
Yes, my speech is often reflective of my writing style, as I had assumed was also true of yourself. For myself, I will often find that I am discussing points of relevance which may first seem unrelated, but which is clear to me as to where I am going, while hopeful not to abuse the kind attentions of the party with whom I am conversing. Occasionally, I will see that some listening may be uncertain of my meaning, at first, but I try to be careful to see they understand the intended relevance, which often falls in one way or another upon the context of some historical reference. I find that the use of historical references is helpful to explain/discuss the proper context of many difficult conversations which might be made more difficult without the basis of such metaphorical comparisons. And the issues that I raise with regard to the virus and vaccines will, of course, at times, seem to upset some friends and family, but they realize the goal of such remarks are intended to help. They mostly accept the correct intent of my conversation, while they are necessarily upset by the content of such conversations – but then there is no way around this as it is quite upsetting to contemplate such evil tidings even from within the confines of one’s own mind.
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@ peloni1986:
You write the way you speak, I’m sure…… I do. Much of what you mention is known to me but also much was not, because it is a period that I was not immersed in except for general knowledge.. Thank you. It was a fascinating period , just before a great interest of mine, the Chashmnaim (Seleucus connection) Both Chandra and Ashoka were great men and deeervedly revered by succeeding generations. But today, we know more than they, considering the extent of relevant scholarship. and can truly appreciate their achievements.
Baen Free Books published a long novel series about Belisarius and his crafty political and military victories against the mighty Mauryan Empire. Pure fiction of course, considering the time line, but nevertheless fascinating. The authors never explained why they picked opponents so far apart historically. Perhaps to laud Belsarius, a favourite subject…?? .
I heard that phrase many times when growing up, and didntunderstand it until my mid-teen years. “Mann Tracht (Lacht), und Gott Lacht.”.
I don’t normally have memory lapses,so when I do it really bothers me. In the “scheme of life” it’s of no omportance, I console myself.
@ peloni1986:
I seem to have screwed up the editing of my post as I was trying to remember something I forgot and let the clock run me out. I was going to say that I am glad you solved the lapse of recollection to the title you long sought. I was upon a similar mindless fog when in school and tried to recall the name of a favorite author of mine whose bold observation set me upon my path of research in Macedonian studies. I thought I would never recall his name and after nine months it grew to such a level of annoyance that I had to break into a storage locker I rented to store my research for which I, of course, lost my key. And, now, just recalling this silly side tale, I realize that I seem to have forgotten his name once more. Wow.
@ Edgar G.:
Edgar, your ‘interruption’, as you name it, was of great interest to me. Chandragupta was the entry subject to my many studies of India. He, as I am sure you know, was a coeval of Alexander and failed to get Alexander to adopt his interest in fighting onto Magadha which was on the Ganges River(Alexander would likely have fought all the way to America left to his own interests, but his war-weary men force a change of plans). Soon after Alexander’s untimely death(and ignore the many thousands of history books that state clearly that it was due to malaria because it was not), Chandra took things into his own hands and overthrew the ruling dynasty of the Nandas who had been the current ruler of Magadha. Chandragupta was a very successful ruler and late in life retired from his kingship leaving his son Bindusara to rule and became an ascetic(seemed to be a common trait in India where much introspection resulted in the development of great philosophical and religious developments) and took up Jainsism. His grandson was Ashoka, of course, who took the Mauryan empire to the height of its power and influence. His war of conquest against the rival southern nation of Kalinga was said to have brought him to convert to Buddhism and gave up his quite cruel and warlike tendencies to that point. Upon conversion he was said to have spent the remainder of his reign as a devout and religious leader responsible for a wide adoption of Buddhism thru India. My inspection of this religion necessarily led me to the Buddha where I learned of the political upheaval taking place in his age between Magadha and a rival nation, Kosala, which was ruled by his father-in-law and then his brother-in-law. It is this time period where the three great religions and many alternate philosophies sprang to life amid a great rivalry and wars of conquest among the Ganges nations. It is a very long and complicated history that I quite enjoyed upon which I quite enjoyed my research. But the language barrier was never quite completed by me(as I say, I was really quite a miserable student with this language). With your background in historical research, I am sure you know that the slight nuances of language is often key to discerning fact from fiction, and I truly wanted to gain a true understanding of this period and, so, I was quite intent upon my path of research. But, then, as the saying goes, men make plans, G_d laughs.
