An infamous ball in 14th century France hosted by the French King Charles VI is remembered as 'Ball of (what) Men' referring to an incident that occurred in it?

History of Great Britain | Uncyclopedia | Fandom powered by Wikia History of Great Britain Great Britain trying to kick Ireland up the arse. Bog off, Scham-o; you've had your turn There have been many Histories of Great Britain. Readily available are Winston Churchill 's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (Except the Irish), David Starkey's Dese Kings 'n' Queens be my Homeboyz, Blood or Simon Schama 's famous BBC television series Me History o' Britain. This isn't like those histories of the world's most famous island archipelago. This history is completely true and honest and free from sinister political bias or the unsettling hand of Her Majesty's censors . If you are a mincing effeminate or pearl-clutching old lady called Elizabeth, you might want to look away now. Too late! Read on! Great Britain (or as it is officially known, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, The Low Tax Islands , the No Tax Islands, Rockall, Gibraltar, Britland etc.), sometimes known as What's The Matter With Britain?, is an ancient island state located just off the coast of France . On a clear day in Calais, you can see the Off-White Cliffs of Dover welcoming unwary visitors like a row of vagrant's teeth. [1] Geologically speaking, until about 8,000 years ago Great Britain was actually part of the European Continent , but as a mark of contempt for France , the Ancient Britons dug a huge trench, now known as the English Channel . Between Calais and Dover the land was soft, made of chalk, old fountain pens and disgusting things discarded by the Gauls , so the digging was relatively easy. At the end of the Ice Age ,sea levels rose, this ditch flooded with water and, to great rejoicing, Great Britain became an island [2] . But the old French Connection continued, as it was they who named this land 'Grand Bretagne' (Great Brittany) to avoid confusion with 'Petite Brittany' (Little Brittany or Jamie Lynn Spears as she is also known). [3] For those without comedic tastes, the self-proclaimed experts at Wikipedia have an article about British history . Contents [ show ] Prehistoric Britain Bumps, lumps, ditches and giant stones left all over the place. That about sums up 'prehistoric' Britain. Since everyone left school illiterate in those days, nobody wrote down so much as a 'must do list' for later historians to work out what really went on. Everyone is nameless, this has been called ' communist history' and therefore unattractive to those who like to follow the careers of great men and women. And the heritage business. The First Briton? The first Briton was Swanscombe Man. [4] His skull was found when the huge Bluewater shopping centre was built on the outskirts of London . He was probably the first inhabitant of what became Great Britain, but there wasn't much to go on regarding his culture, as only part of a skull, a collection of mammoth teeth and beer bottles were found on the site. (The latter may be what archaeologists call an anomaly and not a period object.) Swanscombe Man seems to have died when he forgot to salt the path outside his hut, as the last great Ice Age came hurtling down from the North Pole and encased everything in ice. He probably died on his way to go out and complain to the local council "about the state of the pathways." Stonehenge When the snow retreated northwards, the first (new) Britons arrived, concealed in secret compartments inside hay carts. They quickly spread throughout the island, hunting, spearing, gutting and generally inflicting death on the native wildlife. Some settled and built villages out of anything that came to hand, mostly mud and plastic bags. Others built a gated community, showing the first signs of class distinction. This site would come to be known as Stonehenge , though most of it has since disappeared into car boots of various later visitors (hence Stonehenge's current construction-site look). A typical druid. Also a Crack Suicide Teamster. These men would rush recklessly at the Romans and stab themselves to death. Celts/Celtic/Keltic/Woad Warriors It was around 300


"The phrase ""two plus two equals five"" (""2 + 2 = 5"") popularized by George Orwell is plausibly derived from what developmental policy of the erstwhile Soviet Union?"

Philropost: THE PHILROPOST ENCYCLOPEDIA THE PHILROPOST ENCYCLOPEDIA The Philropost Encyclopedia for Proseminar through Graduation Review and Beyond Incorporating literature, criticism, music, dance, history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, communication, geography, economics, art, political science, rhetoric, criminology, statistics, paleontology, mathematics, globalization, philosophy, and laughter.                      A Quick Introduction           There are people who have inquired during the last seven months, “Why are you doing this?” These well-intended souls were referring to the construction of the book you are now reading. My typical response was that I enjoyed putting together everything known by Greg Jones all in one book. Perhaps the person most perplexed by this answer was the good doctor himself. Granted, he did take the project in good spirit, usually remarking that the book was far too large to represent what he knew, or something of that self-deprecating nature.      The real answer is that I wanted to get down under one cover some record of all the things he and I talked about over the past eighteen months or so, plus all the things that those matters suggested in my mind, as well as a large number of things we probably should have discussed and did not.      “But how do you know all this stuff?” I have been asked. The reality is that we all know much more than we believe we do until such time as we put ourselves in a situation that requires us to retell all the minutiae. In fact, I found the most challenging part of the task to be thinking up the names and terms about which I wanted to write. To that end—with or without knowing it—I relied on a great number of people who deserve mentioning. However, the ones I remember are Jan Stone, Robert Schambier, Lisa Ann Goodrich, Harlan Ellison, Greil Marcus, Elizabeth Fritze, and, of course, Dr. Gregory Jones himself.      Now the book is in your hands. I get to enjoy the laughter, disputes, cursing, crying and occasional nods that I assume accompany an undertaking of this sort. To the extent that anyone encountering this book holds an expectation of anything within one hundred lightyears of either an all-encompassing guide or a near-perfect accounting, I wish that person much luck. However, if a student or other journey-taker wishes to take a glimpse into the nature of what a liberal arts education can actually offer, this is a great place to start. A  abacus: An Asian counting devise and calculator. The standard abacus can be used to perform addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. The abacus can also be used to extract square-roots and cubic roots. The abacus is typically constructed of various types of hardwoods and comes in varying sizes. The frame of the abacus has a series of vertical rods on which a number of wooden beads are allowed to slide freely. A horizontal beam separates the frame into two sections, known as the upper deck and the lower deck. abandonment: In the ethical thought of such existentialist writers as Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, abandonment is the awareness that there are no external sources of moral authority. No deity, for example, provides us with guidance or direction. We achieve an authentic life depending only on ourselves. abdomen: The region of the body furthest from the mouth. In insects, the third body region behind the head and thorax. In humans, the abdomen is the belly, that part of the body that contains all of the structures between the chest and the pelvis. The abdomen is separated anatomically from the chest by the diaphragm, the powerful muscle spanning the body cavity below the lungs.      Sometimes people suffer from illnesses of this region of the body. One of the common illnesses is gallbladder disease. Cholecystitis is the term for inflammation of the gallbladder. The gallbladder is the organ that stores bile after it is produced by the liver, and then releases it into your small intestine, when needed, to help digest fat. Gallstones, which are hard “pebbles” composed of bile, may form


