ROMAN EMPIRE, CONSTANTINE, FRENCH REVOLUTION, PETAIN'S VICHY - DIALECTICS OF HISTORY -NOT PRIMARILY ECONOMIC BUT IDEOLOGICAL

 In a previous blog post, I contended that the Muslims conquered much of the Roman Empire in the early 600s in part, because what we called the Roman Empire was no longer really that.  It was no longer the empire of Caesar, August, the Coliseum, and Olympic Games.  That in the 300s a revolution had occurred, changing forever that nation.  It was no longer the Roman Empire; it was the Christian Empire.  The newly conquering Muslims were creating their own empires, in Spain, all of North Africa, Judeah, Syria, Iraq, Persia. and beyond.  The Christian warriors held most of Europe, and until 1453 Constantinople.

     In France, the Christian world would be challenged by another revolution, with the slogan "liberty, equality, fraternity," make war on the Christian church, and under Robespierre, convert the Cathedral of Notre Dame into a Temple to the Goddess of Reason, with a choir inside to sing to the new era, as Robespierre himself would toss a line to ancient Rome as he wore a toga for the event.  Robespierre, would soon be guillotined, but his revolution would survive in toned down choruses.

And in 1940 an elderly military hero would lead yet another revolution to respond to the liberal, unChristian one of 1789.  Marshall Petain would lead the National Revolution. to cleanse France of the trash of the previous century and a half.  The Roman Catholic church was restored with its former privileges.  The 2nd most popular religion in France, Judaism, was to be put in its place, at the bottom, with many being deported to Nazi Germany where they would lose their arrogance.

     I shall hope to show how these revolutions are connected, but emphasize the one that is most over looked, the Christian Revolution that changed the Roman Empire.  I shall be doing this by adding on to this blog.  Covering a lot of territory in a short space, I will have to leave out much of the story.  But I hope I raise questions in your understanding , and perhaps you can write a better and fuller discussion disagreeing, 0r concurring, or providing a totaly different interpretation.   Hugh Murray

    Part 2

Revolutions, Counter-Revolutions, and the Christian Empire

     In an earlier blog post, I sought to answer Tomas Pueyo's question about how Islam conquered so much territory in such a short time. In this post, I want to stress how the names we currently use—and have used for centuries—distort the reality of what was happening. I want to propose a revision of terminology that may help us better understand the era.

     Civil wars were nothing new to the Roman world. Indeed, the Roman Empire itself rose out of civil war.

     The Roman Republic had existed and expanded for centuries. But many Romans came to believe that the victorious general Julius Caesar intended to destroy the Republic and replace it with monarchy under his personal rule. According to the traditional story, Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March by members of the Senate.

     This was followed by civil war between the assassins—traditional republicans such as Brutus and Cassius—and the forces aligned with Caesar, led by his ally Mark Antony and his adopted heir and nephew, Octavian.  Brutus and Cassius were defeated and, following the customs of many defeated,  committed suicide.

     Then Octavian and Antony split from one another. Each dominated part of the Republic, but tensions increased as Antony, like Caesar before him, entered into a relationship with Cleopatra, the Pharaoh of Egypt. Cleopatra had already borne Caesar a son, raising unsettling questions about what claims she and her child might assert over the Roman world.

     To settle it, another civil war followed, the soldier Antony with help from Cleopatra's Egypt, against the younger Octavian.  But Octavian skillfully used the threat of Rome being dominated by an Egyptian woman, to undermine Antony's forces.  In the big battle, Octavian won.  Result?  The suicides of both Antony and Cleopatra.

     A more surprising result - the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire under Emperor Augustus, with this grand new title bestowed upon Octavian by the Senate.

     The Empire experienced both triumphs and crises, but for centuries it generally won its wars. Conquest brought slaves into Rome in vast numbers, enabling cheap workers to help the construction of monumental public works, many of which still stand today.

     The Empire displayed its wealth proudly. Aqueducts carried water from distant mountains into the cities. Public latrines had running water and communal sponges. Amphitheaters such as the Colosseum combined religion, spectacle, gladiators, and exotic animals into mass entertainment. Egypt, now a province of the empire, supplied wheat and other foods for Rome's growing population.  “Bread and circuses” kept the populace satisfied.

