Marcus Aurelius statue, Brown University. This video would be better if it actually showed the statue for more than two milliseconds near the end.
"A group at Brown University is asking the university to remove its Caesar Augustus and Marcus Aurelius statues from campus because they are seen as symbols of 'white supremacy and white civilization.'" Source: Campus Reform (Nov. 5, 2020).
"On October 28, Decolonization at Brown University and Brown History of Art and Architecture [professor] Dietrich Neumann made a statement to Brown’s Undergraduate Council of Students regarding the initiative to remove the Caesar Augustus and Marcus Aurelius statues from campus which they see as a symbol of white supremacy, according to the Brown Daily Herald.
The Augustus statue was unveiled in 1906 and the statue of Marcus Aurelius dates back to 1908. But screw tradition. They have to be removed because a small but noisy group of campus radicals demands it.
Comment: The university will cave in, of course. God forbid they come to the defense of symbols of western civilization. I'm not sure where the issue stands right now, but somebody proposed moving the statues to a location near the campus's Slavery Memorial. Don't ask me why. The logic behind that proposal escapes me -- maybe the slavery memorial emits some kind of magic aura that would cancel out the toxic whiteness of the Roman statues or something -- but never mind that. The social justice warriors oppose the idea, of course. They want the statues replaced altogether with "new works of art commissioned from local Black and Indigenous artists."
I have a better idea. Instead of just getting rid of a couple of statues, the entire university should be shut down because of its self-admitted historical ties with slavery. That doesn't bother me in the slightest, of course, but if the school's going to start canceling its own traditions in the name of social justice, they might as well go all the way.
Video from Oct. 16, 2020. Closed-captions helpful.
"The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is attempting to erase the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan from Chinese history according to a report this weekend by human rights magazine Bitter Winter."Source: Breitbart (Nov. 10, 2020).
"'...During the past month, fourteen stone tablets summarizing the life story of Genghis Khan and his achievements were painted over or destroyed in Genghis Khan Square in the Hailar district of Hulun Buir prefecture-level city, in Inner Mongolia. Protests of the local population were ignored,' Bitter Winter revealed on Nov. 7.
"'In a middle school in Hexigten Banner under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city of Chifen, also in Inner Mongolia, portraits of Genghis Khan and slogans promoting Mongolian culture have been replaced with the portraits of characters of Han Chinese history and slogans promoting Han culture,' the magazine reported.
"The History Museum of Nantes, France abruptly canceled a long-planned Genghis Khan exhibit on October 13 after the Chinese Cultural Affairs Bureau demanded that the museum alter the exhibition’s title, removing the words 'Genghis Khan,' 'empire,' and 'Mongol.'" [see top video]
Note:According to RFI, "Bertrand Guillet, Director of the museum, said in a statement that the Chinese also wanted 'control over all our productions, texts, maps, the catalogue, press releases.'"
How long will it be before the Chinese pull this statue down?
Comment: The censorship of history is all too familiar in the United States and Europe (and to anyone who's ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four). The US federal government hasn't been quite so blatant as China in its attempts to erase "problematic" history, but members of congress have already called for the removal of Confederate statues in Washington D.C. and if the far left gets into power it won't be long before the Taliban-like destruction of statues, monuments and the censorship of textbooks and museum displays becomes national policy. It's already happening on the state and local level, of course. This is an incredibly dangerous trend because the intent isn't just to erase history but to erase the people who made it.
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." -- George Orwell
The Achaemenid Empire was the largest empire by percentage of the world's population.
What was the largest empire in history? It all depends.
"According to Guinness World Records, which seems as good an authority as any, the answer is the Achaemenid Empire in 480 B.C. Also known as the Persian Empire, it's estimated that 44% of the world's population was ruled from the Achaemenid throne in what is now modern-day Iran, making it history's largest empire by this measure." Source: Live Science.
"However, perhaps unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees. That's because the share of the global population is only one way to measure the expanse of an empire, and some question whether it's really fair to use that metric when comparing empires from different time periods. For example, when the Achaemenid Empire was at its height, there were only 112.4 million people alive. The British ruled over a comparatively meager quarter of the world's population in 1901, but by then the global population had swelled to 1.6 billion people. Is it reasonable to compare the British and Achaemenid empires with this metric? Or are we comparing apples to oranges?
