Debunking Romantic Ideas About the Past

[Hervé]

Pollution in Pre-Industrial Europe (https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1745)

Marian L. Tupy Humanprogress.org (https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1745)
Tue, 02 Apr 2019 12:05 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s25/516409/large/1600s_London.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s25/516409/full/1600s_London.jpg)


Last week, I wrote (https://capx.co/the-romantic-idea-of-a-plentiful-past-is-pure-fantasy/) about Jason Hickel's romantic idea that people in the past "lived well" with little or no monetary income. I noted that prior to the Industrial Revolution, clothing was immensely expensive and uncomfortable. The cotton mills changed all that.

As a French historian noted in 1846, "Machine production...brings within the reach of the poor a world of useful objects, even luxurious and artistic objects, which they could never reach before."

Today, I wish to turn to pollution. It is well known that industrialization helped to pollute the environment, but that does not mean that air and water were clean before factories and mills came along! Compared to today, our ancestors had to endure horrific environmental conditions.

Let's start with air quality. In the 17th century London, Claire Tomalin observed in Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, "Every household burnt coal ... The smoke from their chimneys made the air dark, covering every surface with sooty grime. There were days when a cloud of smoke half a mile high and twenty miles wide could be seen over the city ... Londoners spat black."

In a similar vein, Carlo Cipolla in his book Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy 1000-1700, quotes from the diary of British writer John Evelyn, who wrote in 1661: "In London we see people walk and converse pursued and haunted by that infernal smoake. The inhabitants breathe nothing but an impure and thick mist, accompanied by a fuliginous and filthy vapour ... corrupting the lungs and disordering the entire habit of their bodies."

The streets were just as dirty. John Harrington invented the toilet in 1596, but bathrooms remained rare luxuries two hundred years later. Chamber pots continued to be emptied into streets, turning them into sewers. To make matters worse, even large towns continued to engage in husbandry well into the 18th century. As Fernand Braudel noted in The Structures of Everyday Life, "Pigs were reared in freedom in the streets. And the streets were so dirty and muddy that they had to be crossed on stilts."

Lawrence Stone observed in The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 that "In towns in the eighteenth century, the city ditches, now often filled with stagnant water, were commonly used as latrines; butchers killed animals in their shops and threw the offal of the carcases into the streets; dead animals were left to decay and fester where they lay; latrine pits were dug close to wells, thus contaminating the water supply. Decomposing bodies of the rich in burial vaults beneath the church often stank out parson and congregation."

A "special problem" in London, Stone wrote, was the "poor holes" or "large, deep, open pits in which were laid the bodies of the poor, side by side, row by row. Only when the pit was filled with bodies was it finally covered with earth." As one contemporary writer, whom Stone quotes, observed, "How noisome the stench is that arises from these holes." Furthermore, "great quantities of human excrement were cast into the streets at night ... It was also dumped into on the surrounding highways and ditches so that visitors to or from the city 'are forced to stop their noses to avoid the ill smell.'"

According to Stone, "The result of these primitive sanitary conditions was constant outbursts of bacterial stomach infections, the most fearful of all being dysentery, which swept away many victims of both sexes and of all ages within a few hours or days. Stomach disorders of one kind or another where chronic, due to poorly balanced diet among the rich, and the consumption of rotten and insufficient food among the poor."

Then there was "the prevalence of intestinal worms," which is "a slow, disgusting and debilitating disease that caused a vast amount of human misery and ill health ... In the many poorly drained marshy areas, recurrent malarial fevers were common and debilitating diseases ... [and] perhaps even more heart-breaking was the slow, inexorable, destructive power of tuberculosis."

The situation was no better on the European mainland. In the middle of the 17th century, Queen Anne of Austria and mother of Louis XIV noted that "Paris is a horrible place and ill smelling. The streets are so mephitic that one cannot linger there because of the stench of rotting meat and fish and because of a crowd of people who urinate in the streets."

In the 19th century, pollution remained a problem. In Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England, Judith Flanders noted Waldo Emerson's observation that "no one ... [in England] wore white because it was impossible to keep it clean." According to Flanders, hair brushes looked "black after once using" and tablecloths were laid just before eating, "as otherwise dust settled from the fire and they became dingy in a matter of hours."

In 1858, the stench from the River Thames was so bad that "the curtains on the river side of the building were soaked in lime chloride to overcome the smell". The effort was unsuccessful, with Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once fleeing a committee room "with a mass of papers in one hand, and with his pocket handkerchief applied to his nose," because the stench was so bad. He called the river "a Stygian pool, reeking with ineffable and intolerable horrors."

Keep in mind that even after the Industrial Revolution had begun, much of the pollution was still non-industrial. Henry Mayhew, an English social researcher and journalist, found that the Thames contained "ingredients from breweries, gasworks, and chemical and mineral manufactories; dead dogs, cats, and kittens, fats, offal from slaughterhouses; street-pavement dirt of every variety; vegetable refuse; stable-dung; the refuse of pig-styes; night-soil; ashes; tin kettles and pans ... broken stoneware, jars, pitchers, flower-pots, etc.; pieces of wood; rotten mortar and rubbish of different kinds."

There can be no doubt that industrialisation did great damage to the environment during the second half of the 19th century. But it also created wealth that allowed advanced societies to build better sanitation facilities, and spurred the creation of an enlightened populace with a historically unprecedented concern over the environment and a willingness to pay for its stewardship through higher taxation.

Fast-forward to 2015 and the BBC reported "more than 2,000 seals have been spotted in the Thames over the past decade ... along with hundreds of porpoises and dolphins and even the odd stray whale ... There are now 125 species of fish in the Thames, up from almost none in the 1950s." Similarly, average concentrations of suspended particulate matter in London rose from 390 in 1800 to a peak of 623 in 1891, before falling to 16 micrograms per cubic meters in 2016. Today, air in the capital of the United Kingdom ranks as one of the cleanest among the world's major cities.

Contemporary evidence clearly shows that the lives of many Western Europeans before industrialisation were, at least by today's standards, deeply unpleasant. It would be a stretch to conclude that they have "lived well."

[MorningFox]

Yes, it's rather funny, the millennial vitriol at the modern world. They think everything is getting worse when in fact it is the complete opposite. We live, in general, better lives now than we have for at least the last few thousand years. People are becoming more awake and aware, more full of love and empathy, more ethical and moral, less violent. Living conditions are getting better every day. Access to healthcare and knowledge is becoming more available every single day. We're living in the most peaceful era in recorded human history. The grass is always greener.

Yes, the forces that are in control here are quite clearly, desperately trying what they can to fight against this positive human progression, but as far as I'm concerned that is what we are here for. To experience the fight. To experience the yin and the yang. The good and the bad. As far as I believe; that will never change *here* because that's what *here* is.... a world of duality. Certainly in my experience of the world, things are getting better, people are waking up and wanting to take back power and responsibility for their own lives.

[Cardillac]

@Herve

and what kind of stench did the colonists smell when they reeked native Americans?

Larry

[shaberon]

No one burned much coal from the distant past, that mostly depended on child labor from sort of pre-industrial times. This is a little disingenuous as if "the past" was 15-1600.

The clean part of Europe was Islamic Spain. Most other places were pretty cramped in terms of sewage.

However I think the underlying question is a good one, in what ways was the past cleaner and better, or in what ways it was nasty,brutish, and short. The real shame though is that with all our greater knowledge base, increased capacity, and so forth, we still collectively don't do a very good job. Even the first major municipal waterworks in Chicago re-rerouted the drainage back into the same lake near the intake, and so bath water became "chowder" full of dead fish. Over the next 50 years or so I would however credit the U. S. with at least the ability to set up a functional water system.

Most of the success is from basic soap and bleach, not vaccines.

Away from the cities, not that much had probably changed. Industrialization moved most everyone off farms into cities and flipped everything around from like 5% urban to 5% agricultural. If you can see this, then it starts the way industrialized war machines work. This dirt and health issue is much alike the fact that man inside is coal.

From what I understand, my ancestors left there due to violence shortly after the cotton mill had been found to be beneficial. I can't really figure out much else that was supposed to be good about it, except for something like the farm way of making cider. That was one way to keep you from getting sick from water, mostly everyone drank beer or something like that most of the time. One reason why alcoholic deities existed.

There may have been less suffering in other places. The "only safe place" around there has seemed to be Switzerland. Mostly the explorers were taken as ragged and sort of filthy wherever they went. It's a very mixed story, but I would still tend to think at least some "peasants" felt they were doing well sometimes.

[Agape]

Clean environment is always going to be important for Life. Cultivating clean environment is definitely a process that requires awareness on all levels.
Until we experience dissonance among ourselves and other selves we call for new solutions and remedies to all the solutions and consciousnesses we have produced so far and keep producing that are part of open system.

In theory, solutions for closed systems or semi-open systems are always easier to calculate than predictive solutions for open systems.

In reality, the planet, planetary system and majority of human beings are “open systems” that keep reproducing themselves on many levels.
This giant activity of human civilisation itself produces good amount of “smart solutions” against plenty of junk.

Keep your eyes opened to the amount of junk or repeated, habitual activity we keep producing compared to amount of smart and meaningful activity, informed activity leading to solutions.

So far most of our “civilised activity” depends on our ability to act with respect to the “civilised whole”.
As unique but isolated individuals our chances for survival are about as good ( or worse) as those of any native who lived 1000 years ago.

Place an unequipped human on lonely island and let him recall how to make a fire and what plants are good to eat. With good luck he/she will be able to build a hut.
The odds that he/she would build a computer are negotiable.

Some would be able to construct radio transistor, if so ..we may congratulate them.


What else do we need for our comfort?


I bet there are thousands of plastic toys around in all the stores that will never get to the children who would appreciate them. They do keep hanging around those stores and never get out since each costs $10-1000. For piece of junk.

What does it say about our collective awareness?

How many junk cars and spare parts are there in all car parks?

How much clothing in all your fashion shops around the town, again, costing allegedly thousands of whatever ? How many pairs of new shoes ?

How much food goes to waste everyday?

How many people are out there still hungry?


I understand it’s a process and expansion of consciousness that is individual and yet, happens one by one, and one day we get where we wanted to be.

In the Garden of Eden and friends with our spiritual mentors and each other, by simple acts of sanity that we now call kindness and acts of kindness that are acts of sanity.

Clearly, in couple millions years more we get there, sooner than later and it’s important not to give up on hope.


(Till then, plug your noses, ears and take your prescription medication:)) Just teasing. Don’t forget to laugh and cry, till we get there and keep your cool reserves about it all, as if it all ..just “as if” I said ..was right and meant to be that way.

In reality we are star dust floating around a rock not knowing how long we are meant to be here, survive, we may. We may not. We kind of know it.
But we should not be this pathetic, this negligent, this unkind to own kind. We should try better even if it’s only for a bit.

Stars will keep rolling their eyes anyway



🙏

[A Voice from the Mountains]

@Herve

and what kind of stench did the colonists smell when they reeked native Americans?

Larry

Not sure what you are referring to here, but I get the feeling that this is supposed to be a sarcastic comment about the mistreatment of natives.

I find that most modern Europeans actually know very little about Native Americans or their history, except some cartoonish caricature imagining them living in a crowded utopia from sea to sea until Europeans showed up and began ruthlessly and ceaselessly slaughtering them. It seems rather typical of the European education system for a number of reasons, including the typical Euro-centric arrogance, cultural Marxism, and anti-Americanism, but if people ever actually had the inclination to study the historical facts period-by-period, they'd realize how foolish it actually is to bring up Native Americans as if to inspire a sense of collective guilt.

Since we are clearing up historical misconceptions in this thread already, here are just a few quick facts to paint the barest of sketches: there were never that many of them in the first place because they were semi-nomadic at their most developed and couldn't sustain large populations, they constantly made brutal war against one another for hunting territory before Europeans ever arrived, and they often welcomed the first European settlements as opportunities for trade and acquiring European goods, especially guns and other metal tools, which they of course immediately put to use against their enemies. Something like 90% of their population decline is attributable to disease rather than warfare with Europeans, and Americans married as many of them as they ever killed.

But please, don't let me stop you from enjoying your post-modernist caricature of history.

[Intranuclear]

Claiming knowledge of the past is comical at best, especially when not one single person on earth has the remotest clue of what their neighbors are doing, feeling, thinking, planning, reading, learning.
I have not even considered things such as time travel, alternate timelines, alternate universes and countless other unknowns.
Oh yeah, throw in God (or gods) into the equation, and all certainty vanishes.
Oops, I forgot to mention a tiny rock from space that will trivially end all arguments of who is right and who is wrong.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Say what you will, I would rather live twenty arduous years as an authentic human than eighty years as an oblivious slave. This is not progress, it is oppressionand forced labor for the sake of a few. Keep your knick knacks and affordable industrial art, not interested.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

This is not progress, it is oppressionand forced labor for the sake of a few. Keep your knick knacks and affordable industrial art, not interested.

Ever heard of the feudal system?

[Ernie Nemeth]

Ever heard of an ax, a knife, and some traps?

[A Voice from the Mountains]

I thought you were talking about pre-industrial civilization, not life in modern-day Alaska.

To suggest that the industrial revolution enslaved people is ridiculous when you consider that prior to that, the feudal system literally enslaved people to working their land for a feudal lord. Not to mention they were totally illiterate and had no idea what was going on in the world, speaking of people being "oblivious."

The evils you are trying to attribute to industrialization were actually much worse prior to industrialization. Machine labor actually proved to be very liberating and created the middle class.

[Didgevillage]

There were always wars, hunger, misery and diseases.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution in England and rise of the Rothschilds, wars, hunger, misery and diseases got much worse, while banksters could amass the wealth of the planet to the extent they virtually own everything under the sun. But they haven't owned the soul of the humanity (yet) and some minds are still free.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Who has these romantic ideas about the past, anyway?

Life was short, cruel and indifferent. Much like today except we live longer and spend our pitiful sums on things we don't need - unless government or industry steals it first.

[Strat]

Ever heard of an ax, a knife, and some traps?

Why not 'return' to this lifestyle?

I'm genuinely asking, it's not a gotcha question.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Because for all intents and purposes it is illegal. And most people are so hopelessly innured by the modern world, so helpless and unskilled that they could never survive in the wild.

Not even sure if I could...

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Life was short, cruel and indifferent. Much like today except we live longer and spend our pitiful sums on things we don't need - unless government or industry steals it first.

You could live in Alaska with traps and axes, but I bet you'll start to miss all that useless stuff you don't need. They are far from having it easy, though many of them seem to enjoy it anyway.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq0rZn8HFmQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlPzlmqp7tI


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBB0rK3EIRs

[Ernie Nemeth]

Missing the point, I think.

I couldn't live like that because I know of the useless stuff...but those in the past knew just about nothingb so they would have had nothing else or other to pine for.

[BMJ]

In this post by examples I am trying to debunk the romantic idea that enemies during war are all evil, and in doing so I am trying to portrait the fact that war is never black and white and there is plenty of grey to be seen.

This idea stems from the fact that growing up and watching documentaries on World War 2 it was always the allies were the good guys and axis powers evil. Going back to the war the same would have been drilled into the minds of population.

And so depending on your ethnicity as to whether you were to be perceived to be good or evil.

But in fact there were plenty of instances were there were good and bad people on all sides of the war and of all backgrounds. This sentiment could easily be translated to any war in history.

For example, German and American soldiers working together to protect prisoners of war against Nazi attackers during the Battle for Castle Itter.

Battle for Castle Itter
Quote:
"The Battle for Castle Itter was fought in the Austrian North Tyrol village of Itter on 5 May 1945, in the last days of the European Theater of World War II.

Troops of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division of the US XXI Corps led by Captain John C. "Jack" Lee, Jr., a number of Wehrmacht soldiers led by Major Josef "Sepp" Gangl, SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, and recently freed French prisoners of war defended Castle Itter against an attacking force from the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division until relief from the American 142nd Infantry Regiment of the 36th Division of XXI Corps arrived.

The French prisoners included former prime ministers, generals and a tennis star. It is the only known time during the war in which Americans and Germans fought side-by-side. Popular accounts of the battle have called it the strangest battle of World War II.[3]"

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter


Or japanese americans in the US Army fighting the axis powers, whilst their families lived out their lives in internment camps and contributed to the war effort.

