Die dreigende vooruitsig van ‘n Amerikaanse skuldkrisis het China genoop om te eis dat die wêreld “de-Amerikaniseer”, te midde van waarskuwings van ‘n nuwe wêreldwye resessie.
In China, het Xinhua, die amptelike regeringsnuusagentskap, gesê dat indien Amerikaanse politici voortgaan om die dooiepunt te ignoreer, “dit dalk ‘n goeie tyd is vir die deurmekaar wêreld om te begin oorweeg om ‘n gede-Amerikaniseerde wêreld te bou”.
Christine Lagarde, die hoof van die Internasionale Monetêre Fonds, het die spook van ‘n herhaling van die 2008 finansiële ineenstorting laat loop en gesê ‘n oplossing van die krisis oor die skuldplafon en gedeeltelike regeringsluiting is dringend nodig.
In 2008 moes belastingbetalers sekere banke ondersteun wat weens swak en roekelose bestuur anders sou ondergaan.
Die onderhandelinge tussen die Withuis en die Republikeine in die laerkamer duur voort.
Jack Lew, die Tesouriesekretaris, het gesê die VSA se geld sal Donderdag opraak om sy rekeninge te betaal as die Kongres nie ‘n hoër plafon in die federale leningsperke magtig nie.
Lagarde het haar waarskuwing oor die impak van die versuim om die skuldplafon te lig herhaal tydens die fonds se jaarlikse vergadering van ministers van finansies in Washington.
“Die gebrek aan sekerheid, wat ‘n gebrek aan vertroue in die VSA handtekening is, sal massiewe ontwrigting in die wêreld beteken,” het sy gewaarsku. Nog ‘n groter en meer ernstige wêreldwye resessie is nie uitgesluit nie, volgens Lagarde.
Xinhua het Amerika se voorste posisie in die wêreld aangeval, en bygevoeg dat “sulke ontstellende dae terwyl die lot van ander in die hande van ‘n roekelose nasie is, moet word beëindig word.”
Suid-Afrika se minister van finansies, Pravin Gordhan, het ook sy kommer uitgespreek oor die skielike ommeswaai in sentiment teen ontluikende markte. Hy het in Washington gepraat waar hy die IMF-vergadering bywoon.
Gordhan is aangewys as die finansies-minister van die jaar in Afrika suid van die Sahara deur ‘n webwerf vir ontluikende markte emergingmarkets.org onder meer sy hantering van die wêreldwye finansiële krisis van 2008.
Die dae dat Amerika die supermoondheid en die wêreld se selfaangestelde sedebewaker kom vinnig tot ‘n einde as ek die nuus uit verskeie oorde volg.
Niks gebeur net sommer nie – kyk op die internet die amerikaanse “Mr Y” strategie. Dit is selfverduidelikend wat beteken dat h/d sg histerie slegs bedoel is vir die algemene media. Wees maar rustig en moenie nou investeer nie.
Dankie Johann. Ek hou altyd van jou skrywes. Jammer ek sien net ‘n bietjie min.
een van my voorvaders, `n tonfa vegter met drie Rotweelers vanuit Lombardia, het die selfde ding geprewel vir sy twee kaalkop broers toe hulle destyds buite die hekke van Rome innie nag sit en wag dat die laaste kers moes dood blaas anner kant die muur.
Shannon ek moet eers ‘n whiskey of twee vat voordat ek kan verstaan wat jy eintlik wil sê.
Ek bly nou nie naby ‘n lughawe nie so die boeing gaan nie hier oor nie maar ek sal sommer die witreierjies opjaag.
“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” ― Mark Twain
‘”The Fall of Rome” is normally either dated to the Sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth on August 24th A.D. 410, or the resignation of the last Roman Emperor of the Western Empire, Romulus Agustus, on September 4th, A.D. 476.
The Roman Empire was attacked by tribes such as the Goths and the Vandals (Germanic tribes). Civil wars in parts of the empire further weakened the rule of Rome and respect for Roman law dwindled as a result. As a result Rome – and the empire – was no longer a world power.
