Scotland Will Pardon Thousands of Witches (theguardian.com) 115
Thousands of people — included hundreds of men — were accused of witchcraft in Scotland, the Guardian reports, "from allegations of cursing the king's ships, to shape-shifting into animals and birds, or dancing with the devil."
Many were executed. Now, three centuries after the Witchcraft Act was repealed, campaigners are on course to win pardons and official apologies for the estimated 3,837 people — 84% of whom were women — tried as witches, of which two-thirds were executed and burned...
[W]ell-known cases include Lilias Adie, from Torryburn, Fife, who was accused of casting a spell to cause a neighbour's hangover; while Issobell Young, executed at Edinburgh Castle in 1629, was said by a stable boy to have shape-shifted into an owl and accused of having a coven....
The [pro-pardon advocacy site] Witches of Scotland notes that signs associated with witchcraft — broomsticks, cauldrons, black cats and black pointed hats — were also associated with "alewives", the name for women who brewed weak beer to combat poor water quality. The broomstick sign was to let people know beer was on sale, the cauldron to brew it, the cat to keep mice down, and the hat to distinguish them at market. Women were ousted from brewing and replaced by men once it became a profitable industry.
Wikipedia has a page with a list of people executed for witchcraft. Citing modern scholars, it places the total number of people executed for witchcraft in Europe and America between 40,000 and 50,000.
But the Guardian also notes a recent statement from the head of the pro-pardon advocacy group Witches of Scotland. "Per capita, during the period between the 16th and 18th century, we [Scotland] executed five times as many people as elsewhere in Europe, the vast majority of them women."
Many were executed. Now, three centuries after the Witchcraft Act was repealed, campaigners are on course to win pardons and official apologies for the estimated 3,837 people — 84% of whom were women — tried as witches, of which two-thirds were executed and burned...
[W]ell-known cases include Lilias Adie, from Torryburn, Fife, who was accused of casting a spell to cause a neighbour's hangover; while Issobell Young, executed at Edinburgh Castle in 1629, was said by a stable boy to have shape-shifted into an owl and accused of having a coven....
The [pro-pardon advocacy site] Witches of Scotland notes that signs associated with witchcraft — broomsticks, cauldrons, black cats and black pointed hats — were also associated with "alewives", the name for women who brewed weak beer to combat poor water quality. The broomstick sign was to let people know beer was on sale, the cauldron to brew it, the cat to keep mice down, and the hat to distinguish them at market. Women were ousted from brewing and replaced by men once it became a profitable industry.
Wikipedia has a page with a list of people executed for witchcraft. Citing modern scholars, it places the total number of people executed for witchcraft in Europe and America between 40,000 and 50,000.
But the Guardian also notes a recent statement from the head of the pro-pardon advocacy group Witches of Scotland. "Per capita, during the period between the 16th and 18th century, we [Scotland] executed five times as many people as elsewhere in Europe, the vast majority of them women."
How about Tim the Enchanter? (Score:2, Funny)
After all, he warned you, but no, it's just a harmless little rabbit...
Re:In 500 years Scotland will pardon the antivaxer (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cause right now the mob treats them like witches."
Unlike real witches, one little prick can unwitch the stupid antivaxxers though.
Re: In 500 years Scotland will pardon the antivaxe (Score:5, Informative)
The real problem are the fanatics who still believe that vaccines work against Covid, despite all the evidence to the contrary that shows it is worse than placebo.
Here in Canada the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID are in the unvaccinated, despite their being a small minority. Unvaccinated are 25x more likely to end up in ICU. If you consider that not working I can only laugh.
https://health-infobase.canada... [canada.ca]
Re: In 500 years Scotland will pardon the antivaxe (Score:5, Interesting)
The real problem are the fanatics who still believe that vaccines work against Covid, despite all the evidence to the contrary that shows it is worse than placebo.
Here in Canada the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID are in the unvaccinated, despite their being a small minority. Unvaccinated are 25x more likely to end up in ICU. If you consider that not working I can only laugh.
https://health-infobase.canada... [canada.ca]
Same in the U.S. The overwhelming majority of people hospitalized and dying are unvaccinated. Somewhere between 90% and 98% of all covid deaths are now from the unvaccinated. Those select few who are vaccinated and die have underlying medical conditions. The last figure I saw said those who are unvaccinated are 30 times more likely to contract covid, and 20 times more likely to die from it.
But then, this is what things have come to [imgur.com].
Re: In 500 years Scotland will pardon the antivaxe (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep. And we have people simultaneously refusing the vaccine, and blaming Biden for the fact that death rates were even higher this year than last.
It's like, yeah, the armor only protects you if you *wear* it. Idiot.