Jewish American lawyer Murray C. Bernays (1894-1970) planned the legal framework and procedures for what tribunals?

Murray C. Bernays Murray C. Bernays (1894-1970) "Murray C. Bernays (1894-1970) was an American       lawyer who planned the legal framework and procedures for the Nuremberg       War Crime Trials after World War II. Bernays was born in Russia and       emigrated to the United States with his family as a child. He served       in the U.S. Army in France during World War I and earned his law degree       from Columbia University. Between the late 1920s and early 1940s,       he was a partner in the New York City law firm Ernst, Gale, Bernays & Falk. Bernays rejoined the U.S. Army during World War II and       became a colonel with the U.S. Army General Staff Corps in 1945. In       this capacity, he planned the legal framework and procedures for the       Nuremberg War Crime Trials, basing the trials on the legal foundation       of conspiracy and publically trying the war crimes defendants through       well established legal methods. For this, he was awarded the Legion       of Merit. Bernays retired from the U.S. Army in 1945 and practiced       law for several New York City partnerships between the mid 1940s and       mid 1960s." [Bio/History, Murray C. Bernays Papers,       American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming][The Murray C. Bernays       Papers include "unpublished poetry manuscripts" and an unpublished       book, "This is the Land."]


The Twelve Tables is usually considered the first attempt of Romans to create what?

Law in Ancient Rome, The Twelve Tables - Crystalinks Law in Ancient Rome Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD - when the Roman�Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence - from the Twelve Tables (c. 439 BC) to the Corpus Juris Civilis (AD 529) ordered by Emperor Justinian I. This Roman law, the Justinian Code, was effective in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire (331-1453), and also served as a basis for legal practice in continental Europe, as well as in Ethiopia, and most former colonies of European nations, including Latin America. Historically, "Roman law" also denotes the legal system applied in most of Western Europe, until the end of the 18th century. In Germany, Roman law practice remained longer, having been the Holy Roman Empire (963-1806); thus the great influence upon the civil law systems in Europe. Moreover, the English and North American Common law also were influenced by Roman law, notably in the Latinate legal glossary - stare decisis, culpa in contrahendo, pacta sunt servanda. In contrast, Eastern Europe, though influenced by the Byzantine Empire, was not much influenced by the jurisprudence of the Corpus Juris Civilis; however, they did accept the Roman influence of the Farmer's Law. Roman Legal Development Before the Twelve Tables (754-449 BC), private law comprised the Roman civil law (ius civile Quiritium) that applied only to Roman citizens, and was bonded to religion; undeveloped, with attributes of strict formalism, symbolism, and conservatism, e.g. the ritual practice of mancipatio (a form of sale). The jurist Sextus Pomponius said, "At the beginning of our city, the people began their first activities without any fixed law, and without any fixed rights: all things were ruled despotically, by kings". It is believed that Roman Law is rooted in the Etruscan religion, emphasizing ritual. The Twelve Tables Supplement II Table I. 1. If anyone summons a man before the magistrate, he must go. If the man summoned does not go, let the one summoning him call the bystanders to witness and then take him by force. 2. If he shirks or runs away, let the summoner lay hands on him. 3. If illness or old age is the hindrance, let the summoner provide a team. He need not provide a covered carriage with a pallet unless he chooses. 4. Let the protector of a landholder be a landholder; for one of the proletariat, let anyone that cares, be protector. 6-9. When the litigants settle their case by compromise, let the magistrate announce it. If they do not compromise, let them state each his own side of the case, in the comitium of the forum before noon. Afterwards let them talk it out together, while both are present. After noon, in case either party has failed to appear, let the magistrate pronounce judgment in favor of the one who is present. If both are present the trial may last until sunset but no later. Table II. 2. He whose witness has failed to appear may summon him by loud calls before his house every third day. Table III. 1. One who has confessed a debt, or against whom judgment has been pronounced, shall have thirty days to pay it in. After that forcible seizure of his person is allowed. The creditor shall bring him before the magistrate. Unless he pays the amount of the judgment or some one in the presence of the magistrate interferes in his behalf as protector the creditor so shall take him home and fasten him in stocks or fetters. He shall fasten him with not less than fifteen pounds of weight or, if he choose, with more. If the prisoner choose, he may furnish his own food. If he does not, the creditor must give him a pound of meal daily; if he choose he may give him more. 2. On the third market day let them divide his body among them. If they cut more or less than each one's share it shall be no crime. 3. Against a foreigner the right in property shall be valid forever. Table IV. 1. A dreadfully deformed child shall be quickly kil


Women groups that could not participate in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion of China organized themselves under what colorful name? Raise the ...