The Rottweiler … a breed of domestic dog known as “Rottweil butchers’ dogs” (German: Rottweiler Metzgerhund) because they were used to herd livestock and pull carts laden with butchered meat.
The breed’s history likely dates to the Roman Empire … a descendant of ancient Roman drover dogs, a mastiff-type dog that was a dependable, rugged dog with great intelligence and guarding instincts. During their quest to conquer Europe, the Roman legion traveled in large numbers across the continent. Around 74 A.D. the Roman army travelled across the alps and into the southern part of modern day Germany. After the Romans were driven out of the area by the Swabians (Germanic) some of the breed remained behind in the hands of the enemy.’
Vag Shjannon. Jysh te vinnig. shnog nie ‘n lyfff om shjou te vershtaan nie. give a shchap a shchancshe
Ons moet regtig vir hom ‘n blad kry waar hy al sy waardelose ka… kan publiseer met lesers by. Wat van die “walking dead” se koerantjie?
Ek het weer ‘n ander storie gehoor oor hoe die Romeinse ryk gevou het.
Hulle het blykbaar die oorwonne nasies as slawe gebruik.
Dit het aanvanklik lekker gegaan, en die slawe was heel gelukkig om in Rome te woon ens.
Die Romeine het toe verder gegaan en die slawe opleiding gegee in oorlog voering. Die Romeine het al hoe slegter begin raak, omdat hulle al hoe meer take aan die Slawe toevertrou het.
Hulle grootste fout. Die slawe het hulle base geword.
Klink dit nie baie na wat met ons ook gebeur het nie???
Baie. Behalwe in die opsig dat die burgers van Rome nie `n referendum nodig gehad het om te besef dis tyd om te immigreer Konstantinopel toe. En hulle geld eenheid – smeltbare goud – het nie gedip deur sy dinges nie (ie. Geen Romeinse burger hoef ooit die gelorierde gevreet van `n bok wagter op sy munte moes aanskou nie).
Arnie die groot verskil tussen ons en die Romeine is – hulle is sistematies verswak en uiteindelik oorwin – ons het nogsteeds al die kundigheid want ons is nie in n oorlog oorwin nie ons is bloot net uitverkoop en verraai.
Moet wees omdat Rusland nie meer so ‘n groot bedreiging is nie.
Amerika verkoop nie meer al daardie wapens wat hom laat dryf het nie.
Nou probeer hy om daardie mark te herstel met sy “False Flags” en Rusland onttroon hom toe ook sommer ewe netjies daarmee ook.
Snowden het seker daardie inligting aan die Russe deurgegee. En dan is daar die rol wat die “Jode” ook speel. Of hulle is die argitekte hiervan, of hulle stik nou van bekommernis.
Hallo Arnieann. Baie dankie vir jou skrywe, dit maak sin, ‘n weerlees!
Dag Willy. Dankie.
Rusland bly ‘n gedugte moondheid en ‘n bedreiging vir die NAVO lande.
Twak.
Hulle stik nou van bekommernis seg jy. Dis ook nie waar nie.
Jy hulle verwronge idees en raak opgewonde daaroor. Ek stel voor: Begin die vak Geo-politiek bestudeer. Dit sal jou horison uit die weg ruim.
Is dit nie verbasend nie! Dit vat ‘n swarte een termyn om Amerika op te donder, so ons moet bleddie ryk wees in hierdie land dat hierdie lot so lank en aanhoudend kan steel!
‘n Boer kan ‘n ding bou wat lank kan hou.
Check die mooi rym.
Dames en Here……laat ek aan u voorstel …. ons eie digter in die Praagd Ryk…….. WILLY!!!
Dankie! Dankie!! Dankie!!! Dankie!!!! Dames en Here vir die staande applous!!
Ek wil die wonderlike aand afsluit met een van my treffers.
“Ek is so honger soos ‘n brommer, en so dors soos ‘n by.
