America -- Land of the Free; or is it?!

In what was possibly the most surreal, horrific, and unimaginable thing I have ever witnessed in my life, 1200 Riot Police and Military Personal rabidly attacked a group of well under 300 American citizens, many of them just students that were unaware there was even a protest going on. They then expanded their perimeter and shut large areas of Oakland down. This is how my last experience at the G20 in Pittsburgh went down, out of control authorities mercilessly attacking an unarmed crowd with batons, tear gas, pepper spray, sound weapons, and rubber bullets. Around 10pm on Friday night, long after the vast majority of dignitaries and protesters had left, it became evident that the outrageous show of force by the Military and Police was not enough to stave off their thirst for blood. Read more here...

The War Against Us All

Flu Vaccine Ingredients for the Whole Family

Want to know who is behind the Swine Flu?

Or visit FluScam.Com.

The Land of the Bloody

So these days in America you can be stopped at a roadblock and have a blood sample forcibly taken from you. The "Land of the Free" looks more and more like Nazi Germany... but hey, the major news being covered is Kanye West's antics at the MTV-awards. Not to mention that such bodily violation is against the Fourth Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and who knows which other law is being broken.

On "Liberal" Christianity

The Political Power of Iconography

In the video below the powerful influence of icons and branding is discussed within the context of politics, specifically American politics. As someone who was once a graphic designer (and who have designed my share of logos) and also an avid believer in the need visual literacy in the times we live, I found this an excellent analysis well worth watching.

Eckhart Tolle and New Age

The pastors from Woodland Hills Church has a sound Q&A regarding Eckhart Tolle's worldview and similar New Age trends. You can view it here. They also made comments that resonated with my "Why I'll Never Be a Pantheist Again".

Eckhart Tolle is the author of the book The New Earth, which is endorsed by Oprah Winfrey -- this of course made it a secure best seller.

Eight Years Later: Speak Out Against the War in Afghanistan

A video by Code Pink: Women for Peace.

Obama Banking Too Much On Banks

A very informative article by Nomi Prins, a former investment banker that became a journalist.

Obama Banking Too Much On Banks

On Monday—one year after the once-mighty Lehman Brothers collapsed in the nation’s biggest bankruptcy—President Obama addressed the state of the economy and again outlined his proposals for what he calls reform. The location—Federal Hall at 26 Wall Street, near the New York Stock Exchange and New York Federal Reserve Bank—was fitting. George Washington took his presidential oath there, a precursor for how intertwined Washington and Wall Street would become. And Obama’s speech indicates that he’s still making the grave error of mistaking the health of Wall Street for the health of the American economy.



Obama chose not to deliver his speech on, say, the streets of Bend, Oregon, or Fresno, California, which provide different indicators of our economic predicament. That’s because Washington’s approach to the crisis has been to focus on the banking system, throw a few crumbs to citizens, and hope everything else will magically work itself out.

The problem with concentrating on the banking system is that it allows the administration to present an overly optimistic assessment of its actions. "The storms of the past two years are beginning to break," Obama pronounced, attributing this to a government that "moved quickly on all fronts, initializing a financial stability plan to rescue the system from the crisis and restart lending for all those affected by the crisis." He continued: "By taking aggressive and innovative steps in credit markets, we spurred lending not just to banks, but to folks looking to buy homes or cars, take out student loans, or finance small businesses. Our home ownership plan has helped responsible homeowners refinance to stem the tide of lost homes and lost home values."

Those steps were certainly aggressive. Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, the government, from the Federal Reserve to the Treasury Department, has flushed the banking systems and other components of the financial markets with $17.5 trillion worth of loans, guarantees, and other forms of support. About another $1 trillion has been provided to citizens through the recovery package, first-time homeowner tax benefits, auto purchase credits, and approximately $800 billion to help guarantee the loans of certain lenders—which somewhat helps borrowers, but helps lenders more.

But these measures have hardly brought the economy back from the brink. They brought Wall Street back from capital starvation and prevented the possibility of more big banks going bankrupt—instead of the slew of smaller and mid-size ones that have since met the same fate as Lehman Brothers. Taking credit for stabilizing the financial system after feeding it with massive amounts of federal money is like a teacher bragging about turning around the academic performance of a failing student after handing them all the answers to the big tests.

