Deception

 Deception

By Rand Paul

 

This book may come across as a grudge match between Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci.  It could also be viewed as a legal briefing against the perpetrators of Covid 19.   Yet it is fraught with enough fact disclosed by the alphabet regulators of the human health society that warrants further discussion.  Rand Paul alleges that we were deceived as to the origin of Covid 19.  We were deceived as to the science behind brining it under control.  It is also clear that our Democrat president Biden and Democrat controlled Congress turned a blind eye to the deception as they wreaked havoc on our society.

It becomes real clear the Covis 19 virus was the result of a lab leak in Wuhan China.  Even Dr Shi of the Wuhan Lab admits that.  Yet to cover for the years of hubris denial Fauci pleads the fifth.  Unfortunately, in recent trial hearing with the protection of a Presidential pardon, Fauci dismissed the opportunity to leave the grudge match alone and cooperate in a hearing that would produce a restructuring of our human health society to ensure the tragedy of Covid 19 is not ever repeated.  At the conclusion, the first step is to not allow ONE person to sit as king over such a large and poorly defined Human Health Society.

If indeed a Congressional Hearing or a DOJ hearing does manifest we can proceed with calling Peter Danszak to the stand as our first witness/defendant.  My guess is his testimony would draw Fauci out.  Paul concludes with this comment: “Some worry that the deception, the cover-up, and the elaborate escape from responsibility will succeed and Fauci, the Wuhan lab, and Peter Daszak will somehow avoid culpability.”  Daszak did fund Covid 19 research in Wuhan China.  Fauci masterminded it.  In my view: let them toss and turn in their beds in the prisons of their own minds for the rest of their lives, knowing they are responsible for the deaths of 7,114,321 people.  The goal is to restructure our Human Health society.

Noteworthy excerpts:

 1.     "According to Quay, the particular codon sequence found in the furin cleavage site of COVID-19—CGG-CGG—“is commonly used in laboratories around the world, including the WIV. You can literally order it from a supply company on the internet.

2.     "continue to be astonished at the lack of curiosity among Democrats and the mainstream media who for two years viewed COVID as such a great threat to humankind that it warranted the denial of civil liberties and education to millions of Americans. And now, they shrug"

3.     "My speech condemned the $900 billion coronavirus relief package attached to a $1.4 trillion spending bill. This COVID welfare bill was once again sending checks to everyone regardless of whether the individual had lost his job or not."

4.     "Why does it matter? Because gain-of-function research with laboratory-created viruses not found in nature could cause a pandemic even worse the next time. We are suffering today from one that has a mortality of approximately 1 percent. They are experimenting with viruses that have mortalities of between 15 and 50 percent.14"

5.     "Why does it matter? Because gain-of-function research with laboratory-created viruses not found in nature could cause a pandemic even worse the next time. We are suffering today from one that has a mortality of approximately 1 percent. They are experimenting with viruses that have mortalities of between 15 and 50 percent.14 Yes, our civilization could be at risk from one of these viruses. Experiments that combine unknown viruses with known pandemic-causing viruses are incredibly risky. Experiments that combine unknown viruses with coronaviruses that have as much as 50 percent mortality could endanger civilization as we know it. And here you sit, unwilling to accept any responsibility for the current pandemic, and unwilling to take any steps to prevent gain-of-function research from possibly unleashing an even more deadly virus."

6.     "t virus will create a future pandemic. Such a broad criterion gives one sole committee, comprised of an unknown group of bureaucrats, the power to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a single preemptive guess—with potentially devastating consequences. Today we will also consider whether gain-of-function research was being performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. First, no one—not myself or anyone I’m aware of—argues that a recombinant super-virus that has been published in scientific journals is COVID-19 or a close relative. If COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan lab, it would be a laboratory-created virus that the Wuhan scientists have not yet, and are unlikely to ever, reveal."

