Extra Credits
Published on 23 Sep 2019After killing 1000 men, Samson runs into more trouble with the Philistines. Samson is a Judge, but he may not be the best judge of romantic partners… When Delilah betrays Samson for silver, all hope seems lost. But Samson has one last favor to ask.
The central problem of almost every society before about 1950 has been how to reconcile the great majority to distributions of property in which they are at a disadvantage. Only a minority has even been able to enjoy secure access to abundant food and good clothing and clean water and healthcare and education. Whether actually enslaved or formally free sellers of labour, the majority have always had to look up to a minority of the rich who are often legally privileged. How to keep them quiet?
Force can only ever be part of the answer. The poor have always been the majority, and sometimes the great majority. Armies of mercenaries to protect the rich have not always been available, and they have never by themselves been sufficient to compel obedience on all occasions in every respect.
Force, therefore, has always been joined by religious terrors. In Egypt, the king was a god, and the privileged system of which he was the head was part of a divine order that the common people were enjoined never to challenge. In the other monarchies of the near east, the king might not actually be a god. But all the priests taught that he was part of a divinely ordained order that it was blasphemy to challenge.
In the Greek city states until about a century before the birth of Epicurus, securing the obedience of the poor had not been a serious problem. There had been some class conflict, even in Athens. But most land was occupied by smallholders, and excess population could be decanted into the colonies of Italy and the western Mediterranean. There were rich citizens, but they were usually placed under heavy obligations to contribute to the defence and ornament of their cities.
Then a combination of commercial progress and the disruptions of the war between Athens and Sparta created a steadily widening gulf between rich and poor. There was also a growing problem of how to maintain large but unknown numbers of slaves in peaceful subjection.
The result was a class war that destabilised every Greek state. The sort of democracy seen in Athens could survive in a society where citizens were broadly equal. Once a small class of rich and a much larger class of the poor had emerged, there was a continual tendency for democratic assemblies to be led by demagogues into policies of levelling that could be ended only by the rise of a tyrant, who would secure the wealth of the majority — but who could secure it only so long as the poor could be terrified into submission. Once they could not be terrified by the threat of overwhelming force, they would rise up and dispossess the rich, until a new tyrant could emerge to subdue them again.
Unlike in the monarchies of the near east, no settled order could be maintained in Greece by religious terrors. During the sixth and fifth centuries, the Greek mind had experienced the first enlightenment of which we have record. There had been a growth of philosophy and science that revealed a world governed by laws that could be uncovered and understood by the unaided reason.
Now, enlightenments are always dangerous to an established religion. And the Greek religion was unusually weak as a counterweight to reason. The Greeks had no conception of a single, omnipotent God the Creator. Instead, they had a pantheon of supernatural beings who had not created the world, but were subject to many of its limitations. These were frequently at war with each other, and so they could be set against each other by their human worshippers with timely sacrifices and other bribes. They did not watch continually over human actions, and beyond the occasional punishment and reward to the living, they had no means of compelling observance of any code of human conduct.
And so, when the intellectual disturbance of philosophy and science spilled over into demands for a reconstruction of society in which property would be equalised, there was no religious establishment with the authority to stand by the side of the rich.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Englightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
Extra Credits
Published on 21 Sep 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
Atahualpa vs. Francisco Pizarro. The Incas had never seen horses before, and it wasn’t long before the Spanish had captured Atahualpa as a hostage for gold and silver. But Atahualpa had a plan. He found a way to use this situation to his own political advantage — and Pizarro eventually destroyed himself through his greed and violent carelessness that appalled the Spanish government, eventually allowing the Incas to thrive again.
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Andrew Coyne on the disgraceful habit of the federal government (and nine provincial governments) to look the other way when Quebec decides that some of the guarantees in the Charter don’t apply in La Belle Province:
For many observant persons, particularly Muslims, Sikhs and orthodox Jews, this amounts to a religious hiring bar: the wearing of the hijab, the turban and the kippa are key requirements of their faith, and as such core elements of their identity. To demand that they work uncovered is, in effect, to post a sign saying Muslims, Sikhs and Jews need not apply.
We should be clear on this. It’s not just a dress code, or an infringement of religious freedom, or religious discrimination, or those other abstract phrases you hear tossed about. We are talking about a law barring employment in much of the public sector — not just police and judges, but government lawyers and teachers — to certain religious minorities.
Existing workers may have been grandfathered, but only so long as they remain in their current jobs. Should they ever move, or seek a promotion, they will face the same restrictions. The signal to the province’s religious and, let’s say it, racial minorities, vulnerable as they will be feeling already after the mounting public vitriol to which they have been exposed in the name of the endless “reasonable accommodation” debate, is unmistakable: you are not wanted here. Not surprisingly, many are getting out — out of the public service, out of Quebec.