     Not all emperors possessed Augustus’s discipline. Some were devoted hedonists; others may well have been insane. Yet the Empire endured and continued winning battles.

     From the death of Augustus in 14 AD until the sole rule of Constantine, the Empire experienced repeated civil wars. There was the Year of Four Emperors in 69 AD, the Year of Five Emperors in 193 AD, and what modern historians call the Crisis of the Third Century (235–284 AD), during which dozens of military rulers seized power, often by murdering their predecessors.

     Emperor Diocletian believed he had solved the problem by creating a system of shared imperial rule. But once he retired, the men meant to share authority wanted more than their allotted share, and the Empire again descended into civil war.

By the early fourth century, two principal rivals remained: Licinius in the eastern half of the Empire and Constantine in the west.  In 313 they jointly issued the Edict of Milan, which decriminalized Christianity and ordered the restoration of churches, lands, and other Christian property confiscated during earlier persecutions. Constantine’s daughter married Licinius, and for a time peace prevailed.

But new disputes soon rose, followed by war between the 2 rival emperors..

Constantine defeated Licinius in a series of battles between 316 and 324 and eventually ordered the execution of both Licinius and his son, who was also the son of Constantine’s own daughter.

     Constantine now became sole ruler of the Roman Empire and began constructing his new capital at Constantinople.

My purpose in reducing three centuries of Roman history to a few pages is not simply to repeat what can be found elsewhere. My point is that Constantine’s final victory over his rivals was not merely the end of another civil war in which one military faction triumphed over another and life returned to normal.  Rather, Constantine initiated a revolution.  It was a revolution as significant as the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, or Mao’s Communist Revolution in China. Indeed, Constantine’s revolution may have proved even more far-reaching and certainly longer lasting than those later revolutions.

     It is time, I believe, to abandon the terminology “Late Roman Empire.” In fact, it may be time to stop calling Constantine’s project the “Roman Empire” at all.

It was no longer simply the Roman Empire. It had become the Christian Empire.

Two or three centuries later, a similar revolution emerged in the deserts of Arabia under Muhammad: the Muslim Revolution. Beginning in the seventh century, these two revolutionary civilizations would struggle against other powers—and against each other—for dominance across much of the known world.

    more to come   ---- Hugh Murray

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IT WAS NOT ONLY DR.FAUCI IN WUHAN -- FROM RT: US BIOLABS NEAR THE RUSSIAN BORDER

 

A decade of lies: The US-funded biolab denial saga

Washington for years rejected Russian allegations of the existence of the secret program, before finally admitting it

Published 15 May, 2026 21:21 | Updated 15 May, 2026 22:51

©  Getty Images / Adam Gault

Russia’s allegations that the US-funded clandestine biological laboratories near its borders – claims denied until recently by Washington – have remained a persistent flashpoint in the steadily deteriorating relationship between Russia and the West for nearly a decade.

READ MORE: Gabbard orders probe into US-funded foreign biolabs

The biolabs affair was revealed in a 2017 exposé by RT that questioned a shady US military tender seeking the genetic material of living Russians. Over the years, Moscow has raised allegations against Washington of conducting clandestine bio-research, including potential WMD development and illicit human testing, in a network of labs located across multiple nations, the bulk of which operated in Ukraine. The claims were met with a blanket denial in the West, which repeatedly dismissed them as “Russian propaganda.”

This abruptly changed the past week when US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that her department had identified more than 120 US-funded biological laboratories in 30 countries, with over a third of them located in Ukraine. The agency is now working to “identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what ‘research’ is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world,” according to Gabbard.

RT looks back at the timeline of the biolabs saga and the US denial of its existence until now.

2017 RT report 

The US-funded bio research made international headlines in July 2017, when RT published an investigative report revolving around a tender issued by the US Air Education and Training Command (AETC). The command was seeking to procure genetic material samples that “shall be collected from Russia and must be Caucasian.” The Air Force explicitly said that it did not want samples from Ukraine, for reasons not explained.

READ MORE: Remember how the West laughed at Russia’s ‘biolabs’ claims? Here are the facts

The harvesting of genetic samples in the country did not escape the attention of the Russian leadership. President Vladimir Putin stated later that year “that biological material is being collected all over the country, from different ethnic groups and people living in different geographical regions.” 