These 30 WWII Photos From Japanese Internment Camp Were Censored And Now Everyone Can See Them

Quote from the comments.
"My father and his family were sent to Minidoka in Idaho from Seattle, WA. Ironically his older brother (14 years apart) actually was serving in the US Army at the time as an infantry man. My grandmother had photos that I believe are now in the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, showing the before, during, and after. My father says he remembers that one morning, he woke up to the gates being wide open and the US soldiers that were guarding the camp, were gone. All those interred had to find their own way back to Washington and Oregon. It wasn't until 1988 that the US signed the Civil Liberties Act to compensate more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II. The legislation offered a formal apology and paid out $20,000 in compensation to each surviving victim. Sadly, my grandfather never got to see this."

See photos 8 and 30, see the link below.

Link: https://www.boredpanda.com/japanese-internment-camp-photos-dorothea-lange/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fzen.yandex.com

Then on a personal note I had three great uncles that were forced to fight for the germans during WW2 (or be shot for refusing) and both my great grandfathers were fighting with the partisans in yugoslavia against the germans.

War is never black and white there is plenty of grey.

[Flash]

Hervé post 1: n the middle of the 17th century, Queen Anne of Austria and mother of Louis XIV noted that "Paris is a horrible place and ill smelling. The streets are so mephitic that one cannot linger there because of the stench of rotting meat and fish and because of a crowd of people who urinate in the streets."

It seems that the situation above returned in Paris lately.

Due to lack of education about health and sanitary habits of the people arriving.

Industrialisation has allowed to free regular people to be able to learn to read, write, learn and become altogether better knowledgeable citizens.Therefore more sanitary habits, less sickness, better living conditions.

Lets hope that we can prolonged our learning and actions towards an exceptional stewardship of the earth.

[Didgevillage]

The Japanese migrants and their children were loyal to Japan (in varying degrees).
Consequently, they posed a potential danger on the West Coast and it is not an act of cruelty to relocate them.

Whether they got reasonable compensation for the forced relocation is another story.
I bet some were happy with the money they got.
(The US government is known to treat victims of medical experiments, war veterans, etc., like useless beings.)

[Didgevillage]

I managed to visit this place yesterday
https://katieaune.com/ganina-yama/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganina_Yama

If the Bolshevik Jews hated and wanted to get rid of the Romanovs, thus erasing the past for the Russians, the Bolshevik Jews must have known that the Christian past was important for Russia

[A Voice from the Mountains]

For example, Germans and American soldiers working together to protect prisoners of war against Nazi attackers during the Battle for Castle Itter.

I once read a book called No Simple Victory about how no "good guys" won or even participated in WW2, if only for the fact that the USSR was even more brutal and murderous than the Nazis, and yet we allied with the Soviets.

There are a number of stories in the book about how German and American soldiers got along outside of battle, compared to how Soviet and Germans got along outside of battle (not for the faint of heart).

In one case, a platoon of American soldiers were about to cross the defenses of the Rhine to invade Germany proper, and they had been marching along the outskirts of the German defenses in the snow when they came across a cottage. The German couple living in the cottage welcomed the American soldiers into their home, on the condition that they not cause any trouble for their guests. Their guests, of course, were German soldiers, also taking advantage of the warmth and free food. After the initial awkwardness, the two groups of soldiers warmed up enough to each other to sing "Silent Night" together in their respective languages before parting ways.

There are a lot of stories like that from both world wars. By the end of the war, with the country in a severe famine, so many German soldiers were trying to surrender to the American forces, that the Americans would simply wave them past and ignore them, allowing them to keep their weapons and all, in a hurry to meet the Soviets to set a hard boundary to the Red Army's advance.

The Soviets, on the other hand, had a saying, that no women were off limits, "from 8 to 80," meaning they raped, murdered, and even crucified any German women they came across from 8 years old to 80 years old. These were our allies in the war, remember. They weren't any nicer to the men and boys. Soviets are estimated to have killed about 6 million civilians between the Baltic states and Berlin alone. The book I mentioned above has pictures of some of the horrific scenes the Soviets left in their wake.

General Patton knew that the Soviets were going to cause us serious trouble beginning immediately after the end of the war, and he advocated for turning on the Soviets and pushing through to Moscow. He was already sizing them up, and was confident that he could punch through their front lines and envelope their entire ragged army, but Eisenhower wouldn't hear of it. It's interesting to imagine how history might have played out differently if the Iron Curtain had never existed.

[Didgevillage]

Stalin, a Georgian Jew, didn't care about Russian lives and he let hundreds of thousands starve to death in Leningrad, and shot Soviet POWs after their return from German captivity.

The losses in the Red Army were staggering because many able generals were shot by Stalin on one excuse or another.

[Flash]

Stalin, a Georgian Jew, didn't care about Russian lives and he let hundreds of thousands starve to death in Leningrad, and shot Soviet POWs after their return from German captivity.

The losses in the Red Army were staggering because many able generals were shot by Stalin on one excuse or another.

Lenine was Jewish, this is definitely proven, and many of the communist revolution were Jewish. But Stalin???? Georgian yes, but Jew? I did not know. Where did you get that information?


Childhood and early years

Born in Gori, Georgia to illiterate peasant parents (who had been serfs at birth), his harsh spirit has been blamed on undeserved and severe beatings by his father, inspiring vengeful feelings towards anyone in a position to wield power over him (perhaps also a reason he became a revolutionary). His mother set him on a path to become a priest, and he studied Russian Orthodox Christianity until he was nearly twenty.https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-stalin

this does not sound very Jewish

[Didgevillage]

His Georgian name says it all.
Jughashvili: son of Jew

He was a Rothschild employee in Baku before his political career in communist Russia.
All literature with Jewish editors as well as "Jew-or-not-Jew?" sites conclude men with some achievement as Jews, and criminals and crazies as non-Jews.

There was a Russian diplomat who wrote about Russian history. Stalin virtually married only Jewish women but his brother-in-law controlled and eventually poisoned him.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/24187210?q&versionId=46355107

It was General Zhukov's coup d'etat which removed from power this crazed mass murder from Power

http://www.texemarrs.com/022006/george_w_bush_zionist_double_agent.htm
Texe Marrs says all communist leaders,including Khrushchev and Yeltsin, were Jews except Gorbachev, who according to another source, descended from the Habsburgs.

[Flash]

His Georgian name says it all.
Jughashvili: son of Jew

He was a Rothschild employee in Baku before his political career in communist Russia.
All literature with Jewish editors as well as "Jew-or-not-Jew?" sites conclude men with some achievement as Jews, and criminals and crazies as non-Jews.

There was a Russian diplomat who wrote about Russian history. Stalin virtually married only Jewish women but his brother-in-law controlled and eventually poisoned him.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/24187210?q&versionId=46355107

It was General Zhukov's coup d'etat which removed from power this crazed mass murder from Power

http://www.texemarrs.com/022006/george_w_bush_zionist_double_agent.htm
Texe Marrs says all communist leaders,including Khrushchev and Yeltsin, were Jews except Gorbachev, who according to another source, descended from the Habsburgs.

the first link of yours refers to Beria, not to Stalin

the second link direct us to an articles with spoof pictures that have been debunked and stories hard to prove at times.

there is one thing I totally despise: having the forum flooded with fake stories

Prove to us without possible doubt what you are saying or go elsewhere to spread lies and junk

[shaberon]

Bolsheviks were a re-surge of the Student Group, known for the world's first suicide bombing in the 19th century. This was already Swiss-British backed, was not welcomed by Russians, had no members older than 30, and few more than 25.

The Cold War legitimately came from a lack of on-the-ground intelligence. Russia had just been smashed by Germany and France and saw America projecting force across the ocean, so they felt they needed the Iron Curtain on one side, even though America could not have repeated the invasion. To the east, the atomic bomb was an utter lie, and just a show of force towards Russia. Americans in their turn thought the Iron Curtain was another take-over of Europe, which was not possible or intended.

When NATO was organized, everyone stopped talking when Russia asked to join.

The Romanovs had been dangerously close to making peace with the royals of Britain. Thus they were both under-cut by basically the same gang. If those monarchies had retained influence, the world as we know it would not have happened. The issue of there being Jews involved is partly true and partly Christian Fascism (Jesuit and Protestant). They (collectively) have mostly been placed in position as someone to blame, while, of course, there is a great deal of Zionist guilt.

India, who offered many of her sons to help the British in the "Great War", was thanked with 1,650 machine gun rounds sprayed into a festival in Amritsar, where "hardly a bullet was wasted". From this point, Gandhi found them to be "evil, if not outright satanic". The 20th century as a whole mostly seems to be a disgusting horror story. The success or emergence of some truly good power was...?

[Didgevillage]

What spoof pictures?
Pastor Texe Marrs never wrote fake stories.

[Blipped by Hervé as a useless derailing comment]

Beria was a brother-in-law of Stalin, and became a virtual controller of Stalin behind the scenes.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Hervé's original post is about debunking the nonsense that Europe was all roses and strawberries before the industrial revolution, so this whole side-discussion about Stalin might belong in a separate thread.

I only want to throw in that whether Stalin was a Jew or not, I don't believe he was the Rothschild's guy. Trotsky was, but Trotsky didn't make it (https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/red_symphony.htm). Stalin was too successful as a Bolshevik thug and seized power for himself. That's why he was always so paranoid as to have creaky wooden floors installed in his mansion. He was no one's puppet. And as brutal as he was, he actually reversed the most insane Bolshevik social policies, and restored a kind of social conservatism in the USSR, while still economically a communist, and had more in common with Hitler in that regard than people often appreciate.

[Intranuclear]

Can someone explain how is it remotely possible for ONE human to have power over others?
The question is somewhat rhetorical as the answers are simple.
1. Others may believe that the person is divine somehow.
2. The man has some psy ability to control the minds of others.
3. The man has a serious weapon that can remotely or clandestinely take another out, and he has proven this.
4. The man has surrounded himself by people willing to mindlessly kill and die for him (see 2)
5. The man is a puppet and is being used by hidden powers, human or otherwise to do their bidding and they use things in option 3.

Why even bother to give power to another and then play the blame game?

Everything that has happened in the past is still true today but at a much much larger scale.
However horrible it was, it is much much worse now simply because of the numbers of people involved.
Of course, this absolutely does not mean there is no improvement, just that things grow in every directions.

Things are simultaneously better, worse, more frightening, more horrifying, more uncertain, more amazing, ...etc...
The question is do we argue over what was and kill each other or decide what kind of world or worlds to create and try to give reason for other perhaps more powerful beings to allow us to take another breath?

And if the galaxy is full of powerful and horrible civilizations, are we to increase our weapons capacities and what, take them out? And all the other galaxies? Is this humanities contribution to the universe?
Is it all about survival of the fittest, most powerful? --- I feel like most people do believe this, thus the world we live in.

If this little rant is considered to be off topic, I submit that Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin and Hitler prove that people are simply still much too stupid or powerless to choose another path.
Oh and I did not forget Trump and all the other human and subhuman beings.

[Didgevillage]

What spoof pictures?
Pastor Texe Marrs never wrote fake stories.

This is my response to the attack by Flash.
So sorry, I can't do the "quote" thing.

Toward the end of his life, Stalin was so paranoid, he changed the room he slept in every night.
He executed so many able Red Army generals, it was in total disarray. But Stalin, a Georgian Jew, didn't give a rats arse about Russian deaths.

Even Wikipedia mentions that Stalin worked in Baku (where he should have stayed for life). But he was the man for the Rothschilds to conduct the red terror in the Soviet Union. Really nothing to romanticize about.

[Hervé]

...

Regarding the Rothschilds/Rockefellers consortium:



For an idea on the “big” picture…

Below are excerpts from the work of whistle blower Sue Ann Arrigo (http://pauljackson.us/sue_arrigo/).

These give the blue print for what’s happening currently to this planet on the 3D level

Here is how the implemented strategy has worked in the past:

Rothschilds/John D. Rockefeller, Sr. funded the Bolshevik Revolution

Per his writings in the Archives, John D. Rockefeller helped fund the Bolshevik Revolution to get the wealth of the Czars, the labor of the Russian people, and much the Southern Oil fields in Russia. That wealth changed its name from Czarist, to Russian Government owned. Ignore the names, what happened to it? Did the people of Russia get it? No. The Rockefeller Archives show that he built a private army in Russia, much like the Brown Shirt army later. His accountant said that for each 2 cents that he spent to build that Army he got a dollar back. That Army was not staying up late to knit socks to sell. They were beating people up and committing assassinations, massacres, and mayhem to terrorize the populace into submission. And he was bribing officials to get what he wanted. He was apparently famous for that in the US as well. See www.reformation.org/rockefeller-bribery.html (http://www.reformation.org/rockefeller-bribery.html) .

[...] the Rockefellers charged about 18% interest on the money that they loaned Lenin for the Revolution. The way that agreement was set up made all of the loot that Lenin could seize in Russia, the Rockefellers/Rothschilds.


[…]That meant that Lenin and Stalin could never get out of debt unless they could work people nearly to death to produce the goods Rockefeller/Rothschilds wanted. People thought that the ridiculous factory quotas the Russians tried to accomplish were the result of communism. That was not what I thought after reading the Archives. The Rockefellers were setting the quotas and delighting in the profits. They also delighted in giving the Russians quotas they could not meet as a way of humiliating them.

[…] I sent him [Gorbachev] copies from the Archives of documents that showed those policies had been forced upon Stalin by Rockefeller. While the people of Russia starved, Rockefeller was also insisting that Stalin sell him the grain at the price and amounts previously agreed to. But Rockefeller did not need that grain. And Rockefeller was, to a large extent, responsible for the bad policies that caused the poor crop yields and meant that selling that same amount of grain overseas ensured famine. It appeared to be a deliberate attempt, not just to get grain cheaply, but to starve people. The private journals of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. confirmed that. The Rockefeller Family seemed obsessed by the desire to kill people off, including by starvation. The Rockefellers have long backed population control measures fairly publicly. That was not a secret, nor their funding of ‘eugenics’ research’. See http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/omegafile29.htm (http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/omegafile29.htm) , http://www.eugenics-watch.com/eugbook/,euod_ch1.html (http://www.eugenics-watch.com/eugbook/euod_ch1.html) , http://illuminati-news.com/nazi-california.htm (http://illuminati-news.com/nazi-california.htm). But, the behind the scenes maneuvers on how they were committing those Crimes Against Humanity were secret. To them Communism was a lovely excuse to steal the wealth of the rich Russians and then kill off the poor who were not working in their factories. The factories and the oil fields had the name of the Soviet Union on them, as if they belong to the Russian Govt.. But an examination of the chain of command structure and the flow of money made it look like the Rockefellers et al were already well on their way to being Kings of the World.

Let me give you an example of that so you can understand how this system worked in practice.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., wanted to crash prices in South America of a type of goods to force his competitors into closing. If I remember correctly, the country was Argentina and the goods were stainless steel cookware--pots and pans, bowls, and cutlery. They were items peasants had to buy to live. They were also heavy and it made absolutely no sense to ship them from Russia since they were already made in adequate quantities by factories in that country. But they were not Rockefeller’s factories so a part of the markets’ share of money was not going to them. That was an anathema to John. D., Jr. He wanted to own everything and everyone, or kill them.

So, he wrote a letter to Stalin and told him how much and what kind of each item he wanted. It was a huge order, perhaps several Latin American countries worth. Rockefeller was going to dropped the prices of the goods to drive the Latin American factories out of business. Then he would buy them cheaply. Having a monopoly he would then raise the price of the goods to steal even more from the peasants. His journal shows that he intended to cause their children to starve, if at all possible. It was not an unintended consequence of his business practices. I saw instances in which he was willing to lose money to make others starve. It was really quite sad to read about the life of a man who was so desperately unhappy that this was what it took to distract him from that fact.

[...]

Stalin got the order and wrote back saying that he could not meet those deadlines in 2 months time. Rockefeller wrote back saying he had to ‘or else’.

I wanted to know what the “or else” was.

Later I came across invoices for the guards of Stalin which Rockefeller was paying. They were not just regulars, they were a special outfit chosen by Rockefeller. They were not ethnically the same as Stalin. It appeared that they had been chosen by Rockefeller to have no qualms about killing Stalin, if ordered to do so. The head of them was writing reports on Stalin’s activities to John D. more often than Stalin was writing to John D. After looking into it even further than I have said, I concluded that John D.’s threat to kill Stalin was a credible one.

