The teacher noticed that Johnny had been daydreaming for a long time. She decided to get his attention. "Johnny," she said, "If the world is 25,000 miles around and eggs are sixty cents a dozen, how old am I?
"Thirty-four," Johnny answered unhesitatingly.
The teacher replied "Well, that's not far from my actual age. Tell me...how did you guess?"
Oh, there's nothing to it," Johnny said. "My big sister is seventeen and she's only half-crazy."
*.*
Larry's barn burned down, and, Susan, his wife, called the insurance company ...
Susan: We had that barn insured for fifty thousand and I want my money.
Agent: Whoa there just a minute, Susan. It doesn't work quite like that. We will ascertain the value of the old barn and provide you with a new one of comparable worth.
Susan, after a pause: I'd like to cancel the policy on my husband.
*.*
Saw this on an employee's shirt at a Halloween store: "We put the tomb in costume!"
Kylie Jenner has introduced her own line of hair extensions. Absolutely nothing real about that family.
Artificial Intelligence experts say that over the next few years, robots will be taking most people's jobs. Can I request we start with the Raking Leaves robots?
Life expectancy in the U.S. has reached an all-time high. A spokesman for Craftsmen tools, the ones with the lifetime guarantee, responded with, "Damn!"
It's hard to take the Nobel Chemistry prize seriously when it wasn't awarded to the people who discovered Pumpkin Spice Latte.
*.*
A young man visiting a dude ranch wanted to be "macho," so he went out walking with one of the hired hands. As they were walking through the barnyard, the visitor tried starting a conversation: "Say, look at that big bunch of cows."
The hired hand replied, "Not 'bunch,' but 'herd.' "
"Heard what?"
"Herd of cows."
"Sure, I've heard of cows. There's a big bunch of 'em right over there."
*.*
A hillbilly was making his first visit to a hospital where his teenage son was about to have an operation. Watching the doctor's every move, he asked, "what's that?"
The doctor explained, "this is an anesthetic. After he gets this he won't know a thing."
"Save your time, Doc," exclaimed the man. "He don't know nothing now."
Issue of the Times;
A Letter from General George S. Patton to His Son
On June 6, 1944, General George S. Patton wrote this letter to his twenty-year-old son, George Jr., who was enrolled at West Point. Patton Sr. was in England training the Third Army in preparation for the battles that would follow the invasion at Normandy.
Dear George:
At 0700 this morning the BBC announced that the German Radio had just come out with an announcement of the landing of Allied Paratroops and of large numbers of assault craft near shore. So that is it.
This group of unconquerable heroes whom I command are not in yet but we will be soon—I wish I was there now as it is a lovely sunny day for a battle and I am fed up with just sitting.
I have no immediate idea of being killed but one can never tell and none of us can live forever, so if I should go don’t worry but set yourself to do better than I have.
All men are timid on entering any fight; whether it is the first fight or the last fight all of us are timid. Cowards are those who let their timidity get the better of their manhood. You will never do that because of your blood lines on both sides. I think I have told you the story of Marshall Touraine who fought under Louis XIV. On the morning of one of his last battles—he had been fighting for forty years—he was mounting his horse when a young ADC [aide-de-camp] who had just come from the court and had never missed a meal or heard a hostile shot said: “M. de Touraine it amazes me that a man of your supposed courage should permit his knees to tremble as he walks out to mount.” Touraine replied “My lord duke I admit that my knees do tremble but should they know where I shall this day take them they would shake even more.” That is it. Your knees may shake but they will always take you towards the enemy. Well so much for that.
There are apparently two types of successful soldiers. Those who get on by being unobtrusive and those who get on by being obtrusive. I am of the latter type and seem to be rare and unpopular: but it is my method. One has to choose a system and stick to it; people who are not themselves are nobody.
To be a successful soldier you must know history. Read it objectively–dates and even the minute details of tactics are useless. What you must know is how man reacts. Weapons change but man who uses them changes not at all. To win battles you do not beat weapons–you beat the soul of man of the enemy man. To do that you have to destroy his weapons, but that is only incidental. You must read biography and especially autobiography. If you will do it you will find that war is simple. Decide what will hurt the enemy most within the limits of your capabilities to harm him and then do it. TAKE CALCULATED RISKS. That is quite different from being rash. My personal belief is that if you have a 50% chance take it because the superior fighting qualities of American soldiers lead by me will surely give you the extra 1% necessary.
In Sicily I decided as a result of my information, observations and a sixth sense that I have that the enemy did not have another large scale attack in his system. I bet my shirt on that and I was right. You cannot make war safely but no dead general has ever been criticized so you have that way out always.
I am sure that if every leader who goes into battle will promise himself that he will come out either a conqueror or a corpse he is sure to win. There is no doubt of that. Defeat is not due to losses but to the destruction of the soul of the leaders. The “Live to fight another day” doctrine.
The most vital quality a soldier can possess is SELF CONFIDENCE–utter, complete and bumptious. You can have doubts about your good looks, about your intelligence, about your self control but to win in war you must have NO doubts about your ability as a soldier.
What success I have had results from the fact that I have always been certain that my military reactions were correct. Many people do not agree with me; they are wrong. The unerring jury of history written long after both of us are dead will prove me correct.
Note that I speak of “Military reactions”–no one is borne with them any more than anyone is borne with muscles. You can be born with the soul capable of correct military reactions or the body capable of having big muscles, but both qualities must be developed by hard work.
The intensity of your desire to acquire any special ability depends on character, on ambition. I think that your decision to study this summer instead of enjoying yourself shows that you have character and ambition—they are wonderful possessions.
Soldiers, all men in fact, are natural hero worshipers. Officers with a flare for command realize this and emphasize in their conduct, dress and deportment the qualities they seek to produce in their men. When I was a second lieutenant I had a captain who was very sloppy and usually late yet he got after the men for just those faults; he was a failure.
The troops I have commanded have always been well dressed, been smart saluters, been prompt and bold in action because I have personally set the example in these qualities. The influence one man can have on thousands is a never-ending source of wonder to me. You are always on parade. Officers who through laziness or a foolish desire to be popular fail to enforce discipline and the proper wearing of uniforms and equipment not in the presence of the enemy will also fail in battle, and if they fail in battle they are potential murderers. There is no such thing as: “A good field soldier:” you are either a good soldier or a bad soldier.
Well this has been quite a sermon but don’t get the idea that it is my swan song because it is not–I have not finished my job yet.
Your affectionate father.
Quote of the Times;
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” – Kerouac
Link of the Times;
https://www.youtube.com/embed/wq_lhlIn1e0
Patton?
Meaningless?
The Census Bureau says that more than two thirds of all Baby-Boomers are overweight or obese. In fact, they say that half of all Baby-Boomers make up 2/3's of them.
*.*
Boko Haram Struggles To Find Victims People Give A Shit About
BORNO, Nigeria — According to insider reports, leaders for the terrorist group Boko Haram have called an emergency meeting to determine how many more murders, rapes and kidnappings it will take before anyone in the international community will start giving a shit.
“It’s frustrating,” complained Boko Haram Commander Abubakar Shekau. “We work extremely hard, and all we get from the rest of the world is phlegmatic indifference. I mean, what’s a warlord supposed to do?”
During a month in which the group has attacked hard targets in Cameroon, as well as orchestrated the slaughter of up to 2,000 civilians, international media outlets have largely focused on recent terror attacks in Paris. The carnage wrought by Boko Haram in the Belgium-sized swath of territory it now controls in the northeastern states of oil-rich Nigeria was designed to get attention.
Much to Shekau’s dismay, however, it hasn’t been enough.
“I’m turning this country into a fucking Lars Von Trier film,” Shekau told Duffel Blog via Facebook chat. “I’ve literally stolen hundreds of kids from their parents and sold them into slavery, and all I got was a Twitter hashtag from Michelle Obama.”
Delegates to the strategy meeting struggled to come up with ideas evil enough to generate media attention. Numerous suggestions were scrawled across a white board, to include a moon laser, Ebola zombies, canceling American football, Scientology, a Hitler robot, and Furry convention, only to be crossed out, one after the other, in fits of despondency. Throughout the meeting, many in attendance appeared distracted by the television across the room showing live footage of leaders from countries like Russia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia marching in defense of a free press.
“Nigeria has elephants,” said Secretary for African Affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield, when asked for comment. “But I don’t think Broker Ham or whatever it is wants to hurt elephants.”
By the close of their strategy session, Boko Haram leaders reported a general feeling of pessimism at the prospect of getting people’s attention any time soon.
“Between France, ISIS and those crazy-low gas prices, I don’t think your average media consumer has any room left on his plate,” Shekau admitted. “Je suis Boko Haram, and I am pretty bummed.” Shekau then donned his fedora made of flayed baby skin, filled his pipe with virgin hymens and asked his driver to bring around the Rolls Royce with the old lady crucified on the hood.
“If things keep going this way, he might do something crazy,” Commander Tobala Nukaway confided.
*.*
Amazon wants to continue drone-delivery tests.
Now, the real trick is getting the enemy to order the bombs.
*.*
The CDC says that one in four Americans admit they do no exercise at all.
Which of course means that 75% of Americans are liars.
*.*
When she asked, "Is that a roll of quarters in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
We both just had to laugh, because, being a peep-show girl, it really didn't matter to her either way.
Issue of the Times;
How To Recognize Meaningless Rhetoric From Masters Of Deception by Ashlar Ben David
Identifying and understanding the use of rhetoric is an excellent way to defend yourself against progressive poison. It is an equally good thing to apply against those who cannot be reasoned with logically. First, it is necessary to understand the distinction between logic on one hand, and rhetoric on the other. Then, we will look at examples and explore why one is more politically useful than the other.
When we consider logic, we are talking about the soundness and validity of arguments. Soundness deals with whether the argument is properly constructed and whether the premises lead to the conclusion, and an argument does not have to be true to be sound. Validity deals with the truth of an argument’s premises and their subsequent conclusion. Logic deals with sequence and building, which are in large part left- or male-brained concepts.
Rhetoric, on the other hand, is constructing phrases and arguments that appeal to a listener’s emotional landscape. It picks the audience up, takes them on a ride, then places them back down where it wants them to land. It has nothing to do with truth, relying instead on inducing a trance-like state of suggestibility and gullibility in the listener(s). It is less “built” and more “flowing” and “creative.” In that sense, it is more feminine or right- brained than logic.
The benefits of each method
Now, some of you may be wondering, “which is more persuasive?” Well, that depends on the context. If an engineer needs to know which parts to put in which order to build a machine, he’s going to use logic and sequential thinking in order to begin putting the pieces of the puzzle together…now, if you want to convince a typical non-thinking audience of something, then rhetoric will get you much farther.
Since progressives of all types are essentially unthinking meat puppets living in fear of what their friends might say should they stray from the party line, liberal politicians know better than to use logic. It would go over the heads of their audience, boring them and driving them away. Instead, liberal politicians pluck the heartstrings of their emotional puppet constituency by saying words that sound good and result in good feelings.
Then, they use shaming rhetoric to instill bad feelings in association with certain thought patterns that are labelled as “Politically Incorrect.” The term itself is a shaming tactic, and a young brainless liberal knows that should he dare think naughty thoughts, he will be attacked by others until his compliance improves.
The masters of rhetoric
Much as I despise Barack Hussein Obama for running the free world despite having never accomplished anything of significance besides smooth-talking, I have to give him props for being one of the best (liars and) rhetoricians I’ve ever had the enlightening experience of hearing speak. He and his team have cooked up some of the most meaningless, emotionally persuasive glittery nonsense I have ever heard.
I want to examine his favorite word from the campaign years, back when he still had to pretend that he would follow through with his promises. The name of that sinister syllable is:
“Change”
Barack Hussein Obama, the brother of a man under investigation in Egypt for affiliation with a terrorist organization, loves the word “change”—but not as much as his audience does. In conjunction with top-notch NLP, Obama litters his speech with phrases just vague enough for them to mean whatever the listener wants them to mean.
This is what NLP is, from a purely Ericksonian standpoint: language patterns vague enough for the listener to project his own experiences, assumptions and desires onto. It is essentially like handing someone a blank that feels really good, and having them fill it in.
