Archive for April, 2010

Religionists Attempt Takeover of US Military

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, history, Military, politics, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , on April 27, 2010 by chouck017894

Every citizen of the United States should awaken to the real and present danger that religious fanatics in branches of the US military bring to national security.   Religious fanatics with guns and aircraft and uniforms and a Pentagon allowance are today a part of an undemocratic contagion being nurtured in the bowels of democracy.  The idea that a combination of mismatched ideological groups are actually conspiring for the common goal of imposing a theocratic-form of government  upon US citizens may seem unbelievable, but that element does exist.  If in doubt, consider how religious views influenced the Bush administration and shaped the nation’s foreign policy that regarded the war in the Middle East as essential to its Bible-inspired mission.  And let us not forget the devotion expressed by the born-again president for torture of defenseless prisoners as was practiced in Europe during the church-controlled Middle Ages. 

We should ask, who makes up these seemingly mismatched ideological groups?  First off, major corporations and their puppets known as neoconservatives.  Corporate ideology stresses for profit business.  In itself that is not anti-American.  But it is how they wheedle lawmakers and the media to con the public in ways that increase profits while also setting up safeguards for themselves to avoid liability for the damages they knowingly inflict upon the public.  As a screen these cohorts invariably set up so-called “think tanks” and phony “not-for-profit” fronts that twist their purpose into plausible sounding indulgences.  The goal, however, always remains money and power.

Linked with these are the theo-cons who are dedicated to a theocratic agenda.  In “spirit” there are “faith” enthusiasts who choose to indulge in a long-range plan of Christian reconstruction of America’s genuine history for the purpose of eventually imposing severe  limitations  on every citizen’s freedoms.  Since the 1970s these political minded persons have used religion as a front for attempting the overthrow of democratic principles and imposing a restricted form of government—or as they put it, a  “God-based or Bible -based government.”  The proposal agreed upon in the late seventies and early eighties was to gain control of one of the political parties, and this was accomplished with the full takeover of the Republican Party in 1996.  A few names that were active in this mockery of democracy have become well-known: Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove, John Hagee, to mention only a few.  The organizing was covertly funded by corporations, and the big-lie battle-cry adopted by the brainwashed was that the constitutional demand for separation of church and state was a myth!

But this was not the end of the religious right-wing plotting.  Grabbing and taking command of the nation’s muscle—the military operations—was desired and remains the big prize.  If the military can be brought into submission under religious intimidation, Christian tyranny can be made to prevail.

Thus with religious undertones the US was urged by the Bush administration into a “crusade” against Iraq, and to engage in a “war on terrorism.”  The funding for the religious-right clamoring was  provided by the major corporations that would thereby augment their profits by ensuring their control over the oil subsidized NeoCons.  It has been these institutions that have bankrolled the right-wing religious activists that have brazenly attempted to seize control within the US military. 

Today in 2010, in all the military branches that are intended to guard America’s freedoms, there are still acts of religious intimidation taking place.  At the US Air Force Academy, for example, cadets were still being subjected very recently to heavy-handed proselytism by evangelical Christians.  Shockingly, military officials appeared to be working in conjunction with them.  Hundreds of active duty servicemen from all military branches have reported and complained of similar ham-fisted proselytism tactics.  The general pitch of the proselytizers is that if one does not believe in the Christian version of “spiritual” salvation, then they are destined to become, as on proselytizing officer avowed, nothing more than “worm-dirt.”

Such shameful disregard for spiritual integrity and a lack of respect for other peoples’ sense of spirit is still being fanned by those who profit materially by the phony holy hubbub.  The extremes that militant faith will sink to was recently revealed to the public in the disturbing news that a rifle-sight supplier to the Department of Defense had been imprinting all their rifle-sights with coded references to Bible verses.  Our service personnel must face constant danger and the possibility of death every day when on active duty: they should not be made to endure such a conniving  practice of Christian proselytizing while they are defending a nation that rose  to power by proclaiming everyone’s right to religious freedom.