Stalin was humiliated in more ways that one by trying to fill that order in time. He did not succeed, as hard and as desperately as he tried. He was a week late. Furthermore, this was during the height of the German attack on Russia, about a month before the battle of Stalingrad when the order was completed. It meant that steel and railway transport that would have gone into making of rifles did not. Russian soldiers went into the battle of Stalingrad, Stalin’s namesake, with only about 35% of them carrying a rifle! They had to rush forward into battle defenselessly or be shot in the back. Only after one of their buddies got killed could they pick up a fallen weapon to defend themselves. That caused a huge rift among them which they could not solve. It was designed to destroy their team spirit and turned them against each other.

The Battle of Stalingard was almost a defeat for the Russia people because of what John D. did. His journal showed that he intended for the battle to be a Russian defeat and allow him to spread the war all across Russia. He agonized on the pages of his journal about whether his timing was right and the order big enough. He wanted the fighting to continue all across Russia and not just lead to a Russian capitulation. He wanted to destroy all the shop keepers and small enterprises that had not yet been nationalized and brought under his control. His journal said that he cried at his loses when the Russians bravely managed to force the Germans to retreat. But he did not call them brave in his journal and I will not repeat the derogatory phrases. Skull and Bones calls people not in it Barbarians, will they help the Rockefellers plan and execute mass murders, such as at Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps. It is clear that they have some problems in their thinking.

[…]

[Flash]

What spoof pictures?
Pastor Texe Marrs never wrote fake stories.

This is my response to the attack by Flash.
So sorry, I can't do the "quote" thing.

Toward the end of his life, Stalin was so paranoid, he changed the room he slept in every night.
He executed so many able Red Army generals, it was in total disarray. But Stalin, a Georgian Jew, didn't give a rats arse about Russian deaths.

Even Wikipedia mentions that Stalin worked in Baku (where he should have stayed for life). But he was the man for the Rothschilds to conduct the red terror in the Soviet Union. Really nothing to romanticize about.

BUsh junior pic with a Talmud book, seen on Texe Marrs web site, in his hand has been debunked, with other pics using the same base but changing the books.

Just do a google check on the debunking, the proofs are there.

One fake pic, probably some more fake stories.

[Didgevillage]

BUsh junior pic with a Talmud book, seen on Texe Marrs web site, in his hand has been debunked, with other pics using the same base but changing the books.



The Bush family is one of the oldest (and fatally influential) Jewish families in America.
There's nothing surprising about baby Bush walking around with a Talmud in his hand.
There's nothing to romanticize about America's past.

[Flash]

BUsh junior pic with a Talmud book, seen on Texe Marrs web site, in his hand has been debunked, with other pics using the same base but changing the books.



The Bush family is one of the oldest (and fatally influential) Jewish families in America.
There's nothing surprising about baby Bush walking around with a Talmud in his hand.
There's nothing to romanticize about America's past.

Bon Hervé, est-ce fini cet incroyable modification de l'histoire, ajoutée aux modifications officielles déjà pénibles. C'est pour ça qu'on ne s'y retrouve plus jamais, avec les exagérations des fanatiques ajoutées à celles de ceux au pouvoir ou des gagnants. Une recherche minimale rejette tout au moins une demie de ce que cet énergumène écrit. L'autre moitié, même si elle était vraie, devient tellement rébarbative qu'on ne veut plus l'écouter.

L'Idée est de "debunk romantic ideas" pas de déformer l'histoire, mais plutôt de la remettre pour ce qu'elle était.

En d'autres mots, je le rapporte comme, et j'ai honte de le dire, puisque ce terme est sur-utilisé par les concernés, pour faire taire la majorité, mais cette fois, je le crois justifié, pouvez-vous tenir en laisse cet anti-sémite? Qui n'est de surcroît surement même pas japonais.

Merci

Written in my mothertongue because I have no taste for arguments.

[Didgevillage]

Written in my mothertongue because I have no taste for arguments.

De toute évidence, vous n'avez aucun goût pour la vérité. Puisses-tu passer le reste de ta vie dans des fantasmes de sommeil profond sans te réveiller.

Written in the mother tongue of my ex-wife, because it permits someone to remain in mental coma for centuries.

[loungelizard]

His Georgian name says it all.
Jughashvili: son of Jew

'Jew' in Georgian is 'Ebraeli', so that theory doesn't work.

Stalin’s biography by Montefieore - “Young Stalin” - states that the name means “son of Juga” and is either Ossetian (meaning “herd”) or Georgian (djuga) meaning “steel.”

That would make sense as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili’s chosen name in later years - Joseph Stalin - translates as Man of Steel.


He was a Rothschild employee in Baku before his political career in communist Russia.

To be more accurate: he worked as a labourer in a Rothschild-owned storehouse. He was the instigator behind several uprisings against the management, including strike action.
Hardly the Rothschild acolyte you are implying here.


Stalin virtually married only Jewish women but his brother-in-law controlled and eventually poisoned him.

Neither of Stalin’s wives was Jewish. From the site you referred to:

"One of the myths perpetrated by Neo-Nazis of the Intertubes is that Joseph Stalin had three Jewish wives. It's a completely erroneous statement that nevertheless leads to an intriguing mystery.
First of all, Stalin was only married twice: to Ekaterina Svanidze and Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Neither of the two were Jewish.
Svanidze was a Georgian who married Stalin in an Orthodox church.
Alliluyeva was ethnically Russian, with Georgian, Gypsy, and German roots. She was Christened at birth.
So: no Jews. Shut case."

http://www.jewornotjew.com/profile.jsp?ID=1288

[loungelizard]

https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/24187210?q&versionId=46355107
Texe Marrs says all communist leaders,including Khrushchev and Yeltsin, were Jews except Gorbachev, who according to another source, descended from the Habsburgs.

Texe Marrs says a lot of things ...doesn't make any of them right... :bigsmile:

(how on earth did this thread end up here :confused:)




The Bush family is one of the oldest (and fatally influential) Jewish families in America.


Source, please.




Written in my mothertongue because I have no taste for arguments.

De toute évidence, vous n'avez aucun goût pour la vérité. Puisses-tu passer le reste de ta vie dans des fantasmes de sommeil profond sans te réveiller.

Written in the mother tongue of my ex-wife, because it permits someone to remain in mental coma for centuries.

Translation: Obviously, you have no taste for the truth.

That verges on ad hominem. Flash has shown herself over the years to be a dedicated, open minded and sincere truth seeker.

[Didgevillage]

”Jew” in Slavic langues is Żyd, Žid, etc., and it's like calling a black a Negro.
In the areas of the former Soviet Union, "Evrey" (Hebrew) is more or less a safe way to say it.

So strange, isn't it, calling a German a German, an Englishman an Englishman, a Chinese a Chinese, etc., poses no problem, but Jews and blacks. Never.

"This publication of the National Jewish Welfare Board lists a Major George Bush, Major Louis Bush, and Major Solomon Bush, as Jews participating in the American Revolutionary War against the British. It also reveals the money connection of Rothschild agent, Haym Salomon, to what it describes as the "weak U.S. government."
http://www.texemarrs.com/022006/george_w_bush_zionist_double_agent.htm

https://fathersmanifesto.net/bush.htm

[loungelizard]

"This publication of the National Jewish Welfare Board lists a Major George Bush, Major Louis Bush, and Major Solomon Bush, as Jews participating in the American Revolutionary War against the British. It also reveals the money connection of Rothschild agent, Haym Salomon, to what it describes as the "weak U.S. government."
http://www.texemarrs.com/022006/george_w_bush_zionist_double_agent.htm

Strange. I looked on the National Jewish Welfare Board site and it states:

"The Bureau of War Records include approximately 85,000 individual service files and 320,000 surrogate index cards collected by the BWR
and the Greater New York War Records Committee on behalf of Jewish soldiers and sailors who served in World War II".

Never having heard of this organisation, I have emailed them to see if they have records of Jewish soldiers who fight in the American Revolutionary War.

I'll let you know what they say.

[Didgevillage]

Eustace Mullins used to use Encyclopedia Judaica at the library of the University (of Virginia, I think). He told me that once they discovered who the regular user was, they hid or disposed of the encyclopedia. Same way with Google, Wikipedia, etc.
"Hide it, if it's inconvenient."

[A Voice from the Mountains]

He was a Rothschild employee in Baku before his political career in communist Russia.

To be more accurate: he worked as a labourer in a Rothschild-owned storehouse. He was the instigator behind several uprisings against the management, including strike action.
Hardly the Rothschild acolyte you are implying here.

That's my thinking, too. He was just a rowdy thug.

There is a declassified US Army intelligence report from WW1 that I could post here, that states that the Bolsheviks were receiving financial backing from Wall Street. What was the financial backing for? To give free money, food, and shelter to the Bolshevik thugs who just went around Moscow or whatever other city/town all day, causing mayhem and setting the stage for violent revolution. Stalin got in on that action and he was just too good at it.

Stalin probably was economically beholden to the Rothschilds/Rockefellers, and the United States in general, if only because we supplied him with many, many tons of military equipment, including heavy equipment such as jeeps and other vehicles, even planes if I remember correctly. Stalin was obligated to pay for all of this somehow, and he damned sure wasn't going to do it with a free market economy.

As far as the whole issue of Stalin's birth name and background, why wouldn't he just invent his own background, and kill everyone who said otherwise? He had his own son killed. The guy propped himself up as a god using propaganda and didn't shy away from killing anyone. So take anything about him coming out of the former USSR with a grain of salt.

[Flash]

He was a Rothschild employee in Baku before his political career in communist Russia.

To be more accurate: he worked as a labourer in a Rothschild-owned storehouse. He was the instigator behind several uprisings against the management, including strike action.
Hardly the Rothschild acolyte you are implying here.

That's my thinking, too. He was just a rowdy thug.

There is a declassified US Army intelligence report from WW1 that I could post here, that states that the Bolsheviks were receiving financial backing from Wall Street. What was the financial backing for? To give free money, food, and shelter to the Bolshevik thugs who just went around Moscow or whatever other city/town all day, causing mayhem and setting the stage for violent revolution. Stalin got in on that action and he was just too good at it.

Stalin probably was economically beholden to the Rothschilds/Rockefellers, and the United States in general, if only because we supplied him with many, many tons of military equipment, including heavy equipment such as jeeps and other vehicles, even planes if I remember correctly. Stalin was obligated to pay for all of this somehow, and he damned sure wasn't going to do it with a free market economy.

As far as the whole issue of Stalin's birth name and background, why wouldn't he just invent his own background, and kill everyone who said otherwise? He had his own son killed. The guy propped himself up as a god using propaganda and didn't shy away from killing anyone. So take anything about him coming out of the former USSR with a grain of salt.

For once, I agree totally with you on this Voice.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

"This publication of the National Jewish Welfare Board lists a Major George Bush, Major Louis Bush, and Major Solomon Bush, as Jews participating in the American Revolutionary War against the British. It also reveals the money connection of Rothschild agent, Haym Salomon, to what it describes as the "weak U.S. government."
http://www.texemarrs.com/022006/george_w_bush_zionist_double_agent.htm

Strange. I looked on the National Jewish Welfare Board site and it states:

"The Bureau of War Records include approximately 85,000 individual service files and 320,000 surrogate index cards collected by the BWR
and the Greater New York War Records Committee on behalf of Jewish soldiers and sailors who served in World War II".

Never having heard of this organisation, I have emailed them to see if they have records of Jewish soldiers who fight in the American Revolutionary War.

I'll let you know what they say.

There were Jews on both sides of the American Revolution, but they had more influence through loans than they did in combat.

Anyone who has studied the heavy debates surrounding the US Constitution would know that it wasn't dominated by any one group. Nationalists in the North wanted to create a strong central government, and Jeffersonians in the South wanted a federal republic with sovereignty ultimately resting with the states, and the finer variations in opinion were myriad. The Constitution ended up being purposefully ambiguous on the issue as a result. To claim all of these years of controversy and debate was all part of some pre-ordained plot to restore individual liberties and set limitations on government power seems overly simplistic to say the least.

I like to remind people that we have generally advanced in our standards of living since the medieval period, not declined. Whose agenda is that?

[Didgevillage]

If you like, we shall divide the United States into two parts, one for you, James, and one for you, Lionel.
---Benjamin Disraeli, to Nathan Rothschild’s boys at the wedding of their sister, Lenora, to their cousin Alfonso in 1857.

By the ceaseless praise of DEMOCRATIC RULE we shall divide the Christians into political parties, we shall destroy the unity of their nations, we shall sow discord everywhere. Reduced to impotence, they will bow before the LAW of OUR BANK, always united, and always devoted to our Cause.

At the wished for hour, fixed in advance, we shall let loose the Revolution, which by ruining all classes of Christianity, will definitely enslave the Christian to US. Thus will be accomplished the promise of God made to His people.
---Rabbi Reichhorn
https://www.biblebelievers.org.au/reichorn.htm

[A Voice from the Mountains]

If you like, we shall divide the United States into two parts, one for you, James, and one for you, Lionel.
---Benjamin Disraeli, to Nathan Rothschild’s boys at the wedding of their sister, Lenora, to their cousin Alfonso in 1857.

Sure, they may have expressed that desire, 68 years after 1789. And there were provocateurs on both sides of the Civil War who made a peaceful resolution to the conflict impossible. Other major slave-owning powers such as Brazil and Mexico of course did not require a war to free their slaves, as slavery was becoming economically obsolete anyway. This was all pretext for trying to accomplish exactly such a division between the states.

The British crown was already beholden to bankers such as the Rothschilds, and had been probably at least since William and Mary. The British were also still trying in 1812 to cut the Americans off at the Mississippi River and prevent our expansion. Why, if we were both already run by the Rothschilds, would they be trying to box us in? The British in Canada were paying good money to the Native Americans for American scalps.


At the wished for hour, fixed in advance, we shall let loose the Revolution, which by ruining all classes of Christianity, will definitely enslave the Christian to US. Thus will be accomplished the promise of God made to His people.
---Rabbi Reichhorn
https://www.biblebelievers.org.au/reichorn.htm

"Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you." - Nikita Khrushchev

"We won't have to fight you; we'll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands." - Nikita Khrushchev

Sometimes people let their ambitions run away with them.

[pluton]

Contemporary evidence clearly shows that the lives of many Western Europeans before industrialisation were, at least by today's standards, deeply unpleasant. It would be a stretch to conclude that they have "lived well."

The term "many Western Europeans" applies to those living in larger urban areas, such as London (housing about half a million dwellers) - a place lacking any sewer system. Looking back from the point of our contemporary experience, living in 17th century London wasn't "deeply unpleasant" - it was a living nightmare. Fortunately 17th century Western Europe was still a rural society with far more people living in the countryside under much more favorable conditions.

[Didgevillage]

"Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you." - Nikita Khrushchev

"We won't have to fight you; we'll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands." - Nikita Khrushchev



This certainly is in line with the rabbinical teachings.

"Writing in his provocative, fact-filled expose, Bloodlines of the Illuminati, researcher
Fritz Springmeier reveals how incestuously Jewish the rulers of Russia have been,
including their spouses. First, he notes that Stalin married the daughter of his
number 2 man, the Jew Kaganovich. Also:

The wife of Boris Yeltsin is the daughter of Joseph Stalin from Stalin's marriage
with Rosa Kaganovich. Rosa's father was Illuminati...Boris Yeltsin and Rosa are
secretly Jewish.
Lenin was married to a Jewish wife, Krupsakaya. Molotov married a Jewess, too.
And Stalin was married to Jewess Kaganovich. Kaganovich's powerful brother Lazar is in the Politburo, and Lazar's son, Mikhail Kaganovich, married Stalin's daughter, Svetlana. Boris Yeltsin's original (Jewish name) was Baruch Ellia. He in turn is a good friend of David Rockefeller."
Codex Magica by Texe Marrs, pages 564-565

I also have a document that says Nikita Khrushchev was a crypto-Jew by the name of Pearl or Pearlman, but I'm not home now and can't get it.

