Why would anyone join the army?

An interesting report from the BBC reveals that the army is currently suffering from serious problems relating to desertion. The question I find myself asking is that why would anyone want to join a modern army in the first place? in the old days, recruitment of paid troops was simple. If obligation didnot provide all of the necessary troops for an army, there were always large partsof society who were too restless, too dangerous, too violent and too unscrupulous to exist even within the confines of a medieval society. Such people made useless farmers and townsfolk, but when given a wage, excellent mercenaries. Indeed, in many ways, it was the perfect deal. The mercenaries had a relatively free hand to rape, pillage and plunder until they had sated even the most brutal of their desires, society got to remove some of its most troublesome elements to elsewhere and inevitably had people to call upon when utterly despicable acts, such as the brutal destruction of the Italian town of Cesena, needed to be committed.

In contrast, the modern army appears to be an anachronism. The country needs to be defended, but  as a society we abhor violence.  A patriotic urge to fight for your country is all well and good, but how does that help  when one has to commit the violent acts of killing which are inevitably a part of fighting for one's country?  Certainly, such a question isn't, answered by the army's recruitment programme. You would be hard pressed,  looking at the glossy Army advertising, to gain any understanding of the dark side of soldiery - The advertisements make soldiering seem like an adventure holiday or some sort of  'xtreme' sporting excursion. The fact is, It shouldn't be "The British Army: Be the Best", it should be "The British Army: Kill lots of people".  If you don't advertise one of the most important parts of the job, is it any wonder that people begin to fall apart when they realise that it isn't all abseiling and team building exercises? As the news has shown us time and time again recently, there are certainly individuals who are callous enough to have no problems with killing people, even innocents. Why do we waste time paying to lock such individuals up when we could have them killing on our behalf? Oh, thats right, we've taken away all of the things that make soldiering fun - Crap pay, No looting, no pillaging, no ability to change sides etc.  As a consequence  we appear to be in a bit of a no-man's land. Too much order and discipline to attract societies most vile bastards, to much blood, guts and horror to be a long term career for more sensitive souls.

Mind you, you can't really blame the soldiers for suffering from stress. They are seriously let down by those in authority and by the fundamentally broken nature of modern warfare. If Mercenaries of the old world were untrustworthy, it was generally because the leaders of mercenary bands would not allow their employer to place them in situations where they would face  certain death. Nowadays, the army is not led by a commander on the battlefield, but by a politician in Whitehall. The objectives the soldiers have to meet are political, not military. Thus, thanks to the wonders of the modern world, we have a modern, state-of-the-art sheafing its weapons, giving away its absolute advantage so that its men can be picked off one-by-one by the enemy. Our soldiers lives are sacrificed for the shortest of short-term political gain.

technorati tags:army, mercenaries, bbc, panorama, military, medieval, gang, killings

What does the History Channel do when it isn't discussing 'Toenail Clipping Collections of the Nazis'? It lies about the Middle Ages, that's what it does.

So, not content with urinating over the last 50 years of Crusade scholarship, the history channel have turned their attentions to a new period: 'The Dark Ages'. Unfortunately, at the moment i only have the trailer at my disposal to guage just how terrible this show obviously is. Fortunately, the 'making of' trailer contains enough abominations to keep me fuming for...all... a good 5 hours at least.

Indeed, it would appear that all director Christopher Cassel has to do in order to feel my wrath is open his stupid flappy mouth. 'like, dude, Some people say there were no Dark Ages' says Chris,sounding like some kind of heinous Bill and Ted reject. Yes Chris. In fact, this view is shared by most people who've actually bothered to read any decent academic text produced after about 1950. Silly humanists aside, the term Dark Ages was used for describing the Early Middle ages in Northern Europe because, quite literally, it was shrouded in darkness.  Historians did not have access to the large volume of Latin Texts which were produced in other places/periods, and archaeologists had not found and fully exploited many key discoveries, such as Sutton Hoo, which have since helped to shape our understanding of the Early Middle Ages. Indeed, for the last forty years, history and archeology have been able to pull their resources with fascinating results - far from a 'backwards' age of violence, it is clear that, in Northern Europe at least, important improvements were made in areas such as agriculture. Even if there was a period which could be classified as the 'Dark Ages', it was also certainly long over by the eleventh century ( Carolingian Renaissance, yeah.)

Who knows, perhaps your author is being rash and the programme is in fact  a medieval jewel in a vast vat of World War 2 related shit. If this is the case, these people really need to sort out their promotional material.

technorati tags:Carolingian, renaissance, history, channel, early, middle, ages, sutton, hoo, dark, ages

Could someone explain this 'Democracy' to me?