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Puritan Contamination of America

Posted in Atheism, Atheist, belief, Christianity, faith, history, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , , on April 22, 2010 by chouck017894

During the reign of James the First, King of Great Britain from 1603 to 1625, the spirit of Puritanism had invaded English society and the Parliament, reaching a brief triumph in the person of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658).  The first permanent English-Puritan colonists in America founded Jamestown in Virginia in 1607.  When these “Pilgrim Fathers” began to colonize New England, the native Americans—the Indians—were originally open-hearted and kind.  In every case, with the exception of William Penn (1682), after the Christian colonists had established their god-focused colony they had turned upon their benefactors and protectors, and without any attempt at moral behavior had robbed and murdered the Indians. 

In this timeframe, the founder and Head Chief of the Powhatan Confederacy of Virginia had at first sought friendly interaction with the whites.  Chief Powhatan was astonished and then embittered by the treachery, deceit and thievery indulged in by the Puritan crowd.  Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas (1595-1617), is alleged to have saved the life of the colony leader Captain John Smith in 1607.  The Captain was supposedly held captive by the Indians and was to be slain, but Pocahontas risked her own life to stop it.  At least that was the romantic tale related in a letter to future Queen Elizabeth in 1616.

By myth and tradition, however, the year 1620 is regarded in the United States as when the “Pilgrims” first set foot in the Americas.  Although the ship Mayflower did indeed reach the bleak shore of what is today Massachusetts in 1620, the Pilgrims were at that location due to bad weather and poor navigation.  Their intended destination had been Jamestown and “The Old Dominion” of Virginia, 500 miles to the south which had been established in 1607.  And tradition has it that the Puritans brought by the Mayflower were fleeing religious persecution in England, but the bulk of them had lived for eleven years in Holland where they were not persecuted.  The real reason for the Puritans to strike out  for the New World was to bring aid and support to the Puritan element in Virginia, for the Puritan deputy governor, Samuel Argall, had been deposed by the Episcopalians in 1619—a great set-back for the Whig/Puritan cause.  But the newly arrived “pilgrims” chose to end their travel traumas and instead establish a new colony in Massachusetts on the tenets of harsh intolerance for any belief other than their own. 

In the course of the next twenty years thousands of Puritans settled in what is now Massachusetts.  The situation in England changed, however, and in 1640 emigration by Puritans to America came to a standstill.  The Puritans that had come to the New World considered themselves to be members of the Church of England, and they held no desire to separate.  The Pilgrims that preceded them in the new land in 1607 were already separate from English communion and were independent in their church government.  The influence of the earlier Pilgrims, aided by the Puritans’ sense of being cut off from their home country, led to the Puritans grudging adoption of the Congregational or Independent form of church government.  But the strictness, bigotry, intolerance toward other forms of worship, and the Puritan “blue laws” were to cast their long kinky shadow of Puritanism even into the 21st century.

One example (out of  many that could be cited) of Christian-Puritan piety among the New England settlers is the disgraceful carnage known as the Cos Cob Massacre that occurred December 24, 1641.  The New England settlers had been kindly received by the Cos Cob Indians at Stamford and vicinity (Connecticut).  The Indians had taught the settlers how to make a living from the sea and from the forest.  But when the number of settlers had grown and they attained sufficient firearms, they displayed their Christian understanding of love by creeping out on Christmas Eve to the Indian village of Petudquapen.  In the spirit of Christ they built a huge fire at each of the  village gates and then shot down every man, woman and child that sought to escape.  Every inhabitant of the village perished—400 “savage” souls.

The Puritans who remained in England disliked the useless, misleading and unscriptural forms and ceremonies—especially when those forms and ceremonies were obligatory for all and the observance of them enforced by civil authority.  This, they felt, hampered their faith.  But Elizabeth I was queen, and she leaned toward more colorful tastes and disliked the simplicity and bareness of Puritanism.  The suggestion of puritanical modification of the Prayer Book and ceremonies in the church led to Elizabeth’s first Parliament passing, the Act of Uniformity(1662).  In that Act it was declared unlawful for any form of public worship but the Prayer Book, and acknowledged the Queen as supreme governor of the realm in spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs.  The situation grew steadily harsher for the Puritans, reaching such a state of severity under Charles I (1625-1649) that the Puritans and Separatists again set sail for America.

