Friday, October 31, 2014

Babylon AD



Starring: Vin Diesel, Mélanie Thierry, Michelle Yeoh, Lambert Wilson, Mark Strong, Jérôme Le Banner
Charlotte Rampling, Gérard Depardieu


Remember The Name



Artist: Fort Minor

The Islamic Army Of Frederick II

Archeologists and historians are shedding new light on how medieval Holy Roman emperor Frederick II created an Islamic army to attack the pope. The German Historical Institute in Rome – together with universities of Foggia (Italy), Trier and Kiel (both in Germany) are investigating the southern Italian city of Lucera which, in the 13th century, was a major centre of Islamic culture and learning – and the cause of considerable papal anger.

The story started in 1222 when emperor Frederick II, faced with a Muslim rebellion in Sicily, started deporting Sicilian Muslims to the Lucera area of south-east Italy. By 1244, he had transferred up to 20,000 people – virtually entire Muslim population of Sicily. However, in order to keep the deportees loyal, he treated them well in their new homes and allowed mosques and an Islamic university to be built, and gave them land.
Holy Emperor Frederick II
The pope – just 130 miles to the north-west – was furious and declared Frederick a heretic.  Soon war was raging between emperor and pope – and Frederick used his muslim Sicilian deportees as a purpose – made army to secure initial victory. Indeed it is probable that creating a Muslim army against the pope had been the ulterior motive behind the deportation in the first place.
Frederick II ‘s court in Palermo, Sicily
The investigations so far suggest that Frederick settled his Sicilian Muslims in and around the city of Lucera – not inside town’s vast castle as had been thought until now. Settling them around the city would almost certainly have necessitated the forced removal of some of the pre-existing Christian communities, including the local bishop – a process which angered the pope still further.
Source: History Notes

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Bring The Pain



Artist: Brand X

Mother Nature



Speaker: Julia Roberts

Take action at! 

You can view the remaining 5 short videos here: Nature Is Speaking

Part 2: Harrison Ford is the Ocean.
Part 3: Kevin Spacey is the Rainforest.
Part 4: Edward Norton is the Soil.
Part 5: Penelope Cruz is Water.
Part 6: Robert Redford is the Redwoods.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Let The Bodies Hit The Floor



WARNING: Graphic Fake Violence. Video contains lots of blood and decapitation. 

Artist: Drowning Pool

6 Million People Killed In CIA Wars Against 3rd World Countries



This is a 6:26 minute teaser

John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, working for then Director of the CIA, George Bush. He spent 13 years in the agency. John Stockwell is the highest-ranking CIA official ever to leave the agency and go public. He ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned.

The clip is showing parts of a lecture that Stockwell gave in 1987, explaining the CIA's secret war. A war he describes as 'The Third World War'. Not because it is the thermonuclear exchange that is commonly meant, but because it was mainly waged against people in the third world countries. In Stockwell's own words: 
The six million people the CIA has helped to kill are people of the Mitumba Mountains of the Congo, the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the hills of northern Nicaragua. They are people without ICBMs or armies or navies, incapable of doing physical damage to the United States the 22,000 killed in Nicaragua, for example, are not Russians; they are not Cuban soldiers or advisors; they are not even mostly Sandinistas. A majority are rag-poor peasants, including large numbers of women and children.
Since its creation in 1947, the CIA has mounted approximately 3,000 major operations and 10,000 minor operations of this nature, every one of them illegal and many of them "bloody and gory beyond comprehension". 

Below is the complete lecture:


Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The Persecution Of Iraq's Sunni Muslims



This is a video of a young Sunni Muslim from Iraq. The shia rafidah (rejectors) murdered him in cold blood, then dragged him by the neck with a rope, at the same time, other shia animals repeatedly kick him, some hurl rocks at his head until part of his head caves in. Finally, they douse  him gasoline and set him on fire.

The reason this Sunni teen was murdered, was because his name was "Omar," after the Sahabi (Companion) of the Prophet Muhammed, and the Second Caliph of the Muslim nation.

