"Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law on imprisonment of up to 15 years for "fakes about the Russian army".
Amendments are made to Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code - "on public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Russian Armed Forces to protect the interests of Russia and its citizens".
The punishment for the violation will be a fine of up to 5 million rubles or imprisonment for up to 10 years. If the dissemination of fakes caused grave consequences, the term of imprisonment will be from 10 to 15 years."
Freedom of Speech is a tricky subject, difficult to apply to all societies world-wide. it's a highly secular concept, and in many places it collides with religious and cultural ideas and practices. it certainly doesn't sit well with more authoritarian communities (including the military) and is incompatible with judicial constructs like Lèse-majesté.
Freedom of anything is a tricky subject when normalizing aberrant behaviors. Outside of a few precedencies, most western laws can be trace to some form religious morality codified in an agnostic expression, mainly from two sources: the Assyrian Code of the Assura, Old Babylonian Code of the Hammurabi and Hittite Code of the Nesilim, If I'm not mistaken, Hittite King Hattusili created versions of laws and dates instituted so old actions cannot be prosecuted under newer laws. Spiritual agnosticism is important. It excludes cult based bias (new religious leaders and whim of the king ie tyranny) from impacting socially normal and aberrant behaviors.
'Spiritual agnosticism is important' < great comment! I'll look up these sources you mentioned, and I wonder wether Mozes' Ten Commandments are a spin off of that. in an abstract way one could say that monotheism is a power grab, albeit a sophisiticated one. certainly food for thought.
Modern Hinduism, Judaic, Christian and Islamic Monotheism finds it's origins in pre-abrahamic, prehistory zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda as the supreme creation god. Zoroastrianism is strongly influenced by Egyptian religions @3500bc. Studying the 3-5 populate ancient egyptian creation myths, you can see direct influences on persian and levant religions. The levant was influenced by both predynastic egyptian and prehistory sumers beliefs. Sumer beliefs were introduced during the enslavement of the levant by the babylonians. Exact dates and specific cults are difficult to find.
The foundations and evolution of yahweh monotheism is interesting and ultimate power in the god hierarchy just as interesting. The latter is the most fun.. In the ancient world, gods were generally local to a physical area. The gods of the western stream was behind your village was different than the god of the river a mile to the east. In ancient logic, if the god left the area, the river or stream would dry up.
Yaweh, a canaan combination of el (golden calf), baal, baal hada, and kenite god/vulcan (metal working/volcano god). eg . moses on the mountain, fire creating the ten commandment tablets, the burning bush. The hebrews, if you can call them that during the late bronze age, villainized the philistines because they had iron technology and was a competitor.
The main theistic innovation of yaweh was assignment as a the 'god of man'. The implication was yaweh was not locally constrained and existed anywhere ppl were found. Again, ancient logic demanded El, the omnipotent, be integrated into yaweh.
I think it's important to study creation myths and evolution of religions from ancient egypt, sumers, babylonians, and canaan to fully understand the impacts of those beliefs on laws of the periods into our current age.
I see two different strands which didn’t have a lot in common, the Egyptians who made a big deal of the dead and beleived in afterlife and the Sumers, Assyrians etc who didn’t believe in afterlife at all and this is where the Ancient Greeks drew from a bit of each but their afterlife was more like the Assyrian or Sumer one than the Egyptian one. And then the Greeks from Plato on decided that they wanted a new religion and raised 12 gods for it which became one (reflecting the Roman Empire rather than theh earlier Greek Cities). The Penteteuch is clearly a Greek work and what’s more they created the people in the 1st C BCE who now call themselves Jewish. What happened between then and and 325 CE is that the Romans took over the Greeks hid their treasure (Copper Scroll) and to a large degree reinvented themselves. Apion who was clearly Roman aligned told us so and was maligned for it. Qumran is not a sect, it’s the beginnings of the religion which is based on Aristocratic Greek ideas of separation of the classes. There were at least 4 at Qumran and if you were of the lowest you had zero say.
The sumers did believe in an afterlife, but for mortals it sucked. Only the gods had an place in their heaven, ganzer, a great city. Ganzer was sort of the the french riviera of the afterlife. Mortals went to kur, sort of the detroit of the afterlife and no one really liked to talk about it. Kur was deep under the earth void of light and air. Kur was not like hell, and it was not a punishment to get there, as with the egyptian afterlife judgment. All mortals went to kur in death. What was unique about the sumer area was the flood myth.
