Gary C. Gibson

02 September 2014

Majority of Media Opinion on Global Issues Reflect Market Fundamentalism?

With so much of the established media owned by the wealthy, and with limited opportunities for the public to comment, the political opinions seem to reflect the interests of market fundamental in international affairs rather than some variety of democratic constituent expression. It just happens that way.

The Holy Spirit & Human Experience

The Holy Spirit is thought of as one person of the Trinity. The word person is used in recognition of the identity of an individual sentient being. With God though whom is the transcending omnipotent, omniscient being the differentiation from monism to pluralism is challenging to understand. One wonders what could differentiates or forms boundaries within the being of God such that differences could exist yet equally as well one might wonder how God could not have primary differentiation in order to achieve better intellect or capacity such as one finds in moving from monocular to binocular vision. The Holy Spirit is God, yet so are the Father and the Son.

It is a little difficult to describe the Holy Spirit without describing the Father and the Son for each cohere within God and comprise the essential nature of God as a triune being from whom all good things are made to exist (though one might have an opinion that all things always exist in some nook within the infinite spatio-temporal, non-spatio-atemporal- memory as reality -knowledge of God). The Holy Spirit is held to have always existed as have the Father and Son.

Obviously scientists would want find in that an interest in deconstructing a synthesis as they might find a synthesis in the history of human R.N.A. and mitochondrial D.N.A. or the evolution of a given government bureaucracy such as Homeland Security from prior bureaucracies. The trinity though is something more than what a Nobel Prize winning physicist wrote about phase changes generating new wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts in a book called ‘Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Up’. Existence and creation may be enabled because of the complexity possible with the Trinity.

Albert Einstein had a friend and fellow physicist (Paul Ehrenfrest) who discovered the principle that three dimensions of space and one of time seems to be the ideal configuration for the existence of atoms. With fewer dimensions of space atoms either could not exist as complex structures and with more dimensions the formation of atoms would be too difficult and simple motions would not be possible. Nuclear valence shells would be obstructed by complexity; electrons could not orbit a nucleus and so forth.

If atoms exist in three dimensions of space it is possible that they are made up of one or two dimensional strings at a very fundamental level. At a larger level membrane of space-time may collide to generate energy or membranes of spatial dimensions may intersect and move along creating an appearance of the passage of time for humans or other sentient beings existing within the intersecting ‘branes’. In that context space ‘branes’ would have field energy that generates complexity after collisions. That complexity seem like a big bang and a Universe of particles could appear as detritus. That has been compared to a collision in a particle accelerator. This is all natural philosophy view by humanity within some existing realm willed by God to exist. Various fields and branes, if they exist, would be pluralistic creations will by God to exist. In the infinite power of God all things are possible including an infinite generation of spatial membranes.

The Holy Spirit as one of the trinity has a special role enabling communication with humanity and providing grace unto humanity though the world is itself complex and challenging to exist within. The Holy Spirit has more power than even gravity to transcend the criterion of mass, for gravity acts without differentiation upon all mass with only massless particles being uninfluenced by it, while the Holy Spirit can act specifically upon individuals as the will of God deems. The Trinity may be the way God interacts with all created things while for-himself He just is.

God exists in a heterodox fashion with things existing eternally one might guess as an essential attribute. The Holy Spirit is God as are the Father and Son, yet one might also regard the Holy Spirit from the perspective of existential relations of being-for-others. In that sense one finds the Holy Spirit to be little different-a Person of Holiness and excellence drawing human beings toward the perfect and good, the true and righteous, to a directions leading to fulfillment of the purposes of God. Through revelation human beings learn of the Holy Spirit. It is only as created beings that humanity can regard the Holy Spirit. What or how the Holy Spirit is for-himself or more accurately what God is like for-himself human beings simply cannot know. The most close we can get to that is through Jesus Christ, as Jesus informed us in his special prayer of renormalization unto one-ness.