This is what the Sunni Muslims have been dealing with, since America Saddam and handed the country to the Iraqi shia and Iran.


تمت الجريمة في مدينة الشعلة ببغداد، والتي تعد معقلا ومنطلقًا للمليشيات الشيعية الطائفية التي نشطت مؤخرًا لتنفيذ اعتداءات طائفية ضد أهل السنة في بغداد.

ويُظهر الفيديو عددًا كبيرًا من شباب الشيعة وهم يتناوبون على جثمان الشاب "عمر المفرجي" بمختلف صنوف الضرب والركل والتنكيل، وقد ربطوه من عنقه بحبل وسحلوا جثمانه، حتى انتهى بهم الأمر إلى إضرام النار في جسده.

وكشف المقطع المصور أن الجريمة تمت بجميع تفاصيلها تحت أعين عناصر الشرطة، التي تغض الطرف بشكل واسع عن هذه الجرائم الطائفية، فضلاً عن تورطها نفسها في العديد من تلك الجرائم.


 إن عملية قتل هذا الشاب والتنكيل بجثته جرت على خلفية كون اسمه (عمر)؛ ما يشير إلى أن طائفية الجريمة وأن عملية القتل تمت على الهوية كونه سنيًّا يحمل اسم أمير المؤمنين (عمر بن الخطاب) الذي فتح بلاد فارس وأطفأ نيران مجوسيتهم؛ الأمر الذي جعل الشيعة يحملون حقدًا وبغضًا لكل من يحمل اسمه رضوان الله عليه. وقد شهد العراق العديد من الجرائم الطائفية التي تمت فيها عمليات القتل على الهوية، ولمجرد أن الضحية يحمل اسم (عمر) أو (عائشة).

Indestructible



Another mission, the powers have called me away
Another time to carry the colors again
My motivation, an oath I've sworn to defend
To win the honor of coming back home again
No explanation will matter after we begin
Unlock the dark destroyer that's buried within
My true vocation, and now my unfortunate friend
You will discover a war you're unable to win

I'll have you know
That I've become
Indestructible
Determination that is incorruptible
From the other side, a terror to behold
Annihilation will be unavoidable
Every broken enemy will know
That their opponent had to be invincible
Take a last look around while you're alive
I'm an indestructible
Master of war

Another reason, another cause for me to fight
Another fuse uncovered, now for me to light
My dedication to all that I've sworn to protect
I carry out my orders without a regret
My declaration, embedded deep under my skin
A permanent reminder of how it began
No hesitation when I am commanded to strike
You need to know that you're in for the fight of your life

You will be shown
How I've become
Indestructible
Determination that is incorruptible
From the other side, a terror to behold
Annihilation will be unavoidable
Every broken enemy will know
That their opponent had to be invincible
Take a last look around while you're alive
I'm an indestructible
Master of war

I'm 

Indestructible
Determination that is incorruptible
From the other side, a terror to behold
Annihilation will be unavoidable
Every broken enemy will know
That their opponent had to be invincible
Take a last look around while you're alive
I am indestructible
Indestructible

Indestructible
Determination that is incorruptible
From the other side, a terror to behold
Annihilation will be unavoidable
Every broken enemy will know
That their opponent had to be invincible
Take a last look around while you're alive
I'm an indestructible
Master of war


Artist: Disturbed

Marlon Brando Speaks Truth On The Treatment of American Indians



Legendary Marlon Brando was interviewed on The Dick Cavett Show 6/12/1973 after he refused to accept the Oscar at 45th Academy Awards, 1973 to protest the treatment of American Indians.

Three months after not accepting the best actor award at the Academy Awards, Marlon Brando appeared on The Dick Cavett Show with members of the Pauite, Cheyenne and Lummi tribes. Brando had refused his Oscar for The Godfather in protest of Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans on film.