7.     "So why search for new pandemic viruses? The enticing idea: If researchers could learn which of the estimated 500,000 animal viruses that could spill over into humans might actually cause the next pandemic, then we may be able to prepare defenses against the most threatening ones. But to credibly identify a single virus as capable of causing a pandemic is to give thousands the power to wield it as a weapon. To discover many dangerous viruses, or learn to enhance weaker ones, is to share the blueprints for an arsenal of plagues."

8.      "But before we discover viruses that might rival nuclear weapons in lethality, we should be aware that the consequences of misuse could be worse than if any of those pathogens spilled over naturally. A malevolent individual could introduce multiple pandemic viruses in different locations around the world—say, at half a dozen major airports—making containment nearly impossible."

9.     "Thankfully, we don’t yet know of any animal viruses expected to cause a pandemic if deliberately released. That won’t last if gain-of-function research projects succeed in engineering or evolving ones that can. Even more alarmingly, multiple health agencies around the world are actively funding efforts to find, study and rank-order the animal viruses most likely to cause a new pandemic. These projects are the work of well-meaning scientists doing their best to save us from natural plagues. But they are biomedical researchers and epidemiologists, not defense experts; security and nonproliferation issues aren’t part of their training or mandate. Once we consider the possibility of misuse, let alone creative misuse, such research looks like a gamble that civilization can’t afford to risk."

10.  "Thankfully, we don’t yet know of any animal viruses expected to cause a pandemic if deliberately released. That won’t last if gain-of-function research projects succeed in engineering or evolving ones that can. Even more alarmingly, multiple health agencies around the world are actively funding efforts to find, study and rank-order the animal viruses most likely to cause a new pandemic. These projects are the work of well-meaning scientists doing their best to save us from natural plagues. But they are biomedical researchers and epidemiologists, not defense experts; security and nonproliferation issues aren’t part of their training or mandate. Once we consider the possibility of misuse, let alone creative misuse, such research looks like a gamble that civilization can’t afford to risk."

11.  "According to Dr. Quay, “The Nipah virus is a smaller virus than SARS2 and is much less transmissible. But it is one of the deadliest viruses, with a [greater than] 60% lethality. This is 60-times deadlier than SARS2. The lab where the human specimens were processed is not the highest level biosafety lab, BSL-4, but was in the BSL-2 or -3 facility.”34 If Quay is right, our worries about COVID-19 are only the tip of the iceberg."

12.  "Perhaps then we would start to question some of the absurd “scientific” research grants such as the $2.3 million the NIH spent injecting beagle puppies with cocaine, or the $3 million NIH grant to watch hamsters on steroids fight."

13.  "Perhaps then we would start to question some of the absurd “scientific” research grants such as the $2.3 million the NIH spent injecting beagle puppies with cocaine, or the $3 million NIH grant to watch hamsters on steroids fight.11 Perhaps if we had scientists representing other specialties on these committees, they would recognize such

14.  absurdity and could direct these funds to cancer research instead. Government research funds should—at the very least—pass the common-sense smell test. I think most Americans would conclude that spending $700,000 of autism money to study what Neil Armstrong said when he first walked on the moon—was it “One small step for man” or “One small step for a man?”—is a waste of money.12 These are funds that could be better spent on actual autism research."

15.  "It boggles the mind that General Zhou and Dr. Shi collaborated and were together awarded at least three NIH grants. The U.S. government literally funded a bioweapons military expert in China."

16.  "Musk’s tweet was in response to a montage video of my exchanges with Fauci where Fauci repeatedly and pointedly denied funding any “gain-of-function” research."

17.  "These scientists are the canary in the coal mine, and the real question should be to these objective scientists: Do they sleep well knowing that Dr. Fauci and his decades of appointees seem not to have learned any lesson, nor gained any insight into the dangers of gain-of-function research? If millions of deaths in a worldwide pandemic are not enough, what will be?"

18.  Some worry that the deception, the cover-up, and the elaborate escape from responsibility will succeed and Fauci, the Wuhan lab, and Peter Daszak will somehow avoid culpability."

