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The Air Force of the Knights Hospitaller
- iandanforth 7y agoThis is fantastic. What do I have to do to get a Knights Hospitaller passport?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mxuribe 7y agoI though the same thing! ...Until I noticed this: https://www.orderofmalta.int/in-the-news/order-malta-worlds-rarest-passport-held-500-people/ https://www.orderofmalta.int/in-the-news/order-malta-worlds-... ...So, I'm guessing whatever the requirements, they might be a little tight. ;-)
- michaelt 7y agoAccording to [1] first, you must become a member by invitation, and you need "undoubted Catholic morality and practice" and to show "merit over the years with regard to the Order of Malta, its institutions and its humanitarian works" [1] https://www.orderofmalta.int/sovereign-order-of-malta/faq/ https://www.orderofmalta.int/sovereign-order-of-malta/faq/
- arkades 7y agoThey only issue passports to people in charge of specific projects. Of about 13k members there are about 500 passports, almost entirely held by their diplomats or their governance members. Also, they’re still an order of catholic knights :)
- decebalus1 7y agoWhat's up with this new trend of writing long-ish form crap on Twitter?
- bcraven 7y agoBecause there is a big audience there to read it. Fortunately this website exists: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1151832864494903296.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1151832864494903296.html
- decebalus1 7y agoFortunately there is also the hyperlink. One can use Twitter to post said hyperlink to an article written on a webpage.
- rtkwe 7y agoPeople are less likely to click through to another web page than to keep reading on the current one too.
- decebalus1 7y agoSo this is clickbait 2.0? Basically instead of incentivizing someone to click on a link to learn more, just shit out the 'more' in mediocre form right in your face.
- rtkwe 7y agoYou're rarely presented with more than 2-3 of a tweet thread at once, wouldn't really call it right in your face.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoThis looks nice, but when you're combining a bunch of tweets it just helps you notice how choppy and disjointed the writing is— it still feels like a bunch of tweets stuck together.
- nmeofthestate 7y agoTwitter is where the adoring audience lives
- mothsonasloth 7y agoHere is a wiki link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta#Air_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...
- freeflight 7y agoI never realized there is so much interesting history behind the "Knights Hospitaller" which is kinda funny considering I've donated to a German branch of them in the past [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe
- Tomte 7y agoThe Johanniter are not really a branch, they are a protestant offshoot. Also, they are really young, founded in 1952. There is also the Malteser in Germany, and that's the real branch.
- HarryHirsch 7y agoYou are mixing up Johanniter-Unfallhilfe and Johanniterorden. The Catholic counterpart to the Unfallhilfe is the Malteser-Hilfsdienst, founded in 1953. The St John's branch of the Order was established 1538.
- quickthrower2 7y agoI’m adding them to my country select option list. Ill assume Malta time zone.
- aasasd 7y agoImport your country list from Wikidata, and you'll get the Sovereign Military Order of Malta with all the rest.
- emmelaich 7y agoFolks might be interested in a previous HN article "The Last True Knight of Malta" from the BBC https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18568638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18568638
- mrandish 7y agoThis was a fun read. That old-timey secret orders of knights actually still exist is awesome. I'd totally want to be in such a secret cabal, except for the whole believing in religion aspect...
- Hoasi 7y ago> except for the whole believing in religion aspect... I suspect this is not mandatory as long as the protocol is respected.
- subpixel 7y agoA lot of secular-minded people stay in religious organizations and communities for the perks. That said, I don't think groups like the Knights of Malta are recruiting.
- aasasd 7y agoNot much of a secret, considering diplomatic relations with 108 countries; 80000 volunteers, 42000 employees, and 13500 order members proper.
- jascii 7y agoSome would argue that it doesn't "still exist" but was disbanded with Napoleon's takeover of Malta in 1798 and that the "Sovereign Military Order of Malta" of 1947 was nothing but the result of some creative bookkeeping (with strong political backing)..