For example, “If you care about America, then you should care about change” is a phrase that sounds great….and doesn’t mean anything at all. This is typical speech from a man like Obama. First of all, I will show you where the NLP is here.
The first part of the sentence, “If you care about America,” has two parts. It is the “if” half of an “if, then” statement, which begins with the next part of the sentence. It is also an embedded command, “care about America,” which the speaker would say with a drop in vocal tone or a gesture at the same time to mark the command. The second part of the sentence completes the “if, then” statement and includes another embedded command: “care about change.”
Now, it’s already a very good sentence rhetorically. However, the real genius is in the use of the blank canvass term “change.” Everybody listening to that word has some change they would like to see, whether in themselves, their families, communities, nations or even the entire globe. By using such an ambiguous word, whatever the listener wants to change is automatically linked to “something Barack Hussein Obama promised me.”
He might have promised one person less income inequality, he might have promised another that feminists would rule the world, and he might have promised another that order would be restored. And all he had to say was one word. Best part is, it is impossible for eight years (or one year, or even a day) to pass without change occurring, so in this way, Barack Hussein Obama also covered his own ass. He promised change, and then change happened! Isn’t he great?
Words like “hope,” “progress” and “equality” all belong in the same grouping as “change.” What does progress mean? Depends on what the listener believes should change about the world. What does equality mean? Absolutely nothing. What does hope mean? Something different to everyone. Keep your eyes open for when politicians, media loudmouths and public agitators use words like these. They have been chosen deliberately by those people for a reason, so next time you hear them being used against you, it is on you to figure out the speaker’s agenda and decide what you really think based on truth and logic.
So now that I have explained to you a little about the mechanics behind vague words and liberal rhetoric, it will be easier for you to identify it, guard your mind against it, and mock it openly and publicly so the mouth-breathing hordes and their evil masters know that we will not go down without a fight.
Quote of the Times;
"If I have but one goal in life, it is to be remembered forever!" – Anonymous
Link of the Times;
http://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/most-popular-american-burger-chains-map-in-n-out-sonic-five-guys?vc=2322
*.*
Boko Haram Struggles To Find Victims People Give A Shit About
BORNO, Nigeria — According to insider reports, leaders for the terrorist group Boko Haram have called an emergency meeting to determine how many more murders, rapes and kidnappings it will take before anyone in the international community will start giving a shit.
“It’s frustrating,” complained Boko Haram Commander Abubakar Shekau. “We work extremely hard, and all we get from the rest of the world is phlegmatic indifference. I mean, what’s a warlord supposed to do?”
During a month in which the group has attacked hard targets in Cameroon, as well as orchestrated the slaughter of up to 2,000 civilians, international media outlets have largely focused on recent terror attacks in Paris. The carnage wrought by Boko Haram in the Belgium-sized swath of territory it now controls in the northeastern states of oil-rich Nigeria was designed to get attention.
Much to Shekau’s dismay, however, it hasn’t been enough.
“I’m turning this country into a fucking Lars Von Trier film,” Shekau told Duffel Blog via Facebook chat. “I’ve literally stolen hundreds of kids from their parents and sold them into slavery, and all I got was a Twitter hashtag from Michelle Obama.”
Delegates to the strategy meeting struggled to come up with ideas evil enough to generate media attention. Numerous suggestions were scrawled across a white board, to include a moon laser, Ebola zombies, canceling American football, Scientology, a Hitler robot, and Furry convention, only to be crossed out, one after the other, in fits of despondency. Throughout the meeting, many in attendance appeared distracted by the television across the room showing live footage of leaders from countries like Russia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia marching in defense of a free press.
“Nigeria has elephants,” said Secretary for African Affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield, when asked for comment. “But I don’t think Broker Ham or whatever it is wants to hurt elephants.”
By the close of their strategy session, Boko Haram leaders reported a general feeling of pessimism at the prospect of getting people’s attention any time soon.
“Between France, ISIS and those crazy-low gas prices, I don’t think your average media consumer has any room left on his plate,” Shekau admitted. “Je suis Boko Haram, and I am pretty bummed.” Shekau then donned his fedora made of flayed baby skin, filled his pipe with virgin hymens and asked his driver to bring around the Rolls Royce with the old lady crucified on the hood.
“If things keep going this way, he might do something crazy,” Commander Tobala Nukaway confided.
*.*
Amazon wants to continue drone-delivery tests.
Now, the real trick is getting the enemy to order the bombs.
*.*
The CDC says that one in four Americans admit they do no exercise at all.
Which of course means that 75% of Americans are liars.
*.*
When she asked, "Is that a roll of quarters in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
We both just had to laugh, because, being a peep-show girl, it really didn't matter to her either way.
Issue of the Times;
How To Recognize Meaningless Rhetoric From Masters Of Deception by Ashlar Ben David
Identifying and understanding the use of rhetoric is an excellent way to defend yourself against progressive poison. It is an equally good thing to apply against those who cannot be reasoned with logically. First, it is necessary to understand the distinction between logic on one hand, and rhetoric on the other. Then, we will look at examples and explore why one is more politically useful than the other.
When we consider logic, we are talking about the soundness and validity of arguments. Soundness deals with whether the argument is properly constructed and whether the premises lead to the conclusion, and an argument does not have to be true to be sound. Validity deals with the truth of an argument’s premises and their subsequent conclusion. Logic deals with sequence and building, which are in large part left- or male-brained concepts.
Rhetoric, on the other hand, is constructing phrases and arguments that appeal to a listener’s emotional landscape. It picks the audience up, takes them on a ride, then places them back down where it wants them to land. It has nothing to do with truth, relying instead on inducing a trance-like state of suggestibility and gullibility in the listener(s). It is less “built” and more “flowing” and “creative.” In that sense, it is more feminine or right- brained than logic.
The benefits of each method
Now, some of you may be wondering, “which is more persuasive?” Well, that depends on the context. If an engineer needs to know which parts to put in which order to build a machine, he’s going to use logic and sequential thinking in order to begin putting the pieces of the puzzle together…now, if you want to convince a typical non-thinking audience of something, then rhetoric will get you much farther.
Since progressives of all types are essentially unthinking meat puppets living in fear of what their friends might say should they stray from the party line, liberal politicians know better than to use logic. It would go over the heads of their audience, boring them and driving them away. Instead, liberal politicians pluck the heartstrings of their emotional puppet constituency by saying words that sound good and result in good feelings.
Then, they use shaming rhetoric to instill bad feelings in association with certain thought patterns that are labelled as “Politically Incorrect.” The term itself is a shaming tactic, and a young brainless liberal knows that should he dare think naughty thoughts, he will be attacked by others until his compliance improves.
The masters of rhetoric
Much as I despise Barack Hussein Obama for running the free world despite having never accomplished anything of significance besides smooth-talking, I have to give him props for being one of the best (liars and) rhetoricians I’ve ever had the enlightening experience of hearing speak. He and his team have cooked up some of the most meaningless, emotionally persuasive glittery nonsense I have ever heard.
I want to examine his favorite word from the campaign years, back when he still had to pretend that he would follow through with his promises. The name of that sinister syllable is:
“Change”
Barack Hussein Obama, the brother of a man under investigation in Egypt for affiliation with a terrorist organization, loves the word “change”—but not as much as his audience does. In conjunction with top-notch NLP, Obama litters his speech with phrases just vague enough for them to mean whatever the listener wants them to mean.
This is what NLP is, from a purely Ericksonian standpoint: language patterns vague enough for the listener to project his own experiences, assumptions and desires onto. It is essentially like handing someone a blank that feels really good, and having them fill it in.
For example, “If you care about America, then you should care about change” is a phrase that sounds great….and doesn’t mean anything at all. This is typical speech from a man like Obama. First of all, I will show you where the NLP is here.
The first part of the sentence, “If you care about America,” has two parts. It is the “if” half of an “if, then” statement, which begins with the next part of the sentence. It is also an embedded command, “care about America,” which the speaker would say with a drop in vocal tone or a gesture at the same time to mark the command. The second part of the sentence completes the “if, then” statement and includes another embedded command: “care about change.”
Now, it’s already a very good sentence rhetorically. However, the real genius is in the use of the blank canvass term “change.” Everybody listening to that word has some change they would like to see, whether in themselves, their families, communities, nations or even the entire globe. By using such an ambiguous word, whatever the listener wants to change is automatically linked to “something Barack Hussein Obama promised me.”
He might have promised one person less income inequality, he might have promised another that feminists would rule the world, and he might have promised another that order would be restored. And all he had to say was one word. Best part is, it is impossible for eight years (or one year, or even a day) to pass without change occurring, so in this way, Barack Hussein Obama also covered his own ass. He promised change, and then change happened! Isn’t he great?
Words like “hope,” “progress” and “equality” all belong in the same grouping as “change.” What does progress mean? Depends on what the listener believes should change about the world. What does equality mean? Absolutely nothing. What does hope mean? Something different to everyone. Keep your eyes open for when politicians, media loudmouths and public agitators use words like these. They have been chosen deliberately by those people for a reason, so next time you hear them being used against you, it is on you to figure out the speaker’s agenda and decide what you really think based on truth and logic.
So now that I have explained to you a little about the mechanics behind vague words and liberal rhetoric, it will be easier for you to identify it, guard your mind against it, and mock it openly and publicly so the mouth-breathing hordes and their evil masters know that we will not go down without a fight.
Quote of the Times;
"If I have but one goal in life, it is to be remembered forever!" – Anonymous
Link of the Times;
http://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/most-popular-american-burger-chains-map-in-n-out-sonic-five-guys?vc=2322
Inquisition?
From what I hear, pigs are supposed to be extremely intelligent.
I'll believe that when they tell us to stop eating them.
*.*
A Sign in a Canadian Store Window:
"WE WOULD RATHER DO BUSINESS WITH 1000 AL QAEDA TERRORISTS THAN WITH ONE SINGLE CANADIAN"
This sign was prominently displayed in the window of a business in Hamilton, Ontario. You are probably outraged at the thought of such an inflammatory statement. One would think that anti-hate groups from all across the country would be marching on this business and that the RCMP might have to be called to keep the angry crowds back. But, perhaps in these stressful times one might be tempted to let the proprietors simply make their statement . . We are a society which holds Freedom of Speech as perhaps our greatest liberty. And after all, it is just a sign.
You may ask what kind of business would dare post such a sign?
A Funeral Home
*.*
As I was lying in bed that night, I got to thinking, "What would Jesus do?"
That didn't prove much help, so I got a bit more specific:
"What would Jesus do with a dead hooker's body?"
*.*
After MURPHY'S LAW, there's...
THE SUPERMARKET LAW: Any line you wheel into at the check-out counter, no matter how short, will automatically come to a halt and remain that way until your ice cream has melted and dropped into your shoes.
THE LEFTOVER LAW: Any food that would be delicious as a leftover will never be left over.
THE LAUNDRY LAW: The average washer or dryer will, in its lifetime, consume its own weight in socks... with a limit of one sock per pair.
THE BARGAIN-BASEMENT LAW: Any dress on sale at 50% off and fit to wear to an occasion more elegant than a wheel alignment will never be available in your size.
THE CHICKEN-CROSSING-THE-ROAD LAW: Any person trying to cross a highway from a side road will find that traffic, nonexistent seconds before, will now build to holiday-weekend proportions.
THE CLEAN HOUSE LAW: If you wax the floors, wash the windows, scrub the walls and rinse out the light fixtures, no living soul will come to your door. Conversely, if you fail to dust, leave the dishes in the sink and let the children bathe the dog in the tub; your front porch will sag with unexpected visitors.
*.*
Oneliners:
In t-shirt sizes, XL > L > M, but it's the opposite in roman numerals.
120,000,000 Just sat down and watched a group of millionaires throw a ball.
"Sh*ts and giggles" is kind of cute, but "Sharts and gargles" is an entirely different mental image.
It must be hard for people in England to tell other people when they have a bloody nose.
It would be ironic if snake oil was found to be the cure for cancer.
Children are like farts. While you can tolerate your own, it's tough to put up with anyone else's.
If Japan had won WWII, we'd be learning in school about the Japanese freeing people from the concentration camps in America.