In order to provide a measure of comparison of what I have written here to the historical context of what has been written about the Holy Spirit I will provide a substantial quote from a Christian historian on the Holy Spirit. It is interesting to see how a writer’s knowledge-base affects his approaches for writing about a topic that has existed for writers as a topic for millennia. It occurs to me for example, that the problem of free will and determinism can be approached differently today with string and atomic theory cosmology than during the early Christian era, of course it wasn’t necessary to develop apologetics or replies to quantum physics or the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, General Relativity or quantum teleportation in the first century A.D. With all of that it is illuminating to consider that the Holy Spirit would seem to implicitly have an advantage in acting within and through deterministic sectors of space-time mass and/or energy configured as human life and human affairs. One also might wonder how God can effect deterministic space-time mass or energy once it is set in motion. Though brane theory can negate the need for local brane motion when the appearance of motion can arise through intersecting, traveling branes, some motion does seem to exist at at least one meta-level of brane existence or in a variegated field of branes. With the uncertainty principle perhaps arising because of the difference in space-mass-energy configurations on intersecting branes yet at any rate required for freedom-of-movement within an overall deterministic field, the Holy Spirit can act directly beyond and through any given configuration of branes, entangled mass energy, fields, strings or other atomic structure…helpful indeed for the fallen and lost human race.

Holy Spirit (page 503) and the Trinity (page 507) in volume 2 of Schaff’s History of the Christian Church; (in the public domain).

Quote-“The doctrine of the Holy Spirit was far less developed, and until the middle of the fourth century was never a subject of special controversy. So in the Apostles’ Creed, only one article is devoted to the third person of the holy Trinity, while the confession of the Son of God, in six or seven articles, forms the body of the symbol. Even the original Nicene Creed breaks off abruptly with the words: "And in the Holy Spirit;" the other clauses being later additions. Logical knowledge appears to be here still further removed than in Christology from the living substance of faith. This period was still in immediate contact with the fresh spiritual life of the apostolic, still witnessed the lingering operations of the extraordinary gifts, and experienced in full measure the regenerating, sanctifying, and comforting influences of the divine Spirit in life, suffering, and death; but, as to the theological definition of the nature and work of the Spirit, it remained in many respects confused and wavering down to the Nicene age.

Yet rationalistic historians go quite too far when, among other accusations, they

charge the early church with making the Holy Spirit identical with the Logos. To confound the functions, as in attributing the inspiration of the prophets, for example, now to the Holy Spirit, now to the Logos, is by no means to confound the persons. On the contrary, the thorough investigations of recent times show plainly that the ante-Nicene fathers, with the exception of the Monarchians and perhaps Lactantius, agreed in the two fundamental points, that the Holy Spirit, the sole agent in the application of redemption, is a supernatural divine being, and that he is an independent person; thus closely allied to the Father and the Son yet hypostatically different from them both. This was the practical conception, as demanded even by the formula of baptism. But instead of making the Holy Spirit strictly coordinate with the other divine persons, as the Nicene doctrine does, it commonly left him subordinate to the Father and the Son.

So in Justin, the pioneer of scientific discovery in Pneumatology as well as in Christology. He refutes the heathen charge of atheism with the explanation, that the Christians worship the Creator of the universe, in the second place the Son, in the third

the prophetic Spirit; placing the three divine hypostases in a descending gradation

as objects of worship. In another passage, quite similar, he interposes the host of good

angels between the Son and the Spirit, and thus favors the inference that he regarded the Holy Ghost himself as akin to the angels and therefore a created being. But aside from the obscurity and ambiguity of the words relating to the angelic host, the coordination of the Holy Ghost with the angels is utterly precluded by many other expressions of Justin, in which he exalts the Spirit far above the sphere of all created being, and challenges for the members of the divine trinity a worship forbidden to angels. The leading function of the Holy Spirit, with him, as with other apologists, is the inspiration of the Old Testament prophets. In general the Spirit conducted the Jewish theocracy, and qualified the theocratic officers. All his gifts concentrated themselves finally in Christ; and thence they pass to the faithful in the church. It is a striking fact, however, that Justin in only two passages refers the new moral life of the Christian to the Spirit, he commonly represents the Logos as its fountain. He lacks all insight into the distinction of the Old Testament Spirit and the New, and urges their identity in opposition to the Gnostics.

In Clement of Alexandria we find very little progress beyond this point. Yet he calls

the Holy Spirit the third member of the sacred triad, and requires thanksgiving to be addressed to him as to the Son and the Father.