Re: In 500 years Scotland will pardon the antivaxe (Score:4, Insightful)
What does fantasy have to do with anything? Abstinence only sex ed has NEVER worked anywhere in the world. Vaccines meanwhile are by far the most effective medical treatment ever devised by man.
Reproduction is the biological meaning of life, and when you go up against nature head on you only have two choices: Guide the river on a more productive path in more-or-less the direction it wants to go anyway, or fail.
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It's like, yeah, the armor only protects you if you *wear* it. Idiot.
What happens if you use this same line of reasoning on abstinence-only sex education?
The same thing.
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The belief of anti-vaxers is of a religious type.
Why do people have religious type beliefs at all? I think it is a side effect of the psychological systems that detect looming bad times and synch up a tribe's warriors to attack neighbors.
At least the parts of the US with poor economic prospects also have the highest rates of what most of us consider nutty beliefs.
Re: In 500 years Scotland will pardon the antivax (Score:2)
True story
Pastor of a mega church: "God helped me find my car keys!"
This clown needs to tell that to the mothers whose babies died that day from preventable illnesses, but were blocked because of economic and political problems in their home countries.
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The real problem are the fanatics who still believe that vaccines work against Covid, despite all the evidence to the contrary that shows it is worse than placebo.
Show the evidence.
Three Studies Show Negative Vaccine Effectiveness (Score:2, Interesting)
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/... [dailysceptic.org]
"The last two weeks have brought three new studies finding negative efficacy for two vaccine doses, meaning the vaccinated are more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. These are study findings, not raw data, so have been adjusted for various biases and confounders, making it harder to dismiss them as anomalous or skewed.
The first is a pre-print study from Denmark, published on December 23rd, which looked at nearly all PCR-positive SARS-CoV-2 infection
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The negative estimates in the final period arguably suggest different behaviour and/or exposure patterns in the vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts causing underestimation of the VE. This was likely the result of Omicron spreading rapidly initially through single (super-spreading) events causing many infections among young, vaccinated individuals
The vaccine efficacy rate here is a observational difference between a group of vaccinated people vs unvaccinated people with no care for confounders. In Denmark the only people at 93+
Re: Three Studies Show Negative Vaccine Effectiven (Score:2)
Wait, hold up. What's this nonsense about vaccines suppressing symptoms?
You're not ignorant due to lack of information. You're ignorant due to your inability to coherently comprehend that information. This is partially a side effect of modern pedagogy, teaching folks what to think instead of how.
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Transcending to wellness (Score:2)
You're welcome. Thank you for your reply. Sounds like you have been through a lot -- made worse by a medical system which has misplaced priorities. Kudos to you for hanging in there, learning more, and continuing to search for paths towards healing. I went through something a bit like that in the 2000s with what I thought was Lyme disease. I hope you continue on your path back towards wellness. While blame yourself or others might feel important, a probably more important questions may be, how do we move fo
Re: Transcending to wellness (Score:2)
"made worse by a medical system which has misplaced priorities"
I automatically thought the United States until he used the term "meters".
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Re: In 500 years Scotland will pardon the antivax (Score:3)
You know there's never been a debate about masks, right? We don't even really need tests with specific viruses - the germ theory of disease tells us that prophylactic measures are measurably more effective than none.
I bet you talk really big game about personal responsibi
One of the things I've seen a couple times (Score:1, Troll)
That works just fine for me. I mean we've got a really simple course of drugs to help you transition.
I'm part of that mob, you insensitive clod. (Score:1)
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Re:In 500 years Scotland will pardon the antivaxer (Score:5, Insightful)
Cause right now the mob treats them like witches.
The only ones killing the antivaxxers are the antivaxxers themselves.
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Lets make a deal.
We kill you now... and in 500 years, someone will say "sorry".
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Cause right now the mob treats them like witches.
You should read up on what Europeans did to people carrying the black plague.
In those times, they most certainly could be treated like witches.
If you weren't in the top rungs of society and showed any signs of illness, you and everyone living with you would be drug out of your homes and thrown into a pit with other infected people, dozens of feet deep, bodies pilled on top of you, to be burred alive.
If you were a member of certain ethnical groups, your hovel along with all your neighbors would just be set a
Re: In 500 years Scotland will pardon the antivaxe (Score:2)
What's sad to me is your own ignorance is being weaponized against you and being ignorant as you are isn't gonna provide much defense.
That you insist inoculations provide immunity demonstrates you understand the benefits of inoculation. Why are you being so ignorant about inoculation for coronaviruses and not smallpox? Is it perhaps because your political beli
Money please (Score:3)
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A brace of toads and a hogs head of newts.
