Heather Marsh has tied the persecution of witches to the fight of church and industry to control "the power of life and death" at a time when industry needed more workers. She also argues the persecution of witches was a fight for centralized power over the peasant rebellions and the ownership of knowledge by medicine and science which forbade the earlier teaching or practices by women and indigenous cultures. She writes that the persecution of witches has colored misogyny since the 1400s.
Silvia Federici tied the witch hunts to a history of the female body in the transition to capitalism.
Witchcraft and accusations of witchcraft are still very common in some parts of West Africa.
Control of procreation was a constant theme, as was medical knowledge:
"Concerning Witches who copulate with Devils. Why is it that Women are chiefly addicted to Evil superstitions?"
"Whether Witches may work some Prestidigatory Illusion so that the Male Organ appears to be entirely removed and separate from the Body."
"That Witches who are Midwives in Various Ways Kill the Child Conceived in the Womb, and Procure an Abortion; or if they do not this Offer New-born Children to Devils."
"How Witches Impede and Prevent the Power of Procreation."
"How, as it were, they Deprive Man of his Virile Member."
"Of the Manner whereby they Change Men into the Shapes of Beasts."
"Of the Method by which Devils through the Operations of Witches sometimes actually possess men."
"Of the Method by which they can Inflict Every Sort of Infirmity, generally Ills of the Graver Kind."
"Of the Way how in Particular they Afflict Men with Other Like Infirmities."
"How Witch Midwives commit most Horrid Crimes when they either Kill Children or Offer them to Devils in most Accursed Wise."
Hocus Pocus
The Wizard Of Oz
1210s
West Bank
The West Bank is a piece of land in the Middle East. It touches the Dead Sea and the River Jordan. The landscape is mostly hills or desert. The weather in the summer is hot and dry. It is cooler and rainy in the winter.
Right now, the area is under the control of Israel. Some Israelis and other nations disagree on whose it really is.
Since 1990 there are talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinians about what will happen in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the future. Most people on the West Bank are Palestinians but there are also many Jewish settlers in settlements. There has been some controversy about these settlements.
The State of Palestine claims the West Bank with East Jerusalem included.
The West Bank is called "Judea and Samaria Area" by the Israeli government.
Jan Hus
Jan Hus, or John Huss (c.1370 - 6 July 1415) was born in Husinec, Bohemia (now Czech Republic). He was a Bohemian religious thinker and reformer. He started a religious movement that was strongly influenced by the beliefs of British scholar, John Wycliffe.
Hus studied at the University of Prague. In about 1400, he became a Catholic priest, and was soon accepted a position of preaching in Czech, the language spoken in Bohemia. While preaching, he studied Wycliffe’s writings, and came to like them, especially because of how authentic and real they were.
In 1403, Hus asked the church to undo the ban on Wycliffe's writings, and translated them into Czech. The church, led by archbishop Zbynek Zajíc, had different beliefs. In 1410, Zajíc ordered that Hus’ writings be burned and Hus and his followers, the Hussites be forced out of the church. Hus was excommunicated in 1411, condemned by the Council of Constance, and burned at the stake on 6 July 1415, in Konstanz, Germany.
When Hus was killed his followers revolted and fought against the Catholics until they were defeated in 1431.
Many of his teachings were later taken up by Martin Luther.
Konstanz
Konstanz (English often Constance) is a university town with a population of around 80,000, on the shore of Lake Constance in the south-west corner of Germany, bordering Switzerland. The history of the city goes back to Ancient Rome. In the 15th century, the Council of Constance was held there. This ended the Western Schism. Jan Hus was burned as a heretic at the council.
Panther
Panther can mean
All these animals belong to the Felidae family.
Instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) is a way of chatting between two or more people by typing text. The text is then sent by computers over a network such as the Internet.
Instant messaging must have an instant messaging client that hooks up to a service that can send instant messages. Instant messaging is different from e-mail because conversations happen and can be read right away ("instantly"). A multiprotocol instant messaging application lets one connect to many IM networks.
Instant messaging services got many ideas from an older and still popular way to online chat named Internet Relay Chat (IRC). In early instant messaging programs, each letter appeared when it was typed and when letters were deleted to correct typos. These were also seen by the reader. This made it more like a telephone conversation than sending letters. In newer instant messaging programs, the other readers in the conversation generally only sees each line of text right after a new line is started. Most instant messaging programs have a way to set a status message. This works likes the message on a telephone answering machine. It shows whether or not people are online and want to chat.
Instant messaging offers real-time communication and allows easy collaboration, which might be considered more akin to genuine conversation than email's "letter" format. In contrast to e-mail, the parties know whether the peer is available. Most systems allow the user to set an "online status" or "away message" so peers are notified when the user is available, busy, or away from the computer. On the other hand, people are not forced to reply immediately to incoming messages. For this reason, some people consider communication via instant messaging to be less intrusive than communication via phone. However, not all popular systems allow the sending of messages to people not currently logged on ("offline messages"), thus removing much of the difference between IM and email.
Instant messaging allows instantaneous communication between a number of parties simultaneously, by transmitting information quickly and efficiently, featuring immediate receipt of acknowledgment or reply. In certain cases IM involves additional features, which make it even more popular, i.e. to see the other party, e.g. by using ((web-cams)), or to talk directly for free over the internet.
It is possible to save a conversation to read later or look at again. Instant messages typically are may be logged in a local message history which closes the gap to the persistent nature of e-mails and facilitates quick exchange of information like URLs or document snippets (which can be unwieldy when communicated via telephone).
Instant messaging applications began to appear in the 1970s on multi-user operating systems like UNIX, initially to facilitate communication with other users logged in to the same machine, then on the local network, and subsequently across the Internet. Some of these used a peer-to-peer protocol (e.g. talk, ntalk and ytalk), while others required peers to connect to a server (see talker and IRC). Because all of these protocols were based inside a console window, most of those discovering the Internet in the mid-1990s and equating it with the web tended not to encounter them.