At the 1973 Academy Awards ceremony, Brando refused to accept the Oscar for his performance in The Godfather. Sacheen Littlefeather represented him at the ceremony. She appeared in full Apache attire and stated that owing to the "poor treatment of Native Americans in the film industry", Brando would not accept the award.

At this time, the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee occurred, causing rising tensions between the government and Native American activists. The event grabbed the attention of the US and the world media. This was considered a major event and victory for the movement by its supporters and participants.


Brando is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century. He has earned great respect among critics and theater experts for his memorable performances and charismatic screen presence.
Video and summary via White Wolf Pack.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Down With The Sickness



Artist: Disturbed

The War On Democracy



'The War On Democracy' (2007), It explores the current and past relationship of Washington with Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile.

The film shows how serial US intervention, overt and covert, has toppled a series of legitimate governments in the Latin American region since the 1950s. 

The democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende, for example, was ousted by a US backed coup in 1973 and replaced by the military dictatorship of General Pinochet. Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador have all been invaded by the United States.

John Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries in the region. 

He investigates the School of the Americas in the US state of Georgia, where Pinochet’s torture squads were trained along with tyrants and death squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina.

The film unearths the real story behind the attempted overthrow of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and how the people of the barrios of Caracas rose up to force his return to power.

It also looks at the wider rise of populist governments across South America lead by indigenous leaders intent on loosening the shackles of Washington and a fairer redistribution of the continent's natural wealth.

John Pilger says: 


"[The film] is about the struggle of people to free themselves from a modern form of slavery. These people describe a world not as American presidents like to see it as useful or expendable, they describe the power of courage and humanity among people with next to nothing. They reclaim noble words like democracy, freedom, liberation, justice, and in doing so they are defending the most basic human rights of all of us in a war being waged against all of us."

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Broken Sorrow



Artist: Nuttin But Stringz 

Zionism Has Created "Rivers Of Blood"



Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a United States Haredi rabbi, is an activist and spokesman for a branch of Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist grouping of Haredi Jews.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Who Did That To You



Artist: John Legend

Mexican Drug Cartels Are Worse Than ISIL




Western Obsession With The Islamic State Is Fueled More By Bigotry Than Any Genuine Assessment Of Risk Or Atrocities

The horrific rampage of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has captured the world’s attention. Many Western commentators have characterized ISIL’s crimes as unique, no longer practiced anywhere else in the civilized world. They argue that the group’s barbarism is intrinsically Islamic, a product of the aggressive and archaic worldview that dominates the Muslim world. The ignorance of these claims is stunning.
While there are other organized groups whose depravity and threat to the United States far surpasses that of ISIL, none has engendered the same kind of collective indignation and hysteria. This raises a question: Are Americans primarily concerned with ISIL’s atrocities or with the fact that Muslims are committing these crimes?
For example, even as the U.S. media and policymakers radically inflate ISIL’s threat to the Middle East and United States, most Americans appear to be unaware of the scale of the atrocities committed by Mexican drug cartels and the threat they pose to the United States.

Cartels versus ISIL

A recent United Nations report estimated nearly 9,000 civilians have been killed and 17,386 wounded in Iraq in 2014, more than half since ISIL fighters seized large parts on northern Iraq in June. It is likely that the group is responsible another several thousand deaths in Syria. To be sure, these numbers are staggering. 
But in 2013 drug cartels murdered more than 16,000 people in Mexico alone, and another 60,000 from 2006 to 2012 — a rate of more than one killing every half hour for the last seven years. What is worse, these are estimates from the Mexican government, which is known to deflate the actual death toll by about 50 percent.
Statistics alone do not convey the depravity and threat of the cartels. 
They carry out hundreds of beheadings every year. In addition to decapitations, the cartels are known to dismember and otherwise mutilate the corpses of their victims — displaying piles of bodies prominently in towns to terrorize the public into compliance. They routinely target women and children to further intimidate communities. Like ISIL, the cartels use social media to post graphic images of their atrocious crimes.
The narcos also recruit child soldiers, molding boys as young as 11 into assassins or sending them on suicide missions during armed confrontations with Mexico’s army. They kidnap tens of thousands of children every year to use as drug mules or prostitutes or to simply kill and harvest their organs for sale on the black market. Those who dare to call for reforms often end up dead. 