Finding The Mother Tree

 Finding The Mother Tree

By Suzanne Simard

This book is a PhD Thesis softened with a life story.  Suzanne Simard’s life story in British Colombia, Canada.  The PhD aspect dominates as a “Woman in Science” and first takes on Canadian Forest Service policy makers with new science the goes against forest policy that promotes clear cutting large swaths of forest to a.) produce a profitable lumber industry, b.) creates a long-term sustainable forest.  I am suspect that the book is a paradigm shifter to the casual hiker with limited, if any, knowledge of forest management, who have been listening to the government policy makers as opposed to academia.  While Simard has produced many papers on the subject of forest management, this book as the loudest voice directed at the general public that I am aware of.

In the book right from the start, the reader is pelted with new scientific terms.  They keep coming at you and eventually they sink in and make sense.  When that happens, you are equally enthused as the author.  You are rooting for the forest as it takes on a parallel reality as our own human society.  We are all connected.  Trees-to trees, humans-to-humans, tree-to-human.  She starts with arbuscular mycorrhizal networks in the fungus on the forest floor, where trees communicate with each other much the same way the 2026 human society communicates.  As these parallel sinks in the reader will be motivated for a hike in the woods to have an intimate experience with the nature of a forest in a whole new light. 

Suzanne's closing thought: Diversity matters.  And everything in the universe is connected – between the forest and the prairies, the land and the water, the sky and the soil, the spirits and the living, the people and all other creatures.  As you are walking in the woods, give that some thought.  Share your thinking here.

 

Notes:

1.     Page 5: When Mother Trees – majestic hubs at the center of the forest communication, protection, and sentience – die, they pass their wisdom to the kin, generation after generation, sharing knowledge…

2.     Page 18:  Branching fungal threads…might be beneficial hyphae (the long filamentous branches found in fungi and actinobacteria (shown below), meandering through the soil to pick up nutrients to deliver to the seedlings in exchange for energy.

3.     Page 58:  The fungus was growing on the roots of this healthy tree.  Not only that, it had sprouted a belowground mushroom, a truffle.  The relationship between the tree and the fungus was so robust that the fungus had borne fruit.

…Since the roots would be accessing, or anything soluble in water for that matter, such as nutrients, would have to filter through the fungus, which looked as if it had all the tools to act as the joiner between the roots and the soils water.  Out of the fungus flowed a whole underground apparatus – truffles, cords, and strands that in turn grew fans of ultrafine hyphae that infiltrated the soil pores

4.     Page 59:  mycorrhizal fungus formed a relationship – life-or-death liaison with a plant.  Without entering into this partnership, neither the fungus nor the plant would survive.

5.     Page 80:  The roots of the lichens – the rhizines ( multicellular root-like structures arising mainly from the lower surface) – excluded enzymes to break down a rock, while the lichen’s bodies contributed organic material, and together they made humus for plants to root and grow.

6.     Page 100:  Then I made a promise.  A promise to learn how tree sense and signal other plants, insects and fungi…To get the word out.

7.     Page 102: Even more interesting to me was whether native shrubs might actually collaborate with the pines to help connect with the soil and create a health community.

8.     Page 117:  It was clear that pines get nitrogen from the soil after it’s been enriched by nitrogen fixing plants like alder.  The pin roots -or mycorrhizal fungi colonizing their roots – then take the nitrogen up from the soil.

9.     Page 120:  As they ate the leaves 90 million critters, living in each teaspoon of soil.  As they ate the leaves, they made small and smaller bits of liter.  As they consumed the litter, and one another, they excreted excess nitrogen into the soil pores making a nutritious soup of nitrogen compounds accessible to the pine roots.

10.  Page 121:  Pine got nitrogen from alder not through the soil as all but thanks to the mycorrhizal fungi.

11.  Page 123:  And they failed to illuminate the bigger picture: that interconnections over resources isn’t a winner-take-all thing: its about give-and-take, building more from a little and finding balance over the long term.

12.  Page 124:  We stopped at a crossroad, and I asked what the companies might do if science got in the way of making money.