I wish there was a secret handshake or a badge that identified you to other retail workers as being a current or former retail worker so they know you're not just another dumb customer.
There is one person on the planet for who the phrase, "someone has it worse than you do" doesn't apply.
Poor people used to entertain rich people, now it's the opposite.
My pubes are a calendar for how long it's been since I was sexually active.
The people who are the most athletically ready for a zombie apocalypse are the ones who will be our worst enemy if they become zombies.
Issue of the Times;
7 Myths about the Inquisition by Adam N. Crawford
— 1 —
The term “Inquisition” actually refers to an institution not an event.
Actually, more like a group of institutions within the judicial system of the Roman Catholic Church whose aim was to combat or suppress heresy. Begun in 12th century France, the ecclesiastical tribunal known as the inquisition has evolved over the years but is still an active part of the Roman Curia today, although admittedly operating under a different name. Originally the inquisition was carried out using local clergy as judges,1 but starting in the 1250’s inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order due to their unique charism. St. Dominic founded his order in 1216 in order to preach the Gospel and combat heresy. Is it any wonder that their name gave rise to the pun that they were the Domini canes, or Hounds of the Lord?2 In 1904 the office of the inquisition was given the new name Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and in 1965 it became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and remains as such to this day.
— 2 —
Much like the Crusades, the Inquisition was not a single event, but can be generally broken into the following categories.
• Medieval Inquisition – 1184 AD through the 14th century.
• Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance – During this time the tribunal’s geographic scope was expanded to other European countries resulting most notably in:
1. The Spanish Inquisition – 1478 AD – 1834 AD (this is the inquisition which is perhaps most widely misrepresented today.)
2. Portuguese Inquisition – 1536 AD – 1821 AD
• The Roman Inquisition – 1588 AD – Present, in the form of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Spain and Portugal in particular operated inquisitorial courts throughout their respective empires with a particular focus on the issue of Jewish and Muslim converts to Catholicism – partly because these minority groups were more numerous in Spain and Portugal than in many other parts of Europe, and partly because they were often considered suspect due to the assumption that they had secretly reverted back to their previous religions.
The concept and scope of these inquisitions were also significantly expanded in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
— 3 —
The Inquisition was born out of a need for fair trials, and to prevent unjust executions.
“For people who lived during those times, religion was not something one did just at church. It was science, philosophy, politics, identity, and hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth. Heresy, then, struck at the heart of that truth. It doomed the heretic, endangered those near him, and tore apart the fabric of community.
The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw them as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath. When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig or damaged shrubbery (really, it was a serious crime in England). Yet in contrast to those crimes, it was not so easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. For starters, one needed some basic theological training–something most medieval lords sorely lacked. The result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge.
The Catholic Church’s response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges. From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.”3
— 4 —
The Spanish Inquisition was actually vastly superior to other secular courts of the day.
Unlike the situation in the secular courts of the day, the use of torture was strictly regulated by the Church. In fact, torture was not regarded as a mode of punishment, but purely as a means of eliciting the truth. It was actually prohibited for the first twenty years of the inquisition before being first authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1265.
The procedures of the Inquisition are well known through a whole series of papal bulls and other authoritative documents, but mainly through such formularies and manuals as were prepared by St. Raymond Peñaforte (c1180-1275), the great Spanish canonist, and Bernard Gui (1261-1331), one of the most celebrated inquisitors of the early 14th Century. The Inquisitors were certainly interrogators, but they were also theological experts who followed the rules and instructions meticulously, and were either dismissed or punished when they showed too little regard for justice. When, for example, in 1223 Robert of Bourger gleefully announced his aim to burn heretics, not to convert them, he was immediately suspended and imprisoned for life by Pope Gregory IX.4
From the start limits were placed on the use of torture that were unheard of in the secular courts of the day.
• It was not to cause bloodshed, the loss of life or limb, or imperil life.
• Torture was to applied only once, and not then unless all other expedients were exhausted.
• When it was used, it was not to be applied for more than 15 minutes.
• It was never administered by the inquisitor (a cleric) but rather by the executioner appointed by the state. (In fact, in the beginning, torture was held to be so odious that clerics were forbidden to be present under pain of irregularity)
• A Physician had to be present and could stop the proceedings at any time.
There were no rapes, feet burning, creative torture chambers, iron maidens, etc., and reports show that between 98%-99% of all inquisition trials did not involve torture at all. Compared to secular courts that decreed the death penalty for damaging shrubs in England, or disembowelment for sheep-stealing in France, the Spanish Inquisition was actually far more conservative than the secular Europe of the day. In fact, there are multiple accounts of convicts in Spain blaspheming on purpose, precisely so that they would be transferred to the significantly more humane prisons of the Spanish Inquisition.
According to Professor Kamen, “In fact, the Inquisition used torture very infrequently. In Valencia, I found that out of 7,000 cases only two percent suffered any form of torture at all and usually for no more than 15 minutes . . . I found no one suffering torture more than twice.” Prof. Jaime Conterras agreed: “We find when comparing the Spanish Inquisition with other tribunals that the Spanish Inquisition used torture much less. And if we compare the Spanish Inquisition with tribunals in other countries, we find that the Spanish Inquisition has a virtually clean record in respect to torture.”5
— 5 —
The death toll numbers that you have heard are wrong. Flat out wrong.
Protestant preacher Jimmy Swaggart claimed that 20 million people were murdered by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition.6 Another Protestant text, “The Mystery of Babylon Revealed” claims 95 million people were killed during the Inquisition.
Really? 95 million? How is that even possible? It is not until modern times that the population of all of Europe even begins to approach 95 million. The present-day population of France, Spain, and Italy is about 150 million. To kill 95 million during just the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church would have had to kill every man, woman, and child in all of Europe, then import millions more just to kill them too.
In contrast to these claims, modern historians have begun to study the documentary records of the Spanish Inquisition. The archives of the Suprema, today held by the National Historical Archive of Spain (Archivo Histórico Nacional), conserves the annual relations of all inquisition processes between 1560 and 1700 AD. This material provides information about 49,092 judgements which were carefully studied by Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras. They calculate that only 1.9% of those processed were burned at the stake.
You read that right –
According to the historical records, less than 2% of all accused heretics were executed.
García Cárcel estimates that the total number processed by the Spanish Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150,000. Applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560 – 1700 AD (about 2%), the approximate total would be about 3,000 put to death. Even if we take into account variances due to records from other regions and possible variations throughout the rest of the time period, it is highly unlikely that the total death toll would exceed 3,000 – 5,000 executed during the entire 300 year period of the Spanish Inquisition. Henningsen and Contreras also studied the records of 44,674 other cases, finding that 826 resulted in executions in person and 778 were executions in effigy alone – i.e. a straw dummy was burned in place of the person.7
With all of that in mind, it is also important to note:
— 6 —
The Catholic Church executed no one.
That’s right, the Catholic Church never executed a single heretic. The Church did impose punishment on heretics in order to bring them to repentance. Most frequently certain good works were ordered, e.g. the building of a church, the visitation of a church, a pilgrimage, the offering of a candle or a chalice, participation in a crusade, and the like. Other punishments were more severe: fines whose proceeds were devoted to public purposes such as church-building and road-making, whipping with rods during religious services, the pillory, the wearing of colored crosses, and so on.
The hardest penalties were imprisonment, excommunication from the Church, and surrender to the civil authority. “Cum ecclesia” ran the regular expression, “ultra non habeat quod faciat pro suis demeritis contra ipsum, idcirco, eundum reliquimus brachio et iudicio saeculari” — i.e. since the Church can no farther punish his misdeeds, she leaves him to the civil authority.
Officially then, it was never the Catholic Church that sentenced unrepenting heretics to death. Rather, it was the state who determined and carried out the sentence of death. Heretics were traitors to both God and king, and dangerous to the welfare of the kingdom. Therefore, they deserved death. And unlike the Church, the state had no qualms about carrying out this sentence.
— 7 —
The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition
“Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries in western Europe, the Latin Christian Church adapted certain elements of Roman legal procedure and charged papally appointed clergy to employ them in order to preserve orthodox religious beliefs from the attacks of heretics … Between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries … these procedures, personnel and institutions were transformed by polemic and fiction into myth, the myth of The Inquisition. The institutions and the myth lived — and developed – in western Europe and the New World until the early nineteenth century, when most of the inquisitions were abolished, and the myth itself was universalized …
Although the inquisitions disappeared, The Inquisition did not. The myth was originally devised to serve variously the political purposes of a number of early modern political regimes, as well as Protestant Reformers, proponents of religious and civil toleration, philosophical enemies of the civil power of organized religions, and progressive modernists; but the myth remained durable, widely adaptable, and useful, so that in time it came to be woven tightly into the fabric of modern consciousness. So tight is its place in that weave that the myth has been revived in the twentieth century …
Some myths are tougher and more durable than the occasions which first create and employ them. The Inquisition [as myth] was an invention of the religious disputes and political conflicts of the sixteenth century. It was adapted to the causes of religious toleration and philosophical and political enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this process, although it was always anti-Catholic and usually anti-Spanish, it tended to become universalized, until, by the end of the eighteenth century, it had become the representative of all repressive religions that opposed freedom of conscience, political liberty and philosophical enlightenment.
In the United States, far more than in Europe, The Inquisition remained an evil abstraction, sustained by anti-Catholicism and supported by political opposition.”8
In 1994 the BBC broadcast a television documentary entitled, The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition. It is just over 45 minutes long, free to watch on YouTube, and I highly recommend it. Enjoy!
Quote of the Times;
For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” – II Thessalonians 3:10
Link of the Times;
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/10/31/the-decline-and-fall-of-western-culture-in-one-photo/
I'll believe that when they tell us to stop eating them.
*.*
A Sign in a Canadian Store Window:
"WE WOULD RATHER DO BUSINESS WITH 1000 AL QAEDA TERRORISTS THAN WITH ONE SINGLE CANADIAN"
This sign was prominently displayed in the window of a business in Hamilton, Ontario. You are probably outraged at the thought of such an inflammatory statement. One would think that anti-hate groups from all across the country would be marching on this business and that the RCMP might have to be called to keep the angry crowds back. But, perhaps in these stressful times one might be tempted to let the proprietors simply make their statement . . We are a society which holds Freedom of Speech as perhaps our greatest liberty. And after all, it is just a sign.
You may ask what kind of business would dare post such a sign?
A Funeral Home
*.*
As I was lying in bed that night, I got to thinking, "What would Jesus do?"
That didn't prove much help, so I got a bit more specific:
"What would Jesus do with a dead hooker's body?"
*.*
After MURPHY'S LAW, there's...
THE SUPERMARKET LAW: Any line you wheel into at the check-out counter, no matter how short, will automatically come to a halt and remain that way until your ice cream has melted and dropped into your shoes.
THE LEFTOVER LAW: Any food that would be delicious as a leftover will never be left over.
THE LAUNDRY LAW: The average washer or dryer will, in its lifetime, consume its own weight in socks... with a limit of one sock per pair.
THE BARGAIN-BASEMENT LAW: Any dress on sale at 50% off and fit to wear to an occasion more elegant than a wheel alignment will never be available in your size.
THE CHICKEN-CROSSING-THE-ROAD LAW: Any person trying to cross a highway from a side road will find that traffic, nonexistent seconds before, will now build to holiday-weekend proportions.
THE CLEAN HOUSE LAW: If you wax the floors, wash the windows, scrub the walls and rinse out the light fixtures, no living soul will come to your door. Conversely, if you fail to dust, leave the dishes in the sink and let the children bathe the dog in the tub; your front porch will sag with unexpected visitors.
*.*
Oneliners:
In t-shirt sizes, XL > L > M, but it's the opposite in roman numerals.
120,000,000 Just sat down and watched a group of millionaires throw a ball.
"Sh*ts and giggles" is kind of cute, but "Sharts and gargles" is an entirely different mental image.
It must be hard for people in England to tell other people when they have a bloody nose.
It would be ironic if snake oil was found to be the cure for cancer.
Children are like farts. While you can tolerate your own, it's tough to put up with anyone else's.