[rgray222]

It seems to be fairly common to romanticize the past. I was reading a story of the Japanese Kamikaze Pilots that made it seem like these were noble young men that eagerly went to their death for Mother Japan. It caused me to do some research and it turns out the most of these were young college students that were scared to death and many were reluctant participants.
The American Indian while some were noble and great warriors they are portrayed very differently than the reality of the times. Even the civil rights movement has been romanticized to a certain extent. Unfortunately, man has been romanticizing war for centuries. There is absolutely nothing romantic about people killing people.

[Didgevillage]

I was reading a story of the Japanese Kamikaze Pilots that made it seem like these were noble young men that eagerly went to their death

I heard the story told by an Australian on the radio (Richard Fidler, Conversations, ABC) who was sent to New Guinea or Borneo as a young soldier and in the jungle, suddenly encountered an equally young Japanese soldier. There were only two of them. They pointed the weapon (whatever firearm it was) at each other, but instead of shooting, they slowly made a circle, slowly inching back from each other. It must have seemed like a forever for either of them. The Australian made it back safely and told the story decades later, but the Japanese counterpart, if he survived the war, may not have told anybody.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Fortunately 17th century Western Europe was still a rural society with far more people living in the countryside under much more favorable conditions.

Very favorable compared to living in a city, but still very rough compared to modern standards of living.



I also have a document that says Nikita Khrushchev was a crypto-Jew by the name of Pearl or Pearlman, but I'm not home now and can't get it.

My point was that Khrushchev also made lots of threats to the US but it was the USSR that ended up collapsing. Lots of powerful people have made lots of ambitious threats throughout history, but have often failed.

The infant United States was a relative backwater in terms of international politics. Lots of people had lots of crazy ambitions for the new country, but they always ran up against fiercely independent inhabitants with guns, just like they continue to today. In the early days, the feds couldn't even pass a tax on whiskey without entire communities literally rising up in arms and attacking tax collectors.

[Didgevillage]

The USSR was a Rockefeller playground, and the Rockefellers were dubbed the first family of the Soviet Union.
It was David Rockefeller who fired Khrushchev for not buying enough chemical Rockefeller fertilizers.

The invention of communism, Russo-Japanese War, Russian Revolution, massacre of Nicolai II and his family and destruction of Christianity and Christians were an agenda, outlined in the Protocol. This Protocol may be dismissed as a forgery by the enemy of humanity but the teaching of this Rabbi Reichhorn cannot be dismissed easily. It's the basic rabbinical tenet whether you like it or not.

The original plan was to stage a nuclear war between USSR and USA, but they had to change the plan because of the financial difficulties in the final days of the USSR.

[loungelizard]

By the ceaseless praise of DEMOCRATIC RULE we shall divide the Christians into political parties, we shall destroy the unity of their nations, we shall sow discord everywhere. Reduced to impotence, they will bow before the LAW of OUR BANK, always united, and always devoted to our Cause.

At the wished for hour, fixed in advance, we shall let loose the Revolution, which by ruining all classes of Christianity, will definitely enslave the Christian to US. Thus will be accomplished the promise of God made to His people.
---Rabbi Reichhorn
https://www.biblebelievers.org.au/reichorn.htm

With respect, Bible Believers is not a reputable source. There was no "Rabbi Reichhorn". There was no "Grand Rabbi Simeon-ben-Ihuda of Bohemia". There was no such "funeral". There was no publication entitled "La Vielle France". There was no such "speech".
It's all fake. Fabricated to incite hatred and division. Research it and see for yourself.

[Agape]

What’s romantic about this kind of past anyway?

Yes very immature individuals romanticise the importance of wars and weapons, as SunTzu said in old book called “The Art of War” : “Of matters of importance to every state, war is the greatest”.

Ever since and till now almost( I mean almost) every “self important” nation, regime and country on this planet overemphasised the importance of war industry.

Ask any survivor of war or war veteran who have been in real combat situations instead just sitting on posh chair in command centre whether they “enjoyed” their experience and war and they’ll send you to hel..

There are people who romanticise prisons, concentration camps, hospitals, abortions, artificial imseminations, sadism and abuse ,
people who romanticise pain in general,
spreading hurtful and immature faith that there are “righteous abusers” and “happily abused” ,
that some want to serve and some are here to rule the world and so forth.

Romanticising pain - even personal one- and every each of us have their own clean mirror to look into- the mirror of our eyes- is naive in teenagers, dangerous in adults and took already many individuals and civilisations off roads.

Generally said , I’m not responding to anyone’s comment or post in particular but reflecting on the topic.


History has been written by victors, true, its deep waters obscured and muddled many times. Blaming any one nation or person is unrealistic and impossible.
If only people willed to understand their common nature ..

and interconnectedness of our fates and believes..


The level of consciousness - consciousnesses - permits historical evolution at any given moment - it is a mass of people rather than individual beliefs that decide
and play the game.

As someone said earlier in this thread, there are observable improvements and steps being taken in order to navigate human characters safely from past to better future.


It’s very true that past won’t surpass presence.

[Hervé]

[...]
.... There was no publication entitled "La Vielle France". There was no such "speech".
It's all fake. Fabricated to incite hatred and division. Research it and see for yourself.

... Right, "La Vielle France" doesn't exist but "La Vieille France" does:

La Vieille-France (https://www.worldcat.org/title/vieille-france/oclc/13111456).
Publisher: Paris : Gendrot, 1917-1924.

Edition/Format: https://static1.worldcat.org/wcpa/rel20190403/images/icon-ser.gif Journal, magazine : Periodical : Microfilm : Master microform : French View all editions and formats (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13111456/editions?editionsView=true&referer=di)

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Jews -- Periodicals. (https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=su%3AJews+Periodicals.&qt=hot_subject)
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Rabbi Reichhorn's Protocols - True Democracy (http://truedemocracy.net/hj32/28.html)

truedemocracy.net/hj32/28.html (http://truedemocracy.net/hj32/28.html)

"In its issue of 10 March, 1921, (No. 214) La Vieille France gives the version of this funeral oration which was published in La Russie Juive. It is perfectly clear that the funeral oration and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion come from one and the same mint.

[loungelizard]

[...]
.... There was no publication entitled "La Vielle France". There was no such "speech".
It's all fake. Fabricated to incite hatred and division. Research it and see for yourself.

... Right, "La Vielle France" doesn't exist but "La Vieille France" does:

:blushing: Ooops! I stand corrected.

But that in itself proves nothing (other than I'm not very good at spelling) unless we can view that particular issue.

There is no mention of a Rabbi Reichhorn in any other context that I can find; if he was apparently important enough to give an oration at a funeral, he should pop up somewhere else.
And why is there no record of the many who was being buried?
And why would anyone be as stupid as to say such vile things in public, as a funeral oration?

[Hervé]

[...]
There is no mention of a Rabbi Reichhorn in any other context that I can find...
[...]
One might resort to a Russian researcher...

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Ever since and till now almost( I mean almost) every “self important” nation, regime and country on this planet overemphasised the importance of war industry.

What do you think about the British invasion of India? Do you think the Indians had the right to defend themselves, and might have done a better job if they weren't armed with bows and arrows against gunpowder? Just curious if you think about these kinds of things.

[Iloveyou]

[...]
There is no mention of a Rabbi Reichhorn in any other context that I can find...
[...]
One might resort to a Russian researcher...


Reichhorn is most probably no Jewish name, but Eichhorn is.
(Nelly Weiss: „The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History“)

Maybe a mistake has been made in the course of a translation process of papers, books, website-content (how notorious or obscure they ever might be).

The English Rabbi translates to the German Rabbiner. So Rabbi Eichhorn translates to Rabbiner Eichhorn = RabbineR Eichhorn = Rabbi Reichhorn? Just an idea.

[Didgevillage]

I bet this rabbi didn't exist.
http://antimatrix.org/Convert/Books/ZioNazi_Quotes/img/Chabad_Rabbi_Ginsburgh_Satanic_Sign.jpg

Same technique as Hillary (who happens to be Jewish) if something is inconvenient.
Hide it, deny it, or pretend to have forgotten

[BMJ]

What’s romantic about this kind of past anyway?

Yes very immature individuals romanticise the importance of wars and weapons, as SunTzu said in old book called “The Art of War” : “Of matters of importance to every state, war is the greatest”.

These are my thoughts.

In response it is not that we as humans are immature but rather that it is a human condition, we seem to have selective memory and only seem to remember the good times and forget about the bad.

Translating that thought to your personal experience about a bad time in your life do you tend to focus on the good or bad?

Then think about this in the context of history and it is understandable how we can develop a bias about the past and become romantic about it.

Therefore "debunking romantic ideas about the past" becomes a process of injecting some objectivity into our thoughts of the past.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

These are my thoughts.

In response it is not that we as humans are immature but rather that it is a human condition, we seem to have selective memory and only seem remember the good times and forget about the bad.

Or rather, wish so hard that everyone and everything was always good, that we unrealistically believe that we are safe simply by believing that we are safe and that everyone is loving. The people who believe these kinds of things generally come from first world countries and not the third world, or at least hold these opinions while benefiting from the safety and security of armed police enforcing a system of law and order.

There have been numerous examples in recent years, very tragic examples, of college-age men and women hitchhiking across the Middle East and Africa to "prove" how love conquers all, etc., etc., only to be brutally murdered or simply disappear, never to be heard from again. It's happened so often that it's almost become a meme.


'World peace' hitcher is murdered

An Italian woman artist who was hitch-hiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace has been found murdered in Turkey.

The naked body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, known as Pippa Bacca, was found in bushes near the northern city of Gebze on Friday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7344381.stm

I could go on and on with these stories.


(Btw, pessimists have a confirmation bias in the opposite direction -- they tend to think everything is bad and only remember negative things. I know people like that as well. Neither view is realistic.)

[Didgevillage]

In response it is not that we as humans are immature but rather that it is a human condition, we seem to have selective memory and only seem remember the good times and forget about the bad.

Translating that thought to your personal experience about a bad time in your life do you tend to focus on the good or bad?

Then think about this in the context of history and it is understandable how we can develop a bias about the past and become romantic about it.

Therefore "debunking romantic ideas about the past" becomes a process of injecting some objectivity into our thoughts of the past.

Plato said the idea of philosophy is remembering the past lives, surprisingly.

There is an Arabic saying with a pun that humans (an-naas) are forgetful (from the verb radical N-S-T)
But who wanted humans to be forgetful? Do we have to put up with the condition?

It's the self-proclaimed creator gods (demon god Yahweh and his cohorts). It is about time we rose up against them and smash the paradigm they made us accept.

[BMJ]

These are my thoughts.

In response it is not that we as humans are immature but rather that it is a human condition, we seem to have selective memory and only seem remember the good times and forget about the bad.

Or rather, wish so hard that everyone and everything was always good, that we unrealistically believe that we are safe simply by believing that we are safe and that everyone is loving. The people who believe these kinds of things generally come from first world countries and not the third world, or at least hold these opinions while benefiting from the safety and security of armed police enforcing a system of law and order.

Yes alot of people suffer from ostrich syndrome, whereby when confronted with the truth they would rather continue believe only in the good and so place their head in the sand hoping to safely avoid these hard truths, all the while their behind is feeling the full force of the consequence of their ignorance.

http://fullerhomeoptions.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bird-head-stuck-in-sand.jpg


(Btw, pessimists have a confirmation bias in the opposite direction -- they tend to think everything is bad and only remember negative things. I know people like that as well. Neither view is realistic.)

Well my optimistic confirmation bias has been exposed and AVFTM you have proven the point that objectivity can be a hard thing to attain. :sun:

[Hervé]

How Plumbing (Not Vaccines) Eradicated Disease (https://archive.fo/M5HFC#selection-777.1-802.9)

by Joel Edwards (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/author/joeledwards) April 6, 2015
Last updated on: June 5, 2015


https://archive.fo/M5HFC/170fd40d5b8a199ab3c2eca4d362f9c2ba234b1e.jpg

Vaccines get all the glory, but most plumbers will tell you that it was water infrastructure – sewage systems and clean water – that eradicated disease, and they’re right.

Disease Before Plumbing
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europeans despised all things Roman, including bathing. There was a widespread belief that getting wet caused illness. This contempt and fear of bathing persisted through the Dark Ages.


Some Europeans defied local customs by bathing, but this was usually done over great protest. When Queen Elizabeth bathed, her servants panicked, fearing she would become ill and die.

This resistance to bathing was brought across the Atlantic to America, influencing habits all the way into the 1800s. In 1835, Philadelphia almost passed an ordinance forbidding wintertime bathing. Ten years later, Boston did outlaw bathing, except by medical directive. (Though this law was not widely enforced, it does illustrate the American resistance to bathing as late as the mid 1800s.)


How Plumbing Eradicated Disease
Before plumbing was widely used, indoor facilities consisted of a washstand and a washbowl, a pitcher, and a chamber pot or commode. Human waste was thrown into the street or anywhere convenient.


This total lack of sanitation in urban areas filled with rats and other vermin provided the perfect environment to spread disease. The Black Plague alone killed 75 million – 200 million people – including 1/3 of Europe’s population. Though this disease is not entirely eradicated, human infection has become a rare occurrence. The last plague epidemic in America was in the early 1900’s.


Polio and Plumbing
Polio thrives in fecal matter and is easily transmitted through human waste. Plumbing and water sanitation in India is way behind the rest of the industrialized world. In areas where sanitation and hygiene are good, polio is rare. In areas where sanitation and hygiene are poor, the disease can spread rapidly.


Immunization efforts have received a lot of publicity and have garnered most of the credit for India being declared “polio free” by the World Health Organization. As recently as 2009, India reported 762 cases of polio, and at that time, these numbers made India the polio capital of the world. In 2014, there are currently no “official” documented cases of polio, but without proper sanitation there is no way this can last.


A Polio Breeding Ground
India is the second most populous nation in the world, with an estimated population of 1.2 billion. Currently, 780 million Indians do not have a toilet; 96 million Indians do not have access to clean drinking water. In rural areas, open defecation is still more common than attempting to dispose of human waste in a more sanitary fashion, such as burying it.


There have been some efforts to improve sanitation, but they pale in comparison to the extensive efforts to vaccinate Indians. Over 9 billion has been spent in this vaccination public health campaign. In some parts of India, children have received as many as 30 doses of the oral polio vaccine before their fifth birthday. Bill Gates, the World Health Organization, and GAVI have ardently been pushing vaccines on people who still don’t have access to clean drinking water or the sanitary means to dispose of human waste.


They Say Tomato, I say Tomatoe
The current polio vaccine campaign in India is highly controversial due to the high rate of vaccine injury and death. There were 53,000 cases of NPAFP, a non-polio acute flaccid paralysis, among those vaccinated. NPAFP is a disease that is clinically indistinguishable from polio and twice as deadly that is caused by the live, weakened, polio viruses in the vaccine. Incidences of the disease rose and fell with the number of doses of the vaccine administered. To call this disease anything other than polio is semantic subterfuge, a whitewash for Big Pharma’s image.
“In the past 13 months, India has reported 53,563 cases of NPAFP at a national rate of 12 per 100,000 children—way above the global benchmark set by WHO of 2 per 100,000.”
– Jan, 13 2014 quote from LiveMint Newpaper, the second largest business newspaper in India.
It would be less expensive in human cost and far more effective to improve India’s water infrastructure, improving India’s sanitation and hygiene.


London England and Cholera
In the 1800’s the European infant mortality rate was very high, from 25% to 70%. In the early-to-mid 1800s, London had little in the way of water infrastructure. The majority of people used town pumps and communal wells to get their drinking water. Waste disposal was far from adequate. Most Londoners dumped raw sewage and animal wastes into open pits known as “cesspools” or directly into the Thames River. Unfortunately, the Thames River was also the source of drinking water for many Londoners.


Cholera spreads easily through contaminated water and food and kills very quickly; it often proves fatal within hours of the first symptoms of vomiting or diarrhea.

In 1854, yet another outbreak struck London, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of Europeans. In Soho, a suburb of London, there were more than 500 fatal cases of cholera in ten days.

Dr. John Snow, who lived near Soho, was able to directly investigate what was causing the outbreak. Five years earlier, Dr. Snow had written an article about what he believed caused cholera. It was in the water, he argued. This idea flew in the face of the “wisdom” of his time. In the 1850s, doctors believed that bad vapors, or a “miasma in the atmosphere” caused disease. Dr. Snow dared to believe something different, to try something different, believing he might see different results.


