US Military Dead during Iraq War 1029

T.M. Sommers

Well, I didn't intend to convey that...I meant "when the Romans left" as in "once the Romans were no longer there"...not directly after but sometime after...okay, okay...perhaps not the best phrasiology...BUT, if there wasn't a "refusal" to read the rest of my post, then, later in the same post, I talk about the native Britons directly after the Romans...

Anyway, the Saxons were not long after...indeed, there's been the "Big Roman Dig" all week on Channel 4, where they've been excavating actual Roman sites around Britain and piecing together the archelogical evidence with Roman experts coming in to interpret the finds and to give an overview of Roman Britain - the rise and fall - and, like most areas ("the more you know about a subject, the more you realise just how much crap, guessing and ignorance really is there"; Experts know things best but there are NOT omnipotent), the experts did NOT think that the Roman period was quite as "cut and dried" as you might read in a school textbook...

The Romans called EVERYONE who was not Romanised "barbarians"...you can't take their account of history without recognising "bias" in it ("the victor writes the history books")...there have been discoveries of irrigation and there are mine workings which have been mined - quite a tricky process going safely to such depths - that have been in use long, long before the Romans came...the native Britons lived a tribal rural existence, which to the Romans (an empire named after a city) was "barbaric"...but the native Britons were clearly not quite the idiotic characters that Rome would have you believe...

Indeed, when Rome invaded, they clearly made a path directly towards the natural resources - such as lead mines (the "Time Team" were going to excavate there but the lead and the biproduct of arsenic were too high when they started digging there that this part of the dig had to be called off) - and when they reached Bath, where there's a large natural spring, and other important Celtic locations, they "Romanised" what was already there...built bath houses around these natural springs and so forth...if those you were conquering were quite so "barbaric" then why did Rome often merely "Romanise" what was already going on? Renamed the goddess at Bath to their Minerva but other than these "Romanisations", the sites were effectively continued from their original Celtic origins...

Rome was very "cosmopolitan", so to speak, and "buttimilated" cultures rather than overthrowing them...there's a tablet devoted to Mithras (not a Rome god) up near Hadrian's Wall because the soldiers posted there by Rome had been sourced from everywhere in the Empire...and they did not all completely surrender their previous beliefs...Rome's method of operation, in fact, was to allow the native Britons to carry on, so long as they did it in the Roman way...it's more like how Western civilisation spreads in Coca-cola and jeans and McDonald's Happy Meals around the world today, than an actual physical war and invasion...

Indeed, there's a large villa in the South called Fishbourne, which dates to before the official date of "invasion" by the Romans...but it is clearly Roman architecture and a Roman lifestyle...it's also a very large villa, even by European standards...one likely possibility is that the Roman "influence" invaded long before the armies actually came...and Fishbourne was an early native Briton adopting the Roman way willingly...and there are other sites pretty much all over Britain which suggest that the "culture" invaded in pockets here and there, long before the armies did...some very well likely welcomed the Romans coming...others didn't...

Because, of course, as the Romans "unified" Britain South of Hadrian's Wall, it's easy to forget that Britain was more like a "patchwork quilt"...a tribal society...and, thus, there were some who had been long adopting Roman ways before the Romans came and there were also some who fought bitterly (and failed) against the Roman armies when they came...

Like most things, the "black and white" "cut and dried" of many a textbook account shouldn't be taken as "gospel"...Rome was not built in a day...and neither was the Roman Empire outside of Rome...it was a more gradual transition to the Roman way and, once they left, a gradual transition back from Roman ways...archeological evidence demonstrates this was the case (though, simple logic and common sense should also have been making you think that the "Rome turned up on this exact day at 5:34am...and instantly everything was Roman...then left on this day at 7:34pm...and instantly everything Roman vanished, the instant the last Roman lifted his foot off British soil" account is ever so "simplified" to turn it into "neat" discrete events...history never really works like that in practice...indeed, the deep irony is that the common saying IS "Rome was not built in a day" ;)...

As such, the transition to and from "Roman" was not immediate or instant...and, depending on where you want to draw the line in the sand, the armies of Rome left Britain but, for a while, the native Britons did carry on with Roman ways...the cities Rome built did not all fall down, as Rome left...many generations, of course, had been born to Roman Britain, where British soldiers for the Roman army...they stayed and did not leave with Rome but they had been "born and bred" as citizens of Rome...they carried on going that way...there is archeological evidence too that such Romano British soldiers could have also carried on at their forts but taxed the local people and acted as their "local defence force", rather than having their wages sent from Rome...

