Watson: Los Angeles is a Shit hole (13 min)

Oh me Gad, he is right. The whole LA thing is starting to look like a scene from the movie “Idiocracy”.

Extreme poverty, medieval diseases, plagues, and obscene wealth inequality, is this where the USA is heading under Agent Orange? To be fair, we can’t blame all on the Trumpster as this is merely the continuation of countless fake corrupt politicians.

No worries. According to some, the San Andreas fault is about to be active again.  A coming natural disaster is coming soon. Earthquakes, tsunamis, medieval contagious diseases, zombies (see people on Spice), extreme wealth inequality…

Why do people live there? It’s biblical people, get out of there!

 

Medieval Art Humor

The Los Angeles Disease Renaissance: Typhoid and Typhus Make A Comeback

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Sarah Cowgill via LibertyNation.com,

Sat, 06/08/2019

As the homeless population in Los Angeles grows, so does the unfortunate revival of many third world diseases…

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through Los Angeles to stem the rising tide of homelessness, a resurgence of medieval diseases has the city – and neighboring states – on edge. Typhoid fever and typhus, borne by fleas, body lice, and feces, are turning the once glitzy and glamorous city into a third-world worthy environment.

Yes, Typhoid Mary is back, in a sense, living on the streets and wreaking havoc on unsuspecting people in the Golden State.

These diseases, along with an uptick in tuberculosis, hepatitis A, and staph, are easily and rapidly spread and have wide-reaching consequences. They’re highly contagious and can infect anyone through casual contact.

Typhoid fever

An LAPD officer was recently diagnosed with typhoid, and several other city employees are exhibiting the classic symptoms of high fever, muscle pain, and weakness.  Left untreated, the disease can be fatal – and let’s face it: The malady wiped out entire populations during the Dark Ages and took a heavy toll on American Civil War soldiers and early American settlers.  Some historians blame the malaise for obliterating the Jamestown settlement.

Where The Heck Did They Come From?

Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority recently released a report showing 59,000 people living on the streets in Los Angeles County – a 12% increase since 2018 – with 36,300 of them within the city limits of Los Angeles.  The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), reports that “California accounted for 30% of all people experiencing homelessness as individuals” throughout the United States.

The progress of these once eradicated and near eradicated diseases is so alarming that the politicians who once spent copious amounts of time covering up the warts and putrid pustules in their liberally run cities and state are now showing disbelief and disgust.

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) broke his silence during his state of the state speech in February: “Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public-health crisis. Typhus, a medieval disease. In California. In 2019.”

Los Angeles Mayor Gil Garcetti (D), who many believed would be a 2020 presidential contender, calls the crisis, “the biggest heartbreak for me and my city.”  Garcetti campaigned extensively for the initiative known as Proposition HHH, which designated $1.2 billion over the next ten years to build homeless housing.  But now residents are howling about the pricey plan’s abject failure.  One local L.A. news outlet polled residents and found that “Forty-five percent said it’s failing, with 18 percent saying it’s a complete failure.”

Voters passed Propositions 47 (2014) and 57 (2016), downgrading theft and drug offenses to misdemeanors and redefining many felonies from violent to nonviolent to release a horde of inmates – some addicted to drugs and suffering from now untreated mental illness.

And they wonder why there are so many people on the streets living, sleeping, and breathing surrounded by urine-soaked sidewalks and piles of human feces?  And, of course, they don’t have to show symptoms to carry and transfer these diseases – simple casual contact from a carrier will do just fine.

Asymptomatic Mary Mallon was presumed to have infected over 50 people between 1907 and 1915, yet never experienced a day of sickness.  She died under quarantine – from complications of a stroke, not typhoid.  Her body was cremated and her ashes interred, but her legacy as Typhoid Mary lives on.

What’s The Plan?

Garcetti is doubling down on his homeless housing project, but his highest hurdle is his choice for building sites.  It seems no Angeleno wants drugs, typhus, and hepatitis bubbling and festering on their own block.  A short story made long, aside from Proposition HHH, there is no solid plan to curb the worsening rotting of Los Angeles.

There is a long-held belief that two American presidents succumbed to Typhoid.  The ninth Commander in Chief, William Henry Harrison, is remembered to have died of pneumonia after only 31 days in office, but recent studies suggest he likely died from typhoid.  Number 12, President Zachary Taylor, was most likely felled from the disease as well – due to the unsanitary conditions in the Swamp in the mid-19th century.

Ironically, the only thing that seems to have changed in Washington D.C. is that the deadly infections are in the heart and soul and not the body of the toadies on the Hill.

Here we are in the throes of the 21st century with running water, inoculations for just about every known malady of the last millennia, and welfare programs to heal the poorest of our citizens.  Yet Los Angeles remains a hot, malodorous, infectious mess – and it could be spreading toward a city near you.

Kunstler: America’s Not Going Socialist, It’s Going Medieval

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Fri, 06/07/2019

In response to what has become a nation of shameless racketeering, vivid wealth disparity, and shocking destitution on display in city streets, the party of the common man seeks remedies in the redistribution of capital. Seems more than fair to many. It’s not for nothing that they style it “social justice,” the cutting edge of an economic system called socialism — with overtones, of course, of settling racial and gender scores for good measure.

Socialism might seem to be the answer to all this unfairness and indignity. And naturally, it focuses on the two activities that have turned into the worst rackets in America: higher education and health care, a.k.a. “Eds and Meds.” Both are now cruel bloated parodies of what they used to be, turning their customers into debt serfs and bankrupts, apart from their dismal failures of basic mission: to prepare developing minds for reality and to “first do no harm.”