"That's without getting into the pros and cons of the other ways to measure size: largest land mass; largest contiguous land mass; largest army; largest gross domestic product; and so on."
If you focus on population size alone, the British Empire with around 412 million people was definitely the largest empire in history. It was also the largest in terms of land mass, covering around 35.5 million square kilometers. The Achaemenid Empire didn't even come close. The British Empire was scattered around the globe, however. If you look at contiguous land mass, I'd guess that Alexander the Great's short-lived empire, for example, was probably bigger than the British Empire and at least as big as the Achaemenid Empire.
The Achaemenid Empire covered a lot of ground, true, but it's still way down on the list of empires that controlled the largest dry land area, falling well behind the Mongol empire of the 13th and 14th centuries, which is usually described as the largest contiguous land empire in history.
Another way to look at the question is to consider which empires were the largest at the time. Using this metric, the Old Kingdom of Egypt (which wasn't very big at all) was the biggest in the world back in 2800 - 2400 BC, while the Achaemenid Empire was the biggest in 550 - 350 BC, just to name two examples. This is definitely a more important measure than which empires were the largest in history -- the ancient Egyptians, for instance, weren't in competition with the British. Like all nations, the Egyptians' power was relative to the other powers around them at the time.
Sheer size alone doesn't really mean that much, however. After all, it doesn't matter how large an empire is if its rulers can't hold it together. Alexander's empire was huge, for example, but it broke apart following his death because it was just too big to be stable. Size can actually be a weakness. In Alexander's case, his empire only lasted a few years, if that, but I'm not sure it really makes sense to talk about his "empire" in this sense at all because he was still in the process of consolidating his conquests when he died.
The most important measure of the strength of an empire is probably how long it lasted. The Achaemenid Empire survived for three or four hundred years, I think, around a hundred years longer than the larger Mongol Empire, but once you get into comparisons like this the situation gets extremely murky because it's not that easy to say when some of these empires actually started and when they fell apart. And the question gets even more complicated when you focus on uninterrupted states or uninterrupted forms of government. According to Guinness, for example, the Roman Empire is the longest lasting in history, but this assumes that the Eastern Roman Empire was actually a continuation of Rome and that could be debated endlessly.
If you focus on uninterrupted empires (a particular form of government), then the Roman empire only lasted around four or five hundred years. The Byzantine Empire, aka the Eastern Roman Empire, lasted another 874 years and the Empire of Japan (1703 years and counting) is at the top of the list, according to Eupedia, which goes into all of this in detail. If you look at uninterrupted states (which can have any form of government), then Ethiopia, of all places, is at the top of the Eupedia list, having been around for something like 2900 years. I have a hard time believing that Ethiopia has been a single state for all that time, however.
So what can be concluded from all this? Not much, really. The Achaemenid Empire was the largest empire in history if you focus on population as a percentage of world population at the time. The British Empire was the largest in terms of total population, the Mongol Empire the largest in terms of contiguous land mass, the Roman Empire the longest-lasting if you consider the Byzantine Empire part of the Roman Empire, but the Empire of Japan was/is the longest uninterrupted empire, etc. etc. Everything depends on the criteria and definitions you use, but one thing is clear enough: Whatever you call them -- empires, nations, states -- these power combinations have come and gone with startling regularity throughout history.
Where does the United States fit into this history? America is the third largest country in the modern world, twice as big as the Roman Empire at its height, supposedly. With its vast natural resources and military power, the US is sometimes considered to be a hyperpower like "the Achaemenid Empire, the Tang dynasty, the Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Dutch Empire, and the British Empire..." (Wikipedia) The United States is only around 244 years old, however -- assuming that it started in 1776 -- and has been in decline for at least 50 years now. The country is collapsing. That should be obvious. In fact, there's a good argument to be made that the US as a cultural organism has already collapsed. If historians still exist 2000 years from now they'll probably list the US in the middle-tier of great powers which rose to stupendous heights like the Achaemenid Empire and then fell apart after a couple of centuries, disappearing into the general background of historical white noise.
"The remains of a 1,200-year-old pagan temple to the Old Norse gods such as Thor and Odin have been discovered in Norway — a rare relic of the Viking religion built a few centuries before Christianity became dominant there." Source: Live Science.
