there was an explosion of castle construction as feudal lords
sought to consolidate their power and provide fortresses for
the inhabitants of their kingdoms.
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Medieval Castle History - 0 views
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Research shows that castles served a very utilitarian role in feudal society. It was protector, visible landmark, and source of pride among many communities.
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William the Conqueror, from Normandy, France, invaded England in 1066 and changed the medieval landscape forever. Medieval societies soon witnessed the erection of stone towers and walls in every country. Simple Norman donjons evolved into more elaborate strongholds with towering walls, defensive systems and could house sometimes thousands of people.
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Military tactics centered on the taking of castles, and weapon technology improved over the centuries to exploit any weakness that could be found in castle architecture. It wasn't until the late 1600s, when gunpowder and artillery became more effective, that the castle became obsolete.
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Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed (2011 Version) - 2 views
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A Florida woman wrote to tell me that, before reading it, she’d always been annoyed at the poor for what she saw as their self-inflicted obesity.
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earned less than a barebones budget covering housing, child care, health care, food, transportation, and taxes -- though not, it should be noted, any entertainment, meals out, cable TV, Internet service, vacations, or holiday gifts. Twenty-nine percent is a minority, but not a reassuringly small one, and other studies in the early 2000s came up with similar figures.
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widely read among low-wage workers. In the last few years, hundreds of people have written to tell me their stories: the mother of a newborn infant whose electricity had just been turned off, the woman who had just been given a diagnosis of cancer and has no health insurance, the newly homeless man who writes from a library computer.
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. I started with my own extended family, which includes plenty of people without jobs or health insurance, and moved on to trying to track down a couple of the people I had met while working on Nickel and Dimed
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a healthy diet wasn’t always an option. And if I had a quarter for every person who’s told me he or she now tipped more generously, I would be able to start my own foundation.
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and and was subsisting on occasional cleaning and catering jobs. Neither seemed unduly afflicted by the recessi
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Media attention has focused, understandably enough, on the “nouveau poor” -- formerly middle and even upper-middle class people who lost their jobs, their homes, and/or their investments in the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic downturn that followed it, but the brunt of the recession has been borne by the blue-collar working class, which had already been sliding downwards since de-industrialization began in the 1980s.
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were especially hard hit for the simple reason that they had so few assets and savings to fall back on as jobs disappea
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urban hunting. In Racine, Wisconsin, a 51-year-old laid-off mechanic told me he was supplementing his diet by “shooting squirrels and rabbits and eating them stewed, baked, and grilled.” In Detroit, where the wildlife population has mounted as the human population ebbs, a retired truck driver was doing a brisk business in raccoon carcasses, which he recommends marinating with vinegar and spices.
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ncrease the number of paying people per square foot of dwelling space -- by doubling up or renting to couch-surfer
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“people who’ve lost their jobs, or at least their second jobs, cope by doubling or tripling up in overcrowded apartments, or by paying 50 or 60 or even 70 percent of their incomes in rent.”
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- a government safety net that is meant to save the poor from spiraling down all the way to destitutio
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The food stamp program has responded to the crisis fairly well, to the point where it now reaches about 37 million people, up about 30% from pre-recession levels.
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? There is a right to food stamps. You go to the office and, if you meet the statutory definition of need, they h
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elp you. For welfare, the street-level bureaucrats can, pretty much at their own discretion, just say no.
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Delaware residents who had always imagined that people turned to the government for help only if “they didn’t want to work.
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ace a state-sponsored retraining course in computer repairs -- only to find that those skills are no longer in demand.
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44% of laid-off people at the time, she failed to meet the fiendishly complex and sometimes arbitrary eligibility requirements for unemployment benefits. Their car started falling apart.
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TANF does not offer straightforward cash support like Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which it replaced in 1996. It’s an income supplementation program for working parents, and it was based on the sunny assumption that there would always be plenty of jobs for those enterprising enough to get them.
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When the Parentes finally got into “the system” and began receiving food stamps and some cash assistance, they discovered why some recipients have taken to calling TANF “Torture and Abuse of Needy Families.” From the start, the TANF experience was “humiliating,” Kristen says. The caseworkers “treat you like a bum. They act like every dollar you get is coming out of their own paychecks.”
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, “applying for welfare is a lot like being booked by the police.” There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting, and lengthy interrogations as to one’s children’s true paternity. The ostensible goal is to prevent welf
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The most shocking thing I learned from my research on the fate of the working poor in the recession was the extent to which poverty has indeed been criminalized in America.
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Perhaps the constant suspicions of drug use and theft that I encountered in low-wage workplaces should have alerted me to the fact that, when you leave the relative safety of the middle class, you might as well have given up your citizenship and taken residence in a hostile nation.