That this is actually happening, in 2019, in a province of Canada — members of religious minorities being driven from their jobs, and for no reason other than their religion — is sickening, and shameful. That shame is not reserved to Premier Francois Legault or his CAQ government, the people responsible for designing and implementing this disgraceful exercise in segregation, this manifestly cruel attempt to cleanse the province’s schools and courts of religious minorities. It is no less shaming to the rest of us, everywhere across Canada, so long as we permit it to continue.
That is, so far as we are capable of feeling it. But experience has taught us to look the other way when it comes to Quebec, to tell ourselves that it is none of our affair, that we must not raise a fuss when the province explicitly elevates the interests of its ethnic and linguistic majority over those of its minorities, or threatens the country’s life for long years at a time — the beloved “knife at the throat” strategy — to back its escalating fiscal and constitutional demands. We dare not. We cannot. For then Quebec would leave.
Extra Credits
Published on 9 Sep 2019Join the Patreon community! http://bit.ly/EMPatreon
It was a time of trial for the tribes of Israel. They were no nation, but a loose confederation bound together by their divine covenants — which they had just broken. Amid this political and social chaos, a child was born, instructed by God to keep the Nazirite oath — stay away from alcohol, don’t eat unclean food, and don’t shave — and he would become a man of incredible strength.
Samson was on a mission from God to never drink alcohol, to not eat honey found in a lion’s carcass, and to not cut his hair ever. FORESHADOWING!
Extra Credits
Published on 7 Sep 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
To understand daily life in the Inca Empire, we travel from Cusco to Quito (located in modern-day Ecuador), where Thupa Inca wanted to establish a second capital city. From efficiently designed work assignments, to elaborate death rituals, life was neatly organized, masking rising tensions.
A comparison is in order. At the famous Amritsar massacre of 1919, shot in elaborate and loving detail in the present movie and treated by post-independence Indian historians as if it were Auschwitz, Gurkha troops under the command of a British officer, General Dyer, fired into an unarmed crowd of Indians defying a ban and demonstrating for Indian independence. The crowd contained women and children; 379 persons died; it was all quite horrible. Dyer was court-martialed and cashiered, but the incident lay heavily on British consciences for the next three decades, producing a severe inhibiting effect. Never again would the British empire commit another Amritsar, anywhere.
As soon as the oppressive British were gone, however, the Indians — gentle, tolerant people that they are — gave themselves over to an orgy of bloodletting. Trained troops did not pick off targets at a distance with Enfield rifles. Blood-crazed Hindus, or Muslims, ran through the streets with knives, beheading babies, stabbing women, old people. Interestingly, our movie shows none of this on camera (the oldest way of stacking the deck in Hollywood). All we see is the aged Gandhi, grieving, and of course fasting, at these terrible reports of riots. And, naturally, the film doesn’t whisper a clue as to the total number of dead, which might spoil the mood somehow. The fact is that we will never know how many Indians were murdered by other Indians during the country’s Independence Massacres, but almost all serious studies place the figure over a million, and some, such as Payne’s sources, go to 4 million. So, for those who like round numbers, the British killed some 400 seditious colonials at Amritsar and the name Amritsar lives in infamy, while Indians may have killed some 4 million of their own countrymen for no other reason than that they were of a different religious faith and people think their great leader would make an inspirational subject for a movie. Ahimsa, as can be seen, then, had an absolutely tremendous moral effect when used against Britain, but not only would it not have worked against Nazi Germany (the most obvious reproach, and of course quite true), but, the crowning irony, it had virtually no effect whatever when Gandhi tried to bring it into play against violent Indians.
Despite this at best patchy record, the film-makers have gone to great lengths to imply that this same principle of ahimsa — presented in the movie as the purest form of pacifism — is universally effective, yesterday, today, here, there, everywhere. We hear no talk from Gandhi of war sometimes being a “necessary evil,” but only him announcing — and more than once — “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” In a scene very near the end of the movie, we hear Gandhi say, as if after deep reflection: “Tyrants and murderers can seem invincible at the time, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.” During the last scene of the movie, following the assassination, Margaret Bourke-White is keening over the death of the Great Soul with an English admiral’s daughter named Madeleine Slade, in whose bowel movements Gandhi took the deepest interest (see their correspondence), and Miss Slade remarks incredulously that Gandhi felt that he had failed. They are then both incredulous for a moment, after which Miss Slade observes mournfully, “When we most needed it [presumably meaning during World War II], he offered the world a way out of madness. But the world didn’t see it.” Then we hear once again the assassin’s shots, Gandhi’s “Oh, God,” and last, in case we missed them the first time, Gandhi’s words (over the shimmering waters of the Ganges?): “Tyrants and murderers can seem invincible at the time, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.” This is the end of the picture.
