Empires Crash and Burn After They Rise

A great deal of main stream history is about the rise of empires. Much about the fall of empires is usually related to the Roman Empire.  A little about the Persian Empire, the Mongolian empire is also out there on so called history cable channels.

But speaking mainly about History type channels that talk about the American Revolution and the Civil War and World Wars One and Two are all about how we won. It is so easy in retrospect and in the comfort of an armchair to plot the strategies of success in hindsight. 

Those strategies in many cases were trial and error and paid for in blood and suffering by those directly involved as in an army or a navy or collateral damage as in civilian casualties and death. 

It is funny how a military word like Collateral has worked its way into our lexicon in recent years, with our military involvement overseas in rotting sand piles parked over vast reservoirs of petroleum etc.

Some places like Syria for example has fallen apart because of its location next to falling apart government and geography in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. There is also the falling apart of places like the smaller countries on the rim of the Saudi Peninsula where religion mixed with politics is all there is or has ever been since the Prophet Mohammed found the glue to bring some of the warring parties and tribes together temporarily and centuries ago.  

Syria has no oil and many are saying that the population fell apart over hunger caused by the mythical Global Climate Change denied by the Right wing pols.

On a tangent, the Islamic world has different and or subtle-ly different ideas of the sacred and the profane. A mosque is a place of prayer and not a temple filled with relics and statues as in Christianity and Hinduism. The building is used as a public place when not in use for prayer.  This in not unlike the early use of Churches setting up in the corners of Roman basilicas which were originally covered markets to conduct commerce or court business out of the elements like rain or snow.

I saw in the news recently that the Saudi government in charge of Mecca was going to move the Tomb of the Prophet to accommodate a larger space for tourists to parade around the Kaaba. Nothing sacred in a tomb in the founder of a world religion?

Anyway, watching one of these pseudo history channels, they were throwing in a search for the real Mount Sinai trying to prove that the bible is correct in that there really was a Mt. Sinai etc. And then it hits me how the Christians have to agree with the Jews on their history in order to shore up Christian mythology. 

But the real crux of a religion history archeological type programming on a military history channel also goes to prove that Israel has the right to exist based on the man-made myths in the Hebrew – Greek Book aka the Bible.

When following Moses setting up his empire and taking the land away from the natives by force and blood it was because his desert god told him to do it. Whatever.

Nobody ever mentions that ancient Israel as a political entity crashed and burned and was a failed almost extinct religion by the time that the emperor god Constantine or one of his committees resurrected the party line of the old religion to prop up another new designer religion based on one of the later prophets called Jesus who may or may not have existed around the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E..

Same thing with the History Channel constantly churning out WWII footage about how great and smart and powerful we (USA) were in defeating the Axis Powers. The obsession though I think in all this WWII history stuff now that 95% WWII veterans are dead is to show how to start an empire like Hitler. How easy it is to lie and destroy and hurt and kill 50 million people who directly and immediately indirectly died making his egotistical idea and dream building a temporary political reality. He coulda been a contender – woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Now where did he go wrong is a very real theme of these shows shown on cable channels owned by strange dark right wing billionaires who want their own little strange dark empires which they are a building at the expense of the greater good of all the people in a democracy?

Just saying. That obsession with the building of empires does not prevent them from eventually falling slowly or crashing and burning in plain sight for all to see.  I prefer the crash and burn method of downward spiral for tin plated political and financial gods who have no life outside of their selfish dreams and obsession and mental disorders such as Narcissism etc.

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Knights Templer Secret Swiss Bank Account Number Uncovered on History Channel

Rune Stone
Wikipedia

Forensic History Channel Narrator Scot Wolter was standing by some mysterious stone carvings in Pennsylvania at a secret location in this recent fourth rerun of the original discovery. 

His two companions wearing Camo and carrying shotguns, who found some carvings and inscriptions, led Scot to this super secret location which they found while hunting deer.

The shorter Camo guy of the two who needed a shave said that he believed that pre-Columbian tourism to Pennsylvania is a suppressed fact in the history books in public school that also advocate false ideas like gender equality and evolution.

Walter was surprised that such expertise and opinions existed boots on the ground in Pennsylvania.

Scot managed to disprove the carvings numbers and letters and the rubes gave up the stone. Scot took the stone to dispose of it and is (was) now scheduled first class on a flight to Switzerland.

What a great national asset the History Entertainment Channel is to the national I.Q. and our place among other nations. 

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Unearthing America – One Shovel Full of Shit At A Time – History Channel

Cleopatra's Needle, Central Park NYC
(Public Domain)

Scott Wolter, the world’s leading “Forensic Geologist” is forever trying to figure out if it was a cat or a possum that shit on a rock in your backyard, is host of a History Channel entertainer “Unearthing America”.

Working from and or for an unseen POV – paranoid, white, Mormon-like, this clown has one of those background noise history programs that sees conspiracy and the Templars and the Masons behind every bush rock and tree in America. Kind of reminds me of my late grandma and her paranoia towards the “Commies” in better American days and being fronted by the, any unions.

