#not just between middle eastern cultures but with south asia too

[whencyclopedia]

The Siege of Damascus, 1148 CE

The siege of Damascus in 1148 CE was the final act of the Second Crusade (1147-1149 CE). Lasting a mere four days from 24 to 28 July, the siege by a combined western European army was not successful, and the Crusade petered out with its leaders returning home more bitter and angry with each other than the Muslim enemy. Additional crusades would follow, but the myth of invincibility of the western knights was shattered forever at the debacle of Damascus.

Background: The Second Crusade

The Second Crusade was a military campaign organised by the Pope and European nobles to recapture the city of Edessa in Mesopotamia, which had fallen in 1144 CE to the Muslim Seljuk Turks. Edessa was an important commercial and cultural centre and had been in Christian hands since the First Crusade (1095-1102 CE). However, when Pope Eugenius III (r. 1145-1153 CE) formally called for a crusade on 1 December 1145 CE, the goals of the campaign were put somewhat vaguely as a broad appeal for the achievements of the First Crusade and Christians and holy relics in the Levant to be protected.

The Second Crusade included successful campaigns in the Iberian peninsula and the Baltic against Muslim Moors and pagan Europeans respectively, but it was the Levant that remained the focus of Christianity's holy war. The Crusader army in the Middle East, numbering some 60,000 men, was led by the German king Conrad III (r. 1138-1152 CE) and Louis VII, the king of France (r. 1137-1180 CE). Just as in the First Crusade, the bulk of the army travelled via Constantinople where they were met with misgivings by the Byzantines and their emperor Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143 - 1180 CE). Manuel's primary concern was that the Crusaders were really only after the choice parts of the Byzantine Empire. Accordingly, Manuel insisted the leaders of the Crusade, on arrival in September and October 1147 CE, swear personal allegiance to him. At the same time, the western powers considered the Byzantines rather too preoccupied with their own affairs and unhelpful in the noble opportunities they thought a crusade presented. The old divisions between the eastern and western churches had not gone away either. It was significant that Manuel, despite the diplomacy, strengthened the fortifications of Constantinople and provided a military escort to see the Crusaders on their way as quickly as possible.

The German contingent of the crusader army, already having suffered significant losses during a terrible flash flood at their camp near Constantinople, ignored Manuel's advice to stick to the safety of the coast once in Asia Minor and so met another, even worse disaster. At Dorylaion, a force of Muslim Seljuk Turks caused havoc with the slow-moving westerners on 25 October 1147 CE, and, forced to retreat to Nicaea, Conrad himself was wounded but did eventually make it back to Constantinople.

Meanwhile, the army led by Louis VII, although shocked to hear of the Germans' failure, pressed on and managed to defeat a Seljuk army in December 1147 CE. The success was short-lived, though, for on 7 January 1148 CE the French were beaten badly in battle as they crossed the Cadmus Mountains. It was a disastrous opening to a campaign which had not even reached its target of northern Syria and a sorry tale of bad planning, poor logistics, and unheeded local advice.

Louis VII and his ravaged army finally arrived at Antioch in March 1148 CE. From there, he ignored Raymond of Antioch's proposal to fight in northern Syria and marched on to the south. In any case, a council of western leaders was convened at Acre, and the target of the Crusade was now selected, not at the already destroyed Edessa, but Muslim-held Damascus, the closest threat to Jerusalem and a prestigious prize given the city's history and wealth.

Continue reading...

[slotumn]

One of the many things I cannot help but be a pedantic bitch wrt 3H worldbuilding/fanon portrayals is Almyra's physical environment. Defaulting to "Middle East (or anywhere that seems vaguely culturally adjacent to there) = all of it is stereotypical video game desert level" is very uninspired imo, and directly contrary to the few tidbits we get in canon.

I mean, it's stated that they do have deserts, but they also have mountains and plains (and even forests), probably in about equal amounts (or more). Look at this tidbit in-game:

Almyra

A great kingdom to the east of Fódlan. Its territory borders that of the Leicester Alliance, with the precipitous mountain range known as Fódlan's Throat acting as the dividing line. Its people maintain a strong legacy of horsemanship and relish in the thrill of battle. This vast kingdom is rich in fertile prairies, deserts, and mountain ranges.

As for more solid visual examples of Almyra's environments, we can always look to its real-life motifs. In Claude's support with Hapi in Hopes, they reference Almyra as having steppes, which might look something like this (Kazakhstan):

For mountains, including Fódlan's Throat range, something like this (eastern Anatolia, Turkey):

or this (Ural Mountains, Russia; and since Urals are considered the "dividing line" between Asia and Europe there's a good chance this is the actual motif for the Fódlan's Throat mountain range; they even have precious gemstones there, like in Goneril):

Almyran navy's fleets appear to be active up north, around the Whitehorn Sea. I think the approximate analogue to Whitehorn irl would be Black Sea/Caspian Sea, probably? Here's what those places look like (Batumi Bay in Georgia for Black Sea, Gorgan Bay in Iran for Caspian Sea; btw I'm pretty sure Shahid's unique class name, Gurgan, is from Gorgan):

Moving south, Almyra is called Palmyra in the original Japanese, and the real Palmyra is located in present-day Syria. Here's a photo of the Palmyra historical site:

Closer to the Mediterranean, this is Byblos, Lebanon:

I'd guess the fertile plains (emphasis on fertile) are approximately equivalent to Mesopotamia? In the current day, the area— and most of the places mentioned here— have undergone a lot of desertification. It's especially massive and a rapidly growing threat now, but it was a thing even before human industrial activities. But I'd guess the agricultural production in the equivalent regions are still pretty good as of canon 3H era.

Here's Nineveh from Iraq:

Now, as for the deserts: big sprawling sandy areas you usually think of when you read "desert" probably aren't under the direct control of the regime for the most part, but rather the local tribes that have pledged allegiance to Almyra while still being mostly autonomous in practice. That's usually how it was irl, in places like the Najd (inner part of Arabian Peninsula); these places are difficult to navigate and difficult to govern, easier to just let the guys who were already there keep doing their thing so long as they agree they're your vassals and don't get too rowdy. Applies to colder deserts too, btw, so I like to think that Almyra has the horse-riding desert nomad archetypes in both the scorching and freezing variations.

The desert regions that are under more direct control of the regime are likely ones that have active centers of trade. So, port cities by the coastline, or oasis cities.

Some real-life examples of cities famous for commerce in the Arabian Peninsula (Salalah in Oman, Aden in Yemen):

Tl;dr: if Fódlan isn't a monolith, either in culture or geography, no way in hell Almyra is.

(Also West and Central Asian history is super interesting and I think more people should get into it but that's my personal taste/opinion,)

[herald-divine-hell]

I guess the answer to your question whether I view Germanic regions Western is kinda dependent on the time we're thinking of.

Early modern (what is now)Germany could very well be considered Central Europe. Nowadays not really though. As far as I am aware the way it's viewed in Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, these are Central European countries with Austria on thin ice. Germany is too distinct culturally and historically for us to see it as anything but a Western Country. Also I am pretty sure Germans consider themselves Western Europe, not Central

But even in the early modern period German states were pretty much culturally Western while countries more to the East had a distinct cultures from those more to the West and were obviously and visibly influenced by Western Europe, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. So they were central not just because of being in the middle of Europe but also because of being between very distinct cultures and deriving from them all, something not really happening in Western Europe

I didn't mean to sound rude in any of these btw, hope it didn't come off this way! It's just a touchy subject, what is Central/Eastern/Western Europe.

On the DA side, yeah, it gets boring when we just get fantasy England, fantasy France, fantasy Italy in media, really wished they would've found some other inspirations too, to make Thedas more lively

Of course! I hope I’m not sounding rude either. And that’s fascinating! Primarily we’re taught that Central Europe includes the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, with other Slavic states such as Czechia, Slovakia, and modern day Poland is included into Central Europe, with the Russians, and some aspects of the Balkans are considered a weird area of South/Eastern European. It is definitely to see how people in those areas consider themselves, since most geographic labels tend to come from outside forces—such as the Far East being considered far for Western Europe. Or how the Middle East was primarily what we consider South Asia rather than the current Middle East being Near Eastern. It’s so fascinating and I adore your viewpoint!

And absolutely. I wish more fantasy games explored other areas than traditional western-influenced fantasy. It’s why I adore the Witcher series so much because of it’s clearly Slavic influence. (It’s also why I’m trying to make my own fantasy world influenced primarily by Afghan/Iranian/Islamic history and culture).

[drgamenstein]

If I may have a weird rant about something weighing on me, with no tags, and just to get it out of my system, with no intention of offending anyone. As a white man, with north/eastern European heritage, from a non-christian denominational background, and who's family came to america either as indentured servants to the Mob, or were war refugees from WWII, I feel as though the discussion of race, racism and Racial politics in America is being severely oversimplified in our country on all sides, and that's why it brings up so much tension.

I feel like there are a good portion of people who saw "race" in my prompt and "white man" in my self description, and thought "this guy should really not be talking," and to you I say, you're who I'm referring to when I say the problem is being oversimplified.

The thing that nobody on either side wants to admit, is that racism isn't about bone structure or levels of melanin, but it's something deep rooted in our core instincts, and that's something we all share. The reason why the concentration of racial crime and tension in America is so high is because we are the most diverse country in the world, not just in terms of continental races, but also in terms of racial Ethnicities.

Humans by nature are a tribal species, and we crave community, but in for all of us throughout history, war and violence was common between different tribes, and due to cultural differences that makes it nearly impossible to fully track your lineage if you're from a ethnic group who used oral and artistic traditions to pass down your lineage instead of written. The reason why we have a black history month instead of several individual days like with Irish or Italian heritage is sadly because of those inter-tribal wars, more so than the slave trade, which is hard to say and probably really hard to hear, but is sadly how it is, because the African slave trade started when warlords would conquer other nations, and sell the people they didn't want to take care of to Europeans in exchange for weapons to win more wars, sadly meaning most African American heritage begins in America, after their African nation was rendered extinct.

This isn't exclusively an African issue, though, and that's why I started this by saying it's a more complex issue than we give it credit for. Because African Americans are not the only race in this country to have their culture rendered completely extinct, leaving any remaining descendants to guess and try to rebuild their culture. Asia has too many of these to count honestly and is incredibly hard to map out, considering how China in the modern day treats its own history. North Korea has Propaganda mimicking Nazi and other Eugenicist Propaganda to try and illustrate their superiority to South Korean Citizens, the Middle East is the Cradle of humanity and has been in constant war since the dawn of our species on this planet. Like with the many ancient nations of Asia, American peoples both north and south had many different extinctions to the point that it became a part of their codified religion in South America, and now, almost nobody refers to themselves as "American" and only a few call themselves "Native," a term which I don't think I've ever heard used to refer to South Americans outside of the untouched peoples. As for the Europeans, most of their extinct ethnic groups are either also still being discriminated against to this day, get crowned on as "weirdos" and memes, or nobody even knows what they are or what happened to them. Nords, Vikings, Celts, Armenian, Romani, Wicca, all terms we can recognize, but all either no longer exist, or if they do, are such a vague terms that most don't know what they actually are. There are a lot of people who recognize the term Gypsy, but most don't recognize it in america as a slur, and it's almost been romanticized to refer to "world-wise traveler," instead of a nomadic people that were almost completely exterminated in the holocaust.

I need to cut myself off, or else this will become a very long lesson of world history, like I said Asia had too many extinct cultures to count, I glossed over the Middle East, and I barely touched on Europe, but I literally have sat here typing for 2 hours, and had to edit this down to cut long long diatribes about the waring states, Egypt, Persia, India, Rome and Greek Kings. Like Sparta was an actual country, with a king, independent from Greece but sharing a common religion, and this sentence is why I needed to stop myself.

Look, race is a highly complex issue, but continuing the conflict by shutting down the conversation with phrases like "you don't understand, you can't understand, etc" only serves to prolong the conflict more than resolve. Racial and ethnic tension, violence, and the pursuit of superiority is something common among all modern cultures, so while you may be correct in saying "you don't understand," you should also recognize that same statement can be applied directly to you. None of us can or will ever truly understand each other's history or the feelings that come with them outside of our own communities, but accepting that gap and listening is the only step toward build a new community rather than shutting others down.

The hard truth is that because America was the final continent to be inhabited, even by natives, for 99% of us in this country, if you take any of our family trees back far enough, we're only here because we weren't wanted where we came from, so we need to be welcomed here.

[healthyartsforseniors]

Rice Fields Forever (Part 1)

This week on "Cooking Up Feminism" at Scarborough Arts, we covered our beloved Rice based dishes. South Asia alone has such a wide and popular variety of Rice dishes, such as the ever royal Biryani and Pulao from the Mughal kitchens of India and other favourites across communities: the Khichri or Daal Chawal. Jamaican food cultures are famous for Rice & Beans or Rice & Peas. Many Middle Eastern and Eastern European culinary communities stuff seasoned rice with various proteins and/or vegetables + herbs into grapevine leaves. Rice-based dishes create a larger yield and can be shared with many. When eaten with the hands, which is how Rice based dishes are commonly consumed in South Asian countries, these dishes can foster a sense of community and togetherness.

There are many legends and stories around Rice, specifically grains of Rice, in Pakistan. My elders would often say Allah's name is written on each grain of rice and so dropping a single one on the ground is forbidden. Others would stress that Rice will one day talk in front of the divine to complain about how we wasted the grains and so to eat every last one.

My father always eats Rice with his hands, despite the availability of cutlery. He even serves it onto his plate by reaching into the tray, grabbing a handful, moulding it into a round ball and then gently transferring the grains from one vessel to another. In all of these years of having witnessed him eating, we've never seen him drop a single grain of Rice on the table or the floor.

Let's head over to the Scarborough Arts table and see what our wonderful and creative workshops participants have shared as we unpack the Rice theme in "Cooking Up Feminism."

Soaking Rice & Lentils by Zeni

"I learnt this trick from an old, Tibetan women. People up in the mountains don't have access to too much variety, due to their remoteness. So I was advised, that if you just put a little bit of daal (lentils) in the rice, it makes such a difference to the taste, as well as the quantity. Similarly, it goes the other way. If you're making daal and you put just a tablespoon of rice in it, it makes the daal really, really good."

Herbs & Spices for a healing Pulao by Zeni

"I had a family member that was really sick, and this is the kind of food my mother used to make for us when we were sick. It's really affordable, and it's very tasty. It's like a Pulao, but not the heavier kinds, and it's not Khichri either, it's somewhere in between. It's a Pulao but for when you're not feeling well. It's not very showy, but it tastes really yum! It's lovely to just eat it with your hands." ~ Zeni (Workshop participant, Cooking Up Feminism)

A variety of Rice based dishes by Lady P with edible centre pieces and ornamentation.

Lady P cooked up a storm in her kitchen bringing us multiple Rice based dishes that she grew up eating and feeding her family.

"I made fried, wholegrain rice. I decorated the rice with roasted peppers. On top of that I roasted some mushrooms and put them on the skewer. Whole grain has to be cooked for a long time, because it's natural rice. In the other dish behind the fried rice, I have some colourful rice. I had a pepper from my garden and I stuck it in there. We have some vegetables here, Jamaican Callaloo as well as roasted chicken. Jamaicans make a lot of Callaloo, especially with rice. I also decorated the table with fruits, like apples and pomegranates just in case someone wants to put the pomegranate or apples in their rice, or squeeze some lemon over it. I also made some rice pudding which is usually eaten with a dollop of yogurt."