The proposed remedy is for the national government to take responsibility for running them and making their services free to all. That would do nothing, of course, to reform the patent idiocies of the gender studies departments; or rescue the sorry victims of obesity and diabetes from their toxic consumption of whoppers, pizza, and slurpees. Those dynamics operate on feedback wheels of futility for which there is no happy ending outside of drastic changes in thought and behavior.

The Left now promises redemption from these great quandaries with the tag-team of Robin Hood and Santa Claus ushering in a new golden era of free stuff. It’s understandable perhaps, considering how desperate so many citizens of this land are, and how desperation feeds rescue fantasies. And the Left may even get a chance to try this wizardry after the next election. But it’s really not where history is taking us. America is not going to go socialist, it’s going medieval. Why is that?

To put it simply, the money is not there. But the “money” is only an abstract representation of material wealth of one kind or another — energy, goods, resources, and delivery systems — and all that is becoming more of a fugitive presence in reality-based civilization. We don’t have the mojo anymore to nationalize and centralize these sprawling activities. It must be obvious that government is not only fatally beyond bankruptcy, but that it has also reached the stage of diminishing returns from over-investment in complexity that translates into generalized incompetency. It’s hardly just Mr. Trump alone that is responsible for the chaotic paralysis all around us.

Societies are self-organizing, emergent phenomena. They respond to the circumstances that reality presents, and they take us in unexpected directions. The general expectation in the USA since the Second World War has been for ever-increasing material comfort provided by an inexhaustible techno-industrial cornucopia, kind of a cosmic goodie machine. Well, we’d better adjust our thinking to the fact that the horn-of-plenty is shockingly out of goodies, and that no amount of financial hocus-pocus is going to refill it. Valiant attempts to redistribute the already-existing wealth are liable to prove disappointing, especially when the paper and digital representations of that wealth in “money” turn out to be figments — promises to pay that will never be kept because they can’t be kept.

So, instead of fantasizing about free PhD programs for everybody, and free insulin for the multitudes, consider instead the vista of a reduced population working in the fields and pastures to bring enough food out of the long-abused land to live through the next winter. Consider a world in which, if we are lucky, the electricity runs for a few hours a day, but possibly not at all. Imagine a world in which men and women actually function in different divisions of labor and different social spaces because they must, to keep the human project going. Imagine a world in which the ideas in your head about that world actually have to comport with the way the way that world really works — and the severe penalty for failing to recognize that. That’s the more likely world we’re heading into. It won’t put an end to dreams of utopias and cosmic rewards, but it will be a sobering moment in history.

“Medieval” Diseases Flare as Unsanitary Living Conditions Proliferate

Typhus and other infectious illnesses hit homeless communities

“The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years: About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California.”

Source: “Medieval” Diseases Flare as Unsanitary Living Conditions Proliferate – Scientific American

Source link

http://www.scientificamerican.com

By Anna Gorman, Kaiser Health News

March 15, 2019

Typhus and other infectious illnesses hit homeless communities

Credit: Frederic J. Brown Getty Images

 

Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority.

But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash, and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences.

“I worry about all those diseases,” said Millar, 43, who said she has been homeless most of her life.

Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard.

Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals—in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building.

People in Washington state have been infected with Shigella bacteria, which is spread through feces and causes the diarrheal disease shigellosis, as well as Bartonella quintana, which spreads through body lice and causes trench fever.

Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in New Mexico, Ohio and Kentucky, primarily among people who are homeless or use drugs.

Public health officials and politicians are using terms like “disaster” and “public health crisis” to describe the outbreaks, and they warn that these diseases can easily jump beyond the homeless population.

“Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public health crisis,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in his State of the State speech in February, citing outbreaks of hepatitis A in San Diego County, syphilis in Sonoma County and typhus in Los Angeles County.

“Typhus,” he said. “A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.”

The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years: About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California.

The diseases spread quickly and widely among people living outside or in shelters, fueled by sidewalks contaminated with human feces, crowded living conditions, weakened immune systems and limited access to health care.

“The hygiene situation is just horrendous” for people living on the streets, said Dr. Glenn Lopez, a physician with St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, who treats homeless patients in Los Angeles County. “It becomes just like a Third World environment where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.”

Those infectious diseases are not limited to homeless populations, Lopez warned. “Even someone who believes they are protected from these infections are not.”

At least one Los Angeles city staffer said she contracted typhus in City Hall last fall. And San Diego County officials warned in 2017 that diners at a well-known restaurant were at risk of hepatitis A.

There were 167 cases of typhus from Jan. 1, 2018, through Feb. 1 of this year, up from 125 in 2013 and 13 in 2008, according to the California Public Health Department.

Typhus is a bacterial infection that can cause a high fever, stomach pain and chills but can be treated with antibiotics. Outbreaks are more common in overcrowded and trash-filled areas that attract rats.

The recent typhus outbreak began last fall, when health officials reported clusters of the flea-borne disease in downtown Los Angeles and Compton. They also have occurred in Pasadena, where the problems are likely due to people feeding stray cats carrying fleas.

Last month, the county announced another outbreak in downtown Los Angeles that infected nine people, six of whom were homeless. After city workers said they saw rodent droppings in City Hall, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson briefly shut down his office to rip up the rugs, and he also called for an investigation and more cleaning.

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Medieval hostage-taking and prisoner swaps are back in vogue

Source: Medieval hostage-taking and prisoner swaps are back in vogue – Middle East Monitor

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com

Yvonne Ridley

@yvonneridley

January 18, 2019

People protest outside the White House over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Washington on 19 November 2018 [Win McNamee/Getty Images]

 

Do its member states take the UN Charter seriously any more? The United Nations was originally set up “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained”. However, since those heady days when international law commanded respect and due reverence from East to West, it now seems that the Charter is no longer worth the paper it’s written on.

An alarming demonstration of this is provided by the number of innocent citizens, many with dual nationality, who are being held hostage by various countries around the world. Indeed, there appears to be an outbreak of hostage-taking by states who are using people as bargaining chips or, in the case of the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, something much, much worse.

