I stumbled onto an interesting paper by David A. Plaisted, professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, which discusses the estimates of dead from the Inquisition. Perhaps most striking was this quote:
Bertrand, the Papal Legate, wrote a letter to Pope Honorius, desiring to be recalled from the croisade against the primitive witnesses and contenders for the faith. In that authentic document, he stated, that within fifteen years, 300,000 of those crossed soldiers had become victims to their own fanatical and blind fury. Their unrelenting and insatiable thirst for Christian and human blood spared none within the reach of their impetuous despotism and unrestricted usurpations. On the river Garonne, a conflict occurred between the croisaders, with their ecclesiastical leaders, the Prelates of Thoulouse and Comminges; who solemnly promised to all their vassals the full pardon of sin, and the possession of heaven immediately, if they were slain in the battle. The Spanish monarch and his confederates acknowledged that they must have lost 400,000 men, in that tremendous conflict, and immediately after it-but the Papists boasted, that including the women and children, they had massacred more than two millions of the human family, in that solitary croisade against the southwest part of France.
— Bourne, George, The American Textbook of Popery, Griffith & Simon, Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 402-403.
Full pardon of sin and possession of heaven if they were slain in battle? That sounds scarily familiar…
I miss food from the Horn of Africa. The other night I was talking with a cab driver and he told me about his escape from Somalia to Kenya, and life in the refugee camps. As we started discussing the hundreds of thousands of Somalis now living in Minnesota, I remembered long dark nights in Minneapolis and a number of wonderful meals based on Injera…
Time to prepare and cook: 40 minutes
Servings: 6 (12 flatbread)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups teff
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 eggs, beaten
3 cups club soda
Use a large bowl to whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt. Then add the eggs and club soda until you have a smooth batter (like American pancakes).
Add a touch of oil to a 10 inch frying pan and put over a medium heat. Once hot, drop 1/3 cup of the batter and rotate the pan to spread it thinly over the whole bottom. Cook until it has bubbles and appears dry on top (2 to 3 minutes). Do not flip.
Slide the bread onto a plate and cover with a kitchen towel. Keep it warm by putting in an oven (200F) as you finish cooking the rest of the batter.
From 1961 to 1971, Tsegaye was Artistic Director of the Ethiopian National Theatre, and editor at the office of Oxford University Press in Addis Ababa through 1972. In 1973, he served as General Manager of the Ethiopian National Theatre, and was later appointed Vice-Minister of Culture and Sports in 1975. A year later, Tsegaye was arrested as a result of the military government’s reaction to his plays, and was imprisoned without formal charges being brought against him.
The Boston Globe reported last April that the US apparently not only hired dishonest contractors, but managed to pass immunity laws to prevent anyone from holding those contractors accountable:
American contractors swindled hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds, but so far there is no way for Iraq’s government to recoup the money, according to US investigators and civil attorneys tracking fraud claims against contractors.
Courts in the United States are beginning to force contractors to repay reconstruction funds stolen from the American government. But legal roadblocks have prevented Iraq from recovering funds that were seized from the Iraqi government by the US-led coalition and then paid to contractors who failed to do the work.
A US law that allows citizens to recover money from dishonest contractors protects only the US government, not foreign governments.
In addition, an Iraqi law created by the Coalition Provisional Authority days before it ceded sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004 gives American contractors immunity from prosecution in Iraq.
Some of the examples given in the article are hard to believe. Old Iraqi cranes spray-painted to look like new ones? Trucks that did not work? Importing gasoline into Iraq for Halliburton to rebuild the oil infrastructure? And then there are the typical cases of diverting money from schools and police stations to cars, guns and personal accounts…
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995