Culture of China - history, people, clothing, traditions, women, beliefs, food, customs, family Culture of China The Chinese call their country Zhonghua Renmmin Gogheguo, or Zhong Guo for    short. Orientation Identification. The Chinese refer to their country as the Middle Kingdom, an indication    of how central they have felt themselves to be throughout history. There    are cultural and linguistic variations in different regions, but for such    a large country the culture is relatively uniform. However, fifty-five    minority groups inhabit the more remote regions of the country and have    their own unique cultures, languages, and customs. Location and Geography. China has a land area of 3,691,502 square miles (9,596,960 square    kilometers), making it the world's third largest nation. It borders    thirteen countries, including Russia and Mongolia to the north, India to    the southwest, and Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam to the south. To the east,    it borders the Yellow Sea, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea.    The climate is extremely diverse, ranging from tropical in the south to    subarctic in the north. In the west, the land consists mostly of    mountains, high plateaus, and desert. The eastern regions are    characterized by plains, deltas, and hills. The highest point is Mount    Everest, on the border between Tibet and Nepal, the tallest mountain in    the world. The Yangtze, the longest river in the country, forms the official dividing    line between north and south China. The Yangtze sometimes floods badly, as    does the Yellow River to the north, which, because of the damage it has    caused, is called "China's sorrow." The country is divided into two regions: Inner China and Outer China.    Historically, the two have been very separate. The Great Wall, which was    built in the fifteenth century to protect the country against military    invasions, marks the division. While the areas of the two regions are    roughly equal, 95 percent of the population lives in Inner China. The country is home to several endangered species, including the giant    panda, the golden monkey, several species of tiger, the Yangtze alligator,    and the red-crowned crane. While outside organizations such as the World    Wildlife Fund have made efforts to save these animals, their preservation    is not a top priority for the government. Demography. China is the most populous nation on earth; in 2000, the estimated    population was 1,261,832,482 (over one-fifth of the world's    population). Of these people, 92 percent are Han Chinese; the remaining 8    percent are people of Zhuang, Uyhgur, Hui, Yi, Tibetan, Miao, Manchu,    Mongol, Buyi, Korean, and other nationalities. Sichuan, in the central    region, is the most densely populated province. Many of the minority    groups live in Outer China, although the distribution has changed slightly    over the years. The government has supported Han migration to minority    territories in an effort to spread the population more evenly across the    country and to control the minority groups in those areas, which sometimes    are perceived as a threat to national stability. The rise in population    among the minorities significantly outpaces that of the Han, as the    minority groups are exempt from the government's one-child policy. Linguistic Affiliation. Mandarin Chinese is the official language. It is also called Putonghua    and is based on the Beijing dialect. Modern spoken Chinese, which replaced    the classical language in the 1920s, is called bai hua. The writing system has not changed for thousands of years and is the same    for all the dialects. It is complex and difficult to learn China and consists of almost sixty thousand characters, although only about    five thousand are used in everyday life. Unlike other modern languages,    which use phonetic alphabets, Chinese is written in pictographs and    ideographs, symbols


The commander Subutai who is credited with conquering more territory than any other commander in history fought for which empire?

Subutai - New World Encyclopedia Subutai Next (Succession (ecological)) Subutai. Medieval Chinese drawing Subutai (Subetei, Subetai, Sübeedei; Classic Mongolian: Sübügätäi or Sübü'ätäi; 1176–1248) also known as Subetai the Valiant was the primary strategist and general of Genghis Khan (Temüjin) and Ögedei Khan . The son of a blacksmith, he rose through the ranks and directed more than twenty campaigns during which he conquered (or overran) more territory than any other commander in history . He gained victory by means of imaginative and sophisticated strategies and routinely coordinated movements of armies that were more than three hundred miles away from each other. He is most remembered for devising the battle plan that destroyed the armies of Hungary and Poland within two days of each other, by forces almost a thousand miles apart. Subutai is regarded in history as one of Genghis Khan's and the Mongol Empire 's most prominent generals in terms of ability, tactics and loyalty, helping with the military campaigns in Asia and Eastern Europe . He commanded many successful attacks and invasions during his time and was rarely defeated. Under Batu Khan he extended Mongol rule into Kievan Rus' , the Crimea, part of the Balkans and defeated the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohi . Mongols remained in control of some of the Russian territories he conquered for the next three centuries. Contents 12 Credits When Batu returned to Mongolia for the election of the new Great Khan in 1242, Subatai did not accompany him nor did he press home his advantage in Europe. Had he done so, European history would have taken a different direction. Before his death in 1248, he led the Mongol campaign in China. Subatai played a major role in helping to establish the largest contiguous Empire in human history, which his master believed Heaven had commanded by Heaven to conquer. That empire would leave an indelible mark on world history. Several centuries of Mongol rule across the Eurasian landmass — a period that some refer to as Pax Mongolica — radically altered the demography and geopolitics of these areas. As a result of Subatai's conquests, a huge territory was unified under a stable and peaceful rule and by the Yasa legal code. Across the empire, merit could earn promotion regardless of ethnicity, religious liberty was in the main upheld, trade flourished and contact along the Silk Road reminded Europeans that the East was home to a great civilization and that Europe were not at the center of all human progress and development. Early life Historians believe Subutai was born between the years of 1160–1170, probably just west of the upper Onon River in what is now Mongolia. He belonged to the Uriankhai tribe, a name Mongols gave to a number of tribes of "forest people". Subutai's family had been associated with the family of Genghis Khan for many generations. His brother Jelme also served as a general in the Mongol army. Subutai joined Genghis Khan while still a teenager. Within a decade he rose to become one of the senior officers, commanding one of four roving detachments operating ahead of the main forces. In 1212 he took Huan by storm, the first major independent exploit mentioned in the sources. Subutai was proof that the Mongol Empire , more than any that had preceded it, was a meritocracy. He was the son of Qaban, who was supposedly a blacksmith, which was a not considered a nobility. Qaban brought his son to serve Genghis Khan when Subutai was about 17 years old, and he rose to the very highest command available to one who was not directly related to the Khan. Genghis Khan called him one of his four "dogs of war", namely Jelme, Kubilai Khan, Jebe and Subutai. [1] His title "Bagatur" (The Valiant) was awarded when he became a member of the imperial guard; it means "knight" but also "Valiant" and although promoted to higher rank, Subutai was known by this title until his death. [2] Mongol histories say that Subutai said to Genghis Khan , "I will ward off your enemies as felt cloth protects one from the wind." [3] Tactical ability Subutai was


The Cry of Dolores is regarded as the first event in the fight for independence in the history of what country?

