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May 11, 2018
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79 comments:
I put the over/under on Trump declassifying the files the DOJ/Rosenstein is trying to hide at August 15th.
That leaves a month for the DOJ to fight/burn documents and a little over a month for the full horror of what the democrats were up to to sink in and become fodder for campaign ads.
Whooo hoo! Open bathrooms at Starbucks! Great place for a nap.
Appenzeller?
Best of the Web
The Endless Clinton Campaign
The former secretary of State offers more criticism of U.S. leadership from overseas.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ’s 2018 global grievance tour touched down in Australia this week. The Democratic nominee for President in 2016 has been selling tickets to provocative events in which she explores the alleged shortcomings of her compatriots. Meanwhile back home, her team is once again tapping some of the very wealthiest of her compatriots to support the family enterprise.
Mrs. Clinton’s remarks to foreign audiences are not limited to gripes about the most recent U.S. presidential campaign. She’s also willing to offer unkind words about current U.S. policies.
According to the Australian Associated Press:
The United States’ abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal will make negotiations with North Korea more difficult and leaves America’s credibility “shot”, Hillary Clinton says.
The former US secretary of state and failed 2016 presidential candidate also said there must be concrete concessions from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amid the current efforts at diplomacy.
Ms Clinton used a talk in Melbourne to again criticise US President Donald Trump ’s Iran decision, after tweeting that it was a big mistake.
“Pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal will make it harder to negotiate successfully with North Korea or anyone else,” she said on Thursday night.
“I think pulling out of that agreement makes America less safe and less trusted and Iran more dangerous.
Well-heeled Australians eager to hear what’s wrong with America, its elections and its political leadership were unlikely to be disappointed by this leg of the tour. According to Australia’s Daily Telegraph:
“Free from the constraints of running, Secretary Clinton will share the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules,” the speaking tour’s website claims.
Meanwhile back in the United States, it’s Clinton fundraising season. This has been true of every season of every year since the late 1970s. But this is a particularly important moment because of a major event that is now less than two weeks away. Last month Axios reported:
Longtime Clinton supporters last week received an invitation offering access to the family (the green invitation features photos of Bill, Hillary and Chelsea) at a Clinton Foundation benefit on May 24 in New York, at prices ranging from $2,500 (”Friend”) for cocktail party and dinner, up to $100,000 (”Chair”) for “Leadership Reception for two, a premium table of ten, program recognition as Gala Chair and invitations to the Clinton Foundation Annual Briefing.”
Lots of election ads here in California.Most candidates promising to protect us from Trump. I am serious. Gonna protect women's health, gay marriage, illegal aliens. It is crazy.
Most likely Governor, Gavin Newsome running commercial with gay guys getting married and kissing. Apparently most important thing on his mind.
Interestingly, majority of Californians voted twice to keep traditional marriage. Overruled by gay judge.
Feinstien running ad against NRA, claiming 200 school shootings in last five years. Huh?
Minor candidates gonna protect us from Trump oil spills on coastline and higher health care costs.
Was more simple back in Grandma's day when evil Republicans simply gonna take away your social security.
Fullmoon said...
The United States’ abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal will make negotiations with North Korea more difficult and leaves America’s credibility “shot”, Hillary Clinton says.
Says the corrupt soulless traitor who betrayed and killed Khadafi after he peacefully and voluntarily gave up his nuke program.
The Billary did more to damage this country than anyone except Obama.
What a fantastic photo.
Nice shot!
Dogillas in the mist.
Is he named "Hank"?
A cattle dog without cattle. Sad.
Says the corrupt soulless traitor who betrayed and killed Khadafi after he peacefully and voluntarily gave up his nuke program.
Cackle "We came, we saw, he died" cackle.
One of the most despicable scenes ever from an influential American
"The United States’ abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal will make negotiations with North Korea more difficult and leaves America’s credibility “shot”, Hillary Clinton says.
“Pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal will make it harder to negotiate successfully with North Korea or anyone else,” she said on Thursday night.
“I think pulling out of that agreement makes America less safe and less trusted and Iran more dangerous.
She's only trying to help. It's nice to see a true patriot put her country first before petty squabbles.