- pergadad 7y agoIts just that they are not secret. Never were. Like the freemasons - 100% in the open, but people go wild in conspiracy just because these guys' clubs keep up some funny rituals and have over time accumulated significant wealth.
- Yizahi 7y agoMalta history is very entertaining. Much more than its almost nonexistent beaches :) . I was astonished when I discovered that they defended the island for several months with basically 3 biplanes. And whole siege is insane (same as Ottoman and French previously). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Malta_(World_War_II) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Malta_(World_War_II) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Gladiator#Malta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Gladiator#Malta
- msla 7y agoThe Maltese language is interesting: It's fundamentally a variety of Arabic with a lot of Romance language influence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language > Although the original vocabulary of the language was Siculo-Arabic, it has incorporated a large number of borrowings from Romance sources of influence (Sicilian, Italian, and French), and more recently Germanic ones (from English).[45] > The historical source of modern Maltese vocabulary is 52% Italian/Sicilian, 32% Siculo-Arabic, and 6% English, with some of the remainder being French.[10][46] Today, most function words are Semitic. In this way, it is similar to English, which is a Germanic language that had large influence from Norman French. As a result of this, Romance language-speakers may easily be able to comprehend conceptual ideas expressed in Maltese, such as "Ġeografikament, l-Ewropa hi parti tas-superkontinent ta' l-Ewrasja" (Geographically, Europe is part of the Supercontinent of Eurasia), while not understanding a single word of a functional sentence such as "Ir-raġel qiegħed fid-dar" (The man is in the house), which would be easily understood by any Arabic speaker.
- Cyph0n 7y agoI also heard that modern Maltese is closest to Tunisian Arabic, which is interesting to a Tunisian like myself.
- aasasd 7y agoI made me a script to load country data from Wikidata. And what do I see in the output? Weird numbers linked to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. It has zero land, two citizens but 13500 order members, 80000 volunteers, 42000 employees. And it has diplomatic relations with 108 countries—which, according to analysis by experts in whatever field this is, exhibit the signs that the order is indeed a de-facto recognized sovereign entity even though this recognition is not so firm as that of a full-blown state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma... BTW, if we consider just the members and volunteers, the order would rank twelfth least-populous country, between Andorra and Antigua-and-Barbuda. And its population would be almost 1/5th that of the current population of Malta.
- aasasd 7y agoSo yeah, if you ever contemplate the future Sovereign Chaebol of Samsung, I guess right here is the closest current political precedent.
- walrus01 7y agoWell, Samsung is already a defence contractor, they make autonomous sentry guns for the DMZ
- aasasd 7y agoNot just that: at least in the past, they produced artillery, helicopters and fighter jets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanwha_Techwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanwha_Techwin However, if the territory dispute breaks out, Hanwha may have to fight it out with Hyundai's tanks and artillery. Notably, the same Hyundai's division also produces most of South Korea's train cars and locomotives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K1_88-Tank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K1_88-Tank, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Rotem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Rotem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Wia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Wia
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- afterburner 7y ago"After the Napoleonic wars no one really wanted to bring up the whole Malta thing with the British (the Putin's Russia of the era)" lol what? Britain was the USA of its time, not Putin. As in, global dominant superpower.
- jabv 7y agoMy friend's dad is a Knight of Malta. I think he helps to build hospitals and assists with pilgrimages to Lourdes. There is some recent controversy surrounding Malta in the Catholic world. To dive into that rabbit hole: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-note-on-sovereignity-of-order-of.html https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-note-on-sovereig...
- arminiusreturns 7y agoThere is so much more the KoM than meets the eye. For example, the relatively recent hubub between them and the papacy. The fact that so many heads of CIA and other countries intel agencies are KoM. That you don't have to be Catholic to join. The old connections to the templars and to masonry. It's permanent observer status at the UN. The connections of Elizabeth II to it (she was queen of Malta until 74)... the list goes on and on.
- rapedByDicks 7y agoThis penis of a twitter account is so fucking useless it's embarassing. What a fucking faggot. It's surprising how easy it is to hate someone inside of 140 characters.