To the Puritans the idea of religious tolerance was an utterly devilish concept.  Once they reached the American shore that devotion to intolerance could and was made more rigid than permitted in Europe.  Among the first to feel Puritan prejudice were the Baptists.  Indeed, Roger Williams had to flee from them c. 1636 into the wilderness region that became Rhode Island.  His comment on Puritan persecution of Protestants and Papists are on record with open reference to the blood of so many thousands of victims.  On record too is the account of four Quakers being hanged by Puritans for having differing religious beliefs. 

The Puritan movement, like the Roman Catholic Church, embraced a drastically literal interpretation of the priest-written Genesis version of Creation.  The Puritan movement embraced such interpretation influenced mainly by the English Puritan poet John Milton’s epic work Paradise Lost, composed from 1658 to 1665 and published in 1667.  As noted in Time Frames and Taboo Data: So influential was this poetic epic that Milton’s elaborate rendition of Creation was termed the “Miltonic  hypothesis” by Thomas Henry Huxley.  Theologians swarmed upon what they termed Milton’s “natural” interpretation, and special criticism of an allegorical interpretation was taken up as a fad-craze of Christian thought.  Like most fads, literal interpretation of Bible accounts would crumble before scientific research and the rationality presented by Charles Robert Darwin in the 19th century.

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Gnostic Wisdom in New Testament

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, ecology, faith, freethought, humanity, life, prehistory, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , , , on April 16, 2010 by chouck017894

Over two thousand years ago the symbolism and mythology of several Pagan mystery sects were beginning to fragment while a multifaceted group was developing diverse interpretations which became lumped under the identity as “Gnostic”—from Greek gnostikos, “man of knowledge.”  The movement spread largely through men of culture who sought the secret of higher life.  Unfortunately, lofty thought became entangled with crude mythology and then floundered in mysticism.

Gnosticism was, for the most part, centered on the highest ethics.  To understand Gnostic thought, their concept of ethics was perceived from an amoral perspective.  Remember, amoral does not mean immoral: it is non-judgmental acceptance.  This is difficult for modern religionists to comprehend since standard religious instruction is to uncompromisingly classify things as good/sinful and black/white—with no shades of gray being allowed for consideration.  Unlike rigid religionism, Gnostics recognized that diverse energies found throughout the universe serve as the generative action responsible for all things in Creation.  For this reason the Gnostics regarded what we know as the Old Testament to be the shameful account of Jehovah’s crimes against humanity.  Yahweh/Jehovah was not accepted by them as the true God or the active Source, but as the identity of a demiurge—an energy involvement that fashioned the material world.  Such Pentateuch/Old Testament characters as Abraham, Moses and the like were consequently regarded as the henchmen of Jehovah who had been dedicated to misdirecting the souls of humans into matter and ignorance.

Since the original purpose of the early Christian literature was composed in Rome in the attempt to soften Jewish spiritual arrogance, the new cultists played down the Gnostic attitude to prevent a too strong direct offence to Jews.  Nonetheless, Gnostic influence was cautiously scattered throughout the New Testament.  Although Christianity owes  many planks of its formation and doctrines to Gnosticism, pure Gnosticism itself also represented one of the most challenging threats to the new Christian movement.  Specifically, it denied the keystone upon which the aspiring priestly hierarchy sought to establish itself.  If, as the Gnostics claimed, evil had existed in Creation from the beginning then Adam, meaning mankind, could not possibly have fallen and neither he nor Eve had chosen to disobey God in Eden.  It then followed that Jesus could not possibly be presented by the priesthood as God’s token of forgiveness for humankind’s entanglement with that inescapable condition.

There is a remarkable verse in the New Testament (Matthew 16:23, revised c. 75 CE) that pretty much states what is wrong with all hard-line and fundamentalist organized religions.  Jesus is portrayed as speaking to Simon Peter, saying, “…thou art an offence unto me: for you savor not the things that be of  God, but those that be  of men.”  The real kicker in this scene is that this reproach of Peter comes after verse 19, or immediately after Peter had been given the keys of the kingdom of heaven!  The implication is that the church that he is to establish is intended to be the challenger of the infinite creative powers that are personified as “God.”  There is profound Gnostic wisdom hidden here.