Mexican Independence: The Cry of Dolores Mexican Independence: The Cry of Dolores Mexican Independence: The Cry of Dolores The Cry of Dolores.  Mural by Juan O'Gorman By Christopher Minster Updated September 16, 2015. On the morning of September 16, 1810, the parish priest of the town of Dolores, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla , declared himself in open revolt against Spanish rule from the pulpit of his church, launching the Mexican War of Independence. He exhorted his following to take up arms and join him in his fight against the injustices of the Spanish colonial system and within moments he had an army of some 600 men. This action became known as the "Grito de Dolores" or "Cry of Dolores" and today Mexicans celebrate September 16 as their Independence Day . Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla: Father Miguel Hidalgo was a fifty-seven year old Creole who was beloved by his parishioners for his tireless efforts on their behalf. He was considered one of the leading religious minds of Mexico, having served as rector of the San Nicolas Obisbo academy. He had been banished to Dolores for his questionable record in the church: namely fathering children and reading prohibited books. continue reading below our video What Is Mexican Independence Day? He had suffered personally under the Spanish system: his family had been ruined when the crown forced the church to call in debts. He was a believer in the new philosophy that stated that it was allowable to overthrow unjust tyrants. The Querétaro Conspiracy: By 1810, a couple of failed attempts by Creole leaders to secure Mexican independence had already taken place, but discontent was high. The town of Querétaro soon developed its own group of men and women in favor of independence. The leader was Ignacio Allende , a Creole officer with the local military regiment. The members of the group felt they needed another member: someone with moral authority, a good relationship with the poor and decent contacts in neighboring towns. Miguel Hidalgo was recruited and joined sometime in early 1810. Preparations: The conspirators selected early December 1810 as their time to strike. They ordered weapons made, mostly pikes and swords. They felt out royal soldiers and officers and persuaded many to join their cause. They scouted nearby royalist barracks and garrisons and spent many hours talking about what a post-Spanish society in Mexico would be like. El Grito de Dolores: On September 15, 1810, the conspirators received the bad news: their conspiracy had been found out. Allende was in Dolores at the time and wanted to go into hiding: Hidalgo convinced him that the right option was to go forward. On the morning of the 16th, Hidalgo rang the church bells, summoning the workers from the nearby fields. From the pulpit he announced the revolution: "Know this, my children, that knowing your patriotism, I have put myself at the head of a movement begun some hours ago, to wrest away power from the Europeans and give it to you." The people responded enthusiastically. Aftermath : Hidalgo would battle royalist forces right to the gates of Mexico City itself, although his “army” was never much more than a poorly-armed and uncontrolled mob more interested in murdering hated Spaniards and looting than any lofty principles of Independence. The army would fight at the siege of Guanajuato, Monte de las Cruces and a couple of other engagements before being defeated by General Félix Calleja at the Battle of Calderon Bridge in January of 1811. Hidalgo and Allende were captured soon thereafter and executed. Legacy of the Cry of Dolores: The Cry of Dolores marked the beginning of the long and bloody Mexican War of Independence, which would not conclude until 1821. Millions were killed or displaced in this long conflict. During his trial, Hidalgo seemed to understand what he had wrought and recanted his actions, perhaps foreseeing the bloodbath to come. The Cry of Dolores was the spark that ignited the tinderbox of long pent-up resentment of the Spanish in Mexico. Taxes had been raised to pay for fiascoes like the disastrous (f


What political term originates from the interview of a general during the Spanish Civil War who said that as his four groups of troops approached Madrid, another group of supporters inside the city would support him?

The Nazi-Instigated National Synarchist Union of Mexico What It Means for Today by William F. Wertz, Jr. When in July 2003, the leaders of the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA)founded in 1992 as a Trojan horse within the LaRouche movementresigned from association with LaRouche over the issue of synarchism. Lyndon LaRouche warned that the MSIA's controllers centered around Spain's leading Francoist, Blas Piñar, represent an Hispanic terrorist threat against the United States in behalf of the circles of Vice President Dick Cheney. The fact that Samuel Huntington, who promoted the Clash of Civilizations which has been the operative principle behind Cheney's war in Iraq, has since authored a book, Who Are We?, which promotes a clash of civilizations between what he describes as the "Anglo-Protestant" culture of the United States and the primarily Mexican Hispanization of the U.S. Southwest, underscores the danger of another Sept. 11, under Hispanic cover. The March 11, 2004 train bombing in Madrid, and former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar's warning that he is certain that there will be a terrorist incident in the United States before the U.S. elections, further point to the danger LaRouche identified last year, of a Reichstag Fire-type terrorist attack under Hispanic cover, as part of a desperate effort to keep the besieged Cheney-centered neo-cons in power. The purpose of this article is to document the precedent for such a danger in the history of the Union Nacional Sinarquista (UNSNational Synarchist Union) in Mexico, an organization created in 1937 by the Nazis, operating through the Spanish Falange and in conjunction with the Japanese. Although vastly diminished in numbers today compared to then, this same organization continues to actively organize in Mexico and in the United States. Moreover, although initially created by the Nazis as a fifth column in Mexico directed at the United States, after Pearl Harbor and after the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad, the UNS was taken over by the same anti-Roosevelt, Anglo-American imperialist faction that is behind Dick Cheney and his allies in the Democratic National Committee today. This is the same faction, associated with the Dulles brothers, which after World War II protected the Nazi apparatus, with which they had worked before and, in some cases, during the war. Especially in light of the defeat of the Nazis, the Italian Fascists, and the Axis-allied Imperial Japanese in World War II, the Synarchists and their apologists vociferously lie about their connection to the Axis powers and attempt to portray themselves as a militant Mexican Christian movement based on the social teaching of the Catholic Church, which they misconstrue in such a way as to continue to identify with the fascist Falange of Franco's Spain and the Romanian Legionaires of Cornelio Codreanu. The thesis of Samuel Huntington's sophomoric book is warmed-over Nazi propaganda. Huntington argues that Mexican immigration into the U.S. Southwest is in effect la Reconquista, the reconquest of territory taken from Mexico by military aggression in the 1840s, and that Mexican Catholic Hispanic culture is in a fundamental clash with the underlying Anglo-American Protestant culture which he claims is the basis for the national identity of the United States. As we shall see, this is precisely the ideology of Hispanidad developed by the Nazis at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin under Gen. Wilhelm von Faupel, to try to sabotage Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy and to drive a wedge between all of Ibero-America and the United States in the period leading up to the outbreak of World War II. Nazi and Japanese propaganda circulated by the UNS at the time, also suggested that an Axis victory over the United States would lead to the return of the U.S. Southwest to the Mexicans. For example, one declassified U.S. intelligence report dated Oct. 31, 1941 states that "Mexicans are told that their country, under Sinarquismo, will be the great nation of the Northern Hemisphere. The United States is doomed, say the