Origen vacillates in his Pneumatology still more than in his Christology between

orthodox and heterodox views. He ascribes to the Holy Spirit eternal existence, exalts him, as he does the Son, far above all creatures and considers him the source of all charisms, especially as the principle of all the illumination and holiness of believers under the Old Covenant and the New. But he places the Spirit in essence, dignity, and efficiency below the Son, as far as he places the Son below the Father; and though he grants in one passage that the Bible nowhere calls the Holy Spirit a creature, yet, according to another somewhat obscure sentence, he himself inclines towards the view, which, however he does not avow that the Holy Spirit had a beginning (though, according to his system, not in time but from eternity), and is the first and most excellent of all the beings produced by the Logos.

In the same connection he adduces three opinions concerning the Holy Spirit; one regarding him as not having an origin; another, ascribing to him no separate personality; and a third, making him a being originated by the Logos. The first of these opinions he rejects because the Father alone is without origin (ἀγέννητος); the second he rejects because in Matt. 12:32 the Spirit is plainly distinguished from the Father and the Son; the third he takes for the true and scriptural view, because everything was made by the Logos. Indeed, according to Matt. 12:32, the Holy Spirit would seem to stand above the Son; but the sin against the Holy Ghost is more heinous than that against the Son of Man, only because he who has received the Holy Spirit stands higher than he who has merely the reason from the Logos.

Here again Irenaeus comes nearer than the Alexandrians to the dogma of the perfect

substantial identity of the Spirit with the Father and the Son; though his repeated figurative (but for this reason not so definite) designation of the Son and Spirit as the "hands" of the Father, by which he made all things, implies a certain subordination. He differs from most of the Fathers in referring the Wisdom of the book of Proverbs not to the Logos but to the Spirit; and hence must regard him as eternal. Yet he was far from conceiving the Spirit a mere power or attribute; he considered him an independent personality, like the Logos. "With God" says he, "are ever the Word and the Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, through whom and in whom he freely made all things, to whom he said, ’Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ "But he speaks more of the operations than of the nature of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit predicted in the prophets the coming of Christ; has been near to man in all divine ordinances; communicates the knowledge of the Father and the Son; gives believers the consciousness of sonship; is fellowship with Christ, the pledge of imperishable life, and the ladder on which we ascend to God.

In the Montanistic system the Paraclete occupies a peculiarly important place. He

appears there as the principle of the highest stage of revelation, or of the church of the

consummation. Tertullian made the Holy Spirit the proper essence of the church, but subordinated him to the Son, as he did the Son to the Father, though elsewhere he asserts the "unitas substantiae." In his view the Spirit proceeds "a Patre per Filium," as the fruit from the root through the stem. The view of the Trinity presented by Sabellius contributed to the suppression of these subordinatian ideas.

§ 149. The Holy Trinity.

Comp. the works quoted in §144, especially Petravius, Bull, Baur, and Dorner.

Here now we have the elements of the dogma of the Trinity, that is, the doctrine of the

living, only true God, Father, Son, and Spirit, of whom, through whom, and to whom are

all things. This dogma has a peculiar, comprehensive, and definitive import in the Christian system, as a brief summary of all the truths and blessings of revealed religion. Hence the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19), which forms the basis of all the ancient creeds, is trinitarian; as is the apostolic benediction also (2 Cor. 13:14). This doctrine meets us in the Scriptures, however, not so much in direct statements and single expressions, of which the two just mentioned are the clearest, as in great living facts; in the history of a threefold revelation of the living God in the creation and government, the reconciliation and redemption, and the sanctification and consummation of the world—a history continued in the experience of Christendom. In the article of the Trinity the Christian conception of God completely defines itself, in distinction alike from the abstract monotheism of the Jewish religion, and from the polytheism and dualism of the heathen. It has accordingly been looked upon in all ages as the sacred symbol and the fundamental doctrine of the Christian church, with the denial of which the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and the divine character of the work of redemption and sanctification, fall to the ground.

On this scriptural basis and the Christian consciousness of a threefold relation we

sustain to God as our Maker, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, the church dogma of the Trinity

arose; and it directly or indirectly ruled even the ante-Nicene theology though it did not

attain its fixed definition till in the Nicene age. It is primarily of a practical religious nature,

and speculative only in a secondary sense. It arose not from the field of metaphysics, but from that of experience and worship; and not as an abstract, isolated dogma, but in inseparable connection with the study of Christ and of the Holy Spirit; especially in connection with Christology, since all theology proceeds from "God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." Under the condition of monotheism, this doctrine followed of necessity from the doctrine of the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. The unity of God was already immovably fixed by the Old Testament as a fundamental article of revealed religion in opposition to all forms of idolatry. But the New Testament and the Christian consciousness as firmly demanded faith in the divinity of the Son, who effected redemption, and of the Holy Spirit, who founded the church and dwells in believers; and these apparently contradictory interests could be reconciled only in the form of the Trinity; that is, by distinguishing in the one and indivisible essence of God three hypostases or persons; at the same time allowing for the insufficiency of all human conceptions and words to describe such an unfathomable mystery.

