QQ) The Reader Named Zaki
tommyb
Registrant
(a chapter)
__________
(Friday, 6AUG2021)
"We're in a story old as time," she says, which threw me, emptying the trash can, the tones of her skin.
“… the Greeks," Professor Donald Kagan, Yale, is saying in my left ear, "Are at the most significant starting point of Western Civilization, which is the culture that most powerfully shapes not only the West, but most of the world today. It seems to me to be evident that whatever it’s other characteristics, the West has created institutions of government and law that provide unprecedented freedom for its people. It has also invented a body of natural scientific knowledge and technological achievement that together, make possible a level of health and material prosperity undreamed of in earlier times, and unknown outside the West and those places that have been influenced by the West. I think the Nobel Prize laureate, V.S. Naipaul, a man born in Trinidad, of Indian parents, was right, when he spoke of the modern world as our universal civilization shaped chiefly by the West ...”
She reminds of the Airforce, in their uniforms, when they would say "Sir," as they passed by, even in the midst of talking to each other, as 'worked at the general store. Somehow people knew what was really going on. People 'don't know. 'What's wrong with protecting the harmed kids, instead of taking advantage ...
"... Most people around the world who know of them," he continues. "Want to benefit from the achievements of Western science and technology. Many of them also want to participate in its political freedom. The civilization of the West, however, was not the result of some inevitable process through which other cultures will automatically pass. It emerged from a unique history in which chance and accident often played a vital part. The institutions and the ideas therefore, that provide for freedom and improvement in the material conditions of life, cannot take root and flourish without an understanding of how they came about and what challenges they have had to surmount. Non-Western peoples who wish to share in the things that characterize modernity will need to study the ideas and history of Western civilization to achieve what they want. And Westerners, I would argue, who wish to preserve these things must do the same."
"While you studying like some scholar," she says, charmingly, with a smile, as she continues her work concerning the printer. "Worrying about some Dead Sea crater."
“No Tudor king was ever likely to forget,” says Professor Wrightson, Yale, “That in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth, the Stanleys, William Stanley, Lord Derby, and his brother Thomas Stanley, brought their forces and then sat on the hill waiting to see which way the battle between the claimant, Henry Tudor, and King Richard the third would go. When it was decided that it looked like Tudor was gaining the upper hand, they joined in on his side leading ultimately to the death of Richard the third in a desperate last charge to try to break through. That’s what had happened on the day that Henry came to the throne. He was unlikely to forget that in his dealings with his nobility.”
__________
(Friday, 13AUG2021)
"Taliban Prepare to March on Kabul as U.S. Hastens Pullout," headlines The Wall Street Journal. Three thousand troops are deploying, including of Fort Bragg as the Crusades continue, and 'pray for our troops.
'Doesn't take much imagination to see what they see, one would think.
“At the beginning of the sixteenth century," professor Wrightson, Yale, lectures in my ear. "The church was of course the greatest corporate institution in the kingdom. It was the English branch of a great international institution, which gave Western Europe its identity, collectively as Catholic Christendom. The church in England – of course, there wasn’t a Church of England yet – the church in England was organized into two provinces with archbishops at Canterbury and York, and then there were twenty-one diocese, each of them headed by a bishop, and beneath that archdeaconries and deaneries and so on down to somewhat more than nine-thousand parishes at most local level each with its parish church. And in addition scattered around the landscape but particularly concentrated in parts of the north and the west were the great monasteries and nunneries, some seven-hundred and fifty of them in all. The clergy who staffed this institution were a distinct estate of the realm as you already know. Attempts have been made to estimate their numbers. It’s been estimated about sixty thousand in all, which would mean that the clergy comprised about four percent of the entire national population or, since most of them were men, something like eight percent of the entire male population; a very large presence …"
'Shouldn't take much imagination for them. 'Apparently the illiterate have a lot.
“… They were supported by a variety of fees and dues paid to them and, in particular tithes," professor Wrightson continues. "By which people gave a tenth of their income or produce for the maintenance of the church … A collection of more than nine thousand small Christian communities periodically united in their parish churches in worship, in the practice of their religion … The central doctrines can be covered briefly. They were as follows: Christ’s sacrifice on the cross had made salvation available to sinful humankind through grace; divine favor. Access to grace, the means of salvation, was made available through the church and through its sacraments. Membership of the church was gained through the sacrament of baptism, usually in infancy of course, and it was demonstrated by continued participation in the sacraments, especially the mass when elements of bread and wine were consecrated and transformed into the body and blood of Christ through the miracle of transubstantiation. The Christian life involved obedience to the Ten Commandments, avoidance of the seven deadly sins, participation in the sacraments, the doing of good works and prayer. Given that all mankind was sinful, believers were enjoined to repent of their sins, to confess them, to perform penance for them and in return they were granted absolution by the priest. The church as a whole was conceived of as a community of saints, and so it was possible to pray for the souls of others, in addition to which the saints already in heaven were believed to intercede with God on behalf of living believers, so petitionary prayers could be addressed to saints. And finally the expiation of sins committed in life could continue after death when souls lingered in purgatory until they were purged of sin and made fit for heaven. The living could ease the passage of the dead through purgatory by their prayers. Only those who failed to achieve salvation by their rejection of the means of grace would probably ultimately suffer eternal torment in hell. Okay. Those are the basic beliefs. In its transmission of these central beliefs and in its practices of worship the pre-reformation church fostered what’s been described as a ritually and visually rich religion. In a mostly illiterate society …”
'Ain't no God proving His existence ... as He pleases ... in the language of Islam.