In September, with the apparent assistance of local police, cartels kidnapped and massacred 43 students at a teaching college near the Mexican town ofIguala in response to student protests. A search in the area for the students has uncovered a number of mass graves containing mutilated bodies burned almost beyond recognition, but none of the remains have been confirmed to be of the students.
While the Islamic militants have killed a handful of journalists, the cartels murdered as many as 57 since 2006 for reporting on cartel crimes or exposing government complicity with the criminals. Many of Mexico’s media have been effectively silenced by intimidation or bribes. 
These censorship activities extend beyond professional media, with narcos tracking down and murdering ordinary citizens who criticize them on the Internet, leaving their naked and disemboweled corpses hanging in public squares. 
Yet American intellectuals such as Sam Harris appear to be more outraged when Muslims protest or issue threats in response to blasphemous or anti-Muslim hate speech than when cartels murder dozens of journalists and systematically co-opt an entire country’s media.
Similarly, Westerners across various political spectrums were outraged when ISIL seized 1,500 Yazidi women, committing sexual violence against the captives and using them as slaves. Here again, the cartels’ capture and trafficking of women dwarfs ISIL’s crimes. Narcos hold tens of thousands of Mexican citizens as slaves for their various enterprises and systematically use rape as a weapon of war.
U.S. media have especially hyped ISIL’s violence against Americans. This summer ISIL beheaded two Americans and has warned about executing a third; additionally, one U.S. Marine has died in efforts to combat the group. By contrast, the cartels killed 293 Americans in Mexico from 2007 to 2010 and have repeatedly attacked U.S. consulates in Mexico. While ISIL’s beheadings are no doubt outrageous, the cartels tortured, dismembered and then cooked one of the Americans they captured — possibly eating him or feeding him to dogs.
The US government cannot formulate an effective response to the narcos’ severe threats because the American public is far too busy disparaging Islam while the US military kills Arabs and Muslims abroad. 
The cartels’ atrocities are not restricted to the Mexican side of the border. From 2006 to 2010 as many as 5,700 Americans were killed in the U.S. by cartel-fueled drug violence. By contrast, 2,937 people were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Over the last decade, some 2,349 Americans were killed in Afghanistan, and 4,487 Americans died in Iraq. In four years the cartels have managed to cause the deaths of more Americans than during 9/11 or either of those wars.
Barack Obama’s administration claims ISIL poses a severe threat to U.S. interests and national security. However, the militants were primarily concerned with seizing and holding territory in Iraq and Syria until the U.S. began targeting them. Even now, while they have called for lone wolves to carry out attacks on targets in the United States, so far those arrested in connection to ISIL have been trying to go and fight abroad rather than plotting domestic attacks. To the extent ISIL wants to kill Americans, its primary tactic has been to try to lure U.S. troops to its turf by publicly executing citizens they already hold hostage
In fact, several U.S. intelligence officials have asserted that ISIL poses no credible threat to the United States homeland. 
However, the same cannot be said of the cartels.
Narcos have infiltrated at least 3,000 U.S. cities and are recruiting many Americans, including U.S. troops and law enforcement officers, to their organizations. They have an increasingly sophisticated and robust foundation in the U.S., with Mexican cartels now controlling more than 80 percent of the illicit drug trade in the United States and their top agents deployed to virtually every major metropolitan area. There are no realistic assessments indicating that ISIL could achieve a similar level of penetration in the United States.