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.
Sabaton History
Published on 5 Sep 2019The Sabaton song “A Lifetime of War” is about the Thirty Years War, which influenced many lives of Northern European soldiers, mercenaries, farmers and city-dwellers.
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Listen to Carolus Rex (“Lifetime of War” is featured):
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Google Play: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexGooglePlayWatch the official music video for Lifetime of War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvdbD…
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Maps by: Eastory
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Iryna Dulka and Marek KaminskiEastory YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– Folger Shakespeare Library
– Map of Hanseatic League: H.F. Helmolt, History of the World, Volume VII, Dodd Mead 1902
– Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de SevillaAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
Extra Credits
Published on 24 Aug 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
There’s a lot that we don’t know for sure about the Inca Empire, because we have conflicting accounts among Spanish colonizers, as well as the fact that Inca history itself is told non-linearly. But we do know that they used Andean accomplishments, from architecture to knotted quipu, to create a city that ruled the largest indigenous empire in the Americas, starting with Manco Capac and the successive Sapa Inca rulers.
At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian explains the differences between how ordinary people view science and many progressives “f*cking love” science:
For the benefit of younger readers: If you think Lefties Fucking Love Science(TM) now, you have no idea of the torrid affair they carried on with it back when the USSR was still a going concern. Karl Marx, of course, pretended that his sub-Hegelian flatulence was the only truly scientific world view, and his disciples have been playing along ever since. “The facts have a liberal bias,” you’d routinely be informed, by people who spent $200 to have their chakras cleansed by a Navajo shaman once every two months.
I can’t think of a better illustration of what I call (for lack of a better term) the Left’s grammar problem. Lefties tend to get nouns and verbs mixed up. “Science,” for instance. I’m not going to go all Vox Day here and start making up words, but when normal people say “science,” we generally mean it as a verb:
“Science” is what scientists do; it’s shorthand for “applying the scientific method.”
This is why, when we’re presented with a startling new find from the white coat guys — that the polar ice caps have all melted, say — we ask to see the lab work. If it’s really science, then we should be able to replicate the experiment ourselves. Or, at the very least, you should be able to show us the satellite photos…
Which nicely highlights the Left’s notion of “science.” To them, it’s a noun:
“Science” is a fixed body of knowledge; upon which “scientists” operate the way theologians work on the Bible.
What “scientists” do in the Left’s world, then, is what normal people call “hermeneutics.” This is why the bizarre phrase “the science is settled!” makes sense to Leftists. You don’t get to see God’s lab work, after all, and you’re not allowed to make up new Scriptures. To them, an ordinary person challenging a “scientist” on a point of “science” is like a layman challenging the Pope on a point of theology.
Extra Credits
Published on 17 Aug 2019Writer Rob Rath talks about all the cool stories and facts we didn’t get to cover in our recent series on the hated and beloved Joan of Arc.
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From the comments:
Extra Credits
2 days agoRecommended reading:
– Joan of Arc: A History, by Helen Castor
– Joan of Arc by Herself and Her Witnesses, by Régine Pernoud
– Orléans, 1429: France Turns the Tide, by David Nicolle
4:01 – really cool side characters that didn’t make the final video script (but did show up in Game of Thrones??)
8:12 – multiple versions of Joan’s meeting with Charles
10:48 – all the other famous people we didn’t mention, including Gilles de Rais
13:11 – Joan really did have excellent tactical acumen, which we had to gloss over in her later battles
19:55 – what’s next on Extra History
21:17 – Six Degrees of Walpole
Pieter J. Friedrich reports on recent events concerning the unique constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir within the Republic of India:
CIA map of the Kashmir Region in 2004.
Via Wikimedia Commons. Click image to see full-sized map.
Terror grips the most militarized zone in the world after India’s Central Government terminated Jammu and Kashmir’s 70-year-old “special status” as the first step towards stripping the disputed region of statehood entirely.
Internationally infamous as the world’s hottest potential nuclear flashpoint, J&K originally acceded to India in 1947 only on the condition that the newly-formed country be restricted from interfering in the domestic affairs of the mountainous northern region. The agreement was sealed between the last king of J&K, Maharaja Hari Singh Dogra, and the representative of the British crown, Governor-General Lord Mountbatten. In 1949, when passage of the constitution formed the Republic of India, the Maharaja’s conditions for accession were enshrined in Article 370.
The crux of the article – in combination with Article 35A of 1954 – was that, while J&K accepted India’s handling of issues like defense and foreign policy, the state otherwise reserved the right to autonomy in handling its domestic affairs. Kashmiris, thus, lived under their own distinct laws. Notably, citizens of other parts of India were prohibited from settling permanently or owning property in Kashmir. In the eyes of many Kashmiris, this prevented settler colonialism. On August 5, 2019, the President of India abolished this “special status” by decree.
