'...half the warriors were female' claim is BS

What you find when you read the linked article is an obvious, though as it turns out a superficial problem. The linked research doesn’t say what the article claims. What it establishes is that a hair less than half of Viking migrants were female, which is no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. The leap from that to “half the warriors were female” is unjustified and quite large.

There’s a deeper problem the article is trying to ignore or gaslight out of existence: reality is, at least where pre-gunpowder weapons are involved, viciously sexist.


Speaking of reality, remember when that newly-elected Congressman wanted to be sworn in on Jeffersons' copy of the Koran?  All the "Oh, isn't it wonderful how Jefferson recognized-" bullshit?  Fact is, he read it because it was behind our first foreign war, and it was popular reading at the time for the same reason.
But I heard from a lurker this week who called my attention to another historic naval engagement that gets equally weak coverage:

Americans need to learn fast the lessons of the hottest American geopolitical issue of the late 18th century: the brutal, bloody, deadly and cynical North African Barbary hostage and extortion crisis that threatened to cripple US maritime trade, undermine American liberty and threatened the personal security of Americans and American interests abroad.

Few people know today that this was a huge national issue back in the day. This is detailed in Captives and Countrymen: Barbary Slavery and the American Public, 1785-1816 by Lawrence Peskin:

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Barbary States captured and held for ransom nearly five hundred American sailors. The attacks on Americans abroad - and the government’s apparent inability to control the situation - deeply scarred the public.

And here we are.  With a President who's a chihuahua next to a wolf in comparison to Jefferson.


Which brings us to the UN 'peacekeepers' ordered to surrender to the bad guys:
The 45 UN peacekeepers from Fiji who were abducted by Al Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front rebel forces on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights last Wednesday are to "stand trial" under sharia (Islamic law), according to a Britain-based monitoring group.

Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that the commander of Al-Nusra Front has declared that the 45 peacekeepers will be tried under "divine law," according to Asharq Al-Aswat as cited by Yedioth Aharonoth.
They've issued demands, confident that the UN will talk tough right up until they start killing hostages.

Bet the Filipinos the idiot commander also told to surrender are ready to hunt him down and kick his ass for trying to put them in the same position.