"Archaeologists say the large wooden building — about 45 feet (14 meters) long, 26 feet (8 m) wide, and up to 40 feet (12 m) high — is thought to date from the end of the eighth century and was used for worship and sacrifices to gods during the midsummer and midwinter solstices."
Note: "The Old Norse religion was suppressed from the 11th century, when Norway's kings forcibly imposed the Christian religion and tore down or burned buildings like the god house at Ose to enforce worship in the new Christian churches."
The main factor in the growth of Christianity was the violent suppression of paganism. The destruction of this Norse god house is just one example of a process that was repeated all across the pagan world.
Charles Martel's victory over the Moors/Saracens at the Battle of Tours, one of the most critical battles in the history of the West, "rescued our ancestors of Britain and our neighbors of Gaul from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran," according to Gibbon. The importance of this battle can't be overestimated.
"Few battles are remembered over 1000 years after they are fought, but an exception is the battle of Poitiers [another name for the battle of Tours] in 732, where Charles Martel turned back a Muslim raid that, had it been allowed to continue, might have led to the conquest of Gaul." -- Fighting Techniques of the Medieval World, p. 19.
The battle of Tours checked the Muslims' advances into western Europe after they had carried out a long series of destructive incursions into north Africa, Spain, the Near East, and eastern Europe. In 719 AD, the forces of al-Hurr al-Thaqafi captured the southern French city of Narbonne, but were subsequently defeated by Duke Eudo of Aquitaine:
"The Muslims withdrew only to return in two years with a far larger army, which defeated Eudo and pursued him as far as Tours, the major religious center. In 732, between the towns of Tours and Poitiers, the two armies [the western forces now under the command of Charles Martel] faced one another for seven days without fighting," according to A History of the Middle Ages, by John M. Riddle (p. 147). The Muslims ran out of patience and attacked first, but "could not penetrate the Franks' lines." By nightfall, the Muslims withdrew.
If Martel hadn't defeated the Moors, western Europe would probably be Muslim today, but everything that goes around comes around and it's starting to look like the sacrifices those Frankish soldiers made were all in vain. Europe has degenerated to the point where its corrupt leaders are now welcoming the Muslims with open arms and European liberals are cheering them as they pour into their countries.
Video from 2015.
I wonder what Martel would have said if he'd known that huge crowds of Muslims would be praying in the streets of modern Paris, blocking traffic in a passive statement of political power with the full cooperation of the authorities? Would he have bothered to fight the Saracens if he'd known that modern Europeans would simply invite the Muslims into their countries, all in the name of "diversity" and "multiculturalism?"
Video from 2010.
1,283 years after the battle of Tours, the Muslims are achieving through immigration what they couldn't achieve through warfare in the Middle Ages. The Islamification of Europe is happening at an incredible rate. It was already well advanced before the latest "refugee crisis," which may turn out to have been the modern equivalent of the Germanic tribes pouring into the Roman Empire.
Video from 2015.
The "barbarians" who overran Rome had a lot in common with the Romans, however. Islam is a foreign and hostile religion, totally incompatible with western civilization. If something doesn't happen soon, Europe is finished, assuming that it isn't too late already. Betrayed by their own leaders, demoralized by the poison of Cultural Marxism, the decaying welfare states of western Europe seem to be committing cultural suicide. Are we witnessing the birth of the future state of Eurabia? Don't think it can't happen, because it is happening.
Charles Martel had it easy. He only had to stop a military invasion. The current crisis is something completely different.
"You won’t find it in history textbooks, but the Roman Empire’s rise to dominance in Egypt and the Middle East may have been influenced by a series of volcanic eruptions that reduced rainfall." Source: New Scientist (2016).
"These eruptions could have contributed to the sabotage and destruction of the Ptolemaic Kingdom on the Nile, paving the way for the rise of Cleopatra and the Roman Empire – and, ultimately, the modern Western world."
Comment: The theory is that volcanic eruptions changed global climate patterns enough to drastically reduce the amounts of rainfall in Ethiopia, leading to crop failures, substandard harvests and famine in Egypt which in turn led to widespread revolts that destabilized the Egyptian government of the Ptolemies.
The evidence for these eruptions comes from "spikes in sulphate contamination in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica, while dating of the uprisings came from historical accounts," according to New Scientist.