This was exactly how business used to be conducted in Europe during the Middle Ages when hostage-taking was the norm in society. The recent proliferation of this odious phenomenon, though, should be viewed with alarm as it is becoming a political as well as a legal issue today, in the 21st century.

The latest victim is an old friend of mine, American-born journalist Marzieh Hashemi, 59, who has been detained in the US for reasons as yet unknown. The popular anchor for Press TV, the Iranian state-funded broadcaster, was seized by the FBI as she checked in at St Louis Lambert International Airport on Sunday. From there she was transferred by the Bureau to a cell in Washington, DC; as of Wednesday, her son Hossein said that the family had “no idea” what led to her arrest. “Everyone we ask is very vague and the information is still limited,” he told Associated Press.

At the time of writing, no charges have been filed against Marzieh Hashemi. She was filming a documentary, Black Lives Matter, in St Louis, Missouri, and was about to board a flight to Denver when she was arrested. The FBI has so far refused to comment about her arrest.

I have worked with Hashemi, and always found her to be witty, acerbic and professional, as well as driven in her career. We met while she was living in Tehran where she sometimes works; she has dual US-Iranian citizenship. Her documentaries are hard-hitting and, no doubt, embarrassing for Western powers as she reveals the hypocrisy of their foreign policies.

US law allows judges to order witnesses to be arrested and detained if the government can prove that their testimony has extraordinary value for a criminal case; that they would be a flight risk if not detained; and that they would be unlikely to respond to a subpoena. Press TV is standing by its employee and has held a news conference and launched a hashtag campaign on social media.

“We will not spare any legal action [to help Hashemi],” insisted Paiman Jebeli, deputy chief of Iran’s state IRIB broadcaster. According to Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi, Hashemi’s arrest indicates the “apartheid and racist policy” of US President Donald Trump’s administration.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi in Tehran, Iran on 24 July 2017 [Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency]

Of course, Iran itself is already in the spotlight for arresting people with dual citizenship and others with Western links. It is currently holding US Navy veteran Michael R White and at least four other US citizens, including Iranian-American Siamak Namazi and his 82-year-old father, Baquer, both serving 10-year sentences on espionage charges. Iranian-American art dealer Karan Vafadari and his Iranian wife, Afarin Neyssari, have been sent to prison for 27 and 16 years respectively, while Chinese-American graduate student Xiyue Wang was sentenced to 10 years.

Meanwhile, British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 40, was sentenced to five years in jail more than two years ago for “spying”. The Free Nazanin Campaign has denied the allegations vigorously and has accused the state of using her as a political bargaining chip. Hashemi’s arrest is thus the latest of the tit-for-tat kidnaps — what else can such “lawful detentions” be called? — of people with dual nationality.

Earlier this month, the US State Department urged American citizens to “exercise increased caution” when traveling to China after a spate of high-profile detentions. US-Chinese dual nationals are at particular risk from so-called exit bans that prevent them from leaving China, said American officials.

Canada has also revealed that 13 of its citizens have been detained since last month, around the time that a top Chinese executive was arrested in Canada at the request of US prosecutors. Huawei company executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver to face a US extradition order over fraud charges — which she denies — that are linked to allegations of avoiding US sanctions on Iran.

Just two weeks ago, Russia charged Paul Whelan with espionage. The dual US-British citizen denies the charge, prompting questions over whether this is a genuine case or just another move in a decades-old Cold War. The former Marine, 48, who his family says was in Moscow for a friend’s wedding, was arrested on 28 December. Whelan’s lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov, reckons that his client may just be a pawn in Moscow’s moves to force a classic spy swap, given that his arrest came weeks after Russian Maria Butina pleaded guilty in the United States to acting as a Kremlin agent.

Russia has a history of arresting foreigners with the objective of trading prisoners with other countries. Sergei Skripal was involved in one such prisoner swap; the Kremlin released the Russian military intelligence officer who was convicted in 2006 of spying for Britain. Skripal moved to Salisbury in southern England, where he was subsequently poisoned and almost died in the novichok chemical attack almost a year ago.

One regime which probably warrants its own special category because of the huge number of people it has arrested and detained without trial ever since its foundation is the Zionist State of Israel, where almost 500 Palestinians are currently being held with neither charge nor trial under so-called “administrative detention”. The Jerusalem-based Palestinian prisoners’ rights group, Addameer, understands that Israel currently has 5,500 political prisoners behind bars. Holding people in detention without trial or, as in Israel’s case, without even charging them of an offence, is against international law. It is easier to understand why Israel can act with impunity in this and many other, even more deadly, matters when we see the major superpowers taking hostages for political reasons. We should not be surprised, therefore, that international — and the aforementioned UN Charter — all too often goes by the board.

The practice of holding innocent citizens as hostages was common across the Roman and Persian Empires, and even pre-Islamic Arabia. The fact that hostage-taking is essentially a medieval way of negotiating between competing powers suggests that no matter how much we might pride ourselves on our civilisation, the reality is that we have made little real progress in the skills of dialogue and negotiation. The much-vaunted (and oft-abused) mantra of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is meaningless when even the heads of leading democracies resort to using innocent people in the Game of Nations. When medieval hostage-taking is back in vogue, we can be sure that even more barbarism is not far behind.

Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’

Glacier cores reveal Icelandic volcano that plunged Europe into darkness

Source: Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ | Science | AAAS

http://www.sciencemag.org

By Ann Gibbons

Nov. 15, 2018

An 72-meter ice core drilled in the Colle Gnifetti Glacier in the Swiss Alps entombs more than 2000 years of fallout from volcanoes,  storms, and human pollution.

