Accusations Against Frank Pavone: Analysis

 From Arise! Let Us Be Going!:

 I have written at great length on numerous occasions about insults being hurled against the most corrupt sinners by Jesus and his forerunner, the greatest of all the prophets, and by others in the Sacred Scriptures. These insults of Jesus and John and others have theological and juridic import, such as these sinners being liable to being damned by God to hell forever. But Jesus is God and none of the prophets are God, even if they are the voice for God Himself. Father Pavone is not God. So, let’s use as an example John the Baptist, another non-God. John is not being sinful in this example. He is not blaspheming. He is the voice of the Holy Spirit. I ask people not to blaspheme in saying that the Holy Spirit is sinful. Let’s get into this:

Let’s take a look at Mt 12:34 or 23:33 – γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν – John’s “brood of vipers” insult. Oops! Those are Jesus’ own words. Let’s see, how about Lk 3:7 and Mt 3:7 – γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν – indeed John’s “brood of vipers” insult. What’s that all about? It says that those he is thus insulting are willingly demon possessed blasphemers who will be, get this, they will be damned by God unless they repent. Let’s say it so that we can understand, the greatest of all prophets says that these sinners are God damned. Just like that. Yep. (Read more.)

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The Islamic World’s Perspective on the French Revolution

 From The Collector:

France and the Islamic world enjoyed a close relationship since the Crusades. Both sides benefited from their multilayered contacts, influencing each other in differing fields. This reciprocal relationship was so significant that the Islamic societies called the entire Europe “Frangistan” (The Land of the Franks). Sociopolitical and economic developments in the sixteenth century facilitated their close ties, even leading to alliances for France, notably with the Ottoman Empire. It eventually prepared the ground for the wide-ranging impacts of the French Revolution on the Islamic Empires.

These empires experienced socioeconomic and political problems since the eighteenth century. When the Ottomans were at war with Russia and Austria, Selim III became the new sultan in 1789, and the Qajar tribe under Mirza (Agha) Muhammad revolted against the ruling dynasty (Zand) in the same year, demolishing it after a civil war in Persia.

 In this context, Ottoman and Persian authors of the Islamic world differed in perceiving the French Revolution. While Ottoman ambassadors viewed the American Revolution and fiscal crisis as the main reason for the French Revolution, Persian travelers regarded the suffering of ordinary people under royal pressure as its leading causes. Therefore, the Islamic world had different responses to the French Revolution which were complicated. (Read more.)

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Christmastime in 1960s Japan

 From JSTOR Daily:

Anthropologist David W. Plath observed a growing tradition of celebrating Christmas in Japan in the 1960s. Originally introduced by missionaries in the sixteenth century, the holiday and its trappings only really gained traction in the nineteenth century.

“By the 1870s some famous Tokyo stores such as Maruzen and the Meiji-ya were displaying Christmas decorations and were importing Christmas cards and gifts,” Plath noted, and by the 1920s, “Christmas was percolating downward and outward into the lower classes and rural regions.”

 The years of US occupation after World War II more directly inserted Christmas into Japanese popular culture, and Plath found that in the post-occupation era, “Christmas has not only been encouraged by the mass media and the retail merchants; it has further been encouraged by school English readers…with their chapters on an American family Christmas, or again by school teachers who sometimes praise the event as ‘democratic.’”

Christmas is traditionally a religious holiday, but the embrace of it across the archipelago indicated a secular significance as well. Plath noted that in a survey of people living in the Nagano Prefecture, around half of the respondents said they had a Christmas tree, even if they practiced another religion.

“Christmas usually is listed in calendars issued by Shinto and Buddhist organizations in Japan, which apparently do not interpret it as a religious threat,” Plath explained. He even found evidence of attempts to make December 25, the Anglo-American Christmas (as opposed to a December 6 St. Nicholas Day), a national holiday to be known as “International Goodwill Day.” The proposal prompted “several newspapers to wonder whether such a gesture would be regarded as international goodwill by people in Islamic and Buddhist nations.” (Read more.)

