ellauri063.html on line 41: Tony Blair oversaw British interventions in Kosovo (1999) and Sierra Leone (2000), which were generally perceived as successful. During the War on Terror, he supported the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration and ensured that the British Armed Forces participated in the War in Afghanistan from 2001 and, more controversially, the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Blair argued that the Saddam Hussein regime possessed an active weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, but no stockpiles of WMDs or an active WMD program were ever found in Iraq. The Iraq War became increasingly unpopular among the British public, and he was criticised by opponents and (in 2016) the Iraq Inquiry for waging an unjustified and unnecessary invasion. He was in office when the 7/7 bombings took place (2005) and introduced a range of anti-terror legislation. His legacy remains controversial, not least because of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
ellauri108.html on line 141: Rastafari regards procreation as the purpose of sex, and thus oral and anal sex are usually forbidden. Both contraception and abortion are usually censured, and a common claim in Rasta discourse is that these were inventions of Babylon to decrease the black African birth-rate. Rastas typically express hostile attitudes to homosexuality, regarding homosexuals as evil and unnatural; this attitude derives from references to same-sex sexual activity in the Bible. Homosexual Rastas probably conceal their sexual orientation because of these attitudes. Rastas typically see the growing acceptance of birth control and homosexuality in Western society as evidence of the degeneration of Babylon as it approaches its apocalyptic end.
ellauri115.html on line 414: Hume's eyes were on France, in particular, and his reputation as the good David. His first denunciations of Rousseau were made to his friends in Paris; his Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau would be published there in French, edited by Rousseau's enemies. He studiously avoided communicating with Mme de Boufflers, knowing she would, as she did, urge "generous pity". Hume's descriptions of Rousseau as ferocious, villainous and treacherous ensured joyful coverage in newspapers and discussions in fashionable drawing rooms, clubs and coffee houses. The actor-manager David Garrick wrote to a friend on July 18 that Rousseau had called Hume "noir, black, and a coquin, knave".
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Why a young virgin? This quality ensured that whoever was chosen for the job wouldn’t be taken away from a jealous fiancé or husband, nor would she be a widow familiar with the sexual practices of the marriage bed. We don’t know what hopes and dreams Abishag had for her own life, but in the ancient world where uncertainty and struggle were lifelong challenges for most people, the honor of being brought into the king’s household would mean a lifetime of well-being and security for her and her family (1 Kings 4:27).
ellauri160.html on line 223: While in custody in Italy, Pound began work on sections of The Cantos that were published as The Pisan Cantos (1948), for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949 by the Library of Congress, causing enormous controversy. After a campaign by his fellow writers, he was released from St. Elizabeths in 1958 and lived in Italy until his death in 1972. His economic and political views have ensured that his life and work remain controversial. He is popular with the alt-right but his opinions about usury forever condemn him in the circles of New York money liberals.
xxx/ellauri165.html on line 150: The growing cult of devotion to the Virgin Mary in the medieval period led to fine-grained theological divisions on the issue. On the one hand, devotion to Mary led to the argument that God had ensured Mary did not have “original sin”.
xxx/ellauri178.html on line 124: Mitähän Pili oli näkevinään John Le Carren vakoiluromaanissa A Perfect Spy? Vai pitikö se pikemminkin Davidista izestään? David reportedly enjoyed “playing” on his first wife’s suspicion that he was homosexual. The association between homosexuality and secrecy, furtiveness and potential treachery ensured gay characters were a recurring trope in Cold War-era spy fiction. John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy include gay subtexts - made even more explicit in the 2011 movie adaptation of the latter. Merry Xmas from the onanist and the whore!
xxx/ellauri186.html on line 92: Subsequent hearings and trial, in the words of Walter A. McDougall, "drove Reconstruction off the front pages for two and a half years" and became "the most sensational 'he said, she said' in American history". On October 31, 1873, Plymouth Church excommunicated Theodore Tilton for "slandering" Beecher. The Council of Congregational Churches held a board of inquiry from March 9 to 29, 1874, to investigate the disfellowshipping of Tilton, and censured Plymouth Church for acting against Tilton without first examining the charges against Beecher. As of June 27, 1874, Plymouth Church established its own investigating committee which exonerated Beecher.Tilton then sued Beecher on civil charges of adultery. The Beecher-Tilton trial began in January 1875, and ended in July when the jurors deliberated for six days but were unable to reach a verdict. In February 1876, the Congregational church held a final hearing to exonerate Beecher.
xxx/ellauri199.html on line 907: Contemporary odes to Neptune were harder to come by, but divine intervention ensured I found one that mentioned him by name. One of the highlights of my recent trip to Odesa, discussed here on the blog, was a visit to the literary museum, which houses a small collection of Anna Akhmatova’s work. The statuesque Russian poet, melancholic lover and resolute witness to the Stalinist and Putinist terrors, was born near Odesa and spent her childhood summers in the region. The display included a palm-sized booklet of the long poem ‘Close to the Sea’, or as my host translated, ‘very close’: an intimate relationship. I looked it up in The Complete Poems when I got home and assumed it must be ‘By the Edge of the Sea’. The ballad of a fierce young woman willing the arrival of her beloved from the waves, the poem was too long for the workshop and extracts would not do it justice. A shame, I thought, setting down the 950 page book, which promptly fell open to:
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