Ann Marie instantly recognizes a drink placed intentionally in the background of the dishes on display. Lady P always finds a way to include a food product that honours her Jamaican heritage in some way. "Lady P, wow, how did you find time to cook all of these wonderful dishes and when can I come by to eat? Also, don't forget to save me a Red Stripe." Lady P, and our entire group erupts into laughter. "Oh, I placed the Red Stripe there intentionally. I went into my storage room, grabbed a Red Stripe and said, why not? You know, in the islands, when you're eating, you always want a beer or two as well."

"There are so many varieties of rice out there that we can cook, harvest and share. It's important to know where they're coming from and why. I've bought a little bit of black rice recently, and I'm going to cook it up next time."

"Rice Fields Forever" will continue over Part 2. We can't wait to see what the other participants are bringing to the table.

All of the recipes and stories we share in "Cooking Up Feminism" will be published in a unique cookbook by Scarborough Arts, available to the public in 2023, so stay tuned. Bookmark our blog and follow along. Thank you for your support.

~Mariam Magsi (Workshop Facilitator, Scarborough Arts)

[isanyonetoknow]

it’s going to be so fun when sumeru does come out and people start replicating the whitewashed mena characters there. so, so fun.

[historic-old-guard-lover]

How many languages and which of them would the cast speak if we’re going to be completely historically accurate ?

This a great question that I can’t quite answer, but I spent six hours researching to give it a shot. I think that there’s a broad range of plausible languages and you’ve got leeway to choose how many. The first part is that different people have different affinities for languages. Some people can speak ten different languages fluently (or near-fluency), while others will struggle juggling three different ones in their brains. The range in the languages can affect this, too: it’s easy to mess up between similar languages. I personally have trouble speaking Spanish because in the middle of the sentence, I’ll drop a French word without even realizing it. The same thing doesn’t happen to me in other languages like German, though. By the same token as I’ve discussed before, similar languages are easier to learn. Going from English to Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet? More difficult than English to French, which makes up about a third of modern English. These are languages that are still in the same family (Proto-Indo-European, PIE), though, so it holds nothing to the difficulty of going from English to a language like Mandarin.

I’m breaking this answer into two parts: 1) how many?; 2) which ones? and I’m going to get carried away because I’m me so it’s below the break to spare you if this comes across your dash and you’re not a nerd...

PART 1: What’s a realistic number for them to speak?

I think that each member of the old guard probably has a certain number of languages which they’re comfortable with, a few more that they can understand/get by in, and a few that they may only know phrases from. The number of each isn’t the same for everyone. The average human being is able to speak ~1.5 languages. The most talented polyglots can speak upwards of 50 languages, maybe one guy even spoke 65 (mostly I want to mention he loved translating the phrase “kiss my ass”). This hyperpolyglot, Kreb aka “Kiss My Ass” Stan, had his brain dissected after his death and it showed a lot of “abnormalities”. That leads neuroscientists and me to believe that being able to study and learn 65 languages is either 1) a major skill that rewired his brain because he was flexing it so much; or 2) very abnormal and facilitated by his brain differences. Since their powers don’t make them stop being limited by the human brain (they can forget), I would say that it is unlikely that one of them is fluent/near fluent/comfortable in more than ~65 languages.

Getting past twelve languages is considered a feat, so I think only Andy, Quynh, Nicky, and Joe could be anywhere near the upper-bounds of languages. Remember, these hyperpolyglots spend their entire lives studying languages and often need refreshers. The members of the Old Guard don’t have the luxury of reading grammar books all day, and they also have to remember a bunch of combat training. You can argue that a lot of fighting is “muscle memory” aka located in the cerebellum and nowhere near language processing areas, but there’s still things like math, navigation, etc. that they need to remember. I doubt they have a list of their safe houses just lying around. The older members can speak more languages by virtue of being around longer and having that time to learn, but if we’re being realistic they should probably speak no more than ~45-55 languages comfortably. This doesn’t mean that they only *know* that many, but the other languages would be more like bad high school Spanish in America than able to wax poetic. Aside: that Joe is able to be poetic in what is AT LEAST his fourth or so language is very impressive and we should talk about that more.

How Many Each Member is Maximally Proficient In/Knowledgeable Of at the end of the film/Opening Fire comics run:

Lykon (comics): proficient in ~15, knowledgeable of ~30*

Lykon (movies): proficient in ~45, knowledgeable of ~80*

Andy: proficient in ~50, knowledgeable of ~100**

Quynh | Noriko: proficient in ~51, knowledgeable of ~90**

Joe: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Nicky: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Booker: proficient in ~10, knowledgeable of ~30

Nile: proficient in ~2 (maybe 3), knowledgeable of ~5

*In the comics, he is younger than Andy and Quynh and I assume he dies young. In the movie, it is strongly implied that he was the oldest. The reason why his numbers are not larger, however, is because at some point there were fewer languages as humanity had not dispersed as much as it eventually did. He’s also long before written language which facilitates learning for most people. RIP Lykon.

**I’m not saying that Quynh is smarter than Andy, just that she comes after written language and it should be slightly easier for her to pick things up. I’m giving Andy access to more languages, however, because PIE alone covers Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. More on this later.

PART 2: Which languages would each of them speak?

I’ve covered this question a little in a previous post that was broadly about proto-indo-european/Andy-centric (check it out if you want), but I’ll give a broader survey of each character here.

A Quick Aside on Lykon: We don’t know enough about this character, and the fact that the comics and movie diverge so sharply does not help at all. I’m going to headcannon that he was from Eastern Africa, where most archaeologists agree that modern humans first appeared in the Horn of Africa aka modern Ethiopia and Somolia and neighbors, and predates Andy by ~3,000 years. For future purposes below and assuming a birth date for Andy in the range ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE, this puts his birth at around ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE. This is wild speculation, however. Maybe the early immortals should be spaced by warfare types (Stone Age, Bronze, Iron, Steel?) or maybe they pop up once a cultural region reaches a certain historic point or maybe they just sorta pop up and then live for six or seven thousands years. I’m working off the last assumption because it’s the simplest. The only thing I’m certain of is that Greg Rucka probably didn’t sit down and think this pattern through. If I’m wrong, oh well. I’m mad at him for all his historical inaccuracies. With dating from ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE, I’m having trouble finding a name for the cultures that scientists/historians know were living there at the time. It’s probably because the region has been continually occupied since the first humans, which one can safely assume makes abandoned and undisturbed sites hard to fine.

A Quick Aside on Quynh | Noriko: I like the film better, so I’ll be working with Quynh. If there’s enough interest, I can add on Japanese for Noriko. I’m going to date Quynh to be ~1,500 years after Andy (maybe this should be the new date system, before Andy “BA” and after Andy “AA”). This puts her in the time range of ~3,500BCE - 2,500BCE which could place her in either the Đa Bút neolithic culture of modern-day Vietnam or the Phùng Nguyên bronze age culture of modern-day Vietnam. Those names are archaeological in nature, based on the location where sites have been found and dated to those ranges.

Other Origins: Because we have diverging cannons, I’m going to just state the backgrounds that I’ve assigned. Joe is from 1066CE with a background in the Arab-controlled Maghreb (more specifically, modern-day Tunisia and Northern Algeria). Nicky is from 1069CE with a background from the Italian maritime republic and city-state of Genoa. Booker is from 1770 southern France. Nile is from 1994 Chicago in the United States. Andy is from ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE in the Caucasus (modern-day Georgia and Azerbaijan) or the South Western Eurasian Steppes, probably the Shulaveri-Shomu culture assuming that location.

The first language everyone learned, their “mother tongue” or “native language” is one that they definitely speak. It’s the language that they think in and would be hard-pressed to lose. This even includes now-dead languages, because, again, it’s the one that they learned to think with. Of course, it is possible to lose a language when you have no one to speak it with if you wanted to do something tragic, but I think that these things are too deeply ingrained for it it to happen by accident.

What Each One’s First Language Would Be:

Nile: American English, possibly African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) at home

Booker: Provençal/Occitan, possibly “standard French” (school and other places outside the home)

Nicky: Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize

Joe: Tunisian Derja/Tunisian Arabic/Tunisian, and possibly one of the dialects of the native Zenati language group based on where more precisely you place him

Quynh: Proto-Viet–Muong (which isn’t well documented because it’s so old)

Andy: Proto-Indo-European (PIE), but if you’re curious the Classical Scythian Language for which she is probably named is only off by a factor of 10 (4000 vs 400 BCE) *cue distressed sighing*

Lykon: Proto-Cushitic (also suffering a lack of documentation from being old as heck)

Other than their first languages, what else they learn depends on where they go. People learned languages back then for the same reasons that they do today: to communicate (and to read, after the invention of writing). 

Additional Confirmed or Likely Cannon Languages:

Nile: Spanish because of the American school system for sure. French is listed on the IG account, but she probably speaks only Spanish or French to a degree of fluency, definitely one better than the other. Very Basic Pashto, which we see her use some obviously-memorized phrases with in the film.

Booker: The IG promo things asserts that he knows (modern, standard) Italian and Greek. Why not? He also probably knows Spanish depending on where more specifically in southern France he is from. He’s probably also picked up on at least Very Basic Arabic from Joe and Nicky, but actually learning the language would take commitment from him. He also clearly speaks English.

Nicky: Other Italian dialects, and it would be fairly easy for him to have picked up modern Italian. He definitely reads Latin. If he was from a wealthy family, he probably also speaks Greek. If he was from a trading family, he probably speaks the trading pidgin of Sabir. The IG account confirms Arabic (vague, but okay I’ll be generous and say modern standard Arabic) and Romanche (they meant to write Romansh). I think Romansh is poorly chosen to characterize him in Northern Italy, but I’m feeling generous. He also clearly speaks English.

Joe: He definitely speaks standard Arabic to have been able to communicate with other Arabic-speakers in Jerusalem.  Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize because of the love of his life, which also means he probably picked up modern Italian at some point. The IG account confirms Farsi (they call it “Persian” *cue screaming*), which works if he was a merchant who traveled far to eastward on the Silk Road...and if you go with the comic cannon makes more sense. I’m going to say that he speaks the Mediterranean trading pidgin Sabir because of his location in Tunisia. If he was from a wealthy merchant family and could afford schooling, he probably learned Greek and maybe also Latin. There’s a good chance that he knows conversational-levels of other native Zenati languages thanks to colonialism discouraging their usage. He also clearly speaks English.

Quynh: We don’t actually know if she speaks English, but it’s safe to assume she does speak at least some of it. She’s probably learned Vietnamese and Mường because of her mastery of their proto-language. Because I see her returning to modern-day Vietnam to fight the Chinese colonization, I think that she might know Cantonese or Mandarin. Based on her travels with Andy, I’d like to propose Greek, Latin, and Mongolian. I’m sure that Andy and her share a language, but who knows which one they were each speaking when they met!

Andy: The IG account says “all,” but I’ve discussed this elsewhere (*major eye rolling*). She almost certainly picked up Scythian and Greek based on her chosen name. Latin isn’t as likely as you’d think, but is possible. I’d like to think that she’s also partial to learning Russian (or some earlier form of the language), Mongolian, and Armenian. Based on her travels with Quynh, I imagine that she speaks Cantonese or Mandarin and Vietnamese or Mu’o’ng. There is some mystery language shared with Quynh, too. She also clearly speaks English.

Lykon: I really don’t know enough about him to hazard any guesses. He should share at least one language in common with Andy and Quynh. If his date of death is ~2,000- 1,000 BCE like I’m supposing, there’s a good chance that he only speaks one or two currently-named languages. Sorry, OP.

[icannotreadcursive]

So we all know JKR is a moron, and one of the places that shows is in the official Wizarding Schools list. Mostly because there are way too few of them

There are officially 11 of them, and we know 8: 3 in Europe (one of which is in the British Isles), 1 in Russia, 1 in Japan, 1 in Africa, 1 in South America, and 1 in North America. That's a ridiculously tiny number, and almost all of them cover ranges that are ridiculously huge and with such diverse cultures and magical traditions within their range. So let's run through what I consider a sensible distribution of wizarding schools.

Starting with the British Isles, we know we have Hogwarts in Scotland.  There would also be one in Ireland—because of the way Irish history has gone, this school likely would have taken a side in the Troubles and therefore be, at least unofficially, either very Catholic or very Protestant. Irish wizarding kids whose families are religiously opposite to the school, or not particularly religious, may then choose to go to Hogwarts instead to avoid conflict. I think there used to beother schools—1 in Wales, and as many as 3 in England, 1 in or near London, and 1 each associated with Cambridge and Oxford universities. The Cambridge and Oxford schools I think would have evolved over time into magic colleges, because I do not believe for a second that there is no such thing as post-secondary wizarding education. The London school can't still exist and have it still make sense that all our Hogwarts friends end up at Hogwarts—if it's a fancy private school, Draco is there not at Hogwarts; if it's a public school Hermione and all the Weasleys are there, not at Hogwarts, and so on. I'm not sure exactly why or when I think it closed, but sometime before the 1990s, probably before the 1950s, Hogwarts absorbed the London school's student pool. The Welsh school I think was a victim of the English destruction of Welsh culture. If it still exists, or has been rebuilt, I think it's very small and teaches at least partially in Welsh.

Moving on to the rest of Europe. We know we have Beauxbatons in France, and I buy that. Then we have Durmstrang, which is allegedly in Scandinavia. “Durmstrang” doesn't sound Scandinavian to me, it sounds German, because it is German. It's obviously derived from the German phrase “Sturm und Drang” which means “storm and stress,” so I feel like Durmstrang must be somewhere that is or has been German-speaking.  I'm inclined to put it in Poland in one of the areas that used to be in Prussia, possibly near Danzig. Durmstrang would then serve most everywhere that has ever been part of that which is now Germany, so most of the middle of Europe.

I do think there is also at least 1 school in Scandinavia. And there's going to be 1 in Spain, 1 it Italy—specifically Rome—and 1 in the south-east of Europe, probably Romania or Bulgaria.

That brings us up to a total of 8 major magic schools in Europe, 2 of them in the British Isles, not counting any magic colleges.

You may note I sort of left out most of Eastern Europe. That's because I think there's probably a school somewhere between Moscow, and Minsk in Belarus that serves Eastern Europe and Western Russia. That is still a very large geographical range, but a lot of that area is quite sparsely populated so I think it works out, especially if we expect that there are smaller, more local schools and/or homeschooling coalitions going on. We'll say this is Koldovstoretz, the canon Russian school. But also, Russia is freaking enormous, there's no way there's only one magic school in all of Russia. I think there must be ant least 1 more, out east, but probably there's 2, one out east and one more toward the middle, possibly near Krasnoyarsk.

I'm willing to believe that there is 1 major magic school in Japan, and that's the canon Mahoutokoro School of Magic. That cannot be the only school in Asia.

There has to be 1 in China. Now, despite China's size, I'm actually okay with the idea of there only being 1 major official magic school. China has a long history of centralizing government and education and its vast bureaucracy. I can see there being one school that's been there since, like, the 800s AD. If there is only the one official school, though, there will also be smaller local less prestigious schools, and again homeschooling.

There's definitely at least 1 in India. Mongolia and Kazakhstan are both traditionally nomadic enough that I expect magic is taught much more on a familial, elder-to-child basis without any large centralized schools. I feel like there would be 1 in Korea, because while Korea is relatively small, it is culturally very distinct from both China and Japan and has historically made a point of maintaining that distinction, so I don't think they'd be sending their wizarding kids to either of the neighboring magic schools.

I am going to very conservatively say there's 1 on the Indochinese Peninsula.

That gives us 5 in Asia. With the 8 in Europe and 3 in Russia, we're already at 16 major magic schools.