If this theory is correct, these eruptions were probably a contributing factor to the famines that led to so much unrest in Egypt, but the Ptolemaic Kingdom didn't fall due to bad weather or domestic turmoil alone. In the end, the Ptolemies lost their power and Egypt lost its independence - such as it was - because Cleopatra VII, herself a Ptolemy, chose the wrong side in the Roman civil war between Antony and Octavian.
During the later years of the Ptolemies, Egypt was only nominally an independent state. Rome depended on Egyptian grain and had been heavily involved in Egyptian internal politics long before Octavian defeated Antony at Actium in 31 BC and proceeded to annex Egypt. Poor harvests may have helped to destabilize the country, but there were other, more important factors involved.
"...as Rome relied more heavily on imports of grain from Egypt, the Romans took great interest in the political situation in the country. Continued Egyptian revolts, ambitious politicians, and powerful Syriac opponents from the Near East made this situation unstable, leading Rome to send forces to secure the country as a province of its empire." Source: Wikipedia.
After he defeated Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian's main concern was to stabilize Egypt, the bread-basket of Rome. Bad harvests led to domestic unrest, naturally, but the amount of rainfall in Egypt was only one detail in a much more complicated picture. The series of Syrian wars between the Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemies in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC, and the Roman civil wars that came later had a lot more to do with the destabilization of Egypt than the climate.
"For ages, the shadow of a volcano has hung over the fall of the Roman Republic. Ancient historians told of the Sun’s mysterious disappearance after Julius Caesar’s murder in 44 B.C.E., which was followed by bouts of cold and crop failures. Now, a team of scientists and historians has discovered that one of the largest known eruptions in history struck in 43 B.C.E. — potentially contributing to 2 years of weird weather and famine as the republic dissolved and the empire took shape." Source: Science Magazine (June 2020).
Comment: This eruption may very well have contributed to "2 years of weird weather and famine as the republic dissolved," but it didn't have anything to do with the fall of the republic. Caesar himself took care of that when he invaded Italy, fought a civil war with Pompey and assumed the role of dictator, becoming, in effect, the first princeps of the Roman Empire, a king in everything but name until he was killed by his enemies in an assassination that set off another round of civil wars which eventually led to the rise of Augustus.
If the dates are correct and the volcanic eruption occurred in 43 BC -- one year, more or less, after Caesar's murder -- then the republic was already dead and a change in the weather wouldn't have made any difference to its survival. In fact, the Roman republic was probably dead for all practical purposes long before Caesar ever came along. That form of government may have been effective in the years immediately following the overthrow of the last king in 509 BC, but it couldn't survive the rapid expansion of the state as Rome conquered its neighbors and moved on to become the superpower of the Mediterranean world.
"Tattooing has been practiced across the globe since at least Neolithic times, as evidenced by mummified preserved skin, ancient art, and the archaeological record. Both ancient art and archaeological finds of possible tattoo tools suggest tattooing was practiced by the Upper Paleolithic period in Europe. However, direct evidence for tattooing on mummified human skin extends only to the 4th millennium BC." Source: Wikipedia.
"... tattooed mummies have been recovered from at least 49 archaeological sites including locations in Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, western China, Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines, and the Andes." In 2016, Nature reported the discovery of "[a] mummy from ancient Egypt ... heavily tattooed with sacred symbols, which may have served to advertise and enhance the religious powers of the woman who received them more than 3,000 years ago."
According to Smithsonian Magazine (2007), "... the earliest known examples [of tattoos] were for a long time Egyptian and were present on several female mummies dated to c. 2000 B.C. But following the more recent discovery of [Otzi the Iceman] from the area of the Italian-Austrian border in 1991 and his tattoo patterns, this date has been pushed back a further thousand years when he was carbon-dated at around 5,200 years old."
Otzi had 61 tattoos, apparently. Whether these are still the oldest known tattoos remains to be seen:
"Although Ötzi is the oldest tattooed human ... this will likely change: Ötzi’s tattoos are indicative of social and/or therapeutic practices that predate him, and future archaeological finds and new techniques should someday lead to even older evidence of tattooed mummies." Source: Smithsonian (2015).
"Some tribal cultures traditionally created tattoos by cutting designs into the skin and rubbing the resulting wound with ink, ashes or other agents; some cultures continue this practice, which may be an adjunct to scarification. Some cultures create tattooed marks by hand-tapping the ink into the skin [next video] using sharpened sticks or animal bones (made like needles) with clay formed disks or, in modern times, needles." Source: Wikipedia.
