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Black Slavery in Black Africa by Black Slavers; Henry Louis Gates
By Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport’s blog
May 14, 2022
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I’m going to print an excerpt from a 2010 opinion piece, pub... View MoreBlack Slavery in Black Africa by Black Slavers; Henry Louis Gates
By Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport’s blog
May 14, 2022
donate FacebookTwitterShare
I’m going to print an excerpt from a 2010 opinion piece, published in the NY Times, written by Henry Louis Gates.
It’s a stunner.
It describes black slavery in black Africa, a “forbidden subject.”
Black scholar and historian, Henry Louis Gates, isn’t some unknown lightweight. Many people are aware of him from his genealogy show on PBS. Or his professorship at Harvard. Or his many books. Or his famous 2009 arrest, outside his own home, by a Cambridge cop, who thought Gates was breaking in—which resulted in the highly publicized “summit” at the White House—Obama, Gates, and the cop sitting down, chatting, and drinking a beer.
But before I print the excerpt from Gates’ NY Times piece, which describes the black slave trade in Africa, I want to publish a reaction to it—written by the well-known late political and jazz writer, Stanley Crouch.
Crouch, a black man, took no prisoners in conversation or in print. You might say he was famous for being avoided by ideologues and other superficial types. He backed down from no one.
This is part of what Crouch wrote in response to Gates’ opinion piece in the Times:
“But it was a sad day for the racial gloom industry when Skip [Henry Louis] Gates took out a licking stick and brought it to the editorial page of the New York Times. His short essay left thick welts of the hard, truth-telling blues on the rumps of willfully ignorant or inaccurate academicians. Those most disturbed by the humanizing elements of the facts are usually ideologues who have made careers peddling a convenient simplification of the African slave trade that breaks down into an irresponsible cartoon about good guys and bad guys.”
“Such people have never been able to address the backward and evil elements of African culture that are stubbornly in place and remain fused to all of the elements that deliver universal clarity about the mournful unpredictability of human life. This is difficult information for children to absorb; they prefer cartoons that make everything seem simple. With its many cultures and peoples, Africa is anything but simple. So the slave trade was very different from a soap opera.”
“Ideologues have resisted this because ideology is always at war with humanity. In what Langston Hughes called ‘the quarter of the Negroes,’ the ideologue has a preference for overwhelmed African victims and overwhelming European and white American victimizers. Africans do not show any fewer human traits than any others and show no worse ones when evil is found to exhibit itself with the same level of ruthlessness or paranoid hysteria that we see everywhere else in the world.”
“To reduce Africans to no more than victims, whether they drove the slave trade or not, is to exclude them from the timeless themes that have no nation and no particular address. Getting beyond simple-minded notions of good and evil is one of the big tasks of our time and is, as usual, being addressed by major writers and thinkers the world over. We have seen them rise to prominence as they have spoken with the bullets of hard facts attempting to mortally wound the dragons of totalitarianism—religious, political, or neither—wherever they have appeared.”
“Robert Penn Warren once said to Albert Murray in South to a Very Old Place that American slavery was no more than a terrible human business, and every element of it was defined by the intricate human shortcomings or virtues of those involved on either side of the issue. But those selling academic smack on our campuses never even approach what Gates makes clear in his New York Times editorial…”
“But inconvenient truths are contrary to the rules of the game and academic smack dealers, like all hustlers, are never less than ‘true to the game.’ That game is based in a sadomasochistic ritual where white people pay to be whipped then gleefully pass out appointments and tenure to the most vociferous and those most popular with students. Students are important trumps in this game because they are marks who love to play the alienated parts passed on to them from rock-and-roll entertainment.”
By Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport’s blog
May 14, 2022
donate FacebookTwitterShare
I’m going to print an excerpt from a 2010 opinion piece, pub... View MoreBlack Slavery in Black Africa by Black Slavers; Henry Louis Gates
By Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport’s blog
May 14, 2022
donate FacebookTwitterShare
I’m going to print an excerpt from a 2010 opinion piece, published in the NY Times, written by Henry Louis Gates.
It’s a stunner.
It describes black slavery in black Africa, a “forbidden subject.”
Black scholar and historian, Henry Louis Gates, isn’t some unknown lightweight. Many people are aware of him from his genealogy show on PBS. Or his professorship at Harvard. Or his many books. Or his famous 2009 arrest, outside his own home, by a Cambridge cop, who thought Gates was breaking in—which resulted in the highly publicized “summit” at the White House—Obama, Gates, and the cop sitting down, chatting, and drinking a beer.
But before I print the excerpt from Gates’ NY Times piece, which describes the black slave trade in Africa, I want to publish a reaction to it—written by the well-known late political and jazz writer, Stanley Crouch.
Crouch, a black man, took no prisoners in conversation or in print. You might say he was famous for being avoided by ideologues and other superficial types. He backed down from no one.
This is part of what Crouch wrote in response to Gates’ opinion piece in the Times:
“But it was a sad day for the racial gloom industry when Skip [Henry Louis] Gates took out a licking stick and brought it to the editorial page of the New York Times. His short essay left thick welts of the hard, truth-telling blues on the rumps of willfully ignorant or inaccurate academicians. Those most disturbed by the humanizing elements of the facts are usually ideologues who have made careers peddling a convenient simplification of the African slave trade that breaks down into an irresponsible cartoon about good guys and bad guys.”
“Such people have never been able to address the backward and evil elements of African culture that are stubbornly in place and remain fused to all of the elements that deliver universal clarity about the mournful unpredictability of human life. This is difficult information for children to absorb; they prefer cartoons that make everything seem simple. With its many cultures and peoples, Africa is anything but simple. So the slave trade was very different from a soap opera.”
“Ideologues have resisted this because ideology is always at war with humanity. In what Langston Hughes called ‘the quarter of the Negroes,’ the ideologue has a preference for overwhelmed African victims and overwhelming European and white American victimizers. Africans do not show any fewer human traits than any others and show no worse ones when evil is found to exhibit itself with the same level of ruthlessness or paranoid hysteria that we see everywhere else in the world.”
“To reduce Africans to no more than victims, whether they drove the slave trade or not, is to exclude them from the timeless themes that have no nation and no particular address. Getting beyond simple-minded notions of good and evil is one of the big tasks of our time and is, as usual, being addressed by major writers and thinkers the world over. We have seen them rise to prominence as they have spoken with the bullets of hard facts attempting to mortally wound the dragons of totalitarianism—religious, political, or neither—wherever they have appeared.”
“Robert Penn Warren once said to Albert Murray in South to a Very Old Place that American slavery was no more than a terrible human business, and every element of it was defined by the intricate human shortcomings or virtues of those involved on either side of the issue. But those selling academic smack on our campuses never even approach what Gates makes clear in his New York Times editorial…”
“But inconvenient truths are contrary to the rules of the game and academic smack dealers, like all hustlers, are never less than ‘true to the game.’ That game is based in a sadomasochistic ritual where white people pay to be whipped then gleefully pass out appointments and tenure to the most vociferous and those most popular with students. Students are important trumps in this game because they are marks who love to play the alienated parts passed on to them from rock-and-roll entertainment.”
- ·
- May 14, 2022 1:40 pm
McCarthy's Legacy Still Misportrayed by Media After Venona Disclosure
Right before the kitchen sink, notorious anti-communist Sen. Joe McCarthy was recently tossed on the FISA Court, Oval Office, US Co... View MoreMcCarthy's Legacy Still Misportrayed by Media After Venona Disclosure
Right before the kitchen sink, notorious anti-communist Sen. Joe McCarthy was recently tossed on the FISA Court, Oval Office, US Congress, FBI, CIA, and Russian “active measures” bonfire. For what specific reason exposing communists was piled on, I cannot discern. But evoking McCarthy is like pulling out the trusty “your Mama is ugly” at the end of a school-yard fight.
The hook that elicited McCarthyism could be the current national hysteria that Russia influenced the presidential race to favor Donald Trump. McCarthy was dedicated to identifying Soviet spies in the FDR regime, who certainly could have been helpers in Franklin Roosevelt winning four terms. And, oh yeah, the Soviet spies were Americans.
Today, McCarthy is the icon for attacking communists in government. Or, he is the victim of a purposefully organized mise en scene to ruin him, and with him anti-communism. The descriptions of McCarthy’s alleged “witch hunt,” to expose “innocent” communists working in the Franklin Roosevelt administration — before HUAC and McCarthy’s own Senate Security committee — are pabulum compared to the Army vs. McCarthy hearings, organized by Democrat forces to annihilate him.
The battle majeure to destroy and discredit McCarthy lasted from the late 1940s through the early 1950s. After the conflict, a political poison pill was exposed. The fall-out is dramatically at work now: The nation remains virulently divided between progressive liberals — the Democrats who were allegiant to the destruction of McCarthy — and Republicans who lost ground trying to counter the vilification of McCarthy’s persona.
So what do we know 67 years later? For one thing, that McCarthy actually underestimated the number of American Soviet spies working for the USSR in the FDR administration. It took a while, but in 1994 NSA and CIA released 190,000 formerly classified cablegrams they, and their predecessor agencies, intercepted from 1943 to 1980. The number of American Soviet agents identified from Venona has reached 500, more than double the 205 McCarthy predicted — as researchers have decrypted only ten percent of the documents thus far.
Most of the spies named so far are well known: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Alger Hiss, whom the left maintained were victims of American imperialism, are now proved guilty. Assistant U.S. Treasurer Harry Dexter White, now deceased, who became head of the World Bank; and Lauchlan Currie, highly placed in the President’s office; and hundreds more placed in every Cabinet level organization in the U.S. government.
Due to the left-leaning U.S. media, Venona has been ignored. Fortunately, journalist Stanton Evans wrote "Blacklisted By History," relying on newly declassified FBI and CIA documents that reveal a sinister plot, but not by McCarthy. The person harmed by the so-called witch hunt was McCarthy himself.
It is speculated President Truman could have saved the nation a bitter and destructive internal conflict, caused by McCarthy’s accusations, by making Venona public. This has allowed McCarthy’s enemies to dine out on their role to ruin him. Conservatives have been stained as perpetually guilty, demonstrated by any mention of McCarthy anywhere.