There's at least 4 in the middle east: 1 in Turkey, 1 in Iran, 1 in Saudi Arabia, and 1 in the vicinity of Israel that focuses on Judaic magic tradition. Exactly where that one is—whether it's within the modern state of Israel or not—is going to depend pretty significantly on how old it is, whether it's born of Jewish cultural revival and reclamation or if it's ancient. It's quite likely there would be more schools than this, it's a large region with longstanding emphasis on education, but let's just go with these 4.

We're at 20 schools.

Africa. Canon gives us Uagadou School of Magic in Uganda. The idea that there is only 1 school to serve the entire African continent is insane. And I don't think there's any way around the fact that it derives from the colonialist and racist idea that Africa and African people are uncivilized and uneducated.

In North Africa, I'm saying there's at least 2: 1 in Morocco, and 1 in Egypt. Because of regional histories, there's definitely 1 in Ethiopia and definitely 1 in Zimbabwe. I expect at least 1 in Western Africa, probably Nigeria. I was thinking that is there's 1 in South Africa (the country specifically, not the region of Southern Africa) there'd be 2, one white one black, because of Apartheid, but on second thought I highly suspect that until quite recently, most or all white wizarding kids in South Africa would have been sent to Durmstrang or Hogwarts, depending on their parents' backgrounds and socialaspirations, so I'm not sure what magic schools there might be in Southern Africa other than the one in Zimbabwe.

This puts us at (a minimum of) 6 schools in Africa, 26 worldwide.

Hopping the Atlantic to North America where it's just as ridiculous to think there's 1 school for the entire damn continent. There's going to be at least 8 in the U.S. alone. An old affluent white one up east that looks a whole lot like its European cousins (that's Ilvermorny), 2 in the south (one that started off whites only, one historically black), 2 in the midwest (again, one white one black), 1 in California, 1 that at least used to be girls only (this one is probably also East Coast), and 1 that focuses on Native magic traditions that's either west/midwest or in or near the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina.

There's at least 3 in Canada: an English speaking one probably east of middle, an English speaking one in the west that probably also gets kids from Alaska, and a French speaking one in Quebec.

I'm thinking another 3 in Mexico and Mesoamerica, one of which was or is closely tied to the school in Spain, and all 3 of which teach different, even conflicting, magical traditions.

We're at 40 schools worldwide.

In South America, we know we have Castelobruxo in Brazil, which allegedly serves all of South America, but that's also stupid, in no small part because Brazil speaks a different language from the entire rest of the continent. So that gives us bare minimun 2 schools: Portuguese speaking Castelobruxo, and another Spanish speaking school. I'm gonna say there's actually 2 Spanish speaking schools, for a total of 3.

Finally, Australia's gotta have 1.

So, using my numbers, which I fully recognize leave out a lot of places and still give most of these schools impractically large ranges, even taking into account home schooling and community-based education, we get 44 Wizarding schools. That's four times the official number.

Like, wtf.

[mehrauli]

The shortcomings of secular leftism become obvious every single time Charlie Hebdo published another fucking piece of hate speech and they refuse to acknowledge it as hate speech even though it’s basically just a nazi-era antisemitic caricature with “PROPHET MUHAMMAD” written underneath it.

And maybe some “anti-racists” or something will pipe in to “defend” us with “oh, it iz against zeir religion to draw ze mahomet” which also makes us look ridiculous because 1. that’s only kind of true, there is a wider discussion of that and 2. people are basically not wrong to say that enforcing that is a police state measure that shouldn’t be acceptable. So all they’re doing is making a straw-man to represent the weakest, most hyperconservative possible take that could come out of a Muslim and is actually genuinely irreconcilable with a lot of the left’s values, values which I, and most Muslims, and most leftists, honestly hold. What’s more is that the position they present is genuinely violent and bad; the reason they shouldn’t draw the Prophet isn’t because it’s “against my religion” but because in the political climate we live in it’s inherently an act of hate speech to do so..

Westerners don’t consider it offensive to make fun of their respected political and religious figures, and this is a genuine cultural difference between them and a lot of Muslims particularly from south asia. I don’t think they should, I think the westerners should be free to “practice their culture” or whatever when they’re not killing my family about it. So when the liberals make this purely an issue of “oh ze iZlAm SaYs zat it iz, ‘ow you say, ‘ArAaAaAaM to draw zeir prophet!” they’re making us look like people who want to violently enforce something based solely on our (real or alleged) cultural values, which still agrees that we’re trying to ~eNfOrCe sHaRiA LaW~ in europe. If all they want to do is draw him, whatever. We can talk about that but it’s a different conversation.

Because when they draw Jesus they’re not drawing him as a hook-nosed banker jew with a suicide vest and a child bride, they’re drawing him in a way that is basically respectful and possibly with maybe a thumbs up if they want to be edgy, like it’s fucking different and if you can’t see that you’re just not engaging in good faith.

Aside from the cartoon itself, which nobody will even see by comparison, the publication of it in the first place, surrounded by a bunch of media fanfare and liberal anticipation, is, itself, a massive piece of performance art with the message that it’s good to #trigger all the angry barbarian peoples from out yonder in order to civilise us to French sophistication and defend freeze peach in contrast to the eastern despotism from which we all eagerly await western liberalism to free us, when we’re not busy migrating to the west in hordes to impose it on them from our positions of extreme political and social influence as refugees of ongoing global conflicts and genocides.

This recent publication comes weeks after Macron outlined new repressive police measures which had the explicit, stated purpose of stopping Muslims in France from developing an independent culture from the mainstream in a country where there’s literally a fucking burka ban that “even” liberals defend as “french culture”.

The basic message is secular fascist newspapers can do whatever it is they want and any voiced objection will be met immediately with a harsh punitive action from both the state and polite society. Again the secular left refuses to acknowledge that this is the situation and that this is a measure meant to humiliate a thoroughly subjugated people. They consider that they should be “respectful” of “our beliefs” but they do not actually criticise the power play against us and even participate in it by proclaiming themselves mediator instead of deferring to Muslims on this issue.

These basic normal foundational cornerstones of French culture, and global liberalism more broadly, tangibly and obviously lead to unthinkable violence against us on a global scale, and it’s good to be radicalised against that. The issue isn’t that it “leads to extremism” as if each of us has an inner terrorist just waiting for us to hulk out when we experience one too many microaggressions, but that Charlie Hebdo is actually a fascist publication and a huge part of the justifying apparatus for the past 20 years of western re-colonisation of the middle east, and, again, everyone should be radicalised against that because it is bad, if we’re radicalised against it and you’re not that’s a you problem and reflects a shortcoming in your analysis or organisation or both.

But even the liberals who think (for whatever reason) that they’re radicals will talk about “preventing radicalisation” among Muslim youth as if radicalism is some brand that belongs to them and them exclusively and we can’t be allowed to get our little terrorist mitts on it. They’re allowed to be radical and we’re not. And that right there is how you can tell they aren’t serious about the whole revolution thing, because revolution as they understand it demands a broad-based coalition of people willing to take direct action and who have a common analysis (that it’s their job to at least inform with their theoretical knowledge) about which actions should be taken and against what. They make no effort whatsoever to reach out to our obviously highly motivated and marginalised community with any of their talk of class solidarity because they’re a part of the same apparatus which keeps us marginalised and cooperate fully with it as far as we are concerned.

And the secular left agrees that the cartoons are racist and agrees that that’s bad and agrees that french liberalism sucks ass and is violent, racist, and nakedly imperialistic, but there has never been an instance of a left organisation to my knowledge that’s gone so far as to actually stand in solidarity with Muslims protesting against liberal Islamophobia. While the secular left may condemn islamophobia on its own terms, it never stands with Muslims and accepts Muslim leadership even when we’re protesting obvious violence and hate speech directed at us. Secular leftism and secular antifa agree that it’s good to be radical against a violent society in which hate speech is a normal accepted and even expected value and in which global leaders openly call for repressive police state measures against Muslims specifically on a good day, they even agree that it’s good and proper to use violence in such situations to prevent authoritarian overreach against persecuted minorities, but the moment we do it, it’s an act of terrorism that all radicals liberals have to Condemn Condemn Condemn or else.

And if we defend ourselves as Muslims, as Hannah Arendt called for when she said that if one is attacked as a Jew one must defend oneself as a Jew, not as a world-citizen or a defender of the rights of man, or some shit, global radliberal leftism will never have a word in support of us.

It claims to be better, and it might actually even be genuinely preferable, but it still lacks any interaction or understanding of Muslim analyses of the violence against us and don’t even think to try to theorise it themselves outside of some shallow acknowledgement of a purely economic “imperialism” or racism, which is only a part of it. And so as a result the global left inevitably ends up with a far-right analysis of one kind or the other on this; either censorship is good if it hurts people (”of colour”)s feelings or it’s bad to protest hate speech by unapproved means.

[politicaltheatre]

Empathy, pt.3

Let’s start with this: Jamal Kashshoggi was a man.

Do you remember him? He was a man, a human being, and like any of us he had hopes and dreams and memories.

He was also a journalist. After years of supporting the Saudi royal family and their authoritarian regime, he was murdered in 2018 for writing and speaking out against their abuses and, eventually, their war in Yemen. That was the version of him who fled Saudi Arabia, and the one who was marked for death by the Saudi crown prince he had once called a friend.

Last fall, the Saudi regime commuted the death sentences of the men it offered up as his murderers. Three months ago, an investigation confirmed that it was the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who had ordered his death.

We’re forgetting him. Even now, reading this, we are already forgetting. We can’t help it. At least, we tell ourselves we can’t.

In many ways, Kashshoggi was a lot like Alexei Novalny. Novalny hasn’t left the news quite yet. Like Kashshoggi, he supported the corrupt, authoritarian regime in his country, Russia, before turning against it. The attempt on his life, by poison, failed. Barely. He’s still alive, locked up in a Russian prison, a cautionary tale for those daring to oppose Vladimir Putin.

How long before we’ve forgotten him, too?

It’s a lot to ask of ourselves, remembering everyone around us. Sure, in some abstract way most of us try, “Good will towards men,” and all that, but we have the luxury of looking away and of not having to commit ourselves to thinking of others the way those two men did.

For each of them, it was an inescapable empathy for the suffering of they saw around them that compelled them to risk their lives to draw attention to it. They did so knowing the cost.

That cost - personal loss, imprisonment, death - is enough to keep most of us looking away. So much of what we do is to enable us to look away, to keep unpleasant reality at a distance. When others are already physically far away, it only makes it that much harder for us to do the right thing.

Looking out past our borders, the world today is filled with men, women, and children suffering, more than a few at the hands of authoritarian regimes, and of them far too many paying that cost for standing up against abuse.

The most present case this past week, because videos on social media have made it impossible to ignore in ways that it has been, has been that of the Palestinians.

The facts of this latest series of abuses against them should not be in doubt. During the last days of Ramadan, Israelis began forcing Palestinians out of their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah district in East Jerusalem. This was followed in quick succession by Israeli troops occupying the Al-Aqsa mosque following a confrontation between Palestinians at the mosque for Friday prayers and Israelis celebrating the capture of the mosque in 1967.

This was all a deliberate provocation, beyond the aggressive offense of what the Israelis were doing. The timing of it, during the Muslim holy month while right wing Benjamin Netanyahu struggles to cling to power, was intended to add insult to injury.

It worked. Clearly.

Hamas, ever eager for an excuse to be violent and to be seen to be violent, gave an ultimatum that would make Netanyahu’s regime look weak if accepted, Netanyahu gratefully rejected it, and Hamas began firing rockets, knowing that Israel would escalate and retaliate with a kind of brutality that can only be described as criminal.

The unpleasant reality is that both political powers rely on perpetuating the conflict between them, doing so at the expense of the people they claim to want to serve and protect. And those people pay the cost of it.

Note, please, how I have avoided referring to those instigating these atrocities as Muslims or Jews. That they use their religions and their histories as justification for violence and abuse should not be taken as representative of either religion. If anything, it should be taken as a kind of cruel irony, or perhaps an insight into how the abused, as individuals or groups, can become abusers themselves.

Zionism is not Judaism. It never was and never will be. It grew out of two things: the technology-driven late 19th century belief by Europeans, and their North American “cousins”, in their right to colonial domination of non-Europeans; and the centuries-old, routine and systematic attacks on Jews - pogroms - especially in Central and Eastern Europe that led millions of Jews to flee for their lives, many of them to the United States.

The establishment of Israel in 1948 followed the same pattern: that same, late 19th century belief in the right to claim or assign ownership of others’ land - no matter that it had once belonged to your ancestors; and the routine and systematic attempted genocide of all Jews in Europe - the Holocaust - by Europeans who chose to believe Jews not to be Europeans but some other, lesser race from West Asia.

That, of course, has been the assigned role for Jews the world over: they are accepted as insiders when times are good and scapegoated as outsiders when times are bad. To be Jewish - I am - is to understand that this never quite goes away. There’s always somebody having a bad day, always a big lie ready for justification.

Technically, it is true that Jews are Asian, in the way that Palestinians are also Asian, and that Egyptians are, too, but also African because different people have had different maps which they used for different purposes at different times.

Also true is that these things are only true due to the arbitrary drawing of continental lines on maps made by Europeans, from the ancient Greeks to those carving up the “New World” in the century after Columbus to the 1885 conference in Berlin carving up Africa for colonial exploitation.

This is not, strictly speaking, a European thing. Every culture has a tendency to see themselves as the center of the world. Just ask those living in China, or as they call it, Zhongguo, the “Middle Kingdom”.

The difference here is that modern day Israel was carved out of Palestine, a colonial “protectorate” which was itself carved out of the Ottoman Empire and awarded to the British following World War I. As a spoil of war, formerly-Ottoman Iraq, with its vast oil reserves, had greater value to the British. Palestine had ports on the Mediterranean - “the center of the world” - but was otherwise an afterthought.

Not, however, to the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. We must remember that the rest of the world didn’t want them. Jews attempting to flee the atrocity they and everyone else couldn’t help but see coming were turned away by everyone else, including the United States.

This in no way justifies what was done in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s, it’s just to place it in context. By turning Jews away, by attempting to forget them and their suffering, the world gave weight and power to right wing groups within the refugees.

Starting in the 1930s, those groups began to engage in terrorism against Arabs to force their position into Palestine and against the British to force them out. Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) and later the Stern Gang carried out assassinations and killed hundreds of Arabs and British with bombs.

After what the Nazis did to the Jews in Europe, memorialized in newsreels for all the world to see, who would take the Arabs’ side? Who could? The British were in no position to hold onto their colonial possessions anywhere, so they gave up and pulled out and in 1948 the state of Israel was born. Palestinian Arabs were forced from their homes and stripped of rights they had held under the Ottomans and even the British.

Again, this was not Judaism. As the name “Irgun” suggests, those terrorists were a right wing, nationalist militia doing what right wing, nationalist militias have done before and since, using an ethnic or religious identity to justify committing atrocities to take land and property.

After standing by and allowing the Nazis to do what they did, the world vowed never to forget; part of the price they were willing to pay - that they were willing to allow the Palestinian Arabs to pay - was to forget what Irgun and the Stern Gang had done, and to turn a blind eye to anything the Israelis did going forward.

There was a racist element to it, to be sure. This is part of the pattern of colonial withdrawal, negotiating a partition of land and possessions among the colonized groups, pitting them against each other, and then letting them fend for themselves. Nothing like creating a power vacuum to draw out the worst of us.

The British did the same thing in South Asia in 1947, pitting Muslim and Hindu groups against each other, erupting in spasms of violence before settling into a Cold War, complete with nuclear weapons. Even in their most secular eras, religious nationalism has defined the politics and leadership of each nation.