The latest development in the RussiaGate hoax is the discovery of the role played by Stefan Halper. Beyond The Conservative Treehouse, I recommend the The Markets Work blog. Yesterday that blog published an article titled ...
Ties That Bind – Stefan Halper, Joseph Mifsud & Alexander Downer (& Papadopoulos)
... written by Jeff Carlson.
The article begins as follows:
George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted by three individuals with ties to British and/or U.S. Intelligence.
* Joseph Mifsud
* Alexander Downer
* Stefan Halper
George Papadopoulos and Joseph Mifsud reportedly both worked at the London Centre of International Law Practice.
Joseph Mifsud appears to have joined LCILP around November 2015. Papadopoulos appears to have joined LCILP sometime in late February or early March 2016 after leaving Ben Carson’s campaign.
Per reports, Papadopoulos and Mifsud first met on March 14, 2016.
The London Centre of International Law and Practice Limited (LCILP) is an odd institution. From their website:
[quote]
LCILP training emphasises the practical application of international law as a field inseparable from its geopolitical and global economic context.
[end quote]
On March 22, 2016, the Washington Post noted the following:
[quote]
Papadopoulos, a 2009 graduate of DePaul University, directs an international energy center at the London Center of International Law Practice.
[end quote]
The Post did not seem to be aware that Papadopoulos had only held that position for a matter of weeks.
How Papadopoulos got the position remains unknown. An article by Medium notes the following:
[quote; emphasis in Carlson's article]
The Centre for International Energy and Natural Resources Law & Security existed, at least in name, before Papadopoulos’s arrival and it’s unclear why he was chosen to head it. A list on the website of a dozen people associated with it suggests others were better qualified.
[end quote]
Was Papadopoulos attempting to bulk up his resume. Who offered the young analyst the prestigious sounding position.
Indications seem to be that the position was primarily in name only.
In a November 4, 2017 article, the Post noted the following regarding LCILP:
[quote]
When a Post reporter buzzed the door on several occasions during business hours last week, no one answered.
Until recently, the staff Web page had 33 people listed on it, including Joseph Mifsud. But the page was deleted on Oct. 23, a week before the Papadopoulos plea agreement was unsealed.
[end quote]
Several of those listed as being part of the “team” were only loosely affiliated — if at all.
The link to LCILP’s staffing is no longer functional.
Quartz Media had slightly more success:
[quote]
When a Quartz reporter visited LCILP’s headquarters inside a handsome Georgian building, he found that the office amounted to four people working in an undecorated backroom, all of whom declined to comment.
[end quote]
Mifsud vanished in early November 2017, shortly after the Papadopoulos story broke. To my knowledge, his whereabouts remain unknown.
[The article continues at length.]
https://www.themarketswork.com/2018/05/10/ties-that-bind-stefan-halper-joseph-mifsud-alexander-downer-papadopoulos/
Typical leftist/progressive
"MSNBC daytime host Nicolle Wallace suggested that White House press secretary Sarah Sanders should be choked after she refused to comment Friday on a report that an aide in the administration made a dismissive remark about Sen. John McCain's, R-Ariz., health.
On her show Friday, Wallace, who was an adviser for McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, asked NBC News' White House reporter Kristen Welker, "How do you resist the temptation to run up and wring her neck?"
It seems to me that the CIA (i.e. Trump-hating John Brennan) asked British Intelligence (MI-6) to set up George Papadopoulos and Carter Page as patsies.
MI-6 -- using Mifsud, Downer and Halper -- maneuvered Papadopoulos and Page into positions where they seemed to be communicating between Trump's campaign staff and Russian Intelligence. In this way, the FBI's counter-intelligence "investigation" was justified.
By using MI-6 in this way Brennan kept his own CIA's hands relatively clean.
Poor dawg don't have neither hat nor cattle.
Mike stole my thunder.
I was going to say, "all dog no cattle."
@Bill, ya gotta be quick sometimes.
Cattle dog? I think it's called a cow.
Aggie,
You forgot /snark
”By using MI-6 in this way Brennan kept his own CIA's hands relatively clean.”
Plus, providing a ready made excuse for refusing to hand over documents to investigators.
Aggie - said...
She's only trying to help. It's nice to see a true patriot put her country first before petty squabbles.
Like when she betrayed and killed Ghadafi after he voluntarily gave up his nuke program.