13.  Page 142:  I wanted to know whether these birches were simply competitors – reducing the resources Douglas fir needed for survival and growth – or weather they were also collaborators.

14.  Page 143:  And if birch did spread this bounty – large amount of sugar it was able to produce in full light – maybe it was delivered to the shaded Douglas fir through belowground pathway, mycorrhizal fungi linking the two species together.

15.  Page 146:  Because of their ability to photo synthesize, the leaves were the source of chemical energy, the engines of life.

16.  Page 147:  Even more far-fetched was the idea that networks might serve as avenues for collaboration and trade routes for sugar.

17.  Page 165:  evidence shows unequivocally that considerable amounts of carbon – energy the currency of all ecosystems – can flow through the hyphae of shared fungal symbionts from tree to tree, indeed, from species to species.

18.  Page 171:  Birch was not being run dry by transmitting some of its carbon, it was giving enough to boost the survival and growth of the fir without the cost of its own vigor.

19.  Page 178:  Where they weren’t planted in rows, each isolated from the next, but mixed so they could communicate. Care for one another.  I followed the “three sister” technique developed by Native Americans, who grow corn, squash, and beans as companions to enhance growth of them all.

20.  Page 198:  Over estimating yjr threat of a few birch neighbors could bring unexpected consequences, potentially setting the forest up for vulnerable future, where lower biodiversity might reduce productivity, increase the risk of poor health, and augment the spread of forest fire.

21.  Page 202:  I went on to explain that, in most years in Canada, more carbon is lost to wildfire than from burning fossil fuels, and we should be trying to reduce the risk by planning for missed landscapes of mixed forests instead of coniferous forests…

22.  Page 207:  The old growth in this arid landscape seemed to be aiding the establishment of new seedlings, but maybe the mycorrhizal network played a role too, serving as a pipeline for the carbon.

23.  Page 217:  Dan and I received a grant to create a map of the belowground labyrinth in an old growth forest.  The questions posed were; What is the architecture of this network?  Did the pattern help explain the intelligence of nature.

24.  Page 219:  Where perhaps the success of seedlings depended on tapping into mycelia that were flush with water raised by tap roots of old trees from the deep granite fissures.

25.  Page 221:  One tree bound to the next, and we figured the whole forest was connected – by Rhizopogon alone.

26.  Page 229:  In a mycorrhizal network …what about the existence of the synapse; isn’t that crucial to signaling neighbor trees if they are healthy or stressed.

27.  Page 230:  both neural networks and mycorrhizal networks transmit information molecules across synapses.  Molecules move not just through th cross walls of adjacent plant cells and the end pores of back-to-back fungal cells, but also across synapses at the apices of different plant roots, or different mycorrhizas.

28.  Page 232:  The new grant would eventually show us that the complex mycorrhizal network unraveled into chaos with clear cutting.     

29.  Page 233:  Without the pull of the Mother Tree, though, the new forest might never be the same.

30.  Page 251:  As climate heats up, the forests will become sick and many trees will die, as was already happening, nut new species preadapted to the warmer climate should move in to take their place.

31.  Page 255:  But the infested trees were being clear-cut, the dead trees being salvaged for the market.  I wondered if, in our eagerness to turn a dollar, we’d cut off the opportunity for the dying trees to communicate with the new seedlings.

32.  Page 269:  … the Mother Trees are sending more carbon to the mycorrhizal fungi of their kin than the other trees.

33.  Page 282:  I have come full circle to stumble onto some of the indigenous ideals: Diversity matters.  And everything in the universe is connected – between the forest and the prairies, the land and the water, the sky and the soil, the spirits and the living, the people and all other creatures.