If Japan had won WWII, we'd be learning in school about the Japanese freeing people from the concentration camps in America.
I wish there was a secret handshake or a badge that identified you to other retail workers as being a current or former retail worker so they know you're not just another dumb customer.
There is one person on the planet for who the phrase, "someone has it worse than you do" doesn't apply.
Poor people used to entertain rich people, now it's the opposite.
My pubes are a calendar for how long it's been since I was sexually active.
The people who are the most athletically ready for a zombie apocalypse are the ones who will be our worst enemy if they become zombies.
Issue of the Times;
7 Myths about the Inquisition by Adam N. Crawford
— 1 —
The term “Inquisition” actually refers to an institution not an event.
Actually, more like a group of institutions within the judicial system of the Roman Catholic Church whose aim was to combat or suppress heresy. Begun in 12th century France, the ecclesiastical tribunal known as the inquisition has evolved over the years but is still an active part of the Roman Curia today, although admittedly operating under a different name. Originally the inquisition was carried out using local clergy as judges,1 but starting in the 1250’s inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order due to their unique charism. St. Dominic founded his order in 1216 in order to preach the Gospel and combat heresy. Is it any wonder that their name gave rise to the pun that they were the Domini canes, or Hounds of the Lord?2 In 1904 the office of the inquisition was given the new name Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and in 1965 it became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and remains as such to this day.
— 2 —
Much like the Crusades, the Inquisition was not a single event, but can be generally broken into the following categories.
• Medieval Inquisition – 1184 AD through the 14th century.
• Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance – During this time the tribunal’s geographic scope was expanded to other European countries resulting most notably in:
1. The Spanish Inquisition – 1478 AD – 1834 AD (this is the inquisition which is perhaps most widely misrepresented today.)
2. Portuguese Inquisition – 1536 AD – 1821 AD
• The Roman Inquisition – 1588 AD – Present, in the form of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Spain and Portugal in particular operated inquisitorial courts throughout their respective empires with a particular focus on the issue of Jewish and Muslim converts to Catholicism – partly because these minority groups were more numerous in Spain and Portugal than in many other parts of Europe, and partly because they were often considered suspect due to the assumption that they had secretly reverted back to their previous religions.
The concept and scope of these inquisitions were also significantly expanded in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
— 3 —
The Inquisition was born out of a need for fair trials, and to prevent unjust executions.
“For people who lived during those times, religion was not something one did just at church. It was science, philosophy, politics, identity, and hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth. Heresy, then, struck at the heart of that truth. It doomed the heretic, endangered those near him, and tore apart the fabric of community.
The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw them as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath. When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig or damaged shrubbery (really, it was a serious crime in England). Yet in contrast to those crimes, it was not so easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. For starters, one needed some basic theological training–something most medieval lords sorely lacked. The result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge.
The Catholic Church’s response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges. From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.”3
— 4 —
The Spanish Inquisition was actually vastly superior to other secular courts of the day.
Unlike the situation in the secular courts of the day, the use of torture was strictly regulated by the Church. In fact, torture was not regarded as a mode of punishment, but purely as a means of eliciting the truth. It was actually prohibited for the first twenty years of the inquisition before being first authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1265.
The procedures of the Inquisition are well known through a whole series of papal bulls and other authoritative documents, but mainly through such formularies and manuals as were prepared by St. Raymond Peñaforte (c1180-1275), the great Spanish canonist, and Bernard Gui (1261-1331), one of the most celebrated inquisitors of the early 14th Century. The Inquisitors were certainly interrogators, but they were also theological experts who followed the rules and instructions meticulously, and were either dismissed or punished when they showed too little regard for justice. When, for example, in 1223 Robert of Bourger gleefully announced his aim to burn heretics, not to convert them, he was immediately suspended and imprisoned for life by Pope Gregory IX.4
From the start limits were placed on the use of torture that were unheard of in the secular courts of the day.
• It was not to cause bloodshed, the loss of life or limb, or imperil life.
• Torture was to applied only once, and not then unless all other expedients were exhausted.
• When it was used, it was not to be applied for more than 15 minutes.
• It was never administered by the inquisitor (a cleric) but rather by the executioner appointed by the state. (In fact, in the beginning, torture was held to be so odious that clerics were forbidden to be present under pain of irregularity)
• A Physician had to be present and could stop the proceedings at any time.
There were no rapes, feet burning, creative torture chambers, iron maidens, etc., and reports show that between 98%-99% of all inquisition trials did not involve torture at all. Compared to secular courts that decreed the death penalty for damaging shrubs in England, or disembowelment for sheep-stealing in France, the Spanish Inquisition was actually far more conservative than the secular Europe of the day. In fact, there are multiple accounts of convicts in Spain blaspheming on purpose, precisely so that they would be transferred to the significantly more humane prisons of the Spanish Inquisition.
According to Professor Kamen, “In fact, the Inquisition used torture very infrequently. In Valencia, I found that out of 7,000 cases only two percent suffered any form of torture at all and usually for no more than 15 minutes . . . I found no one suffering torture more than twice.” Prof. Jaime Conterras agreed: “We find when comparing the Spanish Inquisition with other tribunals that the Spanish Inquisition used torture much less. And if we compare the Spanish Inquisition with tribunals in other countries, we find that the Spanish Inquisition has a virtually clean record in respect to torture.”5
— 5 —
The death toll numbers that you have heard are wrong. Flat out wrong.
Protestant preacher Jimmy Swaggart claimed that 20 million people were murdered by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition.6 Another Protestant text, “The Mystery of Babylon Revealed” claims 95 million people were killed during the Inquisition.
Really? 95 million? How is that even possible? It is not until modern times that the population of all of Europe even begins to approach 95 million. The present-day population of France, Spain, and Italy is about 150 million. To kill 95 million during just the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church would have had to kill every man, woman, and child in all of Europe, then import millions more just to kill them too.
In contrast to these claims, modern historians have begun to study the documentary records of the Spanish Inquisition. The archives of the Suprema, today held by the National Historical Archive of Spain (Archivo Histórico Nacional), conserves the annual relations of all inquisition processes between 1560 and 1700 AD. This material provides information about 49,092 judgements which were carefully studied by Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras. They calculate that only 1.9% of those processed were burned at the stake.
You read that right –
According to the historical records, less than 2% of all accused heretics were executed.
García Cárcel estimates that the total number processed by the Spanish Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150,000. Applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560 – 1700 AD (about 2%), the approximate total would be about 3,000 put to death. Even if we take into account variances due to records from other regions and possible variations throughout the rest of the time period, it is highly unlikely that the total death toll would exceed 3,000 – 5,000 executed during the entire 300 year period of the Spanish Inquisition. Henningsen and Contreras also studied the records of 44,674 other cases, finding that 826 resulted in executions in person and 778 were executions in effigy alone – i.e. a straw dummy was burned in place of the person.7
With all of that in mind, it is also important to note:
— 6 —
The Catholic Church executed no one.
That’s right, the Catholic Church never executed a single heretic. The Church did impose punishment on heretics in order to bring them to repentance. Most frequently certain good works were ordered, e.g. the building of a church, the visitation of a church, a pilgrimage, the offering of a candle or a chalice, participation in a crusade, and the like. Other punishments were more severe: fines whose proceeds were devoted to public purposes such as church-building and road-making, whipping with rods during religious services, the pillory, the wearing of colored crosses, and so on.
The hardest penalties were imprisonment, excommunication from the Church, and surrender to the civil authority. “Cum ecclesia” ran the regular expression, “ultra non habeat quod faciat pro suis demeritis contra ipsum, idcirco, eundum reliquimus brachio et iudicio saeculari” — i.e. since the Church can no farther punish his misdeeds, she leaves him to the civil authority.
Officially then, it was never the Catholic Church that sentenced unrepenting heretics to death. Rather, it was the state who determined and carried out the sentence of death. Heretics were traitors to both God and king, and dangerous to the welfare of the kingdom. Therefore, they deserved death. And unlike the Church, the state had no qualms about carrying out this sentence.
— 7 —
The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition
“Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries in western Europe, the Latin Christian Church adapted certain elements of Roman legal procedure and charged papally appointed clergy to employ them in order to preserve orthodox religious beliefs from the attacks of heretics … Between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries … these procedures, personnel and institutions were transformed by polemic and fiction into myth, the myth of The Inquisition. The institutions and the myth lived — and developed – in western Europe and the New World until the early nineteenth century, when most of the inquisitions were abolished, and the myth itself was universalized …
Although the inquisitions disappeared, The Inquisition did not. The myth was originally devised to serve variously the political purposes of a number of early modern political regimes, as well as Protestant Reformers, proponents of religious and civil toleration, philosophical enemies of the civil power of organized religions, and progressive modernists; but the myth remained durable, widely adaptable, and useful, so that in time it came to be woven tightly into the fabric of modern consciousness. So tight is its place in that weave that the myth has been revived in the twentieth century …
Some myths are tougher and more durable than the occasions which first create and employ them. The Inquisition [as myth] was an invention of the religious disputes and political conflicts of the sixteenth century. It was adapted to the causes of religious toleration and philosophical and political enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this process, although it was always anti-Catholic and usually anti-Spanish, it tended to become universalized, until, by the end of the eighteenth century, it had become the representative of all repressive religions that opposed freedom of conscience, political liberty and philosophical enlightenment.
In the United States, far more than in Europe, The Inquisition remained an evil abstraction, sustained by anti-Catholicism and supported by political opposition.”8
In 1994 the BBC broadcast a television documentary entitled, The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition. It is just over 45 minutes long, free to watch on YouTube, and I highly recommend it. Enjoy!
Quote of the Times;
For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” – II Thessalonians 3:10
Link of the Times;
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/10/31/the-decline-and-fall-of-western-culture-in-one-photo/
Cruelty?
"If we could convince the Chinese that Jihadists’ testicles are an aphrodisiac, in 10 years they could be extinct."
*.*
Looking back on my childhood, I'm really thankful that Lincoln Logs were not invented by M.C. Escher.
*.*
Veterans Threaten Michael Moore Over Cartoon Depicting Chris Kyle
FLINT, Mich. — Veterans are threatening violence and murder over a satirical cartoon of American Sniper author Chris Kyle drawn by film director Michael Moore, according to chatter on veteran message boards.
Moore’s illustration, which he released on Twitter, displays Chris Kyle shooting a crippled Iraqi girl in the back as he gives Uncle Sam a handjob on a pile of dollar bills.
“You just can’t question a war hero like Chris Kyle, or the book he wrote to glorify himself, or the movie made by a Hollywood star interpreting that book,” said former Navy SEAL Tom Lancer in one of several hundred “open letters” to Michael Moore. “You have no right to voice an opinion against any of us who defend the Constitution and its immutable freedoms.”
Comments by other veterans range from, “I will beat your ass, Michael Moore,” to “Watch ur back, I’m a sniper.”
Michael Moore, who is currently teaching a military history class on Rules of Engagement at the University of Michigan, said that he never intended to insult Kyle.
“What I posted was a drawing of the sniper that killed my grandfather,” tweeted Moore. Snipers have joined the long list of Moore’s enemies, as his other grandfather was killed by a nutritionist, and his childhood border collie was run over by a logician.
Actor Seth Rogen added thoughtfully to the dialogue. “Michael Moore’s cartoon reminded me of the time your mom gave me and Chris Kyle a handjob,” tweeted Rogen. When thousands responded angrily to his comments, Rogen was surprised. “I said it reminded me of your mom’s handjob, not that it was an accurate depiction. Sheesh,” he replied.
A group of concerned locals from Dearborn, Michigan have already foiled a veteran extremist plot to execute Moore and his colleagues. In response, the citizens of Nigeria gathered by the millions to support the cause of American freedoms and the sanctity of life, as well as sending relief money and armed security guards.
Moore seemed pleased by the threats. “I’m glad I can incite so much anger from people who claim not to care what I think, especially after I have been irrelevant for almost a decade.”
*.*
Oneliners:
A million quarters is a quarter million
After looking at the 1.5 billion pixel image of the Andromeda Galaxy, I realized that we can take a picture of something so big that our minds cannot comprehend it and save it on something so small our minds cannot comprehend it.