Newsmax
Bernie Reeves founded five regional publications and the Raleigh Spy Conference. His writing has appeared in National Review and American Thinker. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
Right before the kitchen sink, notorious anti-communist Sen. Joe McCarthy was recently tossed on the FISA Court, Oval Office, US Co... View MoreMcCarthy's Legacy Still Misportrayed by Media After Venona Disclosure
Right before the kitchen sink, notorious anti-communist Sen. Joe McCarthy was recently tossed on the FISA Court, Oval Office, US Congress, FBI, CIA, and Russian “active measures” bonfire. For what specific reason exposing communists was piled on, I cannot discern. But evoking McCarthy is like pulling out the trusty “your Mama is ugly” at the end of a school-yard fight.
The hook that elicited McCarthyism could be the current national hysteria that Russia influenced the presidential race to favor Donald Trump. McCarthy was dedicated to identifying Soviet spies in the FDR regime, who certainly could have been helpers in Franklin Roosevelt winning four terms. And, oh yeah, the Soviet spies were Americans.
Today, McCarthy is the icon for attacking communists in government. Or, he is the victim of a purposefully organized mise en scene to ruin him, and with him anti-communism. The descriptions of McCarthy’s alleged “witch hunt,” to expose “innocent” communists working in the Franklin Roosevelt administration — before HUAC and McCarthy’s own Senate Security committee — are pabulum compared to the Army vs. McCarthy hearings, organized by Democrat forces to annihilate him.
The battle majeure to destroy and discredit McCarthy lasted from the late 1940s through the early 1950s. After the conflict, a political poison pill was exposed. The fall-out is dramatically at work now: The nation remains virulently divided between progressive liberals — the Democrats who were allegiant to the destruction of McCarthy — and Republicans who lost ground trying to counter the vilification of McCarthy’s persona.
So what do we know 67 years later? For one thing, that McCarthy actually underestimated the number of American Soviet spies working for the USSR in the FDR administration. It took a while, but in 1994 NSA and CIA released 190,000 formerly classified cablegrams they, and their predecessor agencies, intercepted from 1943 to 1980. The number of American Soviet agents identified from Venona has reached 500, more than double the 205 McCarthy predicted — as researchers have decrypted only ten percent of the documents thus far.
Most of the spies named so far are well known: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Alger Hiss, whom the left maintained were victims of American imperialism, are now proved guilty. Assistant U.S. Treasurer Harry Dexter White, now deceased, who became head of the World Bank; and Lauchlan Currie, highly placed in the President’s office; and hundreds more placed in every Cabinet level organization in the U.S. government.
Due to the left-leaning U.S. media, Venona has been ignored. Fortunately, journalist Stanton Evans wrote "Blacklisted By History," relying on newly declassified FBI and CIA documents that reveal a sinister plot, but not by McCarthy. The person harmed by the so-called witch hunt was McCarthy himself.
It is speculated President Truman could have saved the nation a bitter and destructive internal conflict, caused by McCarthy’s accusations, by making Venona public. This has allowed McCarthy’s enemies to dine out on their role to ruin him. Conservatives have been stained as perpetually guilty, demonstrated by any mention of McCarthy anywhere.
Newsmax
Bernie Reeves founded five regional publications and the Raleigh Spy Conference. His writing has appeared in National Review and American Thinker. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
Below post is for those who were told the Andersonville prison camp was a Confederate concentration camp..
Elmira Prison, New York: The Shame Of The Union By William Hesseltine
By dylan, 9 years ago on Civilian & Soldiers' Life In The Acw Era
1.5K
Elmira Prison, New York: The Shame Of The Union By William H... View MoreElmira Prison, New York: The Shame Of The Union By William Hesseltine
By dylan, 9 years ago on Civilian & Soldiers' Life In The Acw Era
1.5K
Elmira Prison, New York: The Shame Of The Union By William Hesseltine
Elmira Prison Camp OnLine Library
Personal Information – Elmira Prison, New York: The Shame of the Union by William Hesseltine
Elmira was outside of New York City. It was only there for one year, yet it had the highest death rate, per capita, of any prison camp North or South. It is a shameful spot on American history. The vindictive U.S. commissary-general of prisoners & the camp's Chief Medical Officer, Col. William Hoffman, bragged in public, that he had killed more Confederate soldiers than any union soldier in the field. When a soldier dies in the field, that's war. When he dies this way, it's cold-blooded murder.
After the war, the Yankees tried their best to keep the whole incident hidden from the public. They gave the Chief Medical Officer a promotion in rank and a medal for services rendered. Elmira had a death rate of 24 percent. The mad doctor and everyone associated with Elmira should have been tried for war Crimes.
Official statistics for the worst six month period at Elmira:
Month Prisoners Sick Dead
September <phone>
October <phone>
November <phone>
December <phone>
January 8,602 1,015 285
February 8,996 1,398 426
Elmira was on a 30-acre site, along the banks of the Chemung River. A one-acre lagoon of stagnant water, called Foster's Pond, stood within the walls of the stockade. The lagoon was a backwash from the river and served as a latrine and garbage dump. Prison buildings were located on the high northern bank of the pond. The lower southern level, known to flood easily, later became a hospital area for hundreds of smallpox and diarrhea victims. Remember Foster's Pond, it will be important later in the story. A more unsanitary spot could not have been chosen. Elmira prison camp was established on May 15th, 1864, when Adjutant General E. D. Townsend reported several empty barracks could be used to house a large number of
"rebels"
recently captured. The buildings were to house as many as 10,000 men.
Two barracks,
"built to comfortably accommodate 3,000 troops without over crowding,"
had been set-aside for 4,000 prisoners.
An additional 1,000 men could be quartered in tents on surrounding grounds. The Camp Bakery had adequate facilities for feeding 5,000 prisoners. No camp hospital existed, but tents were available for any men who might become ill. Not until two weeks before the first contingent of confederate prisoners arrived did Commissary General of Prisons William Hoffman point out again that as many as 10,000 prisoners might be sent to Elmira.
Preparations were never made for more than 5,000 men. On June 30, 1864, Elmira was said to be ready to receive prisoners. Inside the fenced in area (known as "the pen") stood 35 two-story barracks, each of which measured 100 by 20 feet. Ceilings were barely high enough to accommodate two rows of crude bunks along the walls. Unsealed roofs characterized the wooden buildings. The floorings were of green lumber, without foundations, and had little resistance to wind and water. Behind the rows of barracks was a group of buildings converted into a dispensary, adjutant's office and guardrooms. To their rear, extending to the northern bank of Foster's Pond, were the cookhouses and mess halls. The first group of prisoners to arrive at Elmira quickly crowded to allotted barracks. Subsequent arrivals lived in "A" tents scattered around the prison area. At the time of their arrival, most prisoners were unaware of one last and deadly factor. Elmira was located in a region of New York State, where for at least four months of the year, the weather was bitterly cold.
One prisoner from Virginia wrote the compound was,
"An excellent summer prison for southern soldiers, but an excellent place for them to find their graves in the winter."
The first contingent of prisoners arrived from New York by train. Prisoners were pleasantly surprised when sympathetic citizens, at many stops, distributed food and clothing to them. Yet, wrote one prisoner,
"these agreeable incidents were occasionally diversified by the insults of some sleek non-combatant, whose valiant soul found congenial occupation in fearful threats of our indiscriminate massacre, if he could only lay hands on us."
The first group reached Elmira at 6 am on July 6th and numbered 399 men - one soldier escaped enroute. The second group arrived early in the morning of July 11th, followed by 502 Confederates the following day. Before departing their earlier prison camps, the prisoners received vaccinations for smallpox. The injections were of poor quality vaccines, and seen on many arms
"were great sores, big enough, it seemed, to put your fist in."
On July 15th, an Erie Railroad train jammed with prisoners, collided with a freight train near the hamlet of Shohola. Forty-eight prisoners and seventeen guards were killed. 100 prisoners and eighteen guards were injured. The injured prisoners were put in wagons and transported to Elmira.
Several days after the accident the Confederate prisoners still lay on the floors of the makeshift hospitals of Elmira, their wounds still untreated
and clothing stuck fast to the dried blood of cuts and fractures.
By the end of July, 4,424 prisoners were packed in the compound, with another 3,000 enroute. The total number leaped to 9,600 by mid-August. It took three hours to feed 10,000 men in shifts of 1,800 at a time. The camp commander complained of the over crowded conditions, and was told as long as the men got through their breakfast by 11 a.m., and dinner by 6 p.m., nothing more was necessary.
The runoff and sewage going into Foster's Pond was beginning to have its effects on the prisoners. It was getting to be offensive to the nostrils and a danger to the health. One of the surgeons at the prison stated the case more pointedly. An average of 7,000 prisoners released daily over 2,600 gallons of urine -
"highly loaded with nitrogenous material"
- into Foster's Pond. Moreover, he noted, the pond received the contents of the sinks and garbage of the camp until it became so offensive that vaults were dug on the banks of the pond for sinks.
Washington was notified as early as August 17; not until late October was permission received to use prisoner labor to dig drainage ditches to remove the water and it's rotting matter. By December the odor was gone, but by then scores of prisoners were down with disease.
Housing was still a problem and getting worse. Less then a month after the camp opened, almost 10,000 Confederates were inside its crowded compound. Tents ran out on August 7; a new shipment arrived on August 12, but there weren’t enough of them. Hundreds of half-clothed prisoners had to sleep in the open, many of them without blankets. Late in November, a Medical Inspector pronounced the barracks to be
"of green lumber, which is cracking, splitting, and warping in every direction."
In a feeble effort to lessen the number of prisoners at Elmira, late in September, Washington issued a directive that prisoners physically unfit would be exchanged. The order stated that no Confederates would be shipped southward that were
"too feeble to endure the journey."
The Camp Commander was ordered to
"have a careful inspection of the prisoners made by Medical Officers to select those who shall be transferred."
On October 14, five Washington Surgeons examined the 1200 prisoners who arrived by train at the Capitol. Five had died en route; scores of others were reported by one doctor as being
"unable to bear the journey."
The physical condition of many of these men, he added,
"was distressing in the extreme, and they should have never been permitted to leave Elmira."
By the time the train halted at the city point exchange base, forty men were reported dying and another sixty were reported as being
"totally unfit for travel."
Surgeon C.F.H. Campbell wrote a <email> to Col. Hoffman:
"these men are debilitated from long sickness to such a degree that it was necessary to carry them in the arms of attendants from the cars to the ambulances, and one man died in the act of being thus transferred." the spectacle, he concluded, was "disgraceful to all concerned."