Illegal servers to hide her pay for play scams were not her greatest crimes.
Quick didn't matter. Your lne was better.
"Like when she betrayed and killed Ghadafi after he voluntarily gave up his nuke program."
This is the biggest hurdle to any attempt to convince a dictator with a nuclear program to give it up. She and Obama, poisoned that particular well forever.
Clinton is going about as if she is running a third time. One would think she would be in hiding for fear of being arrested. Instead, her behavior makes one think she worries not the least about any prosecution. She must know something that makes her invulnerable.
Clinton is going about as if she is running a third time.
If she does she'll have to deal with Kamala Harris. I want to see these two slug it out. No Miss Congeniality here.
Hillary should run -- third time's a charm.
I predicted Biden was not going to run in 2020. Changed my mind.
New Prediction: Greater then 50% he'll run.
McCain, his son's brain tumour, McCain's brain tumour, and the comments surrounding it.
Today, I stumbled onto a great used bookstore in Bend, Oregon called, "The Open Book". I bought all sorts of good stuff, including a 1963 edition of Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." My suitcase is stuffed. This is almost better than sex.
Grassley is going to have someone's ass in his briefcase by the time this is over.
Maybe wearing an FBI tee shirt.
I'd love to watch this when it happens.
a 1963 edition of Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
I've got an 1864 edition but the volume I cover is loose. I have to find a book smith.
Sure wwww,
Sounds like a solid platform.
"No more bad words!" aka Civility Bullshit, victim status.
That'll make him..viable.
Drudge is fronting a headline “McCain’s Long Goodbye”. He missed the lede. McCain’s Too Long Goodbye.
@Michael K,
You beat me by 100 years. Heh. But this has a nice preface by a Classics Professor at Brown University and it has a stamp from "San Francisco State College Library" where they probably don't even know who Gibbon or the Romans were.
Bring back SI Hayakawa!
Point A:
I have been thinking about how after Ronan Farrow's reports come out, etc. there's the recognition that, actually, "Everybody knew."
Seems to me we could say the same when it comes to the vast abuse of power that went on under President Obama -- from Lois Lerner's IRS to the unmasking and spying on political adversaries. The truth is, every Democrat Knows what happened, or at least that Some Things Happened and they shrug. They know who Obama is and the machinery that made him possible, just like they smile about their Governors winning by finding extra shoeboxes of votes.
Everybody knows the obama administration was absolutely lawless.
BAG, enjoy it. That and the King James version of the Bible are two of the great sources of modern English.
Allahpundit. Creative writing machine!
Hotair, May 11
'...One of the many ways you can tell we’re now living in a simulation that’s being scripted by bad writers is that all plot lines are implausibly converging. First there was Russiagate. Then, seemingly wholly unrelated, came Stormygate. Then, also unrelated, came Schneidergate. But it turns out Cohen used the same account to pay Stormy *and* to receive money from Viktor Vekselberg’s American company, triggering Bob Mueller’s scrutiny and intertwining the Russiagate and Stormygate threads. And now here’s news that the files the FBI took from Cohen in investigating Stormygate may, unbeknownst to everyone, also contain key details of Schneidergate. It’s completely ridiculous, something that would never happen in reality but might definitely happen in “The Apprentice: Oval Office, Season 2.”
Next week we’re going to find out that the Schneiderman information that Gleason passed to Cohen also contained a map to a secret treasure.'
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/05/11/wait-trump-cohen-told-schneiderman-abuse-years-ago/
Point B:
The problem Now is, it was SO awful we have a big mess of a sloppy trail, and the stink cannot ever-never-ever lead to Obama (peace be unto him).
And actually, I am Totally Cool if right now, america gives a pardon to Obama as a person, for any malfeasance he had a hand in,
After all, his Presidency was truly a victory for the nation in that it proved it's voters are not the haters they are made out to be. That's worth a lot for history. Let's let him walk. We probably Have to let him walk.
But! Anyone else in the line, from clinton and rice on down, the Law Must Win. So, Quick! Let's pardon our ex-Pres now so we can start the cleanup.
For starters, and in keeping with the rules according to Kathy Griffin:
"Bring Us The Head of Lois Lerner."