Dr. John Snow Traced Cholera To Its Source
Dr. Snow traced the cholera outbreak to the Broad Street pump. He persuaded the town officials to remove the pump handle, and the cholera outbreak abruptly ended. Some time later, the outbreak was traced back to a woman cleaning a dirty diaper in the well.


Though it took some time, Dr. Snow convinced the authorities that fecal matter was contaminating the water supply. Today Dr. John Snow is widely regarded as the father of epidemiology.


Refugee Camps, Dysentery Epidemic, and Poor Sanitation
The Rwandan refugee camps set up in Zaire in 1994 struggled with outbreaks of dysentery. Sanitation was poor; the refugees defecated openly in common areas. Human waste built up in the same areas where the refugees drew water that was used for cooking and drinking. Heavy rain flooded the area and dysentery became epidemic, at its peak it was killing 2,000 people a day.


Refugee camps have always been a haven for diseases related to poor sanitation. Once U.S. and UN officials brought in purified water and encouraged people to use outhouses and latrines for defecation, the incidences of dysentery fell.


Chicago’s Population Grew from 350 in 1835 to More than 60,000 by 1850
The industrial revolution drove rapid population growth. Chicago’s water infrastructure wasn’t designed to handle such a rapid rise in population. Chicago was dealing with many different diseases, but it had especially high rates of typhoid fever. The source of the rapid increase in disease was traced to the city’s water and sanitation.


The majority of the city’s sewage was directed to the Chicago River, which flowed right back into Lake Michigan, which provided the city’s drinking water. This, of course, contaminated Chicago’s drinking water and created a cycle of disease.

It took many years to solve the problem, but in the early 1900s Chicago modernized their water infrastructure. They reversed the flow of several rivers and streams, and as a result, typhoid fever and all other infectious diseases plummeted.


Conclusion
Sanitation prevents disease by removing the cause of disease transmission, but this is not new information. Moses taught sanitation. He made many rules for encampments. The Greeks and the Romans created elaborate systems of aqueducts, baths, and drainage. When the Roman Empire crumbled, sanitation became a lost art. Civilization paid the price: plague after plague struck areas of dense population.


Smallpox continued to infect Europe’s population until plumbing infrastructure became commonplace. Although, sanitation ended this disease, the smallpox vaccine takes the credit.

When most of us think of a conscientious objector, we think of someone who refused military service for moral or religious reasons. In the 1800s, the term came into use for someone who refused vaccinations for their children. There was a great deal of resistance to the smallpox vaccine. Some statistics placed fatalities from the vaccine as high as 1 in 200

In modern times, objections to vaccines are mounting. Refusing to vaccinate is as controversial today as it was when the first vaccines were forced on British citizens almost 200 years ago.

Vaccines often contain toxins like aluminum and mercury, and many vaccines contain aborted fetal tissues. The reality of vaccine injury and death is making the news, though the propaganda and out and out lies from pharmaceutical companies cause a polarized division between those who are pro vaccine and those who are against.

If you are reading this, you probably have access to running water and a working toilet. If you choose to forego vaccines for yourself or your children, bear in mind that you will need additional protection to avoid contracting illnesses. Exercise, sleep, stress management, and a truly healthy diet are all essential for an immune system to work at optimal efficiency.

While the medical professionals and the pharmaceutical companies are quick to take credit for our increased life expectancy, in truth, they are not the heroes. Have you thanked a plumber lately?

If you’re looking to increase your body’s ability to protect itself against disease, check out Make Your Immune System Bulletproof with These Natural Remedies (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/make-your-immune-system-bulletproof-with-these-natural-remedies/). Also, see How to Detoxify from Vaccinations & Heavy Metals (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/how-to-detoxify-from-vaccinations-heavy-metals/).

Further Reading:


How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/issue/17-how-to-detoxify-and-heal-from-vaccinations-for-adults-and-children/)



Influenza Vaccine – A Comprehensive Overview of the Potential Dangers and Effectiveness of the Flu Shot (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/issue/17-influenza-vaccine-a-comprehensive-overview-of-the-potential-dangers-and-effectiveness-of-the-flu-shot/)



The MMR Vaccine – A Comprehensive Overview Of the Potential Dangers and Effectiveness (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/issue/17-the-mmr-vaccine-a-comprehensive-overview-of-the-potential-dangers-and-effectiveness/)



How Plumbing, Not Vaccines, Eradicated Disease (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/how-plumbing-not-vaccines-eradicated-disease/)



Autism and Vaccines: CDC Whistleblower Exposes Vaccine Dangers, Lies, and Cover-ups (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/autism-and-vaccines-cdc-whistleblower-exposes-vaccine-dangers-lies-and-cover-ups/)

Sources:


Taps and Toilets Essential to Maintain India’s Polio Free Miracle – The Lancet (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/globalhealth.thelancet.com/2014/03/19/taps-and-toilets-essential-maintain-indias-polio-free-miracle)



Polio Vaccine Fails in India Due to Polluted Drinking Water – The Refusers (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/therefusers.com/refusers-newsroom/polio-vaccine-fails-in-india-due-to-polluted-drinking-water/%23.VRynUzvF9IZ)



John Snow and the Broad Street Pump: On the Trail of an Epidemic – UCLA (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/snowcricketarticle.html)



Sanitation, Not Vaccination The True Protection Against Small-Pox – William Tebb (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.whale.to/vaccine/tebb1.html)



The End of Smallpox – History Today (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.historytoday.com/derrick-baxby/end-smallpox)



53,000 Paralysis Cases in India From Polio Vaccine In A Year – NPAFP Identical to Polio But Twice as Deadly – Child Health Safety (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/https://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/53000-paralysis-cases-in-india-from-polio-vaccine-in-a-year-npafp-identical-to-polio-but-twice-as-deadly/)



Understanding Your Western European Ancestors: Demographics: Death and Illness – Understanding Your Ancestors (https://archive.fo/o/M5HFC/www.understandingyourancestors.com/wea/death.aspx)

[Hervé]

8-10 Million Iranians Died over Great Famine Caused by British Empire (1917-1919), Documents Reveal

By Sadegh Abbasi (https://www.globalresearch.ca/author/sadegh-abbasi) Global Research
June 02, 2019
Khamenei.ir (http://english.khamenei.ir/news/2197/8-10-million-Iranians-died-over-Great-Famine-caused-by-the-British) 4 November 2015


https://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/iran-great-famine-british-government-400x267.jpg
Featured image is from Khamenei.ir

This article was originally published in November 2015.
The document in the American Archives, reporting the widespread famine and spread of epidemic disease in Iran, estimates the number of the deceased due to the famine to be about 8-10 million.
***

One of the little-known chapters of history was the widespread famine in Iran during World War I, caused by the British presence in Iran. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Britain became the main foreign power in Iran and this famine or–more accurately–‘genocide’ was committed by the British. The document in the American Archives, reporting the widespread famine and spread of epidemic disease in Iran, estimates the number of the deceased due to the famine to be about 8-10 million during 1917-19 (1), making this the greatest genocide of the 20th century and Iran the biggest victim of World War I (2).


https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41stKfsEu6L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg


It should be noted that Iran had been one of the main suppliers of food grains to the British forces stationed in the empire’s South Asian colonies. Although bad harvest during these two years made the situation worse, it was by no means the main reason why the Great Famine occurred. Prof. Gholi Majd of Princeton University writes in his book, The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, that American documents show that the British prevented imports of wheat and other food grains into Iran from Mesopotamia, Asia, and also the USA, and that ships loaded with wheat were not allowed to unload at the port of Bushehr in the Persian Gulf. Professor Majd argues that Great Britain intentionally created genocide conditions to destroy Iran, and to effectively control the country for its own purposes. Major Donohoe describes Iran of that time as a “land of desolation and death” (3). But this event soon became the subject of a British cover up.

Britain has a long record of its several attempts to conceal history and rewrite it in their own favor. The pages are filled with conspiracies that were covered up by the British government to hide its involvement in different episodes that would tarnish the country’s image. One of the clear examples is the “Jameson Raid”; a failed coup against Paul Kruger’s government in South Africa. This raid was planned and executed directly by the British government of Joseph Chamberlain under the orders of Queen Victoria (4) (5). In 2002, Sir Graham Bower‘s memoirs were published in South Africa, revealing these involvements that had been covered up for more than a century, focusing attention on Bower as a scapegoat for the incident (6).

The records that were destroyed to cover up British crimes around the globe, or were kept in secret Foreign Office archives, so as to, not only protect the United Kingdom’s reputation, but also to shield the government from litigation, are indicative of the attempts made by the British to evade the consequences of their crimes. The papers at Hanslope Park also include the reports on the “elimination” of the colonial authority’s enemies in 1950s Malaya; records that show ministers in London knew of the torture and murder of Mau Mau insurgents in Kenya and roasting them alive (7). These records may include those related to Iran’s Great Famine. Why were these records that cover the darkest secrets of the British Empire destroyed or kept secret? Simply because they might ‘embarrass’ Her Majesty’s government (8).

A famine occurred in Ireland from 1845 until 1852 which killed one fourth of the Irish population. This famine was caused by British policies and faced a large cover up attempt by the British government and crown to blame it on ‘potatoes’ (9). The famine, even today, is famous in the world as the “potato famine” when, in reality, it was a result of a planned food shortage and thus a deliberate genocide by the British government (10).


https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51M8yFOigwL._SX325_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg


The true face of this famine as a genocide has been proven by historian Tim Pat Coogan in his book The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy published by Palgrave MacMillan (11). A ceremony was planned to take place in the US to unveil Coogan’s book in America, but he was denied a visa by the American embassy in Dublin (12).

Therefore it becomes obvious that Britain’s role in Iran’s Great famine, which killed nearly half of Iran’s population, was not unprecedented. The documents published by the British government overlook the genocide, and consequently, the tragedy underwent an attempted cover-up by the British government. The Foreign Office “handbook on Iran” of 1919 mentioned nothing related to the Great Famine.

Julian Bharier, a scholar who studied Iran’s population, built his “backward projection” estimation of Iran’s population (13) based on reports from this “handbook” and, as a result, ignored the effect of the Great Famine on Iran’s population in 1917. Bharier’s estimations were used by some authors to deny the occurrence of the Great Famine or to underestimate its impacts.

By ignoring Iran’s Great Famine in his estimations, Bharier’s work faces four scientific deficiencies. Bharier does not consider the loss of population caused by the famine in his calculations; he needs to ‘adjust’ the figure of the official census in 1956 from 18.97 million to 20.37 million, and this is despite the fact that he uses 1956 census as his primary building block for his “backward projection” model. He also ignores the official growth rates and uses his personal assumptions in this regard, which is far lower than other estimates. Finally, although Bharier frequently cites Amani’s estimates (14), in the end Bharier’s findings contradict that of Amani’s; notably Bharier’s population estimate for 1911 is 12.19 million while Amani put this figure at 10.94 million.

Despite deficiencies in the population estimates offered by Bharier for the period of the Famine and its earlier period, his article offers useful data for the post-Famine period; this is because these figures are generated from 1956 backward. That is to say, numbers generated from 1956 to 1919 are thus credible because they do not include the period of famine. Moreover, this portion of Bharier’s data are also true to that of the American Legation. For example, Caldwell and Sykes estimate the 1919 population at 10 million, which is comparitive to Bharier’s figure of 11 million.

Gholi Majd was not the first author to refute Bharier’s figures for this period. Gad G. Gilbar, in his 1976 article on demographic developments during the second half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, also considers Bharier’s estimates inaccurate for the period.

In an apparently biased review of Majd’s work, Willem Floor confirms Bharier’s model (15), despite its apparent deficiencies, and takes a mocking tone toward the well- documented work of Gholi Majd to undermine the devastation caused by the British-instigated famine in Iran, to the point of total denial of the existence of such a genocide. Floor also offers inaccurate or untrue information to oppose the fact that the British deprived Iranians from honey and caviar in the north, as he argues caviar was haram (religiously prohibited), while no such fatwa has ever existed in Shia jurisprudence and all available decrees assert that caviar is halal or permissible under the Islamic law. There was a rumor made up by Russians at the time, saying that Caviar was haram and Britain made full use of this rumor.

Another criticism made by Floor was to question why Majd’s work does not use British archival sources. A more important question is why Majd should have used these sources when they totally ignore the occurrence of the famine in Iran. The fact that Majd used mainly US sources seems to be reasonable on the grounds that the US was neutral toward the state of affairs in Iran at the time, and made efforts to help by feeding them (16).

*

Sadegh Abbasi is a M.A. student at Tehran University. As a student in history he has also worked as a contributor to different Iranian news agencies.

Notes


1. Majd, Mohammad Gholi. The Great Famine & Genocide in Iran: 1917-1919. Lanham : University Press of America, 2013. p.71: https://books.google.com/books?id=5WgSAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA71&lpg.



2. Sniegoski, Stephen J. Iran as a Twentieth Century Victim: 1900 Through the Aftermath of World War II. mycatbirdseat.com. [Online] 11 10, 2013. [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://mycatbirdseat.com/2013/11/iran-twentieth-century-victim-1900-aftermath-world-war-ii/.



3. Donohoe, Major M. H. With The Persian Expedition. London : Edward Arnold, 1919. p. 76.



4. Nelson, Michael and Briggs, Asa. Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera. London : Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2007. p. 97: https://books.google.com/books?id=6ISE-ZEBfy4C&pg=PA97&lpg.



5. Bower, Graham. Sir Graham Bower’s Secret History of the Jameson Raid and the South African Crisis, 1895-1902. Cape Town : Van Riebeeck Society, 2002. p. xii: https://books.google.fr/books?id=VFYFZKRBXz0C&pg=PR23&lpg.



6. Ibid. p. xvii.



7. Cobain, Ian, Bowcott, Owen and Norton-Taylor, Richard. Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes . The Guardian. [Online] 03 17, 2012. [Cited: 10 10, 2015.] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes.



8. Walton, Calder. Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War, and the Twilight of Empire. New York : The Overlook Press, 2013. p. 15: https://books.google.fr/books?id=f2cjCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT15&lpg.



9. Warfield, Brian. History Corner: The Great Irish Famine. wolfetonesofficialsite.com. [Online] [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://www.wolfetonesofficialsite.com/famine.htm.



10. Britain’s Cover Up. irishholocaust.org. [Online] [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://www.irishholocaust.org/britain’scoverup.



11. Coogan, Tim Pat. The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.



12. O’Dowd, Niall. Proving the Irish Famine was genocide by the British. IrishCentral. [Online] 08 06, 2015. [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://www.irishcentral.com/news/proving-the-irish-famine-was-genocide-by-the-british-tim-pat-coogan-moves-famine-history-unto-a-new-plane-181984471-238161151.html.



13. Bharier, Julien. A Note on the Population of Iran, 1900-1966 . Population Studies. 1968, Vol. 22, 2.



14. Amani, Mehdi. La population de l’Iran. Population (French Edition). 1972, Vol. 27, 3: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1529398.



15. Floor, Willem. Reviewed Work: The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917-1919 by Mohammad Gholi Majd . Iranian Studies. Iran Facing the New Century, 2005, Vol. 38, 1.



16. Fecitt, Harry. Other Theatres of War. westernfrontassociation.com. [Online] 09 29, 2013. [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/the-great-war/great-war-on-land/other-war-theatres/3305-dunsterforce-part-1.html.


The original source of this article is Khamenei.ir (http://english.khamenei.ir/news/2197/8-10-million-Iranians-died-over-Great-Famine-caused-by-the-British)
Copyright © Sadegh Abbasi (https://www.globalresearch.ca/author/sadegh-abbasi), Khamenei.ir (http://english.khamenei.ir/news/2197/8-10-million-Iranians-died-over-Great-Famine-caused-by-the-British), 2019


Related:


History Proves that Western Governments Have Already Used Food as a Weapon of Genocide (https://magnetrack.klangoo.com/v1.1/track.ashx?e=AP_RA_CLK&p=5679286&d=5423682&c=c787d455-1fd6-444b-abe0-3f9cf6dff8ef&u=4df1d254-868a-4036-968e-4b665e235553&l=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.globalresearch.ca%2F8-10-million-iranians-died-great-famine-caused-british-late-1910s-documents-reveal%2F5679286&redir=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.globalresearch.ca%2Fhistory-proves-that-western-governments-have-already-used-food-as-a-weapon-of-genocide%2F5423682%3Futm_campaign%3Dmagnet%26utm_source%3Darticle_page%26utm_medium%3Drelated_articl es)



France Didn't Have A Revolution (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?25102-For-an-idea-on-the-big-picture&p=262947&viewfull=1#post262947)

[Hervé]

Soviets say Allied version of D-Day is a 'distortion' of history (https://www.csmonitor.com/1984/0605/060519.html)

Gary Thatcher Christian Science Monitor (https://www.csmonitor.com/1984/0605/060519.html)
Tue, 05 Jun 1984 15:09 UTC

Note: This article was written on the 40th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France. 35 years later, the Russian version of WW2 is still the correct one, while the Western version is being propped up with ever-grander ceremonies...