And if you consider things in terms of Roman culture, rather than Roman army presence, the Saxons did arrive to meet the remants of Roman culture dying away...as Rome did not collapse in a day either...these things gradually build up, then gradually fade away...so, there are "transition" periods either side...and direct archeological evidence finds instances where, say, a body is buried with a Roman coin on a necklace around the neck while other grave goods are clearly Saxon...indeed, generally speaking, a peoples continue their previous "culture" on until a new one comes to change it, quite directly and quite literally...

Textbooks, though, tend to like "black and white facts", giving exact dates and times of "events"...but the actual history is much more "fuzzy" than that, coming from direct archeological evidence (which, in the end, is observational evidence and has to "override" any "theories" in textbooks)...

So, you know, "when the Romans left" ISN'T a singular discrete event that happened at exactly 4:24p.m. on a Sunday...culturally, Rome stayed in Britain long after they official "pull out"...British Roman soldiers - born and bred in Britain but under the Roman ways - would NOT have gone out of Britain...the "foreign" Romans - if you know what I mean by that - would have returned to their home but for many - totally "Roman" in their culture - Britain WAS their "home"...

And the archeology points to the gradual "fade away" of Roman culture after the Roman pull-out really gradually receding all the way until the Saxons invaded...and the Saxons would have encountered Roman things and Roman culture here and there when they came...

So, it all depends if mean "Roman" in the cultural sense or "Roman" in the administrative sense...

Hence, as to your next question:

...did you ever consider that perhaps, if I say something you feel sounds "contrary", that perhaps I say it because I might have MORE information - not less - than what you might know of the events?

Of course not...everyone believes they are neo-Romans...and, by this, everyone else, of course, is a "barbarian"...if not my "blue blood" genetic superior, then you must at least claim to be my intellectual or cultural "superior"...I'm a "mountain girl", as Annie puts it, with an "s" rather than a "z" in my name...these all mark me out as "inferior"...you don't even listen to "barbarians" - much less those who deny the right of "kings", much less those who dare challenge the "superiority" of this supposed "New Roman Civilisation" - because, as Bah suggests, simply listening to a "barbarian" can turn you into one of them...you might be "brain-washed" into realising you're NOT "superior", into realising that the "Master Race" ISN'T perfect...

That some roads do NOT lead to Rome...

Cities are not the only source of "civilisation"; Indeed, Rome itself would watch liquidate as "entertainment" in the Coloseum before hiring the legal, taxed whores of the city...sound particularly "civilised" to you? Oh, yes, liquidate, pimping and slavery happened in the midst of "glorious" architecture but the magnificence of the buildings do NOT "cancel out" the BARBARIC VULGARITY of Rome...and Rome fell because, in their arrogance at "superiority" (which is perhaps best represented in Nero: The man driven so mad with arrogance, he truly thought himself a "god"), the corruption flowed through the streets of Rome...their people grew fat and complacent...the barbarism, the arrogance, the "superiority complex" rotted Rome from within...

Rome was a DISASTER of humanity...which has been falsely perpetuated to cause more DISASTERS of humanity later...

Oh, yes...your "textbook" won't say that...because Neo-Romans still buttert "superiority"...

Even though the Saxons and Angles and Vikings and others - who fed into the English peoples - came from Germania and the Pagan Nordic countries, those "barbaric" lands Rome never conquered, never civilised (Rome's "barbarians",

Even though this means that the English, in a manner of speaking, are Rome's Conqueror "re-invoked Rome" as he invaded...and the English still, to this day, see the Celts as "barbarians" while they are "New Rome"...a total perversion of the history...through which the English attacked and persecuted the Celts...

But this perversion spread to the Neo-Roman "colonies" of the New World...the word "civilisation" - which actually refers to simply "city living" - taken as a synonym for "cultured", "moral", "superior", etc....that Roman atbreastude STILL in people's minds to this day...and the concept that "civilisation" has a "right" to invade and "civilise" others, who are all "barbarian" by definition...America "most civilised", not through deeds, but by having "the biggest city architecture"...that beautiful Manhattan skyline...

But Rome was CORRUPT...Rome crucified people...Rome watched liquidate as "entertainment"...Rome kept slaves...Rome had legal, taxed prosbreastution...Rome won its Empire by regimented dissolution of its armies...Rome even humilated Jesus, as they crucified Him...

Rome's "civilisation" is a sham...their grand impressive architecture housed immorality on the highest scale...their invincible armies dissolutioned on an unprecedented scale and what for? Why, only for "the Glory of Rome"! Just to make them "feel big"...to re-inforce their LIE that they were "superior"...that they were "enbreastled" to take the world as their "slave" for having an organised, systematic civilisation (yeah, and the Nazis dissolutioned Jews in the Holocaust with similar organised, systematic "efficiency"; Since when was "systematic" automatically an attribute of correct and moral behaviour? History teaches that the reverse is most often the case)...