NICOLE SPAULDING/CCI FROM C. P. LOVELUCK ET AL., ANTIQUITY 10.15184, 4, 2018

Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he’s got an answer: “536.” Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, “It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year,” says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record “a failure of bread from the years 536–539.” Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.

Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.

To Kyle Harper, provost and a medieval and Roman historian at The University of Oklahoma in Norman, the detailed log of natural disasters and human pollution frozen into the ice “give us a new kind of record for understanding the concatenation of human and natural causes that led to the fall of the Roman Empire—and the earliest stirrings of this new medieval economy.”

Slivers from a Swiss ice core held chemical clues to natural and humanmade events.

NICOLE SPAULDING/CCI FROM C. P. LOVELUCK ET AL., ANTIQUITY 10.15184, 4, 2018

Ever since tree ring studies in the 1990s suggested the summers around the year 540 were unusually cold, researchers have hunted for the cause. Three years ago polar ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica yielded a clue. When a volcano erupts, it spews sulfur, bismuth, and other substances high into the atmosphere, where they form an aerosol veil that reflects the sun’s light back into space, cooling the planet. By matching the ice record of these chemical traces with tree ring records of climate, a team led by Michael Sigl, now of the University of Bern, found that nearly every unusually cold summer over the past 2500 years was preceded by a volcanic eruption. A massive eruption—perhaps in North America, the team suggested—stood out in late 535 or early 536; another followed in 540. Sigl’s team concluded that the double blow explained the prolonged dark and cold.

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Source: Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ | Science | AAAS

Natural Remedies and Why Witches Were Burned At the Stake

Source link

http://www.greenmedinfo.com

Written By: Sayer Ji, Founder

Posted on: Sunday, September 2nd 2018

“Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution the time will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to doctors and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic.”

~ Attributed to Dr. Benjamin Rush,
Signer of the Declaration of Independence

In Benjamin Rush’s time the medical dictatorship of which he spoke had not yet come to pass, and though magical potions like mercury and questionable techniques like bloodletting were used in colonial times, herbs were still considered and employed as legitimate medicines. Even if many wise women herbalists were eliminated as competition by being branded witches and sometimes murdered, the herbs themselves were not categorically demonized because no vast armory of pharmaceutical drugs had yet been created to supplant them.

The herbs and foods themselves have now been both vilified as dangerous and lampooned as completely ineffectual, generating the ridiculous contradiction that we are supposed to be dumb enough to accept as truth: namely, that they are both impotent and unsafe.

Given these circumstances confidence in the safety and efficacy of natural substances in the prevention and treatment of disease has not only waned, but the positive association between food and healing has been outright denied by medical authorities.  It is illegal for non-doctors to make health claims for natural substances even if thousands of years of use in folk medicine and a vast emerging body of scientific research now confirms their benefits.   You can’t say cherries cure gout even if its true. (truth is no longer the criteria that decides what you can or cannot say).

I started the website GreenMedInfo.com in August 2008 in order to provide free and convenient access to the massive amounts of research that have accumulated on the health benefits of natural substances over the past 50 years.  The government database known as Medline (which is freely searchable) contains over 28 million biomedical citations from over 5,000 scientific journals, many of which focus specifically on the therapeutic action of foods, vitamins and spices on serious, even life-threatening disease.

I believe that it is only through the free, uncensored and democratic dissemination of health information that we can secure our health freedom and through speaking truth to power, expose the fraud which is strictly profit-driven pharmaceutically-based medicine.

Feel free to explore the 45,000 + biomedical citations posted on GreenMedInfo.com that vindicate the safety and efficacy of natural substances in the prevention and treatment of disease. View the Research Dashaboard here.

Are you interested in natural medicine? Make sure to sign up for the upcoming complimentary access to the documentary, and get exclusive access to GreenMedInfo founder Sayer Ji’s interview here: REMEDY: Ancient Remedies for Chronic Illness. 

Sayer Ji is founder of Greenmedinfo.com, a reviewer at the International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, Co-founder and CEO of Systome Biomed, Vice Chairman of the Board of the National Health Federation, Steering Committee Member of the Global Non-GMO Foundation.

The Peasants’ Revolt Of 1381 – Part Two (Medieval History Documentary)

Tony Robinson explores the major uprising across large parts of England in 1381, its origins, motives and aftermath.

The Worst Jobs in History: Dark Ages (Dark Ages Documentary)

Tony Robinson presents a series examining some of history’s least pleasant employment opportunities. He begins in the first millennium, trying his hand at everyday tasks including back-breaking mining by ancient Roman methods, and Saxon ploughing using wooden implements and oxen. He also enters the world of the Viking egg collector, which involved scaling cliff faces in search of guillemot eggs.

Art History Tweets That Prove Nothing Has Changed In 100s Of Years

 

Art aficionados like to pretend that there’s a very specific and complex science behind interpreting paintings. But as these humorous tweets reveal, the hidden messages are often pretty obvious, not to mention pretty funny!

These modern interpretations of centuries-old paintings come courtesy of Medieval Reactions, a wryly funny Twitter account that’s making people smile with its contemporary take on traditional artwork. And as you can see, it appears that the observations and dilemmas faced by our ancestors aren’t that much different to those of today! Don’t forget to vote for your favorite!

 

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Decoded: The mysterious Voynich manuscript has finally been explained (Maybe)

Source: Decoded: The mysterious Voynich manuscript has finally been explained — Secret History — Sott.net

http://www.sott.net

Annalee Newitz
Ars Techica
Fri, 08 Sep 2017  

 

Roughly translated, many parts of the Voynich Manuscript say that women should take a nice bath if they are feeling sick. Here you can see a woman doing just that.

History researcher says that it’s a mostly plagiarized guide to women’s health.