The reason for this rebuke of Peter by Jesus is that Peter stands as the representative of the continuity in matter-existence that resists the necessity of its own transformation.  Thus Jesus utters the accusation that Peter savours those thing that be of men.  What is illustrated with this peculiar scene is that the confinement of consciousness in our physical-matter forms is what traumatizes the human ego, for it is ego that is obsessed with material identity and wishes to dam the natural flow that we interpret as life/death.

Mankind has lost sight of the soul-saving truth that religion is made for man: man is not made for any particular religion.

Knowing this, we are justified in saying to hard-line and hierarchical style religions, just as Jesus is alleged to have said to Peter, “Get the behind me Satan: you are an offence to me.”

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The Unholy Practice of Proselytizing

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, history, humanity, life, politics, random, religion, science, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 14, 2010 by chouck017894

In the time of Emperor Augustus (Octavian, 63 BCE-14 CE) numerous eastern cults were flourishing in Rome, and their exotic character and rituals elicited considerable attention among the Roman populace.  The eastern influence was in competition with three major religious movements in Rome at the time, those being based upon Mithras (Persian), Isis (Egyptian), and Cybele (Phrygian).  Roman culture, being heavily modeled by Grecian philosophy, adapted the exotic eastern cult attributes accordingly. 

In this period of time also (c.40 BCE) Rome occupied Palestine, and there were living in that country a number of missionary Buddhist monks.  Archeologists have confirmed that Buddhist monks had brought with them into Palestine a wide array of clay figurines.  The monks had traveled far and wide in their avid pursuit of attaining converts.  Palestine, as a commercial crossroad between nations, was a natural target area in the Buddhist missionary appeal to attract others away from the many virtually indistinguishable religions that simmered there.

The majority of the so-called Pagan religions were content to quietly tend to their own belief, practicing an instinctive tolerance of “live and let  live.”  Each little sect might have been convinced that the rest of the world was destined for spiritual oblivion, but they did not feel obligated to rush out and force salvation upon others under the enforcement of conformity.  The concept of  actively recruiting others, introduced among the Pagans by the Buddhist monks,was viewed not only as strange and aggressive but as an offensive intrusion upon other people’s personal affairs. 

Pagan understanding was that things spiritual are highly personal and are meant to be experienced by each person individually.  The reason why Pagans did not actively solicit others to join any particular sect was the belief that the impulse for spiritual enlightenment must originate within the person himself.  The Pagans knew instinctively that the first place of one’s spiritual preparation had to be within one’s own heart.  Spiritual preparation, they correctly understood, was not something acquired through exterior pressure.  To the Pagan, regardless of what little sect he or she might ascribe to, it was always accepted that those in any superior positions were like elder brethren who, just as the postulants, were sharing in a similar search for higher understanding. 

To the Pagan no bribery or aggression could cancel or alter the  personal responsibility of proceeding at one’s  own pace into  spiritual calm and to stand totally responsible for self at all times.  To attempt otherwise was simply trying to bury the truth of one’s personal responsibility under the carcass of some irrelevant scapegoat.

The newly forming faith that would become Christianity latched onto the Buddhist type activity of recruitment in its earliest days.  By 75 CE it was a requirement even though its articles of faith were not yet defined.  Thus Christianity was founded upon the concept of a proselytizing religion—one that actively seeks out and recruits others into mindless dedication.  It was this commitment to active religious competition that then came to influence other cultures to engage in similar competitive tactics as Christianity muscled its way into a position of power.  Spiritual integrity, so highly prized by the Pagans, became overpowered by practices of prejudice and rivalry.  Lost in the competitive scramble was the truth that active recruitment into religious affiliation is itself an act of premeditated aggression and is therefore nothing more than a devotional practice of intolerance.  It was in this timeframe, c. 75 CE, that the new versions of Mark and Matthew were introduced to replace the earlier versions.

