TOKYO MASTER BANNER

MINISTRY OF TOKYO
US-ANGLO CAPITALISMEU-NATO IMPERIALISM
Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies
Establishment of Sovereignty-Usurping Supranational Body Dictatorships
Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of European Displacement, Dismemberment, Dispossession, & Dissolution
No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY
[LINK | Article]

*U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR*

Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
[info from Craig Murray video appearance, follows]  US-Anglo Alliance DELIBERATELY STOKING ANTI-RUSSIAN FEELING & RAMPING UP TENSION BETWEEN EASTERN EUROPE & RUSSIA.  British military/government feeding media PROPAGANDA.  Media choosing to PUBLISH government PROPAGANDA.  US naval aggression against Russia:  Baltic Sea — US naval aggression against China:  South China Sea.  Continued NATO pressure on Russia:  US missile systems moving into Eastern Europe.     [info from John Pilger interview follows]  War Hawk:  Hillary Clinton — embodiment of seamless aggressive American imperialist post-WWII system.  USA in frenzy of preparation for a conflict.  Greatest US-led build-up of forces since WWII gathered in Eastern Europe and in Baltic states.  US expansion & military preparation HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED IN THE WEST.  Since US paid for & controlled US coup, UKRAINE has become an American preserve and CIA Theme Park, on Russia's borderland, through which Germans invaded in the 1940s, costing 27 million Russian lives.  Imagine equivalent occurring on US borders in Canada or Mexico.  US military preparations against RUSSIA and against CHINA have NOT been reported by MEDIA.  US has sent guided missile ships to diputed zone in South China Sea.  DANGER OF US PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES.  China is on HIGH NUCLEAR ALERT.  US spy plane intercepted by Chinese fighter jets.  Public is primed to accept so-called 'aggressive' moves by China, when these are in fact defensive moves:  US 400 major bases encircling China; Okinawa has 32 American military installations; Japan has 130 American military bases in all.  WARNING PENTAGON MILITARY THINKING DOMINATES WASHINGTON. ⟴  

September 24, 2015

DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE - Edward Gibbon

Decline and Fall
ROMAN EMPIRE

HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Edward Gibbon, Esq.
With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman
Vol. 1
1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/731/731-h/731-h.htm



Summary & Extracts
Wikipedia Entries - Edward Gibbon (author)


Edward Gibbon
1737 – 1794
English historian and Member of Parliament

The Decline and Fall
known for
  • quality and irony of its prose
  • use of primary sources
  • open criticism of organised religion

Unusually for 18th century:

  • Gibbon not content with second-hand accounts when the primary sources were accessible 
  • But:  most of these were drawn from well-known printed editions
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Grandfather, also named Edward
lost all of his assets
result of the South Sea Bubble stock market collapse in 1720
... but regained much of his wealth in time

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Maternal neglect

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Westminster School
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_School
{  Royal College of St Peter in Westminster  }

boarder

independent school within
precincts of Westminster Abbey

earliest recorded evidence of the school dates from 1371
in Westminster Abbey's muniments  {land titles records}

buildings now used date back to 11th century
originally part of the Anglo-Saxon Abbey at Westminster

1540
Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in England

personally ensured the School's survival by royal charter
 College of St. Peter carried on
with forty "King's Scholars" financed from the royal purse

available to members of the public from across the country,
so long as they could pay their own costs,
rather than private tuition provided to the nobility

Mary I's brief reign
Abbey was reinstated as a Roman Catholic monastery
but the school continued

Elizabeth I
re-founded the School in 1560
1560 is now gen. taken as date school was "founded"

Located primarily in the precincts of
former medieval monastery of Westminster Abbey

Also at school site:
Church House
HQ of the Church of England

Rooftop Ornament:

The phoenix which was placed on the roof of school in the 1950s to commemorate the school's resurgence after World War II.

[comment:  phoenix looks a lot like a peacock to me.  must be a Persian thing -- ie the mythical bird and the Yezidis peacock]

highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance
rates of any secondary school or college in the world

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Further education:

Magdalen College, Oxford
enrolled as a gentleman-commoner
Expelled from Oxford for religious subversion [ here ]

[Dodgy Wikipedia can't even publish the truth of a dead author's bio.  Got the 'expelled' from Oxford from alternate source.] 

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1753
conversion to Roman Catholicism at Oxford
Sent to Switzerland [on expulsion from Oxford]

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Switzerland

reconversion to Protestantism

father threatened to disinherit him, Christmas Day 1754,
re:   reconversion to Protestantism

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influence of deist or rationalist theologian Conyers Middleton denied

Gibbon's claim to having been converted by a reading of Middleton is very unlikely

It is claimed:

Gibbon fabricated Middleton story retrospectively in his anxiety about the impact of the French Revolution and Edmund Burke's claim that it was provoked by the French philosophes, so influential on Gibbon.

further "corrupted" by the 'free thinking' deism:
playwright/poet couple David and Lucy Mallet

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1759 - 1770

served on active duty & reserve
South Hampshire militia
1762 deactivation
coinciding with the militia's dispersal
end of Seven Years' War
*must have remained a reservist given 1770 date? 