Program last night was about Cleopatra’s giant granite Dildoe in back of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Granite involved here and so only a forensic geologist can say who or what for certain has taken a dump in the vicinity of obelisk for the last 3,000 years. It was stolen from Egypt in the nineteenth century btw.

Why is it there? How did it get there? What is the real reason for it being treated as ancient art and behind the MET and its nefarious and as yet undetermined hidden agenda of “Art” – (wink, nod).

Scott walks through Grand Central Terminal calling it a train “station” and then goes downtown to St.Paul’s Chapel and calls it a church. There is another secret in sight is the obelisk in plain sight in St. Paul’s graveyard, a tombstone, like Cleopatra’s Dildoe in Central Park. St. Paul’s is a chapel and attached theologically to the Trinity Church (Queen Anne Charter) a few blocks over on Wall Street.

Cleopatra’s Needle lines up with the Worth Obelisk at Madison Square and does not quite line up in a straight line with the obelisk gravestone at St. Paul’s Chapel downtown but this expert knows it all, yeah right, between any two separate points is a straight line. That imperfect line continues and does not as his expert prescribes point to the Statue of Liberty on an island in New York harbor but rather straight at Governor’s Island, the original settlement point of the Dutch in NYC.

Governor’s Island is the secret hiding place of the Ark of the Holy Grail, the wooden animal vessel that the Kristian god Yahweh Junior drank from at some supper party once upon a time btw. Don'r ya know yaor bib-L?

And as I suspect the subject of another history channel mystery/conspiracy.

This program “Unearthing America” along with “Ancient Aliens” is the most highly rated cable shows on the History Channel making it most likely to jack-off to while in your living room and in your underwear, from boredom or lack of concrete fact, while watching cable TV btw...

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Templar Treasure Still Hidden in Jerusalem?

Everybody likes a treasure hunt.  These days cash is hard to find.  And what’s more valuable than worthless paper money? GOLD!

You saw the headlines this past July.

Beneath a Temple in Southern India, a Treasure Trove of Staggering Riches

MUMBAI, India — A court-ordered search of vaults beneath a south Indian temple has unearthed gold, jewels and statues worth an estimated $22 billion, government officials said Monday.

Watching the History Channel recently it came to me in a vision (of greed) where the lost Templar Treasure of the defunct order of the Knights Templar might be – it is I think right out in the open so to speak like with that Temple in India.

TOP TEN LOST TREASURES OF THE WORLD

The Treasuries of the Knights Templar
Lost:1307- Current Est. Value: $ Many Billions
Gold and silver ingots, coinage, jewels, jewelry, gold & silver plate, land deeds, religious relics, weapons, documents and records, Middle Eastern trophies and artifacts, valuable curiosities and royal regalia held as securities.
(Location Unknown)

Right out in the open?  Or more importantly, like a good magician, one illusion covers another.  One myth hides another myth or the truth of the myth.

If you saw a keyhole, would you not assume that the keyhole is a clue as to something locked away and in need only of a key to unlock?

What I find annoying about the whole Dan Brown cottage industry thing springing up with all sorts of Knights Templar myths is that somehow their European gold survived the greed and murder of the Knights Templar by France’s Philip IV and Pope Clement V.  

The popular History Channel typical airbrushing of history does not mention that Clement V was the first Avignon pope, of the papacy moved to France away from Rome and bound to the French King.

It was the beginning of a period of close to one hundred years of pope and anti-pope being elected both in France and also in Rome.  It was an age perhaps more corrupt than even the Borgia pope, Alexander VI.

The problem with the History Channel crowd is that they don’t want to get off there ass to find the Templar’s lost, and I think, very real treasure.  They want the treasure in their backyard – in Europe.

Let’s face it.  All the gold went to King Francis IV of France and his massive bribery campaign to get the pope and the authority of the Church moved to his backyard in France.

There was little or no Templar gold in Europe when Francis and Clement killed off the bankers so to speak.  Kind of a medieval version of nationalizing the banks, something even Obama has not done yet.

So if there is no Templar gold in Europe, where is it?

The truth is that the Templars started out issuing letters of credit in Europe for promise to pay in the Holy Land, Palestine. Trade was one way in the beginning.  Over time, trade moved east and the Templars to be successful bankers would have been issuing letters of credit in Palestine for trade moving west to the other side back in Europe.

There were two piles of Templar banking gold – one in Europe and the other in Palestine.

While the European Templar treasury might have been a pile of I.O.U.s from deadbeat kings and popes, the real gold left of that vast banking empire is probably still where the Templars left it.  In Jerusalem.

Where? Under Temple Mount?  Hell no.  Titus and Hadrian scraped that rock clean centuries before.

There is the myth that the Templars dug into Temple Mount and found the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.  Good myths.  Good myth cover.  Myth covering myth.

I look at two surviving symbols of the Templars.

 

One is the Scallop Shell, a sign of pilgrimage, originally by going from France to the shrine of St. James the Apostle in Compostela Spain.  This is where the protecting monks that evolved into the Knights Templar got their start in the centuries before the crusades.  Protecting pilgrims and being paid or receiving donations for their protective services.