Simultaneously, Home Minister Amit Shah – charged with India’s internal security – introduced a bill in the upper house of parliament to strip J&K of statehood, downgrade it to a “Union Territory,” and partition the region.
As Shah did this, the Central Government shut down Kashmir. It imposed a virtual curfew, banning movement of the public, shuttering educational institutions, and barring all public assemblies or meetings. It severed communications, cutting off phone and internet access. And it conducted arrests of mainstream Kashmiri political leaders – such as former chief ministers Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah – on unknown charges.
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which was just re-elected in May, campaigned on promises to scrap J&K’s “special status.” The BJP’s manifesto alleged that it was “an obstacle in the development of the state,” while Shah insisted it stood in the way of of Kashmir becoming an “integral party of India permanently” and was necessary for “national security.” Indeed, the tumultuous region has suffered a significant influx in violence in recent years.
Since 2014, when Prime Minister Modi’s regime first came to power, terrorist incidents in J&K have nearly tripled and security forces deaths have nearly doubled. According to a July 2019 UN report, independent bodies documented 159 security forces deaths in 2018 – a figure comparable to US troop fatalities in Iraq in 2009. The latest round of escalating tensions traces back to at least 2010, when mass protests erupted over an “encounter killing” of three civilians by Indian Army troops. Protests again erupted in 2016. During suppression efforts, security forces killed hundreds of protesters.
The Central Government has responded by flooding J&K with more and more soldiers. The small region – slightly smaller than the United Kingdom – is already occupied by a bare minimum of 500,000 troops. Since late July 2019, India has deployed nearly another 50,000.
Delhi has additionally responded by repeatedly dissolving J&K’s elected state government, imposing direct rule three times since 2015. The last time was in June 2018, after India’s ruling BJP withdrew from a coalition with then J&K Chief Minister Mufti – apparently because she advocated “reconciliation” instead of a “muscular security policy” as the most effective solution to the Kashmir conflict. Elections have not been allowed since 2014.
The ongoing occupation as well as the long-term use of direct rule – imposed for approximately ten of the past 42 years – contribute to the perception of Kashmiris that they are nothing more than vassals within the Republic of India.
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Published on 5 Aug 2019Join the Patreon community! http://bit.ly/EMPatreon
Just as the gods Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, and Nanahautzin sacrificed themselves so the sun could move across the sky, so too did the Aztecs believe people must follow their example, and spill blood to thank the gods for their life, their maize, and the sun.
Extra Credits
Published on 3 Aug 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
Joan had been sold out to the English. Bishop Pierre Cauchon was determined to prove the inaccuracy of her visions and her motivations so that Charles could have no claim to the throne. But Joan held on till the bitter end.
Orwell’s press card portrait, 1943
Attempts at describing a definitely other-worldly happiness have been no more successful. Heaven is as great a flop as Utopia though Hell occupies a respectable place in literature, and has often been described most minutely and convincingly.
It is a commonplace that the Christian Heaven, as usually portrayed, would attract nobody. Almost all Christian writers dealing with Heaven either say frankly that it is indescribable or conjure up a vague picture of gold, precious stones, and the endless singing of hymns. This has, it is true, inspired some of the best poems in the world:
Thy walls are of chalcedony,
Thy bulwarks diamonds square,
Thy gates are of right orient pearl
Exceeding rich and rare!But what it could not do was to describe a condition in which the ordinary human being actively wanted to be. Many a revivalist minister, many a Jesuit priest (see, for instance, the terrific sermon in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist) has frightened his congregation almost out of their skins with his word-pictures of Hell. But as soon as it comes to Heaven, there is a prompt falling-back on words like ‘ecstasy’ and ‘bliss’, with little attempt to say what they consist in. Perhaps the most vital bit of writing on this subject is the famous passage in which Tertullian explains that one of the chief joys of Heaven is watching the tortures of the damned.
The pagan versions of Paradise are little better, if at all. One has the feeling it is always twilight in the Elysian fields. Olympus, where the gods lived, with their nectar and ambrosia, and their nymphs and Hebes, the ‘immortal tarts’ as D.H. Lawrence called them, might be a bit more homelike than the Christian Heaven, but you would not want to spend a long time there. As for the Muslim Paradise, with its 77 houris per man, all presumably clamouring for attention at the same moment, it is just a nightmare. Nor are the spiritualists, though constantly assuring us that ‘all is bright and beautiful’, able to describe any next-world activity which a thinking person would find endurable, let alone attractive.
George Orwell (writing as “John Freeman”), “Can Socialists Be Happy?”, Tribune, 1943-12-20.
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