Rome was the true "barbarian"...but believing their impressive, organised systems made them "superior" (a kind of false pseudo-Darwinism), they inflicted their barbarism on everyone else...and did this so successfully that every single arrogant wanker who thinks they are "superior" (William the Conqueror, Mussolini, Hitler, etc.) "re-invokes Rome" and calls themselves "civilisation" (the "Master Race"), as they perpertrate their crimes on those they deem "barbarians" and "animals"...

Rome was Soddom...Rome was Gamorah...Rome wanted to construct their Tower of Babel to conquer the Heavens themselves...Rome humilated and crucified the Son of God (or, even if not a Christian believer, then as a mere prophet or even "wise man", Jesus did not - no-one does - this treatment for preaching, after all, simply: LOVE...Rome called "Love" a blasphemy...Rome gleefully tortured Love...humilated and ridiculed it...end it, for Love represented a morality that THREATENED the corrupt heart of Rome...mind you, even the mighty Rome fell to Christ's preaching of Love in the end: It couldn't and then ceased to try to deny Love and took Christianity as its main religion...the SAME preaching of Love and tolerance that Gandhi used to make the world's largest empire fall too...deny it all you like but the history shows: Love is the greatest weapon that exists...that's not "wishy-washy" thinking...it HAS conquered the greatest imperial powers, who could not, in the end, DENY THE TRUTH)...

Rome was a DISASTER...but the victors do, indeed, write the history books...and the history books glorify Rome, not rightfully condemn it...and the fascists and the empire builders and all the scum of humanity still "invoke Rome" as they perpertrate their crimes...call themselves "civilisation" and "superior" - the "Master Race" - as they dissolution those they call "barbarian" and "animals"...

And through this perpetuated LIE, the Neo-Roman empires continue the destruction, continue the immorality, continue the genocides...and the "clbutt war" is about the same Neo-Roman concept of "red blood" and "blue blood"...that some are born more equal than others...that there the "right of the king" is unchallengable, as they sit slightly closer to god than everyone else...and, in intellectual circles, the same happens where you have to prove yourself "more knowledgable" than me...even though knowledge itself - "science" and the scientific method - does preach Descartesean "ultimate tolerance"...

It's all the same Neo-Roman LIE...

Take a knife to the skin of a king and needle him: His blood will run RED, not blue...

Whatever you or I know that the other doesn't, there are areas where we are BOTH better "specialists" than the other...true science and knowledge LISTENS to all sources...without exception..."from the mouths of babes"...there is no fear in simply listening, for science has defined the "filter" of belief: No evidence, no can do...indeed, evidence could - and has - come from the most unlikely sources at times...

Success is not architecture...success is not the soil that surrounds you...success is not being "king" (the worst job in the world: "With great power comes great responsibility"...with absolute power comes absolute responsibility...which is why EVERYONE fails when given "absolute power" and becomes CORRUPTED ABSOLUTELY)...

What's the point of possessions, if your life is still empty with them? What's the point of money, if you have no time to spend it? The more slaves a master owns, the WORSE a man this makes him...

And, in the end, you know I'm right...instinctually, we all do...but the Neo-Roman lie is too tempting...it's too "simple" to buy into...it is the "master", giving us clear, simple "goals" to strive for...it's "black and white" set of lies are easy to conform to...the "Kingship" of this lie is easy to bow to...a quick, cheap and easy "comfort" in a crazy, chaotic world...

But, in the end, it is a LIE...and if the instrument is broken, then the music will be sour...you cannot paint a room green using red paint...you cannot kill your way to "peace"...and you cannot "bully" yourself to be "adored" and "Loved" by others...you cannot pick up a baseball bat, write "Love me!" on it then try to beat the crap out of someone, trying to "brand" them with Love for you...

The more you fight me like this, the more I'm convinced you cannot possess much "wisdom", however much "knowledge" you have - and it's a lot and it does impress me - because what could be Hoped to be achieved?

TOTALLY; Utterly...if this book suggests it can PROVE "2 + 2 = 5" and overturn the entire basis of all that humans had believed about the universe all this time...if it would start with "2 + 2 = 5" then I'd DEFINITELY read it...

If it was RIGHT to put "2 + 2 = 5" and could PROVE it...then it would be among the greatest revelations and revolutions in all of human knowledge...it would be amongst the most IMPORTANT books ever written...

I totally WOULD go on to read it...as, if it were right to say "2 + 2 = 5", then it may very well be the most important book that I ever could read in my entire life...