The result of this, naturally, has been an increasingly corrupt leadership exploiting religious hatred and mistrust to gain more power and wealth for themselves. It should be noted, yet again, that the political entities of Pakistan and India, though led by religious nationalists, do not represent Islam or Hinduism.

Their actions and failures do not represent those religions in any way. They are the actions and failures of men and women seeking power, seeking to acquire it and seeking to hold onto it. They are no different than the Netanyahu regime or Hamas, or our own right wing leaders in the United States.

For all of them, it is in their interest to cling to memory of conflict as a means of manipulation; in Israel and Palestine, nationalist leaders preach as if 1948 or 1967 are now; in India and Pakistan, it’s still 1947; and for America’s white nationalists, it’s either 1865 or 1965, take your pick. For the Serbs slaughtering thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica twenty-six years ago, it was 1389, the year the Ottomans conquered the Balkans.

The wars, cold or hot, can never end because time is never allowed to change. This, again, is a function of proximity. By freezing themselves in the increasingly distant past, the leaders and those choosing to follow them do not have to accept the changes facing them in the present. Their fantasy is to return to that idyllic, earlier time, when they possessed everything and did not have to be accountable to anyone.

And they will all fail for the same reason: in the present or near future, we will have reached a point at which we can no longer allow ourselves to ignore those suffering and in doing so forget them.

That is what we have done to the Palestinians. What has been done and what is being done now is in no small part because we forget them, routinely and systematically and purposefully.

The videos sent from Gaza of children being pulled from rubble should help us remember. They should. Ideally, they will have the same effect as those of last year’s Black Live Matter protests, but the people of Gaza remain far away. For many of us, it will be enough that the missiles and rockets have stopped.

Videos sent from India’s emergency rooms and crematoria should help us remember, but they, too, remain far away. Already, we’re starting to put India’s crisis behind us.

Will we remember either of them a month from now? Two? Or will they fade into the background, as the imprisoned Hong Kong democracy protesters have, or those dying of Covid-19 in Brazil, or those shot down in the streets fighting police brutality in Columbia, or those caught between warring factions in Ethiopia’s Tigray region? Or, for that matter, those half a century ago in Argentina who were simply “disappeared”?

What about the coup in Myanmar? Remember that? How about the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya people, supported by the now-deposed and jailed regime of fallen-hero Aung San Suu Kyi? What was done to them was no different than what was done to the Armenians in what is now eastern Turkey by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. That genocide was recently recognized by President Biden, an act of official, international recognition that took over a century and which itself is already being forgotten. The Rohingya may have to wait as long to be remembered themselves, or longer.

The point of all this isn’t that we forget, try as we might, but that despite it we find ways to remember. That Biden recognized the Armenians came because they did not forget and did not allow that crime to be forgotten. 

If this sounds like what nationalists all claim to do themselves - always demanding that everyone remember this date or that insult - remember that actual justice never seems to be their goal.

Justice requires memory, full memory. For us to remember anything fully, we must take the good with the bad. We must recognize the good and bad in each of us and in each group and in each series of actions. We must understand that for the worst act done by anyone in the name of any group or religion, there remain those within those groups and religions who stand against it.

So, let’s end with this: George Floyd 

George Floyd was a man, a human being, and like any of us he had hopes and dreams and memories. He died one year ago today in no small part because we forgot him. 

We remember now, today especially, because of what was done to him on this date, but we should recognize the role that forgetting him and people like him played in the events that led to his murder. We as a society have looked away from the suffering of minorities in this country, and from the violence done to certain groups within our society.

The easiest thing to say, certainly as we watched that video and the countless videos of police brutalizing non-violent protesters all last summer, was that “all cops are bad”. They aren’t. Hard as it may be to hear, they aren’t.

They are, however, led by men and women who push an adversarial culture, who encourage violence and racism, who are corrupt, and who thrive on the failure of reform. And most of them, far, far too many, stand by in silence as men and women are murdered in that culture’s name. In that silence, they have failed us all.

If we want to change that culture, we need those who would stand for justice to stand up and speak. They are there, just as they are in Israel and Palestine, and in Pakistan and India and elsewhere: intimidated, ostracized, and struggling to be heard.

Of course, May 25th, 2020 wasn’t just any other day in America. It was Memorial Day. That is a cruel irony. Another is how little we do to honor that day. It was created to honor those who died for this country, to remember not only them but what they did and what they supposedly did it for. Instead, we grill meats and drink beer and forget our troubles for just one day.

Few deaths may have the lasting impact on this country that George Floyd’s has had and will have, and he died in no small part because he, too, had been forgotten. This coming Memorial Day, let us take a moment to remember him and all of the others everywhere in this world who have died and deserve to be remembered.

- Daniel Ward

[atrayo]

Channeled Angelic Prophecy of the Jewels of Truth Series on Chinese Militaristic Hegemony Triggers WW3

Hello All,

I'm somewhat nervous about making this entry blog post regarding it's a very very controversial topic. It would come off as China-bashing, which in fact it is more an alarmist entry regarding an East vs. West power struggle that gets out of hand with a conflagration of a World War in its wake. This almost seems like history repeating itself less than a century ago with the Japanese Imperial ambitions of the 1940s spreading across the South Pacific.

I get skittish when I receive such automatic writing missives from the angels as a cautionary form of tough love. As repent all ye who enter here type of phenomena. For my part, I usually bury these statements in my notebook collection of these channeled statements. However, I deemed this one more so detailed with 8 Points of No Return as qualifiers for WW3 with China versus the World triggers itself. I intuit that this is 75% locked in already as ill-fated destiny up to 85% potentiality.

This is my caveat I hope to God I'm awful wrong as having drunk the Kool-Aid as Coco for Coco-Puffs loony toons basket case in this regard. With that stated, I feel more a prophet of doom than an Inspirational spiritual poet as my usual devotion. The statement 3,048 dovetails also upon the commencement of WW4 in 2075 by the European Federation as an Empire, not today's European Union.

Interweaving through all this the angel nameless as they often are without egos speaks about my "Jewels of Truth" series surviving eons (?) from now as a recorded spiritual philosophical angelic discourse with humanity. Talk about a shameless plug in all places and on this apocalyptic topic.

Prophecy of WW3 & WW4:

3048) What is to become of what you call the "Jewels of Truth" legacy of our spiritual angelic discourse with you in the centuries and eons following the end of your life on this earth dearest "Ivan the Atrayo". A future global religion as a cross-pollination of spiritual traditions not unlike that of the Persian Bai-Ha religion but one that actually succeeds in becoming truly globalized. A meta-Worship of the Abrahamic Creator God gets pinched transcending its original roots in around 150 years plus. As can be said from wingtip to wingtip of the Imperial Hawk as the standard for a New World Order.

We the angelic heavenly host didn't wish to alarm you dear Navi (Hebrew for Prophet, ie my first name spelled backward "Ivan") with such an infamous statement as you deem alarmist. However, you amongst many others are canaries in the coal mine seeing the writing on the wall as false placating by China is practically a foregone conclusion in world history to come.

With all this said take this as a pinch of salt to add flavor to the human condition as a cautionary tale of woe if ignored en-masse. As you stated in your introduction above, this is our Tough Love for humanity to glean what it may from our stance to date. Humanity can steer around this for the writing on the wall can still be whitewashed over with bravery if mutual reconciliation is so desired between the superpower of China and the rest of the World.

Allow us to start backward as it may with the future disaster of World War 4 in the region of the world that you presently call Ukraine. Mother Russia is no more a threat for China in WW3 made them their conscripts but that comes later in this statement. The peoples of Ukraine are ancestrally pure stalk of Euro-Slavic genetics and the future European Federation as a dystopian version succeeds the European Union after the rampant famines and plagues scorch the earth post WW3. The European Super Continent unites more so akin to the Ancient Roman Empire of yore with democratic tendencies only for its elite castes. Thus the seeds of distrust and acrimony are sowed once more by barbarians at their gates of the empire.

The year is 2075 the European Continent was less so ameliorated by the nuclear holocaust of WW3 than that of the North American continental shelf. In some ways the traces of Chinese culture is stronger upon Europe for the Silk Road 2.0 of the Sino Belt and Road Initiative succeeds culturally and economically by far before the Chinese government uses it as a Trojan Horse. Chinese population centers of its mainland are akin to a lunar landscape post WW3. Thus its peoples migrant en masse onto Asia Minor what is the Middle East today and into the Eastern flanks of Europe. Such Chinese populations will be considered the barbarian mongrels for the dystopian European Federation thus WW4 ignites around the Black Sea of Crimea.

In twelve years what you consider as an alpha or new beginning Ivan. Will be the start of World War 3 with China upon the year 2033 Anno domino. Give or take 6 months after China crosses 8 Points of No Return that the angel of the Lord God sounds the trumpet of perdition on Earth. China for its part ascended to the righteous status of a superpower too quickly and anything that is achieved too soon is lost just as immediately. The greek tragedy of Icarus with the Sun melting the wax bindings of his artificial wings sends the young lad plummeting to his death.

It is a matter of fact that China has every right on God's Earth to succeed and be a proud nation of her ancestral peoples on a united front. However, as they have been victimized by the Japanese during the early 1940s and were the footstool of the British empire of the 19th century. They feel that payback is in order to the world with a chip on their shoulder, thus their Sino exceptionalism soon becomes a recipe for disaster for the rest of the world and her Asian neighbors.

Notwithstanding its currency manipulations as a temporary measure during the early 2000's to cheat its way to the top. This practice was soon discontinued due to not overheating with a meltdown their economies of scale were soon achieved globally. Next to their notorious one-two punch of lured infamy of intellectual property theft as sanctioned statecraft of technological theft transfers. It would allow the Chinese State to supercharge its beautiful minds to leapfrog the West and the grand USA at its own game.

The first ill-fated seal of WW3 was when China annexed and conquered Tibet during its Cultural Revolution of Mao Tse Tung. That set the tone of supremacy in an egotistical guise of reclaiming its lost Imperial Dynasties of centuries before of grandeur. The 2nd seal of WW3 was broken more so recently from what they learned in subjugating the Tibetan peoples. They carried over to their Muslim minority of the Uyghurs accomplishing their cultural genocide upon them as enslaved conscripts. The Western economic sanctions on its textiles from such a provincial region are little more than a slap on the wrist.

What the Chinese learned from the Tibetans and now the Uyghurs they are implementing on Hong Kong like the flap of the wings of a graceful dragon. Soon the 3rd seal of WW3 to be broken is the naval and aerial invasion of the democratic island nation of Taiwan off its mainland. These so-called rebels will soon experience the Chinese boot snapping their collective necks with the revenge of humiliating their might makes right doctrine.

The 4th seal of WW3 is already partially cracked open with China claiming its ancestral Imperial Dynastic seaways and now air passage routes in an outright fashion. Building naval airbase atolls out of the ocean a feat of engineering will soon pot mark the South China Seas like satellite landmines to the rest of the world. Naval commerce and air traffic are now harrassed including foreign military air traffic be dammed. Expect so-called enemy fighter pilots of Australia and other South East nations to be shot down outright. With naval cargo and oil freighters to be harassed by premature boarding inspections as so-called checks for illicit goods.

The 5th seal of WW3 to be broken is when Mother Russia is soon out witted by Chinese Hegemony. When the mafia state of the Russian government gets greedy in an oil dispute transfer with the Chinese it soon escalates to sour grapes all around. Leading up to China invading by land its armies seize Russian Southern Oil fields permanently. Thus Putin the Russian Czar's rule comes to an end as his Oligarchs soon replace him with a shill of a weak national leader to appease China. Opening the way in future years that the Russian army is at the beck and call of the Great Dragon of China as its conscripts by any other name.

The 6th seal of WW3 is when China tires of the North Korean Premiers games of Kim Jong-Un they annex North Korea without firing a shot. Installing a viceroy and begin massive industrial mining for the mineral riches of the North Korean Peninsula. Which ironically jump-starts the North Korean economy putting its citizens to work for an eventual rise out of poverty.

The 7th seal of WW3 is the greatly lauded Belt and Road Initiative as the Silk Road 2.0 becomes what it is advertised to do. A boon of Chinese engineering producing Infrastructure projects from China through the Middle East into parts of Europe as Sino goodwill public relations globally. It is a roaring success since similar projects brought Africa out of its schizophrenic famines and poverty up to 20 years ago. That all the foreign aid historically upon Africa could never do.

However, what looks good and feels good with much mutual economic prosperity triggers a fervor for Chinese hegemony abroad. Where southeast Asian nations of Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia soon get the negative attention of Chinese interference as Big Brother. Frankly stated the Belt and Road Initiative becomes a proverbial Trojan Horse for the conscripted armies of Russia, North Korea, and China's armies. To seemingly roll upon in the guise of an inaugural guest-hosted military parade throughout the circuitous route becomes a bait and switch tactic.

The 8th seal of WW3 is that the unwelcome security occupation by the Chinese armies outside its mainland albeit as security guarantors is soon worn out. The remaining free nations declare war on China and within months a nuclear holocaust is triggered by the United States as a desperate first-strike policy.

Thus ensuring that Beijing its Capitol and Shangai as a modern port megalopolis of Chinese Supermacy is nuked several times by the Western nations of the US and Europe leaving it akin to a lunar landscape. The United States will receive the majority of Chinese Nukes rather than that of Europe as cited in the above introduction to this posting. The US island territory of Puerto Rico is hit directly upon Old San Juan its Capitol for it lacks a missile battery defense shield capability. All the island residents that remain leave over the ensuring years throughout the rest of the Caribbean (ie Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, etc...) and other parts of Florida.

All major primary and secondary American cities are hit once or twice by Chinese and Russian nuclear strikes such as Miami, Houston, Washington D.C., Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City, Detroit, and so forth. Also, the missile defense shield battery purchased by Australia from the United States works as advertised. Sydney is spared a near-fatal strike however the radius concussion of such a nuclear missile detonation overhead causes an electromagnetic pulse knocking out its electrical grid. Its offshore island of Tasmania doesn't fare as fortunate it is hit directly annihilating its entire population. Lastly, the New Zealand Capitol of Christ Church is also hit directly by a Chinese nuclear strike.

World War 3 lasts for a mere 6 years time ending roughly by the end of the year 2039. Leaving what remains of China, Russia, North Korea, and its counterparts of the United States and Europe is a near catastrophe for the next 60 years plus to attempt recovery. The United States loses its superpower status soon to become the Federated States of America an empire by any other name dystopian. Chronic outbreaks of famine and various once curable diseases spread dysentery of water-born illnesses run rampant and plagues of Covid-19 and other forms of Influenza throughout the Americas.

However, in the decade to follow the Federated States of America invades its neighbor to the North as Canada. In order to seize its prized infrastructure and pastoral farmlands to maintain its hold of power. Slavery in America is institutionalized once more in order to cultivate its non-irradiated farmlands and strip mining. Hungry mouths cause riots and thus enslaving such unruly ungrateful once citizens is another act of desperation.

Africa and the rest of the Americas such as the Central and Southern regions fare way better from the Chinese and Russian nuclear attacks lest that of Columbia and Costa Rica. Ironically democracies take root here to one degree or another as they see the dystopian societies of Europe and that of North America and want no part of that turmoil. The Federated States of America partially fascist devolves into feudal Esque family houses of nobility as the once upper classes survive to a degree via tact and shrewdness.

Your "Jewels of Truth" series as our angelic discourse with humanity dearest "Ivan the Atrayo" survives mostly intact not unlike that of the affectionate Rumi and Hafiz as Spiritual Persian poets have done so. Since your channeled writings of us for now, over 26 years to date as Inspirational automatic writings as a clairaudient psychic technique has foretold. It Will be cherished by the generation of readers to come lasting centuries if not an eon or two more. Taken into the stars by futuristic human colonists leaving the earth out of necessity due to dwindling resources.