"I think you have to step back a step," says Michael Gerson, Washington Post. "This is a case where offensive combat operations for the United States ended in two-thousand-fourteen. This was a residual force that was left to do two things. Support the Afghan ar-military and to fight Al-Qaeda ... They were doing that quite well--"
--Afghanistan had an assassination problem. Seemingly anyone who worked with the United States, learned to read, even becoming Afghan journalists, many of whom were women, ended up dead. The Intelligence Community could've out-intel-ed the Taliban, maybe, and such was the failure. The American people saw how many women were being assassinated regularly for doing the right things. They saw the women's lack of protection. They saw the lack of progress of curbing of such assassinations of ordinary women whom educated themselves on their own. Such optics causes populist-maybe presidents, also known as a hack, maybe, who does and says whatever he has to, to stay in office, to worry about reelection. If the mafias in The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola -- representing American history -- can play the assassination game for so long in a somewhat foreign land, then certainly ...
"… Such views as that of the historian Richard Rex," professor Wrightson, Yale, continues, "Who argues that ‘it’s possible that the ideal of a Christian community united in belief and worship,' an ideal which was to be pursued so zealously by Protestants and Catholics alike, ‘was never so closely approximated’ to as in the late medieval--”
"--The were--risk of casualties quite low," Michael Gerson, Washington Post, continues. "There was a cost to that, but the cost that we are incurring now is far greater than the cost of maintaining three thousand troops in a circumstance like this. We have troops all over the world. Um. So this was
a completely unnecessary choice on the part of the president. NATO wanted us to be there. The Afghans wanted us to be there. No one was demanding us to leave. So I think it was a mistake on that level."
__________
__________
(Friday, 6AUG2021)
"We're in a story old as time," she says, which threw me, emptying the trash can, the tones of her skin.
“… the Greeks," Professor Donald Kagan, Yale, is saying in my left ear, "Are at the most significant starting point of Western Civilization, which is the culture that most powerfully shapes not only the West, but most of the world today. It seems to me to be evident that whatever it’s other characteristics, the West has created institutions of government and law that provide unprecedented freedom for its people. It has also invented a body of natural scientific knowledge and technological achievement that together, make possible a level of health and material prosperity undreamed of in earlier times, and unknown outside the West and those places that have been influenced by the West. I think the Nobel Prize laureate, V.S. Naipaul, a man born in Trinidad, of Indian parents, was right, when he spoke of the modern world as our universal civilization shaped chiefly by the West ...”
She reminds of the Airforce, in their uniforms, when they would say "Sir," as they passed by, even in the midst of talking to each other, as 'worked at the general store. Somehow people knew what was really going on. People 'don't know. 'What's wrong with protecting the harmed kids, instead of taking advantage ...
"... Most people around the world who know of them," he continues. "Want to benefit from the achievements of Western science and technology. Many of them also want to participate in its political freedom. The civilization of the West, however, was not the result of some inevitable process through which other cultures will automatically pass. It emerged from a unique history in which chance and accident often played a vital part. The institutions and the ideas therefore, that provide for freedom and improvement in the material conditions of life, cannot take root and flourish without an understanding of how they came about and what challenges they have had to surmount. Non-Western peoples who wish to share in the things that characterize modernity will need to study the ideas and history of Western civilization to achieve what they want. And Westerners, I would argue, who wish to preserve these things must do the same."
"While you studying like some scholar," she says, charmingly, with a smile, as she continues her work concerning the printer. "Worrying about some Dead Sea crater."
“No Tudor king was ever likely to forget,” says Professor Wrightson, Yale, “That in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth, the Stanleys, William Stanley, Lord Derby, and his brother Thomas Stanley, brought their forces and then sat on the hill waiting to see which way the battle between the claimant, Henry Tudor, and King Richard the third would go. When it was decided that it looked like Tudor was gaining the upper hand, they joined in on his side leading ultimately to the death of Richard the third in a desperate last charge to try to break through. That’s what had happened on the day that Henry came to the throne. He was unlikely to forget that in his dealings with his nobility.”