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'Deeply Disturbing'

 From Scottish Daily Express:

A controversial move to label paedophiles as "Minor-Attracted People" in a top-level report has been defended by Police Scotland, with the force suggesting the EU was to blame. Chief Constable Iain Livingstone's annual year end report refers to child abusers as Minor-Attracted People (MAPs). The move comes amid wider concerns by campaigners over what they see as attempts to rebrand paedophilia as a harmless sexual preference. A spokesman for the force stressed that MAPs is not a term they routinely use to describe child abusers and said that its use in the report had to be understood in context. He explained that the reference to MAPs was in relation to the force's engagement with the European Union's Horizon Europe Project – Prevention of Child Sexual Exploitation. The report states: "The project's main agenda is to develop understanding and approach to avoid the victimisation of children by engaging Minor-Attracted People (MAPs) and providing them with the necessary support, treatment and guidance to help prevent criminal activities." (Read more.)

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Catholic Recusant Poet: Edmund Bolton

 From Stephanie Mann:

Because I discovered Mrs. Dorothy Lawson's father, Henry Constable, the poet, I learned about one of Constable's contemporaries and friends, Edmund Bolton. Bolton was a poet and historian, born in 1575. According to Father Herbert Thurston, SJ in the Catholic Encyclopedia, he died circa 1633 and

He seems to have been born of Catholic parents in Leicestershire, and must have been of good family and position, for he claims to have continued "many years on his own charge a free commoner at Trinity Hall, Cambridge", and after going to London to study law to have lived there "in the, best and choicest company of gentlemen". There can be no doubt that there was a strong Catholic element among the lawyers of the Inner Temple (Richard Southwell, the father of the martyr, might be named as one example among many), and the tone of the drama and much of the lighter literature of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period shows that the Bohemian society into which Bolton and his fellows were thrown was often pronouncedly papist. But while many who for a while were Romanizers, like his friend Ben Jonson, ultimately fell away, Bolton, much to his credit, remained stanch to his principles. Of his ability and zeal in the pursuit of knowledge there can be no question. He was the friend of Cotton and Camden; whose antiquarian researches he shared, and as a writer of verses he was associated with Sidney, Spenser, Raleigh, and others in the publication of "England's Helicon". Many influential friends, including for example the Duke, then Marquess, of Buckingham, tried to help him in his pecuniary embarrassments, but there seems no doubt that his Catholicism stood in the way of his making a living by literature.

(Read more.)

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An Australian-Designed Brain Implant

 From Zero Hedge:

Clinical trials are currently underway in the United States and Australia with Opie saying the procedure was minimally invasive—a factor he believes sets it apart from Musk’s Neuralink.

“We don’t need to remove the scalp and skull or put electrodes directly into delicate brain tissue,” he said in comments obtained by AAP.

“We’ve come up with a clever way of getting to the right place in the brain just by using the body’s naturally occurring highways and blood vessels.” He added this ensured patients recovered faster as well from the procedure. So far, four Australian paralysis patients have received implants since undergoing the procedure at Royal Melbourne Hospital in 2020.

“All of those patients were able to control a computer with their mind,” he said. “And there were no serious device-related effects.” The first U.S. patient was treated in July 2022 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York after Synchron received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year. In contrast, Musk’s Neuralink has yet to receive approval from the body and is also facing questions over potential animal welfare violations. Musk had wanted to start human trials in six months, yet the billionaire is also reported to have approached Synchron about a potential investment. (Read more.)

