Portugal is really really sorry about their role in the Spanish
Inquisition and is busily rewriting history. Really really, really and
truly sorry.

As we know, Ferdinand and Isabella (especially Isabella) forced Jews and
Moors to convert or face expulsion from Spain. As a technical matter,
their marriage led to a cooperative but still separate rule of their
underlying kingdoms (five, if I recall) but Spain wouldn't unite into
a single kingdom till later. I don't know the history of why Portugal
retained its own separate kingdom.

The Jews and Moors were expelled in 1492, and many went to Portugal. But
just a few years later, Portugal did their own expulsion.

I had no idea but for the last few years, if a rabbi certifies that your ancestors had lived in Portugal before the expulsion, you can get
citizenship and a passport. Of course there was a huge scandal with one
rabbi doing a certification mill to defraud the Portuguese government.

There are legitimate archives searches performed by neutral archivists
to support claims but the taint of scandal remains and certain
politicians used the scandal to end the practice in an anti-immigration
push. My ancestors wouldn't have been Sephardic (Spanish) so nothing to
do with me.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Turning_Portuguese

https://www.portugalist.com/portuguese-citizenship-for-sephardic-jews/

For our next trick, everyone with ancestors officially tortured by the
king's men in nearly all countries in Europe on behalf of the Church for suspicion of heresy can file a tort claim with a government. Europe
really really really wants to pretend the Middle Ages never happened.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2025-10-19 2:45 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Portugal is really really sorry about their role in the Spanish
Inquisition and is busily rewriting history. Really really, really and
truly sorry.

As we know, Ferdinand and Isabella (especially Isabella) forced Jews and Moors to convert or face expulsion from Spain. As a technical matter,
their marriage led to a cooperative but still separate rule of their underlying kingdoms (five, if I recall) but Spain wouldn't unite into
a single kingdom till later. I don't know the history of why Portugal retained its own separate kingdom.

The Jews and Moors were expelled in 1492, and many went to Portugal. But
just a few years later, Portugal did their own expulsion.

I've seen a few videos on the Reconquista, the 700 year (!!) effort by
the Iberian kingdoms to drive out the Muslims but none of them has given
an inkling of a hint of a suspicion for why Ferdinand and Isabella felt
they also had to drive out the Jews. I remain baffled by this. Was it
just standard anti-Semitism of was there more to it? Were Jews actually working with the Muslims to oppress the native Iberians? >

I had no idea but for the last few years, if a rabbi certifies that your ancestors had lived in Portugal before the expulsion, you can get
citizenship and a passport. Of course there was a huge scandal with one
rabbi doing a certification mill to defraud the Portuguese government.

You might be interested to hear that one video I saw recently says
there's a school of thought that Christopher Columbus himself might have
been Jewish. (I didn't bookmark the video otherwise I'd post the link.) >

There are legitimate archives searches performed by neutral archivists
to support claims but the taint of scandal remains and certain
politicians used the scandal to end the practice in an anti-immigration
push. My ancestors wouldn't have been Sephardic (Spanish) so nothing to
do with me.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Turning_Portuguese

https://www.portugalist.com/portuguese-citizenship-for-sephardic-jews/

For our next trick, everyone with ancestors officially tortured by the
king's men in nearly all countries in Europe on behalf of the Church for suspicion of heresy can file a tort claim with a government. Europe
really really really wants to pretend the Middle Ages never happened.

It's as ridiculous as the Europeans that scoured the Middle East a few
years back trying to find anyone who might be a descendant of an Arab
that fought in the Crusades so that they could apologize to them for
what the (Europeans') ancestors had done to them.

YOU CAN'T UNDO HISTORY: shit happened and there were severely
unfortunate consequences but you can't undo what happened by apologies
or with money. I don't particularly object to the apologies, especially
when delivered by sincere people at their own expense, but using tax
money so that governments can deliver official apologies is just
expensive virtue-signalling. Using tax money to pay compensation is absurd.

Forcing descendants of slave owners to pay compensation to descendants
of slaves is ridiculous. The descendants of slave owners - and lets face
it, the money would essentially come from everyone (including the
descendants of slaves themselves), even if their ancestors had nothing
to do with slavery - did nothing wrong and the recipients of the money
did nothing to deserve it. It's probably reasonable to compensate any
living slaves but I don't see any reason to compensate their defendants.

--
Rhino

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

On 2025-10-19 2:45 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Portugal is really really sorry about their role in the Spanish
Inquisition and is busily rewriting history. Really really, really and >>truly sorry.

As we know, Ferdinand and Isabella (especially Isabella) forced Jews and >>Moors to convert or face expulsion from Spain. As a technical matter,
their marriage led to a cooperative but still separate rule of their >>underlying kingdoms (five, if I recall) but Spain wouldn't unite into
a single kingdom till later. I don't know the history of why Portugal >>retained its own separate kingdom.

The Jews and Moors were expelled in 1492, and many went to Portugal. But >>just a few years later, Portugal did their own expulsion.

I've seen a few videos on the Reconquista, the 700 year (!!) effort by
the Iberian kingdoms to drive out the Muslims but none of them has given
an inkling of a hint of a suspicion for why Ferdinand and Isabella felt
they also had to drive out the Jews. I remain baffled by this. Was it
just standard anti-Semitism of was there more to it?

Jews are Christ killers. The Church said so.

Were Jews actually working with the Muslims to oppress the native Iberians?

I had no idea but for the last few years, if a rabbi certifies that your >>ancestors had lived in Portugal before the expulsion, you can get >>citizenship and a passport. Of course there was a huge scandal with one >>rabbi doing a certification mill to defraud the Portuguese government.