__________
(Friday, 13AUG2021)
"Taliban Prepare to March on Kabul as U.S. Hastens Pullout," headlines The Wall Street Journal. Three thousand troops are deploying, including of Fort Bragg as the Crusades continue, and 'pray for our troops.
'Doesn't take much imagination to see what they see, one would think.
“At the beginning of the sixteenth century," professor Wrightson, Yale, lectures in my ear. "The church was of course the greatest corporate institution in the kingdom. It was the English branch of a great international institution, which gave Western Europe its identity, collectively as Catholic Christendom. The church in England – of course, there wasn’t a Church of England yet – the church in England was organized into two provinces with archbishops at Canterbury and York, and then there were twenty-one diocese, each of them headed by a bishop, and beneath that archdeaconries and deaneries and so on down to somewhat more than nine-thousand parishes at most local level each with its parish church. And in addition scattered around the landscape but particularly concentrated in parts of the north and the west were the great monasteries and nunneries, some seven-hundred and fifty of them in all. The clergy who staffed this institution were a distinct estate of the realm as you already know. Attempts have been made to estimate their numbers. It’s been estimated about sixty thousand in all, which would mean that the clergy comprised about four percent of the entire national population or, since most of them were men, something like eight percent of the entire male population; a very large presence …"
'Shouldn't take much imagination for them. 'Apparently the illiterate have a lot.
“… They were supported by a variety of fees and dues paid to them and, in particular tithes," professor Wrightson continues. "By which people gave a tenth of their income or produce for the maintenance of the church … A collection of more than nine thousand small Christian communities periodically united in their parish churches in worship, in the practice of their religion … The central doctrines can be covered briefly. They were as follows: Christ’s sacrifice on the cross had made salvation available to sinful humankind through grace; divine favor. Access to grace, the means of salvation, was made available through the church and through its sacraments. Membership of the church was gained through the sacrament of baptism, usually in infancy of course, and it was demonstrated by continued participation in the sacraments, especially the mass when elements of bread and wine were consecrated and transformed into the body and blood of Christ through the miracle of transubstantiation. The Christian life involved obedience to the Ten Commandments, avoidance of the seven deadly sins, participation in the sacraments, the doing of good works and prayer. Given that all mankind was sinful, believers were enjoined to repent of their sins, to confess them, to perform penance for them and in return they were granted absolution by the priest. The church as a whole was conceived of as a community of saints, and so it was possible to pray for the souls of others, in addition to which the saints already in heaven were believed to intercede with God on behalf of living believers, so petitionary prayers could be addressed to saints. And finally the expiation of sins committed in life could continue after death when souls lingered in purgatory until they were purged of sin and made fit for heaven. The living could ease the passage of the dead through purgatory by their prayers. Only those who failed to achieve salvation by their rejection of the means of grace would probably ultimately suffer eternal torment in hell. Okay. Those are the basic beliefs. In its transmission of these central beliefs and in its practices of worship the pre-reformation church fostered what’s been described as a ritually and visually rich religion. In a mostly illiterate society …”
'Ain't no God proving His existence ... as He pleases ... in the language of Islam.
"I think you have to step back a step," says Michael Gerson, Washington Post. "This is a case where offensive combat operations for the United States ended in two-thousand-fourteen. This was a residual force that was left to do two things. Support the Afghan ar-military and to fight Al-Qaeda ... They were doing that quite well--"
--Afghanistan had an assassination problem. Seemingly anyone who worked with the United States, learned to read, even becoming Afghan journalists, many of whom were women, ended up dead. The Intelligence Community could've out-intel-ed the Taliban, maybe, and such was the failure. The American people saw how many women were being assassinated regularly for doing the right things. They saw the women's lack of protection. They saw the lack of progress of curbing of such assassinations of ordinary women whom educated themselves on their own. Such optics causes populist-maybe presidents, also known as a hack, maybe, who does and says whatever he has to, to stay in office, to worry about reelection. If the mafias in The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola -- representing American history -- can play the assassination game for so long in a somewhat foreign land, then certainly ...
"… Such views as that of the historian Richard Rex," professor Wrightson, Yale, continues, "Who argues that ‘it’s possible that the ideal of a Christian community united in belief and worship,' an ideal which was to be pursued so zealously by Protestants and Catholics alike, ‘was never so closely approximated’ to as in the late medieval--”
"--The were--risk of casualties quite low," Michael Gerson, Washington Post, continues. "There was a cost to that, but the cost that we are incurring now is far greater than the cost of maintaining three thousand troops in a circumstance like this. We have troops all over the world. Um. So this was
a completely unnecessary choice on the part of the president. NATO wanted us to be there. The Afghans wanted us to be there. No one was demanding us to leave. So I think it was a mistake on that level."
__________
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