Persians - Age Of The Great Kings

 Persians

The Age Of The Great Kings

By Lloyd LLewwllyn-Jones

 

I picked up this book to gain a bit more substance to my general feeling that Cyrus and Darius were great benevolent kings.  I wanted more insight and the book certainly delivered.  Turns out the Achaemenid held rule over Persian Empire for a two hundred years (~550 -330 BCE).  It was a classic familial royal dynasty, with classic familial intrigue, including assassins, poisoning, and conquests. Wrapped into this family were brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers, concubines, and lastly eunuchs.  It seems eunuchs played a major part in the executions of palace tasks, which positioned them in the thick of the whispering plots.  The prime King names were:

• Cyrus II “the Great” (550–529 BC)
• Cambyses II (529–522 BC)
• Darius I (522–486 BC)
• Xerxes I (486–465 BC)
• Artaxerxes I (465–425 BC)
• Xerxes II (425–424 BC)
• Darius II (423–404 BC)
• Artaxerxes II (404–359 BC)
• Artaxerxes III (359–338 BC)
• Arses (338–336 BC)
• Darius III (336–330 BC)

The book lacked maps of which I recommend you have next to you while reading.  Over time of conquest Persian Empire spanned east to west from Pakistan to Euro Asia north to south from the Black and Caspian Seas to Egypt and the Indus Valley (India).  Each King had a hand in a new conquest, new palace, and maintaining the peace of their conquest.  The reader is made aware that what gave the Ruler Kings a benevolent reputation is they allowed those they conquered for the most part to continue their beliefs and way of life.  So one may reflect on who the founding fathers of the USA modeled their governance on? 

 

The book concludes with a chapter King Alexander the Great on the conquest of the Great Persian.  And an epilogue on how this history shapes the minds of modern day Iranians, of which I have an affinity for.  Missing in this history is Persia from 530 BCE to 600 AD under Alexander rule and then Muslim rule, and then  the crucial story of Iran from 1905 through 1979 of secular politics, and finally the brutal IRGC rule from 1979 to present day. 

Why is this history important to me?  Because it helps re-enforce my hope for the IRGC to be removed from Iran.

 Book excerpts:

1.     Page 31: Persians, divided into tribes by what might be called kahns, found themselves brushing up against some ancient indigenous peoples, including the culturally sophisticates, sedentary, city living Elamites.  Elam was one of the most significant of Mesopotamian societies and had strong links to the great players of the Near East world – The Babylonians and the Assyrian.

2.     Page 33:  The migratory nomads identified themselves as ayra, Ayrans, an ethnic language label for groups of people who circulates in the geographic region known as Aryavarta.    

3.     Page 34:  The holy prayers, hymns, and rituals contained in the Avesta, the sacred teachings of early Iranian Aryans, find ready reflection in Rig-Veda, the most important compendium of religions teachings in the early Indian world.  The Avesta and the Rig-Veda emerged from a common ancestor.

4.     Page 37:  A technological tour-dr force, the bow was a compact little killing machine.  It revolutionized warfare and played no small part in the Eurasian takeover of Iran and the subsequent building of the Persian empire.

5.     Page 38:  The Elamites were a distinguished and venerable people.  They had occupied the, which made the one of the longest-lasting and most culturally significant peoples of Mesopotamia.

6.     Page 50:  Cyrus was taught to ride a horse, shoot a bow, and to Page tell the truth – and in each of these valuable life principles Cambyses proved himself to be a patient but dogmatic master.

7.     Page 53:  …it was the Iranian nomads such as Persians and Meded who first introduced trouser-wearing to the world.

8.     Page 57:  Cyrus’ connection to the Achaemenids was further solidified when their most prince and khan, Arasmes, together with his young and energetic son, Hytaspes, also pledged their support and loyalty to Cyrus and the Teispids of Anshan.  With them came the fealty of all Achaemenids en masse.

9.     Page 59:  The Persian soldiers were stopped in their tracks when their womenfolk opened their robes, flashed their genitals, and shouted out to them, “where are you off to, you quitters?!  Do you want to crawl back to where you came from?  It is because of that, in subsequent decades, when the king of Persia travelled To Pasargadae, he reportedly always presented gifts of gold to the brave local women.

10.  Page 60:  Cyrus decided that in peace the Medes were to be on equal footing with the Persians.  Thereafter throughout the Achaemenid period, Medes were routinely appointed to high office at the Persian Court.