The government of this fair isle have recently gained much publicity from their recent attempts to reconnect with the British public through the medium of petition. On the surface, this initiative appears to be an open and unmoderated way of expressing one's views - the government have recently been embarrassed by mere trifles such as the million-strong petition against their road charging schemes - however it would appear that, when presented with true, actual, dissent, the tyranny of  the foolish mob returns with force.

Indeed, I myself put forward a sane and reasonable petition. My plan was quite straightforward. Considering that this country had been governed by nincompoops for hundreds of years, the only reasonble way to progress would be to reset our laws and customs back to a time when we were governed by a righteous and able monarch. After all, if the Charter of Liberties of Henry I was good enough to be the foundation of Magna Carta and various other Medieval Challenges to tyranny, what better way to fight the tyrannical laws of Blair and Brown? Indeed I fear they know this already which is why, though they right my petition off as 'humerous', they well know the harm which could be done to them from the universal truth it contains.

Where is my representation in this representative democracy?

technorati tags:e-petition, government, Blair, Brown, Magna, Carta

A Brief History Of Taxation

People of England, whatever happened to you? Debates on taxation are tedious at the best of times,  but It sickens me that we should even be having debates on issues such as this and this. After all, when looked at in any reasonable state of mind, such forms of taxation seem tyrranical and absurd. Inheritance tax, for example, is simply immoral.  Although an argument could be made that the effectiveness  of government could improve if a small tax is placed on the purchase of goods, once that tax has been paid it is immoral to tax the same goods again - especially if it means obstructing a person's attempt to gain their rightful inheritance. No further argument can be made. There is no sane rebuttal to this point. Indeed, for much the same reason, road charges cannot be stomached. I have already paid for my use of the roads through road tax. I already pay for my 'emissions' through exorbitant petrol duties. If anything, these taxes should be reduced - they should not be expanded into further areas which reduce our rights through the introduction of bad customs.

What really sickens me, however,  is not the nature of the proposed taxes themselves, but the nature of the opposition to them. We should not be politely asking these smug civil servants if they will consider not introducing such taxes, we should be telling them that they will not be, and that if they do the taxes will not be collected and that their very lives may be at risk. This is the way it should be and, indeed, is the way  it has been before.  The modern concept of taxation is a recent innovation, mostly linked with the Napoleonic wars. Taxation was far more infrequent before that, and, though some taxes were relatively successfull, many often went unpaid.  Indeed to see the power of taxation we need to look no further than the example of the poll tax, which has thus far played an important role in instigating two incidents of civil disorder in England. It would appear that the politicians have forgotten the power of taxation. It is the duty of all of us to remind them. When the rebels stormed the Tower of London in 1381, one of their first victims was the King's Chancellor. This is something Gordon Brown should not be allowed to forget.

technorati tags:Tax, road, charging, guardian, inheritance, tax, peasants, revolt, 1381, medieval, gordon, brown

Israel, Israel, Israel...

If there's one topic which is even more wearisome than global warming, it is the subject of Israel. What will we do with Israel? The Saracens do not want to be governed by the Jews, the Jews do not want to be governed by the Saracens. My initial solution to this problem was quite simple: Both should convert to the Catholic faith and submit themselves to the judgment of Rome. Then I thought to myself 'No Andronicus! This will never work'. Observing that the problem was more serious than I had in first anticipated, I meditated on it for a while longer. Then, in a stroke of inspiration, i was struck with the only solution to the issue which could ever actually work.

If the Jews will not live under the Saracens and the Saracens the Jews, it is obvious a third party is needed. Thus, to solve this issue we need to reintroduce the states of the Latin East. After all, if descendants from the Kings of Jerusalem could be tracked down and the Kingdom of Jerusalem/Country of Tripoli were reborn, we could nullify the problems of Israel, Palestine and Lebanon in one fell swoop. Now, I know what you're thinking. As you have doubtlessly been misled by the evils of the education system you probably believe the crusaders to be nothing more than violent butchers. This of course relatively untrue. Though the military enterprises fought by the Latins inevitably ended in bloodbaths, the Latins often made a point of massacring the occupants of settlements which who failed to surrender to them, much of the period between 1100 and 1291 was marked by toleration. Though inevitably society was governed by a Frankish aristocracy, the political system which developed was not overly different from the Islamic system so widely praised today (under Islam, Christians and Jews paid a special Tax, under the Latins it was it was Jews and Muslims). Indeed, though we are taught that the crusades produced nothing more than violent intolerance, in reality the Hospital in Jerusalem treated anyone regardless of race or Faith and Muslim noble Usamah ibn-Munqidh even tells us of how he was assisted by some friendly Templars, the same Templars who are so often the bogey-men of modern dramatic works.