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Till (2022)

Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till-Mobley and Jalyn Hall as Emmett Till

 

The real Emmett and his mother Mamie

 

 I could not get anyone to watch Till with me so I watched it alone on Christmas Day while recovering from Covid. Knowing what it was about caused me to be numb with horror from the beginning, a feeling which increased as the movie went on. The fact that the film is from the point of view of Emmett Till's mother Mamie Till-Mobley makes it easy to relate to the tragedy as a parent, although many of us would drop dead from horror if we had to go through what that poor mother endured. By the end horror was mixed with wondering anger at the murderers of Mamie's child and why such sick and crazed individuals were allowed to live out their wretched lives in freedom. So one night during the Christmas octave I stayed up late researching the case, trying to figure out the background causes of the level of hate that would commit such an atrocity. Yes, there are racists that hate others because of their skin color but the rage inflicted upon that little boy's body by grown men seemed to be fed by something else in addition to their homegrown race hatred. As for the film, I thought it was well-done, well-acted, and more or less accurate historically. The director Chinonye Chukwu chose not to show the torture and murder directly, but rather allow the viewer to see through the eyes of the victim's mother as she views his mutilated body in the morgue. It is a scene which leaves only the hardest of hearts unchanged.

The film is based upon the murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in the summer of 1955 in the town of Money, Mississippi. Emmett was visiting his great-uncle, great-aunt and cousins who worked as sharecroppers. His great-uncle Moses Wright was also known as "Preacher" for his eloquent preaching of the Gospel at local church services. When frequenting a shop in Money, Emmett said something to a twenty-one year old married white woman named Carolyn Bryant, whose husband owned the shop. In the movie, Emmett tells her she is as "pretty as a movie star." Later, at the murder trial, the description of Emmett's behavior morphed into attempted rape. While few could agree about what happened inside the store, everyone present heard Emmett's whistle outside the store, which Mrs Bryant assumed was aimed at herself, in spite of the fact that Emmett had a stutter and often whistled to steady his speech.. Mrs. Bryant retrieved a pistol from her truck, later claiming that she and her four babies were in danger. Emmett and his cousins ran away; he made the other boys promise that they would not tell Preacher about the event. Four days later, at  2:30 in the morning, Mrs. Bryant's husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother John Milham kidnapped Emmett from the Wright family cabin and took him to a barn where they tortured and beat him to death, throwing his body into the river. The culprits were arrested and tried for murder but the all-white jury found them not guilty. However. Emmett's mother Mamie, with the help of the NAACP, Medgar Evers, and other activists, raised the alarm throughout the country, where people everywhere were horrified by the injustice.

From Plugged In:

Too far. Too far.

Oh, it isn’t technically too far to Mississippi—not in 1955. A train could whisk you down South from Chicago in a day. Emmett—whom everyone called Bo—wouldn’t be gone long, either. He’d spend several days with his cousins near Money, Mississippi, and head straight back home. Those cousins would watch him closely, making sure he didn’t get into trouble. He’d be fine, Preacher promises Mamie Till. They’d keep him safe.

Mamie is nervous all the same. Bo has lived all his life in Chicago—a place where whites and Blacks lived in, if not harmony, at least compatibility. Mamie has a good job, a good home, a good life in the city. Emmett has known nothing else.

But Mississippi isn’t Chicago. Jim Crow reigns down there. And people like Mamie and Bo—they go to the back of the bus, drink from different fountains. And if a Black person even dares to hint that they are created equal, well, heaven help that person.

“They have a different set of rules for Negros down there,” she cautions Emmett just one more time. “Are you listening to me?”

Bo says yes. But she worries. The boy’s always been so happy, so carefree. How can he really know what it’s like down there until he sees for himself? And what if he sees too late?

Mamie swallows her worry and sends her boy off, praying every night for his safe return.

A week later, Emmett Till is dead.

His mutilated, bloated body is fished out of Tallahatchie River. Mamie demands Mississippi send the body home to Chicago. And when the body is finally returned, the undertaker cautions Mamie that the sight won’t be pretty. “I need to prepare you.”

She sees the body. She sees her boy. She runs her fingers over his swollen feet, his bloated legs. She sees the face, barely recognizable as a person, much less her son—the side of the head caved in by a bullet, an ear torn, the wounds too many to count.

And in that moment, Mamie realizes the world must see. Bo’s not the only one to die for the “sin” of skin color. For too many years, people have literally gotten away with murder. Now, Mamie will force the world to see. She will force the world to feel her grief.