Here’s how the economy is really faring (and how Washington is failing to take adequate steps to fix it):

* National unemployment is at 9.7 percent, higher than last year’s 5.8 percent, with double digit jobless rates in 139 metropolitan areas this July, compared to 14 last July.
* The number of foreclosures is greater than last year: nearly 2 million new foreclosure filings occurred in the first half of 2009, up 15 percent from the same period in 2008.
* While homes in some areas have begun to slowly sell again, they are doing so at deeply depressed prices, in many instances below their mortgage value.
* Wall Street bonuses are back to pre-crisis levels. For some firms, such as Goldman Sachs, they are even higher.
* Bank leverage, or excessive borrowing on the back of risky assets—a major cause of the meltdown—is rising again.
* Geithner recently reported that his program to enable private financial firms to buy up toxic assets with government help will wind up costing less than the $1 trillion he had first envisioned. However, he did not mention that there are less toxic assets available to buy partly because the Fed has allowed banks to use some toxic assets as collateral in return for cheap loans.
* Big banks are bigger than they were last year. Since the Fed blessed more mergers last fall, the nation’s three largest banks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo—hold the maximum percentage of legally permissable US deposits or more.
* Mid-size and smaller banks keep closing. This year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has closed 92 banks and depleted its deposit insurance money in the process.
* We still don’t have detailed information on the trillions of dollars of loans the Fed handed out to the banking sector or about the quality of the collateral banks provided in return.



Obama did acknowledge that the picture isn’t entirely rosy. He also outlined his ideas for avoiding another catastrophe: reshuffle the decks of regulatory agencies, slap a few trading constraints on some derivatives, and create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). But while Obama's rhetoric was stern—"normalcy cannot lead to complacency," he vowed—the proposals themselves are hardly sweeping.

Obama’s plan calls for eliminating the Office of Thrift Supervision and providing greater oversight by the Fed of “systemically important” institutions. The Senate is trying to water that down, in part because some members of both parties in Congress remain skeptical about the power of the Fed itself. The Senate also wants to consolidate regulatory authority into fewer entities, but leave oversight to a council of regulators. Of course, consolidating regulatory oversight only works if regulators are doing their jobs and the banking system is transparent enough to allow them to do so.

The last leg of Obama’s proposal would be establishing the CFPA, which would monitor financial products in an effort to protect consumers from risky instruments such as subprime mortgages. Legislation to create such an agency is expected to be taken up this year by the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass).

A strong CFPA is a sensible plan. Right now there is no other body imbued with the power not just to protect consumers but also to foster the general economic stability that would be achieved by closely monitoring the integrity of financial products. This proposal has drawn the most ire from the banking community, so you know it’s good. The Chamber of Commerce launched a $2 million ad campaign to convince people that a CFPA would mean that local butcher couldn’t extend credit to his customers without government interference.

But Obama's reforms do not strike deeply enough. The banking crisis has been subdued, not fixed, because of enormous amounts of government assistance. Ignoring that fact, and failing to overhaul the sector, leaves us open to another crisis. And the next round will be worse, because there is now so much more federal money invested in the banks.

Simply funding the banking system without reforming it is an expensive and dangerous game. Obama is capable of truly fixing things—by dividing up the Wall Street mega-banks with a new Glass Steagall Act, thereby enabling the success of more extensive regulatory reforms. Or, he could introduce a set of cosmetic changes that allow banks to keep doing what they did before last year’s crisis and that put us on the path for the next one.

Charlie Sheen's Questions to the President

How Not To Use Facebook

From: FriendFeed

Jailed for What You're Gonna Do

A couple of months old, but still relevant.



The fact that Rachel Maddow should take such a strong position against President Obama should in itself be something of note. She is considered one of the most liberal radio personalities in America.