How do we better know a list compiled in ancient times by Antipater of Sidon and by an observer identified as Philo of Byzantium?

Geometry.Net - Scientists: Philon Of Byzantium          Philon Of Byzantium:     I have seen the walls and Hanging Gardens of ancient Babylon, wrote philon ofByzantium, the statue of Olympian Zeus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the mighty   http://www.unmuseum.org/ephesus.htm Extractions: The Temple of Artemis Artist's conception of the temple 1100 A.D.: A troop of Crusaders stops at a muddy little village in Asia Minor. Their leader looks around. Confused ,he dismounts. This place is not what he expected. He read in the ancient texts that this was a large seaport with many ships docked in its bay. It isn't. The sea is almost three miles away. The village is located in a swamp. There are no ships to be seen. The leader accosts a nearby man. "Sir, is this the city of Ephesus?" "It was called that once. Now it is named Ayasalouk." "Well, where is your bay? Where are the trading ships? And where is the magnificent Greek temple that we have heard about?" Now it is the man's turn to be confused. "Temple? What temple, Sir? We have no temple here..." And so 800 years after its destruction, the magnificent Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World , had been completely forgotten by the people of the town that had once held it in such pride. And there is no doubt that the temple was indeed magnificent. "I have seen the walls and Hanging Gardens of ancient Babylon," wrote Philon of Byzantium, "the statue of Olympian Zeus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the mighty work of the high Pyramids and the tomb of Mausolus. But when I saw the temple at Ephesus rising to the clouds, all these other wonders were put in the shade." Basic forms of gears have been in existence since ancient times. philon ofByzantium describes gears used as early as 300 BC to lift heavy weights.   http://www.televentures.org/brain.htm Extractions: Brain Power -Gear It up! What is a gear? Gears are frequently thought of as wheels with teeth. Gears come in all sizes, shapes, and materials but have one thing in common: they make work easier. Tire jacks, bicycles, clocks, kitchen appliances, garage door openers and cars are just a few modern machines that use gears. How long have gears been used? Basic forms of gears have been in existence since ancient times. Philon of Byzantium describes gears used as early as 300 BC to lift heavy weights. In Alexandria, Egypt during the first century AD, a mathematician named Heron wrote a book titled, Mechanics, which included illustrations and descriptions of gears. Modern archaeologists have found metal gears dating to 500 AD. Although ancient engineers knew the advantage of using gears, they were too difficult to make with existing technology. They did not come into widespread use until the invention of more precise tools and technology. How do gears work? Gears have become fundamental to the motion of virtually all machines in our society. When two or more gears are connected the movement of one gear is transferred to another gear, enabling the machine to do its job. The transfer of movement from one gear to another can increase either the force of the movement or the speed if the gears are of different sizes. Gears can also change the direction of movement. An important part of understanding how gears increase force is the concept of leverage. A gear may be thought of as series of levers, each one extending from the center of the gear to the end of a gear tooth. Just as a lever moves a load, the tooth of one gear moves the meshing tooth of another gear. The longer a lever is, the greater its force. Hence, the bigger a gear is, the greater its force. By arranging gears of different sizes, machines work with different amounts of force. widely chronicled. Greek writers, Antipater of Sidon, and philon ofByzantium compiled the two most well known lists. Most of the   http://www.centralamericaweekly.net/172/english/coverstory.html Extractions: The ancient Greeks were the first to begin compiling lists of the most marvelous structures they knew about. These included historical structures that had long been de


What historic scandal had its roots in security guard Frank Wills discovering a taped latch of a basement door of an office complex?