"..... triggering Bob Mueller’s scrutiny and intertwining the Russiagate and Stormygate threads."
You know Mueller just wants to motorboat Stormy's knockers just to get it out of his system.
It might be healthy for our democracy.
“Everybody knows the obama administration was absolutely lawless.”
Once you announce yourself on the right side of history, the law is really more of a guideline.
According to Fox News someone is digging into Stormy's lawyer Avenatti's business records, and OMG!!!
Well, live by the sword, die bye the sword.
An Eat Mor Chikin dog.
An outfit called Tax March is running plenty of TV ads here in Nevada about how the Tax Reform bill favors the rich and screws the little guy. This is costing somebody a lot of money, and I'm guessing it's not the little guys. Cui bono ? Maybe it's the rich guys in Cali and NY who have their state tax deductions capped at $10K. Follow the money.
I got a polling call today. I told them I was a Republican and we don't answer their stinking polls (yes, it might have been a REPUBLICAN poll).
Social Scientists (mostly Marxist Liberals these days) will be ever increasingly wrong if they continue to get bad data.
Let the Dems think there is a Blue Wave coming because 'Everyone I know who is voting Democrat'.
Alas, they need a majority of electoral votes.
Hillary is an idiot.
Just yesterday I decided I had to find a nice copy of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It seems that somehow my trail of thought became entwined with other commenters. Everything that rises must converge? or is this a Russian/MI6/CIA Aussie plot in which we have become entangled by subconsciously grasping both plot and codewords?
It has been a very rough couple of weeks for friends. If there's someone you've been meaning to talk to or something you've been meaning to do with your kids, talk or do right now. Right now. Or at least this weekend.
”According to Fox News someone is digging into Stormy's lawyer Avenatti's business records, and OMG!!!”
I’m sure Inga will be all over it. {/snark}
I inherited a very nice three volume Heritage Club edition of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. By inherited, I mean that I was the only one who wanted it. Can you believe it? I got all the old books. Perfect to remember the person by.
This is the end of the democrat party as we know it.
There is bad language at the link.
It wouldn’t surprise me if McCain has compiled a cache of shyte for Trump to be dribbled out after he’s gone, kind of like the way Prince left all that unreleased music.
It’s completely ridiculous, something that would never happen in reality but might definitely happen in [fiction].
Actually the reverse is true. Reality is far more likely to exhibit ridiculous coincidences and events than any author would dare employ.
@Michael K. (6:39), back in 2014 General Flynne wrote — on official Pentagon stationery — a letter of support for a top-notch female counter-terrorism expert who was suing Andrew McCabe for sexual harassment. Not, of course, that a fine, upstanding, honorable civil servant like Andrew McCabe would concoct a false charge of lying to the FBI as a means to get even. Perish the thought! As Marc Anthony would say, Andrew McCabe is an honorable man.
"As Marc Anthony would say, Andrew McCabe is an honorable man."
I've read that, too. And he has done other things the Obama people hated.
That's why I would not pardon him. He might be able to recover his expenses from vivil suits.
I picture Hillary still listening to her daily morning intelligence briefing and nodding knowingly.
You hope racist homophobic bigots are paying attention?
Ha ha.
That makes you more guilty than them, those of low potential.
I hope my enemies are drunk, drugged, and coked up, like Tupac thought he wanted his enemies to be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZbGNhFNSLk
I was speaking earlier of the times having Islamist chieftain belhajs Algerian wife write a denunciation of haspel who has nothing to do with what was going on, in libya
So all this fuss over 3% of at&t' s lobbying budget.
In addition I may have found the source of the black cube story it concerns a Taiwanese tycoon name nobi Sumo who tried to break the Iran sanctions in 2013
This guy:
https://splash247.com/nobu-su-hot-water-us-violating-iran-sanctions/
Civility let's try it someday:
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/296582/
You've got your reasons to believe Mozart doesn't exist.
I've got my reasons that know Mozart and Tupac are brothers.
You lose.
You can Thank God Heaven wins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZbGNhFNSLk
I'm reminded of the Thoreau Emerson dialogue:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/amp/story/2018/05/11/alan-dershowitz-donald-trump-what-happened-218359?__twitter_impression=true
Yes about that:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/daily-barrage-of-anonymous-sources-is-neither-news-nor-journalism/
Once again, as in an earlier thread, folks are gushing about 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon's famous History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as if it were sacred text. I don't mind that; Gibbon's history certainly is a great book and its writing a monumental event in the history of history — and indeed I enjoyed Gibbon very much myself as a youth.