The Good News of Christianity's Demise

A while back I responded to a news report on the demise of American Christianity. The report stated five reasons why people give up on Christianity, to which I gave five responses. Below is a similar blog post by Greg Boyd -- of all things, a megachurch pastor and author of insightful theological books. I say "of all things", because those are the type of preachers I mistrust the most. However, Boyd's "brand" of Christianity is one I find very much in line with the version Jesus taught. He is thinking preacher, always studying and contemplating, and always focussing on Jesus. I've written about Greg Boyd before on this blog, in one of my very first posts (the 6th post to be exact, nearly two years ago), "The Scary Right". I mentioned the fabulous CNN three part documentary, God's Warriors, I admitted that of all the high profile Christians interviewed in the documentary, Boyd was the only person I could associate myself with. You can see the segment of Boyd in the documentary God's Warriors on his website here.

His post below discusses why "the demise of American Christianity" is good news for "Real Christianity".

Don’t Weep For the Demise of American Christianity

Hello bloggers,

I’ve come across two very interesting and insightful essays this week on the demise of American Christianity. The first is Michael Spencer’s “The coming evangelical collapse” published in the Christian Science Monitor, and the second is Jon Meacham’s “The End of Christian America” published in Newsweek. Meacham discusses the decline of Christianity in America in general while Spencer discusses what he believes is the soon and inevitable demise of Evangelicalism in particular. In this post I’d like to provide a brief overview of both articles (supplemented by some information from Christine Wicker’s The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church (HarperCollins, 2008), and then offer my own assessment of this demise.

The Demise of Christianity

There are many indications that Christianity in America is in rather rapid decline. For example, the percentage of self-identifying Christians has fallen 10 points over the last decade (down to 76 percent). According to a recent Newsweek Poll, the percentage of people who think that America is “a Christian Nation” has dropped 7 percent in the last year (down to 62 percent). And the percent of those who say that religion “can answer all or most of today’s problems” is at a historic low – down to 48 percent (it never dropped below 58 percent until the last few years).

There are indications that conservative Christianity (Evangelicalism) is being hit particularly hard by this downward turn. (See Christine Wicker’s The Fall of the Evangelical Nation for superb research supporting this claim). While some megachurches continue to grow, the majority of smaller evangelical churches are shrinking (in part because many of their members are migrating to the “full service oriented” model of the megachurches). Yet, there is an over-all net loss of church attenders each year, though this is somewhat concealed by the fact that most conservative churches are reticent to take members off their membership rolls as well as by the tendency of evangelical churches and organizations [especially Southern Baptists, according to Wicker] to grossly exaggerate their numbers (see The Fall of the Evangelical Nation for a full exposé on this trend).

Also significant is the fact that the average age of attendees in conservative churches is rising and there are many indications that the largely personality driven mega-church phenomenon was a “baby-boomer” trend that will likely die with this generation. In light of these and other indications, Spencer goes so far as to predict that ”[w]ithin two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants.” “The end of evangelicalism as we know it,” he argues, “ is close.” More generally, Meacham argues that America is entering into a “post-Christian” epoch.

The Cause of the Decline

What has brought about this decline? The answer to this question is, of course, very complex, but from these essays two factors stand out.

First, as Spencer notes, American evangelical churches have been, to a large degree, gutted by good old fashion American pragmatism. We’ve become preoccupied with being “relevant” and “efficient” at the expense of holding fast to the theological depth of our biblically based traditions. Megachurches in particular are guilty of this – which in part explains why they become megachurches, for relevance and efficiency sell well to baby boomers. (To younger folks, not so much.) Spencer refers to this, quite appropriately, as the “megachurch vacuity.”

Spencer wonders whether “the coming collapse” of Evangelicalism will “get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power?” He’s not very optimistic, however. While he’s quite sure Evangelicalism will continue to decline, he also somewhat caustically anticipates that “[t]he purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church’s problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.”

A second important factor, which both Spencer and Meacham stress, is that Evangelicals “have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism.” Spencer notes that “[w]e fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.” Even some of the staunchest guards of conservative Evangelicalism are beginning to see this.

For example, Alert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, concedes that “[t]he worst fault of evangelicals in terms of politics over the last 30 years has been an incredible naiveté about politics and politicians and parties.” Manifesting typical Constantinian triumphalism, many conservative American Christians naively thought we could transform American society in a “Christian” direction by acquiring political power to enforce our (self-proclaimed) superior views on selected topics (especially abortion, gay marriage, creationism in schools and stem cell research) on the broader culture. It has not gone well, to say the least.