The Socinian and rationalistic opinion, that the church doctrine of the Trinity

sprang from Platonism and Neo-Platonism is therefore radically false. The

Indian Trimurti, altogether pantheistic in spirit, is still further from the Christian Trinity.

Only thus much is true, that the Hellenic philosophy operated from without, as a stimulating force, upon the form of the whole patristic theology, the doctrines of the Logos and the Trinity among the rest; and that the deeper minds of heathen antiquity showed a presentiment of a threefold distinction in the divine essence: but only a remote and vague presentiment which, like all the deeper instincts of the heathen mind, serves to strengthen the Christian truth. Far clearer and more fruitful suggestions presented themselves in the Old Testament, particularly in the doctrines of the Messiah, of the Spirit, of the Word, and of the Wisdom of God, and even in the system of symbolical numbers, which rests on the sacredness of the numbers three (God), four (the world), seven and twelve (the union of God and the world, hence the covenant numbers. But the mystery of the Trinity could be fully revealed only in the New Testament after the completion of the work of redemption and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The historical manifestation of the Trinity is the condition of the knowledge of the Trinity.”-endquote

British P.M Cameroon Considers Expanding Censorship for ELites

I would hate to say that P.M. Cameroon’s desire to rule the free speech of the masses is crude, crass and rash. In the Internet era people are far more threatened by those who would put chains on free speech rather by those who use hateful speech. If Brits can’t say ‘off with the King’s head’ what is the world coming to?

Without free speech could the French have had their revolution or Jacobean reaction to guillotine the rich? Without free speech what kind of protest would reform Wall Street and Footsie financial flummery? If it were illegal to even talk about substantive removal of rich elites from cat-bird seats of opportunity would the masses have any effective means of reform?

Banning political speech in country A would require that Internet speech in country B be censored too. If one has a Sir Queen running for P.M. yet it would be considered hateful to point out that a homosexual politician is queering and blackmailing his, her or its way to the top, but they report that in observant country B-won’t the P.M. need to cut the wire from country B to country A in order to protect the delicate political sensitivity of his country A flock?

British efforts to censor hit Nathan Hale and Patrick Henry a little earlier in history when democracy was just getting started. Sometimes the Brits never change and revert to imperial form. Taming down the hateful masses cannot substitute for poor immigration policy or the right-to-revolt against institutional hatred of the masses whereby every word from the lips of an oppressive ruler is hateful to the oppressed receiving it.

Given the right incentives such as Jacobite correction it is possible for economists and politicians to keep a society in full employment, a good standard of living, conservation and recovery of the ecosphere, a balanced budget and a narrow gap between the most rich and the most poor in a society-without the proper incentives such as decapitating failing leadership classes when economic indexes rise to intolerable pre-set levels the elites just concentrate wealth and let business go on as usual-that’s just the way it is sadly; the human condition has innate greed, corruption and insatiable desire for immortal wealth for a mortal body and of course they should instead be looking toward Jesus Christ.

The

United States

has for a century been malinfluenced by the Brits. We should never have bailed them out in the First World War. If we had let the war find a natural balance the Nazis and Second World War would never have occurred like as not. American Presidents and Congress too often put themselves into a Master-Blaster role of being the muscle for corrupt British P.M. brains as Brits needed to recover from the loss of their imperial empire with American military power.

America

should not send free speech down the way of the Buffalo course to oblivion. Free speech should roam free and wild from border to border, sea to BP oil slickened shiny sea.

Across the globe there are nations with censorship in place. Free speech is considered dangerous by establishments that seek to retard change in order to conserve its place of power. The media domination of broadcast media given by government to the wealthy is itself a censorship of free speech of citizen pod cast user a priori-states should use broadcast wavelengths with new technology for citizens pod cast time-slices. A war to conserve free speech needs to be fought that finds new ways to increase access of the masses to express it.