Pointless virtue signalling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Pointless virtue signalling (Score:1)
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The pardon is just part of it, they want a memorial too. I don't know about you but I feel that memorials commemorating people who were unjustly tortured and killed by the state are a worthwhile and important way of acknowledging the darker parts of our own history, lest we forget and repeat them.
For example, I fully support pardoning Alan Turing and putting his face on the £50 note.
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My ex (Score:5, Funny)
I know my ex will be relieved.
Re: My ex (Score:3)
Iâ(TM)m still paying reparations to mine in the form of alimony-she cast a spell and my bank account started to shrink.
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So, whereas not all people who ride brooms and turn the occasional person into a toad are necessarily bad, your ex still ain't off the list of people to avoid.
I got no skin in the game. Mine went back to her home planet.
Re: My ex (Score:2)
I've known a couple horrid stone cold bitch teachers during grade school that I still wouldn't mind hearing about them being burned at the stake.
You know in a way (Score:1)
witch hunts were a program against mass violation of medical acts that went out of control.
Shows how out of control the Woke crowd is (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The thing is, the convictions were quite sound under the law of the day. So it has to be a pardon since the convictions themselves were sound at the time they occurred.
This issue has cropped up again and again in different countries, a prime example being Carl von Ossietzky [nobelprize.org], whose 1931 treason conviction was upheld in 1992 because it was sound under the laws of the time.
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A boy in a stable claiming he saw a maid transform into an owl, might be "sound under the law of that time", but is still ridiculous.
So a pardon is fine.
Basically all witch craft convictions should be pardoned.
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As far as i understand it she was convicted for something she actually did.
If the "accusation script" included witchcraft does not really matter.
So no idea why you want to nitpick.
Or is my prayer to Odin every night witchcraft and I deserve to get killed, because a catholic priest "says so"?
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My birthday is Tuesday, so my protective god is Tyr :D
As I'm into martial arts since 35 years, I think that fits.
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The way it works in Scotland is that a conviction can't be challenged on the basis of new laws, only on the basis of the law at the time of the alleged crime. It's done that way to stop endless appeals every time the law changes, and politicians are expected to issue a pardon if the law was changed because they are changing the law in order to decriminalize what that person did.
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Re:Shows how out of control the Woke crowd is (Score:5, Insightful)
Turing did nothing wrong. The law itself was immoral. There is no crime to pardon.
That's literally not how legal system works. The morality of law has no bearing on whether someone committed a crime by breaking it. The pardon was a recognition that the law was wrong.
The pardon for Turning was disgusting and these pardons are the same.
These actions ammount to correcting a record. If you thnk the pardon for Turing was disgusting then you're effectively claiming that yes, Turing did do something criminally wrong.
I find your point of view disgusting.
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Re:Shows how out of control the Woke crowd is (Score:4, Interesting)
Next we are going hear woke propaganda like white girls should be allowed to marry black boys, and that women be allowed to own property. Or that the incantations of video games donâ(TM)t cause kids to be more violent
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Crop failure caused by witches?
U wot m8?
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nm sarcasm detector must have been broken, carry on
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Well if Issobell didn't shape-shift into an owl then why did the stable boy say she did? Hmm? He has no reason to lie so probably she was guilty.
But now that shape-shifting into an owl is perfectly legal, she deserves a pardon.
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Well if Issobell didn't shape-shift into an owl then why did the stable boy say she did? Hmm?
Because she wouldn't give him head. That'll teach her!
Re: Shows how out of control the Woke crowd is (Score:2)
Mental illness with outward signs could get you branded as a witch. A medical problem such as epilepsy could give solid physical reasons for people to believe you were "possessed" and "barganing with the devil". Or maybe the crops were poor this year, and the town just didn't like you. You get used as a scapegoat, labeled as a witch, and executed.
The boy who said that a maid turn into an owl might have been a sociopath, coached by others to make that claim, or may have been severely mentally ill him
Re: Shows how out of control the Woke crowd is (Score:2)
Woke
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
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A pardon means you were guilty of a crime but society will forgive them for being witches.
A pardon means what the pardoner intended when they gave the pardon. For current offences it's often a sign of forgiveness, but pardons for historic crimes are generally seen as an acknowledgement that the law itself was immoral.
Kind of like the pardon for Alan Turing. Turing did nothing wrong. The law itself was immoral. There is no crime to pardon.
Except there was a conviction on record for a specific criminal offence at the time. Which is why they granted a pardon that everyone understood to mean "this law was horribly immoral".
How likely are you to want to be pardoned for violating someone else's weird moral convictions. The pardon for Turning was disgusting and these pardons are the same.
Fortunately most people don't share your weird view of what pardons mean.
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These are UK subjects
No such thing. UK citizens.
