Liber Niger Admiralitatis or the Black Book of the Admiralty is a manual for being the Lord High Admiral of the British Navy.
Well that is a gross simplification. It is a critical document in the history of maritime law. It captures the early rulings of the High Court of the Admiralty in Britain. Which arose out of the Rolls of Oléron which were the first known Maritime Laws proclaimed and enforced in Northern Europe. Eleanor of Aquitaine brought the Rolls back from Jerusalem after the Second Crusade and they became law in approximately 1200. They are included in the Black Book making clear the history.
As an aside there were agreed to Maritime Laws in the Mediterranean as early as the 1st Century.
The presumptive date of the Black Book is 1385.
It is filled with quite valuable advice and has considerable historic importance. You can read it here. Well translated from Old French and Latin.
http://shadyislepirates.com/blackbook1/index.htm
Though I like my copy of the Cambridge edition seen above.
The passage I think Donald Trump and every American President should have memorized is "Item, qe nul soit si hardy de crier havok."
"No one should be so foolish as to cry havoc."
Havoc at the time had a very distinct meaning.
The military order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare's parlance 'the dogs of war') to pillage and chaos.
In a narrow sense the Black Book is telling the Lord High Admiral not to free the military to pillage and cause chaos. The British Navy of course has a long history of doing precisely that. Consider the use of Privateers, for example. And it's willful blindness to the acts of certain useful pirates.
However, in context the Black Book is saying don't encourage your subordinates or supporters to commit crimes in pursuit of victory. Which seems both a good idea and very modern. And something Donald Trump clearly struggles to understand.
Apparently he is getting ready to Cry Havoc! again.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/31/trump-state-of-the-union-abortion-1140704
And if he touches the third rail that is abortion he will release the dogs of war. Violence against abortion providers has died down over time but the minute Trump mutters his contrived words of support for the Pro Lifers it will come raging back to life. The crazies haven't gone away they just realized their violence was counter productive to their goals as judges, politicians and the public turned on them. But with a judiciary stacked with Pro Lifers and the Extreme Christian Right once again pulling the strings on an opportunistic President one word of support could lead to the very sort of behaviour the Black Book warns against.
I am scared.
You see I was friends with a Pro Life Dog of War once.
In my defense he seemed fairly sane at the time. I was presenting a poster at a conference of physiologists at UCSF in October of 1979. It was my earliest work on plant communication in succession on dunes in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. (It is a truly wondrous place. If you get the chance go.)
https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/siuslaw/recarea/?recid=42465
I don't know what James Kopp was doing in San Francisco or at the conference. He was a Masters student at Cal State Fullerton studying embryology at the time. But he came up to me because he also loved the Oregon Dunes. We chatted amiably for a few minutes and then he went on to talk to the next poster presenter.
I would have forgotten completely if a bunch of us hadn't gone out for beer and Chinese food later. James was there. He and I started chatting and found we had many things in common.
We both were fascinated by computer languages, codes, and locks. How many people was I ever going to meet who share my love of lock design. James had all these brilliant designs. They couldn't be picked with conventional picks.
And this is how he first became a legend in the Pro-Life Movement. He created locks they could use to lock abortion clinics. No locksmith could open them. They had to be cut off and James made sure you had to bring your acetylene torch.
But that was a few years after we met.
It became very clear, very early on that James was a gun nut. That isn't a judgement. so am I. On the other hand I was deeply troubled by the fact somebody had told him I was a sniper and he wanted to talk about it endlessly.
For the record I come from a military family and my Dad was a Canadian Military legend (held all the Military records in Rapid Fire pistol for over 40 years). My Mom by the way was a trick shooter. Think Annie Oakley. There was zero chance I wasn't going to learn to shoot.
I started shooting competitively at 7. But I didn't really get into it until I joined Cadets when I was 12. That is where I started sniper training or as it is called long range skilled shooting (parents object to the term sniper apparently). In a typical pattern when I made Warrant Officer in Cadets I joined ROTC as it was then. Now it is called Regular Officer Training Plan. My sole interest was to get the Canadian Armed Forces to pay for my education.
I wanted to be a pilot. The military wanted me to be an artillery officer. But they went right on training me to be a sniper as well. Until I flunked the MVAL. That is the mental evaluation to determine that you can remorselessly murder someone at a distance. Not my thing as it turns out.
But I could and can, like my parents, shoot the lights out. And you can't imagine how many crazies have found me over the years and wanted me to teach them how to be a sniper. Not my thing either.
After a couple of years of my refusing to go shooting with James he lost interest in me. But over those years I watched him become radicalized. He left his Lutheran Church and joined an extremist Catholic cult called The Lambs of Christ. And he started referring to himself as Atomic Dog.
He was a self described Dog of War, commanded to pillage and chaos in the name of unborn children. And if he was going to be a Dog of War he was going to be Atomic Dog. It is of course drawn from the George Clinton song of the same name. So I thought he meant it ironically.
It would be another decade before he shot his first doctor. It is believed he shot at least five. His MO was shooting from a wooded area in the dark through a window (usually around Remembrance Day. In that decade sadly someone had taught him to shoot because when I knew him he couldn't hit the broadside of a barn.
In fact James story is filled with accessories. Many accessories. Before, during and after the fact. He was no lone gun man.
He is in prison for the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian on October 28th, 1998. But he was also charged with the shooting of Dr. Hugh Short in Ontario in 1995. James is also suspected in as many as 4 shootings in the fall of 1997. All his victims were doctors who were rumored to be performing abortions. Only Dr. Slepian died but many of the others suffered life altering injuries.
Now what you need to know is that there are a large number of Pro Lifers just like James Kopp out there waiting for the command. Havoc! So they can give into their desire to commit pillage and cause chaos.
President Donald Trump is about to use the State of the Union to give them their marching orders.
The punchline of the story is of course why Lord High Admirals are enjoined to not Cry Havoc.
Because it gives your opponent reason to respond in kind. But they don't of course. Nope, they escalate. And feel justified and empowered in doing so.
Not to mention undisciplined soldiers often become indiscriminate killers. And turn on their one time masters.
Of course Donald Trump is way too short sighted to foresee any of that. Or doesn’t give a shit.