Ek wonner wat ‘n donner is verkeerd met my”!!
Wha ha ha ha…..dissssss snaaks! As jy weet hoe seer hierdie lyf vandag is en nou moer ek nog af van die stoel!!!
Hier is bloggers wat nie verlief neem met jou gebrekkige en plat Afrkaans nie.
Nie waar nie.
Dis jou belasting geld wat jy so gedwee gee aan ‘n kwasi diktator. Julle raas en blaas terwyl die land vir die wolwe gegooi word.
Sede bewaker?
Aside from Judaism rejects Zionism cliche, a lot of Islamist fundamentalist groups subscribe to the same logo and add that Islam also rejects Zionism … but when the going gets tough, most of them adopt the Zionist very mindset and approach.
Two weeks into the government shutdown, a deal to raise the debt
ceiling remains elusive, and Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama are once again squaring off in a high-stakes battle over the country’s fiscal future. How did they get here, and what happens next? Watch Cliffhanger, our moment-by-moment inside look at Washington’s repeated failure to solve our country’s debt and deficit problems Watch the extended interview with a candid Speaker Boehner.
Is die korreke Afrikaanse speling nie ”Sjina” nie? Ek wil nie moeilikheid soek of die aandag van die artikel aftrek nie – ek wil net graag weet.
As ek reg van skooldae af onthou is beide spellings aanvaarbaar maar die een wat jy hier gebruik is verkieslik – nou ja – dit is baie lank gelede en ek mag verkeerd wees. Enige taalkenners hierrond?
Stem, maar ek dink tog SJINA is die korrekte spelling !
Die korekde speling is Shiena
Soms moed ek hart op my tande buit om jou nie te andwoort nie.
Haha ons is weer lekker skerp vandag!
Volg hierdie wyse oosterse raad vanuit antieke tye :
“When that which flows forth from the body is eminent,
the tongue, in haste, soon drips with venom fertile.
Then be more vigilant,
shortly you’ll pop a pile !
When however, you reign your tongue, calm you heart,
Softly, gently apply the squeeze,
and feel it from the body depart.
that which now lingers in the breeze,
is less offensive, but more,
damage to thine own mind and flesh not so extensive”
Take note Shannon.
Tjoen haar sommer Shiena, my tjaaina!
Jou twak is nat.
Hi ,my china
Is ons op spel toets vandag ?
Old game,
new enemy: China
By John Pilger
Countries are “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a
great game for the domination of the world,” wrote Lord Curzon, Viceroy of
India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was
a bloody facade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia
are the great game.
The al-Shabaab shopping mall killers came from Somalia. If any country is an
imperial metaphor, it is Somalia. Sharing a common language and religion,
Somalis have been divided between the British, French, Italians and Ethiopians.
Tens of thousands of people have been handed from one power to another.
“When they are made to hate each other,” wrote a British colonial
official, “good governance is assured.”
Today, Somalia is a theme park of brutal, artificial divisions, long impoverished
by World Bank and IMF “structural adjustment” programs, and saturated
with modern weapons, notably President Obama’s personal favorite, the drone.
The one stable Somali government, the Islamic Courts, was “well received
by the people in the areas it controlled,” reported the US Congressional
Research Service, “[but] received negative press coverage, especially in
the West.” Obama crushed it; and in January, Hillary Clinton, then
secretary of state, presented her man to the world. “Somalia will remain
grateful to the unwavering support from the United States government,”
effused President Hassan Mohamud, “thank you, America.”
The shopping mall atrocity was a response to this – just as the attack on the
Twin Towers and the London bombings were explicit reactions to invasion and
injustice. Once of little consequence, jihadism now marches in lockstep with
the return of unfettered imperialism.