The 1st truly global earth religion subsumes your writings into one of its tomes of sacred literatures. Thus you'll be piggybacking onto another greatness by sheer good prosperous luck for the added measure as there are no accidents metaphorically speaking. To this, we remark a thank you for taking the courage to share this cautionary statement although your reservations have been noted in protest by us.

Go with God(dess) those of the eyes to see and the ears to hear between the rhetoric spoken by the greater national powers that be. There's is the agony soon to herald all into collective planetary ruin because of a game of brinkmanship that gets out of control soon enough. Pay attention and take actions that are peaceable via protests or be steamed rolled into oblivion. Amen. ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo.

Ivan "Atrayo" Pozo-Illas, has devoted 26 years of his life to the pursuit of clairaudient Inspired automatic writing channeling the Angelic host. Ivan is the author of the spiritual wisdom series of "Jewels of Truth" consisting of 3 volumes published to date. He also channels conceptual designs that are multi-faceted for the next society to come that are solutions based as a form of dharmic service. Numerous examples of his work are available at "Atrayo's Oracle" blog site of 16 years plus online. You're welcome to visit his website "Jewelsoftruth.us" for further information or to contact Atrayo directly.

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 308

THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE: Part 1

Ancient people, considering it very important to determine Earth'shape, derived two important clues from the night skies. According to Aristotle (384-322 bce), these were lunar eclipses and the North Star. Lunar eclipses occur when the sun, Earth, and the moon line up in such a way that Earth temporarily blocks the sun's light from reaching the moon while its circular shadow gradually crosses the moon's face. The North Star appears lower in the sky the further south we go: at the Equator it lies directly on the horizon, at a latitude of 45 it is 45 above the horizon; and at the North Pole it is directly overhead. However, it is not visible south of the Equator.(1) As both of these indicate a spherical Earth, the scholars of that time discarded the idea of a flat Earth.

The more challenging question was how to determine Earth's size. Eratosthenes of Alexandria (third century bce) had a simple yet brilliant idea: insert a gnomon (a vertical stick) into a level piece of ground. This enabled him to determine noon's exact time (when the shadow was the shortest). It was also used as a compass, for in the Northern Hemisphere the gnomon's shadow points north.

But can such a simple device determine Earth's size? Aswan, located about 500 miles south of Alexandria, sits on the Tropic of Cancer. So, at noon of June 21 (the summer solstice), a gnomon inserted there has no shadow. By doing just that in Alexandria, Eratosthenes found that the angle was 1/50 of a circle's circumference (i.e., 2p/50). In other words, the angle at Earth's center corresponding to the arc between Aswan and Alexandria on Earth's surface is 1/50 of a circle's circumference. Since the distance between Alexandria and Aswan is 500 miles, Earth's circumference should be 25,000 miles, which is its actual circumference.(2) Thus, Earth's size and shape was pretty well established over 2,000 years ago.

This knowledge was lost to Europe when the ancient civilizations crumbled. But Islamic civilization and culture, which was rising at roughly the same time as the West was declining, produced scholars and scientists who translated and refined quite a bit of this ancient knowledge. For example, in 1424 al-Kashi used Archimedes' method of computing to determine its values to 16 decimal places. Ulug Beg compiled the greatest star catalog known at that time. During al-Ma'mun reign (813-833), al-Khwarizmi measured one degree of latitude on Earth's surface and obtained the result of 57 miles. This means that Earth's circumference is 360x57 = 20,520 miles.(3) Thus, in the ninth century, Muslim scientists knew that Earth was spherical and had a good idea of its size. Most Europeans at that time, believed that Earth was flat and the universe impenetrable.

The Qur'an describes Earth's geographical shape and change in that shape: Do they not see how We gradually shrink the land from its outlying borders? Is it then they who will be victors? (21:44).(4) The reference to shrinking could relate to the now-known fact that Earth is compressed at the poles.

At a time when people generally believed that Earth was flat and stationary, the Qur'an explicitly and implicitly revealed that it is round. More unexpectedly still, it also says that its precise shape is more like an ostrich egg than a sphere: After than He shaped Earth like an egg, whence He caused to spring forth the water thereof, and the pasture thereof (79: 30-32).

The verb daha' means "to shape like an egg," and its derived noun da'hia is still used to mean "an egg." As this may have appeared incorrect to pre-modern scientists, some interpreters misunderstood the word's meaning as "stretched out," perhaps fearing that its literal meaning would only confuse people. Modern scientific instruments recently established that Earth is shaped more like an egg than a perfect sphere, and that there is a slight flattening around the poles and a slight curving around the Equator.

THE WEST RECEIVES "LOST" KNOWLEDGE

An enduring Western myth is that Columbus had to overcome a pervasive belief that he would sail off the edge of a flat Earth by sailing west to Asia. This myth stems in part from compressing the past and conflating the early Middle Ages, when Europe's belief in a flat Earth was widespread, with the late Middle Ages, when Europe's knowledge had caught up with and partially surpassed that of ancient Greece and medieval Islam.

During the Renaissance, Europe came into contact with "lost" knowledge by translating Greek and Arabic works. One important book was Ptolemy's Geography, which accepts Earth's spherical shape. Geography once more became available in the original Greek, which was not widely known in the thirteenth century. This book was translated into Latin in the late fifteenth century and became widely known. Columbus owned a copy printed in 1479.

By the time of Columbus, the idea of a spherical Earth was widely accepted in theory. Columbus believed this and wanted to sail west to the eastern shores of Asia. Earth's size was the real issue. Ptolemy's estimate was as much as 20% too low. Also, he vastly overestimated Asia's size. The resulting map depicted an Earth with oceans between Europe's western tip and Asia's eastern tip, which was well within range of the provisions that ships of that time could carry. Columbus' estimate of the distance to Asia was wrong, as was his assumption that there was no land between Europe and Asia. Fortunately for him, these two "wrongs" made a "right," with all of its attendant fame and glory.

THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE

So far, we have given external information (i.e., lunar eclipses and the North Star) about Earth's spherical shape based upon its position in the universe. If we use this method to determine the universe's shape, we must observe it in an external manner. As this is not possible, let's reconsider the question of Earth's shape with a slight change: Can we determine Earth's shape by using measurements and observations done only on its surface, and thereby acquire intrinsic information that can inform us of the universe's shape?

Karl Gauss (1777-1855) answered this question positively by inventing "curvature," which measures a given surface's "bumpiness" at a specific point. A flat piece of paper has no bumps and so its curvature is zero. But if we look at a sphere at each point, we see some bumpiness. Gauss called such bumpiness "positive curvature." Another kind of bumpiness is "saddle-shaped." We can think of positive curvature at a point as follows: If we put a piece of flat paper on a surface at that point, the surface lies totally on one side of the paper. But in negatively curved space, this cannot happen.

To describe this concept formally (minus some technicalities), assume constant curvatures on the shapes in question. In other words, the shape is totally symmetric and every point has the same amount of bumpiness. There are several ways to describe curvature. Gauss's formulation for curvature is brilliant. But before that, let's look at his intrinsic proof for a spherical Earth. Imagine an orchard so large that any deviation from flatness is perceptible. First plant trees on the Equator every 100 kms (the approximate distance between two meridians on the Equator). Then plant another tree 100 kms (the approximate distance between two parallels) north of each tree, and do this several times. If Earth is flat, the distance between them would be same. But since the distance between the two consecutive trees (on the same parallel) decreases, Earth is spherical.

Having seen that an intuitively positive curvature implies a spherical shape, we want to follow this method to get an idea about the universe's shape. Georg Riemann (1826-66), trying to do just that, invented "curved space" and explained how to compute its curvature. We could launch six probes at equally spaced points along the Equator, and have each of them continually monitor the distance to the two adjacent probes. If space is flat, the distances at any point in its journey would equal the distance from the probe to Earth's center (an equilateral triangle). For negative curvature, the distance between probes would grow faster than the distance the probe had traveled from Earth; in positively curved space, the distance between probes would grow slower than the distance covered by the probes since leaving Earth.

There are two common misconceptions about the curvature of space. The first one is that curvature is a rather vague or qualitative concept. In reality, it is quite precise and assigns to each point in space and each direction at that point an exact number determined by the shape of the space near the specific location. The second one is that to describe curved space, one must think of it as "curving" into a fourth dimension. This can be useful in visualizing curved space for people familiar with four-dimensional Euclidean space (four-dimensional coordinate space). Unfortunately, science popularizers and science fiction writers often lace this concept with mystical overtones. This is more likely to confuse average people. In other words, measurements made in ordinary three-dimensional space may disagree with the results embodied in Euclidean geometry, for curvature measures the degree and kind of deviation from the Euclidean model.

Riemann also proposed a radically different (non-Euclidian) model for the universe: "spherical space." This would be the case if space had a constant positive curvature. Based on this, he said that the universe should be a hypersphere (a three-dimensional sphere). The usual sphere is two-dimensional and lives in three-dimensional Euclidean space. In general, n-dimensional sphere is described as in the (n+1)-dimensional Euclidean space, and the set of points whose distance from origin (the point 0) is 1.

The more intuitive way to describe hypersphere comes from the usual sphere. Starting from a point in the sphere called the South Pole, and as we go in a direction in the sphere, we see concentric circles becoming larger until we reach the Equator, after which they become smaller and we finally reach North Pole. The situation is similar in hypersphere. Start from a point in the sphere called the South Pole, and as we go in a direction in the sphere, the concentric "spheres" become larger until we reach the Equator, after which they become smaller until we reach the North Pole. We can generalize this concept for any sphere of any dimension.

Earlier philosophers speculated that the universe was infinite in extent; others (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Newton, and Leibniz) rejected this as implausible. But the alternative seemed equally dubious: If it did not go on forever, then "like the flat Earth" it had to end somewhere. And, what was beyond that? This model solved the Euclidean paradox of the universe's "edge," for if the universe is positively curved, it can be finite in extent and still not have any "edge." In Riemann's model, every part of the universe looks just like every other part, as far as shapes and measurements go.

Qur'an 51:47-48 mentions the universe's spreading out or expansion in space: And the firmament: We constructed it with power and skill, and We are spreading it. This verse reveals that the distance between celestial bodies is increasing, which means that the universe is expanding.

[cincinnatusvirtue]

On this day:  The Sack of Constantinople 1204, The Fourth Crusade damages Christendom and shapes history...

The Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages have a mixed legacy in the the long lens of history.  In the modern age, they are reviled by some and still upheld as noble, even holy ventures by others.  Depending on the particular Crusade the participants, their motivations and their outcome had varying degrees of impact long term.  Perhaps none however had the long term ramifications, though unforeseen at the time of the Fourth Crusade of 1204.

The Fourth Crusade stands out because it saw not only the one time the Crusades were not directed at their original target of removing Muslim powers from the Holy Land in the Levant but instead changed their trajectory to attack a fellow Christian power, the Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire as it was known as or just Roman Empire.  The Byzantine Empire was the successor to Rome, since it was the continuation of the ancient Roman Empire, albeit with its capital in Constantinople, straddling Europe and Asia between the Balkans and Anatolia between the Black and Mediterranean Seas.  Overtime it had shifted its language and cultural focus from a Latin one to a Greek speaking one and a religious flavor of Christianity different from the Catholic Church of Western Europe, known as the Greek or Eastern Orthodox Church.

The Fourth Crusade came out a complex mix of ever present Byzantine internal politics and civil war, Western Crusader and Papal idealism and economic opportunism.  As well as a mix of cultural and religious differences between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity.  To get a sense of how we get to the events of 1204 we need to look further back to an overview of the Byzantine Empire and the various threats they faced.

The Byzantine Empire was essentially an outgrowth of civil division within the ancient Roman Empire and the subsequent split lead to the founding a new capital in the east, by Roman Emperor Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to become nominally Christian.  The city was named Constantinople though this was not initially Constantine’s planned name.  It was located on the shores of the Bosporus, a channel that runs between the European continent and Asian Continent in modern day Turkey, where the Balkans and Anatolia meet.  A literal crossroads of East meets West.  It was located near the site of a former ancient Greek colony called Byzantium, hence the name later attached to describe the Eastern Roman Empire.  The Byzantine Empire was name given centuries after its fall, it was only ever referred to by its inhabitants as the Roman Empire, because even though it evolved from Latin speaking Romans to Greek speakers, the political institutions remained very much influenced by the ancient Roman Empire and unlike the Western Roman Empire, it withstood the invasions of the various Germanic and other barbarian tribes in the 5th century and continued unbroken into the Middle Ages.  The terms Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire, Roman Empire are used interchangeably hereafter in this post to mean the same polity.

The Byzantine Empire struggled as a bulwark against various barbarian tribes of differing origins over the centuries and increasingly it turned to its Christian religion as an inseparable component of its culture, which also took on a Greek flavor.  The Greek language was the majority of the populace in this part of the world but the political and military elites spoke Latin until the 7th century, after which they too spoke Greek which developed from Koine Greek into Medieval Greek.  Simultaneously there were serious differences between the religious authorities and the Emperors.  While the Byzantine Empire did reclaim parts of Italy and Western Europe and North Africa, the differences between the Pope in Rome and religious authorities in Constantinople along with the Emperor himself was causing a rift between the East and Western Churches.  As a result with these schisms lead to the development of the Eastern Orthodox Church separate from the Catholic or Roman Catholic Church.  A particular break came when King of the Franks Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in the 9th century, giving rise to a new “claimant” to the Roman throne among the German speaking peoples of Central Europe who had also converted to Christianity.  The Holy Roman Empire was never unified completely in the format of the Byzantine Empire, it was actually a collection of various kingdoms, fiefdoms and principalities among Central Europe, namely in the German, Italian, French speaking regions as well as the Low Countries.  However, it too proclaimed itself the successor to the ancient Roman Empire, albeit its formation was really a form of political solidarity with the Roman Pope now at odds with the Roman Emperor in Constantinople, this lead to a break in relations between Rome and Constantinople that never really recovered completely.

In the 7th century a new threat, that of the Arabs and religion of Islam appeared on the Roman Empire’s southern borders in the Levant and North Africa.  The Arabs surprisingly and quickly overran much of the Eastern Roman Empire.  Taking the Levant including Syria and spreading to North Africa and eventually to Sicily, parts of Southern Italy and even the Iberian Peninsula then part of the Germanic Kingdom of the Visigoths in the coming generations.  The Eastern Roman Empire was eventually able to stabilize parts of its eastern borders in Anatolia but had to withstand Arab invasions and even attempted sieges of Constantinople itself, but the city with its famously thick and high walls proved too much for the Arabs to defeat them.  Additionally, they were helped by their sometimes rival the First Bulgarian Empire, a synthesis of Slavic tribes who migrated south in the 6th century from Eastern Europe along with the nomadic Turkic Bulgars who ruled over the area known as Bulgaria as the elite.  Ultimately, the Islamic Caliphate which spread from Spain to the Middle East was divided by internal rivalries and new dynasties which lead to a fracturing within the Islamic world.  This development provided some relief to the Byzantines as time went by, the Byzantines were able to regain parts of their strength in territories lost to the Arabs, at least partially.