11.  Page 61:  It was Croesus who first created a two-part coinage system in which coins of pure gold and pure silver (at a fixed portion of three to forty)replaced the single coin of white gold.

12.  Page 62:  Cyrus spared Croesus’ life, brought him to court in Persia, and valued him as a royal advisor.

13.  Page 66: Decades of emulating Assyrian policy of plundering and demanding tribute of defeated rulers saw Babylon’s treasury swell with loot. … In a bid to add to his collection of Judaean ephemera, in 597 BCE Nebuchadnezzar  deported its king himself, Jehoiachin of Juda, and no fewer than 10,ooo subjects into Babylonia.  The effects of Babylonian exile were profound and far-reaching.  The exile transformed Judeans into Jews.  From being one of many captive people they emerged as the People of the Book.

14.  Page 71:  Cyrus was also fashioning himself as a servant of the Hebrew god and a benefactor of the Jews.  In538 BCE he decreed that the temple in Jerusalem should be rebuilt at his own expense.

15.  Page 72:  The parallels with Marduk’s championship of Cyrus are clear, and it is feisable to think that the Babylonian scribes and the Hebrew prophets drew on a common image of Cyrus as a champion of the gods.

16.  Page 76:  Cyrus had decided that his new empire deserved – and needed – a focal point for ceremonial purposes, and although Pasargadae was never intended to be the palatial complex of the size of Persepolis, it was planned to be the focal point of a new-found Persian kingship.

17.  Page 79:  When Jewish priests and scribes working in Persian-occupied Jerusalem and Babylonia, depicted the Garden of Edan, the locale or the garden of God, they modelled it on a Persian paradise.

18.  Page 80:  All in all, Pasargadae demonstrated Cyrus’ sophisticated appreciation of the trappings of kingship and it remained an important ceremonial Centre throughout the empire’s existence.

19.  Page 84:  The Achaemenids prized poetry as much they prized their horses, and a popular tradition for Cyrus-stories told through verse quickly developed.

20.  Page 102:  In spite of the heroics, Bardiya was quickly overwhelmed…with the last son of Cyrus lying dead on the floor all eyes turned in expectations towards Darius.  One question hung in the air: who should be king now?  …. The Gang of Seven had come together for the sole purpose of eliminating Bardiya.  A deep sense of solidarity existed between them.  So it is impossible that the question of succession had never arisen.  It had probably been settled already because, following Cambyses’ death, it was Darius alone who managed to hold control and certain contingents of the Persian and Median army that had fought in Egypt.

21.  Page 104:  Darius’ Bisitub account of his succession was a masterful compilation of fake news.  It was a rich mélange of untruths, spin and pure bravado.  Darius the Great was antiquity’s most confident, bold, successful propagandist. … To be Truthful was to be loyal to the crown and faithful to god.  In the binary world of Persian theological thought, Drauga and Arta were polar opposites.  The Lie was implicitly the opposite of the Truth and both Truth and the Lie were interlocked in a nexus of cosmic power struggles. …  If Darius did not lie as such, then he certainly championed the dissemination of an elaborate series of alternative facts.

22.  Page 106:  The man Darius killed was Bardiya Son of Cyrus, brother of Cambyses, and Persia’s legitimate king.  All the time, the real traitor, the follower of the Lie was Darius himself.

23.  Page 126:  The Old Persian term for the divine commandment, as well as royal one, is data.  It is the one of the keywords of the Achaemenid royal inscriptions; it means, to all intents and purposes ‘law’.

24.  Page 131:  Gimillu’s story is fascinating.  He is one of the few people from antiquity for whom we have records created as the events happened.  After his fa;;, and once the sust settled, the Enna Temple undertook major administrative reforms in order to ensure that opportunities for larceny and embezzlement were severely  curbed.

25.  Page 140:  Concubine women afforded important links between the satrap and local families, and good politicians recognized that concubines could have an unofficial political influence, since they had the intimate ear of the satrap.