Since its discovery in 1912, the 15th century Voynich Manuscript has been a mystery and a cult phenomenon. Full of handwriting in an unknown language or code, the book is heavily illustrated with weird pictures of alien plants, naked women, strange objects, and zodiac symbols. Now, history researcher and television writer Nicholas Gibbs appears to have cracked the code, discovering that the book is actually a guide to women’s health that’s mostly plagiarized from other guides of the era.

Gibbs writes in the Times Literary Supplement that he was commissioned by a television network to analyze the Voynich Manuscript three years ago. Because the manuscript has been entirely digitized by Yale’s Beinecke Library, he could see tiny details in each page and pore over them at his leisure. His experience with medieval Latin and familiarity with ancient medical guides allowed him to uncover the first clues.

After looking at the so-called code for a while, Gibbs realized he was seeing a common form of medieval Latin abbreviations, often used in medical treatises about herbs. “From the herbarium incorporated into the Voynich manuscript, a standard pattern of abbreviations and ligatures emerged from each plant entry,” he wrote. “The abbreviations correspond to the standard pattern of words used in the Herbarium Apuleius Platonicus – aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc.” So this wasn’t a code at all; it was just shorthand. The text would have been very familiar to anyone at the time who was interested in medicine.

Astrological images appear throughout the book too, mostly because medieval doctors thought the positions of the stars and planets could affect health

Further study of the herbs and images in the book reminded Gibbs of other Latin medical texts. When he consulted the Trotula and De Balneis Puteolanis, two commonly copied medieval Latin medical books, he realized that a lot of the Voynich Manuscript’s text and images had been plagiarized directly from them (they, in turn, were copied in part from ancient Latin texts by Galen, Pliny, and Hippocrates). During the Middle Ages, it was very common for scribes to reproduce older texts to preserve the knowledge in them. There were no formal rules about copyright and authorship, and indeed books were extremely rare, so nobody complained.

Once he realized that the Voynich Manuscript was a medical textbook, Gibbs explained, it helped him understand the odd images in it. Pictures of plants referred to herbal medicines, and all the images of bathing women marked it out as a gynecological manual. Baths were often prescribed as medicine, and the Romans were particularly fond of the idea that a nice dip could cure all ills. Zodiac maps were included because ancient and medieval doctors believed that certain cures worked better under specific astrological signs. Gibbs even identified one image-copied, of course, from another manuscript-of women holding donut-shaped magnets in baths. Even back then, people believed in the pseudoscience of magnets. (The women’s pseudoscience health website Goop would fit right in during the 15th century.)

The Voynich Manuscript has been reliably dated to mere decades before the invention of the printing press, so it’s likely that its peculiar blend of plagiarism and curation was a dying format. Once people could just reproduce several copies of the original Trotula or De Balneis Puteolanis on a printing press, there would have been no need for scribes to painstakingly collate its information into a new, handwritten volume.

Gibbs concluded that it’s likely the Voynich Manuscript was a customized book, possibly created for one person, devoted mostly to women’s medicine. Other medieval Latin scholars will certainly want to weigh in, but the sheer mundanity of Gibbs’ discovery makes it sound plausible.

See for yourself! You can look at pages from the Voynich Manuscript here.

Comment: UPDATE from Ars Technica:

Scholars have started to debunk these claims about the Voynich manuscript, noting that the translation “makes no sense” and that a lot of the so-called original findings were done by other researchers.

As soon as Gibbs’ article hit the Internet, news about it spread rapidly through social media (we covered it at Ars too), arousing the skepticism of cipher geeks and scholars alike. As Harvard’s Houghton Library curator of early modern books John Overholt put it on Twitter, “We’re not buying this Voynich thing, right?” Medievalist Kate Wiles, an editor at History Today, replied, “I’ve yet to see a medievalist who does. Personally I object to his interpretation of abbreviations.”

[…]

However, this isn’t sitting well with people who actually read medieval Latin. Medieval Academy of America director Lisa Fagin Davis told The Atlantic‘s Sarah Zhang, “They’re not grammatically correct. It doesn’t result in Latin that makes sense.” She added, “Frankly I’m a little surprised the TLS published it…If they had simply sent to it to the Beinecke Library, they would have rebutted it in a heartbeat.” The Beinecke Library at Yale is where the Voynich Manuscript is currently kept. Davis noted that a big part of Gibbs’ claim rests on the idea that the Voynich Manuscript once had an index that would provide a key to the abbreviations. Unfortunately, he has no evidence for such an index, other than the fact that the book does have a few missing pages.

The idea that the book is a medical treatise on women’s health, however, might turn out to be correct. But that wasn’t Gibbs’ discovery. Many scholars and amateur sleuths had already reached that conclusion, using the same evidence that Gibbs did. Essentially, Gibbs rolled together a bunch of already-existing scholarship and did a highly speculative translation, without even consulting the librarians at the institute where the book resides.

Pakistani Christian sentenced to death for sending Islam-insulting poem via WhatsApp

I hate to break it to you but if your God /religion permits you to kill others who don’t believe, you have a fake God.

Source: Pakistani Christian sentenced to death for sending Islam-insulting poem via WhatsApp — RT News

RT News

15 Sep, 2017

FILE PHOTO Pakistani Christians © Mohsin Raza / Reuters

A Pakistani Christian has been handed a death sentence for allegedly sending a poem insulting Islam, in particular Prophet Mohammed, to a Muslim friend via WhatsApp. The friend reported him to police, annoyed by the Christian man’s affair with a Muslim girl, the defendant’s lawyer said.

“[Nadeem] James was handed a death sentence by the court Thursday on blasphemy charges,” James’ defence lawyer Anjum Wakeel told AFP Friday. Wakeel said James will “appeal the sentence in the high court as he has been framed by his friend [Yasir Bashir] who was annoyed over James’ affair with a Muslim girl.”