Hate speech lexicons defined by establishment authorities necessarily conserve the power of those authorities. Virtually anything can be marked as hate language with criteria determined by the state or corporate authority and that is quite dangerous. A writer might use one hate word variable per 5000 words of high quality material and find the entire essay deleted-and that retards social development and citizen participation as peers in society. How can neighbor A say to neighbor B ‘I have the right to limit what you say to words that are not hateful?” How may a government implement speech controls through the rubric of hate speech censorship and not be worthy of deletion itself?

The internet reaches more than 180 nations-each with different ideas about what speech is hateful and different constituencies with different opinions about what speech is hateful. Keep in mind that words are just representative symbols with no implicit value as sounds. It is only within a given culture that the meaning of a word can be a referent to a designated object or event-process and be more than noise. Cultural freedom to make noises with referent objects is requisite for a better-than-simian social environment. Prime Minister Cameron is wrong to take

Britain

down the long and winding road to the chimp heaven of state censorship. Every nation on Earth will need to convene to form a standardized lexicon of hate speech words and phrases with translations into every language in order that one may liberally ban the offending thousands of words and lobotomize public thought effectively enough that the flock is free from programmatic hate-speech by dissenters to hate Britain too.

In the

United States

the federal judiciary has made something of a mockery of democracy with vetoes of state bans on homosexual marriage-bans that were approved by popular vote in referenda. Democracy was subverted by corporatist judicial appointees and homosexuals to prove the point that the people can’t really have democracy except to be yes-persons to the will of the elites. To change that situation would require changing the constitution-a cumbersome, expensive process easily thwarted by concentrated wealth elites and their corporatist political minions…they want to impose language bans of hate speech too.

A better way that censorship might be to compel diversity of opinion in public forums dedicated to just one side-such as jihadist Britains that want to kill or maim parliament and napalm Windsor Castle etc. It is illegal in most places to advocate crimes or to form a criminal conspiracy to commit crimes, yet that is a long way from just hate speech saying that Tories suck or Labor have their heads up their arses (I don’t know the except British epithets for that sort of expression-to some that want steak and eggs, fish and chips is hate speech).

Britain

could experiment with compelling extremist web sites to have hyperlinks and windows to opposite opinion sites instead of censorship.

If Saudi Arabia required anti-Jewish web pages to have windows with Jewish women in Professorial robes taking about the dangers of global warming or whatever I imagine that some of the hate speech of Jews would be defrapped (as the French Christine Leguard defrapped things like the world monetary fund that were frapped by Dominique Strauss-Khan). Christine LeGuard should run for Prime Minister of Britain and defrappe that. Plainly free speech should be increase so that Internet troglodytes trolling just a few websites as people tend to do experience the grand vistas of the Internet-maybe Bing’s nice pictures and lose some of the rabidity that Prime Minister Cameron fears might be hateful.

Brits sometimes are impractical in their impecuniary political selections because of greed. The Depr River ought to be a joint Ukraine Russian waterway peacefully facilitating regional and even global trade and commerce with tax-free barge traffic for business large and small. Instead P.M. Cameroon might prefer to have all of the

Ukraine

and run a British barge line on the Dnepr for use of which the Russians would pay dearly. To be fair and balanced though, American Senator Menendez wants to donate free weapons to the Ukraine P.M. Billionaire Poor-o-shingle. One would think that establishing a new college of Guerilla training for Europe might be in store with the proven success of the American College for Guerilla training in

Syria

and

Iraq

. Senator McCain might like to set up a bombing range in the

Ukraine

area generally. He is a guy good to have on your side when the foe attacks.

Hate speech censorship seems like an anachronistic trick more suitable for Catherine the Great and Radischev or other prior eras before the Internet was invented by Al Gore. Not only may radio talk about droopery in private pictures taken by defunct newspapers such as The Guardian, they report that hackers have got into Apple’s private accounts and taken nude pictures of celebrities and posted them on the Internet. They also said that anyone posting them (such as in

Namibia

) will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in that jurisdiction of corporatism when the N.S.A. catches them.

Britain

may not have the technical power to listen to everyone’s smart phone for hate speech yet the N.S.A. does. Perhaps as a cross-pond reciprocation for a first round political issue draft choice and future considerations the N.S.A. could eves-drop and find out who is saying hateful things about P.M. Cameron or seeking to sabotage his re-election campaign with hate speech. As corporatism concentrates wealth even talk about taxing the rich more could be regarded as hate speech. Censoring words is no substitute for rational political measures, immigration policies and economic justice.