The Byzantine Empire also dealt with the issue of various peoples from the north including the aforementioned Bulgarian Empire which originated with the Slavs intermingling with Byzantine citizens and later included the nomadic Turkic Bulgars.  However, the Slavs south of the Danube River were the most populous group in this region and eventually the Bulgars were absorbed into their people which now called themselves Bulgarians.  The Bulgarians however did adopt Christianity, namely the Orthodox branch of Christianity and spread this among their fellow South Slavs, this worked to occasionally smooth relations with the Byzantine Greeks but the rivalry remained both powers for control of the Balkans.  Additionally, various other Turkic tribes and nomadic peoples over the years such as the Avars, Pechenegs, Cumans and Magyars (Hungarians) rode into the areas bordering the Byzantine Empire and variously they battled the Byzantines as well as each other.  This was Constantinople’s preference, a paid for form of diplomacy, to play off the various barbarian peoples as soon as a new one showed up, the Byzantine Empire was immensely wealthy due to large amounts of gold, valuable trade routes and territories to tax.  By paying off the latest arrivals, they could replace an older threat and work as vassals or allies of the Byzantine Empire at varying times.  

Another, people the Byzantines had to deal with was the Kievan Rus, a combination of East Slavic tribes that due to internal strife supposedly invited a group of Vikings, known as Varangians to the Greeks to rule over them.  The Vikings founded Kiev, the modern capital of Ukraine and ruled over as a political elite over these Eastern Slavs, in time they were absorbed into the Slavic majority like the Bulgars and their Slavic subjects.  They formed a medieval state that served as the later basis for the modern states of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and their Slavic peoples.  The Kievan Rus, raided Byzantine lands including Constantinople but were repelled by the city’s famously impregnable walls and the secret weapon of the Byzantines, a Medieval take on the flamethrower known as Greek fire which destroyed the Rus’s navy.  Greek fire’s exact method of deployment is a mystery but suffice to say it was a fearsome weapon that effectively repelled many an enemy.  In time, the Rus too converted to Orthodox Christianity, becoming a sometimes ally of the Byzantines.  They further assisted the Byzantines by sending Scandinavian mercenaries from Sweden, Denmark and Norway to Kiev and onto Constantinople to serve in the Byzantine army, first as mercenary infantry and later into a specialized elite personal guard of the Byzantine Emperors, the Varangian Guard which were quite fearsome in their reputation.  This tradition would carry on for the remainder of the Byzantine Empire’s existence.  Though the composition of the Varangian guard switched from Scandinavian Rus to Anglo-Saxons from England and others following the Norman Invasion of England.

The Normans, descendants of Viking raiders who pillaged France and were given their own duchy, Normandy, also spread to different parts of Europe.  The Normans named after their Viking ancestors called the Norsemen or Northmen which became Norman.  Developed their own distinct subculture of Viking influenced warfare, French dialect along with unique architecture and customs.  The Normans most famously attacked and conquered England under William, Duke of Normandy or William the Conqueror.  Ending Anglo-Saxon rule of England in 1066, the Normans formed a new political elite in the British Isles in union with Normandy.  They also conquered Southern Italy, including Sicily, ending Arab/Islamic rule there and they attacked the Balkan possessions of the Byzantine Empire in raids.  To varying degrees both sides were successful.

In the 11th century, the Byzantines can reconquered Bulgaria, ending a threat their but to the east were facing a new threat, the nomadic Turks coming from the steppes of Central Asia.  The Turks had converted to Islam along with the Persians and other Iranian peoples of Central Asia and with this brought a renewed threat of Islam to the Roman Empire’s borders.  In 1071, the Byzantine suffered a defeat at the Battle of Manzikert from the Seljuq Turks who established the Great Seljuq Empire, the first major nomadic Islamic Turkic Empire to threaten the Byzantines.  They quickly settled into the Anatolian heartland of Byzantine lands replacing the previously Greek majority here.  During the reign of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Kommenos (1088-1118), the First Crusades were called by the Alexios working with then Pope Urban II in 1095.  Promoting a reconciliation of sorts between East and West Christendom.  The goal was to restore Anatolia and the Levant to the Byzantine Empire from the various Muslim rulers since the Seljuqs and their fellow Muslims in the Levant were divided.  Eventually a mix of Italo-Norman, French and other Western European armies “took up the Cross” and became the Crusaders hell bent on Christian restoration of the Holy Land.  The deal was they were to get help drive Muslims from these lands and restore Byzantine rule to them in exchange for spiritual clean slates from the Pope himself to satisfy their religious fervor and get monetary and military support from a reformed Byzantine army and navy that prior to Alexios had been neglected and underfunded due to corruption, civil war and decreased tax bases.  The Crusaders had to swear and oath of nominal fealty to Alexios, even the Normans he previously fought.  The First Crusade turned out to be successful though its intention of restoring lands to Byzantium only went so far.  In Anatolia, the Crusaders with their heavy armor and weaponry decimated the light cavalry of the Turks and the Byzantines were able to partially restore control over Anatolia.  In the Levant however, the Crusaders receiving limited support from the Byzantines decided to take matters into their own hands and create Crusader states in parts of modern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan for themselves, even retaking Jerusalem.  Forming the Counties of Tripoli and Edessa, the Princapality of Antioch and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, these states were nominally to become vassals of the Byzantine Empire since their Christian populace was majority Greek but they would be de-facto independent at varying times over the course of their existence.

As the 11th century gave way to the 12th century other Crusades were undertaken, the Second Crusade was more widespread trying to curtail Muslim reconquest of Anatolia and the Levant which resulted in a Crusader failure in Anatolia but a stalemate in the Levant preserving the Crusader states there.  Meanwhile, Christians successfully retook the Muslim controlled parts of Portugal and Spain, known as Al-Andalus and the Crusaders in Northern Europe started to locally convert some Western Slavs who had long resisted conversion to Christianity to moderate levels of success.  By the end of the 12th century, the Third Crusade was launched to revive the now reconquered parts of the Levant including Jerusalem that fell into Muslim hands of the Ayubid Sultanate, founded by an ethnic Kurd, named Saladin who became Sultan of Egypt and Syria and fought against Richard the Lionheart, King of England.  The Crusaders regained partial control of the coastal regions of the Levant but not the interior and a truce was made between Richard and Saladin out of mutual respect and exhaustion.

The dawn of the 13th century saw Pope Innocent III, want to build on the successes of the Third Crusade and launch a Fourth Crusade to complete retaking Jerusalem once more.  During the time of the Third Crusade though, tensions with the Byzantine Empire and Western Europeans resumed.  Frederick I Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor and his army tried to get permission from the Byzantines to cross over into Anatolia but which was granted but saw an early end after Frederick drowned fording a river.  The Germans were accused of conspiring with the resurgent Second Bulgarian Empire and Serbia both of which had broken away and reclaimed their independence from the Byzantines once more after a century and half of reconquest.  Furthermore, the English took Cyprus from the Muslims but did not return to the Byzantines, instead handing it over to the Knights Templar, one of several Latin (Catholic) Christian military orders founded during the Crusades. 

The Byzantines had for centuries been the most dominate city in Christendom in Constantinople, it was the largest and most cosmopolitan city in Europe reaching populations between 500,000-1,000,000 at its peak.  It had long retained ancient Rome’s political machinations, as well as cultural innovations, public baths, forums, aqueducts, a racing arena for chariots and other classical Roman monuments and structures.  It also housed ornate Christian churches such as the Hagia Sophia and with the Orthodox’s Church’s rich artwork of elaborate mosaics and golden icons it was awe-inspiring to anyone ,Christian or pagan who entered it’s triple set of walls for its sheer grandeur alone.  A sense of bringing “Heaven on Earth” was something the Byzantines sought to do for any foreign dignitary.  

The Byzantine capital was also the center of commerce in the Mediterranean, where east meets west.  Its former vassal, the Italian city-state, the Republic of Venice had over the centuries become independent and became a commercial and naval power on its own and it had sought to become the Byzantine Empire’s biggest benefactor for trade.  In time it sought to replace the Byzantine Empire as the commercial power of the region.  The Venetians at first were granted favorable trade conditions which actually disadvantaged and further weakened the Byzantine economy and customs-tax revenues, this was the result of short-term convenience the Byzantine rulers often needed to lighten the burden on their treasury, making short term political gains at the expense of long term financial ruin.  While Alexios I and his immediate descendants increased Byzantine rule and prestige over the course of the 12th century, they gradually fell back into civil war, corruption and sometimes downright oppressive violence to maintain order.  Eventually they were replaced in a coup by the interrelated Angelos dynasty and reigned from 1185 until the events of 1204.  Even within the dynasty there was infighting.  Isaac II Angelos ruled for years, incompetently until replaced by his brother Alexios III Angelos who had Isaac, ritually blinded and sent into retirement was typical of Byzantine custom.  His own reign was marred by financial mismanagement and corruption, outsourcing the navy to Venetian mercenaries and corrupt bureaucrats selling military and religious equipment to for personal gain.  Once again the Byzantine Empire found itself virtually bankrupt and unable to pay its armies.

Alexios III was now being plotted against by his nephew Alexios, son of Isaac II.  It was his nephew who escaped imprisonment and made his way to the Holy Roman Empire and into the court of his brother in law, the King of Germany Philip of Swabia who was married to Alexios’ sister Irene Angelina.  Alexios  would play a pivotal role in the events of 1204.  Quite separate from his own plans, the Fourth Crusade was already being planned by Pope Innocent III with the typical goal of reclaiming Jerusalem in mind at the same time.  The Venetian Republic agreed to provide the naval fleet and some ground support in exchange for a handsome sum from the mostly French and German Crusaders who were to partake in the voyage.  The Crusaders were expected to pay the Venetians a large sum for their transport.  In part, because the Venetians halted all other naval and commercial development for a year to build a sea worthy fleet with the expectation of being paid upon the Crusaders arrival in Venice which was expensive to a maritime power reliant on seafaring commerce.  The Venetian head of state, known as the Doge was at this time a man nearly 100 years old and partially blinded by the Byzantines years before, by the name of Enrico Dandolo.  Dandolo and the Venetians were surprised when the French and Germans showed up with limited funds.  The Venetians had seemingly built a fleet a great personal expense and now could not expect a reimbursement.  As a result the Venetians held the Crusaders hostage and demanded a negotiated payment from the Crusaders since it looked like the Crusade would no longer happen now.  They received a partial payment, taking a collection from all the Crusaders but it was not enough to recoup their losses and so the stand off continued.  At this point Dandolo proposed a new idea, the Venetians would partake in spoils of the Crusade, not part of the original agreement and the debt could be paid off.  Additionally, Dandolo decided the Crusaders could work off their debt in part by helping Venice reclaim the Croatian city of Zara on the Adriatic Sea. This area nominally belonged to the Venetians but a group of Croatian pirates had taken over this port and disrupted Venetian commerce, if the city could be retaken with Crusader help, the Venetians would consider the debt partially restored.  This had the added benefit of deescalating tensions with the Crusaders residing in Venice out of fear that their hostage ordeal may lead to violence there and at least in Croatia they could be placed elsewhere.

The planned attack on Zara reached the Pope who threatened excommunication of any Crusader French, German or Venetian or other Italian who attacked Zara since it was a fellow Christian city and already the Fourth Crusade’s purposes were being perverted.  A papal sanctioned legate and entourage was sent to oversee the religious aspects of the Crusade and report back to the Pope.  The Pope’s threats were intentionally withheld from the bulk of the Crusaders by the Venetians and some of the Crusader leaders who saw profiteering opportunities here.  Though some Crusaders, devout in their religious convictions and sworn oaths refused to partake in an attack against fellow Christians the bulk of the army joined the Venetians in November of 1202, despite the Croats displaying the Cross as fellow Catholics, the city was taken after a few weeks.  Immediately the Venetians and the Crusaders fought into a violent brawl leaving 100 dead as they disputed the spoils of the conquered city.  The Pope receiving the news of the attack, excommunicated the entire army, though news of the excommunication was likewise withheld from the rank and file.  However, the Pope would later grant an absolution to the army.

While wintering in the warmth of Croat coast, Alexios Angelos, who had escaped his uncle and reigning Byzantine Emperor, Alexios III to Germany made his way to Zara.  He had been plotting to overthrow his uncle and take control of Byzantium for himself but in his exile abroad he needed a vehicle for his plans.  The cousin of his brother in law, the German King happened to be the nominal leader of the Fourth Crusade, an Italian noble and soldier of German descent by the name and title of Boniface of Montferrat.  Though by the Siege of Zara Boniface was merely a figurehead, the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo had more or less usurped the Crusade for his and Venice’s purposes.  Nevertheless, Alexios hearing about the Crusader army, arrived at their winter camp in Zara and proposed a new alternative to their venture, instead of going to the Holy Land as planned why not detour to Constantinople and force his uncle give up the throne, in exchange Alexios would be proclaimed the new Emperor and pay off the Crusaders handsomely including the Venetians with promises to more than recoup the Venetians present losses.  The timing and machinations of the various Crusaders, the Venetian Doge and the would be Byzantine pretender to the throne could not have been more perfect.  Like the planned attack on Zara, Constantinople was a controversial target as a fellow Christian city, albeit one the Catholic or Latin Crusaders as they were known as, saw as still somewhat for their adherence to the Orthodox denomination which was alien and strange to the Catholics.  Both denominations had sense of superiority to the other.  The Doge was eager to gain riches from Constantinople to recoup his country’s losses and also to avenge an earlier massacre of Venetians and other of Italians in the Venetian Quarter of Constantinople years before by the Greek populace.  Some Crusaders who were present at Zara but refused to partake in the attack, including the English noble Simon de Montfort refused to partake in the attack on Constantinople and left for the Kingdom on Hungary and eventually lead a small but unsuccessful contingent to the Holy Land, attempting to complete the original mission of the Crusade as intended.

Alexios additionally promised not only to pay off the Crusaders debts to the Venetians for the Crusade’s assistance in his coup but to resupply and reinforce the Crusade onto the Holy Land.  Additionally, he promised to bring the Greek Orthodox Church (nominally subservient to the Emperor) under Papal authority.  Unbeknownst to Alexios while his promises were too tempting to the Crusaders and Venetians, the practical reality of implementing them were beyond his reach.  Doge Dandolo however, had spent time in Constantinople as a diplomat for Venice years before and was well aware of the complex and fluid politics of Byzantium and likely doubted the veracity of Alexios’s promises.  Nevertheless by early 1203 the Crusader and Venetian flotilla were en-route to Constantinople.  When Pope Innocent caught wind of this plot he warned against further attacks against Christian cities, at least nominally, but did not outright condemn this specific venture for reasons not exactly known, though probably for political reasons.

The Crusader-Venetian army arrived on the outskirts of Constantinople in June of 1203, having left Croatia in April.  The city had a population of half a million and a permanent garrison of 15,000 regular troops, including 5,000 of the Varangian Guard.  The sudden appearance of a fellow Christian army caught the city off guard and indeed the Byzantines could not call for reinforcements from other parts of the Empire in a timely manner.  They sent an emissary to the Emperor Alexios III, stating the goals were to depose him peacefully if possible.  Indeed that was the primary goal of the venture, depose Alexios III and replace him with his nephew and then be paid off rather handsomely before continuing onto the Holy Land as envisioned.   The first fight between Byzantine troops and the Crusaders was an easy Crusader victory as heavily armored Frankish knights from France easy outperformed their Byzantine counterparts.  Nevertheless, taking the city itself was going to be a daunting task and not something they initially thought who be necessary, though they came prepared just in case.