Of course, if, in reading it further, it turns out (as we presume) that it has simply made an error in saying "2 + 2 = 5" then it is no "revelation"...simply an error...

But people make errors...Einstein made a "blunder" too...because he was wrong to say "God does not play dice" then you would NOT read and learn about General Relativity? Just because there's one mistake does NOT mean the rest is necessarily erroneous...

It could simply be a typo caused during typesetting of the manuscript onto the printing press...how many books have you seen with such typos? I've seen many, many books like that...but I wouldn't take them all and burn them on some "Nazi bonfire" because the author chose a bad printers or typesetters...because the editor or proof-reader wasn't on the ball to catch an accidental "typo" (of either the physical or mental kind: One can "mentally typo" from time to time too...you know, you think one thing but accidentally say the other and don't realise that you've done it...this I like to think of as a "mental typo"...if it is revealing of a "hidden mindset" then it becomes a "Freudian slip", of course :)...

And, sometimes, even mistakes can supply useful information...how many scientific inventions and discoveries were actually PURELY ACCIDENTAL? In science, there's not a single problem with something being false...false things can often provide as much - if not far, far more - than true things...an absence can tell you as much - if not more - than a presence...

Do I think myself "superior" that I would not listen to the "theories" of another? Absolutely NOT...there is, to my mind, no less "scientific" atbreastude than that...

Nothing has DAMAGED the quest for human knowledge than the "career scientist"...who is too scared to suggest something outside the "orthodox" - however compelling the evidence - because it may damage her "career"...who would STOP looking for the truth and would refuse to speak the truth when she finds it because it might "effect her career prospects"...

Science is progressed, in the main, by the eccentrics...those often close to even outright insanity, at times...and this is because they not only DARE to think "outside the box" and speak it aloud without hesitation or censorship...but, basically, often can't help doing so (the source of their "eccentricity")...

I do not prejudice any source on the basis that it's "not done" or "unfashionable" or whatever...

For example, I regularly criticise Bush over Iraq and such, as you know...BUT I had a friend who drank heavily and eventually become an alcoholic...I've met that first-hand...and it is an illness that consumes a person, changes them from their nature completely...Bush having put that behind him is amazing...I may sometimes not believe it (but this is the nature of the ILLNESS, not the person...it can turn anyone into the most remarkable liar..."denial", hiding bottles, becoming able to seem sober when actually totally drunk out of their skull and such...in a sense, one has to distrust the ILLNESS, for the sake of helping the person...the two very much are SEPARATE...it takes someone over...someone who NEVER even consider theft outside of the alcoholic illness, can end up some "career criminal"...it's NOT the person themselves...but the power of the illness that it can take over a person...not that this is an excuse: An "addictive personality" is the weakness in the person that allows it to take them over...but you're born with that, so to speak, and don't make an active choice to be "weak")...but I don't criticise it...

I prejudice the behaviour, not the person...and I simply do not believe a person is their behaviours in an "immutable" way (indeed, I've seen leopards change their spots against all the odds against them...it might be rare but it's NOT impossible)...

A mistake is a mistake...we all make them...this does not render a person "broken"...it doesn't mean that every word they utter is wrong...their every action is wrong...I completely see the two as entirely separate...indeed, if I didn't then I wouldn't bother discussing things with people...because, well, what would be the point? If people were inherently "stuck" as one thing or another, there'd be no point talking over politics or worldviews or anything...they'd be "stuck" that way, whatever you said...but I KNOW this isn't true...I myself KNOW it because I myself have been changed by that around me...I have learnt to see things differently from that which I've once believed, that were "bred" into me, so to speak...

Hence, by definition, all "fiction" shouldn't be ever read because none of it is factually true?

The wisdoms encoded in mythology and parable and fable - from Aesop to Jesus to H.G.Wells to Shakespeare - must all be dismissed wholesale if they contain even one minor "technical inaccuracy"?

If there's a "typo" in a reproduction of Euclid's Elements or Einstein's Relativity or Darwin's Origin of Species - completely the PRINTER'S FAULT, not the author's - then we throw out mathematics, physics and evolution wholesale - lock, stock and smoking barrel - because of a failure to meet "perfection"...

A failure to meet "perfection"...a "flaw" in the "Master Race", eh? We can't accept or tolerate even the most minor "genetic impurity" or even "memetic impurity" because this will "taint" the great "Master Race"! So, systematic "Holocaust" of all sources with errors...build up that bonfire and set those books on fire...