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/525005/large/d_day.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/525005/full/d_day.jpg)
D-Day, 6 June 1944


Tomorrow, the leaders of many Western nations will gather on the shores of Normandy to observe the 40th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

But the Soviet Union, meanwhile, is engaged in a major effort to belittle the contribution of Western countries during World War II.

The campaign, involving many organs of the government-controlled press here, holds that Western powers delayed the invasion in order to allow the Germans time to inflict more damage on the Soviet Union - and only belatedly mounted the Normandy invasion to grab part of the credit for defeating Hitler.

"The outcome of the war had already been decided'' before the June 6, 1944, invasion, according to a retired Soviet general interviewed by Tass, the official government news agency. Those who see history in a different way are, according to Soviet writers, ''falsifiers'' or representatives of ''bourgeois'' mass-information media who blend ''deliberate distortions of history together with ill-intentioned lies.''

The Soviet Union has long held that the Red Army bore the brunt of World War II (which is known here as the ''Great Patriotic War'') - and that it played the major role in defeating the forces of Adolf Hitler. But lately the campaign has become louder and shriller in an obvious effort to counter the planned observances of the 40th anniversary of D-Day, the first day of the Allied assault on the European mainland.

On June 6, President Reagan will join French President Francois Mitterrand, Queen Elizabeth, and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau at ceremonies in Caen, France, to mark the occasion.

But an official journal of the Soviet Defense Ministry has already dismissed the ceremonies as a ''pompous propaganda campaign.'' And Izvestia, the official government newspaper, recently carried an article that drew crude parallels between Hitler and President Reagan, implying that the two men share the ''distorted consciousness of a maniac killer.''

For years, the Soviet Union has complained that its contributions in World War II have been consistently understated by contemporary historians. The claim is, according to some military analysts, not without some justification.

In fact, this country suffered grievous losses during the war: Some estimates run as high as 20 million people. The losses in a single Russian city - Leningrad - were calculated at nearly 1.5 million people. That, according to one account, was at the time equal to ''the entire war losses suffered by the United States in the whole of its history.''

Wartime losses of young Russian men are still felt in this country, notably in the form of a male-female population imbalance that will persist for several more generations. The country is studded with war memorials and statues, and memories of the conflict can even now provoke emotional responses, especially for Russians.

A kerchiefed Russian babushka, for example, interviewed on a Moscow street, broke down into tears when recalling, ''I lost two brothers during the war.'' Then, she added as she hurried away, ''and now look what Reagan is doing. . . .''

That is precisely the connection the Soviet leaders would like more people to make.

During the current press campaign, the Soviet government is suggesting that today, as in 1944, the US is no real friend of Europe. The current observances of D-Day, the Defense Ministry's ''military-historical journal'' argues, are aimed at trying to ''dispel the anxiety of Europeans who, according to Washington's strategic plans, are to be the first to be burned in a 'limited' nuclear war in Europe.''

Pravda, the official Communist Party newspaper, recently carried an article by a former war correspondent identified as Daniil Kraminov. In it, he wrote that ''moral preparations'' are under way ''for a new, this time, nuclear war, which dooms Europe and the European civilization to destruction.''

That, of course, dovetails with Moscow's ongoing propaganda efforts against the stationing of new American-supplied nuclear missiles to Europe.

Another theme of the current press campaign is the suggestion that Western leaders were culpable for their encouragement of Hitler's ambitions. Kraminov, in the Pravda article, argues not only that US banks financed Hitler's wartime mobilization, but also that the US blocked early efforts by the Soviet Union to provide for a ''collective defense'' of Europe from Hitler's advance. (Notably, there is no mention in any of the articles about the Aug. 23, 1939, Soviet-German nonagression pact, which many historians view as having paved the way for the subsequent Nazi invasion of Poland.)

Kraminov further argues that ''without that aid and open encouragement from reactionary circles of the USA, Great Britain, and France . . . Hitler would not have dared and could not have possibly undertaken the military adventures which brought untold suffering, sacrifices, and destruction to Europe.''

The current press campaign also makes much of alleged ''foot-dragging'' by the Allies in opening the ''second front'' against Germany in 1944. The military-historical journal claims that ''published documents make it clear'' that the Soviet Union pushed the Allies to open up a front in Europe as early as July 1941 and that the Allies agreed to do so in 1942.

Why the delay until 1944?
In an interview with Tass, Col.-Gen. Ivan Kuzovkov, identified as a wartime commander, argues that subsequent events have made it clear that the West ''deliberately made the Soviet people shoulder the hardships of war and hoped to see the Soviet Union bled white.''

In fact, he continues, the advance of Soviet troops actually forced the Germans to divert troops away from Normandy and thus paved the way for the successful Allied landing there. But, he said, as a practical matter the Normandy invasion ''was an important but auxiliary factor'' in the war effort because the Soviet Army had already doomed Hitler to defeat.

''Why was the second front opened in 1944 and not later?'' the military-historical journal asks. Because, according to the journal, the prospect of a Soviet victory without Allied help ''frightened the monopolistic circles of the US and Britain and made them hurry up with the opening of the second front in Normandy.''

Indeed, pro-Soviet, Australian-born author James Aldridge writes in Izvestia, ''The opening of the second front was partially caused by fear. In Western political circles they understood that the Red Army in its victorious offensive was far from being exhausted and could rout the enemy on its own.''

In a similar vein, Tass rebukes Ronald Heiferman, author of ''World War II,'' for ''falsifying historical events.'' Heiferman, according to Tass, suggests that the Russians pressed the allies to open a second front in Europe to prevent the collapse of the Red Army ''under a Nazi onslaught.''

This is simply another example of how ''falsifiers are rewriting history for the sake of political objectives,'' says Tass.


More: From a 2004 article ('D-Day and the truth about the Second World War (https://www.marxist.com/wwii-anniversary-one210704.htm)'):
In August 1942, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up a document that said:
"In World War II, Russia occupies a dominant position and is the decisive factor looking toward the defeat of the Axis in Europe. While in Sicily the forces of Great Britain and the USA are being opposed by 2 German divisions, the Russian front is receiving the attention of approximately 200 German divisions. Whenever the Allies open a second front on the Continent, it will be decidedly a secondary front to that of Russia; theirs will continue to be the main effort. Without Russia in the war, the Axis cannot be defeated in Europe, and the position of the United Nations becomes precarious." (quoted in V. Sipols, The Road to Great Victory, p. 133.) These words accurately express the real position that existed at the time of the D-day landings. Yet an entirely different (and false) version of the war is assiduously being cultivated in the media today.

The truth is that the war against Hitler in Europe was fought mainly by the USSR and the Red Army. For most of the war, the British and Americans were mere spectators...

Related:
Rothschilds/John D. Rockefeller, Sr. funded the Bolshevik Revolution (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/Rothschilds/John D. Rockefeller, Sr. funded the Bolshevik Revolution)

[Brigantia]

D-Day distortion?

I always appreciate an alternative view on history, but I did find this quite upsetting on a day when I always reflect on my parents and grandparents who lived through the war, especially my grandfathers, one of whom was in the RAF and the other in the army.

One thing that I noted is that there is a strong pro-Soviet bias by the writers. I would say that I grew up knowing full well about the massive losses of the Soviet forces; I watched The World at War when it was first aired (I think most households did in Britain, it was a very good series); that topic was fully covered in that series and I have never forgotten it.

Now I've never had military training, but surely the aim of engaging in battle is to aim to win with inflicting as much damage on your enemy whilst minimising damage to your own forces? I have read about D-Day in detail, it was a massive operation against a heavily fortified coastline and had to set off with the Germans not twigging that it was on its way. There had already been a raid on Dieppe in 1942 which was an unmitigated disaster. British forces were thinly stretched until the arrival of US troops, so surely it makes military sense to attack when the bulk of your enemy's forces are engaged elsewhere?

The planning logistics were an enormous operation, in a pre-computer age when everything was written or typed. There needed to be all the materials assembled, at a time when equipment sustained losses in operations and needed to be replaced, and war production factories were being bombed. They had to assemble almost 200,000 troops and all the necessary equipment in the south of England without them being detected. There was also an elaborate double-cross spy system, with the double agents feeding false information over a period of time. Add to that the weather had to be right (I've had quite a few very choppy Channel crossings in my time), D-Day was nearly called off due to storms and only a brief lull in the bad weather allowed it to go ahead.

So, that's not the sort of thing that you can knock up in a couple of weeks. There never was any certainty about D-Day being a success and Churchill feared that the casualties would be far greater than what they were.

Furthermore, I think when someone starts to criticise the state of someone's house, they should look at their own first. Stalin was a mass murderer. It's hard to get an exact figure, but it is estimated that about 12 million Soviet peasant farmers and their family members died as a result of Stalin's agricultural collectivisation plans. Also, any Soviet prisoners who were repatriated after the end of the war were executed or sent to gulags. I knew a man years ago who had been captured by the Americans in an SS uniform (he was Latvian or Lithuanian I think). He was given the choice of repatriation to the USSR or to be sent to Britain to work in the coal mines. He chose the mines and remained in Britain until he died at an old age.

My personal view is that there were no saints amongst the leaders of the war, and there were certainly a lot of murky dealings below the surface. I do find this increasing criticism of Britain's role quite troubling, in my immediate consciousness I know about the struggles and deprivations that my family had to deal with during the war.

Finally - yes, there are 'ever-grander ceremonies'. You could say the same about most events nowadays. Personally I would love to turn the clock back to the dignified, low-key memorials, but everything these days has to be a 'spectacle'. I felt that a lot of the art installations for the centenary of the end of the First World War last year were distasteful and just a way for some artists to make a name for themselves. It seems to me that you can't get the attention of the young 'uns these days if it's not flashy and gaudy.

[Smell the Roses]

This thread is a gem! I'm surprised I didn't see it before. I am definitely one who romanticizes the past. When I was little, I was really upset that I wasn't born during the pioneer days due to my obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. What's pretty super about current times is that you can live off the land like a pioneer if you choose to, but if you find yourself starving to death, you can always abandon the adventure! :ROFL: While we certainly have challenges in current times, I do believe that we are moving toward an awakening during which we will see how everything fit together beautifully to emerge into something better than ever before. I suppose some of our romanticism may go back to a time we remember from our genetics, a golden age that has been all but wiped out by modern history. So when we romanticize the past, we might need to go back further than we are accustomed.

[Brigantia]

I agree Merry Mom! At least we have choices these days and as you say, can move on if the adventure goes belly-up!

It took years of doing genealogy for me to realise just how hard and precarious life was in the past. I think that is both good and bad, in the present day we take a lot for granted but at least childbirth these days in the developed world isn't something that you fear as it might kill you and medical advances can cure many conditions that used to be a death sentence. Starvation is no longer a condition to be feared in the developed world. My family were solidly working class and poor and it was a revelation to me how they managed to survive through the centuries. I would like to think too that we are moving towards an awakening, at least a lot of people are no longer blindly accepting what they are taught, though with all the distortion about our history I think it's hard to know when the golden age did occur.

Life is still precarious in many other parts of the world though, with a lack of medical facilities, totalitarian regimes and war. We should count our blessings.

[Smell the Roses]

Life is still precarious in many other parts of the world though, with a lack of medical facilities, totalitarian regimes and war. We should count our blessings.
Great reminder! I was speaking from the perspective of the Western world, but so many humans still don’t have the things we take for granted: easy access to clean water, modern sanitation, etc.

I enjoy genealogical research also. I particularly wonder what was going on with my ancestors in England that motivated them to immigrate to the US in 1909. What a huge risk it was, but they must have thought it was worth taking! I know that on my French side, they were part of the Acadian migration. There were such huge upheavals in their lives. I feel like sometimes we modern folks create unnecessary drama in our lives, because we just aren’t genetically used to being content.

[Praxis]

D-Day distortion?

I always appreciate an alternative view on history, but I did find this quite upsetting on a day when I always reflect on my parents and grandparents who lived through the war, especially my grandfathers, one of whom was in the RAF and the other in the army.

One thing that I noted is that there is a strong pro-Soviet bias by the writers. I would say that I grew up knowing full well about the massive losses of the Soviet forces; I watched The World at War when it was first aired (I think most households did in Britain, it was a very good series); that topic was fully covered in that series and I have never forgotten it.

Now I've never had military training, but surely the aim of engaging in battle is to aim to win with inflicting as much damage on your enemy whilst minimising damage to your own forces? I have read about D-Day in detail, it was a massive operation against a heavily fortified coastline and had to set off with the Germans not twigging that it was on its way. There had already been a raid on Dieppe in 1942 which was an unmitigated disaster. British forces were thinly stretched until the arrival of US troops, so surely it makes military sense to attack when the bulk of your enemy's forces are engaged elsewhere?

The planning logistics were an enormous operation, in a pre-computer age when everything was written or typed. There needed to be all the materials assembled, at a time when equipment sustained losses in operations and needed to be replaced, and war production factories were being bombed. They had to assemble almost 200,000 troops and all the necessary equipment in the south of England without them being detected. There was also an elaborate double-cross spy system, with the double agents feeding false information over a period of time. Add to that the weather had to be right (I've had quite a few very choppy Channel crossings in my time), D-Day was nearly called off due to storms and only a brief lull in the bad weather allowed it to go ahead.

So, that's not the sort of thing that you can knock up in a couple of weeks. There never was any certainty about D-Day being a success and Churchill feared that the casualties would be far greater than what they were.

Furthermore, I think when someone starts to criticise the state of someone's house, they should look at their own first. Stalin was a mass murderer. It's hard to get an exact figure, but it is estimated that about 12 million Soviet peasant farmers and their family members died as a result of Stalin's agricultural collectivisation plans. Also, any Soviet prisoners who were repatriated after the end of the war were executed or sent to gulags. I knew a man years ago who had been captured by the Americans in an SS uniform (he was Latvian or Lithuanian I think). He was given the choice of repatriation to the USSR or to be sent to Britain to work in the coal mines. He chose the mines and remained in Britain until he died at an old age.

My personal view is that there were no saints amongst the leaders of the war, and there were certainly a lot of murky dealings below the surface. I do find this increasing criticism of Britain's role quite troubling, in my immediate consciousness I know about the struggles and deprivations that my family had to deal with during the war.

Finally - yes, there are 'ever-grander ceremonies'. You could say the same about most events nowadays. Personally I would love to turn the clock back to the dignified, low-key memorials, but everything these days has to be a 'spectacle'. I felt that a lot of the art installations for the centenary of the end of the First World War last year were distasteful and just a way for some artists to make a name for themselves. It seems to me that you can't get the attention of the young 'uns these days if it's not flashy and gaudy.

You are getting upset about facts which do not seem possible to be upset by.

It is historical fact that the Soviet Union was a large reason that Europe did not fall the nazis. There is absolutely NO QUESTION here.

This being the case does not make Stalin a good person. It does not make communism god tier. It does not white wash the past. It does not remove the impressiveness of organizing an invasion of that scale without computers(which if you think that is impressive then maybe you should check out the logistics system of WW1 and how they kept the lines with those millions of shells supplied. Now that is impressive. Google Der Tag preparations). This does not take away from the service of anyones ancestors. It is just recognizing the millions of Russians that went through the meat grinder to defeat Nazi in europe.

In case you are not aware( and I am aware of how awful this is to the humans having to do it and for the government to tell them to do this), at times there were not enough arms for the Russian soldiers so one would get a gun and the next would get ammo. THe job of the ammo dude was to follow the gun dude to then pick it up and recycle.