“The question is – why is it being done? It’s being done purposefully and professionally. We are a kind of object of great interest,” the president said. “Let them do what they want, and we must do what we must,” he added.

The attention this garnered from the Russian leadership prompted a vague explanation from AETC, which claimed the samples were needed for research on the musculoskeletal system and Russia had been picked as the source of the samples for no particular reason.

Georgia revelations

Another bombshell on the clandestine US-funded biolabs was dropped by a former Georgian minister for state security, Igor Giorgadze, in late 2018. He claimed he had obtained some 100,000 pages of data pointing to questionable practices at the US-funded Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

READ MORE: Dozens of Georgians likely killed by US toxin or bioweapon disguised as drug research – Russian MoD

The documents published by Giorgadze were examined by the Russian Defense Ministry, which suggested the laboratory in Georgia may have conducted bioweapons research under the guise of a drug test. The research resulted in the deaths of at least 73 subjects over a short period of time, the Russian military’s investigation indicated.

The tests appeared to involve “a highly toxic chemical or biological agent with a high lethality rate,” the commander of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces (RKhBZ), Igor Kirillov, said at the time. Kirillov, who had spearheaded the Russian military’s probe into the US-funded biolabs in Ukraine and beyond, was assassinated in late 2024 in a bombing staged by Kiev’s intelligence.

The Pentagon flatly denied the allegations, with then-spokesman Eric Pahon dismissing the Russian ministry’s statements as a part of “a Russian disinformation campaign directed against the West.” The US and Georgian governments also dismissed the claims made by Giorgadze, describing them as “absurd.”

Ukraine conflict 

The escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022 marked a new turn in the biolabs saga. While Moscow seized additional evidence of questionable research activities conducted in secretive facilities dotting Ukraine, the West entered a full-denial mode, bluntly dismissing any Russian statement on the matter as “propaganda.”

READ MORE: Top US spies explain Ukrainian ‘biolabs’

Early in the conflict, Russian troops seized thousands of pages of documents from labs in the Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kherson regions. The Russian military has been releasing the materials in batches while continuing an internal investigation and ultimately concluding in 2023 that “the US, under the guise of ensuring global biosecurity, conducted dual-use research, including the creation of biological weapons components, in close proximity to Russian borders.”

“The credibility of information provided by the Kremlin is in general very doubtful and low,” EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano said at the time. “Russian disinformation has a track record of promoting manipulative narratives about biological weapons and alleged ‘secret labs.’”

The Biden administration took a similar defensive stance, with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki calling the allegations “preposterous” and accusing Moscow of plotting to use “chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine or to create a false flag operation using them.” John Kirby, then-Pentagon spokesman, also branded the Russian allegations “absurd,” “laughable,” and a “bunch of malarkey.” 

“There’s nothing to it. It’s classic Russian propaganda,” Kirby told reporters at the time.

Gabbard’s remarks this past week have reignited scrutiny of a program Washington spent years denying existed.

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IN ABOUT A WEEK I HOPE TO HAVE A RATHER CONTROVERSIAL PIECE TO ADD TO THE BLOG, SHOULD BE INTERESTING

EUNUCHS, HOMOS, CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS, DEATH PENALTY

 Closing the Circle

Some time ago I posted on a contrast between China and the West - the role of eunuchs.  I suggested that Chinese emperors and leading bureaucrats were interested in protecting the government from pillage, even by those employed by the government.  That they feared "family values" were a threat to an employee thinking first of doing what was best for his employee, the government, the empire.  I recall seeing an old movie about a British government employee in one of its colonies in Africa.  He hires a young Black African.  Next week, the lad brings in a relative, asking the Brit to also hire this cousin.  And the following wee another relative.  It was a comedy, but I suspect there was considerable nepotism in large empires.

    I suggest that the way the Chinese empire sought to cut out such "family values," was by cutting off the balls of the employee.  He would work for government, and not have any children to pester him for more favors and would be more distant to relatives.  It is interesting that perhaps the most important Admiral in the Chinese navy, Admiral He, was a eunuch.  He led a fleet of some 30,000 sailors who sailed from China to East Africa with stops along the way.  This in the 1430s, before Portugal and Spain sent out their expeditions.  The first one of Columbus with 3 ships and about 100 sailors.  Eunuchs were an important part of Chinese government until the early 1900s and the last emperor.  