Despite an outcry that the deed showed
"the grossest indifference on the part of the government"
the Officers
responsible for the prisoner transfer remained at their duties.
The episode became one of the major marks against the prison it's occupants had dubbed
"Hellmira."
In the mean time, life at Elmira had become routine and, in most instances, revolting. Prisoners not packed in the flimsy barracks swarmed around the yards and vied for space within the few ragged tents.
The 1st troops designated as guards at Elmira were N egroes who, one Georgia soldier sneered,
"had been decoyed north and Organized into companies and regiments to guard their former masters."
Units of the Veteran Reserve Corps, and New York state troops later became the provost guard.
Late in July the prisoners underwent a unique indignity. A group of townspeople ***** two observation platforms immediately outside the prison walls. For the nominal sum of 15 cents, spectators could observe the prisoners as they endured life inside the compound.
Initially, one of the more pressing needs of the prisoners was for clothing. The cry for clothing brought an instantaneous response from southern families and friends. Yet Col. Eastman withheld issuance of the clothing until he could get permission for distribution from Col. Hoffman. The permission came in late August, but only clothing of the color of gray could be issued.
Piles of clothing of other colors were burned. All but a few coats, shirts and pairs of trousers were destroyed.
Winter struck early at Elmira. Prisoners lacking blankets and clad in rags collapsed in droves from exposure. By early December, 1,600 half naked men
"entirely destitute of blankets,"
stood ankle-deep in snow to answer morning roll call.
In the second week of December, the federal government issued clothing for 2,000 men to 8,400 confederates then quartered at Elmira.
In January, Confederate authorities sent a shipment of cotton northward under a flag of truce, the proceeds, from the sale of the cotton, went to purchase clothing for the prisoners. If insufficient clothing, inadequate quarters, and the stench of disease-laden Foster's Pond were trying ordeals for the men, other factors taxed human endurance. High on the list were food rations. On August 18, in retaliation for the conditions in Southern prison camps, Col. Hoffman ordered prisoner rations restricted to bread and water. The results were, by late August, an epidemic of scurvy was in full force; on September 11, no less then 1,870 cases had been reported.
In October the prisoners received a single small ration of fresh vegetables. Onions and potatoes, wrote a prison doctor, constituted three of every five rations for two weeks of that same month; then their distribution stopped. Not until December was the meager diet of bread and water supplemented with a meat ration. However, stated Captain Bennet Munger, a prison inspector, the meat was of such inferior quality that a quarter-beef weighing 92 pounds yielded but 45 1/2 pounds of meat,
"when carefully taken off the bone."
Men were dying of starvation at the rate of 25 a day. The prisoners turned to a large rat population that inhabitated the banks of Foster's Pond. Once, a small dog followed a wood cart into the compound. The dog was captured and slaughtered, and its carcass was hidden in the barrack rafters until dark. The prisoners were caught in the act of devouring their meal, and arrested by guards.
Close on the heels of the scurvy epidemic came an even larger outbreak of diarrhea. Moreover, by November 1864, pneumonia had reached plague proportions. A month later dreaded smallpox came to Elmira and in it's first week struck 140 men and killed ten. Smallpox was ever-present thereafter. One prisoner wrote,
"there is not a day that at least twenty men are taken out dead."
Medical treatment of prisoners from the outset was bad, and it just got worse as time went on.
As early as July 11, 1864 - five days after the arrival of the first group of prisoners, Surgeon Inspector C.T. Alexander reported, "I found the sick.... in no way suitably provided for except for shelter; diet not suitable; some without bed sacks; blankets scarce."
On
September 21, Ward Assistant Anthony Keiley wrote in his diary: "as I went over to the first hospital this morning early, there were 18 dead bodies lying naked on the bare earth. Eleven more were added to the list by half past eight o'clock."
By November the death toll in the hospitals had reached 755 men. A large portion of mortalities stemmed from nearby Foster's Pond - which one observer described as being
"green with putrescence, filling the air with its messengers of disease and death."
At the rate of sickness then present, a
Doctor informed Washington, "the entire command will be admitted to the hospital in less than a year and thirty-six percent will die."
Washington ignored or denied repeated requisitions for badly needed medicines. An urgent request for straw on which the sick could lay was ignored. Hoffman turned down repeated requests to complete the ceilings and roofs on the hospital buildings without any reasons given.
An official in the U.S. Sanitary commission was turned down flat when he asked permission to attend to the sick and dying. By late December at least 70 men were lying on the hospital floors because of a lack of beds and straw; another 200 diseased and dying men lay in the regular prisoner quarters because there was no room for them in the wards. As one guard wrote,
"prisoners died as sheep with the Rot."
A federal inspector wrote in October with a sense of relief, "The number of deaths this week is but 40."
The number of sick and dead rose sharply at the end of 1864, when prisoners, fighting disease, filth and starvation, could not weather the bitter cold of a New York winter. The winter was so severe, and clothing so scarce, that prisoners stood in deep snow with only rags tied around their frozen and swollen feet to answer morning roll calls. Late in December, after repeated urgent pleas, Washington sent a few stoves to Elmira. There were two small stoves for each barracks, and a few for the men still housed in tents. Prisoners received small wood rations only at 8 am and at 8 pm. During the 12-hour intervals they had to get warm as best they could. Moreover, with an average of 200 men to a barracks, each stove therefore was the sole means of warmth for 100 men. Imagine, if you can, the weather 10 to 15 degrees below zero, 100 men trying to keep warm by one small stove. Each morning the men crawl out of their bunks (those that had bunks) shivering and half frozen to fight for a place by the warm stove. The sick and weak were literally left out in the cold.
On the night of March 16, 1865, unusually hard rains caused the Chemung River to over run it's banks. Federals and Confederates alike hastily assembled crude rafts to evacuate prisoners from the smallpox hospital in the flats, and they did succeed in floating most of the sick to safety. Other prisoners crowded the upper stories of the barracks as icy water rose halfway up the first level.
The camp's Col. Tracy reported jubilantly that the transfer of prisoners to high ground resulted "with but slightly increased loss of life."
A month later General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and the prisoners received much improved treatment, and were not guarded as closely.
The paroling of Elmira's prisoners began late in May. Except for those still confined to the hospitals, the prison camp was vacant on July 5th, and ready for demolition a month later. The last prisoner, named Kistler, did not leave the hospital and start home until September 27, 1865.
Elmira's death rate in March of 1865 was an average of sixteen Confederates a day. Of a total of 12,123 Confederate soldiers imprisoned at Elmira, 2,963 died of sickness, exposure, and associated causes. Of the survivors who stumbled forth from the stockade, an eyewitness made the observation;
"I speak in all reverence when I say that I do not believe such a spectacle was seen before on earth... on they came, a ghastly tide, with skeleton bones and lusterless eyes, and brains bereft of but one thought, and hearts purged of but one feeling - the thought of freedom, the love of home."
Today all that remains of Elmira is a well-kept cemetery.
By dylan, 9 years ago on Civilian & Soldiers' Life In The Acw Era
1.5K
Elmira Prison, New York: The Shame Of The Union By William H... View MoreElmira Prison, New York: The Shame Of The Union By William Hesseltine
By dylan, 9 years ago on Civilian & Soldiers' Life In The Acw Era
1.5K
Elmira Prison, New York: The Shame Of The Union By William Hesseltine
Elmira Prison Camp OnLine Library
Personal Information – Elmira Prison, New York: The Shame of the Union by William Hesseltine
Elmira was outside of New York City. It was only there for one year, yet it had the highest death rate, per capita, of any prison camp North or South. It is a shameful spot on American history. The vindictive U.S. commissary-general of prisoners & the camp's Chief Medical Officer, Col. William Hoffman, bragged in public, that he had killed more Confederate soldiers than any union soldier in the field. When a soldier dies in the field, that's war. When he dies this way, it's cold-blooded murder.
After the war, the Yankees tried their best to keep the whole incident hidden from the public. They gave the Chief Medical Officer a promotion in rank and a medal for services rendered. Elmira had a death rate of 24 percent. The mad doctor and everyone associated with Elmira should have been tried for war Crimes.
Official statistics for the worst six month period at Elmira:
Month Prisoners Sick Dead
September <phone>
October <phone>
November <phone>
December <phone>
January 8,602 1,015 285
February 8,996 1,398 426
Elmira was on a 30-acre site, along the banks of the Chemung River. A one-acre lagoon of stagnant water, called Foster's Pond, stood within the walls of the stockade. The lagoon was a backwash from the river and served as a latrine and garbage dump. Prison buildings were located on the high northern bank of the pond. The lower southern level, known to flood easily, later became a hospital area for hundreds of smallpox and diarrhea victims. Remember Foster's Pond, it will be important later in the story. A more unsanitary spot could not have been chosen. Elmira prison camp was established on May 15th, 1864, when Adjutant General E. D. Townsend reported several empty barracks could be used to house a large number of
"rebels"
recently captured. The buildings were to house as many as 10,000 men.
Two barracks,
"built to comfortably accommodate 3,000 troops without over crowding,"
had been set-aside for 4,000 prisoners.
An additional 1,000 men could be quartered in tents on surrounding grounds. The Camp Bakery had adequate facilities for feeding 5,000 prisoners. No camp hospital existed, but tents were available for any men who might become ill. Not until two weeks before the first contingent of confederate prisoners arrived did Commissary General of Prisons William Hoffman point out again that as many as 10,000 prisoners might be sent to Elmira.
Preparations were never made for more than 5,000 men. On June 30, 1864, Elmira was said to be ready to receive prisoners. Inside the fenced in area (known as "the pen") stood 35 two-story barracks, each of which measured 100 by 20 feet. Ceilings were barely high enough to accommodate two rows of crude bunks along the walls. Unsealed roofs characterized the wooden buildings. The floorings were of green lumber, without foundations, and had little resistance to wind and water. Behind the rows of barracks was a group of buildings converted into a dispensary, adjutant's office and guardrooms. To their rear, extending to the northern bank of Foster's Pond, were the cookhouses and mess halls. The first group of prisoners to arrive at Elmira quickly crowded to allotted barracks. Subsequent arrivals lived in "A" tents scattered around the prison area. At the time of their arrival, most prisoners were unaware of one last and deadly factor. Elmira was located in a region of New York State, where for at least four months of the year, the weather was bitterly cold.