What is offensive and upsetting is your attitude quite frankly. You are ignoring a great many peoples sacrifice because you have a knee jerk reactions to political philosophies. One does not have to become communist to appreciate what Russian people did for the world. Yes D day was important and impressive. Yes we should be grateful for your parents service and if they died sacrifice. But if you forget to be thankful for the Soviets enormous and main part in the winning of the war, then I dont know what to say to you other than, go look at numbers of people dead in the war and rethink.

For the record, I hate the soviet union. I dont see communism as positive. I am not trying to defend anything but the sacrifice of people who are now starting to be forgotten because people dont know history, often many were forced into that situation at gun point.

[Strat]

Hell, it's just her opinion. I'm not upset or offended in the slightest.

My grandfather had a small squad or whatever in WW2. There's a pic of him in a half trac full of people and on the other side he wrote that only 1 guy out of all them survived. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and got a purple heart (shot in leg) amongst other medals. He either gave them away (to my mom and uncle), or trashed them. One of them he mailed to somebody as a sort of a middle finger but that's another story. I forget all the details -I have all his info, pics etc- but I remember he was part of 'Roosevelts Butchers'.

I never realized the truth of the matter till I was in my mid to later 20s when I became increasingly interested in American history. I don't feel bad or anything that the Russians shut down the Nazi's, it's just kinda the way the mop flops.

I'll load up some pics from my grandpa if I can find my damn flickr password. He had lots of great stories. RIP 'Fox'.

[Brigantia]

What is offensive and upsetting is your attitude quite frankly. You are ignoring a great many peoples sacrifice because you have a knee jerk reactions to political philosophies. One does not have to become communist to appreciate what Russian people did for the world. Yes D day was important and impressive. Yes we should be grateful for your parents service and if they died sacrifice. But if you forget to be thankful for the Soviets enormous and main part in the winning of the war, then I dont know what to say to you other than, go look at numbers of people dead in the war and rethink.


Hmmm... so what I said was 'offensive'? I said, if you missed it, that I grew up being well aware of the massive losses of the Soviet forces and I am also aware that this did make a major contribution to the outcome of the war. I don't see how this belittles the massive effort of the Allied invasion, whereas the original post stated that the British and Americans were 'mere spectators'. Don't forget as well that the British and Americans were fighting on many fronts, not just in northern Europe.

Where are my "knee jerk reactions to political philosophies"? I have no political leanings whatsoever as they are all as bad as each other.

Jeez, I joined this forum because it seemed so well mannered and I've been trolled within days.

[Smell the Roses]

Jeez, I joined this forum because it seemed so well mannered and I've been trolled within days. Dear Hiker Chick, I am sorry to hear that you are having a rough time here. I am glad that you joined. Different perspectives are enlightening.

[Praxis]

D-Day distortion?

I always appreciate an alternative view on history, but I did find this quite upsetting on a day when I always reflect on my parents and grandparents who lived through the war, especially my grandfathers, one of whom was in the RAF and the other in the army.

One thing that I noted is that there is a strong pro-Soviet bias by the writers. I would say that I grew up knowing full well about the massive losses of the Soviet forces; I watched The World at War when it was first aired (I think most households did in Britain, it was a very good series); that topic was fully covered in that series and I have never forgotten it.

Now I've never had military training, but surely the aim of engaging in battle is to aim to win with inflicting as much damage on your enemy whilst minimising damage to your own forces? I have read about D-Day in detail, it was a massive operation against a heavily fortified coastline and had to set off with the Germans not twigging that it was on its way. There had already been a raid on Dieppe in 1942 which was an unmitigated disaster. British forces were thinly stretched until the arrival of US troops, so surely it makes military sense to attack when the bulk of your enemy's forces are engaged elsewhere?


First, No one is trolling. You got upset at the article that Herve posted. I just disagree with your being upset at the article for stating what I believe to be fairly accurate.

The bulk of the enemy forces were there because the Soviets forced all the manpower to be there. I.E. They won the war for the allies as they sucked up all of the Reichs real military attention.

You literally just agreed with the article. The Soviets forced the Nazis to put a bulk of their forces there. Although, I should point out that Hitlers obsession with obliterating the slavs and their states also contributed to this outcome, just like keeping troops at concentration camps instead of sending to the front line. If you havent, you should look into the plans for moscow post WW2 had the Germans won.

[BMJ]

James Perloff presents his thoughts on the catalysts, that being false flags, for all major conflicts in the last 150 years.

Making it evident the enemy and the evil was not on the battle front, but right in our own governments that act as an extension of the will of the elite.

cxtHoqdmqIo

911TVorg
Published on May 13, 2019
James Perloff 2019 “War and Deception”

Saturday 27 April 2019
Watertown, Massachusetts

From the sinking of the Maine, to the Tonkin Gulf Incident, to Saddam Hussein’s missing “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” (to name only a few examples) James Perloff will walk the audience through history and ask: Have Americans been repeatedly deceived into war?

James Perloff's jarring conclusion is that the USA ALWAYS goes to war by deception. now who's motto does that sound like?

he continues,

Are our tax dollars and soldiers’ lives sacrificed needlessly?

And if so, what is the true agenda?

Are all wars really fought for “freedom and democracy”?

[Hervé]

Romans may have 'trapped more flies' with honey says new study (https://news.umich.edu/the-art-of-the-roman-deal/)

Morgan Sherburne University of Michigan News (https://news.umich.edu/the-art-of-the-roman-deal/)
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 19:00 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/528242/large/640px_Affresco_con_scena_stori.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/528242/full/640px_Affresco_con_scena_stori.jpg)
An ancient Roman fresco from the Necropolis of Esquilino, dated c. 300-280 BC, depicts a handshake between a Roman and a non-Roman. © Public domain, Wikimedia Commons


Ann Arbor-Romans are depicted as slashing and burning their way across countries in order to secure their empire. But a University of Michigan archeologist suggests that the Romans may have trapped more flies with honey.

At its peak-about the year 117-the Roman Empire ringed the Mediterranean Sea, encompassing present-day Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Eastern Europe, Turkey, Syria and a swath across northern Africa. Since the Middle Ages, historians have described this expansion as a military conquest. But for all its reach, the Roman conquest yielded little evidence of warfare or a disruption of power within excavated settlements across Italy, according to author Nicola Terrenato.

Instead, Terrenato thinks that elite Roman landowners and politicians offered positions of political power to non-Roman nobles in order to woo them into their empire. A wealth of recently digitized inscriptions shows local aristocrats surviving the conquest unscathed. Some of these aristocrats even thrived as politicians in Rome.
"It seems the Romans said, 'Come quietly and be a part of this, and you will not only preserve local power, but also have the chance to play the big game in Rome,'" said Terrenato, author of the book The Early Roman Expansion into Italy.

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/528240/medium/the_art_of_the_roman_deal_1.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/528240/full/the_art_of_the_roman_deal_1.jpg)
Nicola Terrenato, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan, contends in his new book that Romans built their empire through political diplomacy. © Nicola Terrenato


"The violence was there, but this really wasn't what made the Roman empire. What made the Roman empire was delicate and smart back-channel diplomacy among the landed elites."
Terrenato's research spans decades in the field across central Italy, most recently at Gabii. In the process, he realized that very few of the villages and farms in conquered regions reflected war-related destruction. Nor did the sites show a change in language or customs in local societies.

Had the conquest been very violent, as it is generally accepted, Terrenato argues one would expect to find evidence of disruption and radical shifts in leadership. Instead, there is strong evidence that the social and economic structures within these settlements remained the same, and the same families who were in power before the Roman expansion appeared to maintain their dominant positions. For instance, says Terrenato, family tombs of the local nobility continue long after this supposedly catastrophic event.
"Archaeological evidence allows you to see the material truth. You may have ancient historians saying that a city was sacked and destroyed, but when we excavate it, we see little destruction," Terrenato said.

"There must have been some process of negotiation by which Romans and non-Roman elites agreed on a grand bargain to rule the empire together."

[Hervé]

The US Was Created by Freemasonry to Realize NWO (https://www.henrymakow.com/the_united_states_is_a_masonic.html)

By Henry Makow, PhD
July 4, 2019


https://www.henrymakow.com/washington-freemason_big.jpg
(George Washington, Freemason)


You blind guides. You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!" (Matthew 23:24)

"The people of the world and even their governments" will be "as children under-age." The Protocols of Zion (15)
Democracy and freedom are illusions gradually dispersing like morning mist.

Our governments ask Cabalist (Masonic) bankers for credit like children asking for their allowance.

Governments are just a veil for these bankers. "Successful" people are their agents.

Freemasons control every important social institution: government, media, corporations, military, justice, education and the church. They are the "Deep State." Humanity is being reengineered to serve the Cabalist bankers and their god Lucifer in a world plantation.

As historian Bernard Fay explains below, the United States was established to implement this global agenda which explains US foreign policy.
"Your churches will be used to teach the Jew's religion and in less than two hundred years, the whole nation will be working for divine world government. That government that they believe to be divine will be the British Empire. All religions will be permeated with Judaism without even being noticed by the masses, and they will all be under the invisible all-seeing eye of the Grand Architect of Freemasonry."
----General George Cornwallis 1781
By Henry Makow, PhD

Most Americans who scoff at the mention of conspiracy don't know their country was created by Freemasonry . Freemasons drafted the Constitution and signed the Declaration of Independence. The "Indians" who dumped the tea in the harbor were Masons. So were Paul Revere and his Minutemen, George Washington and most of his generals. The Marquis de Lafayette was shunned until he joined the Masons. At least 20 of the 42 US Presidents were "Brothers." (http://www.midnightfreemasons.org/2011/11/freemason-presidents_11.html)

Freemasonry is the Church of Satan masquerading as a fraternal mystical philanthropic order. It fronts for Illuminati (Masonic & Cabalist Jewish) central bankers who started the US as a vehicle to advance their "New World Order." In the words of Masonic elder Manley P. Hall, "we must also perfect the plan of the ages, setting up here the machinery for a world brotherhood of nations and races." ("The Secret Destiny of America," (http://www.scribd.com/doc/21562643/Hall-the-Secret-Destiny-of-America-1944)1944, p.3)

The Freemasons provided Americans with ideals -- civil liberties, equal opportunity and no taxation without representation -- which still are valid. But they were enticements designed to gain power. As you might have noticed, these promises were not intended to be kept. Politicians don't represent us. They are Freemasons and they represent the goals of Freemasonry, i.e. Cabalist Jewish world Tyranny.

Most historians won't tell you this. In Upton Sinclair's words: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."


https://henrymakow.com/upload_images/faye.jpeg


But there was one historian who did reveal the truth. Bernard Fay (1893-1978) (https://www.henrymakow.com/bernard_fay.html)was a Harvard-educated Frenchman. He is considered an "anti-Mason" because his 1935 book, "Revolution and Freemasonry: 1680-1800" is one of very few to reveal the extent of Masonic participation in the US and French Revolutions.

He had access to Masonic archives in the US and Europe. His book is actually a sympathetic portrayal of Freemasonry with no references to its occult nature. However, as a Vichy Frenchman, he subsequently helped the Nazis identify Masons during World War Two. He was imprisoned after the war but pardoned in 1952 by Charles De Gaulle.

MASONIC AMERICA
Fay explains that in the1770's, the US consisted of 13 isolated colonies with different governments, religions, customs, racial profiles, and social and political structures. There were intense rivalries and longstanding antagonisms. A letter took three weeks to get from Georgia to Massachusetts.
"Masonry alone undertook to lay the foundation for national unity in America because [as a secret society] it could spread throughout the colonies and work steadily and silently. It created in a limited but very prominent class of people a feeling of American unity without which... there would have been no United States." (p. 230)

"In 1760, there was no town, big or small, where Masonry had not spun its web. Everywhere it was preaching fraternity and unity." (230)
Benjamin Franklin, who was the Grand Master of a French lodge, raised millions of francs crucial to financing George Washington's army. He was the first to submit a plan for military collaboration and political federation. He established a chain of Masonic newspapers in all of the colonies. You can guess where he found the money.

Fay says George Washington and his ragtag army kept the spirit of independence alive. He organized many military lodges and personally participated in their activities. On Dec. 27,1778, he led a parade after Philadelphia was recaptured:


https://www.henrymakow.com/upload_images/wash-Mason.jpg

"His sword at his side, in full Masonic attire, and adorned with all the jewels and insignia of the Brotherhood, Washington marched at the head of a solemn procession of 300 brethren through the streets of Philadelphia to Christ Church, where a Masonic Divine Service was held. This was the greatest Masonic parade that had ever been seen in the New World." (246)

"All the staff officers Washington trusted were Masons, and all the leading generals of the army were Masons: Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, James Madison, Gen. Greene, Gen. Lee, Gen. Sullivan, Lord Stirling, the two Putnams, Gen. Steuben, Montgomery, Jackson, Gist, Henry Knox and Ethan Allen were Masons. They all gathered around their Master Mason Washington and they all met at the 'Temple of Virtue,' 'a rude structure forming an oblong square forty by sixty feet, one story in height, a single entrance which was flanked by two pillars... The atmosphere which surrounded Washington was Masonic and it may be said that the framework of his mind was Masonic." (p. 250)
Imagine if Washington had shown the same devotion to Christianity. Fay points to a "curious" degree of coordination between Masons in the US and British armies:
"It seems even likely that the unforgettable and mysterious laxness of certain English military campaigns in America, particularly those of the Howe brothers, was deliberate and due to the Masonic desire of the English general to reach a peaceful settlement..." (251)
SURRENDER OF CORNWALLIS
In this context, it is pertinent to recall the confession of General Cornwallis when he surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown (Oct. 19, 1781.)
"Jonathan Williams recorded in his "Legions of Satan," (1781,) that Cornwallis revealed to Washington that "a holy war will now begin on America, and when it is ended America will be supposedly the citadel of freedom, but her millions will unknowingly be loyal subjects to the Crown."

https://henrymakow.com/upload_images/cornwallis.gif
( British General Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown, VA. Masonic hand sign indicates he was an insider.)


The Crown is the Illuminati (i.e. shareholders of the Bank of England.) Cornwallis went on to explain what would seem a contradiction:
"Your churches will be used to teach the Jew's religion and in less than two hundred years, the whole nation will be working for divine world government. That government that they believe to be divine will be the British Empire. All religions will be permeated with Judaism without even being noticed by the masses, and they will all be under the invisible all-seeing eye of the Grand Architect of Freemasonry."
In a 1956 speech, (https://www.henrymakow.com/nwo_introduced_under_masonic_g.html) Senator Joseph McCarthy reflected on these words:
"Cornwallis well knew that his military defeat was only the beginning of world catastrophe that would be universal and that unrest would continue until mind control could be accomplished through a false religion. What he predicted has come to pass. A brief sketch of American religious history and we have seen Masonry infused into every church in America with their veiled Phallic religion."

https://henrymakow.com/upload_images/Illuminati-dollar_tower1.jpg


CONCLUSION
We don't recognize the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy because we are not accustomed to thinking in terms of hundreds of years. But the Illuminati bankers have been plotting the "new order of the ages" (featured on the US dollar along with the uncapped Masonic pyramid) for thousands of years.

We may have the pleasure and pain of witnessing their design come to fruition. As we do, it is worth remembering that Americans, in fact all peoples, have allowed themselves to be duped.

Our role is analogous to that of the French nobles who collaborated in the French Revolution and then were slaughtered. Fay writes: "All these nobles did not hesitate to side with the revolutionary party, even though it was to cost them their rank, their estates and their lives." (p. 287)

In the words of a speaker at a secret B'nai Brith meeting in Paris (https://www.henrymakow.com/jewish_peril.html) in 1936:
"Yet it remains our secret that those Gentiles who betray their own and most precious interests, by joining us in our plot should never know that these associations are of our creation and that they serve our purpose...

