Did Ebola doom Periclean Athens?

Unfortunately timed plagues can have a major effect on history. The so-called Plague of Justinian in the 6th century -- now believed to have been bubonic plague -- killed some 40 percent of the population of Constantinople, a quarter of the population of the Eastern Mediterranean, and permanently crippled Roman military power, effectively ending Emperor Justinian's efforts to recapture the Western Roman Empire and leaving the Romans vulnerable to the Muslim invasions a century later. The catalyst for release of the plague is believed to have been the so-called Climate Crisis of the 6th Century, in which most of the earth suffered from unseasonable weather, causing crop failures and famines worldwide. The political effects were devastating, leading to the fall of Teotihuacan, Sassanid Persia, and the Gupta Empire, among others, and the rise of Islam. 

Another plague that had a major effect on history was The Plague of Athens in 430 BC. Just as Athens was getting the upper hand in the Peloponnesian War, Athens was crippled by this plague. The city was made more vulnerable by the overcrowding caused by refugees fleeing Spartan troops in the Attic countryside. Athens lost one-third to two-thirds of its population, including its best general Pericles and both of his sons. Athens never fully recovered from this plague, and went on to lose the Peloponnesian War. 

This plague has never been identified. Now, one researcher believes it was none other than the Ebola virus:

Could the first recorded Ebola outbreak have occurred not in Africa less than 40 years ago, but rather, more than 2,400 years ago, in ancient Greece? That's what one professor of infectious diseases and history now suggests.
[...]
In the new paper, (University of Michigan history and infectious diseases Professor Powel) Kazanjian suggests that an Ebola virus may have been the culprit in the infamous Plague of Athens, a five-year epidemic that began in 430 B.C., whose cause has long been a matter of conjecture among physicians and historians. The famed historian Thucydides, who chronicled the Peloponnesian War between the rival city-states of Athens and Sparta, was not only an eyewitness to the Athenian disease, but also contracted it himself and survived.
"The Athenian epidemic in 430 B.C. has had a fascinating attraction for researchers of communicable diseases for a long period of time," said William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Athenian illness, also called Thucydides syndrome, began with an abrupt onset of fever, headache, fatigue, and pain in the stomach and extremities, accompanied by furious vomiting. Those who survived after seven days of illness also experienced severe diarrhea. Additional symptoms included reddened eyes, hiccups and bleeding from the mouth. Stricken individuals also sometimes experienced cough, seizures, confusion, rashes, pustules, ulcers, and even loss of fingers and toes, possibly due to gangrene.
As the disease progressedin those afflicted, Thucydides noted that people became so dehydrated that some plunged themselves into wells in futile attempts to quench their unceasing thirst. The disease often ended in death, typically by day seven to nine of the illness. Medical treatment was useless against the disease's severity and bleak outcome.
"Thucydides' vivid description allows present-day historians and clinicians to speculate about the cause of prior epidemics and the historical roots of our epidemics we know about today," Kazanjian said.
The Athenian disease began south of Egypt in a region Thucydides called "Aethiopia," a term that ancient Greeks used to refer to regions in sub-Saharan Africa, where modern Ebola outbreaks have occurred, Kazanjian said. In the ancient world, sub-Saharan Africans migrated to Greece to work as farmers or servants, thereby providing a potential human vector for Ebola.
Kazanjian argued that the symptoms, mortality rate and origin in sub-Saharan Africa that characterize the Plague of Athens are consistent with what is known about Ebola. He added that physicians were among the first victims of the Athenian disease in Thucydides' account, just as modern health care workers have proven especially vulnerable to Ebola, with nearly 500 dying from the virus in the current outbreak as of January, according to the World Health Organization.
"Diseases like Ebola, which we sometimes lump into the category of a new or emerging disease, may actually be much older than we realize," Kazanjian said. His paper was published June 1 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
A number of other possible causes of Thucydides syndrome have been suggested over the years, including typhus, smallpox, measles, anthrax, the bubonic plague and toxic shock syndrome. Kazanjian argued that no other disease matches the features of the Athenian disease as well as Ebola does; however, he said, "my study does not answer this question definitively. …
The actual cause remains elusive, he said."
"We may never know what caused the Athenian epidemic," said Schaffner, who did not take part in Kazanjian's paper. "I think it's a bit far-fetched that the plague of Athens was Ebola, but I think it's great fun that new people have become engaged in what I call studious speculation of the subject."

