Thursday, September 14, 2006

Sewer Thing



Belgium, where the sretts are paved with ......... cast iron (image source)

The Belgian city of Charleroi has been hit by a spate of drain-cover thefts because of rising metal prices. About 70 sewer lids made from cast iron have vanished since Thursday of last week, an official at the town hall said. A 40kg sewer lid can be sold on the black market for roughly e6 (£4), the official said. "We have put pressure on resellers of metals and warned them they will be prosecuted if they are found with lid covers," he said.

As they say in my part of the world "where there's muck there's money."

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Shot Through The Foot Again

by Little Nicky Machiavelli:


American Civil War (image source)

We should never underestimate the ability of Americans to shoot themselves in the foot. The hymn chosen for yesterday's wrath laying ceremony at Ground Zero was the unsurpassably inappropriate " The Son Of God Goes Forth To War."

The lyric starts off like this:

The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain,
His blood red banner streams afar,
Who follows in his train.

It then goes on in the same vein for several mote verses. Now call Little Nick an namby - pamby appeaser if you like but I would have thought that is just asking for trouble. Its a bit like slapping your enemy's face with your golve and then unzipping your pants and pissing on his boots.

So are we surprised to hear on this morning's news that the USA stands accused of faking its eforts to oppose ISIS in Syria because the real agenda all the time was to overthrow Assad, and that now ISIS fighters are firing on US non - combatant troops with weapons supplied to them by the USA?

All together now, The son of God goes off to war ....


RELATED POSTS:

Back to Contents table


Latest Posts


Elsewhere: [Boggart Blog]...[Little Nicky Machiavelli]...[Scribd]...[Wikinut] ... [ Boggart Abroad] ... [ Greenteeth Bites ] ... Ian Thorpe at Flickr ] ... [ Tumblr ] ... [ Ian at Minds ] ... [ The Origninal Boggart Blog] ... [ TSU ]

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Our Debt to Islam




A Zoroastrian symbol for wisdom. (source)

The extremism and religious fundamentalism we associate with Islam is quite a modern phenomenon, the religion, like Judaeism and Christianity grew out of middle eastern belief systems such as Zoroastrianism and Brahminism, although the so - called Abrahamic religions also incorporate quite a lot of Hellenic and Egyptian paganism. Untangling the development of human societies from the earliest civilisations is a complex task however. and the extremist fundamentalism of modern Muslims does not make it any easier for the western mindset to understand the Islamic point of view.

As right wing politicians and commentators ramp up the rhetoric about fundamentalist Islamic ideology and the left grow ever more desperate in their efforts to defend Muslims against accusations of brutality and medievalism, I decided that the western world forgets too easily what we have to thank for our modern civilisation. During the "dark ages" it was Christianity, not the Muslims, pagans of northern Europe or Hindus that tried to eradicate learning and knowledge and the sciences we now depend on so much were only preserved by those pagans and in the Jewish and Islamic world.

A good example is during the Crusades, the barber - surgeons who travelled with Christian armies were known as 'sawbones' because what yhey mostly did was amputate limbs that had become infected when the physician priests had treated open wounds with a poultice of dung and urine, "to draw out evil humours from the flesh" and presecribed prayer. Some of the soldiers however chose to be treated by Jewish or Muslim physicians, who would bathe an oen wound with warm wine, close it by stitching with sterilized (boiled) sinew and bind it with cloths soaked in antiseptic herbs such as lavender. The Jews and Arabs got much better results than the Christian priest physicians with their poop and piety therapy and so the barber surgeons learned the techniques, brought them to Europe and were burned or beheaded for heresy if caught using them.

Northern Europe also had healers who used similar techniques and obtained amazingly good results, from the complex surgery carried out with primitive tools and techniques by Druids, to some herbal cures used by the village 'wise women' some of which are to the present day equalling the results of Big Pharma's expensive products.

It was not just medicine and health in which the east was ahead of Christians. Mathematics, building, engineering, horticulture, astronomy and map making (geography) were fields in which they excelled.

Not that I would ever suggest the world of Islam was responsible for the development of the arts and sciences. Their contribution was that, unlike the fanatical, obsessive early Christians, they did not kill people for valuing and teaching the things we had inherited from the learned scholars of Zoroastrianism (The Magi of the New Testament), the Brahmins of India, and the aristocratic castes of Hellenic and Egyptian pagan cultures.

The scholars of the Islamic world were instrumental in preserving that knowledge and taking it forward. They were a bridge between the Magi and modern science.

Read my article Our Debt To Islam at Greenteethmm.com or at Authorsden.com


RELATED POSTS:



Latest Posts

Elsewhere: [Boggart Blog]...[Little Nicky Machiavelli]... [ Ian's Authorsden Pages ]... [Scribd]...[Wikinut] ... [ Boggart Abroad] ... [ Grenteeth Bites ] ... Ian Thorpe at Flickr ] ... [ Tumblr ] ... [Ian at Minds ] ... [ The Original Boggart Blog]

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Ed Butt Is Back

After taking a long break from verbally nutting celebrity, political and corportate two faced bastards bastards and helping consolidate the position of my friend Little Nicky Machiavelli I, Ed Butt am back.

Chck out these stories and the accompanying comments to get a taster of what you are in for

The troubles of and teachers with boobs

Is Big Business The Baddie

You can also see more of the most irreverent, funniest writing on the web at
Machiavelli hard hitting political and social comment
Boggart Blog from the surreal to the ridiculous, you will not find a finnier blog.