Read more

Pakistan to blame for its own ‘bad name’ – Malala Yousafzai

James was held inside the prison for safety reasons as local Muslim clerics repeatedly threatened his family, the lawyer added.

The story of James from the town of Sarai Alamgir in Punjab province hit the headlines in summer 2016.

James, 28, is “illiterate and works as a tailor”, according to the Rescue Christians charity group which fights persecution of Christians.

The group said Pakistani police also “intimidated” James’s family and arrested his sisters-in-law. “They were threatened with prosecution if they did not give up their brother,” the group said, adding that the women were later released.

In July 2016, James shared the details of the incident to the Rescue Christians group.
“… One of my friends sent me a WhatsApp message. I forwarded it to the Muslim friends as I was not educated and unaware of the contents written in the messages. [Now] they are after me to kill me as they believe that I have committed blasphemy against their prophet,” he stated.

Read more

Pakistani Christian burnt with rods after ‘befriending’ Muslim woman – report (GRAPHIC PHOTO)

The man continued, saying his Muslim friends “wanted to kill him” and sent a complaint to police who later raided his home and eventually arrested him.

“Nadeem is uneducated and could not have possibly sent that text message. I’m certain that Yasir Bashir downloaded the supposedly blasphemous text onto Nadeem’s phone and then forwarded it to his cell number to build a case against my brother,” the man’s sibling Shahbaz James, told the Morning Star News, an independent news service focusing on persecution of Christians.

The charge of blasphemy can carry heavy sentences in Pakistan. According to Amnesty International, “Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are often used against religious minorities.”

A 2016 Amnesty report ”shows how once a person is accused, they become ensnared in a system that offers them few protections, presumes them guilty, and fails to safeguard them against people willing to use violence.”

Medieval Disease Documentary: The Syphilis Enigma (49 min)

Timeline – World History Documentaries

Published on 7 Aug 2017 

In 1495 a new disease hit Europe. It was deadly, devastating and attacked those who were promiscuous, well-heeled and well-traveled. But what was Syphilis and where had it come from? The traditional view has been that syphilis was part of “the Columbian exchange” – one of the things, along with tobacco and the potato, that the New World gave the Old. Arriving in Spain in the 1490s with Columbus and his crew, this destructive new plague spread quickly across Europe, leaving no country, no city, no royal household untouched. But what if this assumption is wrong? There is evidence of syphilis in skeletons dug from sites in France, Italy and England. Bones found in a medieval graveyard in Hull show signs of the ravages of syphilis. But if syphilis was present in Europe before Columbus went to America, why was the 1495 outbreak so deadly? And why did everyone see it as an entirely new plague?

Hey Macarena: Dancing teen arrested in Saudi Arabia

What? Can’t do the Macarena? Saudi Arabia is a barbaric country.

Source: Hey Macarena: Dancing teen arrested in Saudi Arabia – World – CBC News

CBC News

The Associated Press

Posted: Aug 23, 2017

14-year-old later released with warning after swaying to ’90s hit in intersection

(ahmed/Twitter)

Western music and dancing are taboo in Saudi Arabia, but such incidents have not necessarily led to lengthy imprisonment or serious punishment.

Police in Saudi Arabia arrested and later released a 14-year-old boy who was filmed dancing to the ’90s hit song Macarena at an intersection in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, according to local media reports on Wednesday.

The 45-second video, which went viral on social media in the kingdom, shows the boy wearing headphones, sweat shorts, a striped shirt and neon Crocs. He sways his hips and arms to the Los Del Rio song, and appears to be smiling and giggling throughout the dance.

More words:

Hey Macarena: Dancing teen arrested in Saudi Arabia – World – CBC News

Why these statues must go

J. Marion Sims was a gynecologist in the 1800s who purchased Black women slaves and used them as guinea pigs for his untested surgical experiments. He repeatedly performed genital surgery on Black women WITHOUT ANESTHESIA because according to him, “Black women don’t feel pain.” Despite his inhumane tests on Black women, Sims was named “the father of modern gynecology”, and his statue currently stands right outside of the New York Academy of Medicine. #FightSupremacy

BYP 100

 

The Medical Marijuana Racket

Source: The Medical Marijuana Racket – LewRockwell

http://www.lewrockwell.com

I saw a small sign stuck in the grass near the side of a road where I live in Orlando that I have never seen before. I wrote down the text on the sign so I could remember it. It simply said:

Legal Weed

Office Visit $199

Signs like this were inconceivable until January 3 of this year. That is the day when Florida’s Amendment 2 took effect, “The Florida Medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative.” Amendment 2 appeared on the November 8, 2016, ballot in Florida as an initiated constitutional amendment under the title of: Use of Marijuana for Debilitating Medical Conditions. The ballot summary reads:

Allows medical use of marijuana for individuals with debilitating medical conditions as determined by a licensed Florida physician. Allows caregivers to assist patients’ medical use of marijuana. The Department of Health shall register and regulate centers that produce and distribute marijuana for medical purposes and shall issue identification cards to patients and caregivers. Applies only to Florida law. Does not immunize violations of federal law or any non-medical use, possession or production of marijuana.

Florida voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment 2 by a vote of 71.32 to 28.68 percent. Article X, section 29 of the Florida constitution has been amended to allow Floridians access to marijuana for medical use. There are now 29 states that have legalized medical marijuana, plus the District of Columbia.

But all is not well.

According to the text of Amendment 2, a “debilitating medical condition” means

cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or other debilitating medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those enumerated, and for which a physician believes that the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the potential health risks for a patient.

“Identification card” means “a document issued by the Department that identifies a qualifying patient or a caregiver.”

“Medical use” means “the acquisition, possession, use, delivery, transfer, or administration of an amount of marijuana not in conflict with Department rules.”