Explaining The Dissonance

It is clear that the anti-ISIL campaign is not driven by the group’s relative threat to the United States or the scale or inhumane nature of their atrocities. If these were the primary considerations, the public would be far more terrified of and outraged by the narcos. Perhaps the U.S. would be mobilizing 50 nations to purge Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel rather than shielding it from prosecutionhelping it polish off its rivals or even move drugs into the United States.
Some may argue that despite the asymmetries, the cartels are less of a threat than ISIL because ISIL is unified around an ideology, which is antithetical to the prevailing international order, while the cartels are concerned primarily with money. This is not true.
A good deal of the cartels’ violence is perpetrated ritualistically as part of their religion, which is centered, quite literally, on the worship of death. The narcosbuild and support churches all across Mexico to perpetuate their eschatology. One of the cartels, the Knights Templar (whose name evokes religious warfare), even boasts about its leader’s death and resurrection. When cartel members are killed, they are buried in lavish mausoleums, regarded as martyrs and commemorated in popular songs glorifying their exploits in all their brutality. Many of their members view the “martyrs” as heroes who diedresisting an international order that exploits Latin America and fighting the feckless governments that enable it. The cartels see their role as compensating for state failures in governance. The narco gospel, which derives fromCatholicism, is swiftly making inroads in the United States and Central America. In short, the cartels’ ideological disposition is no less pronounced than ISIL’s, if not worse.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government cannot formulate an effective response to these much more severe threats because the American public is far too busy disparaging Islam while the U.S. military kills Arabs and Muslims abroad. One thing is certain: America’s obsession with ISIL is fueled by Islamophobia rather than any empirical realities
Musa al-Gharbi is an instructor in the Department of Government and Public Service at the University of Arizona, and an affiliate of the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts (SISMEC).



Friday, October 24, 2014

Django Unchained



Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson

Ancora Qui



Ancora qui
ancora tu
ora però io so chi sei
chi sempre sarai
e quando mi vedrai
ricorderai
ancora qui
ancora tu
e spero mi perdonerai
tu con gli stessi occhi
sembri ritornare
a chiedermi di me
di come si sta
e qui dall'altra parte
come va
l'erba verde, l'aria calda
sui miei piedi e sopra i fiori
si alza un vento tra i colori
sembri quasi tu
anche il cielo cambia nome
cosi bianco quel cotone
ch'è veloce, che si muove
perso in mezzo al blu
è un qualcosa in te
è quel che tornerà
com'era già
ancora qui
ancora tu
e quel che è stato è stato ormai
e con gli stessi occhi
sembri ritornare
a chiedermi di me
di come si sta
e in questo strano mondo
come va
ritornerai
e ritornerò
ricorderai
ricorderò
ritornerai, ritornerò
ricorderai, ricoderò
ricorderai, ricorderai, ricorderai, ricorderò
ricorderai,
io ti ricorderò
ricorderai, ricorderò
ricorderai, ricorderò
STILL HERE
Stll here,
still you,
but now I know who you are,
who you will always be
and when you will see me again
you will remember
still here
still you
and I hope you will forgive me
you, with the same eyes
look like you are coming back
to ask me about myself
and how it feels
here from the other side
how does it go
the green grass, the warm air
on my feet and on the flowers
some wind rises up between the colors
it looks nearly you
even the sky change its name
so white that cotton
which is fast, which moves
lost inside the blue
it's something in you
it's what will come back
as it already was
still here
still you
what it has being, it has being by then
and with the same eyes
you look like you are coming back
to ask me about myself
how it feels
in this strange world
how does it go
you will come back
and I will come back
you will remember
and I will remember
you will come back
and I will come back
you will remember
and I will remember
you will remember
and I will remember
you will remember
and I will remember
you will remember
I will remember you
you will remember
and I will remember
you will remember
and I will remember

Artist: Elisa Toffoli

The Difference Between American and Canadian Media



A tragedy in Ottawa, Canada shows us just how different US and Canadian media are.

“Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? 

Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind.” 

― Philip K. Dick

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Freedom



Felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders
Pressure to break or retreat at every turn;
Facing the fear that the truth I discovered;
No telling how all this will work out;
But I've come too far to go back now.