One prisoner from Virginia wrote the compound was,
"An excellent summer prison for southern soldiers, but an excellent place for them to find their graves in the winter."
The first contingent of prisoners arrived from New York by train. Prisoners were pleasantly surprised when sympathetic citizens, at many stops, distributed food and clothing to them. Yet, wrote one prisoner,
"these agreeable incidents were occasionally diversified by the insults of some sleek non-combatant, whose valiant soul found congenial occupation in fearful threats of our indiscriminate massacre, if he could only lay hands on us."
The first group reached Elmira at 6 am on July 6th and numbered 399 men - one soldier escaped enroute. The second group arrived early in the morning of July 11th, followed by 502 Confederates the following day. Before departing their earlier prison camps, the prisoners received vaccinations for smallpox. The injections were of poor quality vaccines, and seen on many arms
"were great sores, big enough, it seemed, to put your fist in."
On July 15th, an Erie Railroad train jammed with prisoners, collided with a freight train near the hamlet of Shohola. Forty-eight prisoners and seventeen guards were killed. 100 prisoners and eighteen guards were injured. The injured prisoners were put in wagons and transported to Elmira.
Several days after the accident the Confederate prisoners still lay on the floors of the makeshift hospitals of Elmira, their wounds still untreated
and clothing stuck fast to the dried blood of cuts and fractures.
By the end of July, 4,424 prisoners were packed in the compound, with another 3,000 enroute. The total number leaped to 9,600 by mid-August. It took three hours to feed 10,000 men in shifts of 1,800 at a time. The camp commander complained of the over crowded conditions, and was told as long as the men got through their breakfast by 11 a.m., and dinner by 6 p.m., nothing more was necessary.
The runoff and sewage going into Foster's Pond was beginning to have its effects on the prisoners. It was getting to be offensive to the nostrils and a danger to the health. One of the surgeons at the prison stated the case more pointedly. An average of 7,000 prisoners released daily over 2,600 gallons of urine -
"highly loaded with nitrogenous material"
- into Foster's Pond. Moreover, he noted, the pond received the contents of the sinks and garbage of the camp until it became so offensive that vaults were dug on the banks of the pond for sinks.
Washington was notified as early as August 17; not until late October was permission received to use prisoner labor to dig drainage ditches to remove the water and it's rotting matter. By December the odor was gone, but by then scores of prisoners were down with disease.
Housing was still a problem and getting worse. Less then a month after the camp opened, almost 10,000 Confederates were inside its crowded compound. Tents ran out on August 7; a new shipment arrived on August 12, but there weren’t enough of them. Hundreds of half-clothed prisoners had to sleep in the open, many of them without blankets. Late in November, a Medical Inspector pronounced the barracks to be
"of green lumber, which is cracking, splitting, and warping in every direction."
In a feeble effort to lessen the number of prisoners at Elmira, late in September, Washington issued a directive that prisoners physically unfit would be exchanged. The order stated that no Confederates would be shipped southward that were
"too feeble to endure the journey."
The Camp Commander was ordered to
"have a careful inspection of the prisoners made by Medical Officers to select those who shall be transferred."
On October 14, five Washington Surgeons examined the 1200 prisoners who arrived by train at the Capitol. Five had died en route; scores of others were reported by one doctor as being
"unable to bear the journey."
The physical condition of many of these men, he added,
"was distressing in the extreme, and they should have never been permitted to leave Elmira."
By the time the train halted at the city point exchange base, forty men were reported dying and another sixty were reported as being
"totally unfit for travel."
Surgeon C.F.H. Campbell wrote a <email> to Col. Hoffman:
"these men are debilitated from long sickness to such a degree that it was necessary to carry them in the arms of attendants from the cars to the ambulances, and one man died in the act of being thus transferred." the spectacle, he concluded, was "disgraceful to all concerned."
Despite an outcry that the deed showed
"the grossest indifference on the part of the government"
the Officers
responsible for the prisoner transfer remained at their duties.
The episode became one of the major marks against the prison it's occupants had dubbed
"Hellmira."
In the mean time, life at Elmira had become routine and, in most instances, revolting. Prisoners not packed in the flimsy barracks swarmed around the yards and vied for space within the few ragged tents.
The 1st troops designated as guards at Elmira were N egroes who, one Georgia soldier sneered,
"had been decoyed north and Organized into companies and regiments to guard their former masters."
Units of the Veteran Reserve Corps, and New York state troops later became the provost guard.
Late in July the prisoners underwent a unique indignity. A group of townspeople ***** two observation platforms immediately outside the prison walls. For the nominal sum of 15 cents, spectators could observe the prisoners as they endured life inside the compound.
Initially, one of the more pressing needs of the prisoners was for clothing. The cry for clothing brought an instantaneous response from southern families and friends. Yet Col. Eastman withheld issuance of the clothing until he could get permission for distribution from Col. Hoffman. The permission came in late August, but only clothing of the color of gray could be issued.
Piles of clothing of other colors were burned. All but a few coats, shirts and pairs of trousers were destroyed.
Winter struck early at Elmira. Prisoners lacking blankets and clad in rags collapsed in droves from exposure. By early December, 1,600 half naked men
"entirely destitute of blankets,"
stood ankle-deep in snow to answer morning roll call.
In the second week of December, the federal government issued clothing for 2,000 men to 8,400 confederates then quartered at Elmira.
In January, Confederate authorities sent a shipment of cotton northward under a flag of truce, the proceeds, from the sale of the cotton, went to purchase clothing for the prisoners. If insufficient clothing, inadequate quarters, and the stench of disease-laden Foster's Pond were trying ordeals for the men, other factors taxed human endurance. High on the list were food rations. On August 18, in retaliation for the conditions in Southern prison camps, Col. Hoffman ordered prisoner rations restricted to bread and water. The results were, by late August, an epidemic of scurvy was in full force; on September 11, no less then 1,870 cases had been reported.
In October the prisoners received a single small ration of fresh vegetables. Onions and potatoes, wrote a prison doctor, constituted three of every five rations for two weeks of that same month; then their distribution stopped. Not until December was the meager diet of bread and water supplemented with a meat ration. However, stated Captain Bennet Munger, a prison inspector, the meat was of such inferior quality that a quarter-beef weighing 92 pounds yielded but 45 1/2 pounds of meat,
"when carefully taken off the bone."
Men were dying of starvation at the rate of 25 a day. The prisoners turned to a large rat population that inhabitated the banks of Foster's Pond. Once, a small dog followed a wood cart into the compound. The dog was captured and slaughtered, and its carcass was hidden in the barrack rafters until dark. The prisoners were caught in the act of devouring their meal, and arrested by guards.
Close on the heels of the scurvy epidemic came an even larger outbreak of diarrhea. Moreover, by November 1864, pneumonia had reached plague proportions. A month later dreaded smallpox came to Elmira and in it's first week struck 140 men and killed ten. Smallpox was ever-present thereafter. One prisoner wrote,
"there is not a day that at least twenty men are taken out dead."
Medical treatment of prisoners from the outset was bad, and it just got worse as time went on.
As early as July 11, 1864 - five days after the arrival of the first group of prisoners, Surgeon Inspector C.T. Alexander reported, "I found the sick.... in no way suitably provided for except for shelter; diet not suitable; some without bed sacks; blankets scarce."
On
September 21, Ward Assistant Anthony Keiley wrote in his diary: "as I went over to the first hospital this morning early, there were 18 dead bodies lying naked on the bare earth. Eleven more were added to the list by half past eight o'clock."
By November the death toll in the hospitals had reached 755 men. A large portion of mortalities stemmed from nearby Foster's Pond - which one observer described as being
"green with putrescence, filling the air with its messengers of disease and death."
At the rate of sickness then present, a
Doctor informed Washington, "the entire command will be admitted to the hospital in less than a year and thirty-six percent will die."
Washington ignored or denied repeated requisitions for badly needed medicines. An urgent request for straw on which the sick could lay was ignored. Hoffman turned down repeated requests to complete the ceilings and roofs on the hospital buildings without any reasons given.
An official in the U.S. Sanitary commission was turned down flat when he asked permission to attend to the sick and dying. By late December at least 70 men were lying on the hospital floors because of a lack of beds and straw; another 200 diseased and dying men lay in the regular prisoner quarters because there was no room for them in the wards. As one guard wrote,
"prisoners died as sheep with the Rot."
A federal inspector wrote in October with a sense of relief, "The number of deaths this week is but 40."
The number of sick and dead rose sharply at the end of 1864, when prisoners, fighting disease, filth and starvation, could not weather the bitter cold of a New York winter. The winter was so severe, and clothing so scarce, that prisoners stood in deep snow with only rags tied around their frozen and swollen feet to answer morning roll calls. Late in December, after repeated urgent pleas, Washington sent a few stoves to Elmira. There were two small stoves for each barracks, and a few for the men still housed in tents. Prisoners received small wood rations only at 8 am and at 8 pm. During the 12-hour intervals they had to get warm as best they could. Moreover, with an average of 200 men to a barracks, each stove therefore was the sole means of warmth for 100 men. Imagine, if you can, the weather 10 to 15 degrees below zero, 100 men trying to keep warm by one small stove. Each morning the men crawl out of their bunks (those that had bunks) shivering and half frozen to fight for a place by the warm stove. The sick and weak were literally left out in the cold.
On the night of March 16, 1865, unusually hard rains caused the Chemung River to over run it's banks. Federals and Confederates alike hastily assembled crude rafts to evacuate prisoners from the smallpox hospital in the flats, and they did succeed in floating most of the sick to safety. Other prisoners crowded the upper stories of the barracks as icy water rose halfway up the first level.
The camp's Col. Tracy reported jubilantly that the transfer of prisoners to high ground resulted "with but slightly increased loss of life."
A month later General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and the prisoners received much improved treatment, and were not guarded as closely.
The paroling of Elmira's prisoners began late in May. Except for those still confined to the hospitals, the prison camp was vacant on July 5th, and ready for demolition a month later. The last prisoner, named Kistler, did not leave the hospital and start home until September 27, 1865.