Too far. This time, they’ve gone too far. (Read more.)

From Mommy Factor:

The film TILL shows the lifestyle of Emmett Till and his mom Mamie. A peek into moments during their day to day to life. Moments of laughter, preparing for a trip to visit family and even "reminder" between them. As any mother would do with her child. It's a lifestyle that any parent could can relate to, no matter their race or background. While race did bring a separation in how Emmett is treated in society, there is no separation when a parent has to grieve the death of their child. That type of grief is felt by all and transcends everything. There's a moment when Mamie describes how she knew her son and truly it's a moment all parents, especially mothers will felt down to their souls.  It's that parentally connection, that mothers love, that touched that nation back then and will touch the views now. No matter race or background.  (Read more.)

Emmett's mother Mamie was a lovely and refined person who had built a middle class life in Chicago for herself and her son. She had a good job working for the air force and could afford to shop at the best stores. Emmett was a high-spirited, mischievous and cheeky teen, and as an only child was perhaps just a tiny bit spoiled. In spite of his mother's divorces, he had a secure family situation, with loving grandparents and a supportive circle of friends and relatives. Emmett was intelligent and had a bright future ahead of him. As parents of only children know, "cousin time" is important. In spite of the possible dangers  of life for black people in Mississippi, Mamie wanted Emmett to have fun with his cousins and see how they lived. In real life, Emmett was accompanied by family members even on the train so that he would be safe. 

Now the place in Mississippi ironically called "Money" was a dead end of sorts, especially for white people. The Bryants, who owned the store, served a primarily black clientele, sharecroppers who they no doubt looked down on for being poor as well as black. However, one can pretty much guess that in the white community, the Bryants were at the bottom of the totem pole, their skin color being the only aspect of their existence which kept them from being classed with the black sharecroppers. So to the Bryants, their whiteness was their lone claim to a rather shaky status in the wider community of Leflore County. They were what a lot of white and black people would have sympathetically called "poor white trash." Carolyn Bryant at 21 was already the mother of four. There were no nice stores or colleges in her future. We know, based upon what followed, that her husband had a tendency to extreme violence. Her life was bleak, to put it mildly. So one hot summer afternoon into her store bounds a young black boy on the brink of manhood, well-dressed and confident, who looks at her as the pretty woman that she is. Emmett probably and unknowingly broke four or five taboos before he even opened his mouth. He had no concept that he was supposed to pretend to be inferior to someone like Carolyn Bryant. Once he opened his mouth, it was all over, because he spoke to her as an equal, looking into her face, not with eyes downcast, saying, "Miz Bryant, ma'am." But even then, Carolyn Bryant did not tell her husband right away, and by her later testimony did not plan to tell him at all, afraid he would "beat up the little boy." But Roy Bryant found out.

Bryant and Milam discovered Emmett's identity and where to find him, and with other men, two of whom were black, to help them, dragged him away into the night. In the film Till, when Mamie eventually visits the Wright cabin from which her son Emmett was abducted, she notices her uncle's shot gun and asks him why he did not use it to protect Emmett. Preacher tells her that if he had shot a white man his whole family would have been killed and perhaps the entire black population of Money as well. There had indeed been recent assassinations of black leaders in Mississippi and so such atrocities were not unknown. After their acquittal, Bryant and Milam gave an interview to Look magazine admitting to the murder of Emmett. They claimed it had been their original intention to beat him and throw him in the river alive. But according to Milam, Emmett's demeanor made them resolve to kill him. Because they could probably tell that in spite of his fear and pain he saw them as the pathetic, ignorant, scared, white trash bullies that they were, and that they would never be anything else, no matter how many fourteen-year-old boys from Chicago they killed. As William Faulkner wrote of the interview:

If the facts as stated in the Look magazine account of the Till affair are correct, this remains: two adults, armed, in the dark, kidnap a fourteen-year-old boy and take him away to frighten him. Instead of which, the fourteen-year-old boy not only refuses to be frightened, but unarmed, alone, in the dark, so frightens the two armed adults that they must destroy him ... What are we Mississippians afraid of? (William Faulkner, "On Fear")