If my eyes could see 5 years into the future I would have 2020 vision.
What do centaurs do with their arms when they run.
Somewhere in the bowels of that stadium, Lenny Kravitz is fucking a backup dancer in a foam shark costume.
A "human being" who has died is technically a "human has been"
When my iPhone says "Siri not available" it should be in a voice other than Siri's.
*.*
A completely inebriated man walked into a bar and, after staring for some time at the only woman seated at the bar, walked over to her, placed his hand up her skirt and began fondling her.
She jumped up and slapped him silly. He immediately apologized and explained, "I'm sorry. I thought you were my wife. You look exactly like her."
"Why you drunken, worthless, insufferable asshole!" she screamed.
Funny," he muttered, "you even sound exactly like her."
Issue of the Times;
Redemption Through Cruelty by Theodore Dalrymple
One little phrase in Le Monde’s report of an incident in Nice—in which a man aged 30 called Moussa Coulibaly attacked with a knife three soldiers guarding a Jewish community center—caught my attention: rien de bien méchant, nothing very bad.
It was used in describing his prior record: Coulibaly had been found guilty six times between 2003 and 2012 by French courts of “theft, use of drugs, insulting policemen,” and had received either fines or suspended prison sentences for his rien de bien méchant. Given the percentage of offenses that are actually elucidated in France (as elsewhere), the chances are that he had committed at least ten times as much as he had ever been charged with, and it is also very likely that some of what he had done was a good deal more serious than anything that has come to light. At the very least delinquency was his way of life; and the total amount of harm he did, the misery caused to or inflicted on others, considerable. Rien de bien méchant doesn’t quite capture it, and could only have been written by someone inhabiting so utterly different a social world that he has no idea of the nature of Coulibaly’s.
The trajectory followed by Coulibaly is by now depressingly familiar: so familiar, indeed, that I could have written the outlines of his biography myself merely by having read what he did in Nice. As with many others of his type, his delinquency was followed by religious radicalization that gave to his criminal impulses a patina of moral justification. It not only gave him permission to do bad things, but made them morally obligatory. Could there be any greater pleasure in life than making others suffer for righteousness’s sake? For such as he, and those worse than he, sadism is next to godliness, or even the thing itself.
Coulibaly’s action was probably an instance of the Werther effect that has been known for a long time to those who study suicide. When there is a well-publicized case of suicide there is often a brief increase in the number of suicides afterwards. The effect was first noticed after the publication of Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the young hero killed himself for the sake of forlorn love; and all over Europe young men, who fancied themselves forlorn, followed suit. There is no underestimating the weakness of the human mind.
Coulibaly’s efforts were preceded by those of a Burundian convert to Islam, Bertrand Nzohabonayo, who not long ago entered a police station in a suburb of Tours and stabbed three policemen before being shot dead by a fourth. He, it seems, was responding to a call by a video by ISIS calling on Muslims in France to kill officials of the state by whatever means possible.
The Werther effect is not confined to Muslim converts or radicals, though no doubt such conversion adds to the weak-mindedness of which the effect is a manifestation. Not long ago in the city in which I worked, there were three attacks in quick succession on crowded places by men wielding machetes, the latter two presumably imitating the first. What was also interesting to me was that machetes should be so easily obtained in the city, though it was hardly famous for its sugar cane fields or jungle undergrowth (literal, not metaphorical) where such implements might be genuinely useful or necessary. This reminds me of the interesting fact that in England, where baseball is not played, the sale of baseball bats far exceeds the sale of baseball balls, the bats used for purposes which it does not require much effort of the imagination to guess.
And this is a convenient point to reflect upon the culture—I use the word culture in its anthropological sense—which produced Moussa Coulibaly. Though Le Monde did not mention it, I should be very surprised if he had never evinced an interest in rap music or had never worn the slum costume whose style—another word I use in its anthropological sense—originates in the black ghettos of America. Two of the fashions at least appear to have a carceral origin: the baseball cap worn backwards and the trousers worn at half-mast, as it were. The former was first employed by visitors to prison, who wanted to get nearer to the prisoner whom they were visiting, and the peak of whose cap prevented this so that the cap had to be reversed. The latter was in imitation of prisoners who were allowed no belts in case they were used for suicide (or hanging others), and whose nether garments therefore hung low. I add two caveats: the first that the origin of these two fashions is conjectural, and second that such as Moussa Coulibaly are not necessarily interested in tracing the historical origins of their own tastes, tending to live as they do in an eternal present moment.
Anyway, what is more or less certain is that Coulibaly would have emerged from a swamp of discontent, of thwarted entitlement, or more accurately of a thwarted sense of entitlement. Hardly a day would have gone by without him being told, or hearing somehow or other, that he inhabited the land of les droits de l’homme, of human rights, of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But what would his experience of daily life have been? Armed at huge public expense with the worst education which could possibly be provided over the prolonged period of his childhood and adolescence (an adolescence from which he would never emerge into adulthood), made aware neither of the possibility or necessity of personal effort, his mind filled with ideas and values derived from debased products for consumption by proletarians manufactured by a cynical culture industry, neither obliged or able to earn a living, and aware of the disdain and contempt with which he would be viewed by anyone minimally successful, his mind a bubbling cauldron of inchoate resentment; how wonderful for him to have found a providential—and enjoyable—role and purpose in the world, namely to kill or injure people!
“I’ll give them liberty, equality, and fraternity!” he would have thought (or felt). Because of his sense of entitlement, it would never have occurred to him that he had been fed, watered, housed, schooled, doctored all his life for nothing in return. What is given as an entitlement is not received with gratitude.
So in thinking about our home-grown Islamists, it is not enough to fume at the sheer idiocy and wickedness of their ideas; we should turn our attention inward as well, to our own societies.
Quote of the Times;
“You have the body of a hunter-gatherer but you may well inhabit the environment of a zoo. Which is maybe why you don’t feel brilliant 100% of the time.” – Bate
Link of the Times;
http://www.naturalnews.com/048467_vaccine_industry_intelligent_questions_scientific_principles.html
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Looking back on my childhood, I'm really thankful that Lincoln Logs were not invented by M.C. Escher.
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Veterans Threaten Michael Moore Over Cartoon Depicting Chris Kyle
FLINT, Mich. — Veterans are threatening violence and murder over a satirical cartoon of American Sniper author Chris Kyle drawn by film director Michael Moore, according to chatter on veteran message boards.
Moore’s illustration, which he released on Twitter, displays Chris Kyle shooting a crippled Iraqi girl in the back as he gives Uncle Sam a handjob on a pile of dollar bills.
“You just can’t question a war hero like Chris Kyle, or the book he wrote to glorify himself, or the movie made by a Hollywood star interpreting that book,” said former Navy SEAL Tom Lancer in one of several hundred “open letters” to Michael Moore. “You have no right to voice an opinion against any of us who defend the Constitution and its immutable freedoms.”
Comments by other veterans range from, “I will beat your ass, Michael Moore,” to “Watch ur back, I’m a sniper.”
Michael Moore, who is currently teaching a military history class on Rules of Engagement at the University of Michigan, said that he never intended to insult Kyle.
“What I posted was a drawing of the sniper that killed my grandfather,” tweeted Moore. Snipers have joined the long list of Moore’s enemies, as his other grandfather was killed by a nutritionist, and his childhood border collie was run over by a logician.
Actor Seth Rogen added thoughtfully to the dialogue. “Michael Moore’s cartoon reminded me of the time your mom gave me and Chris Kyle a handjob,” tweeted Rogen. When thousands responded angrily to his comments, Rogen was surprised. “I said it reminded me of your mom’s handjob, not that it was an accurate depiction. Sheesh,” he replied.
A group of concerned locals from Dearborn, Michigan have already foiled a veteran extremist plot to execute Moore and his colleagues. In response, the citizens of Nigeria gathered by the millions to support the cause of American freedoms and the sanctity of life, as well as sending relief money and armed security guards.
Moore seemed pleased by the threats. “I’m glad I can incite so much anger from people who claim not to care what I think, especially after I have been irrelevant for almost a decade.”
*.*
Oneliners:
A million quarters is a quarter million
After looking at the 1.5 billion pixel image of the Andromeda Galaxy, I realized that we can take a picture of something so big that our minds cannot comprehend it and save it on something so small our minds cannot comprehend it.
If my eyes could see 5 years into the future I would have 2020 vision.
What do centaurs do with their arms when they run.
Somewhere in the bowels of that stadium, Lenny Kravitz is fucking a backup dancer in a foam shark costume.
A "human being" who has died is technically a "human has been"
When my iPhone says "Siri not available" it should be in a voice other than Siri's.
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A completely inebriated man walked into a bar and, after staring for some time at the only woman seated at the bar, walked over to her, placed his hand up her skirt and began fondling her.
She jumped up and slapped him silly. He immediately apologized and explained, "I'm sorry. I thought you were my wife. You look exactly like her."
"Why you drunken, worthless, insufferable asshole!" she screamed.
Funny," he muttered, "you even sound exactly like her."
Issue of the Times;
Redemption Through Cruelty by Theodore Dalrymple
One little phrase in Le Monde’s report of an incident in Nice—in which a man aged 30 called Moussa Coulibaly attacked with a knife three soldiers guarding a Jewish community center—caught my attention: rien de bien méchant, nothing very bad.
It was used in describing his prior record: Coulibaly had been found guilty six times between 2003 and 2012 by French courts of “theft, use of drugs, insulting policemen,” and had received either fines or suspended prison sentences for his rien de bien méchant. Given the percentage of offenses that are actually elucidated in France (as elsewhere), the chances are that he had committed at least ten times as much as he had ever been charged with, and it is also very likely that some of what he had done was a good deal more serious than anything that has come to light. At the very least delinquency was his way of life; and the total amount of harm he did, the misery caused to or inflicted on others, considerable. Rien de bien méchant doesn’t quite capture it, and could only have been written by someone inhabiting so utterly different a social world that he has no idea of the nature of Coulibaly’s.
The trajectory followed by Coulibaly is by now depressingly familiar: so familiar, indeed, that I could have written the outlines of his biography myself merely by having read what he did in Nice. As with many others of his type, his delinquency was followed by religious radicalization that gave to his criminal impulses a patina of moral justification. It not only gave him permission to do bad things, but made them morally obligatory. Could there be any greater pleasure in life than making others suffer for righteousness’s sake? For such as he, and those worse than he, sadism is next to godliness, or even the thing itself.
Coulibaly’s action was probably an instance of the Werther effect that has been known for a long time to those who study suicide. When there is a well-publicized case of suicide there is often a brief increase in the number of suicides afterwards. The effect was first noticed after the publication of Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the young hero killed himself for the sake of forlorn love; and all over Europe young men, who fancied themselves forlorn, followed suit. There is no underestimating the weakness of the human mind.
Coulibaly’s efforts were preceded by those of a Burundian convert to Islam, Bertrand Nzohabonayo, who not long ago entered a police station in a suburb of Tours and stabbed three policemen before being shot dead by a fourth. He, it seems, was responding to a call by a video by ISIS calling on Muslims in France to kill officials of the state by whatever means possible.
The Werther effect is not confined to Muslim converts or radicals, though no doubt such conversion adds to the weak-mindedness of which the effect is a manifestation. Not long ago in the city in which I worked, there were three attacks in quick succession on crowded places by men wielding machetes, the latter two presumably imitating the first. What was also interesting to me was that machetes should be so easily obtained in the city, though it was hardly famous for its sugar cane fields or jungle undergrowth (literal, not metaphorical) where such implements might be genuinely useful or necessary. This reminds me of the interesting fact that in England, where baseball is not played, the sale of baseball bats far exceeds the sale of baseball balls, the bats used for purposes which it does not require much effort of the imagination to guess.