Otzi the Iceman's tattoos may have been a form of acupuncture. According to the International Business Times (2015), "eighty per cent of [Otzi's] tattoos had been found along acupuncture meridians used to treat back pain and abdominal problems, which Otzi suffered from ... If correct, the tattoos would predate the first recorded use of acupuncture in China by 2,000 years."
"Pre-Christian Germanic, Celtic and other central and northern European tribes were often heavily tattooed, according to surviving accounts, but it may also have been normal paint. The Picts may have been tattooed (or scarified) with elaborate, war-inspired black or dark blue woad (or possibly copper for the blue tone) designs. Julius Caesar described these tattoos in Book V of his Gallic Wars (54 BC). Nevertheless, these may have been painted markings rather than tattoos." Source: Wikipedia.
Note: According to Caesar, "All the Britons dye their body with woad, which produces a blue color, and shave the whole of their bodies except the head and upper lip." (The Conquest of Gaul, Book V.14)
In Greece and Rome, tattoos were mostly used for identification purposes -- much like brands on cattle -- but this changed over the centuries, at least among certain classes of society:
"... amongst the Greeks and Romans, the use of tattoos or 'stigmata' as they were then called, seems to have been largely used as a means to mark someone as 'belonging' either to a religious sect or to an owner in the case of slaves or even as a punitive measure to mark them as criminals. It is therefore quite intriguing that during Ptolemaic times when a dynasty of Macedonian Greek monarchs ruled Egypt, the pharaoh himself, Ptolemy IV (221-205 B.C.), was said to have been tattooed with ivy leaves to symbolize his devotion to Dionysus, Greek god of wine and the patron deity of the royal house at that time. The fashion was also adopted by Roman soldiers and spread across the Roman Empire until the emergence of Christianity, when tattoos were felt to 'disfigure that made in God's image' and so were banned by the Emperor Constantine (A.D. 306-373)." Source: Smithsonian Magazine.
Closed-captions helpful.
Comment: Tattoos, piercings and scarification are usually associated with barbarian tribes and the lower orders of society. In the classical world, tattooing as a decorative art seems to have been practiced mostly by the more primitive cultures of Europe, Asia and the Orient. In a way, the popularity of tattoos in any given culture could be seen as an indicator of that culture's social development. The more barbaric the culture, the more tattoos. There also seems to have been an inverse relationship between tattoos and social status. In Greece and Rome, for instance, soldiers, slaves, criminals and some priests and acolytes were frequently tattooed, but I'd be amazed to find out that someone like Tacitus had a tramp stamp.
Tattooing seems to become more widespread in civilizations on their way down. For instance, "the decline of the Ptolemaic dynasty began under the reign of Ptolemy IV," the tattooed Egyptian pharaoh, according to Wikipedia. This is just a theory, but I'd say that the rising popularity of tattoos is a symptom of cultural decay. For example, I don't think it's an accident that the use of tattoos "spread across the Roman Empire until the emergence of Christianity" or that tattoos are becoming a cultural norm in modern Europe and the United States. I guess you could call this the Tattoo Theory of Social Collapse. As a civilization declines into the Third World, more and more people start to cover themselves with body art. I have no idea why this would happen, but maybe the masses are responding in an unconscious way to the barbarism that is slowly engulfing them.
Video from 2009. Edgerton searched for the site back in the Sixties.
"There is little to see today of Helike, just a few walls and artifacts scraped clean by archaeologists. The great Greek city, famed across the classical world, sunk into the coastal mud of the Gulf of Corinth in 373 BC during a terrible earthquake. Writers still recalled its fate hundreds of years later." Source: Archaeology News Network (2019).
According to Wikipedia, "Helike was founded in the Bronze Age, becoming the principal city of Achaea. The poet Homer states that the city of Helike participated in the Trojan War as a part of Agamemnon's forces. Later, following its fall to the Achaeans, Helike led the Achaean League, an association that joined twelve neighboring cities in an area including today's town of Aigio. Helike, also known as Dodekapolis (from the Greek words dodeka meaning twelve and polis meaning city), became a cultural and religious center with its own coinage."