Since NATO reduced modern Libya to a Hobbesian state in 2011, the last
obstacles to Africa have fallen. “Scrambles for energy, minerals and
fertile land are likely to occur with increasingly intensity,” report
Ministry of Defence planners in the UK. They predict “high numbers of
civilian casualties”; therefore “perceptions of moral legitimacy will
be important for success”. Sensitive to the PR problem of invading a
continent, the arms mammoth, BAE Systems, together with Barclay Capital and BP,
warn that “the government should define its international mission as
managing risks on behalf of British citizens”.
The cynicism is lethal. British governments are repeatedly warned, not least by
the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, that foreign adventures
beckon retaliation at home.
With minimal media interest, the US African Command (AFRICOM) has deployed
troops to 35 African countries, establishing a familiar network of
authoritarian supplicants eager for bribes and armaments. In war games, a
“soldier to soldier” doctrine embeds US officers at every level of
command from general to warrant officer. The British did the same in India. It
is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson
Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master’s black colonial elite whose
“historic mission”, warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the
subjugation of their own people in the cause of “a capitalism rampant
though camouflaged”. The reference also fits the Son of Africa in the
White House.
For Obama, there is a more pressing cause – China. Africa is China’s success
story. Where the Americans bring drones, the Chinese build roads, bridges and
dams. What the Chinese want is resources, especially fossil fuels. NATO’s
bombing of Libya drove out 30,000 Chinese oil industry workers. More than
jihadism or Iran, China is now Washington’s obsession in Africa and beyond.
This is a “policy” known as the “pivot to Asia”, whose
threat of world war may be as great as any in the modern era.
This week’s meeting in Tokyo of US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel with their Japanese counterparts accelerated the prospect
of war with the new imperial rival. Sixty percent of US and naval forces are to
be based in Asia by 2020, aimed at China. Japan is re-arming rapidly under the
right-wing government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who came to power in
December with a pledge to build a “new, strong military” and
circumvent the “peace constitution”.
A US-Japanese anti-ballistic missile system near Kyoto is directed at China.
Using long-range Global Hawk drones, the US has sharply increased its
provocations in the East China and South China seas, where Japan and China
dispute the ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Advanced vertical take-off
aircraft are now deployed in Japan; their purpose is blitzkrieg.
On the Pacific island of Guam, from which B-52s attacked Vietnam, the biggest
military buildup since the Indochina wars includes 9,000 US Marines. In
Australia this week, an arms fair and military jamboree that diverted much of
Sydney, is in keeping with a government propaganda campaign to justify an
unprecedented US military build-up from Perth to Darwin, aimed at China. The
vast US base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs is, as Edward Snowden disclosed, a
hub of US spying in the region and beyond; it also critical to Obama’s
worldwide assassinations by drone.
“We have to inform the British to keep them on side,” an assistant US
secretary of state McGeorge Bundy once said, “You in Australia are with
us, come what may.” Australian forces have long played a mercenary role for
Washington. However, there is a hitch. China is Australia’s biggest trading
partner and largely responsible its evasion of the 2008 recession. Without
China, there would be no minerals boom: no weekly mining return of up to a
billion dollars.
The dangers this presents are rarely debated publicly in Australia, where prime
minister Tony Abbott’s patron, Rupert Murdoch, controls 70% of the press.
Occasionally, anxiety is expressed over the “choice” that the US
wants Australia to make. A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute
warns that any US plan to strike at China would involve “blinding”
Chinese surveillance, intelligence and command systems. This would
“consequently increase the chances of Chinese nuclear pre-emption … and
a series of miscalculations on both sides if Beijing perceives conventional
attacks on its homeland as an attempt to disarm its nuclear capability”.
In his address to the nation last month, Obama said, “What makes America
different, what makes us exceptional is that we are dedicated to act.”
John Pilger’s new film, Utopia, is released in cinemas in the UK on 15
November and is launched in Australia in January. http://www.johnpilger.com/Utopia
Dit lyk kompleet of Obama se kant dink dat hulle die VSA uit die skuld kan uitleen.