Mortals tried to extort a place in ganzer by putting the gods in debt to mortal. Most ppl think giving gifts to the gods in offering was a means to find favor. I believe that to be incorrect. Looking at the laws of the period, giving something of value to anyone left the receiver with a debt to be repaid. Offerings to gods was a way to indebt to god to you, redeemable at a future time. If mortals were left with an unexplained windfall, their theistic logic would assign a debt to the god repaid as offerings. Indebtedness completely changes the outlook between mortals and gods. Failure to repay the debt/loan would result in bad stuff occurring to mortals, ie king midas.
As for gr4eak outlook and bias, it's hard to tell. We may be imposing our modern ideas of greek interpretation of more ancient texts. The greeks may have better understood those cultures and knew how to properly interpret their texts.
I must admit to not having heard of this Ganzer place. The only place that I’ve seen described is basically an accurate analogy for what death is. Underground as you stated, dusty and devoid of life.
I wonder is the giving of gifts to the ‘gods’ was merely a form of banking and passing on assets to your children in death.
I think most of what we have now from religion say Noah’s Ark can be traced to Deucalion rather than to Atrahasis. i.e. even if it is obviously Assyrian or Egyptian it is filtered through a Greek lens.
re Moses: some have pointed to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (1755–1750 BC), which predates Solon (638-558 BC) by many centuries. it could also be that as far as they weren't kept (and lost/destroyed as a result of the demise of Alexandria's library), perhaps some Greek written texts were better preserved than others (papyrus likes a dry climate). having lived in SE Asia for many years, where's it's very difficult to preserve any text because of the monsoon-related weather and humidity, I'm a sucker for the provenance of texts (but no scholar). BTW you run a great substack, big TQ for all the work you do :-))
...but but according to Greg Reese he has more freedom to speak in Moscow than in the USA.
It depends on the topic.
He'd best keep shtum about the military:
"Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law on imprisonment of up to 15 years for "fakes about the Russian army".
Amendments are made to Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code - "on public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Russian Armed Forces to protect the interests of Russia and its citizens".
The punishment for the violation will be a fine of up to 5 million rubles or imprisonment for up to 10 years. If the dissemination of fakes caused grave consequences, the term of imprisonment will be from 10 to 15 years."
https://www.currenttime.tv/a/putin-zakony-feiki/31736694.html
LOL
Everyone has their own destiny, and world events have their own course to follow.
We can’t afford to be overwhelmed by events that are not in our control.
Genocide needs to be resisted wherever it raises its ugly head though.
"They are guarding ALL the doors. They are holding ALL the keys"
Therefore:
The ONLY way we win is by refusing to play on their board and instead tipping it over!
The new world awaits....we just need to stop being afraid.
When enough of Us...
Dear AnyOne, I Am Not in Your Jurisdiction (article): https://amaterasusolar.substack.com/p/dear-anyone-i-am-not-in-your-jurisdiction
Freedom of Speech is a tricky subject, difficult to apply to all societies world-wide. it's a highly secular concept, and in many places it collides with religious and cultural ideas and practices. it certainly doesn't sit well with more authoritarian communities (including the military) and is incompatible with judicial constructs like Lèse-majesté.
Freedom of anything is a tricky subject when normalizing aberrant behaviors. Outside of a few precedencies, most western laws can be trace to some form religious morality codified in an agnostic expression, mainly from two sources: the Assyrian Code of the Assura, Old Babylonian Code of the Hammurabi and Hittite Code of the Nesilim, If I'm not mistaken, Hittite King Hattusili created versions of laws and dates instituted so old actions cannot be prosecuted under newer laws. Spiritual agnosticism is important. It excludes cult based bias (new religious leaders and whim of the king ie tyranny) from impacting socially normal and aberrant behaviors.
'Spiritual agnosticism is important' < great comment! I'll look up these sources you mentioned, and I wonder wether Mozes' Ten Commandments are a spin off of that. in an abstract way one could say that monotheism is a power grab, albeit a sophisiticated one. certainly food for thought.
Modern Hinduism, Judaic, Christian and Islamic Monotheism finds it's origins in pre-abrahamic, prehistory zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda as the supreme creation god. Zoroastrianism is strongly influenced by Egyptian religions @3500bc. Studying the 3-5 populate ancient egyptian creation myths, you can see direct influences on persian and levant religions. The levant was influenced by both predynastic egyptian and prehistory sumers beliefs. Sumer beliefs were introduced during the enslavement of the levant by the babylonians. Exact dates and specific cults are difficult to find.