Concentrating wealth through corporatism gradually evolves a stagnant society with wealth given over to uncreative heirs reinvesting in an existing, ossifying establishment. The acceleration of the velocity of money through globalization and networking reinforced with theories in support of market fundamentalism will petrify social liberty, economic innovation and prohibit critical political change to reply to environmental threats in a way satisfactory to the majority of the people with a minority of global capital and political power. Concentration of wealth and political power to prohibit free speech may bring about the end of human life on earth, and I for one, would hate that.

29 August 2014

Is N.A.T.O. Harmful to European Security?

In the aftermath of the cold war one can ask how N.A.T.O. is relevant to European security. After all N.A.T.O. was formed in response to the post-World War Two chaos of Europe that was divided between the Soviet bloc and the west. When the dust settled after Soviets rolled back the Nazis from the East and other allied powers from the west Europe was divided from the core right at Berlin. Ordinary historical nationalism with grand alliances and spheres of interest to control regions prevailed; militaries and bureaucracies grew to power as rival economic meta-theories competed side by side. N.A.T.O. was formed to coordinate the North Atlantic alliance ‘across the pond’.

America

agreed to defend Western Europe against, primarily, the Soviet Union though any existential threat to N.A.T.O. members would be met by all.

Is N.A.T.O. still relevant in the post-cold war political and economic environment? Its foundation is one of conventional historical nationalism and international conventions rather than that of transcendental economies flowing beyond national borders with instant global communications, stock trades etc.

Since the Cold War, N.A.T.O. interventions have been out of phase with its reason for being. Intervening in the Yugoslav civil war was not an action in response to an attack on a N.A.T.O. member, neither was Kuwait a member of N.A.T.O., nor did Iraq attack a member of N.A.T.O. before several N.A.T.O. members joined the coalition of the willing to invade and occupy Iraq. It is difficult to say that the Afghanistan attacked a N.A.T.O. member. Instead Khalid Sheik Mohammed-a terrorist organizer from Baluchistan, designed a plan to crash planes into building across the U.S.A., the international terrorist organizer and financier Osama Bin Laden scaled back the plan and focused it upon New York and Washington D.C. and the Taliban provided refuge to the terrorists. The decision to send N.A.T.O. to occupy Afghanistan was the knee-jerk response-a policy that has been costly with uncertain long range results.

In the year 1994 while N.A.T.O. was bombing the heck out of Serbia Russian President Boris Yeltsin acting under Bill Clinton’s influence signed away the Ukraine. With uncertainty even as to who or what a hypothetical new Russian Federation would be or become in the post-Soviet new Russian order and without an effective military at his command Yeltsin gave up on the indefensible Ukraine. N.A.T.O. was not in disarray. The U.S. military forces in Europe and worldwide were primed and ready to attack a Soviet enemy that had dissolved. The power of a Yeltsin government to hold on to Ukraine was not existent. Like V.I. Lenin giving away Ukraine to a victorious Germany that had defeated the Tsar’s army as a land-for-peace deal, Yeltsin gave away Ukraine. Moral arguments of the west to hold on to all of the Ukraine are not well-founded. Instead they lie in force de majeure.

Western nations have historically sought to capture the Ukraine from Russia taking it like an overly burdensome fruit waiting on a branch for plucking. Swedes, Teutonic Knights, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolph Hitler were prior aggressive warriors invading Russia. The Kaiser, like President Bill Clinton, possessed military power advantages over Russia and Boris Yeltsin like Vladimir Lenin before him signed away the Ukraine to buy a period of relief. This time Washington provided certain economic benefits yet those would not prevent a natural long-term effort for Russia to recover its missing limb. Russia is probably not planning an invasion of Paris or battle of Britain.

N.A.T.O. construction of long-range political instability that promotes curtailment of Russian-N.A.T.O. counter-terror and economic security is bad policy, yet that is the way bureaucracies surge ahead inertially as the most doctrinaire rise to the top pounding on the pulpit of paranoia. Democracy morphing to corporatism are run from the top-down like structuring programming language. The people of Ukraine probably want peace, security, prosperity and freedom and don’t care much who is running the government in an era when governments are run by and for elites- elites that don’t mind breaking a few hundred thousand eggs to make Wall Street omelets rise in value.