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Most cities, for example, have ordinances designed to drive the destitute off the streets by outlawing such necessary activities of daily life as sitting, loitering, sleeping, or lying down. Urban officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about such laws: “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a St. Petersburg, Florida, city attorney stated in June 2009, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges...”
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the criminalization of poverty has actually intensified as the weakened economy generates ever more poverty.
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ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with the harassment of the poor for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering, or carrying an open container.
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grizzled 62-year-old, he inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington, D.C. -- the city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine in Phu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972.
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, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, leadi
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The experience of the poor, and especially poor people of color, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks. And if you should try to escape this nightmare reality into a brief, drug-induced high, it’s “gotcha” all over again, because that of course is illegal too.
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Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Generate no public-sector jobs, then penalize people for falling into debt.
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way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor succumbs to racial profiling, but whole communities are effectively “profiled” for the suspicious combination of being both dark-skinned and poor. Flick a cigarette and you’re “littering”; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you’re displaying gang allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you as a potential suspect. And don’t get grumpy about it or you could be “resisting arrest.”
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g. And what public housing remains has become ever more prison-like, with random police sweeps and, in a growing number of cities, proposed drug tests for residents.
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official level of poverty increasing -- to over 14% in 2010 -- some states are beginning to ease up on the criminalization of poverty, using alternative sentencing methods, shortening probation, and reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like missing court appointments. But others, diabolically enough, are tightening the screws: not only increasing the number of “crimes,” but charging prisoners for their room and board, guaranteeing they’ll be released with potentially criminalizing levels of debt.
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a higher minimum wage, universal health care, affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation, and all the other things we, uniquely among the developed nations, have neglected to do.
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: if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.
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: if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.
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: if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.
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: if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.
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Stop the institutional harassment of those who turn to the government for help or find themselves destitute in the streets
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But at least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they’re down.
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The Spartans - 0 views
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Right to grow your hair long, Right to shop for yourself in the markets, Right to return home and live with your family
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Negotiations on labour reforms continue | Athens News - 0 views
Greece Daily life - 1 views
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Greece - Archaic Age of Ancient Greece - 1 views
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The Archaic Age was a time of expansion. Greeks from the mainland set out to settle the Ionian coast. There they had contact with the novel ideas of native populations in Asia Minor. Certain Milesian colonists began to question the world around them, to look for a pattern in life or cosmos, thereby becoming the first philosophers.
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Martin Luther Biography - 0 views
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Bachelors and Masters degrees in Theology. He was in his first year of Law School in Erfurt when an incident occurred that would change the course of European history.
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Many Christians of the late Middle Ages had a great fear of demons and devils, and were terrified of ending up in hell. Mortality rates were high and life was very uncertain due to disease, accidents, childbirth and wars. Luther shared those fears and his first years in the monastery he was tormented with the idea that all men were hopeless sinners in the sight of God and unworthy of salvation.
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reason, he was sent to teach theology at the University of Erfurt, and in 1511, at the University of Wittenberg, where he received his Doctorate in Theology. In Wittenberg he was also the parish priest assigned to minister to the citizens of the town.
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A major source of church funding during this period was the sale of indulgences. An indulgence was a "get out of purgatory card" that could be obtained for oneself or others by paying a certain sum to the church.
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The Pope was selling offices and indulgences to get money for an ambitious building program which included the construction of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. The Pope's representative, the Dominican Father Tetzel, encouraged people to buy the indulgences with the jingle, "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings The soul from Purgatory springs"
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He was shocked by the lack of morality and piety of the local clergy and by the luxurious lifestyle of the Pope Leo X, a member of the Medici family. Pope Leo was known for his expensive tastes and was fond of hunting, gambling and carnivals. The papacy was at a low point in its history and others had been calling out for reform prior to Luther.
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He came to the conclusion there was no evidence in the Bible for believing the Pope had power to release souls from Purgatory.
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On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his ninety-five theses, or points of discussion, on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The document was in Latin and invited other scholars to debate the statements set out.
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The 95 Theses were translated into German and widely distributed throughout Germany, courtesy of the printing press.
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There is no question, however, that Luther wrote the list and sent a copy of it to Prince Albert of Mainz.
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The reaction of the Church initially was to try and suppress the attack on indulgences by suppressing Martin Luther.
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The protest against the indulgences set off a conflagration which, step by step, resulted in most of Northern Europe breaking away from the authority of the Catholic Church.
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It was clear by this time that there could be no coming together on these issues, since the very authority of the Pope was called into question.
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Luther was given safe conduct to attend the meeting and defend his positions. At the Diet of Worms, Luther was shown a table with a pile of his books and other writings. He was offered the opportunity to recant, but refused. Luther's reply was written down as he spoke it: "Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason -- I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other -- my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen." The printed document released after the Diet of Worms also contained the famous words, "Here I stand, I can do no other."