After Emmett's murder, the Bryant and Milam families found themselves shunned all over the Delta area, by whites and blacks alike. Unfortunately the outrage over Emmett did not extend to the jury, who found the two perpetrators to be "innocent." However, the black sharecroppers refused to patronize the Bryant store and it went out of business. The film shows white people uniting behind the murderers at the trial. If that was the case, the Look interview, in which the men bragged about their crime, finished them in the eyes of their fellow Mississippians. To this day, there are pink signs in the vicinity of Money to tell wayfarers that they are near to a place which played a part in the gruesome history of the murder of Emmett Till. The signs keep getting shot up. I must say that the pink color is jarring given the hideous nature of the case. Plus the signs are adorned with a magnolia blossom, which seems bizarre, since it is nothing for the state of Mississippi to take pride in. As for the state of Illinois, where Emmett is buried, every weekend in his native Chicago sees the murder of black teens and children, sometimes in broad daylight. Mothers are still weeping.

More on the Till case and film: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

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Ancient Sanskrit Text Algorithm

 From Big Think:

Although the Indian subcontinent has produced many writing systems — historian Steven Roger Fischer calls it “the world’s richest treasury of scripts” — it also maintains a strong oral tradition. The Brahmins, India’s priestly class, long considered speech superior to writing. Even centuries after the Indians adopted writing, the Brahmins continued to pass down the hymns of the Vedas, Hinduism’s oldest four sacred texts, orally.

This tradition meant the desire to use language correctly wasn’t simply a matter of avoiding an embarrassing correction in the comments section. It was of the utmost religious consequence. With the Aṣṭādhyāyī, Pāṇini didn’t only want to teach the language. He aimed to protect Hinduism’s sacred texts from corruption. He built a system of operations that allowed a reader to combine base words and affixes to generate proper word forms. The user could then combine those words to construct impeccable sentences. All readers had to do was follow the instructions. (Read more.)

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Piers Court

 

 

 

Evelyn Waugh's house. From Right Move:

Perhaps best known for being the home of author Evelyn Waugh, Piers Court has many historical connections. It was used for royalists during the Civil War. In 1640 the local wealthy mill owning Pynffold family acquired Piers Court where they remained for 150 yrs. After the fall of Bristol, it is thought that Piers Court was ransacked by parliamentarian troops while searching for Prince Rupert, the King's cousin. In the nineteenth century Piers Court saw little change until 1937 when Evelyn Waugh was given the property by his parents-in-law.

This Grade II* listed Georgian manor house is approached up a long drive. Piers Court is nestled in its extensive grounds enjoying views over its own land. Once described by Pevsner as a 'dignified and elegant house', Piers Court displays a classical 18th century façade with the central crowning pediment bearing a coat of arms which is supported upon enriched pilasters. Piers Court has not been inspected since early 2019 when purchased by the current owners. The property at the time was extremely well presented and benefits from both an imposing, formal layout ideal for entertaining, yet to the rear of the property lies a more homely arrangement of rooms ideal for family living. The front door opens into a classical Georgian hall with a flagstone floor and cantilever staircase. Off the main entrance hall was the formal drawing room and library, both of which provided the grandeur that would be expected of a Georgian manor house. On the west side of the library was a large bay window. The drawing room looked to the front of the house and down a copper beech avenue. The Elizabethan rear of the house, had slightly less formal rooms. The kitchen had a range of traditional wooden cabinets and a terracotta tiled floor. The wine cellar comprised two rooms and wine bins. A self-contained staff wing lead from the kitchen. The first floor offered the primary accommodation with an en-suite master bedroom with south westerly views of the parkland. There were four further bedrooms on this floor, all of which had en-suite. The second floor had three spacious double bedrooms which would be ideal for guests. Servicing these bedrooms was a family bathroom. It is from this floor that a large attic space was accessed which provided storage space. (Read more.)

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