After 40 years of intense political involvement, Evangelicals have little positive to show for their efforts. To the contrary, we’ve arguably only succeeded in getting multitudes of non-Christians [or simply non-Evangelicals] to distain us and the “Good News” message we’re supposed to be bringing. (A great book on the [mostly negative] non-Christian perceptions of Evangelicals in America is UnChristian by David Kinnamen and Gabe Lyons). Now that the political parties and positions Evangelicals largely identified with have fallen on hard times, Evangelicals have, to a significant extent, fallen with them.

Is The Demise of the Christian Religion a Bad Thing?

For those who are heavily invested in the Christian religion, at least as it’s usually been understood in America, the news that America is entering into a “post-Christian” epoch is understandably alarming. As Meacham makes apparent in his article, people like Albert Mohler find the indisputable evidence of Christianity’s demise in America deeply disturbing. Mohler vows to fight this demise tooth and nail, predicting that a “new generation of young pastors” is about to rise up “to push back against hell in bold and visionary ministry.” “Expect to see the sparks fly,” he adds.

Personally, I strongly suspect that all such “spark flying” efforts on the part the righteous to protect us sinners from ourselves will only speed Christianity’s demise.

Others of us interpret the demise of Christianity and America’s descent into a “post-Christian” epoch quite differently. Indeed, I and many others see this as good news! Yes, the loss of a Judeo-Christian civic religion may bring about a greater degree of moral and religious relativism and intensify American’s moral decadence. This is admittedly unnerving. But here are six reasons why I do not think Kingdom people should weep over the demise of American Christianity.

1. America has never been, and will never be, a “Christian” nation in any significant sense. Among other things, America, like every other fallen, demonically-oppressed nation (see Lk. 4:5-7; 2 Cor. 4:4; I Jn. 5:19; Rev. 13), is incapable of loving its enemies, doing good to those who mistreat it or blessing those who persecute it (Lk. 6:27-35). By applying the term “Christian” to America, we’ve massively watered down its meaning — which undoubedly helps explain why the vast majority of American Christians assume being “Christian” is perfectly compatible with hating and killing your national enemies if and when your earthly Commander and Chief asks you to. The sooner the label “Christian” gets divorced form this country, the better. It provides hope that someday the word “Christian” might actually mean “Christ-like” once again.

2. Related to this, there’s a good bit of research demonstrating that the majority of American’s identify themselves as “Christian” when asked by a pollster, but when asked what this label actually means in terms of core values and lifestyle choices, it becomes apparent that for the majority of them the meaning of “Christian” is basically “American.” I submit that the main problem Kingdom people confront in spreading the Kingdom in America is that a majority of people assume they are already in the Kingdom — they are “Christian” — simply by virtue of being American or because they prayed a certain prayer or go to Church once a year, or whatever. If fewer people are identifying themselves as “Christian,” this is good, for it means there’s one less major illusion that Kingdom people have to confront and work through as they invite these folks into the Kingdom.

3. If Evangelicals lose all their political clout, we may be less tempted to lust after political power, which means we may have one less distraction from actually doing what God called us to do — namely, manifesting God’s reign by how we humbly live, love and serve.

4. As my friend Alan Hirsch demonstrates in his great book, The Forgotten Ways, the Kingdom has always thrived — and really, has only thrived — when it was on the margins of society. The Kingdom is, by its very nature, a “contrast society.” If Christians lose all their power and position in society and become marginalized, this can’t help but be good for the Kingdom. If Christians become persecuted, it likely will be even better. We’d be turning back the clock from the disaster of Constantinian triumphalist Christianity in the direction of Apostolic, servant Christianity.

5. The “Christian” element of American culture was never deeper than the thin veneer of a shared civic religion. A major problem Kingdom people have faced on the mission field of America is that the majority of people mistook the civic religion for the real thing. So it is that so many think that being “Christian” is focused on preserving the civic religion (e.g. fighting for prayer before sports events, keeping the ten commandments on government buildings, holding onto a “Christian” definition of marriage within our government, etc.). Not only this, but this veneer of Christianity causes Jesus followers not to notice the many ways foundational assumptions that permeate American culture are diametrically opposed to the values of the Kingdom. If the civic religion of Christianity were to die, Kingdom people would be less tempted to associate Christianity with symbolic civic functions and would become more aware of how the Kingdom sharply contrasts with foundational aspects of American culture.