Elmira's death rate in March of 1865 was an average of sixteen Confederates a day. Of a total of 12,123 Confederate soldiers imprisoned at Elmira, 2,963 died of sickness, exposure, and associated causes. Of the survivors who stumbled forth from the stockade, an eyewitness made the observation;
"I speak in all reverence when I say that I do not believe such a spectacle was seen before on earth... on they came, a ghastly tide, with skeleton bones and lusterless eyes, and brains bereft of but one thought, and hearts purged of but one feeling - the thought of freedom, the love of home."
Today all that remains of Elmira is a well-kept cemetery.
Cross of Iron (Sam Peckinpah, 1977) - “Demarcation!”
Sgt. Steiner (James Coburn) and his men are betrayed by their own army in this stirring scene from Sam Peckinpah’s anti-war masterpiece, “Cross of Iron”
@ CABAL TIMES / ISLAM / MIDDLE EAST1
The Secret, Generational War on Circassians and Kurds
BY HAMAD SUBANI · FEBRUARY 19, 2022
Last Updated on March 19, 2022 by Hamad Subani
This post is an extension of a... View More@ CABAL TIMES / ISLAM / MIDDLE EAST1
The Secret, Generational War on Circassians and Kurds
BY HAMAD SUBANI · FEBRUARY 19, 2022
Last Updated on March 19, 2022 by Hamad Subani
This post is an extension of an earlier theory discussed on this website, which demonstrated that our secret rulers are Phoenician in origin. If that is indeed the case, then many major conflicts today may actually be Phoenician operations aimed at decimating their historical enemies. The Circassians and the Kurds (among many others, such as certain Turkic groups) can be considered as such “historical enemies.” Out of finger-gnawing fear, it seems that the Phoenicians continue to be terrified by these now poor and stateless people. And with other dumb people committing their entire nations and resources to the Phoenicians, the Phoenicians are more than happy to continuously fight the shadows of those who once threatened them. On the other hand, it is unlikely that these targeted groups are even aware of what they are up against.
Just as the Phoenicians are obscured from history, so are their historical enemies. It seems that the common denominator among these “historical enemies” is that they have always been fiercely independent people, and they are now Muslims. Of course, Circassians and Kurds are not the only ones. But this analysis reveals that they occupy top positions on the hit list.
This article uses information and pictures freely available on the Internet and on Wikipedia. The truth was always out there. It’s only much-needed analysis which is always missing censored.
Most readers have a fleeting recollection of who these two ethnic groups are today, or where they tend to be located. Of course, these two ethnic groups are not perfect people and have their own faults. But the organized persecution these two groups faced, from ancient times, is actually a carefully coordinated program, still being operated by the same old perpetrators. And many of these genocides and persecution have been completely obscured from history, so that a pattern is not readily noticeable.
The Circassians
Circassians commemorate the banishment of the Circassians from Russia in Istanbul, taken on 21st May 2011.
The Circassian people are an ancient ethnic group associated with the Caucasus region. They are also known as Cherkess or Adyghe. They are sometimes associated with the Muslims of Chechnya.
In an exhaustive review of a theory of Miles Mathis and Gerry on this website, we learnt that the Phoenicians had destroyed an advanced civilization in Anatolia known as the Hittites. The Hittites were probably the first humans to use iron alloys, which is maybe why the Phoenicians targeted them (after appropriating their technology). According to some suppressed (1, 2, 3) theories, the Hittites were predecessors of the Circassians. There is also a theory that Circassia is a reference to Kassites, who could be an even more ancient ancestor group, who competed with the Ancient Spookians for control over Mesopotamia. Some say that they may also be related to Cimmerians, a group which clashed with Greek-Phoenicians.
Hattusa during its peak. Illustration by Balage Balogh.
Enter Islam. In the earliest phases of Muslim-Arab expansion, we see frequent battles with the Khazars over control of the Caucasus. Eventually, most of the Caucasus became Muslim.
Original Circassia is in green. Circassians were later forcibly resettled to the brown regions.
The Kurds
A Syrian Kurdish fighter at a house on the Turkey-Syria border. He was preparing to leave for Kobani, Syria, to rejoin the fighting against the Islamic State.
Now let’s talk about another group of people, the fiercely independent Kurds. They are not Circassians, but their history and fate seems to be closely intertwined with that of the Circassians. It is established that the Kurds are an Iranian people. So were the Mittani, who established a kingdom in northern Syria. Prior to destroying the Hittites, the Phoenicians had destroyed the Mittani.
But it seems the Kurds lingered on in other regions. In 401 BC, they routed Greek-Phoenicians marching into Iran at the battle of Cunaxa. Greek historians would later cover it up as a strategic retreat. Later when Persian-Phoenicians established themselves over Iran as the Sassanians, we find numerous reports of Kurds giving them battle. They inflicted a major defeat on the Sassanian King Ardashir I. Later they gave battle to Sassanian King Shapur II. After the Islamic conquest of Persia, almost all Kurds became Muslim.
In the 10th-12th centuries, a number of Kurdish principalities and dynasties were founded, ruling Kurdistan and neighbouring areas.
The Shaddadids (951–1174) ruled parts of present-day Armenia and Arran.
The Rawadid (955–1221) ruled Azerbaijan.
The Hasanwayhids (959–1015) ruled western Iran and upper Mesopotamia.
The Marwanids (990–1096) ruled eastern Anatolia.
The Annazids (990–1117) ruled western Iran and upper Mesopotamia (succeeded the Hasanwayhids).
The Hazaraspids (1148–1424) ruled southwestern Iran.
The Ayyubids (1171–1341) ruled Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia and parts of southeastern Anatolia and the Arabian Peninsula. The Ayyubids trace their origin to the Kurdish Rawadids of Azerbaijan.
Of all of these, the most important are the Ayyubids. The Ayyubid dynasty was a Muslim dynasty of Kurdish origin, founded by Saladin. His father was appointed the military governor of Tikrit by the Turkic Seljuks, who were in constant struggle with remnants of the crypto-Phoenician Byzantines. His father later assisted the illustrious Turkic noble Imad al-Din Zengi, who went on to establish the Zengid dynasty, which ruled as vassals of the Seljuks. The Zengids operated out of Mosul and Sinjar. For some reason, both towns became the chief target of US forces in the Second Gulf War. The Seljuks were based out of Damascus and Aleppo, which have also been pretty much destroyed in recent times. Imad al-Din Zengi made Saladin the commander of the former Phoenician stronghold of Baalbek.
The Secret, Generational War on Circassians and Kurds
BY HAMAD SUBANI · FEBRUARY 19, 2022
Last Updated on March 19, 2022 by Hamad Subani
This post is an extension of a... View More@ CABAL TIMES / ISLAM / MIDDLE EAST1
The Secret, Generational War on Circassians and Kurds
BY HAMAD SUBANI · FEBRUARY 19, 2022
Last Updated on March 19, 2022 by Hamad Subani
This post is an extension of an earlier theory discussed on this website, which demonstrated that our secret rulers are Phoenician in origin. If that is indeed the case, then many major conflicts today may actually be Phoenician operations aimed at decimating their historical enemies. The Circassians and the Kurds (among many others, such as certain Turkic groups) can be considered as such “historical enemies.” Out of finger-gnawing fear, it seems that the Phoenicians continue to be terrified by these now poor and stateless people. And with other dumb people committing their entire nations and resources to the Phoenicians, the Phoenicians are more than happy to continuously fight the shadows of those who once threatened them. On the other hand, it is unlikely that these targeted groups are even aware of what they are up against.
Just as the Phoenicians are obscured from history, so are their historical enemies. It seems that the common denominator among these “historical enemies” is that they have always been fiercely independent people, and they are now Muslims. Of course, Circassians and Kurds are not the only ones. But this analysis reveals that they occupy top positions on the hit list.
This article uses information and pictures freely available on the Internet and on Wikipedia. The truth was always out there. It’s only much-needed analysis which is always missing censored.
Most readers have a fleeting recollection of who these two ethnic groups are today, or where they tend to be located. Of course, these two ethnic groups are not perfect people and have their own faults. But the organized persecution these two groups faced, from ancient times, is actually a carefully coordinated program, still being operated by the same old perpetrators. And many of these genocides and persecution have been completely obscured from history, so that a pattern is not readily noticeable.
The Circassians
Circassians commemorate the banishment of the Circassians from Russia in Istanbul, taken on 21st May 2011.
The Circassian people are an ancient ethnic group associated with the Caucasus region. They are also known as Cherkess or Adyghe. They are sometimes associated with the Muslims of Chechnya.
In an exhaustive review of a theory of Miles Mathis and Gerry on this website, we learnt that the Phoenicians had destroyed an advanced civilization in Anatolia known as the Hittites. The Hittites were probably the first humans to use iron alloys, which is maybe why the Phoenicians targeted them (after appropriating their technology). According to some suppressed (1, 2, 3) theories, the Hittites were predecessors of the Circassians. There is also a theory that Circassia is a reference to Kassites, who could be an even more ancient ancestor group, who competed with the Ancient Spookians for control over Mesopotamia. Some say that they may also be related to Cimmerians, a group which clashed with Greek-Phoenicians.
Hattusa during its peak. Illustration by Balage Balogh.
Enter Islam. In the earliest phases of Muslim-Arab expansion, we see frequent battles with the Khazars over control of the Caucasus. Eventually, most of the Caucasus became Muslim.
Original Circassia is in green. Circassians were later forcibly resettled to the brown regions.
The Kurds
A Syrian Kurdish fighter at a house on the Turkey-Syria border. He was preparing to leave for Kobani, Syria, to rejoin the fighting against the Islamic State.
Now let’s talk about another group of people, the fiercely independent Kurds. They are not Circassians, but their history and fate seems to be closely intertwined with that of the Circassians. It is established that the Kurds are an Iranian people. So were the Mittani, who established a kingdom in northern Syria. Prior to destroying the Hittites, the Phoenicians had destroyed the Mittani.
But it seems the Kurds lingered on in other regions. In 401 BC, they routed Greek-Phoenicians marching into Iran at the battle of Cunaxa. Greek historians would later cover it up as a strategic retreat. Later when Persian-Phoenicians established themselves over Iran as the Sassanians, we find numerous reports of Kurds giving them battle. They inflicted a major defeat on the Sassanian King Ardashir I. Later they gave battle to Sassanian King Shapur II. After the Islamic conquest of Persia, almost all Kurds became Muslim.
