"To our Lord and very Holy Father in Christ, Lord John, the Supreme Pontiff, by G-d's Providence, of the Most Holy Roman and Catholic Church, his humble and devoted sons" - here follow the names of the Nobles and Commons in Parliament assembled [The Arbroath letter went in the names of eight earls (Fife, Moray, March, Strathearn, Lennox, Ross, Caithness, Sutherland), Walter the Stewart, William de Soules the butler, James Douglas, Roger de Moubray, David Brechin, David Graham, Ingram de Umfraville, John Menteith, tutor of the earldom of Menteith, Alexander Fraser, Gilbert Hay the Constable, Robert Keith the Marischal, Henry Sinclair, John Graham, David Lindsay, William Oliphant, Patrick Graham, John Fenton, William Abernethy, David Wemyss, William Muschet, Fergus of Ardrossan, Eustace Maxwell, William Ramsay, William Mowat, Alan Murray, Donald Campbell, John Cameron, Reginald Cheyne, Alexander Seton, Andrew Leslie, Alexander Straiton, the remaining barons and freeholders, and the whole community of the realm of Scotland - deliberately, the clergy were not mentioned separately but implicitly, as within the community.] and "other barons and freeholders, with the whole Commons of the Kingdom of Scotland. With all filial reverence devoutly do we kiss your blessed feet.["Reign" closer to Latin sense than "Kingdom".]
From the deeds alike and the books of our forefathers, we understand, most Holy Lord and Father, that among other noble nations our own, the Scottish, grows famous for many men [no gender-discrimination nor lack of consideration for children's dignity implied]of wide renown. The which scottish nation, journeying from Greater Scythia by the Tyrrhene Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, could not in any place or time or manner be overcome by the barbarians, though long dwelling in Spain among the fiercest of them. Coming thence, twelve hundred years after the transit of Isræl, with many victories and with many toils they won that habitation in the West, which, though the Britons have been driven out, the Picts effaced, and Norwegians, danes and English have often assailed it, they hold now, in freedom from all vassalage [excluding, therefore, any dependence on multinational corporations or other alien interests of any kind - Afghans, Iraqis, autochthonous Palestinians and people of Cornwall, please note. ]: and as the old historians bear witness, have ever so held it. In this kingdom have reigned [exactly; not "ruled".]a hundred and thirteen kings of their own Blood Royal, and no man foreign has been among them. Of their merits and their noble qualities we need say no more, for they are bright enough by this alone, that though they were placed in the furthest ends of the earth, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the King of Kings, called them among the first to His most firm faith, after His Passion and His Resurrection. Nor did He choose to confirm them in the Lord's Faith by any one less than His own first Apostle (although he stands second or third in order of rank) the most gracious Andrew, brother of Peter's self, whom ever since he has established their Patron.
Bearing all these things carefully in mind, those holiest of fathers, your predecessors, have adorned and fortified this kingdom and people, as belonging specially to Peter's brother, with many favours and many privileges. Thus our nation till now has lived under their protection in peace and quiet, till the Magnificent Prince, Edward King of the English [nothing like present U.S. and U.K. seemingly fully official lack of courteous respect for Saddam Hussein, still a widely acknowledged Head of State], the father of the Edward that now is, did, under cover of alliance and friendship, invade and occupy as an enemy our kingdom and people ["and" here emphasises that, land, people and, normally, king are, like St Patrick's shamrock, three yet one.], who then had no head, who had in mind no evil towards him, and who then were unused to war or sudden invasion. What that king has done in wrongs and slaughter and violence, in imprisonings of the leaders of the Church, in burning and looting of religious houses and the massacre of their communities, with his other outrages on the Scottish people (sparing neither sex nor age nor priestly orders) is something that is not to be comprehended save by those who know these things from their own experience.
Yet, at last, by His help Who heals and sains ["heals" by making both "whole" and, so, "naturally holy", in the sense of also ecologically integrated - no alien vibes, electronic or otherwise! ] the wounded, we are freed from these innumerable evils by our most valiant Sovereign, King, and Lord, King Robert, who to set free his heritage and his people faced, like a new Maccabeus or Joshua, with joyful heart, toil, weariness, hardship, and dangers. By the Providence of G-d, the right of succession, those laws and customs which we are resolved to defend even with our lives, and by our own just consent, he is our King: and to him who has brought salvation to his people through the safeguarding of our liberties [like H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama], as much by his own deserving as by his rights, we hold and choose in all things to adhere. Yet Robert himself, should he turn aside from the task that he has begun, and yield Scotland or us to the English King and people, we should cast out as the enemy of us all, as suvberter of our rights and of his own, and should choose another king to defend our freedom: for so long as a hundred of us are left alive, we will yield in no least way to English dominion. We fight not for glory nor for wealth nor honours; but only and alone we fight for freedom, which no good man surrenders but with his life [These sentiments echo those voiced, according to Sallust the historian, by one of Catiline's colleagues].