The legacy is today’s solicitation-religions with their hierarchical structuring and constant clamoring for monetary donations and which share precious little in spiritual achievement or instruction.  The epidemic of highly contagious proselytizing in the United States can be traced back to the early 1950s when television became the must-have novelty.  With the new wonder, television, a vast horizon of new opportunities was presented to a whole new batch of holy word interpreters that were still clutching their newly printed diplomas from some bible school business system.  Salvation could be offered to anyone who would send money to support their electronic ministry.  The spiritually lazy found this to be a godsend and a new wave of religious enthusiasm was fanned into fixation by a variety of hucksters for god.  Wiser heads warned that the new wave of religious enthusiasm could easily proliferate to threaten true religious freedom with the sly diversion of public funds to private sectarian schools. 

Through the rest of the twentieth century there followed a deluge of holy performers parading in an endless televised Christian carnival.  Out of this there was set in place the dynamics found in ultra-fundamentalism and an upsurge of evangelical posturing.  Hand in hand with the gold rush into television-land the newly inspired “faithful” were becoming vociferous in the 1960s and began to actually challenge careful scientific studies—especially those in regard to the discernible principles of creation and evolution.  The media at the time crowed that a religious revival was sweeping America, church attendance was up, and the televangelists were beginning to rake in huge donations.  The media carefully avoided mentioning the other side of the phenomena—that keeping pace with the rising religious fervor was the steady rise in crime, delinquency, racial tensions, alcoholism, a rise in drug problems, higher divorce rates, and increase in suicides.  But alarmed citizens had to move to file addition court actions to block the clearly unconstitutional forms of aid to religion-based indulgences.  Youth instinctively felt the hypocrisy that brewed in the religious hoopla and the so-called “sexual revolution” burst out with a vengeance.

As the 1960s closed, man was kicking up dust on the Moon while the pope was ranting against all artificial means of contraception.  1970 saw a self-propelled eight-wheeled vehicle on the Moon, an unmanned Soviet space craft landing on the planet Venus, while Pope Paul VI proclaimed that unnatural celibacy was a fundamental principle of the Roman Catholic Church.  Meanwhile, a great deal of religious sneaky-deal operations were in progress in the United States, such as the “Wylie Amendment” introduced in the House of Representatives to force mandatory programs of prayer and religious instruction in all public schools!   When that was struck down those high on holy spirit then pursued a new self-serving form of parochial-aid scheme known as “vouchers.”  By the 1970s the religiously inspired were forming pressure groups to prevent sexual education in schools, apparently convinced that suggestive whispers and back-alley experimentation were truer to God’s method of learning.  Meanwhile, research and sociological surveys—which were allowed very little news attention—were showing that people from devoutly religious backgrounds were statistically less intelligent and economically less productive.  Nonetheless, the nation was supposed to follow their leadership!

The eighties and nineties saw religious-inspired policies bringing havoc across the world.  The religious fanatic Ayatollah Khomeini slithered into Iran in the 80s and the Reagan administration was  illegally shipping arms to help set up the Ayatollah.  The nineties saw the  Religious Right gaining full control of the Republican Party, and the betrayal of democratic  principles that had made the U.S. great was taken up with a fervor of a devil.  Proselytizing was big business with a “born again” president who had been put in office under suspicious circumstances.

In this new century, after eight years under Bible-inspired governance in the U.S. and the stripping away of constitutional rights, robbing the working citizens to serve the rich, an illegal war, god-approved torture, allowing corporations and economic institution to monitor themselves, etc., the citizens of Earth should awaken to the evil that alway beats in the heart of proselytizing religions.

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Myth of “Saint Peter”

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, history, humanity, life, prehistory, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , on April 11, 2010 by chouck017894

Pomp and ceremony and holy razzle-dazzle are effective ways to drown the testimony of quiet truth.  By this means of alleging spiritual entitlement, truth is repeatedly crucified.  This, obviously, is an outsider view of manufactured belief.  And this observation is an expression of grief for the injustices done to truth in the name of spiritual reliability.

The catalyst for this lament springs from the Easter ceremony in Vatican City (April 2010) and the brazen denial that der pope was aware of the sexual transgressions that have  been going on in the church for  millennia.  Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, sniffed that it was all “petty gossip” and “a vile smear!”  According to Sodano the whole uproar over pedophile priests is due totally to the “anti-Vatican media,” but the “successor to (St) Peter, bishop of Rome, (is) the unfailing rock of the holy church,” said Sodano.  Well, that line of succession has quite a long blood soaked history.  And there were occasional breaks in the chain of succession as well, one lasting around five years, for example.  To put it mildly, there are peculiar viruses attached to the “Bishop of Rome” claim that has its roots anchored deep in church-composed “history.”