I am looking for freedom, 
And to find it, cost me everything I have.

I know all too well it don’t come easy;
The chains of the world they seem to move in tight;
I try to walk around it, 
But stumbling’s so familiar;
Try to get up but the doubt is so strong;
There’s gotta be a wind in my bones.

Not giving up has always been hard, 
So hard.
But if I do the things the easy way, I won’t get far.

Artists: Anthony Hamilton & Elayna Boynton

Guantanamo: Blacked Out Bay



"We're embarking upon a very dark future" - Terry Colin Holdbrooks Jr.

Almost 800 men have been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since it was established in 2002. Today, fewer than 150 remain. Despite the fact that more than half of current detainees have been cleared for transfer from the base, and in spite of the executive order signed by President Barack Obama in 2009 ordering the closure of the prison within one year, there's no indication it will be shuttered anytime soon.

VICE News traveled to Guantanamo to find out what the hell is going on. After a tightly controlled yet bizarre tour of the facility, we sought out a former detainee in Sarajevo and a former guard in Phoenix to get their unfiltered impressions of what life is like at Gitmo.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Castle Of Glass



Bring me home in a blinding dream,
Through the secrets that I have seen
Wash the sorrow from off my skin
And show me how to be whole again

Artist: Linkin Park

When The West Wanted Islam To Curb Christian Extremism

Russian and Ottoman forces battle in 1788 over a port on the Black Sea. (Wikimedia Commons)
Russian and Ottoman forces battle in 1788 over a port on the Black Sea. (Wikimedia Commons)


Islam and those who practice it were not always perceived to be such a cultural threat. Just a few decades ago, the U.S. and its allies in the West had no qualms about abetting Islamist militants in their battles with the Soviets in Afghanistan. Look even further, and there was a time when a vocal constituency in the West saw the community of Islam as a direct, ideological counter to a mutual enemy.
Turn back to the 1830s. An influential group of officials in Britain -- then the most powerful empire in the West, with a professed belief in liberal values and free trade -- was growing increasingly concerned about the expanding might of Russia. From Central Asia to the Black Sea, Russia's newly won domains were casting a shadow over British colonial interests in India and the Middle East. The potential Russian capture of Istanbul, capital of the weakening Ottoman Empire, would mean Russia's navy would have free access to the Mediterranean Sea--an almost unthinkable prospect for Britain and other European powers.
And so, among diplomats and in the press, a Russophobic narrative began to emerge. It was ideological, a clash of civilizations. After all, beginning with the Catherine the Great in the late 18th century, the Russians had framed their own conquests in religious terms: to reclaim Istanbul, once the center of Orthodox Christianity, and, as one of her favorite court poetsput it, "advance through a Crusade" to the Holy Lands and "purify the river Jordan."
That sort of Christian zeal won little sympathy among other non-Orthodox Christians. Jerusalem in the 19th century was still the site of acrimonious street battles between Christian sects, policed by the exasperated Ottomans. Russian Orthodox proselytizing of Catholics in Polandinfuriated European Catholic nations further west, such as France.
Baron Ponsonby, the British ambassador to Istanbul for much of the 1830s, decided the job of thwarting Russian expansionism was a "Holy Cause." An article in the "British and Foreign Review" pamphlet, circulated in Britain in 1836, saw the Ottomans as "the only bulwark of Europe against Muscovy, of civilization against barbarism." Russia represented, insome accounts, a backward, superstitious society where peasants still labored in semi-slavery and monarchs ruled as tyrants, unchallenged by parliaments and liberal sentiment. The Ottomans, who were embarking on their own process of reform, looked favorable in comparison.
David Urquhart, an enterprising agent who served a spell with Ponsonby in Istanbul, became one of the most energetic champions of the Ottoman cause and Islamic culture in British policy circles. His writings on the threat of Russia shaped the opinions of many in Britain at the time, including a certain Karl Marx. And Urquhart's time spent among the tribes of the northern Caucasus set the stage for decades of romantic European idealizing of the rugged Muslim fighters in Russia's shadow.
Urquhart returned from his travels in Turkey and elsewhere convinced that the Ottoman lifestyle was better for one's health. "If London were [Muslim]," he wrote, "the population would bathe regularly, have a better-dressed dinner for [its] money, and prefer water to wine or brandy, gin or beer." He would later launch a largely unsuccessful movement to bring theculture of Turkish baths to the cold damp of Victorian Britain.
Casting his eye to the territories the Ottomans controlled, Urquhart praised the empire's rule over a host of Christian communities and other sects -- for example, the warring Druze and Maronites in the Levant, or feuding Greek Orthodox and Armenians. In a passage cited by the historian Orlando Figes in his excellent history of the Crimean War, Urquhart credits Islam under the Ottomans as a specifically "tolerant, moderating force":
What traveler has not observed the fanaticism, the antipathy of all these [Christian] sects – their hostility to each other? Who has traced their actual repose to the toleration of Islamism? Islamism, calm, absorbed, without spirit of dogma, or views of proselytism, imposes at present on the other creeds the reserve and silence which characterize itself. But let this moderator be removed, and the humble professions now confined to the sanctuary would be proclaimed in the court and the military camp; political power and political enmity would combine with religious domination and religious animosity; the empire would be deluged in blood, until a nervous arm – the arm of Russia – appears to restore harmony, by despotism.
Flash forward to 2014, and the conversation has curiously flipped: Pundits bluster about the centuries-old war between Sunnis and Shiites. Christians are a persecuted, beleaguered people in the Middle East. Without ruthless strongmen aligned with the West, we're told, the Muslim world would descend into a chaotic bloodbath where terrorist organizations would gain sway.
The history lesson above is not meant to denigrate the Russians... But it goes to show how much the politics of an era shape its conversation about cultures and peoples. That's no less true now than it was almost two centuries ago.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Shadow Soldiers