“Caregiver” means

a person who is at least twenty-one (21) years old who has agreed to assist with a qualifying patient’s medical use of marijuana and has qualified for and obtained a caregiver identification card issued by the Department. The Department may limit the number of qualifying patients a caregiver may assist at one time and the number of caregivers that a qualifying patient may have at one time. Caregivers are prohibited from consuming marijuana obtained for medical use by the qualifying patient.

“Physician” means “a person who is licensed to practice medicine in Florida.” According to the Orlando Sentinel: physicians have been licensed by the state — with dozens in Orlando — to recommend medical cannabis to patients.”

“Physician certification” means

a written document signed by a physician, stating that in the physician’s professional opinion, the patient suffers from a debilitating medical condition, that the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the potential health risks for the patient, and for how long the physician recommends the medical use of marijuana for the patient. A physician certification may only be provided after the physician has conducted a physical examination and a full assessment of the medical history of the patient. In order for a physician certification to be issued to a minor, a parent or legal guardian of the minor must consent in writing.

“Qualifying patient” means “a person who has been diagnosed to have a debilitating medical condition, who has a physician certification and a valid qualifying patient identification card.”

All medical marijuana treatment centers (MMTCs) must be registered with the Florida Department of Health.

The Department of Health is tasked with issuing “reasonable regulations necessary for the implementation and enforcement of this section” to ensure “the availability and safe use of medical marijuana by qualifying patients.” No later than six months after the effective date of section 29, “the following regulations shall be promulgated”:

1. Procedures for the issuance and annual renewal of qualifying patient identification cards to people with physician certifications and standards for renewal of such identification cards. Before issuing an identification card to a minor, the Department must receive written consent from the minor’s parent or legal guardian, in addition to the physician certification.
2. Procedures establishing qualifications and standards for caregivers, including conducting appropriate background checks, and procedures for the issuance and annual renewal of caregiver identification cards.
3. Procedures for the registration of MMTCs that include procedures for the issuance, renewal, suspension and revocation of registration, and standards to ensure proper security, record keeping, testing, labeling, inspection, and safety.
4. A regulation that defines the amount of marijuana that could reasonably be presumed to be an adequate supply for qualifying patients’ medical use, based on the best available evidence. This presumption as to quantity may be overcome with evidence of a particular qualifying patient’s appropriate medical use.

The text of the amendment is also very clear that nothing in it “shall affect or repeal laws relating to non-medical use, possession, production, or sale of marijuana” or “authorizes the use of medical marijuana by anyone other than a qualifying patient.”

What a racket.

No one in Florida in pain because he suffers from a “debilitating medical condition” can obtain marijuana to alleviate his pain without jumping through numerous hoops and going to great expense even though he can easily purchase and consume all the Tylenol, aspirin, or alcohol he wants to. Yet, these three substances (especially alcohol) cause many deaths every year while the number of deaths from marijuana every year is still a big fat zero.

So, what’s a libertarian to make of all this?

First of all, some freedom is better than no freedom. Some marijuana freedom is better than no marijuana freedom. Legal medical  marijuana and illegal recreational marijuana is better than illegal medical and recreational marijuana. Legal medical marijuana with regulations and restrictions is better than illegal medical marijuana.

Second, limited federalism is better than no federalism. On the federal level, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act with “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” The Supreme Court case of Gonzales v. Raich (2005) affirmed the power of the federal government under the Constitution’s commerce clause to ban the medical use of marijuana. Yet, 29 states, including Florida, are permitted by the federal government to allow the medical use of marijuana.

Third, any adult should be able obtain marijuana just like he would obtain any other medicine. It shouldn’t matter what his medical condition is. He shouldn’t have to obtain an identification card. He shouldn’t have to be a qualified patient. No physician should need a special license to prescribe marijuana. Patients should be able to chose anyone to be a caregiver. No qualifications and standards for caregivers should be promulgated. No physician certification should have to be issued. No MMTCs should have to be registered. No regulations, reasonable or otherwise, should be issued by the government. The amount of marijuana possessed by a patient should not be limited. No prescription should have to be obtained to purchase marijuana. No physician should have to be seen before one is able to use marijuana for some aliment.

And fourth, the use of marijuana for any reason should be perfectly legal. There should be no laws at any level of government regarding the buying, selling, growing, processing, transporting, manufacturing, advertising, using, possessing, or “trafficking” of marijuana for any reason. There should be no laws at any level of government to prohibit, regulate, restrict, or otherwise control what a man desires to smoke, drink, inject, snort, sniff, inhale, swallow, or otherwise ingest into his mouth, nose, veins, or lungs. There should be no federal or state DEAs, no Office of National Drug Control Policy, no drug schedules, and no Controlled Substances Act. There should be marijuana freedom. That is the libertarian position.

The Best of Laurence M. Vance

The Pendle Witch Child (59 min)

Simon Armitage presents the extraordinary story of the most disturbing witch trial in British history and the key role played in it by one nine – year – old girl. Jennet Device, a beggar – girl from Pendle in Lancashire, was the star witness in the trial in 1612 of her own mother, her brother, her sister and many of her neighbours and, thanks to her chilling testimony, they were all hanged. Armitage explores the lethal power and influence of one child’s words – a story of fear, magic and demonic pacts retold partly with vivid and innovative hand – drawn animation. He discovers how Jennet’s appearance in the witness box cast its shadow way beyond Lancashire, impressing lawyers, politicians, clerics and even King James I himself, and setting a dark precedent for child testimony in witch trials as far away as America.

5 Children of The Evilest Dictators (7 min)

World famous dictators possessed unlimited power: in their sever hands was the fate of not only the state but also of every person who lived in it, including the fate of their own children. Could we say that the tyranny of the fathers didn’t affect their families, and that their children were swimming in rivers of money, love and understanding, while the country was drowning in rivers of blood? Let’s see. Here are five children of dictators and their unenviable fate.