Why are we losing to ISIS?

As Ralph Peters explains, "We’re losing to ISIS because Obama has no will to fight."

Of course not. Obama knows ISIS is the enemy of America and, indeed, all of Western Civilization. But they are not his enemy, and that's the only thing that matters to him.

Still think Edward Snowden is a hero?

Thanks to him, the US and British overseas spy network has been effectively destroyed:

Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.
Western intelligence agencies say they have been forced into the rescue operations after Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files held by the former American security contractor, who fled to seek protection from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after mounting one of the largest leaks in US history.
Senior government sources confirmed that China had also cracked the encrypted documents, which contain details of secret intelligence techniques and information that could allow British and American spies to be identified.

Instapundit quotes an earlier report from The Guardian:

MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, has withdrawn agents from overseas operations because Russian security services had broken into encrypted files held by American computer analyst Snowden. . . .
The files held by Snowden were encrypted, but now British officials believe both countries have hacked into the files, according to the report.
The newspaper quotes a series of anonymous sources from Downing Street, the Home Office and British intelligence saying that the documents contained intelligence techniques and information that would enable foreign powers to identify British and American spies. . . .
A “senior Home Office source” was also quoted by the newspaper, saying: “Putin didn’t give him asylum for nothing. His documents were encrypted but they weren’t completely secure and we have now seen our agents and assets being targeted.”
The Sunday Times also quoted a “British intelligence source” saying that Russian and Chinese officials would be examining Snowden’s material for “years to come”.
“Snowden has done incalculable damage,” the intelligence source reportedly said. “In some cases the agencies have been forced to intervene and lift their agents from operations to prevent them from being identified and killed.”

Yup. A real hero, that Snowden. Like John Walker. And Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. And Benedict Arnold.

George Orwell's Junior Anti-Sex League

Apparently has at least two members, law professors Stephen Schulhofer and Erin Murphy, who are unfortunately on the American Law Institute's team for drafting the Model Penal Code. Ashe Schow:

The act of sex is not illegal. But if two members of the American Law Institute have their way, it will be — unless you follow their rules.
Law professors Stephen J. Schulhofer and Erin Murphy are trying to update the criminal code when it comes to sex offenses, believing current definitions of rape and sexual assault are antiquated. The focus of their draft is on what constitutes consent. It adopts the "yes means yes," or "affirmative consent" model that was passed in California last year.
The California law applies only to college campuses, however. Schulhofer and Murphy aim to take that definition of consent — which says that before every escalation of a sexual encounter, clear and convincing consent must be given — to the state or federal level. No one actually has sex this way, requesting permission and having it granted perhaps a dozen times in a single encounter.
But the theory that millions of Americans are having sex wrongly has gained currency among campus activists. This new attempt to alter the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, a highly influential document that has been adopted in whole or in part by many states' legislatures, is part of a push to bring authoritarianism into the bedroom.
Schulhofer and Murphy do not intend to make sexual intercourse impossible to construe as an innocent act. But this would be the consequence of their draft. Any act of sex in which permission is not repeatedly requested and granted would put at least one of the parties, usually men, in legal jeopardy. Absent the repeated "May I…?" and affirmative responses, any woman could later have her partner locked up over unexpressed mental reservations. Men could make the same accusations.
No one who opposes this legal change argues that consent is unnecessary. But the "yes means yes" standard is so stringent that it would criminalize millions of Americans overnight unless no one reports them.

Think this could never happen? Think again.