In July, the Crusaders began the siege proper by trying to cross the Bosporus and take the suburb Galata, the Crusaders would break into the sub channel of the Bosporus, known as the Golden Horn, which would allow the Venetian navy to park their fleet there and they could assault the sea walls of the city proper.  Indeed, the Crusaders launched an amphibious landing onto Galata and took routed the Byzantine defenders, though a mercenary force of English, Danish and Italian troops held the strategic Tower of Galata.  Eventually the tower fell and many attacks and bloody counterattacks.  The Golden Horde itself was defending by a large chain but by taking Galata, the chain was cut and the Venetian fleet was allowed entry into the Golden Horn.  At this point,  Alexios Angelos was indeed paraded outside the city walls as if he were to be the Emperor, but to his and the Crusaders’ surprise they were jeered by the Greeks. Constantinople had been accustomed to coups and changing reigns in their emperors over the years and they cared little about the exiled prince or his blinded and retired father, they felt Alexios III was adequate as a ruler, he may not have been especially popular but he wasn’t so disliked that the city would depose him for his nephew, not at foreign coercion.  This in turn soured the mood of the Crusaders and built resentment, thinking they would be hailed as liberators.

Now the assault on the city was absolutely necessary to achieve their goals, even if it was limited in scope.  The Crusaders and Venetians made several attempts but were repulsed by the Byzantine troops.  Though in July 11th, the Venetians captured some portions of the sea walls and towers before the Varangian Guard dispersed them, but the Venetians set off a fire to cover their retreat, this fire damaged a good portion of the city and left 20,000 people homeless.  Finally, Alexios III personally lead a force to confront the Crusaders but before a fight could commence, he lost heart and retreated even though he outnumbered the Crusaders at that juncture.  The fire and the disgraceful retreat prior to a right disheartened the city, Alexios III abandoned the city in disgrace, fearful of the implications of this, the city’s nobility actually brought back his deposed brother, the blinded former emperor, Isaac II out of retirement and declared him the Emperor once more in the hopes this would dissuade further conflict and allow them to save face.  

The Crusaders had achieved the goal of deposing Alexios III, though they had not placed his nephew on the throne which meant no guarantee of pay.  To remedy this, the Crusaders demanded that Alexios be made co-emperor alongside his restored father, a tradition that had occurred on occasion throughout Roman history.  Alexios Angelos was now Alexios IV Angelos and he realized upon taking the throne that the imperial treasury was in fact far more depleted than he thought, meaning he could fulfill his promises to Crusaders so easily.  His uncle had made off with precious jewels, further depleting the treasury.  The result was a demand to the citizenry and the Church to provide their religious icons and melt them down to make silver and gold coins with which to pay his mercenary army, it was only a partial payment.  It was viewed as a sign of desperation and weakness, making the populace have disdain for their new emperor and his army of mercenaries.  Alexios IV then asked the Crusaders to renew their contract for another six months until April 1204 to gather more time to collect their payment and to help him secure his rule against his uncle who was regrouping elsewhere.  Taking 6,000 Crusaders he marched to fight his uncle Alexios III near Adrianople, a nearby large city.  The remaining army of Crusaders and Venetians stayed in outskirts of the city sort of holding the city in an hostage situation.  During this time a riot broke out killing some Venetian merchants in the Venetian quarter once more.  The Venetian marines and sailors retaliated by setting another fire to the city, greater than the first leaving 100,000 citizens homeless.

Upon Alexios IV’s return from facing his uncle the tensions with his Crusader army lead a decline in relations between him, his subjects and the Crusaders.  His own father resented his co-ruling and began to denounce him.  He declared his refusal to help the Crusaders after December 1203 and lead at least an attempt to force the Crusaders away which failed.  The Crusaders were incensed at having been shortchanged in their promises.  Meanwhile, the Byzantine senate tried to declare a noble the new emperor in early 1204, following Isaac II’s death from natural causes.  Their appointee declined and instead another Byzantine nobleman who apposed the Crusaders, named Alexios Doukas, from a previously imperial and noble family was declared emperor after he launched a coup in which he paid the Varangian Guard to arrest Alexios IV, Alexios IV was strangled to death in prison by the Varangians.  Doukas was now declared Alexios V and he was committed to ridding himself of the Crusaders like he had just deposed his predecessor.

In fact, Alexios V personally lead several attempts to attack the Crusader encampment and forays to find food and supplies outside the city, though many Byzantine troops were killed and Alexios V nearly lost his life.  His also raised funds to help the common citizenry endearing him to the populace.  Nevertheless, that February he attempted to negotiate with Doge Enrico Dandolo.  The terms were deemed to harsh and to no avail.  It was around this time, Alexios IV was in fact killed, since his restoration to the throne was a demand of theirs.  News of his death angered the Crusader encampment further, though relations had been strained they still saw him as the one negotiator within Byzantium who could pay them off.  In March, all Catholic Westerners who resided in the city were expelled.  Though the Muslim populace was allowed to reside and had in fact helped the Greek Orthodox citizens and troops in their fights.  At this point, the Crusaders and Venetians planned to take matters into their own hands, they would take the city by force and the Byzantine Empire with it, dividing the spoils among themselves.  

April 1204 saw the final siege begin which Alexios V resisted until April 12th when the Crusaders managed to penetrate the city walls, altogether, a first in the nearly 900 years of the city.  Alexios V fled by boat.  Another emperor was declared briefly in the form of Constantine Laskaris but when the Varangian Guard refused to fight further, the siege was over.  The Byzantine capital fell for the first time, for the next three days a plundering phase took place, riches religious icons were stolen and melted down for coin, the Hagia Sophia, the most sacred cathedral was desecrated by the Crusader army, the Crusaders murdered and robbed every day citizens and raped Greek women including nuns.  After three days, the pillaging was ceased and division of the spoils was made.  

A treaty partitioning the empire was made between Venice and the Crusaders.  The Venetians were given advantageous trade rights, a collection of spoils including Four Bronze Horses taken from the Hippodrome, known now as the Horses of St. Marks in Venice.  The also acquired many Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.  Meanwhile, the Crusaders got Constantinople and its environs declaring a new Catholic empire, known to them as the Empire of Constantinople but known to history as the Latin Empire.  The Hagia Sophia became a Catholic Church during this time.  The Latin Empire would exist for another 57 years.  Baldwin of Flanders was elected its first Emperor, while Boniface of Montferrat was made King of a vassal state, the Kingdom of Thessalonica, based in northern Greece.  Meanwhile, various Byzantine noble refugees established Byzantine rump states which claimed to be the true successors and continuation of the Byzantine Empire:  The Empires of Nicaea and Trebizond and the Despotate of Epirus in various parts of Greece and Anatolia.  These states over the next several decades would engage in civil war and fights with the Latin Empire and its vassal states.  Meanwhile, the Latin Empire found itself at odds with the neighboring Second Bulgarian Empire and indeed in short time, the Bulgarians would defeat both Baldwin and Boniface in battle, killing them both and Dandolo would die of old age.  Eventually in 1261, the Palaiologos dynasty which ruled Nicaea reclaimed Constantinople after the Latin Empire was weakened due to infighting and losses to the Bulgarians and other Byzantine rump states, was conquered.  The “reunified” Byzantine Empire was partially restored for another two centuries but it never reclaimed its former glory and gradually gave way to more internal fighting and external threats such as the Bulgarians and eventually the Ottoman Turks whose empire eventually conquered Constantinople and later Trebizond officially ending the last remnants of the Byzantine and Roman Empire in 1453 and 1461 respectively, renaming the city Istanbul in the 20th century.

The Fourth Crusade increased East-West tensions and unknowingly paved the way for the Turkish takeover of the Balkans and rise of the Ottomans centuries later.  The impact could not have been experienced at the time and the events leading to 1204′s Sack of Constantinople developed out of a complex and at times reactionary web of intrigue with multiple actors that lead to its happening, the ripple effects of which would help shape the modern world.

[writingwithcolor]

LA's Asian Locations

Hello! I’m Kore, I’m Korean, Thai, and Chinese, and live in LA. I’m going to be sending some other things in, in a seperate POC Profile, but this was getting long. But if anyone ever is writing about Asians in LA(since there are… you know… a lot of Asians in LA), or just LA in generally and want to have their character visit one of parts of the city where more Asian people live, here is a small guide to most of them. 

Westside

Asian-Americans in LA have a shit ton of places you can go. To begin with is the Westside. This is the area near the Ocean, but isn’t directly on it generally. It’s called the Westside, because it’s almost the western most part of LA. On the Westside there’s Little Persia, with a lot of Persian food, and UCLA. This is specifically called Westwood, but we also call it the Westside. So hah. But because of UCLA there ends up being more East Asians around here because of UCLA, because of this, there’s a super strong East Asian presence around here with a lot of restaurants and stuff. In Mar Vista around here, there’s also a Chinese School that’s super big and popular.

Little Osaka

Then there’s Little Osaka, technically still part of the Westside, also technically called Sawtelle because it’s like three, maybe four, blocks of Sawtelle Blvd. But Little Osaka deserves a special mention of it’s own. This is the first of two Japanese areas in LA, however, Little Osaka also has a lot of Korean things, with many Korean people running Japanese stores. Little Osaka, is super popular to just mostly get food. There’s nothing actually to do here? But hey, food.

Koreatown

Next is Koreatown. So this place is almost in the heart of LA, it’s about 30 min to an hour from the Westside in terms of driving. This is half residential and half not. It’s 100% lit at night. In the heart of Koreatown we’ve got a lot of night clubs, and places to drink. On the peripherals, it’s dead at night. But there’s good food, and a lot of supermarkets. Around 60k Koreans live here alone. There are a lot more than that in LA. Around here is also Little Bangledesh. I’ve never actually been, but that’s also mostly made up of Korean people. Recently Little Bangledesh tried to take over half of Koreatown and make it into little Bangledesh, but was defeated in a vote, as Korean people really didn’t appreciate that. 

Right outside of here is Wilshire Korean School, which is a bilingual private school that has Korean School on Saturdays. This is one of maybe… three? Proper Korean schools in LA, most people just home teach their kids Korean. There are two supermarkets here. Galleria and HMart, both of them in Plaza sort of places. Galleria’s has better food, and probably better shopping. But HMart is the OG Asian supermarket and is near two really awesome desert places. One of them you can get a sweet bread, shaped like a fish, filled with ice cream and either red bean, custard, or nutella, and the other one you can get patbingsoo at, or Korean shaved ice.

Little Tokyo

There’s also Little Tokyo. Which I don’t think I’ve ever been to, odd, since I’ve lived in LA my whole life. But I mostly keep to Koreatown and the Westside too.

Chinatown(s)

Okay now for the Chinatowns. So there’s technically one, and that’s in the middle of LA. But let me tell you, that’s not Chinatown. It was, once upon a time, however, a lot of Chinese people moved out of there and to either Alhambra, or Montery Park. So we’ve got Old Chinatown, New Chinatown, and Chinatown. Now I can’t remember whether Montery Park or Alhambra is Old or New, but these are both out a bit a ways from the Chinatown in the middle of LA. 

In that Chinatown, all the festivals are thrown. It’s also tiny. Alhambra is a lot more laid out than Montery, which is super laid out. But Montery Park, and Alhambra, have got great food. Also no social lives, but great great food. There’s a supermarket here, when you leave the heart of Chinatown, and walk for maybe 10 minutes, that’s probably the biggest Thai supermarket I’ve ever seen. I mean… You can buy so much coconut sugar here. It's insane.

Thaitown

There’s also Thaitown!! Which is closer to Koreatown than both Old and New Chinatown. This is where you can get a lot of Thai Food, and products. There’s not a lot to do here, and it’s mostly disappearing. But food. Really though, this place is super duper duper boring.

Little India

There’s Little India as well. It’s maybe three streets at most.

Little Saigon

Little Saigon is the heart and soul of the Vietnamese diaspora in LA. It’s beautiful, and actually really awesome. Unlike Thaitown though, you can get good Vietnamese food outside of it. They’ve got streetfood (illegal in LA technically), and a super duper ginourmous market that’s bigger than the biggest HMart that I’ve ever see. It’s so… big.

Everything else isn’t of much note, I’m not going to lie. I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide! I enjoyed writing it for sure.

More PoC Profiles here

Commentary

I’m assuming much of the above is confined to Los Angeles (City) proper. Because much of the Asian population in LA moves pretty fluidly between cities, here are my additions for LA County as a whole (including some key LA landmarks that were left out).

Torrance, Gardena and parts of Culver City: Home to the largest Nikkei and Japanese expat population in LA. This used to be the homebase for Toyota America until they moved their HQ close to their factories in Texas. However, many other Japanese companies still use this region for their American homebases, and as such the biggest Japanese grocery chains (Nijiya, Tokyo Central and Mitsuwa) all operate their largest Californian stores here. This region also has sizable Korean, SE Asian and S. Asian communities. One of LA’s more popular Indian grocers (Samosa House) is based in Culver City. Asahi Gakuen, a Japanese Saturday language school designed to help Japanese American kids keep up with the Japanese national curriculum, is also based here.

San Gabriel Valley aka 626: This includes not only Alhambra, Montebello and Monterey Park, but also Arcadia, Covina, West Covina, San Gabriel, Duarte, El Monte, Commerce, Asuza and Chino). It’s a pretty big, diverse place home to a large number of diaspora in various waves from Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and South Asia. The annual 626 Night Market (a street food fair) is held near the Santa Anita racetracks. When I was a kid, most of my lion dance jobs for the Lunar New Year were in Old Chinatown, but they have all since moved here. The diversity in cuisine is incredible. To get a sense of just how many different types of food there are out here, I recommend reading old reviews by the late, great Jonathan Gold from the LA Times.

Glendale and Pasadena: Large Armenian and Persian communities. Lots of very good bakeries, restaurants and also Armenian evangelical churches.

Artesia and Norwalk: Little India, basically, but there are also large Vietnamese and Filipino communities. Pioneer Blvd. in Artesia in particular has many Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi grocers, restaurants and clothing shops.

All of the cities I have mentioned have things like language schools, religion and culture centers, grocers, restaurants, etc. specific to the communities I’ve described above.

Religion (Major landmarks):

Hinduism: Venkateswara Temple - Malibu; Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Temple - Chino Hills;

Buddhism: Zen Center Los Angeles - Koreatown; Koyasan Betsuin - Little Tokyo; Nishi Honganji - Little Tokyo; Higashi Honganji - Little Tokyo; Zenshuji Soto Mission - Little Tokyo; Guan Di temple - Old Chinatown

Taoism: Thien Hau Temple - Old Chinatown

Shintoism: Konko Church - Boyle Heights, Gardena, Whittier

There are also many gurdwaras and mosques spread out throughout LA County (North Hollywood in particular for LA proper), but I’m not saying where they are because humanity is terrible.

Addendums for Little Tokyo:

Japanese American Museum: Covers the history of Japanese Americans in the US, internment during WWII and Little Tokyo. Also provides assistance to families looking to review historical, declassified records about interned relatives.

Nihonmura Plaza: main setting for festivals for Tanabata, Obon and New Years. Has a nifty looking traditional Japanese fire tower

Kinokuniya: LA branch of a major Japanese bookstore chain

Addendums for Koreatown:

Dawooljung/ Korean Pavilion: A gazebo and open space across the street from the Seoul International Park and the Koreatown Community Center

Schools for Eastern Medicine/ Acupuncture: There are at least 2 schools in Koreatown for Eastern/ Chinese/ Alternative medicine that quite a few Asian Americans who run their own clinics have trained at.

LA is so big and so diverse that there’s no one way to really capture how much of Asia is represented here. I know our county registrar and DMV offers information in Armenian, Chinese, Cambodian/Khmer, Farsi, Korean, Tagalog/Filipino, Vietnamese, Hindi/ Urdu, and Japanese because at least 5% of the voting population speaks each of those languages. I’d love to see further additions from other Asian Los Angelenos.

- Marika.

[madamlaydebug]

Root race according to Theosophy was and is a major phase in the development of the human consciousness in its interaction with the material world. Each endures for a long period of time, going through cycles of development and decline, during which seven distinct subtypes or subdivisions are manifested. Theosophists see these root races as steps in human development, the final result not known until all steps are accomplished, but many feel ancestors knew more than present population.

