Thanks for that piece of Jewish wisdom... Now, my turn to offer you a piece of...err.. my own wisdom:
BYZANTIUM, VENICE AND THE FOURTH CRUSADE
Translation: EUROPE, THE U.S. AND THE FOURTH CRUSADE
by Donald M. Nicol
(In order for the reader to correctly transpose the following paper into present-day geopolitics, here're some additional "translations" that should be kept in mind:
Venetians = Americans
The Doge of Venice = US President [Dandolo]
The Greeks = the Europeans
The Franks = the Brits
Pope = Bilderberg
Church = Democracy
Constantinople = Brussels --not as much as the city proper as the EU's symbol
Saracens = Arab/African countries
Jerusalem = Kabul
leading men = marginalized immigrants)
Message 15687800
Excerpt:
The fact remains that Dandolo was probably the only man in the whole Crusade who had been to Constantinople before. He had been sent there as an ambassador at least twice. He knew his Greeks, and he was not fond of them, whether or not he had suffered injury at their hands. He also knew the leading men of the Venetian community living inside Constantinople. Their presence in the city must surely have been a factor in Dandolo's calculations, a factor rather neglected by historians of the Fourth Crusade. We do not know how many there were, but they could be numbered in thousands rather than hundreds. When Manuel I had arrested all Venetians in his empire in 1171, their commercial quarter in Constantinople had been closed. But by 1184, when Dandolo was sent to negotiate with the Emperor Andronikos Komnenos, several merchants of Venice had already moved back to their premises; and three years later the Emperor Isaac II reaffirmed all the rights and privileges of Venetian residents as they had existed in the past. In 1189 he allowed them to expand their quarter in Constantinople. In 1198 Alexios III clarified their legal status as resident aliens. By the time of the Fourth Crusade they formed a large and influential community. Yet they were uncomfortably aware that they resided in the imperial city under sufferance. They had never been allowed to appoint a spokesman or consul of their own. The sight of their Doge sailing in from Venice at the head of the biggest fleet they had ever seen must have cheered them up. Dandolo certainly knew many of them personally. He could rely on them for inside information as his agents or spies.
[...]
When, why and how did this change of heart and plan come about? What persuaded the leaders of the Crusade that it had become necessary not only to capture Constantinople but also to transform the whole Byzantine Empire into a Latin Empire of Romania? This was surely no mischance or accident of fortune. The sources are not clear on the matter.
[snip]
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Well, Joe, now we know what triggered the Fourth Crusade, don't we?? Those Greek bastards blew up Venice's WTC and the Doge's military HQs!! Such a treacherous attack had to be avenged... Weird how a 21st-century event can retroactively clear up a major event that happened 800 years earlier!! Quantum magic? Perhaps I should read David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality BEFORE Curt Gentry's biography of J. Edgar Hoover, after all...
Gus. |