Qui vive: Two weeks into the government shutdown, a deal to raise the debt ceiling remains elusive, and Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama are once again squaring off in a high-stakes battle over the country’s fiscal future. How did they get here, and what happens next. Dive deep with FRONTLINE: Watch Cliffhanger, your moment-by-moment inside look at Washington’s repeated failure to solve their country’s debt and deficit problems. Watch our extended interview with a candid Speaker Boehner. Explore our interactive guide to Washington’s economic gridlock.
Qui vive my unieke Afrikaner Volk.
And I believe that the politicians in Gaza have been waiting for a
chance for a real escalation with Israel to also find out how the new leaderships
in the neighboring Arab countries will react, mainly Egypt. And also
this time the conflict in Gaza involves, and for the first time, a new
major
player who has also been persistently working to build up the tension
between Gaza and Israel just to announce its presence on the Arab-Israeli
operation theater, namely the Islamist Mujahideen cells acting inside
Sinai.
As a mother of young children, Fadumo Sheikh is used to rising early. On October 5, she was due to prepare breakfast before the family went to the local madrasa. But the day started earlier than usual when, at about 2am, she was woken by the sound of sporadic gunfire.
Within sight of Sheikh’s home in Barawe, Somalia, crack United States Navy Seals had launched a lightning amphibious assault on the Islamist militant group al-Shabab. Less than an hour later, they would be forced to retreat, their mission far from accomplished.
Based on interviews with witnesses and members of al-Shabab, as well as official statements and media reports, we can present the most comprehensive picture yet of the daring predawn raid – and where it went wrong.
The Seals’s target was an innocuous two-storey beachside house in Barawe, a fishing town of about 200000 people that was a crucial slave trade port in the colonial era. In particular, they had planned the delicate operation of capturing, not killing, Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, a Kenyan of Somali origin and senior commander of al-Shabab who was linked to a number of terrorist plots.
The house, about 200m from the sea on the town’s east side, is understood to be used by foreign extremists who have gone to Somalia to take up al-Shabab’s cause. The group’s presence there was not news to Sheikh.
“I live in a house near the beach and I used to see the house every day. There were so many al-Shabab fighters entering and coming out,” she said. “I usually see them going back and forth, but I had never thought that so important a person was living inside the house.”
Early morning gunfire was unusual, Sheikh continued, except when al-Shabab was conducting training exercises. “I raised my ears and I continued to hear the gunfire growing. I had no feeling or thought of such an attack from the Americans. I looked at my watch about 30 minutes later and heard one explosion and then, a few minutes later, another explosion occurred, like boom!”
What had been invisible to Sheikh and other residents of Barawe was the stealthy advance of Navy Seal team six – the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan – in a speedboat towards the Somalian coastline before first light. The team consisted of about 20 Seals, according to leaked accounts, and their craft was flanked on the Indian Ocean by three small boats to provide backup.
The Seals swept ashore, but not everyone in Barawe was asleep in those chilly early morning hours.
Abdurahman Yarow, a longtime resident of the town, recalled: “I was wrapping my turban on my neck and head to protect against the cold and heading to the mosque. When I had nearly entered it, I heard a sound behind me. I saw what looked like three big cows going to the north of the mosque – it was dark so I could not identify well what they were.
“After only 10 minutes I heard the first guns – that is, when the gun battle occurred between al-Shabab fighters in the house and the US forces. I now understand the big cows I saw in the night were the American special forces with their military bags on their backs going in the direction of the house they targeted.”
The Seals took up positions inside the house’s compound, according to a report by NBC, which continued: “Then a lone al-Shabab fighter walked out into plain view, smoked a cigarette, and went back inside,” one source familiar with the details of the raid said. “The fighter played it cool, and gave no indication that he had spotted the Seals. But he came back out shooting, firing rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle.”
The element of surprise had been lost and al-Shabab’s fighters unleashed gunfire and grenades, and the cacophony rang out across the town. But the Seals continued with the offensive, according to an elder who did not wish to be named.
