This book purports to be the true life tale of an Israeli Counter-Terror team. I have no idea whether it is mostly true, or mostly fiction. The interesting thing for me is the nature of the task that the team has to undertake, and that this task forces them to think about their lives and why they do what they do. I guess that's one of the differences between an assasin and a soldier-the assasin has time for self-examination.

These are the memoirs of Countess Karolina Lanckoronska written in 1946 and covering the years of the war. It is interesting, and a bit troubling. It is troubling because she is (was, I don't know if she's still alive) a Catholic Polish nationalist. So some of her comments are disparaging towards Ukrainians, who are portrayed as the worst ethnic group during the war. And while trying to exonorate herself of the curse of anti-semitism, she proves she possesses this flaw several times. She was in prison for most of the war, and her reason for writing the memoir was to provide evidence against an SS man, Kruger, for the murder of 175 Polish professors. But, he was never charged with this crime because he was serving multiple life sentences for the murder of thousands of jews. That is the problem with the whole book, is that she fails to see it as a human tragedy, she views it as another in the long struggle for Polish freedom. Another interesting thing about the book that I should mention is the fact it talks about the Soviet Invasion of Poland in 1939 which no one ever seems to remember, and shows the affect of the other great tyranny of that age.

The idea is that Jesus was a hereditary monarch and that the church founded by Constantine was an attempt to destroy his heirs and the people who believed in his movement. Parts are interesting, such as when he talks about the translation of the bible, and how certain words are mistranslated, or ignored. Like in the bible, it says that Jesus has brothers and sisters. So how can he have brothers and sisters if his mother is an eternal virgin? Also the idea that Jesus and John the Baptist came out of the Essene movement. It does make sense, and I have heard this argument before. Jewish religious life was split into a few main groups at that time. The Pharasees, the Sadduccees, the Zealots, and the Essenes. The bible never mentions the Essenes. But after this point the author goes off into wacky land. He starts to interpret the bible in a way where he claims to know what Jesus was doing on practically every day of the week. I'm exaggerating, but he does claim to know more about him than is possible to know about someone who lived 2000 years ago. What I wonder, is, what is the appeal of Jesus being a king like any other? It does seem to resonate with some people. I think the tradition idea of Jesus is much more emotionally rich. I am not saying that I agree with it, but I realize how people could get comfort from it. Another thing that I wonder about. Why there hasn't been a second Christian reformation on the basis of the Christian literature that was left out of the Bible. Protestants rebelled because they turned to the Bible for inspiration. But they didn't know that the bible was a piece of political propaganda, and that many other opinions were left out. You would think that now that people know this, they would re-examine their faith. I guess too many people have an emotional commitment to those words on those pages in that form.

This week I was trapped. Trapped by Umberto Eco. Umberto Eco wrote in the name of the Rose and other novels, and he is also, apparently, a very good essay writer. So I purchased Kant and the Platypus. Eco is also a semiotician. Semiotics is the philosophy of meaning. You would think that would be interesting, but alas, I hate philosophy. Philosophy and philosophers never say anything clearly so I have only a vague conception of what the book is about. Not that I'm too stupid or anything, they use terms which unless you have been studying philosophy for many years, you will have no familiarity with. Like the following sentence, 'The ontics of onctology'. It reminds me of when I was in university and I took a philosophy of art course. It was led by a very pretensious guy, tall thin, with a long thin pony tail, but also balding. He would only talk to a very attractive woman in class. I failed. The only class I ever failed in my entire academic career.