The term root race was first introduced by Helena Petrovna blavatsky, secretary of the Theosophical Society, in the second volume of her work The Secret Doctrine. In the first volume she explains the evolution of the earth itself. In the second volume she explains what she terms root races, or epochs or geological periods, through man evolved and contributed to the earth’s history.

Theosophy terms the presence of what will develop into human existence or life “Pilgrims.” The first Pilgrims in the First Foot Race appeared in the formative stages of the earth’s development, still a primordial liquid. Their bodies were more etheric than organic, and recognized as the first adaptations of human existence. They were called Polarians because they existed around the North and South Poles.

The Second Root Race was called the Hyperboreans. They too were more etheric having a loose-knit watery. Their appearance is thought to have occurred in a balmy climate; such Theosophical assumption is now partially supported by beliefs in continental and polar shifts that vary with time. The watery bodies of these Hyperboreans assumed remarkable diverse and monstrous shapes as they experimented with existence in the physical world.

It seems the first two Root Races were asexual, multiplying by division. They enjoyed an amoeba-like immortality. Little is known of their consciousness, but certainly it was primitive with the manas largely latent.

In the Third Root Race, the Lemurian period, the current form of humanity possessing sexual reproduction between male and female began. During the middle of the Lemurian period the higher forms of beings appeared to allow the wrath-like precursors to rake form and spark the evolution of human intelligence.

It is speculated that these maybe the ancestors of Africa and parts of Asia where the oldest human remain have been discovered. As previously mentioned some of these assumptions are based upon the continental and polar drift theories, but one must not place too much substance upon this judgment because there is a significant difference of time span between root race and epoch or geological period. In some cases the difference is as great as 2.5 billion years. The reason given for the difference is that modern science ignores the differences in the radioactive decaying rates during different time periods; for example, the reheating of minerals after earlier crystallization.

Mostly of what is known of the consciousness of the Lemurians comes from Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, meaning there is no or little scientific evidence. The Lemurians were extremely primitive, ruled by kings, and built massive but crude cities. However, they possessed exceptional psychic powers, out reaching those exhibited today, that were put to everyday use.

Their religion was a simple, uninstitutionalized monotheism. Within the religion was a small group called the “elect” that were led by higher beings, incarnated in human form to guide the development of the race, and to keep deep wisdom alive in secret lodges. It is uncertain as to the relationship, if any, between these Theosophical speculations and reality. When belief in the “elect’ declined they are thought to have retreated to Shambhala, a mysterious place in the Gobi desert.

The Fourth Root Race, coming from the Lemurian remnants, is the Atlantean, a name derived from Plato’s lost continent of Atlantis, but not referring to just the island alone but other areas on earth as well according to Blavatsky. It is thought the appearance of the Atlanteans more or less coincide with the discovered remains of the first humanoids in Eastern and Southern Africa dating back some four million years.

Initially it is thought the Atlanteans were two divided races, a warrior rave and a “pious, meditative” one. At first, they both were, each in its separate way, “deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature” though antagonistic. They pursued a “double evolution.” There are obscure indications of the following developments use of fire, building of cities, some development of metallurgy, and among the “pious” recurrent visits of ”gods.’

The Altanteans like the Lemurians before them fell into decline, evil ways led to destruction of much of their civilization by a great, cataclysmic deluge as thought being described in ancient literature. Remnants of the lost island population were roots of later culture established on both sides of the Atlantic. Whether such events actually happened as described in literature is uncertain but the general Atlantean scenario could coincide with the initial millions of years of proto-humanity and humanity such as the first tribal people that emerged into the initial more-advanced civilizations.

For some, there is a great stress on the decline of the Atlantean cultures, especially the “pious.” As with the Lemurians, the Atlanteans were thought to initially possess more psychic powers because evolving in the middle of the Lemurian era they were closer to an etheric existence than a physical one. As might be mentioned here, many think there was an overlapping of the Root Races; one did not begin as the preceding one ended. Like their predecessors, though to a lesser degree, the Atlanteans retained some vestige of a proto-physical existence in which astral and etheric (psychic) modes of communication were commonplace. These psychic powers declined as the people adapted more to their physical environment. Weakening these powers were the demands and pleasures of their physical surroundings. It was a developmental stage, common among many cultures, which inevitably leads to evil when adults refuse to surrender childish ways or a modern nation refuses to works towards human rights for everyone. Then the Atlanteans decline to the use of low magic and sorcery; the perversion of power eroded psychic abilities and spiritual reality. The sorcerers were called the ‘Dark Face” of these cultures, and they mostly perished while remnants of the righteous escaped to help build future cultures.

The Fifth Root Race has been generally labeled the Aryan and its nucleus or core is said to have been composed mostly of the Atlanteans who escaped the deluge. The present age is said to be about in the middle of this Fifth Root Race, which spans from the se of the first flint blade to spaceships. The psychic powers of the people are nearly depleted since they are comfortable living in the physical realm of existence but bits still are traceable through the people’s love of Ultimate Reality as the ideal of knowledge and beauty. Its greatest temptation, and possible defeat, is to regard the human self with no more respect than given to physical material.

Here again must be noted the overlapping of the Root Races which is especially noted in the development of the human consciousness and seen in the Fifth Root Race as the remnant of psychic power. Because of this overlapping of Root Races a predominant factor in one Race may influence another thus result in a no pure Root Race.

There is a definite distinction made between the term Aryan as designating rheFifth Root Race and its use by German National Socialism, or the Nazis. Aryan, in Sanskrit means “noble,” and in Buddhist scriptures it applies to all those who are spiritually sincere, regardless of race. In Theosophy, Aryan, as with the names of the other Root Races, applied to a certain kind of emerging human consciousness. It has nothing to go with intrinsic racial superiority or inferiority as the Nazis implied.

From the description of the preceding Root Races according to Theosophical teaching one sees they are shown to follow a similar pattern of rise and decline. As with previous Root Races, the Fifth it is thought will decline too. Two indications for such a decline have been mentioned, the lack of psychic powers and the lack of respect for human self. If it is understood that each Root Race signaled the emergent of a certain kind of human consciousness then the importance of these two indications can be fully comprehended. The lack (decline) of psychic powers, use of them for communication, results in a different mindset, a different way of thinking. For example, as supposed, when mental telepathy was commonplace, people would have less need for the telegraphy, telephone, television, and so on; more could communicate with each other without the need for external instruments. As can be seen, when human psychic powers decreased the need for material instruments and things increased until humanity became totally dependent on a material environment and comfortable living within it.

Inevitably this led to or produced the second and far dangerous indication, the lack of respect for human self. As a general rule when people become increasingly dependent on material things in their environment they lose respect for each other; the more dependent they become on the physical environment, the more they seek to keep for themselves which can lead to natural catastrophes and wars. Soon respect of human self and spirituality is depleted. This is pretty much the situation in which current society finds itself.

According to Theosophical teaching there are two more Root Races to come, the Sixth and Seventh. The Fifth Root Race now appears to have entered its declining stage; if it follows a similar path as the preceding Root Races it may be destroyed by atomic warfare or some other catastrophe. Following the same pattern, there will be survivors of the Fifth Root Race who may already exist that will develop the Sixth Root Race. Like its predecessors the Sixth Root Race will attempt to advance a higher human consciousness which most probably means exerting attempts to eliminate the causes promoting the decline of its predecessor. Following a similar pattern this Sixth Root Race will decline and the Seventh will take its place. According to Blavatsky the Seventh Root Race marks the end of the evolution of human consciousness on earth before humanity migrates to Mercury to continue its evolution.

https://www.themystica.com/root-races/

[cactusnotes]

Cultural Globalisation

Cultures and traditions, through globalisation, have been intermingling, creasing a whole array of good and bad impacts, the base for striking debates, and for me importantly: a chunk of what my exams are probably going to be on. Well, here are my notes and case studies:

In 1959, Fidel Castro declared Cuba to be a communist country, separated from Western capitalism. It remained isolated for 50 years, relying on subsidies from communist USSR until 1991, when it collapsed. Cuba seemed to have no other option but to allow in tourism to develop its economy, resulting in increasing awareness of other cultures. 

In 2008, Fidel Castro resigned, and his brother took over, and decided to weaken communism. Free enterprise businesses were allowed to set up, in a relaxed communism that somewhat reflected China’s. Since 2012, Cubans could buy and sell houses, take out loans and start businesses, at the loss of state-employment guarantees and state-owned farmland was sold. This allowed USA-Cuban relations to improve. However, it has increased divisions, with some wealthy Cuban entrepreneurs living in luxury, while some live in tumble-down houses, with no variety in their simple diet--bread, eggs and plantain and state rations. This is as differences in wealth, and person leads to different chances of success. From then, it’s positive feedback, as the poor cannot help their kids do better. Capitalists too, don’t have such incentive to help their workers.

Today, Cuba is in a state of change. Tourists, TV and the internet have allowed Cubans to broaden their knowledge of the wider world, and learn about the challenges to their values and traditions, so globalisation is diluting Cuban culture. This cultural erosion has also led to a detriment in the environment, with the coral reefs at risk as beach-side tourist resorts are erupted.  This process is called cultural diffusion: Western attitudes and values have spread to Cuba, and also to around the world. Maintaining a strong Cuban identity is very difficult.

The economy changes, ways of life changes, attitudes and values change. Global changes are impacting how people view the world, and these global changes can be seen on a local level: called glocal cultures. British cities have been transformed by inwards migration to hubs of cultural diversity, with its own new character, new identity, compared to just a mix of others. These areas are called ethnic enclaves, with some examples being Indian populations in London, South East, and East of England.

There are several key ideas surrounding this concept of globalisation of society: culture is the ideas, customs and social practices of a particular people or society; cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural beliefs and activities from one group (ethnicities, religions, nationalities) to another through communication, transport and technology; cultural erosion is when cultural diversity is reduced through popularisation; cultural imperialism is when one culture of a nation is promoted over another, otherwise known as westernisation. 

The main culprits of cultural imperialism, westernisation and americanisation are, of course, Europe and North America, turning western culture into a global culture. The factors amplifying this today include TNCs, tourism, global media and migration. The main protector of individual cultures is language: things don’t translate straight into each other, something is lost in translation. But as the same groups control global media, which impacts language, there is increasingly common vocabulary.  Global homogenisation is the process of culture everywhere becoming one.

News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, impacts political and cultural thinking worldwide. They have 101 newspapers in Australia (national and suburban); four in the Uk including The Times and The Sun; over 25 papers in the USA including The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal and a 33% share in Russia’s leading financial times paper. Television wise: Fox is theirs; My Network TV; channels in Eastern Europe, Israel, Indonesia and NZ. Their satellites are: BSkyB in the UK, Foxtel in Aus, SKY in NZ/Ita/Ger and StarTV in Asia. Politically, Fox TV in the USA openly supports the Republican Party, while every winning party in the UK since 1979 has been promoted by the Sun (EW, WHY UK?).

IT and digital communication means that the rate and desire of consumption has changed, and the products themselves have changed, as hybrid products are on the rise, where global TNCs create a cultural mix. What we consume generally is based on the work of small groups of big TNCs. 90% of the music market is owned by five companies: EMI, Universal, AOL, Time Warner, SonyBMG. They’ve focused on cutting the range of successful artists: it’s easier to promote one than promote several. This one becomes universal, rather than having different, local artists, contributing to homogenisation in the music world. Globalisation is the new term for cultural imperialism, and helps this musical homogenisation as it promotes the spread of TNCs due to easier connections to promote one thing worldwide, and distribute one product rather than  just producing local music.

Some may consider the change of value as a good thing (the fact that the textbook author portrays this as good literally demonstrates this westernisation, as he proposes that these values are right. Don’t get me wrong, I 100% agree that these values are good, but the fact that he’s portraying them positively is literally proof of what he’s saying and it’s funny. Or is that just me? Just me, sorry, ignore this). One of these is the attitude to disability. In China, 2011, official data reported that only 25% of disabled people could find employment. They were stigmatised, marginalised, abused. Yet, in 2012, they won the paralympics. This helps to destigmatize disability (but boy, have we got far to go!) as described by disabled Australian TV presenter Adam Hills: “Sydney was the first Paralympics to treat Paralympians as equals. London was the first to treat them as heros”. The West is adopting more liberal ideas on ethical issues, such as gay rights (gay rights!), and we can see that homogenisation is far off from total control, with how this contrasts with attitudes in places like Russia and the Middle East.

There is obviously resistance to globalisation. I personally feel like these notes do portray it as negative until the last few paragraphs. It’s perceived to be exploitation of people and the environment. The general criticisms link to: the environment, third world debt, animal rights, child-labour, anarchism, and mostly anti-capitalism and opposition to TNCs. There are many anti-globalisation and environmental pressure groups rejecting globalised culture and TNCs especially (like tax avoidance). The Occupy is one such group, and held demonstrations in cities like London and New York (now that is ironic). The main targets for anti-globalisation movements are the WTO, IMF and World Bank, as well as large US TNCs like McDonald and Starbucks, on the exploitation of the workers, and environment, making it easier for the rich to get away with wrong, and erasing cultures (Americanisation).

Anti-globalisation and rejection of cultural diffusion can even occur on a governmental level. Iran confiscated Barbie Dolls for being un-islamic in the 2000s, but ended up liberalised due to a need for international assistance in dealing with radicalism, and the youth still accessing banned social media, like Twitter and Facebook. Until the 2000s, France led the anti-globalisation movement, limiting broadcasting of foreign material--40% of broadcasts had to be French and no more than 55% American film imports--but has had to liberalise this due to internet downloading of media and due to successful TNCs from France, like EDF energy.

In Norway, for hundreds of years, local fishermen have hunted whales and the food source was considered part of their tradition and culture. The Norwegian representatives claimed that their northern coastal villages depended on hunting and fishing for their livelihoods. Although whaling is not a big part of the Norwegian national budget, it is still considered a crucial source of income for those fishermen who need it. They also argued that the global effort to prohibit the hunting of whales amounted to an imposition of other countries' cultural values that contradicted their own, since it cannot be environmental concerns, for the whales they hunted were not endangered--it’s all based on values. The US Department of Commerce has even suggested that trade restrictions be imposed upon Norway, because it was violating the International Whaling Commission's ban on these kinds of whaling activities. Here, the environment, different values and nationalism clash.

Papua New Guinea has over 7000 cultural groups, with different languages, diets, etc. living in different villages or hamlets, and generally sustained by subsidence farming, fishing and collection. People who are skilled and also generous in getting food are well respected. Then, colonisation meant tribal tensions were crushed, and people were used on plantations and integrated into a new economic and political system. Christianity and western ideals have come forth, with value being placed in well-educated and successful workers, and intermarriage between tribes has lead to losses of languages and direct cultural conflict. Mining took place in one tribal area, meant to benefit all, but the local tribe was doubtful, and resented those on the mainland for allowing the Aussies and Brits to come in and mine. They developed into a revolutionary army, causing conflict in the 1990s, fighting between citizens, youth gangs, riots, looting, returning tribal warfare and huge law and order problems.

The USA and UK have faced increasing nationalisation as a political movement. These are potentially seen in things like the Brexit vote, and election of Trump. Some follow it due to the dilution of their native culture and loss of sovereignty, others due to the low-income and low-level education people in HICs feel as though they have been left out of the benefits of globalisation. While it has the same benefits of protectionism, nationalism can lead to negative impacts, most notably through marginalisation/persecution of ethnic minority groups, ironically emphasising the whole trope and reason for cultural imperialism in the first place.