6. Finally, and closely related to this, if Jesus followers lose all their position and power and become a minority (or better, revealed to have always been a minority) in American culture, this will expose the idol of American individualism we have bought into for far too long and perhaps help us realize that we need to cling to each other and that the Kingdom is inherently communal. We are called to manifest God’s uniquely beautiful love and bear witness to the reality of Jesus Christ by how we share our lives and serve one another (e.g. Jn. 17:20-26; Acts 2: 42-47. 4: 42-45). But its very difficult for many of us to embrace radical Kingdom community when we can get along very well (by American standards of “well”) without it. The demise of Constantinian American Christianity would serve us well by stripping us of the privilege of individualistic living.

Other possible positive outcomes of the demise of American Christianity could be listed, but this must suffice for now. I hope it is enough to show that, from a Kingdom perspective, the demise of American Christianity is not something we should weep over. To the contrary, its actually good news. Yes, it will likely bring about cultural disarray. But, as has often been noted, the Kingdom thrives best when the broader cultural is falling apart. The God-given mandate to Kingdom people is not to keep the broader culture from falling apart, but to offer all who are hungry a radically different, far more beautiful, way of doing life. And often people will not take this offer seriously until everything else is crumbling around them.

Let the civic religion die. And if the culture crumbles, it crumbles. Our task is to live in a way that gives people hope.

Think about it,

Greg

The Battle of Good and Evil (A Sermon)

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Locational Privacy

Locational privacy (also known as "location privacy") is the ability of an individual to move in public space with the expectation that under normal circumstances their location will not be systematically and secretly recorded for later use.

How much locational privacy do you have? How many CCTV cameras record your comings-and-goings everyday? Are your photo taken at the ATM every time you make a withdrawal? Is there a log at your local library of the books that you read -- and is this log really private? How safe are your surfing habits from Internet spying? Did you suddenly get spam mail, email, cell phone text messaging, after you signed up for a new account with a store, bank, or other service? Are your movements "tracked" via your cellphone, without you knowing?

Benito Mussolini

"Speeches made to the people are essential to the arousing of enthusiasm for a war."

"Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State. "

Anatomy of a Collapse

The graphic above is an interesting interpretation of the predicament. It was designed by Wall Stats. There is also another (more colourful) diagram on Flickr.

Some ponderings...

I have been quite negative the last couple of weeks and months. Most of it relates to the state of the world and how I see people’s liberties taken away without them even flinching, with how I see economies being manipulated and money “legally” stolen by governments and corporate powers working together, with manipulating people’s fears to get them submissive and obeying, with governments “fixing” the economic problems by printing more money and so devaluing the system even further, with political two-faced tactics where the front man says one thing, but the administration another.

But I’m gaining hope. In a letter to my friends I wrote sometime back that one of the only ways to get out of this depression is if something wonderful is discovered, like a cheap alternative energy source. A friend recently sent me a link to current experiments happening in this area. This is wonderful, and if it is not squashed by the oil syndicates, then the world can change dramatically for the better.

The other thing that is giving me hope is the amount of protests worldwide. More and more people are standing up to their governments and making themselves heard. The powers-that-be will try and fear monger the masses into submission with anything from military involvement to swine flu epidemics. If the people can rise above such fear-terrorism employed by their governments, then I have a little more hope for the world.

Good luck everyone. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride ahead.

Napoleon Bonaparte is a Solar Myth

So you still believe Jesus Christ never existed, but is merely a fictional character based on a Solar Myth? That, at least, is what Peter Joseph (writer, director, editor and producer) of the Zeitgeist movie claimed, and thousands of gullible people were persuaded by his argument. More than a century ago Jean-Baptise wrote the treatise below (see full text here), proving (by using the same logic as Peter Joseph) that Napoleon Bonaparte did not exist and is just a fictional character based on a Solar Myth.