In 2001, after decades of searching, the ruins of the city were discovered "buried in an ancient lagoon near the village of Rizomylos. To further confirm that the discovered site belongs to Helike, the earthquake destruction layer consisting of cobblestones, clay roof tiles, and pottery was uncovered in 2012. This destruction layer is in good agreement with ancient texts on the location of Helike and earthquake effects to the city." (Wikipedia)
The search for Helike is a story in itself and led to several other interesting discoveries. For instance, "in 1979 in the Corinthian Gulf, the Greek undersea explorer Alexis Papadopoulos discovered a sunken town and recorded his findings in a documentary film which shows walls, fallen roofs, roof tiles, streets, etc. at a depth of between 25 and 45 m" and a 1994 magnetometer survey "carried out in the midplain of the [Helike delta] revealed the outlines of a buried building. This target (now known as the Klonis site) was excavated and a large Roman building with standing walls was found. Also a well-preserved settlement of the early bronze age was uncovered." (Wikipedia) More information can be found here.
Next video (2009) shows the discovery of an ancient Roman artifact from a dig conducted during the hunt for Helike. I'm not sure if this particular site was Helike or turned out to be something else.
Helike is commonly referred to as a "real Atlantis." This thriving city was literally destroyed overnight:
"One night during the winter of 373 B.C., the city of Helike was obliterated. Some signs of the city’s impending doom were recorded, including the appearance of ‘immense columns of flames’ and the mass migration of small animals from the coast to the mountains several days prior to the disaster. A major earthquake, followed by a large tsunami from the Gulf of Corinth, wiped the city of Helike from the face of the earth. The rescue party that came in the following morning found no survivors." (Ancient Origins)
The sunken city could still be seen under the water for hundreds of years:
"Around 174 AD the traveler Pausanias visited a coastal site still called Helike, located seven kilometres southeast of Aigio, and reported that the walls of the ancient city were still visible under water, 'but not so plainly now as they were once, because they are corroded by the salt water'." (Wikipedia)
"For centuries after, its submerged ruins could still be seen. Roman tourists frequently sailed over the site, admiring the city's statuary. Later the site silted over and the location was lost to memory."
Video from Aug. 2019. These attacks have been going on for years now.
"Vatican City, Sep 8, 2020 / 06:30 am MT (CNA).- Attacks on churches in France are back to their 'normal' level following a nationwide lockdown, according to an organization led by young Catholics." (Catholic News Agency)
Note: "Since 2017, the Paris-based L’Observatoire de la Christianophobie (Observatory of Christianophobia) has recorded anti-Christian incidents in France month by month on interactive maps. The most recent map available, for August 2020, shows 11 incidents, comprising six acts of vandalism and five thefts. The Observatory recorded nine disturbances on its map for August 2019."
Video from Sept. 10, 2020.
"T. CATHARINES, Ontario, September 9, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — A tabernacle stolen from a Canadian Catholic cathedral early Tuesday morning was found Wednesday lying in a canal — but the consecrated Hosts that had been in it were nowhere to be seen.
"Two people were caught on surveillance cameras breaking into St. Catherine of Alexandria Cathedral about 4:30 A.M. on September 8, Catholic News Agency reported."
Note: Over the years, there have been dozens of cases in Canada and the US of thieves stealing tabernacles for whatever reason. Motives seem to range from simple vandalism to host desecration, general anti-Catholic sentiment and theft for financial gain (some of these tabernacles are valuable or apparently valuable historical relics). In some cases, Satanists may have been after the consecrated wafers for ritual use:
"... a Black Mass takes the Catholic Mass and inverts it, intentionally mocking the Catholic celebration. Participants often use a consecrated Eucharistic host and desecrate it, using it in obscene ways. This is one of the reasons why tabernacles in Catholic churches have locks and why some parishes have an usher stand next to a communion line. Both policies aim at protecting the Eucharist from being used in a Black Mass." (Wikipedia)
Video from Sept. 17, 2020.
"A statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe was vandalized at Shrine Church of Our Lady of Solace. Praying for the church, as parishioners come together to raise funds to repair the statue important to the whole #ConeyIsland community. @TabletNewspaper https://t.co/aBkhpnClbF." - — Diocese of Brooklyn (@BrooklynDiocese) September 16, 2020. (CBS New York).
Video from Sept. 15, 2020.