Because of these things, most reverend Father and Lord, praying earnestly from our hearts that before Him as Whose Vicar on Earth you reign, before Him to whom there is but a single weight, Who has one law [in the Ancient Egyptian sense: maat, the Tao - not Magna Carta or the North American Constitution or Canon Law…] for Jew and Greek and for Scots and English - before Him will with honesty consider the manifold anguish and tribulation which we and the Church [kinship, not tribalism is here focussed] have suffered through the English [Edward was not to blame; he was a fellow-victim of that structural sin which flows from Magna Carta], and will look upon us with a father's eye. We pray you to admonish the King of England (to whom his own possessions may well suffice, since England of old was enough for seven Kings or more) that he should leave us in peace in our little Scotland, since we desire no more than is our own ["Each plant best flowers in native earth" - St Francis of Sales.], and have no dwelling-place beyond our borders: and we on our part, for the sake of peace, are willing to do all within our power.
Most Holy Father, it is your part to do this, or surrender to the barbarity of the heathen, let loose for the sins of Christians on the Faithful, and daily forcing the bounds of Christendom, and you know it would mar the security of your fame if you looked unmoved on anything which in your time should bring dishonour on any part of the Church. [Although, as Thomas Bokenkotter has noted, Pope Boniface VIII's Bull, Unam Sanctam, of 18 November 1302, "set forth no new doctrines, … but merely reiterated in resounding trumpet blasts of Latin the traditional claim of the papacy to the ultimate sovereignty over the Christian European social order", in today's world, such functions as those of a Dalai Lama, Pope, Great British Sovereign, or Paramount Chief, are, as is already quite generally agreed and as, in fact, we said on 11 February last, appropriately complemented by this Webmaster (in retirement) & Master I+N The Sacred Page's present Office.] May Your Holiness therefore admonish those Christian princes who falsely claim that their own wars with their neighbours now hinder them from relieving the Holy Land: though indeed they are hindered only by their belief that they will find more profit and less toil in crushing neighbours smaller than themselves, who appear to them alser weaker than themselves. He Who knows all knows that if the King of the English would leave us in peace, we and our own Lord King would go joyfully thither; which thing we solemnly testify and declare to the Vicar of Christ and to all Christian people. But if too readily, or insincerely, you put your faith in what the English have told you, and continue to favour them, to our confounding, then indeed shall slaying of bodies, yea and of souls, and all those evils which they shall do to us, or we to them, be charged to your account by the Most High.
We are always bound to you [by the golden chains of kith-&-kindred loving kindness, amorevolezza and spirito di famiglia - if today's Mafia is bad, it is only because corruptio optimi pessima; millennia ago, omertà served all well…], as G-d's Viceregent, to please you by a son's obedience in all things. We remit our cause to the Highest King and Judge, casting our care on Him, in the hope and faith that He will grant to us both strength and valour, and bring about our enemies' overthrow.
May the Most High preserve for many years Your Serene Highness to His Holy Church.
Given at the Monaster of Arbroath in Scotland the sixth day of April in the year of Grace one thousand three hundred and twenty, and in the fifteenth year of the King named above." [Although this letter was penned by Abbot Bernard de Linton and sent from Arbroath to Pope John XXII, who was then in Avignon, in April 1320, it is believed that its terms were decided earlier that year during a council at the Cistercian abbey of Newbattle in Lothian. For helpful discussion cf Robert Bruce, 1965.]
"On June 30 1908, seventeen minutes and eleven seconds after midnight GMT, an explosion of monumental proportions occurred over an area near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River (60º 55' N; 101º 57' E) in Siberia. The blast of the explosion had been visible from about 500 miles away from its epicentre and distant eye witnesses had seen a fireball which lit up their horizon, felt the ground tremble and experienced hot winds strong enough to blow people over and shake buildings. The vibrations from this gigantic explosion were felt in America, while in England scientific instruments registered two consecutive shockwaves which travelled full circle around the planet…" (Mary Bennett & David S. Percy, Dark Moon - Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers, London: Aulis Publishers, 1999, pp. 237-8.)
Bennett & Percy's important study significantly enhances our understanding of a large number of subsequent events. Available evidence suggests that the seldom mentioned Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev, whose official grave is in Moscow's prestigious Novodevichy Cemetery but whose mortal remains may still be somewhere on the Moon, is the only human being who has been there in modern times, since nobody has so far managed to work out how adequately to protect astronauts from the radiation effects of the Van Allen belts that surround our Earth.
The United States' so called Apollo Missions were therefore no more than test-flights around the Earth but, for public relations' purposes, they were timed to coincide with satellite-television transmissions of fictional Moon-related events - events which had, in fact, been filmed and recorded beforehand in a studio somewhere in America.