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He spent nearly a year there, writing furiously and fighting depression and numerous physical ailments. It was in a small study in the castle in 1522 that he translated the New Testament from Greek into German and profoundly influenced the form and standardization of the German language.
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Maybe one of the most important ideas. He gave the people the bible in the local language, so more people could read what the bible said...not have someone tell them. See this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible#Surviving_copies
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in Luther's absence numerous leaders had sprung up, each with his own interpretation of doctrine, and most having far more radical views than Luther.
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Priests wore ordinary clothing and grew their hair, services were performed in German, monks and nuns were leaving the cloisters and getting married. Some groups were smashing images and statues in the churches and dragging priests away from the altars.
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However, he impulsively announced he was marrying Katharina von Bora, to the great surprise of his friends.
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Many were inspired by Martin Luther's challenge to the authority of the Church to challenge the secular powers as well.
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Both sides were angry with Luther: the nobles blamed him for stirring up the people and the peasants blamed him for encouraging the nobles to use violence against them.
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Luther wrote to and met with other leaders of the Reformation, such as Zwingli, to try and produce a unified statement of belief for the reformed church, but nothing came out of it because they were not able to agree on many of the doctrinal issues.
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This dissident poet says elections and the nuclear pact give him hope for Iran | Public... - 0 views
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The 44-year-old journalist and poet might have ended up dead, like some of his writer friends back home in Iran. Several of them were murdered in a series of political assassinations that began in the late 1990s.
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freedom of expression, the Islamic Republic of Iran is among the worst of the worst. The country is ranked 169th, out of a total of 180 countries, on the 2016 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders.
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Rafizadeh looks every bit the intellectual — glasses, leather jacket, cigarette. As a child, he would wake up early and recite Persian poetry out loud, annoying his father and his siblings.
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“The [Iranian] government intrudes into your personal life no matter who you are. That’s why, after the murders started happening, I decided to write political poems,” he says.
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“Other intellectuals were killed, too,” he says. “The Iranian regime was murdering innocent people just because they dared to call for political change and reform.”
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afizadeh managed to shine a light on the killings with his writings in the pages of pro-reformist newspapers. But only for a time. Eventually, Rafizadeh was arrested.“I spent 86 days in a cell that was 1.5 meters by 2 meters,” Rafizadeh says. “And I was tortured.”
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Even after he was released, pending trial, he says authorities threatened to harm his children if he didn’t make public statements saying he was treated well in prison and that his past writings were false.
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Rafizadeh says he did what he was being pressured to do. But he adds that, “the Iranian public knew who was lying and who was telling the truth.” “Other journalists besides me wrote about the human rights situation in Iran and we did have an impact,” Rafizadeh says. Nonetheless, he felt he had to leave the country after the courts sentenced him to 20 lashes and nine months in prison. He escaped into Turkey in 2005. Two years later, he got asylum in Canada.
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None of these political actors are entirely answerable to Iran’s elected government. That enabled the hardliners to launch a brutal crackdown against the pro-reform camp of then-president Mohammad Khatami and his supporters. The crackdown began in in the late '90s and continued into the early 2000s.
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“You can fight for rights and freedoms in the political space all you like, but if there is not judicial protection of them, that is a fundamental problem,” she says.
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No. 123: The Black Death - 0 views
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Now rats carried this disease off ships in Genoa. In just four years it killed off 40 percent of the people in Europe. It took three forms: "bubonic" plague hit the lymph system, "pneumonic" plague attacked the lungs, and "septicemic" plague assaulted the blood. But the words "Black Death" encompassed it all.
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The Church-centered world before the plague had been oddly timeless. Now people worked long hours, chasing capital gain, in a life that could end at any moment. The first new technology of the plague years was time-keeping -- mechanical clocks and hourglasses. Medicine had been a function of the Church before the plague. Physicians were well-paid, highly-respected scholars. They spun dialectic arguments far away from unwholesome sick people -- not unlike some of today's specialists. 13th-century medicine, like the 13th-century Church, had failed miserably in coping with the plague. Both medical and religious practice now shifted toward the laity. Medicine was redirected into experimentation and practical pharmacology. Medical books were now being written -- not in Latin -- but in the vernacular, and by a whole new breed of people.
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Hajj - 0 views
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Performing these rituals, known as the Hajj, is the fifth pillar of Islam and the most significant manifestation of Islamic faith and unity. Undertaking the Hajj at least once is a duty for Muslims who are physically and financially able to make the journey to Makkah.
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The pilgrimage is the religious high point of a Muslim's life and an event that every Muslim dreams of undertaking.
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Magna Carta 1215 - 2 views
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document that King John of England (1166 - 1216) was forced into signing. King John was forced into signing the charter because it greatly reduced the power he held as the King of England and allowed for the formation of a powerful parliament.