So today Russia is struggling to recover some of its Ukrainian possession or at least secure independence for Russians living in the region. N.A.T.O. Chief Rasmussen made grandiose, nationalistic form statements about international obligations of Russian (to give up the Ukraine). The natural Russian sphere of influence and security in Ukraine is targeted by anachronistic N.A.T.O. leadership. Without Russia as an enemy N.A.T.O. has little obvious reason to exist except perhaps to keep its own members in line.

One of the primary roles of N.A.T.O. is to defend not just against external threats but against internal threats too. Europeans traditionally fought themselves or even attacked the U.S.A. (burning the U.S. capitol in 1812). It was good to know that with N.A.T.O. formed the werewolf problem of recrudescent Germen Nazis or Italian fascists would not too easily recur, It was good to know that France and Germany could forge a new identity together fighting communism at least before French President Charles DeGaulle withdrew France from N.A.T.O. membership. It may be that N.A.T.O. wasn’t too helpful to France in the French-Algerian war and he resented that. If European N.A.T.O members hadn’t supported America’s Afghanistan invasion its leadership would have worried about American support if Russia should attack-something it wasn’t likely to do.

So far as I know Russia has never attacked the West. Adolph Hitler signed a deal with Stalin enabling Stalin to attack Finland-yet that was a special case with Stalin perhaps a little incentivized to appease the dictator in return for some real estate. With Hitler receiving assurances that Stalin would not attack from the east if the Nazis attacked the west, the Nazi game was on. European N.A.T.O. memberships preclude much potential for intra-European military scrumming.

Europeans, it should be recalled, are quite subject to social determinism. There is less social room for movement as well as less vacant land space for movement or expansion in Europe than the U.S.A.. Lebensraum was a rational for Nazis. Conflicts often arise because people are unable to leave their highly determined social roles-even at a national level. The First World War was set into motion with automatic alliances and mobilizations.

Americans had less physical social determinism thanEuropeans because of the unpopulated land where only 3 or 4 millions pre-Columbian orgin natives lived (in the area that is today the U.S.A.). The recent Obamacare health policy is a movement of modern social determinism snaring every citizen for corporatism and making it difficult to live a poor nomadic national existence with health care. That freedom of land, movement and social existence in American heritage makes it difficult for Americans to recognize how much social determinism still shapes political affairs in Europe especially in how political actors fill their roles. EC changes and the ending of the Iron Curtain permitted more freedom of movement for ordinary people yet powers of control will inevitably re-cinch determinist nooses.

Americans have supplied military muscle to keep Europe free from either German hostile takeover or communist dictatorship. Supplying the intellectual muscle is a little more challenging for Americans. In the present political environment Americans should think hard about how to let Russia have hegemony east of the Dnepr in Ukraine and return to normalize economic relations and close social cooperation with Russia-a nation in land-population ratio more like America than Europe. There are pressing economic and environmental concerns that need to be addressed directly as demographics of the Earth continue to outpace the capacity of institutions to recognize and successful respond to the challenges. The Ukrainian billionaire President wants NATO to fight his battles for him with the warning to Western Europe that the Eastern Ukraine could be the start of a domino effect where all of the EC fall one at a time to Vladimir Putin. I can hardly wait till Vienna becomes the winter Kremin and London the major producer of vodka.

The United States and Europe as N.A.T.O. members face few conventional threats. South Americans don’t seem likely to invade Europe soon though Taco Bell may be expanding its menu. Australia and Africa don’t seem ready to kick over Norway or Sweden. China is a potential future military threat yet that’s kind of tentative right now . Besides, China is a fertile nation for economic investment-it is inconvenient to posture about a Chinese military threat for N.A.T.O. leaders. So Russia is the old reliable threat for N.A.T.O. leaders. Like preceding large post-Korean war era interventions the object nation N.A.T.O. is concerned over is not a member of N.A.T.O., nor should it be. Russian, European and American economic security are threatened and adversely impacted by N.A.T.O. actions concerning Ukraine and Syria.

One of the troubles with expanding a political alliance too broadly is that the potential for internal breakup increases with size as do the problems implicit in its breakdown. When an alliance is a mile wide and an inch deep it may freeze and wind can transport stones around rolling over the surface (that makes as much sense as some present NATO policy). N.A.T.O. parameters for mutual defense against external threats have become less effective as the nature of the threats have changed. China defends against Muslim terror and is not a member of N.A.T.O.