In the 10th-12th centuries, a number of Kurdish principalities and dynasties were founded, ruling Kurdistan and neighbouring areas.
The Shaddadids (951–1174) ruled parts of present-day Armenia and Arran.
The Rawadid (955–1221) ruled Azerbaijan.
The Hasanwayhids (959–1015) ruled western Iran and upper Mesopotamia.
The Marwanids (990–1096) ruled eastern Anatolia.
The Annazids (990–1117) ruled western Iran and upper Mesopotamia (succeeded the Hasanwayhids).
The Hazaraspids (1148–1424) ruled southwestern Iran.
The Ayyubids (1171–1341) ruled Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia and parts of southeastern Anatolia and the Arabian Peninsula. The Ayyubids trace their origin to the Kurdish Rawadids of Azerbaijan.
Of all of these, the most important are the Ayyubids. The Ayyubid dynasty was a Muslim dynasty of Kurdish origin, founded by Saladin. His father was appointed the military governor of Tikrit by the Turkic Seljuks, who were in constant struggle with remnants of the crypto-Phoenician Byzantines. His father later assisted the illustrious Turkic noble Imad al-Din Zengi, who went on to establish the Zengid dynasty, which ruled as vassals of the Seljuks. The Zengids operated out of Mosul and Sinjar. For some reason, both towns became the chief target of US forces in the Second Gulf War. The Seljuks were based out of Damascus and Aleppo, which have also been pretty much destroyed in recent times. Imad al-Din Zengi made Saladin the commander of the former Phoenician stronghold of Baalbek.
crusader of southerland likes this. 
The Occult Roots Of NASA...
Parsons, John Whitesides
Lux Ferre
July 2, 2018
John Whitesides Parsons
John Whitesides Parsons (1914–1952) was an American chemist and magician and a follower of ALEISTER CROWL... View MoreThe Occult Roots Of NASA...
Parsons, John Whitesides
Lux Ferre
July 2, 2018
John Whitesides Parsons
John Whitesides Parsons (1914–1952) was an American chemist and magician and a follower of ALEISTER CROWLEY. John (known as Jack) Parsons was regarded as a brilliant physical chemist. He participated in the founding of the California Institute of Technology, where he worked as an expert in rocket propulsion.
Parsons was born on October 2, 1914, in Los Angeles. He was named Marvel Whiteside Parsons after his father, Marvel H. Parsons, and his mother, whose maiden name was Ruth Virginia Whitesides. He was their second child; their first died in infancy. Soon after Parson’s birth, his mother left his father out of anger over an extramarital affair. It is uncertain whether they ever legally divorced. Ruth began calling her young son John but never legally changed his name. John favoured the nickname Jack as he grew older.
As a boy, Parsons was fascinated by science fiction and rockets, and he and his friend Edward S. Forman experimented with small rockets, using dangerous combinations of black powder fuel. The two formed a lifelong friendship and working relationship.
In 1932 Parsons went to work for the Hercules Powder Company in Pasadena, where he refined his expertise on powder explosives. In 1933 he graduated from the private University School in Los Angeles. He and Forman attended Pasadena Junior College and went on to the University of Southern California, from which neither of them graduated. In 1935 Parsons married Helen Northrup.
Parsons and Forman were hired by the Guggenheim Aereonautical Laboratory, which became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1936. With Frank Malina, they played key roles in the development of the United States’s new rocketry program, as well as in jet projects for the U.S. Army Air Corps and the U.S. Navy.
In the late 1930s, Parsons discovered the works of Crowley and told friends that he was in correspondence with him. Parsons was strongly attracted to Crowley’s sex magic, and soon a colleague introduced him to Wilfred T. Smith, the leader of the Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis, located in Los Angeles. Parsons and his wife began attending meetings and the lodge’s Gnostic Mass, Crowley’s version of the Catholic mass that Crowley said was corrupted. Crowley had made the Gnostic Mass one of the OTO’s central rites, and it was used to recruit new members. Parsons advanced in his occult knowledge and learned Astral Travel and other skills.
In 1940 Parsons met the actress Jane Wolfe, who had been initiated by Crowley at his Abbey of Thelema (Cefalu) in Italy. Wolfe considered Parsons to be “potentially bisexual” and the genuine successor to Crowley. Smith also saw great potential in Parsons, writing to Crowley that he was going to be valuable to the OTO. Jack and Helen officially joined the Agape Lodge on February 15, 1941. Parsons took the name Frater T.O.P.A.N., or Frater 210 for short; 210 was a number significant in Crowley’s magic, the precise meaning of which Crowley said was “too holy” to reveal. T.O.P.A.N. had a dual meaning of “To Pan” and also Parson’s MagicAL MOTTO, Thelemum Obtentum Procedero Amoris Nuptiae, or “The Obtainment of Thelema through the Nuptials of Love.” Helen became Soror Grimaud.
Thus Parsons entered into a double life. By day he was a brilliant and successful rocket scientist, earning large sums of money, regarded as well educated and cultured by his peers. By night he was an occultist and magician, participating in rites that his peers would have found shocking and bizarre. Parsons became dedicated to bringing Crowley’s New Aeon into manifestation. He was devoted to Smith. He and Helen turned their bedroom in their mansion into a temple and massed a library of occult works. Parsons rented out rooms in his mansion to occultists, offending the neighbors with frequent, loud parties involving strange Rituals. A thrill-seeker, Parsons engaged in increasingly dangerous occult rituals, which he acknowledged might have undesirable side effects such as the creation of permanent haunting phenomena. He liked to evoke ElementALS, some of which were lingering and troublesome in the bedroom temple. Banishing rituals were conducted frequently.
Rumors circulated that Parsons was leading a black magic cult. There were police investigations, but no action against Parsons was taken.
Parsons became one of Crowley’s main sources of funding in the United States and funneled large sums of money to him in England through Crowley’s named OTO Outer Head successor, Karl Germer. This arrangement lasted until Crowley’s death in 1947.
Germer despised Smith and succeeded in influencing Crowley to retire him from the Agape Lodge. Leadership was taken over by Parsons. Meanwhile, Helen had become Smith’s lover and bore him a son in 1943. Parsons divorced her the same year and entered into a relationship with her younger sister or half sister, Betty, whose real name was Sara. He told others that he had gotten rid of Helen by means of Witchcraft. Betty was 18 years old, 11 years younger than Parsons. He encouraged her to take other lovers, and he engaged in affairs himself. He began to use drugs frequently in his magical work.
In April 1945, Parsons met L. Ron Hubbard, who became the founder of Scientology. Hubbard liked Parsons and moved in with him and Betty. Hubbard and Betty began an affair. In a letter to Crowley, Parsons enthused about Hubbard, noting that he had no formal training in magic but possessed a keen natural ability for it.
Despite Parson’s sexual open-mindedness, he resented Hubbard’s affair with Betty, and he conducted a ritual to overcome his jealousy. He told Crowley that, though he bore Betty and Hubbard no ill will, he desired to have a female magical partner on his own terms. He resolved to summon magically an elemental in a female form who would serve as his ideal companion and partner. The ritual was supposed to be performed alone, but Parsons performed it in the presence of Hubbard, who acted as scribe.
The Babalon Working, as the event became known, began on January 4, 1946, and was repeated several times until January 15. Babalon, Crowley’s spelling for Babylon, is the ultimately desirable harlot inspired by the ENOCHIAN Magic of JOHN DEE and Edward Kelly. The elaborate working involved numerous invocations of spirits, Enochian calls, a wand Talisman magically charged with semen and Blood, and magical masturbation, that is, sexual arousal without release so that the energy is absorbed back into the body. Parsons specified that the manifested elemental would have red hair and green eyes.
As of January 15, the results were disappointing—only a violent wind storm. In February 1946, a woman artist from New York named Marjorie C. appeared, and Parsons recognized her as the result of his summoning. She was red-haired with green eyes. Parsons described her as “strong-minded and determined, with strong masculine characteristics and a fanatical independence.”
Parsons and Marjorie performed sex magic for several weeks to invoke Babalon. Parsons informed Crowley in cryptic terms of his progress and impending success. Crowley dismissed it as an ill-intentioned effort to create a moonchild, a magical child. In late February, Marjorie split from Parsons and returned to New York, where she discovered she was pregnant.
Parsons performed a ritual alone to invoke Babalon. He said the presence of Babalon commanded him to write. The result was the 77-verse Liber 49, which Parsons viewed as the fourth chapter to Crowley’s The Book of the Law. He also took it as further indication that he was to create a magical child into which Babalon would incarnate and fulfill Crowley’s prediction of the birth of one “mightier than all the kings on earth.” Only two chapters of Parsons’s original book survive.
In March 1946, Marjorie returned to Parsons and began living with him. They resumed sex magic, and Hubbard served as the scryer to convey messages from Babalon. The rituals went on for some time. Crowley reacted to this with concern, warning Parsons not to become too attached to Marjorie. He quoted Eliphas Levi, saying that “the love of the Magus for such things is insensate and may destroy him.” The same month, Parsons stepped down as head of the Agape Lodge and turned it over to Roy Leffingwell.
The Babalon Working failed; Marjorie did not have a magical child. But nine years later, she claimed to be Babalon herself and to have given birth on the Astral Plane to a magical child. While the Babalon Working was going on, Parsons, Betty, and Hubbard pooled money to purchase a yacht with the intention of reselling it for a profit; Parsons put up most of the funds. Betty and Hubbard deserted Parsons and left in the yacht. Parsons told Crowley he used magic to force them to return. Within the first few hours of their departure, Parsons said he performed a full EVOCATION to Bartzabel, the spirit of Mars, causing the yacht to be struck by a sudden squall. The severity of the storm ripped off the yacht’s sails and forced a return to port. Parsons seized the damaged boat but lost most of the money he had invested.
Parsons retreated from magic and focused instead on his rocketry career. He was targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and in 1948 lost his security clearance. FBI documents describe Parson’s magical activities as a “mythic love cult,” but the agency maintained that the real reason for their investigation was his ties to known Communists. His clearance was restored a year later in March 1949. In January 1952 Parsons permanently lost his security clearance. Meanwhile, on the magical front, he decided to pursue contact with his Holy Guardian Angel. His efforts, he told Germer in a letter, produced “acute psychosis . . . manic hysteria and depressing melancholic stupor.”