Why did Nixon and Bush burglarize the Watergate?  font size=6> Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Charles Colson, Parkinson, Erlichman,  Halderman, Mitchell, AG. In 47 years, what new evidence have we discovered about the ambush of President Kennedy? Plenty.   Bay of Pigs = Dallas = Watergate. Do you see what is happening?  Powerful people like Jesse Ventura, John Hankey, DA Jim Garrison,  Mark Lane,  Gen. Fletcher Prouty, Gen. Escalante, Michael Canfield,  and thousands more investigators worldwide,  leaders of a new movement to Impeach CIA agent Geo HW Bush for the murder of JFK, have arisen. We have achieved critical mass worldwide. Today, 11-29-10, in Manila, a rich powerful sexist clan is on trial. Every journalist in the Philippines is speaking out against this rich Clan. Look at journalism in America. Most journalists are just lap dogs for the rich terrorists like Bush. Now look at journalists in the Philippines. They are not afraid to print & say the truth, about the rich clan of terrorists who murdered their candidate for President, on 11-23-09, and 57 eye witnesses. 47 of them were journalists. Very similar to Dallas 1962, when the Rich Bush clan assassinated JFK & 63 eye witnesses, including top journalist Dorothy Killgallen, (What's My Line ). Journalists in America have been mute for 47 years. All the sexist members of the Ampatuan Clan must be arrested, convicted & executed. Youtube:: paul8kangas font size=6> ï¿½Jail Bushï¿½ is now a major grass roots movement world wide.  Here are the key facts:  Bush was in charge of the Bay of Pigs. I know, because I am a veteran of the invasion of Cuba.  The US files on the invasion of Cuba are still Top Secret. No one is allowed to look at the files until the year 2038. font size=6> Why? What is so secret about the Bay of Pigs, that the American public can't look at the files? font size=6> Here are a few clues you would see in the files, if we were allowed to look at them: Bush named the 2 war ships, sent by the CIA agent Gen. Fletcher Prouty, to Bush in Guatemala,  used to invade Cuba: " the Barbara & " the Houston" after his wife and his home town, where his oil company Zapata was based. Bush named the whole invasion: "Operation Zapata," after the name of his oil company. Bush owned an island, Cayo Sal, 30 miles north of Cuba, where he had an oil rig & big company office, with 100 employees, which was actually a front for running guns into Cuba, to attack Fidel & the Cuban system of free schools and free medical care. British police raided 3 speed boats, leaving the island, heading straight towards Cuba, on Dec 1, 1963, and arrested 9 of Bush's employees, who were caught smuggling machine guns towards Cuba.   font size=6> As soon as Bush killed JFK, 2 weeks earlier, Bush, Dulles, Bissel, Cabel, Hunt & Helms re-launched a second invasion of Cuba on Dec 1, 63.  font size=6> The British stopped the first wave of the invasion and took away all their guns & bombs.  As reported on pg 250, "JFK - The Cuba Files". by General Fabian Escalante, head of Cuban Intelligence. Thanks to the Church Committee investigating the JFK ambush, Cuba released its files of interviews of the 1,500 terrorists from Miami, they had arrested during the invasion.  font size=6> Cuba then sent journalists to track the movements and actions of these terrorists in the US, after they were released back to the US.  Most of them moved to Dallas, New Orleans and Miami. Cuba was doing this investigation to protect itself from terrorists attacks by the CIA trained Cubans in Dallas & Miami. font size=6> In the process they uncovered the plot to kill JFK. J. Edgar Hoover discovered the same plot at the same time, and sent a FBI telex to the SF office of the FBI, on 11-17-63, warning every FBI office in the US that a group of CIA trained Cubans from Dallas and Miami were planning to assassinate President Kennedy on 11-22-63. font size=6> A copy of this telex was introduced by DA Jim Garrison in the trial of gay CIA agent Clay Shaw.  There is a copy


The Three Pashas of the Ottoman Empire organized what 'fledgling' political group during the early 20th century whose name has now become synonymous with any internal reform group?

Ottoman Empire Ottoman Empire ("The Eternal State") Anthem: Ottoman imperial anthem At the height of its power (1683) Capital Söğüt (1299-1326) Constantinople ( Istanbul ) (1453-1922) 41°00′N 29°00′E Language(s) Ottoman Turkish Government Monarchy Sultans  - 1281–1326 Osman I  - 1918–1922 Mehmed VI Grand Viziers  - 1320-1331 Alaeddin Pasha  - 1920-1922 Ahmed Tevfik Pasha History  -  Foundation 1299  -  Partition November 17,  1922 Area  - 1914 540,766 km2 208,791 sq mi Population  - 1453 est. 410,580   - 1878 est. 26,000,000   - 1914 est. 25,000,000       Density 46.2 /km²  119.7 /sq mi Currency Akçe, Kuruş, Lira The Ottoman Empire ( Ottoman Turkish: دولت عليه عثمانيه - Devlet-i Âliye-yi Osmâniyye; literally, "The Sublime Ottoman State"), also known in the West as the Turkish Empire, existed from AD  1299 to AD  1922. At the height of its power in the 16th and 17th centuries , the tri-continental Ottoman Empire controlled much of Southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa , stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar (and in 1553 the Atlantic coast of North Africa beyond Gibraltar) in the west to the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf in the east, from the edge of Austria and Slovakia and the hinterland beyond Ukraine in the north to Sudan and Yemen in the south. The empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. With Istanbul , (the Ottoman Turkish name of old Constantinople) as its capital, it was the final great Mediterranean Empire and heir to the legacy of Rome and Byzantium in many ways. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was among the world's most powerful states, threatening the powers of eastern Europe with its steady advance through the Balkans. Its navy was a powerful force in the Mediterranean Sea , Black Sea , Red Sea , Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean . On several occasions, the Ottoman army invaded central Europe, laying siege to Vienna in 1529 and again in 1683 in an attempt to conquer the Habsburgs, and was finally repulsed only by coalitions of European powers on the sea and on land. It was the only Eastern power to seriously challenge the rising power of Western Europe between the 15th and 20th centuries . The Ottoman Empire steadily declined during the 19th century, and met its demise at the beginning of the 20th century after its defeat in World War I in the Middle Eastern theatre with the other Central Powers. In the aftermath of the war, the Ottoman government collapsed and the victorious powers partitioned the Empire. Subsequent years saw the creation of new states from the remnants of the Empire; at present 39 nation-states (40 including the disputed TRNC) have emerged from the former Ottoman territories. In Anatolia, the historical centre of the Empire, an emergent Turkish national movement expelled invading forces during the Turkish War of Independence, which concluded with the birth of the Republic of Turkey. The new Republic declared the Sultan and his family, the Ottoman Dynasty, as persona non grata of Turkey. Fifty years later, in 1974, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey granted descendants of the former dynasty the right to acquire Turkish citizenship. History Russian Wars Near East Wars The history of the Ottoman Empire spans more than six centuries, and primary documentation of the empire's relations with other powers is to be found in the archives of thirty-nine nations. Earlier historiography of the empire was based largely on analysis of Ottoman military victories and defeats; current approaches take a wider perspective, the scope of which includes the social dynamics of territorial growth and dissolution, and examination of economic factors and their role in the empire's eventual stagnation and decline. An examination of Ottoman history from a political and military viewpoint will be presented here; a socioeconomic analysis is treated in separate articles, divided between two periods, the classic period (sometimes referred to as the "era of enlargement"), and the reform period (also called "the era of Westerniz