That doesn't obviate the fact, however, that the Decline and Fall — composed as it was in the late 18th century (published 1776-1788) — is now centuries obsolete.
With regard to what we've learned since (as to the fundamental reliability from a modern historical-scholarly vantage point of Gibbon's great history), one might turn to Cambridge University's highly-regarded (originally 8-volume) Cambridge Medieval History, whose General Bibliography cautions concerning Gibbon's Decline and Fall that “Notes [are] essential especially for chronology.”
What does this mean in practice? For a specific example of how Gibbon has been shown to be (very!) wrong in numerous situations, let's consider another, later distinguished historian of the medieval (so-called “Byzantine”) Roman Empire: J.B. (John Bagnell) Bury. One might note that Bury, in addition to his specialized historical studies, also performed the considerable task of planning out the entire (terrific) Cambridge Medieval History referred to above.
According to Bury's plan, the medieval Roman Empire got allocated the entirety of Volume IV in the Cambridge Medieval History. He didn't compose any of the text of that (or any of the other) volumes (each chapter of the C.M.H. was composed by a different outstanding historian — which I have to say, works very well); however, Bury did write the fascinating Introduction to Volume IV on the medieval Roman Empire.
In his Introduction Bury provides an overall assessment of “Byzantine” civilization vis-à-vis the culture of the medieval West — also noting a formidable error in this regard by Edward Gibbon. The Introduction is simply too good not to include a formidable excerpt. Bury writes (quoting…):
As a civilised state, we may say that the Eastern Empire performed three principal functions. As in its early years the Roman Empire laid the foundations of civilisation in the West and educated Celtic and German peoples, so in its later period it educated the Slavs of eastern Europe. Russia, Bulgaria, and Serbia owed it everything and bore its stamp.
Secondly, it exercised a silent but constant and considerable influence on western Europe by sending its own manufactures and the products of the East to Italy, France, and Germany. Many examples of its embroidered textile fabrics and its jewellery have been preserved in the West.
In the third place, it guarded safely the heritage of classical Greek literature which has had on the modern world a penetrating influence difficult to estimate. That we owe our possession of the masterpieces of Hellenic thought and imagination to the Byzantines everyone knows, but everyone does not remember that those books would not have travelled to Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, because they would not have existed, if the Greek classics had not been read habitually by the educated subjects of the Eastern Empire and therefore continued to be copied.
Here we touch on a most fundamental contrast between the Eastern Empire and the western European states of the Middle Ages. The well-to-do classes in the West were as a rule illiterate, with the exception of ecclesiastics; among the well-to-do classes in the Byzantine world education was the rule, and education meant not merely reading, writing, and arithmetic, but the study of ancient Greek grammar and the reading of classical authors.
{Continued on the next page: page 2}
{Continued from preceding page: page 2}
J.B. Bury's Introduction (continued quoting…):
The old traditions of Greek education had never died out. In court circles at Constantinople everyone who was not an utter parvenu would recognise and understand a quotation from Homer. In consequence of this difference, the intellectual standard in the West where book-learning was reserved for a particular class, and in the East where every boy and girl whose parents could afford to pay was educated, were entirely different. The advantages of science and training and system were understood in Byzantine society.
The appreciation of method and system which the Byzantines inherited both from the Greeks and from the Romans is conspicuously shewn in their military establishment and their conduct of war. Here their intellectuality stands out in vivid contrast with the rude dullness displayed in the modes of warfare practised in the West. Tactics were carefully studied, and the treatises on war which the officers used were kept up to date. The tacticians apprehended that it was stupid to employ uniform methods in campaigns against different foes. They observed carefully the military habits of the various people with whom they had to fight — Saracens, Lombards, Franks, Slavs, Hungarians — and thought out different rules for dealing with each. The soldiers were most carefully and efficiently drilled. They understood organisation and the importance of not leaving details to chance, of not neglecting small points in equipment. Their armies were accompanied by ambulances and surgeons.