Don't you see where such leads? You're not stupid...why can't you see it's not only an idiotic but a dangerous mindset? And there's nothing as OPPOSITE - the anbreasthesis - of "scientific thought" than choosing to destroy or ignore knowledge...indeed, "science" means "knowledge" and choosing ignorance - major or minor - is the most unscientific act possible...

Descartes laid out the principle clearly: The "filter" is EVIDENCE...and ONLY evidence...all "hypothesis" is guesswork - unproved - by definition...a "hunch", a "suspicion"...but EVIDENCE - and only evidence alone - will "filter" the truth from the falsehood...and if there is no evidence, then there is simply NO CONCLUSION (NOT a negative conclusion: One says "I don't yet know if it's right or wrong", NOT "it is wrong")...

If you propose the way you do, then, sorry, I'll never accept anything that defies that simple and clear principle...you will not "bully" yourself to correctness...you will PROVE it...and if you propose delibrate ignorance is any kind of "scientific method" then I know this is false...you merely further prove the UNTRUSTWORTHINESS of any evidence you might present, as you don't seem to comprehend the basic principles of evidence gathering...you don't "select" just the data that says what you want...you take the whole lot and ACCEPT whatever it tells you, whether you believed that way or not prior...

You have made plenty of mistakes too, you know...the difference is that I do not "persecute" you for such perfectly forgivable mistakes...I don't believe in your "fascist" notions of an unacheivable "perfection" of thought and deed...I welcome the eccentrics...I let in the stranger with their "alien ways" because it tells us more about ourselves to see how people can differ from us...I want that "biodiversity"...I want the nutter who, like Daniel Jackson, talks about pyramids as "alien landing sites"...I don't believe for an instant that there's even the smallest amount of truth in that...but it MUST be permitted to be spoken...people MUST be allowed to ponder the "alternatives"...seek the truth that has yet to be found or realised...it is similar to the democratic principle: "Freedom of Speech and Belief" MUST be maintained at all times...

"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the rest your right to say it." Translation of a line from "Le Liaisons Dangereuses" (note: This is often falsely attributed to Voltaire all over the 'Net...but this "mistake" does NOT invalidate the truth of the quote...the message remains true, even if fracking Scooby Doo said it! The "mistake" of wrongfully attributing it to the wrong party does NOT invalidate the quotation itself one iota)

I never said that he did...

This was a means to describe the nature of what I refer to as a "phantom book review", in general...a delibrately exaggerated "exemplar" of the generalised atbreastude of "phantom book reviews"...the exaggeration NECESSARY to make its defining attributes - the mindset - obvious and clear, to help make it "distinct" from other, similar, things which would not be "phantom book reviews"...a generalised clbuttification of the phenomenon...

Mr. Falconer had given a "phantom book review"...not of the exaggerated sort in my "exemplar" (but that was a delibrately "exaggerated" and "extreme" version of the "mindset" that leads to "phantom book reviews" for the purposes of "clear identification")...but a "phantom book review" nonetheless as he openly criticised that which he confesses to have not even read...

And it's simple logic: How can you know something is wrong or erroneous when you don't even examine it? That, in essence, is the illogical basis of the "phantom book review"...

Bottom line: I don't think nor speak like you do...this is a reality...and in no way does it make either you or me "superior" to the other...there IS more than one way to skin a cat...you choose one particular methodology...I choose another...you'll note, ironically, though, that when push comes to shove, we tend to be on the same "side" in these big debates...what you appear as yet unable to tolerate or cope with is that someone could function by a different rationale to yourself...that a "poetical" approach could equal your "prose" methodology and come to the same conclusions about truth...even though, yes, the means to get there is utterly alien to you...

And, so, you hate my "loose language"...you loathe my "pop culture reference"...you just can't stand the use of metaphors, analogies and other "poetical" devices...

I'm, well, so fracking "vulgar", aren't I? My methods so horribly "common"...and I not only don't do it "right", as your "nobility" does it, I even refuse to bow to the middle-clbutt intellectual as my "superior"...how dare I! What an evil person I must be...

Sorry, but, you see, I did "courses" too...I am not an illiterate, whatever the perception of us "scum of the Earth" is in your section of "high society"...and I DO fracking know what I'm talking about, sunshine, even if I'm far more Chaucer than Shakespeare in the way I say it! At no point, my friend, will you ever find me apologising or changing to "conform" to your "blue blood" ways...without wanting to annoy you with the crbuttness and vulgarity but, well, "screw you"...with knobs on...

"There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have." Don Herold

"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird...So let's look at the bird and see what it's DOING -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and actually KNOWING something." Richard Feynman (my emphasis)

"I understand a fury in your words...

...but not the words."

William Shakespeare, "Othello", Act IV Sc.II

Beth :)