When in 1862 did the Mexican army claim an unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla immortalizing the day in Mexican history?

Puebla – THE HISPANIC BLOG Confusion with Mexican Independence Day Many people outside Mexico mistakenly believe that Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexican independence , which was declared more than 50 years before the Battle of Puebla. That event is commemorated on September 16, the anniversary of the revolutionary priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla ’s famous “Grito de Dolores” (“Cry of Dolores”), a call to arms that amounted to a declaration of war against the Spanish colonial government in 1810. The book The Course of Mexican History states “The exact words of this most famous of all Mexican speeches are not known, or, rather, they are reproduced in almost as many variations as there are historians to reproduce them.”The book goes on to claim that “the essential spirit of the message is… ‘My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the gachupines!’ Hidalgo’s Grito did not condemn the notion of monarchy or criticize the current social order in detail, but his opposition to the events in Spain and the current viceregal government was clearly expressed in his reference to bad government. The Grito also emphasized loyalty to the Catholic religion, a sentiment with which both Creoles and Peninsulares (native Spaniards) could sympathize; however, the strong anti-Spanish cry of “Death to the Gachupines” (Gachupines was a nickname given to Peninsulares) probably had caused horror among Mexico’s elite. Cinco de Mayo: The History Behind What this Day Truly Means cPhoto: Battle of Puebla In Mexico, the various factions that fought their civil war had borrowed large sums of money from foreign creditors. The fighting devastated Mexico’s economy, and the country had to suspend payments on its debts. Taking advantage of the relative weakness of the United States during the US Civil War , in December of 1861 the governments of France, Great Britain and Spain landed an allied military force at Vera Cruz  to protect their interests in Mexico and to try to collect the debts owed to their citizens. Juárez negotiated with the allies and promised to resume payments, and the British and Spanish troops began to withdraw from Mexico in April, 1862. source unknown The French, however, did not withdraw and instead sent reinforcements to their troops in Mexico. At the time France was ruled by Louis Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte . Louis Napoleon was elected President of France , but after the election he proclaimed himself Napoleon III, Emperor of the French  (the British referred to him as “the nephew of the uncle”). While negotiations for the Mexican government to repay its debts were ongoing, the French commander, General Charles Ferdinand Latrille, comte (Count) de Lorencez, advanced on Mexico City from Vera Cruz, occupying the mountain passes which led down into the Valley of Mexico. At this point it became clear that Napoleon III planned to turn Mexico into a colony. The French advance was along a route that had been used several times in the past to conquer Mexico, first by the conquistador Hernan Cortes and most recently by US General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War. Napoleon III France declared war on Mexico, and called on those Mexicans who had fought on the side of the Conservative Party in the civil war to join them. Napoleon III planned to turn Mexico into an empire ruled by Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Josef von Habsburg, the younger brother of the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Josef von Habsburg General Charles Ferdinand Latrille, Count de Lorencez, was the leader of the French forces – the Corps Expéditionnaire – which numbered about 7,300 men. He had been their commander for about two months. He was confident of victory. He boldly proclaimed, “we are so superior to the Mexica


What is the common family name of the sisters Ai-ling, Chang-ling and May-ling who had a significant influence on 20th century Chinese history?

TIMELINE of Asian American History between 1900 and 1909 HISTORICAL TIMELINE DETAILS (1900 to 1909) Our victories, obstacles and leaders Discover additional specific info on the many links (outlined in "red" or "blue") listed below 1900   1900 CENSUS FIGURES ON INDIAN AMERICANS By the     1900 census, 2,050 East Indians were found in the United States, and one     estimate is that the number had grown to 7,000 by 1923. Distinguished Americans of South Asian ancestry include conductor Zubin     Mehta, former EEOC Commissioner Joy Cherian, award-winning author Bharati     Mukherjee, filmmaker Ismail Merchant and Dalip     Saund. Population estimates were 359,000 in 1980, 815,447 in 1990, and over 1.3     million today, including an estimated 25,000 medical doctors. By 1990     census estimates, Asian Indians had a per capita income of $17,777 as     compared to the national average of $14,420, and high levels of educational     achievement (averaging 15.6 years) and annual household income ($34,300). Indian     Americans have served on the state level in Maryland and Wyoming, and     run for office in states as diverse as California, New York, South Dakota,     Minnesota, and Georgia. 1901   SAN FRANCISCO'S "NEW CHINESE TELEPHONE COMPANY" OPENS The new Chinese Telephone Exchange is open and ready for business, after months of preparation. The exchange differs from all others in this city or in the world in that it is gorgeous with Oriental beauty and a marvel of luxurious good taste and splendor. The telephone company has made it a point to make the new exchange one of the show places in Chinatown. It has spared no expense to obtain this result. The new exchange is in the three-story building at 743 Washington street. The first floor is occupied by a store, which has been refitted and decorated by its owners to be in accord with the remainder of the building. The entrance to the exchange is up a long flight of narrow stairs, at the head of which is a gayly decorated sign in Chinese letters announcing the presence of the telephone, which, strangely enough, is one of the most popular of the American inventions among the Chinese. 1901   SUNG VS. U.S. Sung    v US Supreme Court rules that unreasonable search and seizure, cruel    and unusual punishment, and trial without jury are acceptable in deportation    proceedings. 1901  CHINESE EXCLUSION CONVENTION In    November 22, 1901 - a Chinese exclusion convention in San Francisco    spells out the reasons why it thinks Congress should exclude Chinese immigrants.    Some excerpts are listed below: The effects of Chinese     exclusion have been most advantageous to the State. The 75,000 Chinese     residents of California in 1880 have been reduced, according to the last     census, to 45,000; and whereas the settlement of California by Caucasians     had been arrested prior to the adoption of these laws, a healthy growth of the State in population has marked the progress of     recent years. Every material interest of the State has advanced, and prosperity     has been our portion. To quote the imperial Chinese consul-general of San Francisco: They work more cheaply than whites; they live more cheaply;     they send their money out of the country to China; most of them have no     intention of remaining in the United States, and they do not adopt American     manners, but live in colonies, and not after the American fashion. Until this year no statute had been passed by the State forbidding their intermarriage with the whites,     and yet during their long residence but few intermarriages have taken     place, and the offspring has been invariably degenerate. SINS          OF EXCLUSION Exclusion        and the Racial/Ethnic Enclaves However, exclusion was not only an immigration restriction.        It became a unique form of racism that also socially defined the        situation of the remaining Asians insid