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curb the King and make him govern by the old English laws that had prevailed before the Normans came. The Magna Carta was a collection of 37 English laws - some copied, some recollected, some old and some new. The Magna Carta demonstrated that the power of the king could be limited by a written grant.
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Copies of the Magna Carta were distributed to bishops, sheriffs and other important people throughout England.
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constitutional government in England. The Magna Carta demonstrated that the power of the king could be limited by a written grant.
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The influence of Magna Carta can be seen in the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Article 21 from the Declaration of Rights in the Maryland Constitution of 1776 reads:"That no freeman ought to be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, liberties, or privileges, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner destroyed, or deprived of his life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land."
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Taxes - No taxes except the regular feudal dues were to be levied, except by the consent of the Great Council, or Parliament
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The Church - The Church was to be free from royal interference, especially in the election of bishops
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Daily Life, Kids, Toys, Bone Games - Mongols, the Felt Tent People, For Kids - 0 views
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Mongol Kids: From a very early age, kids were taught to respect their parents. They were taught survival skills - how to collect dry animal dung for firewood, how to milk cattle, how to use a bow and arrow, and how to cook and sew.
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Good Behavior: The most important things Mongol parents taught their children had to do with behavior. Everything they did, including the toys they gave their children, and the stories they told, were designed to teach their children to be ethical, honest, and skilled - to have good behavio
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Although the Mongols were nomads, they still had a royalty of sorts - chieftains, and later khans. These were the leaders of various tribes. In ancient times, a tribe did not necessarily travel together. But they did get together at festivals, and in times of need.
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They did not live in towns. The Mongols were nomads. They traveled in small groups composed of perhaps only two or three families.
Hilarious Waving Bear - 0 views
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Feudalism Pyramid - 0 views
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Feudalism - The Pyramid of PowerThe pyramid of power which was the Feudal system ran to a strict 'pecking' order - during the Medieval period of the Middle Ages everyone knew their place. The order of rank and precedence in the Medieval Feudal System was as follows:The PopeThe KingNoblesKnights / VassalsFreemenYeomenServantsPeasants / Serfs / Villeins
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Feudalism PyramidFeudalism in the Middle Ages resembles a pyramid, with the lowest peasants at its base and the lines of authority flowing up to the peak of the structure, the king. Under Feudalism the King was only answerable to the Pope. Feudalism was based on the exchange of land for military service. Life lived under the Medieval Feudal System, or Feudalism, demanded that everyone owed allegiance to the King and their immediate superior.
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Feudalism Pyramid - Fealty and HomageDuring the Middle Ages a portion of land called a fief would be granted by the King. This reward would be granted to him by his lord in exchange for his services. The recipient of the fief would be one of his vassals. The fief, or land, was usually granted following a Commendation Ceremony. The commendation ceremony was designed to create a lasting bond between a vassal and his lord. Fealty and homage were a key element of feudalism.
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Feudalism was based on the belief that the land belonged to God - but that the Kings, who ruled by Divine Right, managed the land and used it as they wished. However, under the Feudalism pyramid the King was answerable to the Pope. The Pope, as God's vicar on Earth, had the right to intervene and impose sanctions on an unjust King. Under the feudalism pyramid the Pope had the power to pronounce judgement against a King, depose a King, forfeit his Kingdom, put another King in his place or excommunicate a King.
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The Middle Ages: Feudal Life - 2 views
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or safety and for defense, people in the Middle Ages formed small communities around a central lord or master. Most people lived on a manor, which consisted of the castle, the church, the village, and the surrounding farm land. These manors were isolated, with occasional visits from peddlers, pilgrims on their way to the Crusades, or soldiers from other fiefdoms.
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n this "feudal" system, the king awarded land grants or "fiefs" to his most important nobles, his barons, and his bishops, in return for their contribution of soldiers for the king's armies. At the lowest echelon of society were the peasants, also called "serfs" or "villeins." In exchange for living and working on his land, known as the "demesne," the lord offered his peasants protection.
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The Middle Ages | Feudalism - 3 views
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Working hard did not change your status. Your clothing, food, marriage, homes, etc., were determined for you.
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Fancy clothes were a status symbol. Laws were passed that forbade peasants from wearing fancy clothes, which they couldn’t afford anyway.
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There were plenty of toys and games. Medieval children had dolls, spinning tops, rattles, hobby horses, blocks, balls, whistles and puppets. Little girls had glass jewelry for dress-up, while little boys played with wooden soldiers, whips, toy horses and wooden swords.
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Marriages were never based on love. They were arranged by the parents and often involved land issues and strategic bonds.
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Girls as young as age 12 were married to anyone who met the requirements of the girl’s parents. Grooms could be from 20 years to 50 years old.