"EL PASO, Texas, September 17, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – In yet another instance of vandalism directed at churches and religious symbols, a 30-year-old man on Tuesday toppled and destroyed a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus located on the high altar of the cathedral in El Paso, Texas.
"St. Patrick Cathedral, north of downtown, was vandalized on Sept. 16 at around 10 am, the diocese announced on Instagram. 'A suspect came into the sanctuary at St. Patrick Cathedral and destroyed the almost 90-year-old statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was located in the center behind the main altar of the church. The church was open and available for prayer.'" (LifeSite News)
Comment: These are only a few of the incidents which have been reported this month. A simple search will turn up hundreds of cases stretching back for years. Vandalism, arson, attacks on priests and in some cases mass shootings have been taking place in churches all around the world for some time now, and the Catholic church seems to be a prime target. I haven't been able to find any statistical evidence to support this conclusion, but my impression is that these attacks have been increasing dramatically for the last decade. Maybe that just reflects the fact that they're being reported more often -- I don't know -- but some sources believe that "these shocking events are undeniable proof that religious hostility is rising across America." (First Liberty) Whatever the case, these attacks are just another symptom of the ongoing collapse of the West.
The Battle Of Tours & The Modern Islamification Of Europe
Charles Martel's victory over the Moors/Saracens at the Battle of Tours, one of the most critical battles in the history of the West, "rescued our ancestors of Britain and our neighbors of Gaul from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran," according to Gibbon. The importance of this battle can't be overestimated.
"Few battles are remembered over 1000 years after they are fought, but an exception is the battle of Poitiers [another name for the battle of Tours] in 732, where Charles Martel turned back a Muslim raid that, had it been allowed to continue, might have led to the conquest of Gaul." -- Fighting Techniques of the Medieval World, p. 19.
Note: this battle of Poitiers shouldn't be confused with the battle of Poitiers that took place during the Hundred Years' War.
The battle of Tours checked the Muslims' advances into western Europe after they had carried out a long series of destructive incursions into north Africa, Spain, the Near East, and eastern Europe. In 719 AD, the forces of al-Hurr al-Thaqafi captured the southern French city of Narbonne, but were subsequently defeated by Duke Eudo of Aquitaine:
"The Muslims withdrew only to return in two years with a far larger army, which defeated Eudo and pursued him as far as Tours, the major religious center. In 732, between the towns of Tours and Poitiers, the two armies [the western forces now under the command of Charles Martel] faced one another for seven days without fighting," according to A History of the Middle Ages, by John M. Riddle (p. 147). The Muslims ran out of patience and attacked first, but "could not penetrate the Franks' lines." By nightfall, the Muslims withdrew.
If Martel hadn't defeated the Moors, western Europe would probably be Muslim today, but everything that goes around comes around and it's starting to look like the sacrifices those Frankish soldiers made were all in vain. Europe has degenerated to the point where its corrupt leaders are now welcoming the Muslims with open arms and European liberals are cheering them as they pour into their countries.
Video from 2015.
I wonder what Martel would have said if he'd known that huge crowds of Muslims would be praying in the streets of modern Paris, blocking traffic in a passive statement of political power with the full cooperation of the authorities? Would he have bothered to fight the Saracens if he'd known that modern Europeans would simply invite the Muslims into their countries, all in the name of "diversity" and "multiculturalism?"
Video from 2010.
1,283 years after the battle of Tours, the Muslims are achieving through immigration what they couldn't achieve through warfare in the Middle Ages. The Islamification of Europe is happening at an incredible rate. It was already well advanced before the latest "refugee crisis," which may turn out to have been the modern equivalent of the Germanic tribes pouring into the Roman Empire.
Video from 2015.
The "barbarians" who overran Rome had a lot in common with the Romans, however. Islam is a foreign and hostile religion, totally incompatible with western civilization. If something doesn't happen soon, Europe is finished, assuming that it isn't too late already. Betrayed by their own leaders, demoralized by the poison of Cultural Marxism, the decaying welfare states of western Europe seem to be committing cultural suicide. Are we witnessing the birth of the future state of Eurabia? Don't think it can't happen, because it is happening.
Charles Martel had it easy. He only had to stop a military invasion. The current crisis is something completely different.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Ancient Warfare, Collapse, Commentary, Culture, Current Affairs, Europe, Medieval, Religion, Videos | Permalink