We Know Who Owns Britain

Come on UK, reclaim what is yours, get rid of the parasites that are enslaving you right back to medieval times. Grab the pitch forks and march in protest and anger! (Use the pitch forks only for show; no violence is needed; just stop electing the parasites into power). Or have you turned imbecilic like the American population? What the heck is wrong with you?  You keep electing these parasites and the result is what you deserve.

Serfdom then, serfdom now.

Source: We Know Who Owns Britain

With permission from

http://www.counterpunch.org

by Julian Vigo

August 17, 2016

In 2014 the Scottish government announced a land reform programme, aptly named 432:50–Towards a comprehensive land reform agenda for Scotland to reflect the fact that 432 people own 50% of the land in Scotland. And this report is worth readings as it is an indictment of the pervasive obstruction of information linking which parts of British aristocracy own what and the disparity in wealth affecting this country:

Inequality in wealth is an increasing concern internationally. Debate about the causes and consequences of inequality has focused, in the UK and elsewhere, on the divide between the ‘one per cent’ (who hold a large and growing proportion of available wealth) and the ‘ninety-nine per cent’ (whose share of total wealth has been falling). The inequality inherent in Scotland’s land ownership pattern, however, is of an entirely different order to the more general 1:99 divide. The disparity in this instance is not between one hundredth of the population and the other ninety-nine hundredths. Setting aside the complex ownership structures many owners have put in place (below) in order to obscure or conceal aspects of their ownership, the divide is between the equivalent of one twelve-thousandth part of the population (the part owning half of Scotland’s privately-owned land) and the remainder. [emphasis mine]

And if this was not condemnation enough of the greed rife throughout the country’s land ownership, Conservative MEP (Member of the European Parliament) Struan Stevenson estimates that Scotland’s wealthiest landowners will net around £1 billion from rental charges levied on wind farms which, he underscores, only exist because of public subsidy.  What the United States government did to bail out Wall Street, the British people have been doing for centuries for its elite, acting against their own interests.  The question we must all ask now, is why?

First, the 432:50 paper set out a compelling case for the need for land reform in Scotland and the equally important need to register who owns the land since the Registration Act of 1617 which created the Register of Sasines did not make land registration compulsory.  And by the early twentieth century, Scotland moved from a system of recording deeds to that of registering titles which was assisted by the 1979 Land Registration Act.  “The Land of Scotland and the Common Good,” the final report which 432:50 instigated, came out in May 2014 and this was followed up in November, 2014 with the First Minister, Nicola Surgeon, announcing plans to establish an accountability for Scotland’s land which must be an asset “that benefits the many and not the few.”  Initially announcing twelve legislative proposals, by 2015 “A Consulation on the Future of Land Reform in Scotland” proposed to give powers to ministers to intervene where the scale of land ownership or the conduct of a landlord was acting as a barrier to sustainable development; to establish a Scottish Land Reform Commission; to improve the transparency and accountability of land ownership; to ensure charities holding large areas of land were under an obligation to engage with local communities; to remove business rates exemptions for shooting and deerstalking estates.

The Land Reform Bill was finally passed by the Parliament on 16 March of this year and received Royal Assent on 22 March, 2016, but by and large the bill was what many described as “underwhelming.”  While the new legislation subsumes protections for tenant farmers and the end to tax relief for sporting estates and a new Scottish Land Fund with £10m available to help community buy-outs, the other promised amendments never made it through: the restriction of the amount of land that one individual can own; the prevention of land ownership through offshore tax havens; and the creation of a public register of landowners throughout Scotland. But even with this bill falling short of more radical change, Scotland is light years ahead of England and Wales on this matter.

For throughout its history, Britain has been the welfare state for capital. And just as Americans were quick to point to the US government’s bailout of its elite class in 2008 while homeless line the streets, today we see that the elite in the United Kingdom are able to hold onto their wealth primarily through the obfuscation of information and the control of media.  Indeed, should the masses learn how much the very few elite of this nation actually own, many would likely take to the streets in protest.  The same secrecy surrounding who owns Scotland’s land exists south of the border as well, and such secrecy must be removed in order for meaningful land reform to take place.

Now that Gerald Grosvenor, the 6th Duke of Westminster, has passed away, his son, the twenty-five year old Hugh Grosvenor, has taken the helm of what some media outlets inaccurately describe as “half of London.” More accurately the 7th Duke of Westminster now owns 300 acres of central London between Mayfair and Belgravia as well as 133,000 acres in Scotland, Lancashire and Cheshire.  In total, the wealth that Grosvenor has inherited between property and other assets is estimated to be £9bn.  All this while housing is scarce in London, all this while homelessness rises to record levels as 2015 government statistics show that 3,569 people slept in the rough while local agencies report that 8,096 people slept rough from April 2015 through March 2016, double the rate of 2010.  Equally as daunting, 114,790 households in England, 14,160 in Wales, and 34,662 in Scotland applied to their local authority for homelessness assistance in 2015-2016.

All this while a huge chunk of the £9bn inheritance will not be subject to death duties–only a periodic tax and income from these assets is likely to be subject to tax due the inheritance being part of a complex trust arrangement.  Ah, the travails of the rich and famous!

Meanwhile, the elite of the United Kingdom might believe that obscuring land ownership titles will keep them from being held accountable for the growing poverty in the country, the reality is that everyone knows who they are.

And yes, Hugh Grosvenor, we are looking directly at you.

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Julian Vigo is a scholar, film-maker and human rights consultant. Her latest book is Earthquake in Haiti: The Pornography of Poverty and the Politics of Development (2015). She can be reached at: julian.vigo@gmail.com

More articles by:Julian Vigo