With the rise of ISIS in the post-invasion chaos of Iraq there are far more terrorists with excellent training funded ironically by American and N.A.T.O. efforts than in 2001. N.A.T.O. members promoted development of the Syrian Civil war with rhetorical and material support perhaps to give themselves something to so. With the appearance and proliferation of new technology in that region counseling patience and slow political evolution organically would have been a better way. At least three million people would not have been made homeless with something like 194,000 dead.

Did promotion of the Syrian civil war enhance N.A.T.O. member security? Britain recently declared its second highest terror alert level –severe- because of the danger posed by Caliphate members with British passports who might return home to blast civilians to bits. The Middle East is saturated with loose plastic explosives and ISIS has more than a half billion dollars in cash after robbing a bank in Mosul. ISIS might afford to exfiltrate packages of semtex to England. The U.S. Government is concerned about American citizens-some from Minneapolis Minnesota that are fighting for the Caliphate in Iraq or Syria who might return to attack Boston, New York, San Francisco, D.C. or London-hubs of radical godless atheist, homosexual politics.

Muslim terrorism is the greatest clear and present threat to N.A.T.O. nations. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has warned the west about the Caliphate's potential for attack. Prior N.A.T.O. responses have thrown accelerants upon formation of Muslim terrorists. Though Russia has been very helpful in combating Muslim terrorism since the end of the cold war, N.A.T.O. is quick to put economic sanctions on Russia, stimulate a civil war in Syria and Ukraine-where no conflict would have arisen if the natural balance was not changed with interventionist policies, and N.A.T.O. member security has been degraded.

Global Islam has no conventional borders. The Islamic State aka the Caliphate synthetically appearing in areas of Syria and Iraq is an example of the transcendental nature of the Muslim political identity. In the U.S.A. it is called the nation of Islam; the fundamental concept of Islam is a world without borders ruled by Sharia law wherein all bow to Mecca. N.A.T.O. has no rational strategy for addressing its primary political-para-military challenge as it has allowed liberal Muslim immigration policies for decades.

N.A.T.O. member immigration policies were set in the post-Nazi era to act against racism and to exploit cheap labor from immigrants. The redistribution of people of various races for racial reasons seems implicitly racist, yet the prevailing sentiments about racial redistribution of an historical period do follow economic interests. It is worth remembering that the United States with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world besides that of the Soviet Union exercised a lot of political influence…there were many yes men nations in Europe both former allies and former enemies. That much power can dull a nation’s need for critical political thought-it simply has so much power that a reductionism to us or them may be all that is necessary.

Being us is the infallible advantage it might be thought. In that security of power arise the inflexibility and ossification that many mature powers have experienced over the course of history as Toynbee noted in A Study of History. The philosopher Allan Watts wrote a book named The Wisdom of Insecurity. Whatever gives political leaders cause to circumstantially reevaluate their political situation may be good. Simple confident assumptions about power structures and threats that are more real in inertial appearance rather than actual, and hidden dangers built structurally in one’s own actions can make N.AT.O. ineffective at defending European and American security.

27 August 2014

Nakamura Draws With Aronian in First Round of 2014 Sinquefield Cup

America's number one and world's number five ranked chess player Hikaru Nakamaru (age 26) drew his first round game with the World's number two ranked player, Levon Aronian of Armenia at today's opening round of the 2014 Sinquuefield Cup in St. Louis.

In other matches Fabiano Caruana of Italy defeated former world champion Veselin Topolov of Bulgaria. World Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway drew with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France.

The 2014 Sinquefield Cup is the highest rated match in the history of chess with six of nine highest ranking grandmasters playing. That is quite a concept with so many great players in the past such as Capablanca, Kasparov, Fischer, Karpov, Morphy, Tal etc... There are about 1000 grandmasters in the world and those with a rating above 2700 are regarded as Super GMs.

https://arena.chessdom.com/#/stream_tournaments/show/433

The Holy Spirit in Regard to Space, Time and History

The Holy Spirit is thought of as one person of the Trinity. The word person is used in recognition of the identity of an individual sentient being. With God whom is the transcending omnipotent, omniscient being, the differentiation from monism to pluralism is challenging to understand. One wonders what could differentiates or forms boundaries within the being of God such that differences could exist yet equally as well one might wonder how God could not have primary differentiation in order to achieve better intellect or capacity such as one finds in moving from monocular to binocular vision. The Holy Spirit is God, yet so are the Father and the Son.