In addition to work as bureaucrats, eunuchs were also employed to guard the harems.  The number of women could vary, but some emperors had a different woman for each night of the year.  To prevent full males from getting to them, eunuchs had that job.

Harems were not limited to China.  With the expansion of Islam, and into nations at the cross roads of trade between the Orient and distant Europe and wherever.  True, a wealthy Muslim might have 4 wives, but if he were wealthy, he might want greater variety, so harems, though not as large as an emperors.  The East Africa slave trade had developed, and some of the strong men would be castrated to guard the harems of the Middle East, strong even after surgery.

My premise, one reason European kings had not harems was Christianity permitted them only one wife.  Now, of course, with wealth and power, they could have more women, but a large harem would bring condemnation.  Better a few extra girl friends on the side, small enough number to keep an eye on them keeping them behind bars.  So Europe did not need eunuchs for harems.

But what about "family values" encouraging bureaucrats to steal from the nation?  Were not eunuchs the best way to solve that problem?  Perhaps, but NOT in Europe.  Why?  With the fall of the Roman Empire there were various nations in Europe, and most were Christian, working with the church.  The church provided the most literate people who could help the government.  The best were probably priests.  Better yet, they would have no children of their own, no overly close relatives, they could devote their lives to the church and its ally, the Christian nation.

CLOSING THE CIRCLE

With the victory of Constantine over the Pagans in a civil war, Christianity was on the road to becoming the official religion of the empire.  One major change, Google AI gave 2 answers for the first anti-homosexual laws of the new regime: Constantine in 320, or Constantine II, somewhat later.  I do not know precisely how they defined it, or even if it was defined in the new laws.  However, the punishment for homosexuality was death.  This was an enormous change, for the Greco-Roman world was generally quite tolerant on the issue of homos.  Even the statues of gods and goddesses were often naked, to make the appeal to humans in various ways.  The Christians were, however, out to change things.  In the 500s, Emperor Justinian sought to collect and organize Roman law so it could be used and passed on to new Christian countries.  There was a slight change, homosexuals were to be tortured before being executed.  Justinian ordered the building of the beautiful Hagia Sophia in the then Roman capital of Constantinople.  (It is still a terrific building, changed into a mosque in the 1400s. into a museum after WWI, and a mosque again under Turkey's Pres. Erdogan.)

The Roman Empire, once Christian, stopped subsidies to pagan temples.  No one learnt to write or read Egyptian hieroglyphics, and for nigh 2 millennia, no one could tell what was written.  Justinian's code made it clear, Jews and pagans were 2nd class citizens.  Homos to be killed.  Now if you were a young guy growing up, and you are suddenly aware that you are homo, what are you to do?  To earn a living?  To not be denounced? ?  There was one profession where you did not have to marry a woman - indeed, they did not want you to do so.  You would learn to read, be around other men, be respected.  I suspect the death penalty for homos, in reality made many of them slaves inside the church as priests.  Some probably advanced quite high in the organization.  I certainly would not be surprised to hear about gay popes along the way.  On the other hand, I do not mean to imply that all priests were or are gay.  In 1,800 years, the percentage of gay priests might vary greatly, also depending on place, and bureaucratic leadership at the time.  I did see one survey suggesting about 33% were gay in parts of 20th century America.  But take surveys with a grain of salt.

And while this was happening in Christian Europe, something similar was occurring among the Muslims.  Not immediately, but they too learnt how to "enslave' a homo community.  Around the age of 14 young Christian boys had to show up for examination by their Muslim overlords.  Over time, rules said the authorities could not take the only son of a family; the one they would take would have to be healthy, intelligent, handsome, etc.  They were to be slaves of the sultan, called Janissaries, though this is usually the term for those selected into the Ottoman army.  The others would be bureaucrats for the state, or perhaps boy friends of important men, or...They would be quickly broken in, taken on the back of a soldier's horse, given a new name, forced to become Muslim, beaten and probably forced by the man on the horse to do other things.  They were told they could never marry or have a family.  Many of these may never have been homo to begin with, just like some criminals in jails for long terms may also discover the joys of same sex (compared to no sex).  Interestingly, The Janissary troops gained the reputation as the best soldiers of the Ottoman Empire.