So if you want to insist that Jesus Christ was in fact just a Solar Myth, then by implication you have to insist the same regarding Napoleon Bonaparte.

GRAND ERRATUM. THE NON-EXISTENCE OF NAPOLEON PROVED.

BY JEAN-BAPTISTE

Napoleon Bonaparte, of whom so much has been said and written, never even existed. He is nothing more than an allegorical personage. He is the personification of the sun; and we can prove our assertion by showing how everything related of Napoleon the Great has been borrowed from the great luminary. Let us see briefly what we are told of this remarkable man.

Ye are told:

That he was called Napoleon Bonaparte:

That he was born in an island in the Mediterranean sea;

That his mother's name was Letitia;

That he had three sisters and four brothers, three of whom
were kings;

That he had two wives, one of whom bore him a son;

That he put an end to a great revolution;

That he had under him sixteen marshals of the empire, twelve of whom were in active service;

That he prevailed in the South, and was defeated in the North;

To conclude, that after a reign of twelve years, begun upon his arrival from the East, he departed, and disappeared in the Western seas.

It remains for us to ascertain whether these various details are borrowed from the sun, and we hope that every reader of this disquisition will rise convinced that this is the case.

i. In the first place, every one knows that the sun is called Apollo by the poets. Now, the difference between Apollo and Napoleon is not a great one, and it will appear very much less still if we go back to the meaning and origin of these names. It is unquestionable that the word Apollo means Exterminator; and it seems that this name was given by the Greeks to the sun on account of the injury it did them before Troy, where a part of their army perished from the excessive heat, and from the pestilence that followed at the time of the outrage perpetrated by Agamemnon on Chryses, priest of the sun, as we read at the beginning of the "Iliad" of Homer. The brilliant imagination of the Greek poets transformed the rays of the luminary into flaming arrows, hurled on all sides by the angry god, who would soon have exterminated everything if his wrath had not been appeased by the release of Chrysei's, daughter of Chryses, the sacrificial priest.

This, then, is probably the reason why the sun was called Apollo. But whatever the cause or circumstance which occasioned the giving of such a name to this luminary, it is certain that the name means Exterminator.

Now, Apollo is the same word as Apoleon. They are derived from Apollyo, or Apoleo, two Greek verbs which are really the same, and which mean "destroy," “kill," "exterminate."

Thus, if the fictitious hero of our century were called Apoleon, he would have the same name as the sun, and would besides fulfil the meaning of the name; for he is pictured to us as the greatest exterminator of men who ever existed. But this personage is called Napoleon, and thus his name contains an initial letter which we do not find in the name of the sun. Yes, there is an
extra letter, an extra syllable even; for, according to the inscriptions cut in every part of the capital (Paris), the real name of this supposed hero was Neapoleon, or Neapolion. This is more particularly to be seen on the column of the Place Vendome.

Now, this extra syllable makes no difference whatever. The svllable, no doubt, like the rest of the name, is Greek; and in Greek ne, or nai, is one of the strongest affirmations, equivalent to our veritably, or yea. Whence it follows that Napoleon means Veritable Exterminator, Veritable Apollo; it
means, in truth, the sun.

But what is to be said of his other name? What connection can there be between the word Bonaparte and the star of the day? At first it is not at all evident, but this at least can be understood: that as bona parte means "good part," it has no doubt to do with something consisting of two parts, a good and a bad, with something which in addition is connected with the sun, Napoleon.

Now, nothing is more directly connected with the sun than the results of his diurnal revolution, and these results are day and night, light and darkness; the light produced by his presence, and that darkness which prevails during his absence. This is an allegory borrowed from the Persians. They have the reign of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of light and darkness, of good and bad spirits. And it is to these last, spirits of evil and darkness, that people used formerly to devote their foes, using the following imprecation: Abi in malam partem. If by mala parte was meant darkness, no doubt bona parte meant light, day as opposed to night. There can then be no doubt that this name is connected with the sun, especially 'when it is seen to be associated with
Napoleon, who is himself the sun, as has been already demonstrated.