With the loss of his security clearance, Parsons found part-time work for a powder company and did explosives consulting for films. On June 17, 1952, Parsons was working in his garage at home when two violent explosions ripped through it. Severely injured, he survived the explosions and was conscious when he was dragged out by neighbors. He died in a hospital about a half hour later, saying, “I wasn’t done.” Informed of her son’s death, Ruth was shattered. Within a few hours, she committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills.
The explosion was said to be an accident due to Parsons’s alleged mishandling of cordite and mercury fulminate, a sensitive detonator. But those familiar with his magical interests thought that the explosion resulted from his ongoing efforts to manifest Babalon.
Further Reading:
Carter, John. Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2004.
King, Francis. Megatherion: The Magickal World of Aleister Crowley. New York: Creation Books, 2004.
SOURCE:
The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley Copyright © 2006 by Visionary Living, Inc.
Parsons, John Whitesides
Lux Ferre
July 2, 2018
John Whitesides Parsons
John Whitesides Parsons (1914–1952) was an American chemist and magician and a follower of ALEISTER CROWL... View MoreThe Occult Roots Of NASA...
Parsons, John Whitesides
Lux Ferre
July 2, 2018
John Whitesides Parsons
John Whitesides Parsons (1914–1952) was an American chemist and magician and a follower of ALEISTER CROWLEY. John (known as Jack) Parsons was regarded as a brilliant physical chemist. He participated in the founding of the California Institute of Technology, where he worked as an expert in rocket propulsion.
Parsons was born on October 2, 1914, in Los Angeles. He was named Marvel Whiteside Parsons after his father, Marvel H. Parsons, and his mother, whose maiden name was Ruth Virginia Whitesides. He was their second child; their first died in infancy. Soon after Parson’s birth, his mother left his father out of anger over an extramarital affair. It is uncertain whether they ever legally divorced. Ruth began calling her young son John but never legally changed his name. John favoured the nickname Jack as he grew older.
As a boy, Parsons was fascinated by science fiction and rockets, and he and his friend Edward S. Forman experimented with small rockets, using dangerous combinations of black powder fuel. The two formed a lifelong friendship and working relationship.
In 1932 Parsons went to work for the Hercules Powder Company in Pasadena, where he refined his expertise on powder explosives. In 1933 he graduated from the private University School in Los Angeles. He and Forman attended Pasadena Junior College and went on to the University of Southern California, from which neither of them graduated. In 1935 Parsons married Helen Northrup.
Parsons and Forman were hired by the Guggenheim Aereonautical Laboratory, which became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1936. With Frank Malina, they played key roles in the development of the United States’s new rocketry program, as well as in jet projects for the U.S. Army Air Corps and the U.S. Navy.
In the late 1930s, Parsons discovered the works of Crowley and told friends that he was in correspondence with him. Parsons was strongly attracted to Crowley’s sex magic, and soon a colleague introduced him to Wilfred T. Smith, the leader of the Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis, located in Los Angeles. Parsons and his wife began attending meetings and the lodge’s Gnostic Mass, Crowley’s version of the Catholic mass that Crowley said was corrupted. Crowley had made the Gnostic Mass one of the OTO’s central rites, and it was used to recruit new members. Parsons advanced in his occult knowledge and learned Astral Travel and other skills.
In 1940 Parsons met the actress Jane Wolfe, who had been initiated by Crowley at his Abbey of Thelema (Cefalu) in Italy. Wolfe considered Parsons to be “potentially bisexual” and the genuine successor to Crowley. Smith also saw great potential in Parsons, writing to Crowley that he was going to be valuable to the OTO. Jack and Helen officially joined the Agape Lodge on February 15, 1941. Parsons took the name Frater T.O.P.A.N., or Frater 210 for short; 210 was a number significant in Crowley’s magic, the precise meaning of which Crowley said was “too holy” to reveal. T.O.P.A.N. had a dual meaning of “To Pan” and also Parson’s MagicAL MOTTO, Thelemum Obtentum Procedero Amoris Nuptiae, or “The Obtainment of Thelema through the Nuptials of Love.” Helen became Soror Grimaud.
Thus Parsons entered into a double life. By day he was a brilliant and successful rocket scientist, earning large sums of money, regarded as well educated and cultured by his peers. By night he was an occultist and magician, participating in rites that his peers would have found shocking and bizarre. Parsons became dedicated to bringing Crowley’s New Aeon into manifestation. He was devoted to Smith. He and Helen turned their bedroom in their mansion into a temple and massed a library of occult works. Parsons rented out rooms in his mansion to occultists, offending the neighbors with frequent, loud parties involving strange Rituals. A thrill-seeker, Parsons engaged in increasingly dangerous occult rituals, which he acknowledged might have undesirable side effects such as the creation of permanent haunting phenomena. He liked to evoke ElementALS, some of which were lingering and troublesome in the bedroom temple. Banishing rituals were conducted frequently.
Rumors circulated that Parsons was leading a black magic cult. There were police investigations, but no action against Parsons was taken.
Parsons became one of Crowley’s main sources of funding in the United States and funneled large sums of money to him in England through Crowley’s named OTO Outer Head successor, Karl Germer. This arrangement lasted until Crowley’s death in 1947.
Germer despised Smith and succeeded in influencing Crowley to retire him from the Agape Lodge. Leadership was taken over by Parsons. Meanwhile, Helen had become Smith’s lover and bore him a son in 1943. Parsons divorced her the same year and entered into a relationship with her younger sister or half sister, Betty, whose real name was Sara. He told others that he had gotten rid of Helen by means of Witchcraft. Betty was 18 years old, 11 years younger than Parsons. He encouraged her to take other lovers, and he engaged in affairs himself. He began to use drugs frequently in his magical work.
In April 1945, Parsons met L. Ron Hubbard, who became the founder of Scientology. Hubbard liked Parsons and moved in with him and Betty. Hubbard and Betty began an affair. In a letter to Crowley, Parsons enthused about Hubbard, noting that he had no formal training in magic but possessed a keen natural ability for it.
Despite Parson’s sexual open-mindedness, he resented Hubbard’s affair with Betty, and he conducted a ritual to overcome his jealousy. He told Crowley that, though he bore Betty and Hubbard no ill will, he desired to have a female magical partner on his own terms. He resolved to summon magically an elemental in a female form who would serve as his ideal companion and partner. The ritual was supposed to be performed alone, but Parsons performed it in the presence of Hubbard, who acted as scribe.
The Babalon Working, as the event became known, began on January 4, 1946, and was repeated several times until January 15. Babalon, Crowley’s spelling for Babylon, is the ultimately desirable harlot inspired by the ENOCHIAN Magic of JOHN DEE and Edward Kelly. The elaborate working involved numerous invocations of spirits, Enochian calls, a wand Talisman magically charged with semen and Blood, and magical masturbation, that is, sexual arousal without release so that the energy is absorbed back into the body. Parsons specified that the manifested elemental would have red hair and green eyes.
As of January 15, the results were disappointing—only a violent wind storm. In February 1946, a woman artist from New York named Marjorie C. appeared, and Parsons recognized her as the result of his summoning. She was red-haired with green eyes. Parsons described her as “strong-minded and determined, with strong masculine characteristics and a fanatical independence.”
Parsons and Marjorie performed sex magic for several weeks to invoke Babalon. Parsons informed Crowley in cryptic terms of his progress and impending success. Crowley dismissed it as an ill-intentioned effort to create a moonchild, a magical child. In late February, Marjorie split from Parsons and returned to New York, where she discovered she was pregnant.
Parsons performed a ritual alone to invoke Babalon. He said the presence of Babalon commanded him to write. The result was the 77-verse Liber 49, which Parsons viewed as the fourth chapter to Crowley’s The Book of the Law. He also took it as further indication that he was to create a magical child into which Babalon would incarnate and fulfill Crowley’s prediction of the birth of one “mightier than all the kings on earth.” Only two chapters of Parsons’s original book survive.
In March 1946, Marjorie returned to Parsons and began living with him. They resumed sex magic, and Hubbard served as the scryer to convey messages from Babalon. The rituals went on for some time. Crowley reacted to this with concern, warning Parsons not to become too attached to Marjorie. He quoted Eliphas Levi, saying that “the love of the Magus for such things is insensate and may destroy him.” The same month, Parsons stepped down as head of the Agape Lodge and turned it over to Roy Leffingwell.
The Babalon Working failed; Marjorie did not have a magical child. But nine years later, she claimed to be Babalon herself and to have given birth on the Astral Plane to a magical child. While the Babalon Working was going on, Parsons, Betty, and Hubbard pooled money to purchase a yacht with the intention of reselling it for a profit; Parsons put up most of the funds. Betty and Hubbard deserted Parsons and left in the yacht. Parsons told Crowley he used magic to force them to return. Within the first few hours of their departure, Parsons said he performed a full EVOCATION to Bartzabel, the spirit of Mars, causing the yacht to be struck by a sudden squall. The severity of the storm ripped off the yacht’s sails and forced a return to port. Parsons seized the damaged boat but lost most of the money he had invested.
Parsons retreated from magic and focused instead on his rocketry career. He was targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and in 1948 lost his security clearance. FBI documents describe Parson’s magical activities as a “mythic love cult,” but the agency maintained that the real reason for their investigation was his ties to known Communists. His clearance was restored a year later in March 1949. In January 1952 Parsons permanently lost his security clearance. Meanwhile, on the magical front, he decided to pursue contact with his Holy Guardian Angel. His efforts, he told Germer in a letter, produced “acute psychosis . . . manic hysteria and depressing melancholic stupor.”
With the loss of his security clearance, Parsons found part-time work for a powder company and did explosives consulting for films. On June 17, 1952, Parsons was working in his garage at home when two violent explosions ripped through it. Severely injured, he survived the explosions and was conscious when he was dragged out by neighbors. He died in a hospital about a half hour later, saying, “I wasn’t done.” Informed of her son’s death, Ruth was shattered. Within a few hours, she committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills.
The explosion was said to be an accident due to Parsons’s alleged mishandling of cordite and mercury fulminate, a sensitive detonator. But those familiar with his magical interests thought that the explosion resulted from his ongoing efforts to manifest Babalon.
Further Reading:
Carter, John. Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2004.