History is full of ironies, and this is surely one.  2 religions that despise homos officially, basically enslaved them if the homos wanted to live.  In both, the homos contributed to the growth of the organizations that enslaved them, and how many there were and how much contributed never permitted to surface.  Yet, I would contend both Abrahamic religions have provided the rationale for hatred of homos and individual beatings and murders of homosexuals for centuries, - some called witches, demons, Sodomites, Fidel Castro preferred gusanos, or whatever, religions providing foundations for murder.

Another irony, neither the Christians nor Muslims invented the death penalty for male homo  behavior.  They simply took it from the Jews, Leviticus, states that a man who sleeps with another man as he would with a woman, then both those men are to be condemned to death.

The irony is when Christians and Muslims came to power, at times they were angry with Jews and wanted to kill them, so both Jews and homos were on the death lists of different eras suffering together.  In 1933 it is well known that Hitler began a boycott of Jewish stores, with Storm Troopers outside painting stars of David on shop windows, and talking to potential customers not to go into such shops, instead by from Germans (meaning Jews could not be real Germans).  The Nazis also moved quickly against homos, closing the famous ElDorado bar/club, stopping use of the mail by homo publications, raiding Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld's building (he was away in France at the time, the British writer, Christopher Isherwood, stayed on the premises, and his experiences led him to write Berlin Stories, which eventually was the film Caberet).  Hirschfeld was a social scientist and activist for homo rights.  He appeared in the 1919 film Anders als die Anderen (Different from the Others, asking for repeal of the homo criminalization statute #171.  The Nazis tried to destroy every copy of that film.)  In early 1933 the Nazis raided the Hirschfeld premises, gathered all his books, and research materials, and conducted one of the first major burning of the books for the movie capers to teach German movie-goers what was to happen to un-German books.  Later they would also do the same to un-German people, like Jews and homos.  Then German science proved a connection - Jewish women were more masculine than most women; and Jewish men more feminine.  And who would bother to question the results of German science, except "frauds" like Albert Einstein.

My main point, I am convinced the Leviticus assertions are wrong, and dangerous.  I think Levi took us all for a ride.  Levi took us in the wrong direction.  If there had been a democratic vote of the Gods of that era, say 2,700 years ago, most gods and goddesses would have found nothing wrong in homo love, and instead of calling for the death penalty, might have encourage the love.  And it was practiced in their countries.  Even Zeus carried a baby in his thigh.  The Indian Kama Sutra depicted love scenes on walls in India, both hetero and homo.  No condemnation by the gods.  Some African tribes initiations of boys included homo acts.  Amerindians had an institution, the berdache, a kind of same sex marriage.  J don't think China had laws against homos until the Western influence of Mao.  It was part of Japanese culture, including among the samurei.  Homo love was found all over the world BECAUSE it is natural to humans.  Perhaps not as natural as reproductive sex, but natural anyway.  Of course, when covering near 3,000 years of human history, there would be changes.  The British Empire imposed its Christian, anti-homo laws on colonies, even India in the age of Victoria.  Happily, France had a revolution, and the horrific Justinian Code was revised freeing Jews, Protestants, and homos in France, where Napoleon's army conquered, and in French colonies.  The French colonies did not impose Levi's laws.  (It is possible things in the French colonies may have changed, as they did in the home country during the early 1940s under Martial Petain as his collaborationist government in Vichy sought to undo the reforms of the French Revolution in many areas. The horrible irony, jn early 1940s in Germany and other parts of Europe, Jews and homos wound up in the same camps, the concentration camps, and in the death camps.  Tell your gods to repeal the Leviticus laws.

MY ANSWER TO TOMAS PUEYO'S QUESTION, - WHY DID ISLAM SPREAD SO FAST?

