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.

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.

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

Nakamura Draws Two, Loses Two Against Stockfish

America's top chess player Hikaru Nakamura drew two games against the number one chess engine Stockfish in a series of four games recently. In the first draw Nakamura had benefit of an older version of another chess engine-Rybka. In another drawn game Stockfish played without one pawn-the H pawn. That handicap has been used for centuries by GMs playing against lesser opponents.

Not too bad  a result for Nakamura considering how challenging it is to play against what is in effect a mathematical sort  and dialectical networking forecast algorithm with games theory memory that makes few errors. Nakamura will not play in the Sinquefield cup in St. Louis that starts Wens. It is said to be the strongest group of chess players to play in the U.S.A. in a tournament ever. Nakamura is the number five ranked player in the world at 2787 and will play in the 2014 Sinquefield.

http://www.uschesschamps.com/node/499 Sinquefield Cup 2014

Union Warp of American Public Education Against Enterprise?

American public education may rank near the bottom of world standings in efficiency. Considering how much K-12 educators are paid and how costly American public schools are to taxpayers it is difficult to imagine that students of Liberia and the Congo wouldn’t finish ahead of U.S.A. in cost-per-student vs. achievement-per-student efficiency. In Boston a fat kid drives an El Dorado to a vast H.S. parking lot filled with student’s gas guzzlers; in Kenya a future winner of the Boston Marathon might run miles to school, if a school exists. Reforms are needed to sharpen wits and scholastic ratings of students.

In some respects physical parameters for American public education haven’t changed in a couple of centuries. Concentration of students from one-room schoolhouses expanded to multi-story dwellings with thousands of students. Students herded like cattle into K-12 corrals are moved from grade to grade ram-rodded under bureaucratic cowgirls ripening the cattle on correct book-feed lots until ready for market.

Americans are not invariably quick to accurately implant new technology in order to increase citizen security and  empowerment. In the recent Michael Brown killing in a suburb of St. Louis one police micro digi-camcorder pinned on a uniform might have eliminated voodoo legal procedures presenting what really happened for grand jury as well as mob review. A five-foot six policeman could have pressed a button to activate a wireless connected cam-corder on his uniform and saved the incident with Brown on his car’s computer keeping a virtual witness of what the gentle shoplifting giant walking in the middle of the street did that brought the cop to fire his gun.  One might wonder if short cops are responsible for most police shootings of tall black males or of short criminals shoot most tall cops. Digi-cams that record audio-video for 5 minutes when activated might help jurors determine legal culpability. Students and teachers have been drawn into the classroom-of-the-absurd paradigmata of real reality TV.

Public school teachers in Washington D.C. have been given a ‘starter packet’ to help discuss the loss of another American to violence with grieving, angry or curious students. When Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were killed such Maoist quality teacher-indoctrination class room time did not generally occur-and look what happened. To a certain extent students need to be taken out of mass indoctrination loops and allowed to pursue their enlightened self-interests in personalized educational settings.

I am somewhat skeptical about the value of union and bureaucratic controls on public education where little changes and too much is standardized. My grandfather had just a 4^th grade education at the turn of the 20^th century and though I took a Bachelor’s degree, he had a better quality of life.  An outdoorsman in the state of Washington in the first half of the 20^th century experienced a healthier ecosphere than in the present era of accelerated mass species die-off.

 Practical Tex-Mex males during the last building boom dropped often out after completing the legally required 8^th grade in order to work construction, perhaps brick laying, to raise a family instead of pursuing pie-in-the-sky goals of higher education that can lead to nowhere. Deferring gratification when there will be no gratification later doesn’t seem too smart. Higher education in modern America can be a bridge to nowhere.

A close relation between mass production of engineers and manufacturing creates realistic economic applications for education. In the U.S.A. high schools have become something of a culture for themselves with education somewhat down-sized and not uncommonly irrelevant to actual job prospects.

College graduates after the 2008 financial crash had a much harder time finding a job. Decentralizing schools and students might be a way to return the focus to education instead of spectator sports, gangs and standardized curricula more suitable for Maoist China than a free enterprise society.

Concentrated capital tends to promote the most vicious to political and economic power. Competition to remove government regulation of capital internationally is a self-reinforcing phenomenal assault upon democracy and the idea of government by and for the people.

