politics, Rod Fleming's World, Page 7

10/06/2025

Inanna and Jesus: a tale of syncretisation

Originally posted 2018-09-20 06:25:57.

In an oral culture — one that is not written down — mythology evolves as it is passed from storyteller to storyteller. The Jesus myth was created in exactly this way, pasted together from earlier sources. This process is called ‘syncretisation.’

There is no fixed record of an oral tradition, by definition. In an oral culture or tradition, myths grow and develop to reflect the lived experiences and cultures of the people telling them. It was only when writing was invented that these traditions could be codified and by that time, they had been evolving for thousands of years. This means that there are many versions of the same myth, as different peoples carried it forward.

So we cannot say that, because detail differences exist between two similar myths, they are different or have different origins.

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10/06/2025

Gender Dysphoria facts: The DSM-V

Originally posted 2018-08-03 05:00:40.

I have taken the liberty of republishing in full the pages of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition (APA DSM-V) which are relevant to Gender Dysphoria.

If the APA objects, I’ll take it down, but I publish this in good faith, without alteration or comment, as a public information service. I will write another post commenting. I’ll also put a link to this and to the DSM itself (which is downloadable in full as a .pdf) on my Links page.

I strongly advise anyone interested in the field of transsexualism, transvestism, gender dysphoria and related topics to thoroughly study the document below.

Note: The APA now has a programme of rolling revision to its online materials, so the specific wordings may change. This was the state as downloaded in February 2018. As a result, this is only a guide and in all cases of clinical interaction, the current version on the APA website (see link below) should be referred to.

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10/06/2025

Zionist: how I became one (and remain so)

Originally posted 2021-02-25 14:23:20.

Being a Zionist is usually thought to be restricted to the Jews themselves; but not in my case. So how I came to be a Zionist might be worth telling.

Once, when I was much younger, I took a train journey from my then home in Arbroath in Scotland, to Falmouth in Cornwall. The purpose was to join the crew of a new, semi-submersible oil-rig which had just crossed the Atlantic from Texas. It’s a long way from Arbroath to Falmouth.

In those days, trains had compartments and were comfortable. There was some privacy and one might even sleep. For part of the interminable journey, I shared a compartment with a young woman, blonde and attractive. We chatted about many things but mainly, as travellers do, about where we were going. My tale was easy to tell and seemed to me mundane, but hers was interesting.

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10/06/2025

Debunking the Blank Slate

Originally posted 2018-05-18 11:05:03.

Gender is innate and evolved; it is not the result of ‘socialisation’, as the blank slate ideology contests. No serious scientist believes the blank slate hypothesis now, other than a few contrarians who allow their political beliefs to overshadow their rigour. The notion that gender — along with a raft of human behaviours — is ‘socialised’ has been completely, comprehensively and utterly debunked, for over 60 years.

Anyone who has experience of dealing with animals knows that male and female animals are very different, not just in the way that they look, but the way that they behave. In other words, they display innate gendered behavioural traits. Males tend to be more aggressive, females more nurturing.

This applies no less to humans.

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10/06/2025

Ladyboys and the two-group social model.

Originally posted 2023-02-04 17:28:54.

Over the last eleven years’ I have spent much time in the Philippines and was lucky enough to be invited into the company of Filipino families on many occasions. I was fascinated to observe a two-group social model in full operation. This two-group social model was particularly obvious at large family gatherings.

two-group social model — A family party in the Philippines

Here, the men would congregate around one or more tables — often drinking heavily — while the women and children socialised completely separately. There were never any women or children at the men’s tables. Because I am obviously a man, I was directed to the men’s group and watched from there, as the rising tide of alcohol — in the form of ‘Empi’ or Emperador brandy — rose to my gills.

[kofi]

This separation into two groups, however, was not to do with alcohol. As a foreigner and a guest — a person of important status in a Filipina household — I was also invited to join women’s drinking parties on several occasions and I can attest that Filipina women party just as hard as the men do.

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10/06/2025

How Jan Sobieski saved Europe from Islam

Originally posted 2018-01-13 11:28:08.

The name of King Jan III Sobieski of Poland is one that every European should know and speak with pride.