"One of the many triumphs of our Freemasonry is that those Gentiles who become members of our Lodges, should never suspect that we are using them to build their own jails, upon whose terraces we shall erect the throne of our Universal King of Israel; and should never know that we are commanding them to forge the chains of their own servility to our future King of the World."
from Feb 20, 2016

------
Related:


The Occult Origins of the American Nation (https://nwoobserver.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/the-occult-origins-of-the-american-nation/)



Ernst Zundel - Freemasonry has Doomed Western Society (https://www.henrymakow.com/2016/01/Freemasonry-has-doomed-western-society.html)



Media Masks Masonic Control (https://www.henrymakow.com/2017/05/Media-Mask-Masonic-Control%20.html)



Masons Stage Political Charade (https://www.henrymakow.com/masons_run_world_charade.html)



Rothschilds Murdered at Least Seven US Presidents (https://www.henrymakow.com/002009.html)



Freemasonry-The Elephant in the Room (https://www.henrymakow.com/300902.html?_ga=2.20427197.485274014.1496750388-1239183559.1420930233)



Ex-aide to Jean-Marie Le Pen: 'Zionists, Freemasons' Control French media (http://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-aide-to-jean-marie-le-pen-zionists-freemasons-control-french-media/)



Freemasonry Has Doomed Western Society (https://henrymakow.com/2016/01/Freemasonry-has-doomed-western-society.html)



Freemasonry- Mankind's Death Wish (https://www.henrymakow.com/000768.html)



Freemasonry- The Elephant in the Room (https://henrymakow.com/300902.html)



CNN's Take on Freemasonry (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFuAPYKyPVU)



Jewish Organizations Want to Disarm Americans (http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2016/02/jews-and-jewish-organizations-lead-the-gun-control-campaign/)

[Valerie Villars]

Well, CNN's take is already unavailable.

https://www.henrymakow.com/002009.html

The link above is a link in the Rothschild link above and is called "The Mardi Gras Secrets", supposedly a deathbed confession of Mimi Eustis' father.

That is one of the most fascinating reads I've had in a while, as it delves into the Mystic Krewe of Comus' origins here in New Orleans, as tied in with Freemasonry and Freemasons Albert Pike, Judah Benjamin and John Slidell.

I had no idea Judah Benjamin and Albert Pike had such a history in New Orleans, living and working here.

I am familiar with the Eustis family, as I worked for Eustis Mortgage. Interesting and eye opening stuff.

[Hervé]

Myth of pristine Amazon rainforest busted as old cities reappear (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27945-myth-of-pristine-amazon-rainforest-busted-as-old-cities-reappear/)

Fred Pearce New Scientist (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27945-myth-of-pristine-amazon-rainforest-busted-as-old-cities-reappear/)
Thu, 23 Jul 2015 00:00 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s12/258040/large/dn27945_2_800.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s12/258040/full/dn27945_2_800.jpg)
Dreamscape: the Amazon was once lined with fields and plazas © Mario Tama/Getty


The first Europeans to penetrate the Amazon rainforests reported cities, roads and fertile fields along the banks of its major rivers. "There was one town that stretched for 15 miles without any space from house to house, which was a marvellous thing to behold," wrote Gaspar de Carvajal, chronicler of explorer and conquistador Francisco de Orellana in 1542 (http://www.amazon.com/The-Discovery-Amazon-According-Documents/dp/1163155969). "The land is as fertile and as normal in appearance as our Spain."

Such tales were long dismissed as fantasies, not least because teeming cities were never seen or talked about again. But it now seems the chroniclers were right all along. It is our modern vision of a pristine rainforest wilderness that turns out to be the dream.

What is today one of the largest tracts of rainforest in the world was, until little more than 500 years ago, a landscape dominated by human activity, according to a review of the evidence by Charles Clement (http://inpa.academia.edu/CharlesRClement) of Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus, and his colleagues.

After Europeans showed up, the inhabitants were decimated by disease (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16765-columbus-innocent-over-anthrax-in-the-americas) and superior weaponry, and retreated into the bush, while the jungle reclaimed their fields and plazas. But, thanks to a combination of deforestation and remote sensing, what's left of their civilisation is now re-emerging.

They reveal an anthropogenically modified Amazonia before the European conquest. "Few if any pristine landscapes remained in 1492," says Clement. "Many present Amazon forests, while seemingly natural, are domesticated."

Amazon domesticity
The evidence for this radical rethink has been stacking up for some time. Archaeologists have uncovered dense urban centres that would have been home to up to 10,000 inhabitants along riverbanks, with fields and cultivated orchards of Brazil nuts, palm and fruit trees stretching for tens of kilometres. Remote sensing has revealed extensive earthworks, including cities, causeways, canals, graveyards and huge areas of ridged fields that kept crops like manioc, maize and squash clear of floods and frosts.

Meanwhile, agriculturalists have discovered that many forest soils have been mulched and composted with waste. These fertile "dark earths", or terra preta, may cover 150,000 square kilometres, much of it now reclaimed by rainforests. Before the arrival of Europeans, the region's population may have reached 50 million.

The remains date back 3000 years or more, say the authors, who include geographer William Denevan (http://www.geography.wisc.edu/faculty/profile.php?p=71) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and anthropologist Michael Heckenberger (http://users.clas.ufl.edu/mheck/) of the University of Florida at Gainesville - both pioneers of the idea that the Amazon has long been modified by humans (http://www2.nau.edu/%7Ealcoze/for398/class/pristinemyth.html).

Not everyone agrees. Dolores Piperno (http://anthropology.si.edu/archaeobio/piperno.html) of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama recently argued that "recent investigations of soils in parts of the western Amazon... found little vegetation disturbance (http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/06/01/0959683615588374.abstract)."

Clement and his co-authors agree that

"the idea of a domesticated Amazonia... contrasts strongly with reports of empty forests, which continue to captivate scientific and popular media".
But the idea of a domesticated Amazon complements research in other rainforest regions, including the Congo basin and South-East Asia, that also suggest that much of what seems pristine is actually regrowth after dense human occupation. Erle Ellis of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, says such evidence suggests that we should be dating the start of the Anthropocene (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829154-500) - the era of human domination of the planet - to thousands of years ago rather than in the middle of 20th century (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27162-all-hail-the-anthropocene-the-end-of-holocene-thinking).

Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2015.0813 (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/lookup/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.0813)

Related:


Drones to explore Amazon for evidence of ancient civilizations (https://www.sott.net/article/292620-Drones-to-explore-Amazon-for-evidence-of-ancient-civilizations)



Mysterious earthen rings predate Amazon rainforest (http://www.livescience.com/46682-earthen-rings-predate-amazon-rainforest.html)

[Cara]

I’m not sure if this is a “romantic” idea of the past but it does concern the skewed modern idea of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and our wrong ideas about science, philosophy, magic and religion.


A Categorical Mistake: ‘Science’, ‘Magic’ and ‘Religion’ in the Middle Ages.
By Joanne Edge
August 13, 2019

Dr. Joanne Edge specialises in late-medieval and early modern European social and cultural history, with an emphasis on medicine and the ‘occult’ sciences: divination, magic and astrology. She did her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of London, and held a four-year postdoctoral position as Assistant Editor on the Casebooks Project at the University of Cambridge. She is currently Latin Manuscripts Cataloguer at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester.

The last two decades have seen the rise of the Irritating STEM Bro.™ Two well-known examples are Neil deGrasse Tyson and Steven Pinker: Great Men from Important Science Backgrounds who blithely talk and write about the history of their topic as if they are expertly qualified polymaths. Both use the word ‘medieval’ pejoratively, and see the history of science as an inexorable, teleological march of progress from the fantastic Classical Period to the Terrible Medieval Dark Ages and then woo Renaissance! And then things gradually getting better and better until hurrah! We are enlightened and clever in the 21st century!

Quite simply, though, this is insulting, ahistorical nonsense. The problem, which Irritating STEM Bros™ don’t understand – or more likely don’t want to acknowledge – is that our modern categories of ‘science’, ‘religion’, and ‘magic’ do not map in any meaningful way onto the medieval period. So let’s first examine this problem of categories.

Anachronistic Misnomers

‘Scientia’ in medieval Latin simply meant ‘knowledge’: the investigation of the material world and its properties was called ‘natural philosophy’. So ‘medieval science’ is a difficult concept for starters. To be ‘religious’ in the Middle Ages was to be a member of a monastic order, and the opposite of this was ‘secular’. The very idea of being religious in the modern sense was only really conceived of when there was a widespread idea of not being religious ­–we have the 19th century to thank for this meaning of the word.

Moreover, ‘theology’ and ‘philosophy’ were not separate disciplines at this time. The framework of Western European thought in the Middle Ages was largely one of Christianity combined with ancient philosophy (Aristotle being the most significant), which had been transmitted to the Middle Ages largely via the Greco-Arabic translations of the 12th century. So: medieval thinkers did not conceive of what we call ‘religion’ and what we call ‘science’ as separate, mutually exclusive categories.

Let’s move on then, to ‘magic’. If there was ever a ‘Humpty Dumpty’ word, magic would be it:


“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’” (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass).

So what did it mean? It depends who you ask. Medieval thinkers and writers used several Latin words to mean the sort of practices we might deem occult – sortilege, superstitio, magia and more. But those practising such impermissible arts might think they were acting as perfectly pious Christians, and magic rituals often included invocations to God or angels. How were these invocations different to orthodox prayers to God? I could spend hours trying to define medieval magic without getting anywhere: not one definition is completely satisfactory.

There are also significant overlaps between ‘magic’ and ‘science’ in the Middle Ages – a good example being astrology (https://www.forbiddenhistories.com/casebook-project-final-release/). Was this legitimate science based on logical principles of the observation of the heavens, or an illicit act of divination that operated via the meddling of demons? Again, it would depend who you asked.

So: what we call ‘religion’, ‘magic’ and ‘science’ were not separate categories (or even necessarily concepts) in the Middle Ages.

Let’s now take a look at where the Irritating STEM Bros™ get it – probably wilfully – wrong.

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s ‘Alternative History’

Tyson notoriously likes to refer to the irrational, religious, superstitious ‘Dark Ages’ as a counterpoint to the rational, scientific, logical world of modern science. Here’s one example: in January 2016, Tyson tweeted that the idea of a round earth was “lost to the Dark Ages”:

https://i2.wp.com/www.forbiddenhistories.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/tyson.jpg?w=1226&ssl=1

This is categorically untrue. But even if medieval thinkers had thought the earth was flat, that would have been OK: the idea that we only value what people in the past ‘got right’ is part of the same problem. In fact, the medievals-as-flat-earthers idea was one of the many myths started and perpetuated in the 19th century: medieval philosophers generally conceived of a round earth. There’s even a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to this exact topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth) which is broadly accurate. But something tells me Tyson chooses to ignore it because it this doesn’t fit with his narrative of irrational, superstitious Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages didn’t espouse one monolithic set of values or ideas (as I often tell my students, medieval people didn’t share a brain). The word ‘medieval’ itself is anachronistic: a term applied retrospectively by Renaissance thinkers onwards to indicate a time that was neither ‘Classical’ nor ‘Renaissance’ but ‘in the middle’ – a time where ‘progress’ ended and the ‘discoveries’ of the Classical world could be continued after a time of stagnation. How Renaissance and later thinkers conceived of and used the Middle Ages, as a contrast to their own time is interesting in terms of what it says about them and their own times. But it’s not something appropriate for Tyson and his contemporaries to do.

On the other hand, it is jaw-droppingly arrogant to assume that modern science has everything sorted out, just fine, and that we’re heading for further, linear progress. That’s not to say that as a disabled person I’m not glad for the medication and therapy that I’ve been able to access thanks to evidence-based medicine and randomised double-blind trials: just that we must place ourselves in our own context just as we must those in the past. Tyson does himself and his subject no favours by continuing to represent what is complex as simple.

Steven Pinker’s Religion of Progress

Psychologist Steven Pinker’s 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined has as its central thesis the idea that violence has declined over time, and that we now live in the most peaceful era yet. This is, he tells us, due to five main developments: the monopolisation on the use of force by the judiciary stemming from the rise of the modern nation-state (as expressed in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan of the mid-17th century); commerce, feminisation, cosmopolitanism and the ‘escalator of reason’.

It’s this last factor, which is of most interest here, this ‘escalator of reason’ which says that we now apply ‘rationality’ to human affairs. This, Pinker tells us, means there’s less violence in modern society than there was because we’re more rational. And he’s not shy to use the Awful Irrational Medieval Dark Ages as a counterpoint to the Brilliant Post-Enlightenment Modern Times of Awesome.

But are we more rational than our medieval counterparts? What does ‘rational’ even mean?

People in the past were in general no less ‘stupid’ or ‘clever’ than we are. Medieval thinkers were certainly as rational as modern ones, if we consider that they worked from a different set of assumptions from our own.

For example, let’s return to astrology (http://www.forbiddenhistories.com/astronomy-and-astrology/), in the later Middle Ages widely considered to be a sophisticated way of making sense of the cosmos and of mundane life. If you accept the central tenet of astrology – that the position of the heavens has an effect on worldly matters – then astrology is perfectly ‘rational’. It works according to its own internal, very complex rules. Of course not every medieval thinker believed fully in astrology and there were several contemporary sceptics including John of Salisbury (c. 1115-1180) and Nicole Oresme (c. 1320-1382). Seeing the effect the moon had on the tides, and apparently on menstruation, was very visible, tangible evidence of the effect of the planets on the mundane world.

https://i0.wp.com/www.forbiddenhistories.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/im1.jpg?w=1078&ssl=1
Astronomical tables for working out the best times for bloodletting from a folding almanac. BL Harley 5311, leaf H (made in 1406): (f. 5r here). Image credit: British Library, London.

And what about medieval medicine, often reduced in the media to dung poultices, leeches and witchcraft? The orthodox medicine of the Middle Ages was basically the orthodox medicine of antiquity, based on the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen. And while it certainly doesn’t resemble anything that we might think would ‘work’ for our ailments today, it was based on the notion of humoral theory, which followed logical principles: that the body’s four ‘humours’ – blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile – all had to be kept in balance for the body to be healthy.

This is why bloodletting and laxatives were such common treatments for illness and not in fact the irrational practices of superstitious people. So, if you accept the basic humoral framework, then humoral medicine is ‘rational’. Many medieval writers and practitioners followed a range of medical practice alongside humoral theory, as evidenced from surviving manuscripts. These ranged from tried and tested remedies to occult magic. Humoral theory was just one mode of thought, though the dominant one among educated elites.

https://i1.wp.com/www.forbiddenhistories.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/image2.jpg?w=1397&ssl=1
A physician letting blood. BL Sloane 2435 f. 11v, (produced in northern France c. 1285). Image credit: British Library, London.

Pinker’s entire book is a case for the modern era, a panegyric to what he sees as ‘progress’, and a build up to his 2016 work, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress which of course follows the same thesis: the Enlightenment was brilliant and everything is better now than it was before. But this is simplistic rubbish. Pinker does exactly what he accuses medieval thinkers of – not relying on rigorous evidence. He cherry picks evidence, which suits his thesis and quotes historians of the Enlightenment out of context to back his over-simplistic teleological narrative.

Pinker and Tyson see ‘science’ and ‘religion’ (which they seem to conflate with ‘magic’) as immutable, separate categories that can never intertwine. But as I hope I’ve shown, the truth is far more complex than that, and we do our medieval ancestors a profound disservice by blanketly dismissing them and their practices as ‘irrational’ and ‘superstitious’.

What is interesting about the Middle Ages is precisely how different it was to our own time yet also how similar. And it is finding the familiar in the alien – the internal logic of astrology, for example – that makes this topic endlessly fascinating. Tyson and Pinker take what is interesting and ask all the wrong questions. Was there science in the Middle Ages? No, not as we would know it today. But many medieval modes of thinking conformed to their own internal logic: a logic based on quite a different framework to our own.

© 2019 Joanne Edge
From: https://www.forbiddenhistories.com/jo-edge_vs_stem_bros/

[Gerard]

Pinker and tyson are just one of a long line of historical commentators who view the past through a modern world view. As pointed out terms such as "science" and "occult" become meaningless when applied to pre modernistic cultures. They are the invention of a society obsessed with taking inventories and making classifications.

I was lucky to study this and similar topics under professor John Brooke of Lancaster University in the UK. For those interested his work "Science and Religion some historical perspectives" Cambridge press is the definitive work on the subject.

Kind Regards
Gerard

[Gerard]

Quick caveat, Professor Brooke's work dispels the myth that science and religion are, and have always been in conflict. On the contrary science and religion have always shared a dynamic mutually enriching relationship. It was the late 19th centuary western belief systems that created and retrospectively projected an interpretation of conflict.

Kind regards
Gerard