Government and economics exist to serve the interests of the people, especially the overwhelming majority of the people, yet that point is too easily lost within self-reinforcing corporatism supported with media propaganda and sycophant politicos. American students do not learn to invent new reforms to government and capitalism that would restore free enterprise and downgrade extreme capital concentration. They do not learn the philosophy of philosophy, free thought and the relationship of free enterprise to democracy, or that unfettered capitalism is not the sole alternative to communism or socialism. Free enterprise can be killed off with excessive capitalism.

It is a real point that unlimited capital concentration is not required for free enterprise and that economic adjustments through government regulation rightly adopted can direct the entire free enterprise field toward more competition, inventiveness and responsiveness to the material and spiritual interests of the people of the United States.

With an abundance of vacant office spaces it should be easy to rent private space for small public education classes. Listings for quality-rated classroom space might arise on eBay. Classrooms could be located closer to neighborhoods reducing transport costs. Students ought to be able to walk to a classroom with ten or twenty students. School districts could in effect have numerous franchise outlets in rental spaces tied together through computer electronics. Classrooms could be given chalkboard size tablet computer screens on which a teacher could write upon images. A life-sized remote teacher could see and instruct students. Perhaps qualified assistant teachers could help in some classrooms for less cost than an actual teacher. More quality private teachers could contract for teaching just one class-as adjunct professors might in college. There would be no room for gangs in school.

Decentralizing schools would save costs refurbishing obsolete and decrepit school facilities. The private sector ought to be involved more in public education it is presently. Even the Army contracted many of its former soldier tasks to the private sector. Empty meeting halls, vacant convention centers, high-rise office buildings and empty shopping malls might be good places to have ten or twenty carefully selected students gather for a semester or two perhaps before moving on to another location in the future. New jobs could appear interfacing with decentralized school facilities that are closer to being privately financed.

It is possible that with a higher percent of students attending decentralized schools in private facilities that a blending in of actual existing private schools with the decentralized school system could be synthesized.

Private schools classes could be rated and certified.  Education contractors could interact with the school district education programmer so students could move in and out of private and public school courses seamlessly. Working toward graduation goals could be monitored by a computer program following each student’s progress and providing lists of all of the available course outlets relevant and available in the school district in public and private school facilities. Some private employers may want to hire a student-intern for a semester. Course apps for available classes and classroom locations and spaces available ought to exist live on each school district’s student access URL.

Students working closer within a civil economic and neighborhood setting instead of being alienated within separate, hierarchical, institutional pubic school corrals might better understand the relationship between what is learned in the classroom and what they experience every day in the real world. With so many jobs being outsourced from the U.S.A., with so many illegal aliens and legal foreign immigrants, with entire career fields disappearing as quickly as morning dew in sunshine and with such a high cost of post-graduate continuing education to private citizens changing the setting of secondary and post-secondary in the U.S.A. might be a way to bring education to a closer working synthesis with real economic and spiritual needs of the people. Making education more responsive and adaptive than it is presently would be a first step in creating a future U.S.A. capable of being a leader in inventive and creative thought and applying that knowledge pragmatically.

Without a better and reformed public education system American democracy will continue to wither away under the influence of corporatism, media, concentrated wealth and foreign competition.

 

Promises from God; What are They?

The promise-fulfillment paradigm of the Bible generally refers to a concept that God making promises to some or all of humanity will keep those promises. That’s a non-technical way to look at it. The paradigm does give one pause to consider several elements of it in order to have more understanding. For one thing a promise implies some sort of obligation from the promise-giver, and of course God has no obligation to humanity at all. The pottery maker is not at all indebted to the pots. Even so God is necessarily truthful and we may interpret select words from God as promises that are matters of fact.

There are covenants made between God and humans in the Bible in at least five instances. One can say that God treats humanity compassionately. Presently though I want to consider some of the meta-theological paradigm of promise fulfillment instead of the actual promises.

Promises from God- statements that would seem prophetic to humanity if not made by a Person capable of making the future happen the way he says it will, could be subject to some sort of structural analysis I suppose. That analysis might determine subject and predicate relationships or referent and object; logical relationships in the language context as well as temporal arrangement. If all of these prophetic statements from God that appear to be promises can be viewed in the perspective of God’s eternal being for whom time passes in a non-linear fashion I would guess; that is God might be thought to occupy the center of temporal time in any-given-universe with the temporal order existing all around him and so linear time occurs at the same instant for Him, then God is interpolating pieces of the complete complex of Universal compresence to people from one temporal location to another.