And this is a convenient point to reflect upon the culture—I use the word culture in its anthropological sense—which produced Moussa Coulibaly. Though Le Monde did not mention it, I should be very surprised if he had never evinced an interest in rap music or had never worn the slum costume whose style—another word I use in its anthropological sense—originates in the black ghettos of America. Two of the fashions at least appear to have a carceral origin: the baseball cap worn backwards and the trousers worn at half-mast, as it were. The former was first employed by visitors to prison, who wanted to get nearer to the prisoner whom they were visiting, and the peak of whose cap prevented this so that the cap had to be reversed. The latter was in imitation of prisoners who were allowed no belts in case they were used for suicide (or hanging others), and whose nether garments therefore hung low. I add two caveats: the first that the origin of these two fashions is conjectural, and second that such as Moussa Coulibaly are not necessarily interested in tracing the historical origins of their own tastes, tending to live as they do in an eternal present moment.
Anyway, what is more or less certain is that Coulibaly would have emerged from a swamp of discontent, of thwarted entitlement, or more accurately of a thwarted sense of entitlement. Hardly a day would have gone by without him being told, or hearing somehow or other, that he inhabited the land of les droits de l’homme, of human rights, of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But what would his experience of daily life have been? Armed at huge public expense with the worst education which could possibly be provided over the prolonged period of his childhood and adolescence (an adolescence from which he would never emerge into adulthood), made aware neither of the possibility or necessity of personal effort, his mind filled with ideas and values derived from debased products for consumption by proletarians manufactured by a cynical culture industry, neither obliged or able to earn a living, and aware of the disdain and contempt with which he would be viewed by anyone minimally successful, his mind a bubbling cauldron of inchoate resentment; how wonderful for him to have found a providential—and enjoyable—role and purpose in the world, namely to kill or injure people!
“I’ll give them liberty, equality, and fraternity!” he would have thought (or felt). Because of his sense of entitlement, it would never have occurred to him that he had been fed, watered, housed, schooled, doctored all his life for nothing in return. What is given as an entitlement is not received with gratitude.
So in thinking about our home-grown Islamists, it is not enough to fume at the sheer idiocy and wickedness of their ideas; we should turn our attention inward as well, to our own societies.
Quote of the Times;
“You have the body of a hunter-gatherer but you may well inhabit the environment of a zoo. Which is maybe why you don’t feel brilliant 100% of the time.” – Bate
Link of the Times;
http://www.naturalnews.com/048467_vaccine_industry_intelligent_questions_scientific_principles.html
Crusades?
Onliners:
Bear Grylls should take the spoiled rich kids from MTV's My Super Sweet 16 to live in the wild and name the show "Grylls Scouts"
If a pizza has radius 'z' and a thickness of 'a', then its volume can be defined as Pi(z*z)a
Starbucks employees have to work at a business where 100% of the customers have not yet had their cup of morning coffee. Sounds like the most hostile work environment ever. Hats off to those baristas.
If there's ever an X-men movie solely about Mystique, a mirror would make a great movie poster.
There is no difference between counterfeit money and real money until someone realizes it's counterfeit.
I pay every month to get my hair cut, a subscription fee for my hairstyle.
I'm really good at solving Rubik's cubes in reverse.
'Hotness' is the speed limit of soup-eating
I wish I could google smells.
If you took two GoPros, a drone, an Oculus rift, and some programming, you could watch yourself in 3rd-person in real time and control yourself like a Grand Theft Auto character.
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The teacher noticed that Johnny had been daydreaming for a long time. She decided to get his attention. "Johnny," she said, "If the world is 25,000 miles around and eggs are sixty cents a dozen, how old am I?
"Thirty-four," Johnny answered unhesitatingly.
The teacher replied "Well, that's not far from my actual age. Tell me...how did you guess?"
Oh, there's nothing to it," Johnny said. "My big sister is seventeen and she's only half-crazy."
*.*
Fred was telling his friend how his uncle tried to make a new car for himself..."so he took wheels from a Cadillac, a radiator from a Ford, some tires and fenders from a Plymouth..."
"Holy Cow," interrupted his friend, "What did he end up with?"
Fred replied, "Four years with time off for good behavior."
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A man is sitting on his front stoop staring morosely at the ground when his neighbor strolls over.
The neighbor tries to start a conversation several times, but the older man barely responds. Finally, the neighbor asks what the problem is.
"Well," the man says, "I ran afoul of one of those questions women ask. Now I'm in the doghouse."
"What kind of question?" the neighbor asks.
"My wife asked me if I would still love her when she was old, fat and ugly."
"That's easy," says the neighbor. "You just say, 'Of course I will'".
"Yeah," says the other man, "that's what I meant to say. But what came out was, 'Of course I do.'"
*.*
Are you interested in making $$$$ fast?
Try it now!
1) Hold down the shift key.
2) Hit the 4 key four times very quickly
Issue of the Times;
7 Myths About the Crusades by Adam N. Crawford
The Crusades were never referred to as such by their participants.
The original crusaders were known by various terms, including fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of Saint Peter) or milites Christi (knights of Christ). The word “Crusade” is a relatively modern term, from the French croisade and Spanish cruzada. The French form of the word first appears in the L’Histoire des Croisades written by A. de Clermont and published in 1638. It wasn’t until 1750 that the various forms of the word “Crusade” had established themselves in English, French, and German. The origin of the word may be traced to the cross (crux) made of (typically) red cloth and sewn as a badge onto the outer garment of those who took part in these enterprises. This “taking of the cross”, eventually became associated with the entire journey. The crusaders saw themselves as undertaking a journey, or a peregrinate – an armed pilgrimage. Additionally, before the 16th century the words “Muslim” and “Islam” were very rarely used by Europeans. During the Crusades the term widely used for Muslim was Saracen. In Greek and Latin this term had a longer evolution from the beginning of the first millennia where it referred to a people who lived in desert areas around the Roman province of Arabia and who were distinguished from Arabs. The Crusades took place under the direction of the Popes and were all announced by preaching. After pronouncing a solemn vow, each warrior received a cross from the hands of the Pope or his legates, and was thenceforth considered a soldier of the Church. The Crusades were wars undertaken in the name of Christendom, but not primarily for religious reasons.
More wars have been started over religion than for any other reason.
Although this claim is oft repeated, and most often leveled against the Crusades of the Catholic Church, it is patently ridiculous. In their Encyclopedia of Wars, authors Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod attempt a comprehensive listing of wars in history. They document 1763 wars overall, of which an astonishingly low 123 (6.98%) have been classified to involve a religious conflict. However, when one subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23%. William T. Cavanaugh in his Myth of Religious Violence (2009) argues that what is termed “religious wars” is a largely “Western dichotomy”, arguing that virtually all wars that are classified as “religious” have secular (economic or political) ramifications.
The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world.
Again, this is patently ridiculous. Let’s look briefly at just the major Islamic invasions and conquests in the West which proceeded the Crusades:
630 – Muhammad conquers Mecca from his base in Medina.
632 – Muhammad dies in Medina. Islam controls the Hijaz.
636 – Muslims conquest of Syria, and the surrounding lands, all Christian – including Palestine and Iraq.
637 – Muslim Crusaders conquer Iraq (some date it in 635 or 636)
638 – Muslim Crusaders conquer and annex Jerusalem, taking it from the Byzantines.
638 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Iran, except along Caspian Sea.
639 – 642 Muslim Crusaders conquer Egypt.
641 – Muslim Crusaders control Syria and Palestine.
643 – 707 Muslim Crusaders conquer North Africa.
644 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa, and establish Islamic rule in Iran, Afghanistan, and Sind.
673 – 678 Arabs besiege Constantinople, capital of Byzantine Empire
691 – Dome of the Rock is completed in Jerusalem, only six decades after Muhammad’s death.
710 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer the lower Indus Valley.
711 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer Spain and impose the kingdom of Andalus. The Muslim conquest moves into Europe.
718 – Conquest of Spain complete.
732 – Muslim invasion of France is stopped at the Battle of Poitiers / Battle of Tours. The Franks, under their leader Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne), defeat the Muslims and turn them back out of France.
762 – Foundation of Baghdad
785 – Foundation of the Great Mosque of Cordova
789 – Rise of Idrisid amirs (Muslim Crusaders) in Morocco; Christoforos, a Muslim who converted to Christianity, is executed.
800 – Autonomous Aghlabid dynasty (Muslim Crusaders) in Tunisia
807 – Caliph Harun al—Rashid orders the destruction of non-Muslim prayer houses & of the church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem
809 – Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sardinia, Italy
813 – Christians in Palestine are attacked; many flee the country
831 – Muslim Crusaders capture Palermo, Italy; raids in Southern Italy
837 – 901 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sicily, raid Corsica, Italy, France
869 – 883 Revolt of black slaves in Iraq
909 – Rise of the Fatimid Caliphate in Tunisia; these Muslim Crusaders occupy Sicily, Sardinia
928 – 969 Byzantine military revival, they retake old territories, such as Cyprus (964) and Tarsus (969)
937 – The Church of the Resurrection (aka Church of Holy Sepulcher) is burned down by Muslims; more churches in Jerusalem are attacked
960 – Conversion of Qarakhanid Turks to Islam 969 – Fatimids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Egypt and found Cairo
973 – Israel and southern Syria are again conquered by the Fatimids
1003 – First persecutions by al—Hakim; the Church of St. Mark in Fustat, Egypt, is destroyed
1009 – Destruction of the Church of the Resurrection by al—Hakim (see 937)
1012 – Beginning of al—Hakim’s oppressive decrees against Jews and Christians
1050 – Creation of Almoravid (Muslim Crusaders) movement in Mauretania; Almoravids (aka Murabitun) are coalition of western Saharan Berbers; followers of Islam, focusing on the Quran, the hadith, and Maliki law.
1071 – Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk Turks (Muslim Crusaders) defeat Byzantines and occupy much of Anatolia 1071 – Turks (Muslim Crusaders) invade Palestine
1073 – Conquest of Jerusalem by Turks (Muslim Crusaders)
1075 – Seljuks (Muslim Crusaders) capture Nicea (Iznik) and make it their capital in Anatolia
1076 – Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) conquer western Ghana
1086 – Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) send help to Andalus, Battle of Zallaca
1090 – 1091 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) occupy all of Andalus except Saragossa and Balearic Islands
1094 – Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I asks western Christendom for help against Seljuk (Muslim Turks) invasions of his territory
1095 – Pope Urban II preaches first Crusade; they capture Jerusalem in 1099
In other words, by the end of the eleventh century the forces of Islam had captured fully two-thirds of the Christian world. And these were not merely areas at the periphery of the Christian world, but rather places which represented the very origin of the Christian communities – their heart and soul. Palestine, the home of Jesus Christ, where He was born, conducted His ministry, died and was resurrected; Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism and home to countless Saints and theologians such as St. Anthony, St. Cyprian and St. Augustine; Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted the seeds of the first Christian communities.
Far from being unprovoked, then, the Crusades actually represent the first great western Christian counterattack against the Muslim attacks which had taken place continually from the inception of Islam until the eleventh century, and which continued on thereafter, mostly unabated. Three of Christianity’s five primary episcopal sees (Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) had been captured in the seventh century; both of the others (Rome and Constantinople) had been attacked in the centuries before the crusades. (The latter would be captured in 1453, leaving only one of the five -Rome- in Christian hands by 1500.) At some point what was left of the Christian world would have to defend itself or simply succumb to Islamic conquest. St. Augustine has articulated a Christian approach to the concept of just war, one in which legitimate authorities could use violence to halt or avert a greater evil. It must be a defensive war, in reaction to an act of aggression. For Christians, therefore, violence was ethically neutral, since it could be employed either for evil or against it. When the First Crusade was called by Pope Urban II in 1095 in response to an urgent plea for help from the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, it was Urban calling the knights of Christendom to come to the aid of their eastern brethren. It was to be an errand of mercy, liberating the Christians of the East from their Muslim conquerors. The Crusades all met the criteria for just wars, and it is largely due to this defense of Christendom and the Western world that you and I don’t speak Aramaic today and require our women to wear burqas.
Christians attacked Muslims without provocation to seize their lands and forcibly convert them.
We’ve already dealt with the unprovoked assertion above, but some will respond that the Crusades rather than being defensive and just wars, were instead wars of retaliation and revenge. That the goal of the crusaders was to seize Muslim lands and forcibly convert them. To put the question in perspective, one need only consider how many times Christian forces have attacked either Mecca or Medina. The answer, of course, is never. It has however become common practice to equate the forcible conversions of the Islamic conquests with the Catholic Crusades, as if to suggest that there is a similarity between the coerced conversions of Islam and the activities of the crusaders. Nothing could be further from the truth. Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that none of the Christian military orders fighting the Muslims sought to impose baptism by force. Certainly, the crusaders did not object to using military force to establish conditions conducive to the peaceful conversion of Muslims, but that is a different matter altogether.