I am glad you found the book ‘Elephant in Jet’. I find such lapses of titles annoying .
I will look into the And as you see, I am still unable to keep things short, though I do try. But in spite of my efforts I seem to be incapable of terse commentary.
@ Edgar G.:
fascinating, Edgar.
@ peloni1986:
Pelosi. Do me a favour, do not curtail your posts.; you are needlessly apologetic. I find your choice of language eclectic, flowing, a pleasure to read. I realise that this should have been in “Chit-Chat” but too late, I had already written it. So apologies TED.
******Not delving into your scholarly discourse,; you are needlessly apologtic…..but jogged a bit,by your mention of Jain(ism) I have a book, unfortunately stored away with thousands of others for many years now, because of lack of space etc. It is a novel, written in 1940 by Frank Stanley Stuart, who seems never to have written another. Possibly died in the War. Published by Paternoster House London, long defunct. I have been intrigued by it for years.
The story tells of the war between Changragupta Maurya and Seleucus Nicator. A major character is a huge black elephant, which turns up at critcal moments of battle.
What I found interesting is, that looking into Chandragupta, the earliest information about him is in a 2nd cent. account by the Roman historian Justin,,……… and he says that a huge wild elephant came from the forest and attached itself to Chandra, making it sound like a miraculous legend. xome say the first mention was in a Gujarati scroll.
In trying to track down another copy, I found that Roy Gashan never heard of it. Neither had Colin Choat, who founded and runs Gutenberg Australia, He has contacts all around the globe, couldn’t find a copy, which he’d have scanned and put in his library. But he referred me to The British Library. THEY have a single copy, in their Yorkshire branch, and told me that Trinity College Dublin Library (my old Alma Mater) had a copy.
My cousin’s daughter was the Head Librarian of the Semitic section there, until retirement. The person with whom I spoke, offered to scan, page by page, (needing to set up lights, a special studio etc). It eventually worked out to cost over 600 Euro. Maybe she thought it was important, like The Book of Kells..
So that was that. For the past 30 years I was trying to remember the book’s name, assuming easy access at, say Gutenberg Project, but couldn’t. Suddenly out of thr blue last year, I recalled it. “Elephant in Jet”..which set me on my fruitless search.
Nothing to do with your present subject, just a vignette on a matter of interest to me***
So, forgive the interruption.
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@ Sebastien Zorn:
Seb I’ve read all the way down from the top post. It’s a good alugh am surprised that you should even discuss Netayahu with Reader, as you “wont get no satisfation” from him. He is a fervent Netanyahu hater or a disgruntled contrarian,possibly both—and much more.
Whatever you say, he’ll find an answer which is not apposite, as I see above.
Good Luck !!
@ Reader:
Sorry Reader, I know many are likely to agree with you, and I do try to be pithy like yourself and others on this site but I seem to be quite miserable at it.
I had completed my manuscript on Macedonia and was eager to find something as challenging as that was. I began to learn Hindi as I was researching the history of the rise of great religions in India. I had English translations, but didtn’t trust them – with good reason. Buddhism and Jainism arose around the civilization of a city state called Magadha. Hinduism was sort of transformed due to the rising influence of the competing religions/philosophies of the age(roughly 600BC, by most historical estimates but not all). The history is quite captivating but the sources and scholarly discussions are never in English. I never was very good with the language and finally surrendered as life granted me the opportunity for higher studies in medicine. I have never stopped regretting the decision having left that project half completed, but oh well.
And yes, this is the very short version of this story.
@ peloni1986:
Your posts are extremely long and i cannot read them, they drive me crazy.