It was noted in Time Frames and Taboo Data that the claim that a fisherman apostle named Simon but called Peter was in Rome rest entirely on one source—a work titled The Clementines written around the early 200s CE.  In that literary work is a tale of a wonder-working man named Peter coming face to face with the fabled sorcerer/magician named Simon Magus.  Peter allegedly challenged Simon Magus to give proof of his magical power.  To comply the sorcerer levitated into the air.  Peter chose to regard  it all as contest of wills and with his divine powers brought down the magician with such force that it broke Simon Magus’ leg.  Nothing has ever been presented that could be said to support that Peter in The Clementines story referred to Simon (renamed Peter) of Christian Gospels. 

There is a small fact that came to the aid of the later authors of church “history” and inspired the assertion that the Peter of the Gospel stories was  active in Rome c. 67.   Indeed this tiny fact contributed the names of the alleged first four “bishops of Rome.”  Through the general  timeframe c. 67 to c. 99, there were priests of ancient Pagan mysteries that had been active in Rome for generations, and they were venerated as PTR, which signified them as interpreters or revealers of divine mysteries.  As in Jewish writings the vowels were not inscribed, and the sacred Tau-cross was central in the title indicating his power of interpretation.  This  opened the freedom for church historians to make an identity switch with a former Pagan priest interpreter and present that mutation as the cornerstone of the faith laid down in Rome. 

The interpreters, the PTR of Pagan mysteries, were the highest authority in the Pagan priesthood and the high priest was well-known throughout Rome when the Christian cult was struggling for  identity.  Thus  in the tradition handed down for the first four “bishops of Rome” each take their identity from the Pagan PTR—the title for all Pagan interpreters of the mysteries—whose actual names probably were Linus, Anacletus, and Clement (1).

Thus today if one looks up the list of popes of the Roman Catholic Church in any encyclopedia they will find total untruths listed as facts.  Peter is claimed to have been crucified in Rome in 67 CE, supposedly as part of Nero’s attempt to eliminate Christians—who at that time were not yet referred to as Christians.  Even so, we are to believe that the second “bishop of Rome,” Linus, rushed forward to preside as Christ’s representative.   Linus is asserted to have presided as “bishop” from 67  to maybe 79.  The next “bishop,” Anacletus, third from Peter, is listed as serving from 79 to some uncertain time around 90.  Fourth after Peter (PTR) is listed Clement (1) from 90 to maybe 99.  Marcus Ulpian Trajanus became emperor in 98.  Oddly, the literature in Rome at the entry into the second century CE remained absolutely silent about any person referred to as Christ.  The  rowdy new religion was mentioned by only a few contemporary historians such as Plutarch and Juvenal, but none ever referred to a Jesus or a “Christ” as the central figure of that new religion. 

So how does the legendary Simon, AKA Peter, stack up against the early Gospels?  That earlier Peter was an apostle of Jesus who taught and preached only to Jews.  Strict Jewish customs of the times, which considered it “unclean” to venture into Rome, make it illogical that an apostle of a Jewish teacher, who vowed not to preach to the uncircumcised, would toss aside his obligation to his own people to raise a church among Gentiles in Rome.

By Christian lore, Peter was allegedly crucified (upside down) in the Coliseum in 67.  This is awkward, for it would indicate that Peter and Paul were both representing differing doctrines of Christianity in the Roman Empire in the same narrow timeframe.  And this is the basis for the Peter-Paul controversy that has been so laboriously papered over that the faithful today have  little clue of how things just did not and do not match.

Before Christianity assumed squatters rights to what is now the Vatican, the area had been the site of the main temple of Mithras, the Persian god of light.  Remembering the PTR connection to the apostle Simon’s name change, there is a haunting suggestion that the professed remains of “Saint Peter” in the underground  vault in St Peter’s Basilica are of the Pagan PTR, not of the Jewish fisherman apostle Simon, AKA Peter.

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