2. According to Greek mythology. Apollo was born in an island in the Mediterranean (the Isle of Delos): an island in the Mediterranean has, therefore, been fabled as the birthplace of Napoleon; and the preference has been given to Corsica, because the relative positions of Corsica and France, where he was to be made to reign, correspond best to those of Greece and Delos, where were situated the chief temples and oracles of Apollo.

Pausanias, it is true, calls Apollo an Egyptian divinity; but it does not follow that an Egyptian divinity must be born in Egypt: it is enough that he should be there regarded as a god, and that is what Pausanias meant. He designed to inform us that the Egyptians worshipped Apollo, and that establishes yet another connection between Napoleon and the sun; for Napoleon is said to have been held in Egypt to be invested with supernatural qualities, to have been regarded as the friend of Mahomet, and to have received homage partaking of the nature of adoration.

3. His mother is said to have been named Letitia. But by the word Letitia (or "joy") was meant the dawn whose first tender light fills all nature with joy. It is the dawn, say the poets, which brings forth the sun, flinging wide for him the portals of the Kast with her rosy-tipped fingers.

Again it is worthy of remark that, according to Greek mythology, the mother of Apollo was called Leto. But if the Romans made Latona of Leto, it has been preferred in our century to change it into Letitia. Then, this Letitia, no 1ess than her son, belongs to Greek mythology.


4. According to tradition, this son of Letitia had three sisters, and there can be no doubt that these three sisters are the three Graces, who, with their companions the Muses, were the ornaments of their brother Apollo's court.

5. This modern Apollo is said to have had four brothers. Now, as we shall show, these four brothers are the four seasons of the year. Let us not be startled, at the outset, at seeing the seasons represented by men rather than women. It ought not even to seem an innovation, since, in French, only one of the four seasons, the autumn, is feminine; and even with respect to that
our grammarians are disagreed. But in Latin autumnus is no more feminine than the other three seasons, so there is no difficulty on that point. The four brothers of Napoleon may very well represent the four seasons, and what follows proves that they really do so.

Of Napoleon's four brothers, three, they tell us, were kings; these three kings are Spring, who reigns over the flowers; Summer, who reigns over the harvest; and Autumn, who reigns over the fruit. As these three seasons derive all their potent influence from the sun, we are told that Napoleon's three brothers held their sovereignty at his hands, and reigned only by his authority. And when it is added that of Napoleon's four brothers one was not a king, it is because one of the four seasons Winter, reigns over nothing. But if, to invalidate our parallel, it were alleged that Winter was not without sway, and if it were wished to ascribe to him the dismal principality of the frosts and snows which whiten our land at this melancholy season, our answer would be ready: that, we should say, is what was designed to be shown by the empty and ridiculous principality with which this brother of Napoleon is said to have been invested after the fall of all his family. This principality has been described as in connection with the village of Canino, in preference to any other, because Canino comes from cani, which denotes the white hairs of chill old age, and they recall winter. For, to the poet, the forests crowning our hill-sides are locks of hair; and when Winter covers them with his hoar frost, it is the white hairs of failing nature in the old age of the year.

Cum gelidus crescit canis in montibus humor.


Thus the pretended Prince of Canino is nothing more than the personification of winter. Winter begins when nothing more is left of the three good seasons, and the sun is at his greatest distance from our country, which is invaded the furious children of the north, the poet's name for the winds: the winds come from northern climes, discolor our land, and cover it with a detested
whiteness. This has given rise to the fabulous account of the invasion of the northern nations into France, where they are said to have done away with a parti-colored flag adorning it and to have substituted a white one which entirely covered it, after the exile of the fabulous Napoleon. It would be idle to repeat that this is merely emblematical of the rime that the winds from the north produce in the winter, and which obliterates the charming colors that the sun produced in our land, before he waned and departed from us. It is easy to see the analogy of all these things with the ingenious fables conceived in our century.

6. According to these same fables, Napoleon had two wives; hence two wives have been attributed to the sun. These two wives are the moon and the earth : the moon according to the Greeks (Plutarch is our authority), and the earth according to the Egyptians ; with this noteworthy difference, that by the moon the sun had no issue, and by the earth he had a son, an only son. This child was the little Horus, son of Osiris and Isis; that is to say, of the sun and the earth, as may be seen in the "History of the Heavens," Vol. I., p. 61 and following. It is an Egyptian allegory, where the little Horus, born from the earth impregnated by the sun, represents the fruits of agriculture. Even so the birth of the supposed son of Napoleon has been fixed at the
2Oth of March, the period of the vernal equinox, because in the spring agricultural produce undergoes its most important phase of development.