Makes me wonder (Score:2)
Cursed (Score:1)
My family, and many others from the region, were cursed [bbc.co.uk] by the Bishop of Glasgow in the 1500s.
I personally hope the curse is never revoked, it's a reflection of the historical over-reach of the "first estate" and if they don't know where they can stick their religion it I'll be happy to meet the current bishop and explain it
Re: Cursed (Score:1)
Cursed Scotland to be Drunks (Score:2)
They did a good job. (Score:5, Funny)
It says they executed some 40K to 50K witches. Obviously they did a good job of that, since there are no witches left anymore nowadays.
Our forefathers (and mothers, not witches), saved us from a witch infestation.
Like nearly all things (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how many atrocities you can trace back to somebody wanting take stuff away from somebody else.
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The scientific mind should not forget that a large chunk of modern science also has it roots in witchcraft tradition with the practice of alchemy which would eventually lead to the science of chemistry.
There's very little overlap between alchemy and witchcraft. Your whole post is offensive nonsense.
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At least one author would agree you have a point.
Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West [amazon.com]
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I'm reasonably sure you're thinking of Christian demons, other cultures have them too, they just use different words. Oni, Jinn, Cthulhu, Jake from State Farm? Demons all.
Why Bother? (Score:2)
It's not like pardoning people who were convicted under anti-sodomy laws which, at least plausibly, sends a valuable message on a matter of current public concern. I don't think there is anyone even sorta reasonable who doesn't see witchcraft trials as absurd and grossly unjust.
Given that people bothered to fight for it I guess it's better to just do it than resisting as that would just waste more time and create more possibility for division but it seems kinda silly to push for in the first place.
The Dead Alewives (Score:2)
will be thrilled.
So it is news for the nerds? (Score:3)
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Still called them witches (Score:2)
They are just being pardoned.
Big mistake. (Score:1)
Greedcraft (Score:1)
> Women were ousted from brewing and replaced by men once it became a profitable industry.
They punished the wrong people.
Quiet day in Scottish Parliament, then? (Score:2)
So much easier to pardon long-dead people than to investigate where the First Minister and her husband hid that half-a-million quid that's gone missing from the party funds.
Stupid, performative BS. (Score:3, Insightful)
All these "grand gestures".
That's all this crap is.
None of it brings back the people killed.
It doesn't compensate the families.
And everyone involved is long dead.
It means exactly nothing.
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It means exactly nothing.
It means you are a short sighted piece of shit.
It means, after a pardon, something that can be pointed at and said "Look, we fucked up in the past, lets not do that again".
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Short sighted?
Something that's been openly acknowledged int he past.
But now, it's framed as if it were an actual pardon, instead of just theater.
Sorry, it's bullshit.
Re:Stupid, performative BS. (Score:4, Insightful)
All these "grand gestures".
That's all this crap is.
None of it brings back the people killed.
It doesn't compensate the families.
And everyone involved is long dead.
It means exactly nothing.
Well then it can't cost much either.
But you're also missing a big piece of the context. Who created the anti-witchcraft laws? The government. Who convicted the witches? So with the posthumous pardons the government is admitting it made a mistake.
Considering the dates involved the loss in credibility is quite small, but still there's a reason why this sort of "stupid, preformative BS" is the product of liberal Democracies far more than autocratic states. It's an admission by the government that the government can be wrong and immoral, which is a very important symbolic gesture.
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So you;re saying you're responsible for the sins of your forefathers?
No. You're NOT.
And the fact that these "witch-slayings" have been acknowledged in the past.
Just not with all the fancy dress bullshit.
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There's probably people living in tiny villages in Scotland who are still called witches behind their backs by townspeople, and still feel pain from realizing their great-great-grandparents were killed for just being different. The apology does make a difference.
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If you say so.
If you're so fragile that actions 2-300 years gone are upsetting your day to day...
sad race =( (Score:1)
I wonder... (Score:1)
I wonder if their list of pardons includes Hillary?
Dancing with the devil? Really? (Score:2)
So if you happen to be at the same rave as Dick Cheney you get burned at the stake?
That's almost as bad as Fyre Festival.
Whata we gonna do... (Score:1)
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Yup, it sure does. And, newsflash... IT ALWAYS HAS. Did you know there are hundreds of laws on the books that limit your freedom in the name of public safety? You can't up and murder a guy, even if he deserves it. His safety trumps your freedom. You can't drive on the wrong side of the road. Other drivers' safety trumps your freedom. You can't drive on the sidewalk, either. Pedestrians' safety trumps your freedom. You can't smoke in certain public places (including most wor
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Meanwhile, Scotland is quickly slipping into Fascism,
What??? What a load of nonsense.