In September 1683, the city of Vienna was near to collapse. For months, it had been under siege by the Islamic hordes of the Islamic Ottoman army. Every day now, starvation and surrender grew closer. The city had long since run out of horses and pets to eat and even rats were few and far between now.

Worse, the Viennese knew that other Europeans had been the instruments of their doom. Swiss Calvinists had begged the Turks to attack, so that they could sweep away Catholicism. It beggars belief that Christians could call down the hounds of Islamic hell on their fellow Europeans, but that they had, hoping, no doubt, to negotiate some deal, a reward for their treachery, that might spare them the scimitar or a lifetime of submission to the foul creed of Islam.

The city’s defenders, listening in its basements, could hear the scrape-scrap of pick and shovel as the enemy’s sappers undermined them. Soon they would plant another huge mine and blow up a section of the city’s curtain wall, breaching it and allowing the enemy in. Nobody in Vienna was under any illusion as to what would happen then: the men would be tortured and killed or enslaved, the women would be raped and killed or enslaved and the children slaughtered. The behaviour of triumphant Islamic armies was well known.

Today, the Twelfth of September, was the last. The government of the city knew it. The people knew it and worse, the enemy knew it. They were ready: their final attack was to come on the twelfth of the month. There was nothing left. Vienna would fall. Without a miracle, Vienna must fall, and with it, Europe.

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10/06/2025

Jihad: the Islamic struggle for the World

Originally posted 2021-02-10 14:57:20.

When Islam, in the form of the Ottoman Empire, launched the attack on Europe that ended before Vienna, it was engaged in Jihad — fighting in the name of Allah, to make the world Islamic. The Caliph, his general and all the men who fought, were carrying out their religious duty — to conquer the world for Islam. This is Offensive Jihad, the most aggressive form. We see it today in Daesh and similar bandit groups today, but under the Ottomans, it motivated the biggest killing machine in the world.

There are other forms of jihad, and they may, in the right circumstances, be almost as effective at destroying other cultures and their values. They corrode them just by contact.

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15/11/201801/12/2020

Labour’s moral authority

Originally posted 2016-08-13 13:33:11.

The UK’s official Opposition is the Labour Party, though on present showing you might not guess that. On one hand it has at once been utterly and indefensibly useless at challenging the Government over the EU referendum. On the other, internecine fighting and political blood-letting over its own leadership has gone out of control. These pose serious questions about Labour’s moral authority and its fitness to govern.

First the party’s ruling body, the National Executive Committee, decided to prevent members who had joined within the last six months from voting. This was because the NEC is currently filled with Blairites. They want the elected leader, Jeremy Corbyn, out and think that all the new members are Corbyn supporters. That should speak volumes about how they regard democracy.

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15/11/201601/12/2020

The Brexit Mirror — cracked from side to side

Originally posted 2016-08-12 19:01:00.

The Brexit mirror cracked from side to side under the weight of simple, sheer reality this week.

The fissure in the Brexit mirror began to appear when Norway’s Foreign Minister told the world that no, the UK could not re-enter the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) just because it fancied the idea. The UK was a founder member of EFTA but left as a condition of joining the then EEC in 1973. Re-entry, however, would require unanimous approval from the remaining members and Norway is agin the idea. It’s not the only one to show reluctance.

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15/11/201601/12/2020

Swivelly-eyed Brexit panic.

Originally posted 2016-07-29 12:56:04.

The first signs of widespread panic amongst the UK’s hard-right, swivelly-eyed Brexiteers have begun to appear. In our last Friday Politics we pointed out that Brexit, as promised by the triumvirate of swivelly-eyed-ness, Johnson, Gove and Farage, is dead. It can’t happen. Now that realisation has got through to those whose eyes are usually so swivelly they can’t read a Daily Mail headline.

They’ve figured out that they were blindsided (it’s the swivelly eyes) and they’re livid. Beside themselves. Last Friday, probably after he had read my piece, Bill Cash, a person whose eyes are so swivelly we wonder how he drives to work, broke the ranks. ‘Brexit must happen,’ quoth he.

B-b-b-but Bill, is there any doubt? Surely…I mean it’s only been a month since the Phony Referendum…

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