“The attackers from the US divided into two groups,” he said. “Group one, comprising six men, stormed the house and began shooting the people inside it, while group two, also of at least six men, were staying outside the house. The worst shooting took place inside, where one al-Shabab fighter was killed. Al-Shabab had more fighters inside and they fought extremely hard against the Americans.”
The elder continued: “The Americans tried to enter room by room in the house to start searching for the big fish, but al-Shabab got reinforcing fighters from other houses and then the situation deteriorated until the Americans retreated.”
According to the NBC account, several Seals could see Abdulkadir through windows, but he was heavily protected; according to al-Shabab, he was not in the building. Although Pentagon officials have been reluctant to provide a full narrative, they have said US forces retreated from the gun battle out of a concern for potential civilian casualties. Details leaked to the press suggest that the compound contained far more women and children than the Seals expected.
The commandos returned to their boat, grateful for having suffered no casualties, and finally there was calm.
Sheikh recalled: “At 3am the call for prayer started, and all the gunfire stopped. A neighbour called me on the phone and said there is an attack against the mujahideen. When it became safe enough to see everything outside, I came out to look around.
“Outside the house that came under attack there were some fighters of al-Shabab and some residents come to witness the incident.
“These al-Shabab fighters were not talking to the people. Some of them were masked and you could not see their faces. I saw one dead man and he was loaded into a car for burial. They were saying ‘the martyr’, which is the only word that you can understand for an al-Shabab member who’s been killed.”
The dead man was Abdulkadir’s bodyguard, according to one source in the town. On Tuesday, the Somali defence minister, Abdihakim Haji Mohamud Fiqi, said two al-Shabab members had been killed: “We have found that two senior commanders – one of them foreign – were killed in the attack despite the top target not being found.”
A United Nations official in Somalia also said two al-Shabab figures had been killed: one Sudanese man and another of Somali and Swedish origin.
Sheikh said: “There were more fighters and supporters of al-Shabab coming to the house in the morning; they were vowing that they will kill anyone who is found working with the nonbelievers.
“On the beach, the residents were looking at items left by US forces. I saw a grey military bulletproof jacket. There was also blood scattered on the ground. There were military boots on the ground, which we suspect were those of the Americans.”
In the aftermath of the US assault, al-Shabab deployed more heavily armed fighters to patrol the streets of Barawe, and also posted men and anti-aircraft weapons on the beach. There was also a local backlash and a hunt for suspected informants who may have helped US intelligence to locate the house.
A man who frequently used the local internet café was arrested on Sunday and is still being held.
Al-Shabab took control of Barawe in 2008 and it became a refuge for its senior figures after they lost control of the capital, Mogadishu, and other towns in 2011. These have included the leader Ahmed Godane, who has been described as Africa’s most wanted man after the Westgate mall attack in Nairobi; Omar Hammami, the so-called jihadist rapper from Alabama, killed last month after falling out with Godane; and Abdulkadir.
Barawe is about 200km from Mogadishu. The nearest town that the government and African Union forces control is Shalanbood, only 110km away. To the east is the Ambaresa training camp for al-Shabab’s foreign fighters.
The events on October 5 could boost al-Shabab’s confidence in its defences, but also give it notice that the world’s most powerful military is ready to bring the battle to its doorstep.
Speaking at a mosque in Barawe on Monday night, al-Shabab’s military operations spokesperson Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab said: “Western countries … have to bear in mind we know that we are your target, but we will not be caught off guard.
“We know you are sharpening your knives to cut our heads off. We know our enemies. We will not oversleep so you can attack us at once. We are always vigilant and your cowardly attacks will end in failure.”
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, who studies Somalia and al-Shabab at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, described Barawe as “right now the strongest area of sanctuary” for the militant group. He said it was likely that al-Shabab expected something like a foreign raid after it perpetrated the attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall.
Gartenstein-Ross said the probable immediate response by al-Shabab would centre on strengthening its internal security and grip on Barawe, rather than launching another terror attack.