26.  Page 141:  The advantage of employing local elites to defend Persian interests was clear. … Local elites found working along side the Persians was more profitable than antagonizing them.

27.  Page 142:  It was under the Achaemenid rulers that the world experienced its first use of coinage.

28.  Page 145:  A fast and efficient postal relay system called in Old Persian pirradazish (express runner) connected major cities.  … No society came close to matching its competency until modern age.

29.  Page 149:  The court, too, moved around with the weather. In the summer the court resided in the cool mountains of Ecbatana. In the winter it resided in Babylon and Susa in the south.  In spring it resided in Persepolis and Pasargadae.  Thousands of people were affected in each move.

30.  Page 157:  Darius was proud of his newly built palace at Susa.  He commissioned the creation of a series of finely carved cuneiform inscriptions to testify to the multi-ethnic labor of love which went in to its construction.

31.  Page 159:  The Susa Charters list no fewer than sixteen regions of the empire that furnished raw materials or labor to Darius’ building project.

32.  Page 160:  Persepolis was by far the largest and most spectacular of the Achaemenid palaces and today it is the most stunning of antiquity’s ruins.

33.  Page 165:  We must remember that the art of Persepolis was not created to be quasi-photographic reflection of reality., Persian art does so in order to transform it and make it inspiring.  Persepolitan art should be read as an ideological discourse on the theme of royalty and imperial might, organized around evocative images of the power of the Great King himself.

34.  Page 166:  Soon after the consolidation of imperial power under Cyrus and Cambyses, Achaemenid nobles became the owners of a very large number of slaves. …a substantial number of slaves performed domestic work

35.  Page 169:  It is clear that these old Greeks, ripped away from their homes many decades before, were kurtash (kurd) … the story does provide a very grim perspective of Persia’s labor system.  The story’s emotional pull stands in stark contract with Persepolis tablet’s clinically cold administrative language.

36.  Page 171:  all indicate that the kurtash were slaves.  It was slave labor that lay behind the hallmarks of physical presence of Persia’s empire.

37.  Page 174:  The word harem is therefore a term of respect, evoking personal honor.  IN royal practice harem refers to a king’s women and to all other individuals under his immediate protection.  ..therefore they followed in peripatetic lifestyle in court.

38.  Page 175:  We have noted how the Achaemenid dynasty was essentially a family-run business.  At the heart of the operation was the harem.

39.  Page 179:  Her name was Irdabama.  Recent scholarship suggest that in all probability, she was the mother of Darius I and thus the most important and influential woman of the empire. 

40.  Page 203:  In Persepolis records we find and Elamite word of common usage: ziyan.  It literally means a ‘place of seeing’ and it was used to refer to a temple, shrine or cult building.  Zyian refers to a place of divine epiphany, a locale where the gods are seen or experienced.

41.  Page 205:  Because of associations with the figure of the king and the symbols of power, some scholars argue that the man emerging from the winged disc is Ahuramazda himself.

42.  Page 206:  ..in an inscription found from Susa whare Darius confidently stated that  Ahuramazda is mine, I am Ahuramazda. …  The figure is Ahuramazda, the god who supports the king; the king receives the glory through the gift of divine khvarenh.  (Khvarenah, also known as Farr in New Persian, is a mystical radiant force believed to emanate from individuals chosen by God, granting them both the divine right to rule and the cosmic ability to govern justly)

43.  Page 208:  The Persians put much emphasis on the concept of dualism and recognized  for every good there is a bad …Ahuramazda met his counterpart in the form of AngraMainys, an evil spirit who is said to have created ‘non-life’ that is a form of existence diametrically opposed to that which is good.

44.  Page 211:  Zarathustra emphasized the dualistic nature of the Creation of Ahuramazda and asked followers of the faith to play their part in rejection of the Lie and the establishment of the Truth and to this day Zoroastrians maintain a personal commitment to three principal tenants: to have good thoughts, to speak good words, and to perform good deeds.