  When subject-humans receiving the divine information-the promise move through time and encounter the circumstances that comprise actualization of the promise it can then be said that the condition of promise fulfillment as occurred. There are numerous instances of promise fulfillment in that context given in the Bible.

Promise fulfillment may be a knowledge protocol affair of compartmentalization of information within structures of creation of the omniscient Being. In order to create temporal structures and beings essentially a realm of non-sentient mass and energy supporting limited-sentient beings in some way is generated. Promise fulfillment continually reifies to the information classified beings the presence of the future. Less than omniscient sentient beings have an implicit insecurity or uncertainty about existence that may move along the temporal world-line with jolts and pains, dangers and health-tuning challenges that is alleviated somewhat with the interventionist contact from God the non-temporal Creator. God relates select information of the narrative from the future of the world-line of everyone in the Universe or at least of the planet Earth and gives that to humanity. Those with faith in God accept that prophetic data as true.

In the garden of Eden paradigm Adam and Eve (Adamas and Edith?) hadn’t the problems of temporality. One almost might interpret their paradigm as an experiment of God in generating independent beings with limited sentience. Edith (Eve) was for some reason a believer in falsehood given unto her inducing her to eat from the tree of knowledge.

While God would not tell a lie apparently deception did arise from some fallen super-angel. The appearance of falsehood in the perfectly true realm/existence of God seems almost a necessary enabling condition for the existence of temporal structures wherein beings with non-omniscience that are subjectively separate from God exist. In a sense any temporal realm apart from God that has sentient beings within it requires an element of fiction or falsehood to exist. God is omniscient and omnipotent and is all that is. Apart from God nothing else is except that he wills it to seem so.

One can well say that the paradigm of the Genesis story while having several historical facts that are difficult to interpret accurately was an act of theological genius. Adam and Eve existing without mortal bodies in a project area on non-temporal God, Adam and Eve given intelligence yet without an ability to obey the will of God to the letter since they had free will. Adam and Eve without a knowledge of what falsehood is were easily deceived though some have pointed out that Adam seems to have willfully gone along with Eve who was the one deceived. Adam evidently did not experience the deception of the fallen angel directly.

That might be a significant point itself; Eve was taken from Adam’s symbolic rib, while Adam was made from dirt (Adamas), yet both were in a non-temporal realm of being before mortality was made to exist. The dirt (Adamas) is probably not star dust. Instead it is perhaps the fundamental set-aside paradigm for potential temporal being.

It is difficult to continually correct one’s language terms to correspond with basic theological parameters for being that God is entirely Spirit. What appears to be mass and energy in the set-aside of God is for us humans the context for writing. Natural philosophy explaining the set-aside for God that seems for incarnate humans to be the Universe-in-itself permeates the language and influences the ideas with which we write about Genesis and the parameters of Genesis.

 Words and referent objects or events from long ago are difficult to flesh out. There may have been a particular flood in Mesopotamia and a proto-civilization Genesis refers to-perhaps a drown mud-brick town a couple hundred feet below the sea level of the Persian Gulf. Regardless of the temporal meta-ontology of physics of the set-aside realm Adam and Eve from a non-temporal condition were downloaded to emerge into a temporal set-aside Universe. The set-aside Universe may have been created in phases, at once, with an appearance of billions of years having passed or any number of other configurations by omnipotent God. Creating the state of steady-state entanglements with logical probabilities and quantum uncertainty to permit temporal change from a field that at heart arises from Spirit is a mechanics of mystery to humans; even to cosmological physicists who are left with numerous theories about Universal mechanics.

Adamas and Edith were put into the containment vessels of mortality since they ate of the tree of knowledge. If Adam and Eve having ate of the tree of life existed forever and with willful disobedience to God’s instruction concerning the matter of not eating from the tree of knowledge corrupting them from the start, correcting them would have been problematic. With eternity to go wrong and with infinite increase of their intellects within God’s meta-structure it might have created a kind of chaos, perhaps not.