King, Francis. Megatherion: The Magickal World of Aleister Crowley. New York: Creation Books, 2004.
SOURCE:
The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley Copyright © 2006 by Visionary Living, Inc.
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HOLY FATHER, YOU’RE NOT HELPING: THE PROBLEM WITH THE POPE’S PLAN TO CONSECRATE RUSSIA AND UKRAINE TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
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March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation... View MoreHOLY FATHER, YOU’RE NOT HELPING: THE PROBLEM WITH THE POPE’S PLAN TO CONSECRATE RUSSIA AND UKRAINE TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
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March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation, the celebration of the day that the Angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to the Virgin Mary to announce that she would bear Christ. It is a date of great significance to Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, one of the major feasts focused upon the Virgin Mary.
The Vatican has announced that this year on the Feast of the Annunciation the Pope will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. While it would be unfair to assume bad intentions, it’s yet another glaring misstep in the pontiff’s handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a stark, and extremely public reminder, of the West’s entirely unhelpful—and historically tone deaf—approach to Orthodox Christianity.
The Pope’s decision to carry out the consecration service dates to a series of appearances of the Virgin Mary reported by three shepherd children in the small village of Fatima, Portugal between the spring 1916 and the autumn of 1917. During the appearance, the children received a series of prophecies and requests, among them that Russia (then in the midst of the Bolshevik Revolution) would be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that Russia would be converted.
While it’s easy for Western Christians, particularly for Catholics, to see this prophecy and subsequent consecration, as a response to the threat of atheist Communism facing Russia at the time of the apparition, it’s difficult for Orthodox Christians to not see the prophecy that Russia will be “converted” in the light of the now nearly-thousand years of tension (and sometimes open warfare) between Western and Eastern Christendom, a history that’s frequently seen the Catholic Church operate in the role of aggressor or opportunist.
This history begins roughly in 1054, the formal break in communion between the Latin Western Christian Church, headed by the Roman papacy, and the four historical patriarchates of the Eastern Church. The split was preceded by a series of disputes concerning both church governance and theology, chief among them contention over the pope’s claim to universal authority.
A number of violent incidents over two hundred years, from both sides of Christianity’s two halves, helped solidify the separation. These included the Byzantine massacre of Catholics living in Constantinople in 1182, the sacking of Thessaloniki by Catholics in 1185, and their pillage of Constantinople in 1204. Finally, the establishment of Rome-allied episcopacies in traditionally Eastern Christian territory captured by Crusaders further cemented the divide.
While the history of Western Christianity since that time has been a history of relative power and prominence, the Eastern Christian world has had a rockier ride, from Ottoman occupation to Soviet repression. Throughout all this time, it’s difficult not to notice that the West—the rich, powerful twin—has seldom missed an opportunity to leverage Eastern Christian misfortune to its own advantage. The Crusades themselves are an excellent example, but Catholic power grabs in places like Ukraine during the 16th century around the fall of Constantinople also demonstrate this problem.
Which brings us back to Thursday’s consecration. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was free from Original Sin, is not a doctrine shared between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In fact, it’s only been an official part of Catholic teaching since 1854. While the Eastern churches agree with Catholics that Mary was free from personal sin, the fact that the Eastern church has never accepted Augustine’s teaching on Original Sin means that the doctrine is superfluous for Eastern Christian theology.
The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is also one of the most hotly contested theological issues in ecumenical dialogue between East and West, right up there with papal primacy and the filioque (the “and the son” part of the Nicene Creed)—two issues that helped drive the split in the first place.
In light of this history, consecrating two countries with overwhelmingly Orthodox majorities to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, particularly in response to a prophecy that one of those countries will be converted is, at best, problematic. On an entirely pragmatic level, these kinds of actions feed the fears of the most reactionary elements in the Orthodox world, for whom the fear of Western encroachment is very real. As these are the forces that we’re all collectively interested in keeping at bay, adding fuel to their fire seems ill-advised.
Also, not to steal Chrissy Stroop’s gig, but it’s really not okay to make other people your non-consensual missionary project. And it’s nonsensical to try to convert a person—or a country—that’s already converted. Unless you don’t think they really are converted; and as we’ve already discussed, in light of the history of East-West Christian relations it’s easy to see this ritual as implying exactly that.
And that’s ignoring the fact that consecrating Ukraine and Russia at the same time, because of a prophecy about Russia, is probably less than ideal in the midst of a war in which the independence of Ukraine is at issue.
To be clear, there’s almost certainly no ill intent on the part of Pope Francis, the Vatican, or all the well meaning Catholics cheering this on. They all probably believe they’re doing a very good thing. But that’s the problem of making other people—particularly other people with whom your people already have a tense history—your project. Also, it’s genuinely a good idea to check with people before you try to help, whether materially or metaphysically. Sometimes people don’t want your kind of help.
I mean, why didn’t the Vatican suggest special papal-led prayers to the Virgin Mary for Russia and Ukraine, perhaps including the Eastern Christian bishops resident in Rome? That could be worked out, in theory. Marian devotion is shared between the two ancient halves of the Christian world. Why include so explicitly a doctrine that can be seen as a symbol of Catholic attempts to change Orthodox theology? It’s simply tone deaf and insensitive to the wounds of history.
So, (and I genuinely cannot believe I’m writing this) Pope Francis: Russia and Ukraine are #NotYourMissionField. Please try to find another way to help.
Image: Twitter
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March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation... View MoreHOLY FATHER, YOU’RE NOT HELPING: THE PROBLEM WITH THE POPE’S PLAN TO CONSECRATE RUSSIA AND UKRAINE TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
Image: Twitter
FacebookTweet
March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation, the celebration of the day that the Angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to the Virgin Mary to announce that she would bear Christ. It is a date of great significance to Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, one of the major feasts focused upon the Virgin Mary.
The Vatican has announced that this year on the Feast of the Annunciation the Pope will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. While it would be unfair to assume bad intentions, it’s yet another glaring misstep in the pontiff’s handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a stark, and extremely public reminder, of the West’s entirely unhelpful—and historically tone deaf—approach to Orthodox Christianity.
The Pope’s decision to carry out the consecration service dates to a series of appearances of the Virgin Mary reported by three shepherd children in the small village of Fatima, Portugal between the spring 1916 and the autumn of 1917. During the appearance, the children received a series of prophecies and requests, among them that Russia (then in the midst of the Bolshevik Revolution) would be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that Russia would be converted.
While it’s easy for Western Christians, particularly for Catholics, to see this prophecy and subsequent consecration, as a response to the threat of atheist Communism facing Russia at the time of the apparition, it’s difficult for Orthodox Christians to not see the prophecy that Russia will be “converted” in the light of the now nearly-thousand years of tension (and sometimes open warfare) between Western and Eastern Christendom, a history that’s frequently seen the Catholic Church operate in the role of aggressor or opportunist.
This history begins roughly in 1054, the formal break in communion between the Latin Western Christian Church, headed by the Roman papacy, and the four historical patriarchates of the Eastern Church. The split was preceded by a series of disputes concerning both church governance and theology, chief among them contention over the pope’s claim to universal authority.
A number of violent incidents over two hundred years, from both sides of Christianity’s two halves, helped solidify the separation. These included the Byzantine massacre of Catholics living in Constantinople in 1182, the sacking of Thessaloniki by Catholics in 1185, and their pillage of Constantinople in 1204. Finally, the establishment of Rome-allied episcopacies in traditionally Eastern Christian territory captured by Crusaders further cemented the divide.
While the history of Western Christianity since that time has been a history of relative power and prominence, the Eastern Christian world has had a rockier ride, from Ottoman occupation to Soviet repression. Throughout all this time, it’s difficult not to notice that the West—the rich, powerful twin—has seldom missed an opportunity to leverage Eastern Christian misfortune to its own advantage. The Crusades themselves are an excellent example, but Catholic power grabs in places like Ukraine during the 16th century around the fall of Constantinople also demonstrate this problem.
Which brings us back to Thursday’s consecration. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was free from Original Sin, is not a doctrine shared between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In fact, it’s only been an official part of Catholic teaching since 1854. While the Eastern churches agree with Catholics that Mary was free from personal sin, the fact that the Eastern church has never accepted Augustine’s teaching on Original Sin means that the doctrine is superfluous for Eastern Christian theology.
The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is also one of the most hotly contested theological issues in ecumenical dialogue between East and West, right up there with papal primacy and the filioque (the “and the son” part of the Nicene Creed)—two issues that helped drive the split in the first place.
In light of this history, consecrating two countries with overwhelmingly Orthodox majorities to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, particularly in response to a prophecy that one of those countries will be converted is, at best, problematic. On an entirely pragmatic level, these kinds of actions feed the fears of the most reactionary elements in the Orthodox world, for whom the fear of Western encroachment is very real. As these are the forces that we’re all collectively interested in keeping at bay, adding fuel to their fire seems ill-advised.
Also, not to steal Chrissy Stroop’s gig, but it’s really not okay to make other people your non-consensual missionary project. And it’s nonsensical to try to convert a person—or a country—that’s already converted. Unless you don’t think they really are converted; and as we’ve already discussed, in light of the history of East-West Christian relations it’s easy to see this ritual as implying exactly that.
And that’s ignoring the fact that consecrating Ukraine and Russia at the same time, because of a prophecy about Russia, is probably less than ideal in the midst of a war in which the independence of Ukraine is at issue.
To be clear, there’s almost certainly no ill intent on the part of Pope Francis, the Vatican, or all the well meaning Catholics cheering this on. They all probably believe they’re doing a very good thing. But that’s the problem of making other people—particularly other people with whom your people already have a tense history—your project. Also, it’s genuinely a good idea to check with people before you try to help, whether materially or metaphysically. Sometimes people don’t want your kind of help.
I mean, why didn’t the Vatican suggest special papal-led prayers to the Virgin Mary for Russia and Ukraine, perhaps including the Eastern Christian bishops resident in Rome? That could be worked out, in theory. Marian devotion is shared between the two ancient halves of the Christian world. Why include so explicitly a doctrine that can be seen as a symbol of Catholic attempts to change Orthodox theology? It’s simply tone deaf and insensitive to the wounds of history.
So, (and I genuinely cannot believe I’m writing this) Pope Francis: Russia and Ukraine are #NotYourMissionField. Please try to find another way to help.
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