This scandalous outrage appears, moreover, to be only one aspect of an intricate and elaborate international plot, that was quite deliberately planned, orchestrated and concealed throughout the course of most of the twentieth century by a number of leading German, Soviet and American scientists and government officials, aided and abetted by various associates of different nationalities…
In the April 1974 issue of the Council for Foreign Relations' Foreign Affairs Journal John Gardner wrote:
"We will build the New World Order, not by an end-run, but we will build it piece by piece, right under their noses. The House of the New World Order will have to be built from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. An end-run around sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old fashioned frontal attack."
In John Coleman's well researched but highly speculative and, indeed, frequently both confused and confusing book, The Conspirators' Hierarchy - The Committee of 300 (4th edition, WIR: Carson City, Nevada, 1997), any 'New World Order' is to be avoided like the plague, and Gardner is categorized as a 'super-servant' of a so called 'Committee' of, if Coleman is to be believed, arch-villains having at their disposal "a major bureaucracy… made up of hundreds of think tanks and front organizations that run the whole gamut of private business and government leaders" and thrive on "untruths, non-facts, innuendoes, and conjectures based entirely upon a false premise".
In "The Force of Falsity" (Serendipities - Language and Lunacy, Orion paperback, 1999, p.24), Umberto Eco refers to Karl Popper as having "reminded us that the social theory of conspiracy is like the one we find in Homer" - or, if Gore Vidal is to be believed, in contemporary Washington, D.C.
It is, however, not difficult to find evidence in favour of Alvin Toffler's premise in his 1980 best seller, The Third Wave (paperback edition: Pan Books, 1981):
"A powerful tide is surging across much of the world today, creating a new, often bizarre, environment in which to work, play, marry, raise children, or retire. In this bewildering context, businessmen swim against highly erratic economic currents; politicians see their ratings bob wildly up and down; universities, hospitals, and other institutions battle desperately against inflation. Value systems splinter and crash, while the lifeboats of family, church, and state are hurled madly about.
Looking at these violent changes, we can regard them as isolated evidences of instability, breakdown, and disaster. Yet, if we stand back for a longer view, several things become apparent that otherwise go unnoticed.
To begin with, many of today's changes are not independent of one another. Nor are they random. For example, the crack-up of the nuclear family, the global energy crisis, the spread of cults and cable television, the rise of flexitime and new fringe-benefit packages, the emergence of separatist movements from Quebec to Corsica, may all seem like isolated events. Yet precisely the reverse is true. These and many other seemingly unrelated events or trends are interconnected. They are, in fact, parts of a much larger phenomenon: the death of industrialism and the rise of a new civilization…
It does little good to forecast the future of semi-conductors or energy, or the future of the family (even of one's own family), if the forecast springs from the premise that everything else will remain unchanged. For nothing will remain unchanged. The future is fluid, not frozen. It is constructed by our shifting and changing daily decisions, and each event influences all others." (op. cit., pp. 15-16 & 141.)
The pronouncements of any Prime Minister addressing the nation on Television are, one hopes, honest expressions of her or his personal opinion but, even when they assume the form of emphatic requests for emotional, social and political solidarity, their credibility is weakened when no more plausible a motivation for compliance is mentioned than what, surely, is an entirely unrealistic wish thereby to promote "stability"…
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose is no recipe for "stability". No! 'eppur' si muove…
In September 1990, in a significant presentation to the First International Dialogue on the Transition to Global Society (Landegg Academy, Switzerland), Robert Artigiani, professor of the History of Science at the United States Naval Academy and a founding member of the Washington Evolutionary Systems Society, noted:
The last one hundred years have witnessed organized violence, suffering, and injustice on a previously unequalled scale… but amidst the chaos and misery, an evolutionary analysis finds hope… Cultural change is associated with entropy bursts that may lead to re-stabilizations at higher levels of complexity.
Higher levels of complexity in human systems, have consequences which appear to encourage increasing individuation, autonomy and community. Thus, an evolutionary analysis suggests that we are in a position to build a new kind of society that will display progress measured in terms of classical human values. Thus our choices and actions can ennoble the sacrifices made by earlier generations…
Such "hopeful realism" offers a key of sorts to what may, in the biblical sense, be a "peaceful" solution to many problems. Whether or not it justifies any sort of allegedly "pre-emptively defensive" military aggression against a sovereign State or its currently legitimate leader is a significant, difficult and complex question. Certainly, it is difficult to conceive of any other rational basis for the events that precipitated what is now happening in Iraq. Dreams of "stability" may prove to be, in fact, preludes to a nightmare.
Are you sure that the plan for world government, a central bank, currency, and army, together with a microchipped population is no more than conspiracy theory? … Look before you leap!
"That ye will that other men do not to you, do ye not that to other men. From this one doom (law or judgment) a man may think that he should doom every one rightly; he need keep no other doom-book." - King Alfred (849 - 901)
"I thank you for not being one of the wheels of power, but for being instead one single thing with the living creatures which are crushed by those wheels … Power says to the world: you are mine. The world holds it in prison on its throne. Love says to the world: I am yours. And the world gives it full possession of the house." - Rabindranath Tagore.
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