Yes, it is true that the last time the West tried to occupy the Palestinian coast it all went horribly wrong, but what is there left to lose? Christendom certainly deserves a second crack of the whip - between the suicide bombs and the helicopter strikes it can hardly be said that our history makes us seem any worse.

technorati tags:Israel, palestine, Jerusalem, Lebanon, conflict

Carbon Neutral = Flagellation for the 21st Century

So today's, and indeed it would appear every other day's, hot topic is Global Warming. Apparently we should all be trying to be 'Carbon Neutral' to 'save' the 'Environment'.
 When it gets hot, it is apparently due to global warming. When it gets cold, it is apparently due to global warming. If it's too dry, it's down to global warming. If it's too wet, global warming is to blame. They even have the inconclusive and somewhat variable science to prove it!

Of course, this is all nonsense. As proved to be the case with the Millennium bug (which, sadly, didn't send the world back to the 1200s), and is currently proving to be the case with the SARS/Bird Flu viruses  (which have failed, as of yet, to carve through the population in same the manner as the Black Death.) We have convinced ourselves these are threats when really they are not - they are simply  the manifestation of a basic social instinct, Millenarianism. It would appear that, though we laugh at the obsessive medieval preoccupation with the identification of Antichrist and with the writings of Joachim of Fiore, once again we find ourselves in a similar mindset. The only real difference seems to be that, while medieval man looked to religion to find an explanation of how and when the world would end, modern man simply invents secular harbingers of his destruction. It is crucial for us to remember, then, that It was not so long ago that we were warned of the dangers of global 'cooling', and we should certainly make note of the fact that in the 'damning' report that supposedly proves man's contribution to 'Global Warming', the scientists themselves cannot bring themselves to use more precise terms than 'Very likely'. George Bush is not Antichrist. Al Gore is not Joachim of Fiore. 'Global Warming' should be seen in the context of these non-threats and treated accordingly - it is nothing more than medieval millenarianism given a fresh lick of paint.

technorati tags:global, Warming, Antichrist, George, Bush, Al, Gore, Medieval, Joachim, of, fiore, carbon, neutral, IPCC

Andronicus Is Still Here

Do not fear, my dear readership. Although I am sorry for neglecting this noble cause as of late, my mind has been detained by various pressing matters. If fortuna aidds me, I shall be back with an abundance of new thoughts soon. Until then, may i present you with my comment on a  blog published on that abominable Guardian website that riles me so much. The original post was here, and represented a generic modern attack on religious institutions which the author clearly failed to understand:

"Professor Grayling, it saddens me to see a man as evidently eloquent and educated as yourself resorting to such desperate and base argumentation. You appeal to us to tell you what "Christianity qua a body of doctrine and belief" has done for science, but surely you should know that the question itself is in fact false. The doctrines of a religion are utterly powerless - they are merely words on a page. The only powers these doctrines have is to influence people to act. Naturally, if you ignore the work of the people who are influenced by those doctrines and the work of the institutions they go on to create, it is inevitable that the answer to your question will be that the doctrines have produced nothing of note - after all, the same could be said for science. If you ignore the work of all scientists and scientific institutions, what great advances has the concept of experimental science (as advocated by 13th century English monk Roger Bacon) made on its own? Very little. In terms of creating progress, both religious and scientific doctrines have to be translated into actions before they can deliver results. Quite frankly, I'm shocked that I have to point out something so elementary to a professor of Philosophy.

Following on from this, I fear that your of knowledge of history is possibly both deficient and too heavily influenced by works of modern-centric popular history. The thing people in general seem to forget when discussing history is that, until they were made known, the Church was as ignorant as the next man of its scientifc errors. Thus, for centuries, religion and science were able to live hapily hand in hand. Let us not forget, after all, that science needs to develop to a certain level before it can challenge the authority of the clergy. The Medieval Church had no problem promoting science as the word of medieval science often corroborated their views. Indeed, even when individuals came into conflict with the Church, it was not always for the reasons popular history would have us believe. Roger Bacon, for example, fell foul not because of his unorthodox scientific experimentation, but because of internal church politics (he was too closely allied with the extreme spiritual faction of the Franciscans.) The same can also be said for Galileo, whose downfall was chiefly linked to his characterisation of the Pope in the figure of 'Simplicus' rather than to his ideas of heliocintricity (ideas the Pope had asked him to write down). Such distortions and ugly characatures of the past are common these days, and I myself try to combat them with my own personal blog (http://www.everythingsgonewrong.blogspot.com). If you wish to have more profound thoughts on this subject, I strongly reccomend you consult witho historians who specialise in the periods in question. However, next time, i would also advise you to ponder the historical background of the institution in which you work before attacking the Church's contribution to science and learning."

technorati tags:A.C., Grayling, Science, church, History, Guardian, comment, is, free