45.  Page 214:  significance of the historical Zarahustra in history of humanity consisted in his metaphysical interpretation of morality, especially his idea that the fight between good and evil was the real force in the order of the universe.

46.  Page 215:  As the rituals were performed, the priests prepared a sacred drink from the haoma plant by mashing its twigs with a mortar and pestle.  The paste was mixed with mare’s milk and was drunk by the priests, who quickly be came intoxicated with its powerful hallucinogenic properties.

47.  Page 220:  The mix of deities is best defined as a Persian pantheon, and the combination of blended Indo-European and Mesopotamian gods and goddess support the notion that the Achaemenids had proclivity to merge ancient Iranian and ancient Elamite concepts of the divine and the rituals of their worship.

48.  Page 223:  In Book 3 of his Laws, written around 360 BCE, the Greek philosopher Plato reserves a place for a relatively long  exposition on Persian society, dedicated by and large to a description of, and explanation for, degeneracy.  ‘Since the time of Xerxes whose career resembled that of misfortunate Cambyses, he writes hardly any king of the Persian had been truly “great” except in title and magnificence.  I hold that the reason for this is this the shocking life that they always lead.  I call that a sore losers view)

49.  Page 226:  He was around sixty-five years old.  Darius had been a remarkable ruler.  His vision of an empire linked together by bureaucracy, communication systems, and the law propelled Persia into an age of world domination.  Even his Athenian enemies admitted that Darius has been an exemplary monarch.

50.  Page 232:  Outside the tomb chamber, in the panel above the doorway a carved relief depicts the king standing on a three-stepped pedestal in front of a fire alter; both king and alter are supported by throne bearers representing the twenty-eight nations of the empire.

51.  235:  Who is the real Xerxes, known to the Persians?  His subjects did not know him and Xerexes’ of courses.  They knew him as Xshayarash, a good Old Persian name meaning ‘ruling over heroes’.

52.  Page 280:  The Egyptian revolt came to an end in 454 BCE, after a six long, bloody years of conflict.

53.  Page 281:  It was into this world of fear that Ezra stepped.  He was a Jewish scribe and priest who had been born and educated in Persia.  He had been commissioned by Artaxerexis I to return to his homeland and to ensure that Persian laws were being honored.  Before departing Mesopotamia, Ezra started a campaign to return all Jews to their homeland throughout Babilonia informing them of impending return to the Promised Land and rebuilding the Temple of Solomon.

54.  Page 283:  According to the Hebrew Bible, the temple was completed in the sixth reginal year of Darius II, which would place the event around 418 BCE.

55.  Page 334:  Parysatis must have been around ninety years old when she died.  She was one of the great women of ancient history who achieved prominence while living in the shadow of men, yet excelled in controlling them all.

56.  Page 337:  The great failing of the Achaemenids was their terminal inability to deal with the royal succession of power.

57.  Page 338:  Finally, after years of plotting, and by eventually eliminating all his key rivals, Ochus was appointed as Artaxerxes’ heir, very shortly before the old king died t age eight-six.  It was December 359 BCE.  He had been renowned for being a gentle ruler, a friend to his subjects.

58.  Page 343:  The Great King Artaxerxes, the King of Kings, the King of Countries, the King of this Earth, says I am the son of King Artaxerexes II.  Artaxerxes was the sin od Darius II.  Darius the Great.  Darius was the son of a man named Hystaspes.  Hystaspes was the son of a man named Arsames, the Achaemid.

59.  Page 380:  In 651 CE the Sasanian empire fell to the Arabs of the south and Iran becam an Islamic State.  The new Muslim administration overturned a millennia’s worth of Iranian political, social, and cultural institutions as access to power meant that Iranians needed to adopt Arabism and Islam.

60.  Page 385:  The ai of the anniversary festival was to identify the Shah not only wit Cyrus the Great himself but to associate him with the great historical monuments of Iran’s pre-Islamic past and to celebrate all that is glorious in Iran’s ancient heritage before the shameful Arab conquest and Muslim takeover of Persia.