The foundations and evolution of yahweh monotheism is interesting and ultimate power in the god hierarchy just as interesting. The latter is the most fun.. In the ancient world, gods were generally local to a physical area. The gods of the western stream was behind your village was different than the god of the river a mile to the east. In ancient logic, if the god left the area, the river or stream would dry up.
Yaweh, a canaan combination of el (golden calf), baal, baal hada, and kenite god/vulcan (metal working/volcano god). eg . moses on the mountain, fire creating the ten commandment tablets, the burning bush. The hebrews, if you can call them that during the late bronze age, villainized the philistines because they had iron technology and was a competitor.
The main theistic innovation of yaweh was assignment as a the 'god of man'. The implication was yaweh was not locally constrained and existed anywhere ppl were found. Again, ancient logic demanded El, the omnipotent, be integrated into yaweh.
I think it's important to study creation myths and evolution of religions from ancient egypt, sumers, babylonians, and canaan to fully understand the impacts of those beliefs on laws of the periods into our current age.
I see two different strands which didn’t have a lot in common, the Egyptians who made a big deal of the dead and beleived in afterlife and the Sumers, Assyrians etc who didn’t believe in afterlife at all and this is where the Ancient Greeks drew from a bit of each but their afterlife was more like the Assyrian or Sumer one than the Egyptian one. And then the Greeks from Plato on decided that they wanted a new religion and raised 12 gods for it which became one (reflecting the Roman Empire rather than theh earlier Greek Cities). The Penteteuch is clearly a Greek work and what’s more they created the people in the 1st C BCE who now call themselves Jewish. What happened between then and and 325 CE is that the Romans took over the Greeks hid their treasure (Copper Scroll) and to a large degree reinvented themselves. Apion who was clearly Roman aligned told us so and was maligned for it. Qumran is not a sect, it’s the beginnings of the religion which is based on Aristocratic Greek ideas of separation of the classes. There were at least 4 at Qumran and if you were of the lowest you had zero say.
The sumers did believe in an afterlife, but for mortals it sucked. Only the gods had an place in their heaven, ganzer, a great city. Ganzer was sort of the the french riviera of the afterlife. Mortals went to kur, sort of the detroit of the afterlife and no one really liked to talk about it. Kur was deep under the earth void of light and air. Kur was not like hell, and it was not a punishment to get there, as with the egyptian afterlife judgment. All mortals went to kur in death. What was unique about the sumer area was the flood myth.
Mortals tried to extort a place in ganzer by putting the gods in debt to mortal. Most ppl think giving gifts to the gods in offering was a means to find favor. I believe that to be incorrect. Looking at the laws of the period, giving something of value to anyone left the receiver with a debt to be repaid. Offerings to gods was a way to indebt to god to you, redeemable at a future time. If mortals were left with an unexplained windfall, their theistic logic would assign a debt to the god repaid as offerings. Indebtedness completely changes the outlook between mortals and gods. Failure to repay the debt/loan would result in bad stuff occurring to mortals, ie king midas.
As for gr4eak outlook and bias, it's hard to tell. We may be imposing our modern ideas of greek interpretation of more ancient texts. The greeks may have better understood those cultures and knew how to properly interpret their texts.
I must admit to not having heard of this Ganzer place. The only place that I’ve seen described is basically an accurate analogy for what death is. Underground as you stated, dusty and devoid of life.
I wonder is the giving of gifts to the ‘gods’ was merely a form of banking and passing on assets to your children in death.
great comment and a good reminder of, indeed, the various creation myths, thank you!
I figure Moses’ commandments can probably trace their origins to those of Solon’s from the 6th C BCE.
I think most of what we have now from religion say Noah’s Ark can be traced to Deucalion rather than to Atrahasis. i.e. even if it is obviously Assyrian or Egyptian it is filtered through a Greek lens.
re Moses: some have pointed to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (1755–1750 BC), which predates Solon (638-558 BC) by many centuries. it could also be that as far as they weren't kept (and lost/destroyed as a result of the demise of Alexandria's library), perhaps some Greek written texts were better preserved than others (papyrus likes a dry climate). having lived in SE Asia for many years, where's it's very difficult to preserve any text because of the monsoon-related weather and humidity, I'm a sucker for the provenance of texts (but no scholar). BTW you run a great substack, big TQ for all the work you do :-))
Thanks mary-lou