Contrast the feudal armies of the West, ill-disciplined, with no organisation, under leaders who had not the most rudimentary idea of tactics, who put their faith in sheer strength and courage, and attacked all antagonists in exactly the same way. More formidable the Western knights might be than Slavs or Magyars, but in the eyes of a Byzantine officer they were equally rude barbarians who had not yet learned that war is an art which requires intelligence as well as valour.
In the period in which the Empire was strong, before it lost the provinces which provided its best recruits, its army was beyond comparison the best fighting machine in Europe. When a Byzantine army was defeated, it was always the incompetence of the general or some indiscretion on his part, never inefficiency or cowardice of the troops, that was to blame. The great disaster of Manzikert (1071), from which perhaps the decline of the Eastern Empire may be dated, was caused by the imbecility of the brave Emperor who was in command.
A distinguished student of the art of war has observed that Gibbon's dictum, “the vices of Byzantine armies were inherent, their victories accidental,” is precisely the reverse of the truth. He is perfectly right.
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(J.B. [John Bagnell] Bury, Introduction to Volume IV: The Eastern Roman Empire, edited by J.R. Tanner, C.W. Previté-Orton, and Z.N. Brooke, The Cambridge Medieval History, original 8-volume series planned by J.B. Bury, Cambridge at the University Press, London, 1923; pp. vii-xiv)
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I posted Bury's foregoing correction to Gibbon in an earlier thread on this topic, only to have multiple folk here proclaim that they couldn't believe that their Historian Hero could have made any such gross mistakes — and who's this “J.B. Bury” whippersnapper to put any onus on the Great Man?
This attitude — though I sympathize with it somewhat, since I too have my own author heroes — is nevertheless basically nuts. J.B. Bury was not only a distinguished specialist in the history of the Roman Empire, working a century and a half after Gibbon, but he published (1898) his own 7-volume annotated edition (the annotations he wrote himself) of Gibbon's Decline and Fall.
So, what to do about this for fans of Edward Gibbon? I suggest that folks do read Gibbon — but read Bury's annotated edition of Gibbon's history — and maybe the Cambridge Medieval History too!
Very interesting perspective.
Similar things could be said about regarding Thucydides as canon and ignoring herodotus.
Donald Kagan monograph on thucydides for instance.
Michael McNeil, thanks for your interesting comments.
Yes, but what about the women and racial minorities of the Eastern Empire?
The TransByzans?
Which pronouns did they use?
@BAG: "Today, I stumbled onto a great used bookstore in Bend, Oregon called, "The Open Book". I bought all sorts of good stuff, including a 1963 edition of Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." My suitcase is stuffed. This is almost better than sex."
Whilst motorcycling around the Eastern half of the USA in summer of 1963?4? I came across a wonderful used bookstore in Murfreesboro, TN on state hwy 27 (this was before most of the Interstates were built), and bought 2 dozen books of all kinds and mailed them home to Boston (not too much carry space on a Honda 250!).
Good times. Thanks for the reminder.
One of your best dog pics.
Derb this week
"We're going through a spell in which for a woman to have been a victim of toxic masculinity brings her much attention and sympathy. Women are lining up to claim their Victim Awards.
That doesn't necessarily mean these four women in the Schneiderman story are lying. I have no idea whether they are or not. It does, though, give them a strong incentive to dramatize and exaggerate."
Great quip:
The greatest trick the patriarchy ever pulled was convincing women it was feminist to get naked
Similar things could be said about regarding Thucydides as canon and ignoring herodotus.
Probably so.
The main qualitative distinction between Herodotus and Thucydides, as I understand it (and I'm certainly no expert) is that Herodotus on the one hand basically invented history — which the dictionary (.com) defines as (sense 2): “a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc., usually written as a chronological account; chronicle….”
Thucydides, on the other hand, in addition to writing a top-notch history himself (while incidentally debunking the widespread conceit that “history is written by the victors”), gets major credit also for inventing the idea (and emphasizing the importance) of historicity — that is, the systematic study of the study of history.
Including for instance how historians — in investigating complex historical situations where factions have differing interests as well as sharply divergent insights into what's gone on — may nonetheless gather and evaluate the quality of real facts, while winnowing out spurious or propagandistic lies, in composing their history.
Yes, but what about the women and racial minorities of the Eastern Empire?