The American Law Institute was founded in 1923 "to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work," according to its charter. It is a consequential organization. The Institute's Model Penal Code of 1962 was adopted almost entirely in New Jersey, New York and Oregon, with nearly two-thirds of the states using at least some portion of it.
So, Schulhofer and Murphy want to change an important document.
The two presented their first draft of a new model penal code for sexual offenses to the Institute's 2014 annual meeting. Members discussed the draft vigorously. Because the discussion ran out of time, the draft was referred back to Schulhofer and Murphy for reworking.
They presented a reworked draft at ALI's 2015 annual meeting in Washington, D.C. It was dated April 28, just three weeks before the meeting on May 19. Schulhofer and Murphy were criticized for providing the draft so close to the meeting, giving lawyers limited time to read and analyze its 250 pages. But the "reworked" draft is actually just a reorganized version of the 2014 draft, with hardly any changes.
This made it easy for opponents to produce an opposition letter with 22 co-signers to pick the document apart. It also showed that Schulhofer and Murphy did not allow the feedback received in 2014 to affect their views.

The reality of their proposal is right out of Oceania.

Opponents say the draft would further burden an already over-criminalized and over-incarcerated American public.
The opponents' letter provides this common and hypothetical encounter: "Person A and Person B are on a date and walking down the street. Person A, feeling romantically and sexually attracted, timidly reaches out to hold B's hand and feels a thrill as their hands touch. Person B does nothing, but six months later files a criminal complaint."
Under Schulhofer and Murphy's new rules, according to the opposition letter, Person A is guilty of "criminal sexual contact." That's because Section 213.0(5) of the draft "defines 'sexual contact' expansively, to include any touching of any body part of another person, whether done by the actor or by the person touched. Any kind of contact may qualify; there are no limits on either the body part touched or the manner in which it is touched."
Person A would be guilty of the act only if Person B filed a complaint, but therein lies a profound problem with Schulhofer and Murphy's draft. Everything is potentially a sexual assault unless done strictly according to their rules about obtaining prior consent to every action, no matter how innocuous, of every sexual encounter. There is no need to say "no." Without the presence of a prior "yes," the act is already an assault.
By this definition, millions of Americans — perhaps almost all sexually active people — become offenders. Previously, it was not thought necessary to ask verbally, "May I hold your hand?" or "May I kiss you now?," if a couple had been together for a while, or for months or years. It was recognized that either previous requests or implicit indications had given permission for a touch or a kiss. Men and women can and often do misread signals coming from someone to whom they are attracted, but it has not been thought appropriate to criminalize a touch or a kiss attempted in light of what seemed to be implicit assent.
Proponents of "affirmative consent" rules might argue that an explicit question is not necessary if there are proper social cues. But given the scope of the proposed definitions, the only safe way to be sure a person is consenting is to ask explicitly at every step of the sexual process. Thinking that a person "seemed into you" during a date would not be a strong enough social cue to presume the person wanted his or her hand held.
The law wouldn't apply only to first dates or similar new encounters, but would apply even in committed relationships. This means affirmative consent would be mandated for every sexual encounter, even to married couples. Given that divorce and custody cases frequently produce false accusations of child abuse, it's easy to imagine false accusations of sexual abuse proliferating if Schulhofer and Murphy's rules aren't followed every time a couple has sex.
Schulhofer and Murphy's draft makes clear "that when a complainant's behavior has been passive — neither expressly inviting nor rebuking the defendant's sexual advances, that behavior cannot be considered sufficient to show affirmative permission."
Silence and passivity could automatically be construed as unwillingness, and would make a "guilty" verdict far more likely. Indeed, Schulhofer and Murphy say this is what they want, writing in their draft that "the appropriate default position clearly is to err in the direction of protecting individuals against unwanted sexual imposition."
In other words, when in doubt, convict.

This idea is by itself horrifying. That it has come to so many college campuses -- including Ohio State, thanks to Michael Drake -- is an affront to any reasonable notion of human nature, justice and fair play.

That drafters of the ALI's Model Penal Code want to make this the law shows just how far the rot in the legal profession has spread.