7. Napoleon is said to have put an end to a devastating scourge which terrorized France, and was called the Hydra of the Revolution. Now, a hydra is a serpent, of what kind matters little, especially when the serpent is fabulous. The Python, an enormous serpent, was the cause of great terror in Greece; Apollo slew the monster, and dissipated the fear of the people; this was his first exploit. Hence we are told that Napoleon began his reign by crushing the French Revolution, which is itself as much a chimera as everything else. For revolution is obviously derived from the Latin word rwolutus, which denotes a curled-up serpent. The Revolution is the Python, neither more nor less.

8. The celebrated warrior of the nineteenth century had under him, we are told, twelve marshals at the head of his armies, and four were not in active service. Now, the twelve first are obviously the twelve signs of the zodiac, marching under the orders of the sun Napoleon, each of them commanding a division of the innumerable army of the stars, which is called the celestial host in the Bible, and is divided into twelve parts, corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Such are the twelve marshals who, according to our mythical chronicles, were actively employed under the Emperor Napoleon. The four others, in all probability, are the four cardinal points, which, fixed amid universal motion, are very well symbolised by the inactivity of which we have spoken.

Thus, all these marshals, active and inactive, are purely symbolical beings, with no more reality than their leader.


9. We are told that this leader of so many brilliant armies overran in triumph the countries of the south, but that, having penetrated too far north, he was there unable to maintain himself. Now, these details precisely apply to the sun's course. The sun, it is well known, rules supreme in the south, as is said of the Emperor Napoleon. But it is most worthy of note that, after the vernal equinox, the sun makes for the northern regions, and moves further away from the Equator. But when he has taken his course in this direction for three months, he encounters the North Tropic, which compels him to retreat and go back the way he came to the south, following the sign Cancer, or Crab ; which sign, according to Macrobius, derives its name from the retrograde course of the sun in this region of the globe. This, then, is the material from which has been drawn Napoleon's imaginary northern expedition to Moscow, together with the humiliating retreat by which it is said to have been followed.

Thus everything we have been told of the success or defeat of this strange warrior is nothing more than a series of allusions to the course of the sun.

10. Finally, and this needs no explanation, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, as all the world knows. But to the spectators at the extremities of the earth, the sun seems to rise from the eastern sea in the morning and to plunge into the western sea at night. It is, moreover, thus that poets describe his rising and setting.

That, then, is all we are to understand when we are told that Napoleon came by sea from the east (Egypt) to reign over France, and that he disappeared in the western seas after a reign of twelve years. The twelve years are nothing more than the twelve hours of the day during which the sun shines on the horizon.

"He reigned but a day," says the author of "Les Nouvelles Messeniennes," speaking of Napoleon: and the way in which- he describes his rise, decline, and fall shows that, like ourselves, this delightful poet saw in Napoleon nothing more than an image of the sun. And in truth he is nothing more. His name proves it: his mother's name proves it; his three sisters, his four brothers, his two wives, his son, his marshals, his exploits. all prove it.
It is proved, moreover, by his birthplace; by the regions whence we are told, he came before entering on his career of dominion; by the time he employed in traversing those regions; by the countries where he prevailed, by those where he succumbed; and by the place where he vanished, pale and discroivned, after his brilliant course, to quote the poet Casimir Delavigne.

It has, then, been proved that the supposed hero of our century is nothing more than an allegorical personage, deriving his attributes from the sun. It follows that Napoleon Bonaparte, of whom so much has been said and written, never even existed; and this fallacy, into which so many people have fallen headlong, arises from the amusing blunder of mistaking the mythology of
the nineteenth century for history.

We might further have appealed in support of our contention to a great number of royal ordinances, whose indisputable dates are evidently irreconcilable with the reign of the pretended Napoleon; but we have had sound reasons for letting them alone.