“The raid has made them very nervous,” he said. “In Barawe, it’s already been reported that al-Shabab has implemented curfews. There will be an uptick in operational security and they will certainly use the way they repulsed this attack by navy Seals as a propaganda piece.” – © Guardian News & Media 2013
Weer van voor af begin met die maak van ons eie god en here
We Invented Jesus Christ
Biblical scholars will be appearing at the ‘Covert Messiah’
Conference at Conway Hall in London on the 19th of October to present this controversial
discovery to the British public.
[Jesus Christ] may be the only fictional
character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources.
London (PRWEB UK) 8
October 2013
1.
American Biblical
scholar Joseph Atwill will be appearing before the British public for the first
time in London on the 19th of October to present a controversial new discovery:
ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to Atwill, that the
New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats and that they
fabricated the entire story of Jesus Christ. His presentation will be part of a
one-day symposium entitled “Covert Messiah” at Conway Hall in Holborn
(full details can be found athttp://www.covertmessiah.com).
2.
Although to many
scholars his theory seems outlandish, and is sure to upset some believers,
Atwill regards his evidence as conclusive and is confident its acceptance is
only a matter of time. “I present my work with some ambivalence, as I do
not want to directly cause Christians any harm,” he acknowledges,
“but this is important for our culture. Alert citizens need to know the
truth about our past so we can understand how and why governments create false
histories and false gods. They often do it to obtain a social order that is
against the best interests of the common people.”
3.
Atwill asserts that
Christianity did not really begin as a religion, but a sophisticated government
project, a kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects of the Roman
Empire. “Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a
prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection
during the first century,” he explains. “When the Romans had
exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to
psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous
Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That’s when
the ‘peaceful’ Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this
Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ‘give onto
Caesar’ and pay their taxes to Rome.”
4.
Was Jesus based on a
real person from history? “The short answer is no,” Atwill insists,
“in fact he may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire
life story can be traced to other sources. Once those sources are all laid
bare, there’s simply nothing left.”
5.
Atwill’s most intriguing
discovery came to him while he was studying “Wars of the Jews” by
Josephus [the only surviving first-person historical account of first-century
Judea] alongside the New Testament. “I started to notice a sequence of
parallels between the two texts,” he recounts. “Although it’s been
recognised by Christian scholars for centuries that the prophesies of Jesus
appear to be fulfilled by what Josephus wrote about in the First Jewish-Roman
war, I was seeing dozens more. What seems to have eluded many scholars is that
the sequence of events and locations of Jesus ministry are more or less the
same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of
[Emperor] Titus Flavius as described by Josephus. This is clear evidence of a
deliberately constructed pattern. The biography of Jesus is actually
constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of
a Roman Caesar.”
6.
How could this go
unnoticed in the most scrutinised books of all time? “Many of the parallels
are conceptual or poetic, so they aren’t all immediately obvious. After all,
the authors did not want the average believer to see what they were doing, but
they did want the alert reader to see it. An educated Roman in the ruling class
would probably have recognised the literary game being played.” Atwill
maintains he can demonstrate that “the Roman Caesars left us a kind of
puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the
solution to that puzzle is ‘We invented Jesus Christ, and we’re proud of
it.'”
7.
Is this the beginning of
the end of Christianity? “Probably not,” grants Atwill, “but
what my work has done is give permission to many of those ready to leave the
religion to make a clean break. We’ve got the evidence now to show exactly
where the story of Jesus came from. Although Christianity can be a comfort to
some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind
control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war
throughout history. To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to
create support for war in the Middle East.”
8.
Atwill encourages
skeptics to challenge him at Conway Hall, where after the presentations there
is likely to be a lively Q&A session. Joining Mr.Atwill will be fellow
scholar Kenneth Humphreys, author of the book “Jesus Never Existed.”
9.
Further information can
be found at http://www.covertmessiah.com.
10.
About Joseph Atwill: Joseph
Atwill is the author of the best-selling book “Caesar’s Messiah” and
its upcoming sequel “The Single Strand.”
Matt dink jy nie jy praat te veel nie?