One could compare the situation to a computer’s operating system within which are installed or made a couple of small programs that increase their size and access outside their own lines of code to takeover like a virus the operating system. As in windows that could lead to the system just locking up or freezing. Rebooting the system would require a meta-operator outside the operating system.

Plainly God would not be too challenged by Adam and Eve virus’ within His being. Even so it must be a challenging work to create sentient beings and place them within a suitable context for development and moral guidance. Promise fulfillment is the ongoing presence of a continuum of the kingdom of God existing for-humans too as time rolls on. Jesus Christ the Son of God is the basic promise fulfillment for humanity. A particular being is the promise and fulfillment of Universal God, for humanity. With the Lord Jesus Christ the lost may be saved, reconciled and freed from the sin of moral corruption. 

Wrong U.S. Ukraine Policy Like Other Bad Clinton-Era Financial Structures

Since the expropriation for the west of Ukraine from the Soviet Union/Russia during the heady post-cold war boom days Russia has slowly recovered its composure from the shock of sudden disestablishment. Building elements of a free market economy Russian political sentiments have naturally sought to recover historically integral parts of Russia such as the Crimea and Ukraine. It has not sought to capture regions of Eastern Europe it took during the Second World War rolling up Nazi held areas in 1944.

The expropriation of Ukraine is the moral equivalent of Clinton era financial structures of home mortgage derivatives expanding as far as possible. It is the other shoe to drop from the 2008 global financial meltdown in a sense. The world has not yet recovered from the damage of Clinton era financial foundations and the political stumbling blocks of the Crimea and Ukraine has brought the left and right of Washington to structure the big chill, freeze and sanctions with Russia over the Crimea and Ukraine. Moscow wants the Crimea and Ukraine in Russia. Washington D.C. wants them to belong to Wall Street and have easy-breezy legal and illegal alien policy.

That might help expand the Caliphate/Nation of Islam into Eastern Europe. The invisible empire is a religious philosophy without nations except Islam. The Dar al Harb is expanding globally through globalism and lax border security. Already a large new mosque is being constructed in Anchorage Alaska and there are said to be 25,000 terrorists living in the U.S.A. that are not evidently in the Democrat Party though if amnesty were given to illegal aliens some could be.

With Washington’s severance of cooperation with Moscow on counter-terrorism and economic activity China’s red star is rising as even the big King Fu guns are putting on the Red Army uniform to star in films that half a billion might watch with subtitles. Wall Street has red stars in their eyes and imagines the Chinese as the final solution to all things Russian, Stalinist and invasive. The broadcast media will provide propaganda support for conflict with Moscow over Ukraine in a cold war, and as a godless atheist influence the media and Democrat Party probably don’t like humble Russian Orthodox Christianity much. There is a prevailing bridge-too-far ideology of Washington-Wall Street-Media globalist runt patriots that can’t see the woods for the trees.

Russia is not an intermural American contest. We cannot declare ourselves winners, Russians losers and toss them into a caste of historical flunkies in which we are cynched for life without trouble with enough power to repress them forever. Taking advantage of the end of the cold war to permanently view ourselves as winners with a bright future serving China and making pompous speeches about Russians being on the wrong side of history, or people recognizing Russian claims as appeasers with runt patriots in the Churchillian role of staring down the Nazis is the epitome of runtness. The same people also pan-mooned-jom, danced before Kim Il, gave food in exchange for the end of nuclear development and thus allowed nuclear development in North Career.

 Runt-patriots (unlike actual national patriots for secure borders, environmental restoration, elimination of nation debt and full employment) won’t recognize Russia’s historical presence in Ukraine and Crimea and that letting them naturally keep hegemony there is not a first step in losing Eastern Europe to either recrudescent Stalinism nor a sort of right-wing Russian theoretical fascism. It is important to move on beyond the cold war mentality, recognize historical facts and accelerate peaceful economic cooperation and ecospheric reconstruction efforts that are dwindling even as fracking up oil fields knocking down oil prices per barrel moving oil power and politics back into the throne of planetary political energy.

Russian will to keep Ukraine and Crimea Russian won’t go away the next century or so. Washington’s ideas about keep Russia out of historically Russian areas is probably as short-sighted as the idea that it would cost just 15 billion dollars to rebuild Iraq or the Arab Spring spirit would make mince meat of Syria’s Assad led government with the encouragement of ‘moderate’ Sunni muj.