LABAN KAPTEIN - Pieter van Woensel, Aanteekeningen, vol. I (1791): Remarks, made on a journey through Turkey, Natolia, the Crimea and Russia, in the years 1784/89

 LABAN KAPTEIN. Pieter van Woensel, Aanteekeningen, vol. I (1791): Remarks, made on a journey through Turkey, Natolia, the Crimea and Russia, in the years 1784ñ89. (Edition with English translation and commentary Laban Kaptein.) 3-vols. Privately Published, 2015. 1st Edition. 304 x 220 x 87 Mm . Hard Cover. As New ISBN: ISBN 978-90-816. Pieter van Woensel, Aanteekeningen, vol. I (1791): Remarks, made on a journey through Turkey, Natolia, the Crimea and Russia, in the years 1784/89. (Edition with English translation and commentary Laban Kaptein.) 3-vols. hardcover set. 2015 (Asch, 2015-2019). - The Dutch atheist writer, physician and traveller Pieter van Woensel (Haarlem 1747 - The Hague 1808), was a staunch critic of antisemitism, nationalism, slavery and serfdom. In his key work Aanteekeningen (ëRemarksí), he carries on his fight against State and Religion, these constant threats to manís liberty and sanity. The fruit of a picaresque, irreverent writer and openly avowed atheist, Remarks is in a class by itself. No previous or contemporaneous travelogue even remotely compares to it. Lofty themes are treated in colloquial language, and taboos breached with discomfiting ease. The reader finds scathing critique of religion side by side with scatology, and he meets with disdain and distrust for all forms of authority. Beware of Leaders, crowned, mitred or wearing a revolutionaryís cap, just follow the money to see their self-serving ends for which you may pay, pray and die. It was abundantly clear to Van Woensel (and, before him, Spinoza), that the inherently transgressive nature of religious authority must inevitably encroach upon the individualís liberty and his freedom from religion. Societies must never allow religion any role in the public space; all else amounts to a free fox in a free henroost. Based on his long years of experience in the region, Pieter van Woensel enjoins Russiaís neighbours that the only deterrence against Russiaís insatiable appetite for land grabbing coupled with its total disregard for human life, its own troops included is to without delay develop weapons of mass destruction - As new copy, directly from editor. [006565]