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Father died 1770

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1763 - Grand Tour
Grand Tour (of continental Europe)
included a visit to Rome

Claimed he:
first conceived the idea of composing a history Rome
later extended to the entire empire
incident known as:  the "Capitoline vision"

"It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind."  [Edward Gibbon]

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
disputes this as:
  • "creation of memory" or a "literary invention" 
  • given that Gibbon journal is undated

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"Ruins of the Forum
looking towards the Capitol, 1742, by Carnaletto"
image source | roberthorvath30.wordpress.com
see also

‘Capitoline Vision’ of Edward Gibbon

https://roberthorvat30.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/the-capitoline-vision-of-edward-gibbon-on-this-day-in-history/
---------------------- ꕤ ----------------------
Other

US Mercantile Empire
Modelled on Roman Empire


US Mimicry
[image source:  wikipedia  - public domain]


"Capitol" 
Latin
  associated with Roman temple
to Jupiter
Optimus Maximus on Capitoline Hill

USA
established upon ratification
United States Constitution
formally began:  Mar. 1789

New York remained home to Congress

1790 - Residence Act
passed to pave the way for a permanent capital

Philadelphia was chosen as a temporary capital 
for ten years (to Dec. 1800)

until capital in Washington, D.C. would be ready

US Capitol
aka called Capitol Hill

in  Washington, D.C.
is the seat of the US Congress, the legislative branch of the US
federal govt

original building was completed in the year 1800
subsequently expanded
distinctive neoclassical style and has a white exterior

War of 1812
Capitol was partially burned
by the British - 1814
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol

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1774
 initiated a freemason of the Premier Grand Lodge of England

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Became the archetypal back-bencher
benignly "mute" and "indifferent"
support of the Whig ministry invariably automatic

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Decline & Fall well received by public
Rapid & lasting fame

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Medical

extreme case:  scrotal swelling, prob. hydrocele testis
  • chronic inflammation
  • numerous procedures
  • last of series, caused
  • unremitting peritonitis (inflammation of membrane that lines abdominal cavity)
  • inflammation set in and spread
  • caused death
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 Death

"English giant of the Enlightenment"

died:  12:45 pm, 16 January 1794 - age 56

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Decline & Fall
criticised for scathing view of Christianity
chapters XV and XVI.

... resulted in the banning of the book in several countries
... alleged crime was disrespecting ... character of sacred Christian doctrine, by:

"treat[ing] the Christian church as a phenomenon of general history, not a special case admitting supernatural explanations and disallowing criticism of its adherents"
... the chapters excoriated the church for:

"supplanting in an unnecessarily destructive way the great culture that preceded it" and for "the outrage of [practising] religious intolerance and warfare"

... assumed to be entirely anti-religion

... was supportive of religion to extent that work/history Decline and Fall was not influenced and swayed by official church doctrine

... Christianity chapters are heavily ironical & cutting about religion
---------------------- ꕤ ----------------------

Gibbon verdict on the history of the Middle Ages:

"I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion."
But:

... politically, he aligned himself with the conservative Edmund Burke's rejection of the democratic movements of the time as well as with Burke's dismissal of the "rights of man."


Winston Churchill
"I set out upon ... Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [and] was immediately dominated both by the story and the style. ... I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all."
Modelled his writings on that of Edward Gibbon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gibbon
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COMMENT

Glad I looked up Edward Gibbon.

His history is a history of place and time, and it touches on significant movements of the period -- which contrast with the Dark Ages that followed the Fall of Rome and are relevant to religion etc.

Churchill
"Democracy is not some harlot in the street," he said in condemning the Greek Communists toward the end of World War II, "to be picked up by some man with a Tommy gun. Democracy is based on reason, a sense of fair play, and freedom and a respect for the rights of other people." [here]
On the contrary, both Democracy & Religion are the harlots of the beneficiaries of wealth and privilege and are both probably the 'opium of the people' in a sense  ... in terms of conditions that involve illusion, at least.
1931 Paris - Opium Den
Skimming the editor's and author's introductions and noting how Decline and Fall was banned in several countries, as it did not preserve the special protections this harlot of privilege and power enjoyed, filled me with disgust.

Very interested in the Fall of the Roman empire, because I see what appears, to me, to be the fall of Europe right now.

Not sure how I'll go with reading Decline and Fall seated at a desktop.  It will take me forever.

Drawn to the chapters on Christianity. 

Do not understand why the beliefs of a break-away religious sect/cult from the Middle East were adopted by Europe:  why this was adopted over one's own traditions.  

The worship of a foreign mortal and the blend of foreign religion with pagan religion that resulted is intriguing -- as is the role that religion may have played in the decline of the Roman Empire.
Even today, religions receive special protections.  I don't think that should be the case at all.  Organised religion deserves no special regard. It is organised fraud perpetuated perpetrated for political ends, and this organisation is an expression of a host of other things that are tied to personal and group identity, psychology and so much more.
Works of Karl Marx 1843

A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Introduction

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

What Carl has to say looks interesting. Might check this out before I launch into the Gibbon's chapters on Christianity.


PS

Struggling reading what Marx has to say.  Sounds like he's opposed to the old order of the German empire.  Struggling with it because each sentence seems to be packed with so much weight.  The manner of presenting unfamiliar ideas is also hard to follow.  But I guess the more you know the easier that becomes to understand?  lol

Might set Marx aside and pop over to visit Christianity destroying the Roman empire.  lol

* Even though this book would be outdated, I think it will be an interesting read. 


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