 Hugh Murray,  With the victory of Constantine, Rome turned its back on its religious and to some extent, its cultural past, - the opposition to the joys of the Coliseum, for example.  In the 500s, with the codification of Roman Law under Justinian, it is clear that pagans and Jews were to be 2nd class citizens of the new empire.  Homosexuality, which was prevalent in the Greek and even Roman worlds, brought with it in addition to the death penalty imposed around 320 with Constantine.  Under Justinian, there would still be the death penalty, but torture would precede that to make it worse.  There was no immediate end of all Roman culture, and the Library of Alexandria continued to inspire thought freely, but the trend was away from free inquiry, into religious issues, the beginning of the closed mindedness we associate with the Middle Ages.  When the Roman Empire (or if you prefer Byzantine) defeated the Seleucids the victors  took away their statue of the long haired Adonis, to show the old faith of the Mid-East was conquered..  When Islam came on the scene, That empire was no longer what it had been, and the Roman Empire no longer what it had been.  Suddenly, there was now one new group crashing onto the scene with a new culture and a new religion.  The clash of Islam was a war of one new religious group with 2 tired. spent empires.

  Jews were already 2nd class citizens in Christian Europe, so they might adopt more easily to the 2nd class status of Islam.  And while Christians and Muslims continued to war against each other  in the Med. Sea, Jews who had relatives in both Christian Europe and now also in Islam's N Africa could become what Pirenne called them, Jew and merchant were interchangable words by the time of Charlemagne.

     Islam conquered because the traditional values of Greco-Rome, and possible of the Mid East, had been overthrown already by another new religion.  So the struggle became a battle between the 2 newbies.

 Jews were already 2nd class citizens in Christian Europe,, so they might adopt more easily to the 2nd class status of Islam.  Christians in North Africa had been top dog; would they not decide to accept 2nd class citizenship under Islam?  Could they?  Wars continued between Islam and Christendom, especially in the Med Sea, each side enslaving the captives.  And while Christians and Muslims continued to war against each other, Jews who had relatives in both Christian Europe and now also in Islam's N Africa could be come merchants, a risky business as pirates, and war ships might confiscate their packages.  But in time, barred from owning land and doing many things, Jews became merchants.

     Islam conquered because the traditional values of Greco-Rome, and possible of the Mid East, had been overthrown already by another new religion.  So the struggle became a battle between the 2 newbies.  The Muslims also used camels, as they had in Arabia.  The Roman Empire's North Africa planned to defend itself through the sea, but the Muslims invaded Egypt and moved westward using camels, more adept to the sandy African expanse.  So Islam conquered to Morocco, then most of Spain and Portugal.  The land of St. Augustine was now the land of Allah. 

Much of the long post by Pueyo concerns rain etc., is interesting, but sometimes it is hard to believe the the tv weather man for one week, much less for over 600 years.  Interesting with a grain of salt.

His point about change in sexual population under Islam - a man can have 4 wives, so 25% of the men had no woman!  He says, this makes them more warlike, determined to capture a wife.  All those men without women!?  Greek armies, lovers.  Alexander may have fu**ed the wife of Darius, and his own wife, but his great love was his fellow warrior.  The Sacred Band of Thebes, a group of male lovers, etc.  Even the Roman general Julius Caesar was teased by his troops.  Much later a Prot. leader in France declared Paris is worth a mass, became Roman Catholic, and yhen king of France.  Caesar became quite friendly with the king of Pergamen?  Perhaps Caesar reasoned, a kingdom is worth my ass.  When the king died, he willed his kingdom to the Roman Republic.  Of course Caesar also had a wife, fu**ed Cleopatra, etc. Many swung both ways, and slaves had no choice.

     Even if Mohammad declared death for homos, in time, things changed in Islam.  The Janissaries', sons of Christians, taken around age 14 to become slaves of the Sultan, and some of them would eventually form the best fighting units in Islam.  They had new names, could not marry or have a family, forced to convert to Islam, so I suspect it was a gay group.  The Christians had the death penalty for homos until the French Revolution, when Justinian's legal work was revised, and in France Jews, homos, and Protestants won equal rights.  And where Napoleon's army swept in, so did his liberation of the oppressed.  Was it only under Islam that the army was a source of liberation?  Could armies be gay?  Well, a King of France decided it was also true of Knights Templar, and he therefore sought to confiscate all their properties as a consequence.  Proof- the Templar symbol of a knight riding a horse, but a young man riding the same horse at his back.  Whether the charges were true or false, several kings used the charges to confiscate Templar properties.  Others also say, twas the beginning of the Masons.