The TransByzans?
Ha ha! Lol.
Taking it slightly seriously for a moment, though….
The medieval Romans pretty much didn't care what race or ethnicity you belonged to, so long as you were Orthodox in your religion. Indeed, a number of emperors were of (e.g.) Armenian (or other ethnic minority) descent.
As for the girls, I'm afraid that women (at least upper class) typically spent their days cloistered in their homes (except for excursions such as going to church on Sunday and the like).
On the other hand, as Bury noted in his Introduction that I'd quoted before (quoting again…):
… among the well-to-do classes in the Byzantine world education was the rule, and education meant not merely reading, writing, and arithmetic, but the study of ancient Greek grammar and the reading of classical authors.
… in the West … book-learning was reserved for a particular class, [but] in the East … every boy and girl whose parents could afford to pay was educated….
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How many people grasp that there was any place in Europe during (especially) the first (so-called “Dark Ages”) half-millennium of the medieval period (AD 500 – 1000 — near the beginning of which literate and learned culture generally collapsed across the Western world) where such a learned (and generally humane) culture and civilization held sway?
What do I mean by a “humane culture and civilization” at the end of my previous posting?
Let's take it farther, via a further interesting excerpt from J.B. Bury's Introduction which I haven't included heretofore (quoting…):
In [Byzantine] criminal law there was a marked change in tendency. From Augustus to Justinian penalties were ever becoming severer and new crimes being invented. After Justinian the movement was in the direction of mildness. In the eighth century only two or three crimes were punishable by death. One of these was murder and in this case the extreme penalty might be avoided if the murderer sought refuge in a church.
On the other hand penalties of mutilation were extended and systematised. This kind of punishment had been inflicted in much earlier times and authorised in one or two cases by Justinian. In the eighth century we find amputations of the tongue, hand, and nose part of the criminal system, and particularly applied in dealing with sexual offences.
If such punishments strike us to-day as barbaric (though in England, for instance, mutilation was inflicted little more than two centuries ago {note: written in 1923}), they were then considered as a humane substitute for death, and the Church approved them because a tongue-less or nose-less sinner had time to repent. In the same way, it was a common practice to blind, instead of killing, rebels or unsuccessful candidates for the throne.
The tendency to avoid capital punishment is illustrated by the credible record that during the reign of John [II] Comnenus there were no executions.
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––––
Thus, within a great cosmopolitan empire (the Roman Empire!), still containing at the time upwards of 10 million people (including the largest city in the world as its capital): over the quarter-century span that its emperor reigned (which was during the overall incredibly violent and uncaring as to personal fates medieval period — but, specifically, the reign of John II Comnenus, to wit, AD 1118-1143) — there were no executions.
That's a remarkable record even for today.
As for the mutilation punishments that the Byzantines migrated toward in lieu of everyday criminal executions, we're queasy about such a concept today — and oh-so proud of our modern and oh-so “humane” system of punishments where bodily-mutilating prisoners is eschewed — in lieu of heavy doses of prison time.
Not that I'm suggesting that we in today's world ought to advocate society taking up mutilizing for its criminal punishments. But, in my view our own system of locking up convicts in (highly unsafe, from a personal integrity point of view) prisons — for oftentimes decades of time, not infrequently as a result of relatively trivial non-violent offences — is the precise opposite of humane.
How many prisoners in such a circumstance would (more or less) gladly accept loss of a finger, or even hand or eye — if it means being out of prison a quarter, third, or half your life sooner?
Such severe punishment (mutilization) is also certainly not “coddling” the convicted criminal — but might (arguably) be preferable to having other gross pieces (timewise chunks) chopped out of your life, which is what we do.
Indeed, after such a personally immediately-jarring disfigurement, might one also perhaps rethink your life and not re-offend afterwards? (When merely tranquilly locking one up for a while with other criminals wouldn't accomplish the job?) I know: dream on!
I just wish we exercized more imagination in how we attempt to solve societal issues like this.
Seeing a different civilization's approach to the issue could I think spark ideas (even if not the same ideas) as to what we can or should do to improve the dismal situation of our own cruel criminal conviction and imprisonment systems.
––––
(J.B. [John Bagnell] Bury, op. cit.; p. xiii)
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