Artist: Accept

Free People Claim Their Rights



Your rights are yours by the very nature of your birth. You have them whether a document or a government says so or not. And while governments at every level will always work to limit or destroy your rights, it’s up to you – and others – to defend them.

How to do that? Thomas Jefferson had what I believe to be the most important advice on this front:

“A free people claim their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”

Monday, October 20, 2014

1st Regiment



Another country 
Another soil 
Another place to fight for 
Another story 
Another cause 
Another reason to die for 

Another mission 
Another goal 
Another reason for not growing old 
Another home 
Another son 
Another place dead and gone 

When you here us walking, 

You know what you're about to receive 
No time for walking, 

You better be on your way 

Here we are 
Take you out 
Here we go 
1st Regiment 
Here we are 
Take you out 
Here we go 

When you here us walking, 

You know what you are about to receive 
No time for talking, 

You better be on your way 

Another country 
Another soil 
Another place to fight for 
Another story 
Another cause 
Another reason for 
War! 

Here we are 
Take you out 
Here we go 
1st Regiment 
Here we are 
Take you out 
Here we go 

When you here us walking, 

You know what you are about to receive 
No time for talking, 

You better be on your way

Artist: Chrome Division

The Congressman Who Spied For Russia



Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1885, Dickstein immigrated with his religious Jewish parents to the Lower East Side as a small child.

Samuel Dickstein, a Democrat from New York City who served in the House of Representatives from the early 1920s to the mid-1940s.

Dickstein didn’t achieve a degree of prominence in Congress until the Democrats took control of the House following the 1930 midterms and Tammany chieftains insisted that he be named to lead the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. From this perch, he began his career as a scourge of the disloyal.

Stalin had a spy in Congress, an exasperating character who once “blazed up very much, claiming that if we didn’t give him money he would break with us,” according to his Soviet contact. To this day, Sam Dickstein is the only known U.S. representative to have served as a covert agent for a foreign power. His codename was Crook.