You might be interested to hear that one video I saw recently says
there's a school of thought that Christopher Columbus himself might have >been Jewish. (I didn't bookmark the video otherwise I'd post the link.)

Plenty of his crew certainly were.

. . .

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 18:45:56 -0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman"
<ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

The Jews and Moors were expelled in 1492, and many went to Portugal. But
just a few years later, Portugal did their own expulsion.

I had no idea but for the last few years, if a rabbi certifies that your >ancestors had lived in Portugal before the expulsion, you can get
citizenship and a passport. Of course there was a huge scandal with one
rabbi doing a certification mill to defraud the Portuguese government.

Poland has a program where if your parent or any of your grandparents
were born in Poland you can apply for Polish citizenship. The catch is
that you're not eligible if any of your forebears your claim goes
through served in any foreign military (e.g. other than Poland's) -
and since my father in law WAS born in Poland, one of my daughters has
claimed it. (Presumably her siblings could as well but her siblings
live in Canada whereas she lives in the UK - and for her a Polish
passport means she can freely enter the EU which post-Brexit Brits
(she is also both a British citizen by naturalization and Canadian by
birth) Whereas the children of my wife's cousins could NOT since both
my father-in-law's brothers went to the Royal Military College of
Canada (e.g. our equivalent to West Point and if you graduate from RMC
you are commissioned as part of your graduation ceremony)

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 18:23:28 -0400, Rhino
<no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

Forcing descendants of slave owners to pay compensation to descendants
of slaves is ridiculous. The descendants of slave owners - and lets face
it, the money would essentially come from everyone (including the >descendants of slaves themselves), even if their ancestors had nothing
to do with slavery - did nothing wrong and the recipients of the money
did nothing to deserve it. It's probably reasonable to compensate any
living slaves but I don't see any reason to compensate their defendants.

By THAT "logic" if reparations were made law, Barack Obama would be a
payor and not a recipient since his (white) mother was from a family
that in times past had owned slaves whereas his father was
non-American and therefore not descended from an American slave.

The whole proposition is of course pure bollocks.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2025-10-20 4:04 a.m., The Horny Goat wrote:

On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 18:45:56 -0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman"
<ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

The Jews and Moors were expelled in 1492, and many went to Portugal. But
just a few years later, Portugal did their own expulsion.

I had no idea but for the last few years, if a rabbi certifies that your
ancestors had lived in Portugal before the expulsion, you can get
citizenship and a passport. Of course there was a huge scandal with one
rabbi doing a certification mill to defraud the Portuguese government.

Poland has a program where if your parent or any of your grandparents
were born in Poland you can apply for Polish citizenship. The catch is
that you're not eligible if any of your forebears your claim goes
through served in any foreign military (e.g. other than Poland's) -
and since my father in law WAS born in Poland, one of my daughters has claimed it. (Presumably her siblings could as well but her siblings
live in Canada whereas she lives in the UK - and for her a Polish
passport means she can freely enter the EU which post-Brexit Brits
(she is also both a British citizen by naturalization and Canadian by
birth) Whereas the children of my wife's cousins could NOT since both
my father-in-law's brothers went to the Royal Military College of
Canada (e.g. our equivalent to West Point and if you graduate from RMC
you are commissioned as part of your graduation ceremony)

Germany has a surprisingly broad entitlement to citizenship. They will
grant citizenship to anyone who can prove German ancestry going back CENTURIES. I saw a documentary where a whole multi-generation family
whose ancestors had gone to Russia in the time of Peter the Great showed
up at the German border with a family bible written in German and a
family tree handwritten in it going back to those days and the German authorities accepted it even though only the oldest member of the family
knew a handful of words of German. The rest of them were thoroughly
Russified. By those rules, it seems to me an awful lot of people could
claim German citizenship because a LOT of people have at least some
Germans in their family tree!


--
Rhino

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 10/19/25 11:45 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Portugal is really really sorry about their role in the Spanish
Inquisition and is busily rewriting history. Really really, really and
truly sorry.

As we know, Ferdinand and Isabella (especially Isabella) forced Jews and Moors to convert or face expulsion from Spain. As a technical matter,
their marriage led to a cooperative but still separate rule of their underlying kingdoms (five, if I recall) but Spain wouldn't unite into
a single kingdom till later. I don't know the history of why Portugal retained its own separate kingdom.

The Jews and Moors were expelled in 1492

False information! The Jewish leader Torquemada led the Spanish
Inquisition, and how could he have done that if he was expelled?

, and many went to Portugal. But

just a few years later, Portugal did their own expulsion.

I had no idea but for the last few years, if a rabbi certifies that your ancestors had lived in Portugal before the expulsion, you can get
citizenship and a passport. Of course there was a huge scandal with one
rabbi doing a certification mill to defraud the Portuguese government.

There are legitimate archives searches performed by neutral archivists
to support claims but the taint of scandal remains and certain
politicians used the scandal to end the practice in an anti-immigration
push. My ancestors wouldn't have been Sephardic (Spanish) so nothing to
do with me.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Turning_Portuguese

https://www.portugalist.com/portuguese-citizenship-for-sephardic-jews/

For our next trick, everyone with ancestors officially tortured by the
king's men in nearly all countries in Europe on behalf of the Church for suspicion of heresy can file a tort claim with a government. Europe
really really really wants to pretend the Middle Ages never happened.

Catholics persecuted Protestants and Protestants persecuted Catholics,
so they and all their descendants should file charges against the
left-wing regimes of Spain and Portugal, rogue states that have
for generations have systematically and illegally trafficked migrants
as pawns for the avowed purpose of changing the political landscape of
Europe.





--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)