The other symbol is the Keyhole which in reality is the shape of many churches in Europe built after the Crusades which follow the shape of the Temple (Templar) Church in London UK. 

Looks like a keyhole to me, the design.  And what is this design?  It is of the rebuilt, redesigned, with Templars’ cash, Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.  

This shrine, by many historic accounts,­­­­­­ has a massive honeycomb of tunnels under that shrine and most bricked up too for centuries like the recent Temple in India with its billions in forgotten treasure.

The truth is if you look at the bones of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they never tore down the Temple of Venus part of this shrine, the solid round part of it built by a true builder – Emperor Hadrian. 


That Temple of Venus in Roman times no doubt served a lot like the Temple of Athena in Athens with a treasury vault built into the bones of the structure.

You can discount the myths of church fathers who say they tore down the Temple of Venus.  Truth is that no church father is ever going to tear down or throw away a protective vault for treasure.

The key to the Templar’s Keyhole in Jerusalem protecting the lost Templar treasure is the Scallop Shell – symbol also of the goddess Venus.

I want a finder’s fee.

Bill Maher - Religulous - Review

I finally got around to seeing the movie Religulous with professional comedian commentator Bill Maher.

The title apparently arises from fusing the word Religion with Ridiculous.

Religulous

The movie is not a very good documentary on the topic of Religion. In fact the whole point of the movie is to show Religion in an unfavorable light. That light is the opinion of the comedian’s pet peeve or pet gripe that religion is wrong or a bad thing.

Somewhere in between improvised street interviews expressing opinion and soliciting opinions on the topic, Maher or his director fails to make a good point about anything. It comes more across as a home movie than a professionally cut documentary. This cavalier film editing is from a director, Larry Charles, who has directed many TV shows among them Seinfeld.

Maher says something somewhere in the home movie to the effect that he is not an atheist in that most atheists’ strong assertions constitute in fact another religion. The many times I have read material on him, his place on the map in terms of beliefs moves around a lot.

Interspersed with the gorilla journalism are scenes of stock footage mostly from old Hollywood movies on religious subjects. It was here that I saw a similarity with the Cable show The Naked Archeologist with Simcha Jacobovici who is not an archeologist. The Naked Archeologist is an entertainment show with historic overtones and shown on The History Channel.

It was here that I realize that the whole generational genre thing these days is about entertainment and not classical news and or documentaries. Maher’s impromptu deliveries did not have the polished umph of a professional tightly edited movie, documentary or comedy routine. In fact, there were probably few retakes as in a scene in a Truck Stop chapel in Charlotte NC in the bible belt where I was not too certain that Maher was going to walk out alive of the chapel. His tone came across to me as a bit disrespectful of the beliefs of the men in that chapel and delivered to their faces.

I have watched his shows both on ABC and HBO and know he was not being disrespectful but there is that east coast America urban flippancy serving as confidence for some that does not translate south of the Mason Dixon line or west of the Mississippi. His humor is usually on an intellectual sarcastic bent.

Maher interviews a few snake oil salesmen, successful preachers, who ooze confidence in their confidence game and their spin on their successful business techniques which in my opinion is not legitimate religion. He of course does a few lines outside the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City and is chased off the grounds by Mormon Security. He also stands in St. Peter’s Square in Rome to make a few lines of acerbic attitude. Also on the itinerary was a visit to a Dinosaur museum showing those creatures co-existing with man in the 6,000 years old age of the religious universe and a Holy Land Theme Park in Florida complete with hourly shows of scourgings and crucifixions. (entertainment?)

It, the movie, rates more as entertainment and geared to younger age brackets like most TV shows. In fact I think it could have been done on cable but even cable is likely to shy away from the topic of non-belief in religion which is where I think this film was originally headed considering it choppy sequences dancing all over geography and the topic of religion.

As I have asserted on many occasions, I feel that most atheists, or in Bill Maher’s case quasi-atheist, have had a bad religion experience in their past to justify their present attitudes and rhetoric toward belief.

In Bill Maher’s case, he was the son of a Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father and raised in the RC church. That in one scene, interviewing his sister and late mother and sitting in his former church as background located in New Jersey, the subject of how the family stopped going to church when he was thirteen is not probed in depth. The story goes something like the father stopped going to church and the mother was not too certain as to why her husband did that. She did speculate that they used birth control and her husband no doubt had a run in with the local priest on the subject.

No big deal but perhaps the curiosity of the mind of a young person like Maher never got a full explanation why one Sunday he was going to church and the next Sunday there was a mandate to boycott the religion thing.

The market on disbelief, and people’s curiousity about it, are no doubt the reason for a modest profit on the movie. People are curious about non-belief. The latest polls put the population of America with no religious affiliation at around sixteen percent. That and the lack of diction or strong traditional rhetoric to defend one’s belief in non-belief is a factor that would seem to have many people buying movie tickets. I saw this film on Cable TV so I did not buy a ticket.

Unless you are a Bill Maher groupie or are deeply curious about one man’s obsession with the follies of religion in a poorly make film, I do not recommend this home movie.