We can see an example of how military conquest created the conditions conducive to peaceful conversion in an anonymous pamphlet from 1260 entitled De constructione castri Saphet, which argued that the building of a castle in conquered Muslim territory meant that “the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ can be preached freely in all the aforesaid places [in the region of Safed] and the blasphemy of Muhammad can be publicly refuted and demolished in sermons.” A perfect example of this is Pope Alexander III ’ s confirmation of the Order of Santiago, issued in 1175, which contains the injunction: “in their warfare they should devote themselves to this objective alone, namely either to protect Christians from their [the Saracens ’] attacks or to be in a position to induce them [the Saracens] to follow the Christian faith.” The latter clause, “be in a position to induce them to follow the Christian faith”, does not refer to forcible conversion, but rather an ideal situation in which Christian military dominance paves the way for peaceable evangelization by Christian missionaries. In contrast, the Islamic religion has always been advanced at the point of a sword. “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”5 Those who are conquered are given a simple choice. For those who are not People of the Book — in other words, those who are not Christians or Jews — the choice is convert to Islam or die. For those who are People of the Book, the choice is submit to Muslim rule and Islamic law or die. The expansion of Islam, therefore, was always directly linked to the military successes of jihad.
The Crusades however, were something very different. From its beginnings Christianity has always forbidden coerced conversion of any kind. Conversion by the sword, therefore, was not possible for Christianity. Unlike jihad, the purpose of the Crusades was neither to expand the Christian world nor to expand Christianity through forced conversions. In a nutshell, therefore, the major difference between Crusade and jihad is that the former was a defense against the latter, not an attempt to seize Muslim lands or acquire new converts.
The Crusaders were motivated by greed and the pursuit of Muslim lands and fortunes.
We’ve already dealt with the myth of Crusaders seeking to acquire Muslim lands, but during the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have verified that crusading knights were indeed generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap; even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade.
As Fred Cazel has noted, “Few crusaders had sufficient cash both to pay their obligations at home and to support themselves decently on a crusade.” From the very beginning, financial considerations played a major role in crusade planning. The early crusaders sold off so many of their possessions to finance their expeditions that they caused widespread inflation. Although later crusaders took this into account and began saving money long before they set out, the expense was still nearly prohibitive.
So why did these crusaders set out on these “armed pilgrimages?” Largely due to sermons which were preached in order to convince the crusaders to participate in these ventures. Crusade sermons were replete with warnings that crusading brought deprivation, suffering, and often death. As Jonathan Riley-Smith has noted, crusade preachers “had to persuade their listeners to commit themselves to enterprises that would disrupt their lives, possibly impoverish and even kill or maim them, and inconvenience their families, the support of which they would . . . need if they were to fulfill their promises.” The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (Bampton Lectures in America)
In other words, they did so not because they expected to gain material wealth (which many of them already had), but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Far from being a materialistic enterprise, crusading was impractical in worldly terms, but valuable for one’s soul. I won’t take time here to explore the doctrine of penance as it developed in late antiquity and the medieval world, but suffice it to say that the willing acceptance of difficulty and suffering was viewed (and still is, in Catholic doctrine today) as a useful way to purify one’s soul.
Europe is littered with literally thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments – charters in which these men still speak to us today if we are willing to listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing plunder if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing. “Crusading,” as Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith has rightly argued, was also understood as an “an act of love”—in this case, the love of one’s neighbor. The Crusade was seen as an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. As Pope Innocent III wrote to the Knights Templar, “You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.'”
Despite the fact that money did not yet play a major role in Western European economies in the eleventh century, there was “a heavy and persistent flow of money” from West to East as a result of the Crusades, and the financial demands of crusading caused “profound economic and monetary changes in both western Europe and the Levant.” In short: very few people became rich by crusading, and their numbers were dwarfed by those who were bankrupted.
When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred every man, woman and child in the city until the streets ran ankle deep with the blood.
So, let’s be clear. Atrocities were committed during the Crusades. The Crusades were wars, and as the old saying goes, “War is hell.” But, let’s also be clear. The above quote is pure hyperbole. No historian accepts it as anything other than literary convention. Jerusalem is a big town, and the amount of blood necessary to fill the streets to a continuous and running three-inch depth would require many, many more people than those which lived in the region, let alone the city. Also, the cities defenders had resisted right up to the end. They calculated that the formidable walls of the city would keep the crusaders at bay until a relief force from Egypt could arrive. They were wrong. When the city fell, therefore, it was put to the sack. Many were killed, yet many others were ransomed or allowed to go free. It is worth noting that in those Muslim cities that surrendered to the crusaders the people were left unmolested, retained their property and were allowed to worship freely.
But, atrocities were committed. Let’s face it, mistakes were going to be made. Have you ever known of a war where they weren’t? How about seven wars over almost two hundred years? Of course there were things done which were reprehensible. But what is really shocking is just how relatively few horrific incidents can be pointed to over such a lengthy time frame involving multiple wars. However, in the interest of fairness here are a couple of prime examples.
During the First Crusade a large band of riffraff, not associated with the main army, descended on the towns of the Rhineland and decided to rob and kill the Jews they found there. In part this was pure greed. In part it also stemmed from the incorrect belief that the Jews, as the crucifiers of Christ, were legitimate targets of the war. Pope Urban II and subsequent popes strongly condemned these attacks on Jews. Local bishops and other clergy and laity attempted to defend the Jews, although with limited success. Similarly, during the opening phase of the Second Crusade a group of renegades killed many Jews in Germany before St. Bernard was able to catch up to them and put a stop to it.
The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and sacked the Orthodox Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. This is seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, and a key turning point in the decline of the empire and of Christianity in the Near East, leaving Pope Innocent III to lament, “How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, who made their swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they have spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex. They have committed incest, adultery, and fornication before the eyes of men. They have exposed both matrons and virgins, even those dedicated to God, to the sordid lusts of boys. Not satisfied with breaking open the imperial treasury and plundering the goods of princes and lesser men, they also laid their hands on the treasures of the churches and, what is more serious, on their very possessions. They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics.”9
These relatively isolated incidents were universally condemned by the Popes and the Catholic Church and they should not be confused with the initial reasons for the Crusades – in the same way that individual atrocities committed by a small number of World War II soldiers didn’t change the necessary reasons for which the United States went to war in the first place.
Saint Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades.
John Paul II never actually apologized for the Crusades. The closest he came was on March 12, 2000, the “Day of Pardon.” During his homily he said: “We cannot fail to recognize the infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second millennium. Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among Christians, for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken toward the followers of other religions.” It is true that John Paul apologized to the Greeks for the Fourth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople in 1204, but even the Pope of that time, Innocent III, expressed similar regret as we have seen above.
Quote of the Times;
“Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own.” - Bardot
Link of the Times;
http://www.theartofselfhood.com/
Bear Grylls should take the spoiled rich kids from MTV's My Super Sweet 16 to live in the wild and name the show "Grylls Scouts"
If a pizza has radius 'z' and a thickness of 'a', then its volume can be defined as Pi(z*z)a
Starbucks employees have to work at a business where 100% of the customers have not yet had their cup of morning coffee. Sounds like the most hostile work environment ever. Hats off to those baristas.
If there's ever an X-men movie solely about Mystique, a mirror would make a great movie poster.
There is no difference between counterfeit money and real money until someone realizes it's counterfeit.
I pay every month to get my hair cut, a subscription fee for my hairstyle.
I'm really good at solving Rubik's cubes in reverse.
'Hotness' is the speed limit of soup-eating
I wish I could google smells.
If you took two GoPros, a drone, an Oculus rift, and some programming, you could watch yourself in 3rd-person in real time and control yourself like a Grand Theft Auto character.
*.*
The teacher noticed that Johnny had been daydreaming for a long time. She decided to get his attention. "Johnny," she said, "If the world is 25,000 miles around and eggs are sixty cents a dozen, how old am I?
"Thirty-four," Johnny answered unhesitatingly.
The teacher replied "Well, that's not far from my actual age. Tell me...how did you guess?"
Oh, there's nothing to it," Johnny said. "My big sister is seventeen and she's only half-crazy."
*.*
Fred was telling his friend how his uncle tried to make a new car for himself..."so he took wheels from a Cadillac, a radiator from a Ford, some tires and fenders from a Plymouth..."
"Holy Cow," interrupted his friend, "What did he end up with?"
Fred replied, "Four years with time off for good behavior."
*.*
A man is sitting on his front stoop staring morosely at the ground when his neighbor strolls over.
The neighbor tries to start a conversation several times, but the older man barely responds. Finally, the neighbor asks what the problem is.
"Well," the man says, "I ran afoul of one of those questions women ask. Now I'm in the doghouse."
"What kind of question?" the neighbor asks.
"My wife asked me if I would still love her when she was old, fat and ugly."
"That's easy," says the neighbor. "You just say, 'Of course I will'".
"Yeah," says the other man, "that's what I meant to say. But what came out was, 'Of course I do.'"
*.*
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Issue of the Times;
7 Myths About the Crusades by Adam N. Crawford
The Crusades were never referred to as such by their participants.
The original crusaders were known by various terms, including fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of Saint Peter) or milites Christi (knights of Christ). The word “Crusade” is a relatively modern term, from the French croisade and Spanish cruzada. The French form of the word first appears in the L’Histoire des Croisades written by A. de Clermont and published in 1638. It wasn’t until 1750 that the various forms of the word “Crusade” had established themselves in English, French, and German. The origin of the word may be traced to the cross (crux) made of (typically) red cloth and sewn as a badge onto the outer garment of those who took part in these enterprises. This “taking of the cross”, eventually became associated with the entire journey. The crusaders saw themselves as undertaking a journey, or a peregrinate – an armed pilgrimage. Additionally, before the 16th century the words “Muslim” and “Islam” were very rarely used by Europeans. During the Crusades the term widely used for Muslim was Saracen. In Greek and Latin this term had a longer evolution from the beginning of the first millennia where it referred to a people who lived in desert areas around the Roman province of Arabia and who were distinguished from Arabs. The Crusades took place under the direction of the Popes and were all announced by preaching. After pronouncing a solemn vow, each warrior received a cross from the hands of the Pope or his legates, and was thenceforth considered a soldier of the Church. The Crusades were wars undertaken in the name of Christendom, but not primarily for religious reasons.
More wars have been started over religion than for any other reason.
Although this claim is oft repeated, and most often leveled against the Crusades of the Catholic Church, it is patently ridiculous. In their Encyclopedia of Wars, authors Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod attempt a comprehensive listing of wars in history. They document 1763 wars overall, of which an astonishingly low 123 (6.98%) have been classified to involve a religious conflict. However, when one subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23%. William T. Cavanaugh in his Myth of Religious Violence (2009) argues that what is termed “religious wars” is a largely “Western dichotomy”, arguing that virtually all wars that are classified as “religious” have secular (economic or political) ramifications.
The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world.
Again, this is patently ridiculous. Let’s look briefly at just the major Islamic invasions and conquests in the West which proceeded the Crusades:
630 – Muhammad conquers Mecca from his base in Medina.
632 – Muhammad dies in Medina. Islam controls the Hijaz.
636 – Muslims conquest of Syria, and the surrounding lands, all Christian – including Palestine and Iraq.
637 – Muslim Crusaders conquer Iraq (some date it in 635 or 636)
638 – Muslim Crusaders conquer and annex Jerusalem, taking it from the Byzantines.
638 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Iran, except along Caspian Sea.
639 – 642 Muslim Crusaders conquer Egypt.
641 – Muslim Crusaders control Syria and Palestine.
643 – 707 Muslim Crusaders conquer North Africa.
644 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa, and establish Islamic rule in Iran, Afghanistan, and Sind.
673 – 678 Arabs besiege Constantinople, capital of Byzantine Empire
691 – Dome of the Rock is completed in Jerusalem, only six decades after Muhammad’s death.