The original article by Tomas Pueyo raised the question of why Islam spread so quickly. 0n Substack, a source I seldom use.  Unfortunately, I began the read about it 1am; I am a poor typist, and with poor eyesight.  His article stressing geography was quite interesting, with maps; his discussion of the 2 major areas of long-lasting warfare rang true, and his discussion of the quick conquest of North Africa by Islam convincing.  It perked my interest, and I wanted to add other reasons, like internal weaknesses, especially of the Christian West. His article stresses climate, rain, etc.  I take the local tv weather forecast with a grain of salt, and that is only for a week; he covers weather for several hundred years.  His name appears only once, and I constantly had trouble on my computer going back and forth trying to get it right while Substack kept interrupting for my name, etc.  I am 87 and must urinate every hour or so, and had no time for the irritations.  Bottom line, he wrote an excellent article and I urge all to take a look.  My stress on the internal problems of Christian was written in an hour, top of my head, but I think it basically correct.  He raised an important question, perhaps more important as Islam and modified Christianity face another confrontation today.  Hope it inspires us to think about the earlier conflicts.  I also hope I finally got his name right.  I apologize for many more mistakes of spelling, typing than usual, but I was in a hurry to get this out.  We have only had 1,500 years of clashes now.   Hugh

An important point about the latest clash between the West and Islam.  There In the last 1,400 years since Muhammad, there have been some major changes in Christentum.  2 very important ones, the American Revolution providing a great deal of freedom for citizens without regard to their religions.  Also, the French Revolution, with its revision of the Justinian law code that had imposed legal restrictions on religious minorities and worse on homos.  There are probably several other equally important changes in the Christian West making in a freer place to live, work, and create.  Meanwhile, I know of no such reforms in Islam.  "Death to America, death to Israel," the terror attack destroying 2 of the then tallest buildings in the world, the World Trade Center in NYC, (where I worked some years ago) and other threats and terror attacks in the US.  To me the choice is clear - I stand with Trump and the West.  I do not mean all Muslims are terrorists, but enough are, enough are unwilling to accept the basics of freedom for all in the West.  So they cannot enjoy the same freedoms, as I see it.  Long live America and its Allies.  Hugh Murray

SIXTH FLOOR MUSEUM IN DALLAS INTERVIEW WITH HUGH MURRAY A DECADE AGO

 Yesterday Tony Flood, my friend and a fellow Aptheker research assistant decades ago on various projects re W E B Du Bois, stumbled upon an interview with me that The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza conducted ten years ago. This blog's terms of service may not permit t me to provide the internet address here, but you can find it easily enough by searching <hugh murray jfk>.  The full interview is about 1  1/2 hours, no visual, just audio.  You also get to hear my voice, which is NOT a selling point.  The topic is the JFK assassination, or my tangential connection to those events.  My book will have more detailed material, and on other aspects of growing up in New Orleans many decades ago.----HUGH MURRAY

LEIPZIG, NEW ORLEANS, MINNEAPOLIS AND THROWING A ROCK

 This js my conclusion of the possibilities of bloodshed during protests.  I noted it took the Chinese authorities a month before they decided to crack down on Tiananmen, and they brought in troops from another province to do so.  I noted at a Black college in New Orleans, when a line of armed police was met by a line of Black students, that if a student had thrown a rock and hit a cop, blood, shooting first on campus, and possibly beyond might have occurred.

     Now I stress my support of ICE, the group trying to enforce the law in rounding up invaders who now reside in the US.  I would argue that the young man killed by ICE had provoked them, the equivalent of throwing a rock.  He was there to obstruct them from doing their duty in rounding up illegal aliens.  He had used violence against ICE and their vehicle, and they retaliated with force killing him.  HE WAS NOT A PEACEFUL PROTESTOR.  He was there to cause trouble, trained in tactics to provoke.  When you see the savagery of the mobs of Minneapolis, not just their vocal taunts, but throwing things aimed at the lawmen.  This is NOT peaceful protest.  The laws on the books for years should be enforced.  Billionaires like George Soros fund "non-governmental" organizations, which, in effect, train people to throw rocks, cause trouble, destroy law and order, loot stores, and if not revolution, promote chaos.  I also think the government should crack down on NGOs whose purpose is to create chaos in out country.

Hugh Murray