Anyway, if this video had pictures of Biden instead of Netanyahu wouldn’t you think that the video is trying to associate all these alleged achievements with Biden?
How did you get to learn Hindi?
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Dialects are not the same as accents.
@ Reader:
@ Sebastien Zorn:
TGI Global is the latest of a series of expansions and rebranding that began back in 2012. It was previously known as Rightlog and had both Indian and English websites associated with the original Rightlog and its initial rebrand TGIpost formats. That being the case, the stories covered on the Indian site do not appear to be rehashed translations of their English site as I believe I can discern by visiting the two sites – now I don’t know Hindi well enough to read a newspaper, but enough to see they appear to be different articles, but a native Hindi speaker could tell for sure. It could also be that the stories are variously placed on different parts of the two websites as to target their intended audiences(I would suspect this is likely – only makes sense). Oh, if you use Chrome, which I do not, it has a way to translate I am told so you can confirm my conclusions if you like. Rightlog was established in 2012 and was forced to rebrand when it became one of the early winners to be awarded with the scarlet letter of a facebook decertification – they got scrubbed. Also, the chief columnist, Ajit Datta, seems to have PM Modi as a twitter follower of his – I can’t confirm if this is true or just propaganda he placed on his twitter acct but it would be a pretty lame straw man to advertise if it were false. It seems wherever you go for news in the 21st century, it often acts as an echo chamber reverberating a particular agenda back at you – the balkanization of political thought and discourse in the 21st century. So, it may well be that TFI is just a propaganda site for conservative Indians, but the idea that this site was setup by Bibi or some Bibi enthusiast is not a rational one. More likely than it being a result of a Bibi enthusiast selling Bibi propaganda is that it may be a Modi enthusiast(or China antagonist) selling Modi propaganda which would include supporting or encouraging pro-Bibi perspectives/news. I am uncertain of the visits either site receives, but India is a nation of 1.4 billion people, so 30 million visits would include only 2% of their public without any visits on the English site. Hence it may not be an unreasonable estimate. That being said, it is still a lot of viewers and I would hazard to guess that it is probably exaggerated.
Here is a list of their columnists
https://tfipost.com/columnists/
and here is a video with one of the columnists named on the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NKLBybFKlM&list=PLbKEFngXW_XyQjrhVJAx1cKY40xVcQCPb&index=5
So I think they are Indians, but who knows these days.
@ Reader: So, have I. Sounded Indian to me. And there are a lot of people from Bangladesh, here, too, so I know the difference. Still, there are many different regional accents there. More than would be represented over here. This is what Wikipedia says:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_differences_and_dialects_in_Indian_English
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I am not an expert in accents but i have heard how people from India speak English and this is not it.
@ Reader:
Valid questions. What accent is it if not HIndi? I tried to find something on TFI Global and found it is mostly owned By Corus Entertainment which is mostly owned by Shaw Communications which is a Canadian company which tells me nothing. What makes you think it is doing propaganda for Bibi? It’s very pro-Israel, and they’ve decided that Bibi is good for Israel but that’s not necessarily a biased disregard for truth. As to the question of whether their claims of 30 million viewership in India is true, I don’t know how to check that. Anyone?
@ Sebastien Zorn:
How do you know it is a legitimate agency?
How do you know it is an Indian agency?
The narrator’s accent is not Hindi.
It could be made by a Netanyahu fan anywhere but can’t you see that photos of Netanyahu are there constantly?
And that the narrator spouts NONSENSE?.
Netanyahu didn’t have to bribe anyone, he could have just released an ad or created this “independent alternative” website..
Just about any child can now create a website and write or say anything s/he wants.
Sebastien Zorn Said:
This is what they say about themselves in their bio:
https://tfiglobalnews.com/about-us/
@ Reader:
Are you suggesting he has bribed this Indian News Agency to give him favorable coverage?
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Don’t you understand that this is Netanyahu’s “election ad”?
Makes sense to me. It’s a testament to Bibi Netanyahu’s leadership. He knows how to play 4D chess like Trump.