710 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer the lower Indus Valley.
711 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer Spain and impose the kingdom of Andalus. The Muslim conquest moves into Europe.
718 – Conquest of Spain complete.
732 – Muslim invasion of France is stopped at the Battle of Poitiers / Battle of Tours. The Franks, under their leader Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne), defeat the Muslims and turn them back out of France.
762 – Foundation of Baghdad
785 – Foundation of the Great Mosque of Cordova
789 – Rise of Idrisid amirs (Muslim Crusaders) in Morocco; Christoforos, a Muslim who converted to Christianity, is executed.
800 – Autonomous Aghlabid dynasty (Muslim Crusaders) in Tunisia
807 – Caliph Harun al—Rashid orders the destruction of non-Muslim prayer houses & of the church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem
809 – Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sardinia, Italy
813 – Christians in Palestine are attacked; many flee the country
831 – Muslim Crusaders capture Palermo, Italy; raids in Southern Italy
837 – 901 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sicily, raid Corsica, Italy, France
869 – 883 Revolt of black slaves in Iraq
909 – Rise of the Fatimid Caliphate in Tunisia; these Muslim Crusaders occupy Sicily, Sardinia
928 – 969 Byzantine military revival, they retake old territories, such as Cyprus (964) and Tarsus (969)
937 – The Church of the Resurrection (aka Church of Holy Sepulcher) is burned down by Muslims; more churches in Jerusalem are attacked
960 – Conversion of Qarakhanid Turks to Islam 969 – Fatimids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Egypt and found Cairo
973 – Israel and southern Syria are again conquered by the Fatimids
1003 – First persecutions by al—Hakim; the Church of St. Mark in Fustat, Egypt, is destroyed
1009 – Destruction of the Church of the Resurrection by al—Hakim (see 937)
1012 – Beginning of al—Hakim’s oppressive decrees against Jews and Christians
1050 – Creation of Almoravid (Muslim Crusaders) movement in Mauretania; Almoravids (aka Murabitun) are coalition of western Saharan Berbers; followers of Islam, focusing on the Quran, the hadith, and Maliki law.
1071 – Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk Turks (Muslim Crusaders) defeat Byzantines and occupy much of Anatolia 1071 – Turks (Muslim Crusaders) invade Palestine
1073 – Conquest of Jerusalem by Turks (Muslim Crusaders)
1075 – Seljuks (Muslim Crusaders) capture Nicea (Iznik) and make it their capital in Anatolia
1076 – Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) conquer western Ghana
1086 – Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) send help to Andalus, Battle of Zallaca
1090 – 1091 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) occupy all of Andalus except Saragossa and Balearic Islands
1094 – Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I asks western Christendom for help against Seljuk (Muslim Turks) invasions of his territory
1095 – Pope Urban II preaches first Crusade; they capture Jerusalem in 1099
In other words, by the end of the eleventh century the forces of Islam had captured fully two-thirds of the Christian world. And these were not merely areas at the periphery of the Christian world, but rather places which represented the very origin of the Christian communities – their heart and soul. Palestine, the home of Jesus Christ, where He was born, conducted His ministry, died and was resurrected; Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism and home to countless Saints and theologians such as St. Anthony, St. Cyprian and St. Augustine; Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted the seeds of the first Christian communities.
Far from being unprovoked, then, the Crusades actually represent the first great western Christian counterattack against the Muslim attacks which had taken place continually from the inception of Islam until the eleventh century, and which continued on thereafter, mostly unabated. Three of Christianity’s five primary episcopal sees (Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) had been captured in the seventh century; both of the others (Rome and Constantinople) had been attacked in the centuries before the crusades. (The latter would be captured in 1453, leaving only one of the five -Rome- in Christian hands by 1500.) At some point what was left of the Christian world would have to defend itself or simply succumb to Islamic conquest. St. Augustine has articulated a Christian approach to the concept of just war, one in which legitimate authorities could use violence to halt or avert a greater evil. It must be a defensive war, in reaction to an act of aggression. For Christians, therefore, violence was ethically neutral, since it could be employed either for evil or against it. When the First Crusade was called by Pope Urban II in 1095 in response to an urgent plea for help from the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, it was Urban calling the knights of Christendom to come to the aid of their eastern brethren. It was to be an errand of mercy, liberating the Christians of the East from their Muslim conquerors. The Crusades all met the criteria for just wars, and it is largely due to this defense of Christendom and the Western world that you and I don’t speak Aramaic today and require our women to wear burqas.
Christians attacked Muslims without provocation to seize their lands and forcibly convert them.
We’ve already dealt with the unprovoked assertion above, but some will respond that the Crusades rather than being defensive and just wars, were instead wars of retaliation and revenge. That the goal of the crusaders was to seize Muslim lands and forcibly convert them. To put the question in perspective, one need only consider how many times Christian forces have attacked either Mecca or Medina. The answer, of course, is never. It has however become common practice to equate the forcible conversions of the Islamic conquests with the Catholic Crusades, as if to suggest that there is a similarity between the coerced conversions of Islam and the activities of the crusaders. Nothing could be further from the truth. Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that none of the Christian military orders fighting the Muslims sought to impose baptism by force. Certainly, the crusaders did not object to using military force to establish conditions conducive to the peaceful conversion of Muslims, but that is a different matter altogether.
We can see an example of how military conquest created the conditions conducive to peaceful conversion in an anonymous pamphlet from 1260 entitled De constructione castri Saphet, which argued that the building of a castle in conquered Muslim territory meant that “the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ can be preached freely in all the aforesaid places [in the region of Safed] and the blasphemy of Muhammad can be publicly refuted and demolished in sermons.” A perfect example of this is Pope Alexander III ’ s confirmation of the Order of Santiago, issued in 1175, which contains the injunction: “in their warfare they should devote themselves to this objective alone, namely either to protect Christians from their [the Saracens ’] attacks or to be in a position to induce them [the Saracens] to follow the Christian faith.” The latter clause, “be in a position to induce them to follow the Christian faith”, does not refer to forcible conversion, but rather an ideal situation in which Christian military dominance paves the way for peaceable evangelization by Christian missionaries. In contrast, the Islamic religion has always been advanced at the point of a sword. “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”5 Those who are conquered are given a simple choice. For those who are not People of the Book — in other words, those who are not Christians or Jews — the choice is convert to Islam or die. For those who are People of the Book, the choice is submit to Muslim rule and Islamic law or die. The expansion of Islam, therefore, was always directly linked to the military successes of jihad.
The Crusades however, were something very different. From its beginnings Christianity has always forbidden coerced conversion of any kind. Conversion by the sword, therefore, was not possible for Christianity. Unlike jihad, the purpose of the Crusades was neither to expand the Christian world nor to expand Christianity through forced conversions. In a nutshell, therefore, the major difference between Crusade and jihad is that the former was a defense against the latter, not an attempt to seize Muslim lands or acquire new converts.
The Crusaders were motivated by greed and the pursuit of Muslim lands and fortunes.
We’ve already dealt with the myth of Crusaders seeking to acquire Muslim lands, but during the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have verified that crusading knights were indeed generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap; even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade.
As Fred Cazel has noted, “Few crusaders had sufficient cash both to pay their obligations at home and to support themselves decently on a crusade.” From the very beginning, financial considerations played a major role in crusade planning. The early crusaders sold off so many of their possessions to finance their expeditions that they caused widespread inflation. Although later crusaders took this into account and began saving money long before they set out, the expense was still nearly prohibitive.
So why did these crusaders set out on these “armed pilgrimages?” Largely due to sermons which were preached in order to convince the crusaders to participate in these ventures. Crusade sermons were replete with warnings that crusading brought deprivation, suffering, and often death. As Jonathan Riley-Smith has noted, crusade preachers “had to persuade their listeners to commit themselves to enterprises that would disrupt their lives, possibly impoverish and even kill or maim them, and inconvenience their families, the support of which they would . . . need if they were to fulfill their promises.” The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (Bampton Lectures in America)
In other words, they did so not because they expected to gain material wealth (which many of them already had), but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Far from being a materialistic enterprise, crusading was impractical in worldly terms, but valuable for one’s soul. I won’t take time here to explore the doctrine of penance as it developed in late antiquity and the medieval world, but suffice it to say that the willing acceptance of difficulty and suffering was viewed (and still is, in Catholic doctrine today) as a useful way to purify one’s soul.
Europe is littered with literally thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments – charters in which these men still speak to us today if we are willing to listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing plunder if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing. “Crusading,” as Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith has rightly argued, was also understood as an “an act of love”—in this case, the love of one’s neighbor. The Crusade was seen as an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. As Pope Innocent III wrote to the Knights Templar, “You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.'”
Despite the fact that money did not yet play a major role in Western European economies in the eleventh century, there was “a heavy and persistent flow of money” from West to East as a result of the Crusades, and the financial demands of crusading caused “profound economic and monetary changes in both western Europe and the Levant.” In short: very few people became rich by crusading, and their numbers were dwarfed by those who were bankrupted.
When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred every man, woman and child in the city until the streets ran ankle deep with the blood.
So, let’s be clear. Atrocities were committed during the Crusades. The Crusades were wars, and as the old saying goes, “War is hell.” But, let’s also be clear. The above quote is pure hyperbole. No historian accepts it as anything other than literary convention. Jerusalem is a big town, and the amount of blood necessary to fill the streets to a continuous and running three-inch depth would require many, many more people than those which lived in the region, let alone the city. Also, the cities defenders had resisted right up to the end. They calculated that the formidable walls of the city would keep the crusaders at bay until a relief force from Egypt could arrive. They were wrong. When the city fell, therefore, it was put to the sack. Many were killed, yet many others were ransomed or allowed to go free. It is worth noting that in those Muslim cities that surrendered to the crusaders the people were left unmolested, retained their property and were allowed to worship freely.
But, atrocities were committed. Let’s face it, mistakes were going to be made. Have you ever known of a war where they weren’t? How about seven wars over almost two hundred years? Of course there were things done which were reprehensible. But what is really shocking is just how relatively few horrific incidents can be pointed to over such a lengthy time frame involving multiple wars. However, in the interest of fairness here are a couple of prime examples.
During the First Crusade a large band of riffraff, not associated with the main army, descended on the towns of the Rhineland and decided to rob and kill the Jews they found there. In part this was pure greed. In part it also stemmed from the incorrect belief that the Jews, as the crucifiers of Christ, were legitimate targets of the war. Pope Urban II and subsequent popes strongly condemned these attacks on Jews. Local bishops and other clergy and laity attempted to defend the Jews, although with limited success. Similarly, during the opening phase of the Second Crusade a group of renegades killed many Jews in Germany before St. Bernard was able to catch up to them and put a stop to it.
The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and sacked the Orthodox Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. This is seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, and a key turning point in the decline of the empire and of Christianity in the Near East, leaving Pope Innocent III to lament, “How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, who made their swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they have spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex. They have committed incest, adultery, and fornication before the eyes of men. They have exposed both matrons and virgins, even those dedicated to God, to the sordid lusts of boys. Not satisfied with breaking open the imperial treasury and plundering the goods of princes and lesser men, they also laid their hands on the treasures of the churches and, what is more serious, on their very possessions. They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics.”9
These relatively isolated incidents were universally condemned by the Popes and the Catholic Church and they should not be confused with the initial reasons for the Crusades – in the same way that individual atrocities committed by a small number of World War II soldiers didn’t change the necessary reasons for which the United States went to war in the first place.
Saint Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades.
John Paul II never actually apologized for the Crusades. The closest he came was on March 12, 2000, the “Day of Pardon.” During his homily he said: “We cannot fail to recognize the infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second millennium. Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among Christians, for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken toward the followers of other religions.” It is true that John Paul apologized to the Greeks for the Fourth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople in 1204, but even the Pope of that time, Innocent III, expressed similar regret as we have seen above.
Quote of the Times;
“Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own.” - Bardot
Link of the Times;
http://www.theartofselfhood.com/
Several animals were savagely beaten in the making of this page, including but not limited to; kittens, rabbits, zebu, skunks, puppies, and platypus. Also several monkeys where force fed crack to improve their typing skills.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.