"Talking about which country did the writer V. S. Naipaul write ""No civilization was so little equipped to cope with the outside world; no country was so easily raided and plundered, and learned so little from its disasters""?"

A reward for Mr. Naipaul - The Hindu A reward for Mr. Naipaul November 10, 2012 00:27 IST Updated: August 18, 2016 10:27 IST Share Article November 10, 2012 00:27 IST Updated: August 18, 2016 10:27 IST more-in lead Honouring Sir Vidia for “lifetime achievement” means affirming not just his great “craft” but also his idea of India With the Mumbai Literary Festival recently honouring V.S. Naipaul for “lifetime achievement,” the ironies of rewarding Naipaul’s work have been resurrected. So have predictable “arguments.” Naipaul is a great writer. Writing has no room for politics. Great men are eccentric. Girish Karnad should have spoken about theatre, not Naipaul. A continuum Girish Karnad was absolutely right to speak up at the venue where Naipaul was honoured. Karnad has reminded us that for writers, all texts, literary debates and political questions form a continuum. As for propriety, why is it that great men like Naipaul are allowed departures from propriety, but not the great and not-so-great writers at home? Karnad added that Indian writers, especially those writing in English, have not challenged Naipaul’s views. Like their counterparts in other spheres of middle class Indian life, many writers are wary of making a “political” statement, or taking on the great — especially the great in London or New York — in public. But to set the record straight: I am aware of at least three Indian writers in English who have responded to Naipaul’s statements in public. In a festival session at Neemrana in 2002, the Great Man threw darts at two of his fears: women and Muslims. He said women writers are banal; he finds them boring. In response, Shashi Deshpande said she found Naipaul’s preoccupation with the loss of an imaginary India boring. Naipaul cut off Nayantara Sahgal as she spoke of post-colonialism, again complaining of banality. Ruchir Joshi made a sharp, timely intervention. Naipaul was not just being rude; he felt Sahgal had not gone back far enough in identifying the colonisers of India. “When did colonialism begin?” he asked, implying that it began with “the Muslims.” This is exactly what Girish Karnad refers to when he speaks of the questionable assumption of a pristine Hindu past sullied by Muslim invaders. Writers are not necessarily historians; but they are not precocious children with a knack either. Nor are they hermits. Any intelligent reader knows that the written work is informed by the writer’s take on history, politics, socio-economic contexts. Two important questions emerge when we debate an Indian honour conferred on Naipaul. One is on the context in which Naipaul’s work is located. The other is about the books and writers we choose to reward and what these choices say about us. To revisit Naipaul’s view of the world, I went back to an essay I wrote when Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What I wrote then is relevant to the present debate. On receiving the Nobel in 2001, Naipaul paid tribute to England, “[his] home,” and India, “the home of [his] ancestors.” Trinidad, where he was born and where he grew up, did not merit a mention though it was home to admirable work such as The Mystic Masseur, Miguel Street and A House for Mr Biswas. But then Naipaul thinks Trinidad is “unimportant, uncreative, cynical … [with] an indifference to virtue as well as vice”. In fact, Naipaul’s early novels responded to the painful contradictions in these societies struggling to create a coherent narrative of their postcolonial lives. But the later work, particularly Naipaul’s considerable body of non-fiction, took his acute eye and graceful sentence elsewhere. This elsewhere, where mutinies abound (not dissent or movements) are chaotic “half-worlds”. All of them are, without exception, non-western countries. Many of them are yet to recover from their colonial legacies; many still grapple with chauvinist or opportunist rulers, appropriate successors to their colonial masters. Naipaul places himself outside these struggling worlds. He dissects them fastidiously to arrive at deadly diagnoses. Trinidad is “a place where


The founding of the Austrian city of Wiener Neustadt by Duke Leopold V in 1194 came about from the ill-gotten gains of whose kidnapping that probably yielded the highest ransom ever?

Austria Austria — Austrian , adj., n. /aw"stree euh/, n. a republic in central Europe. 8,054,078; 32,381 sq. mi. (83,865 sq. km). Cap .: Vienna. German, Österreich. * * * Austria Introduction Austria Background: Once the center of power for the large Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria was reduced to a small republic after its defeat in World War I. Following annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938 and subsequent occupation by the victorious Allies in 1945, Austria's status remained unclear for a decade. A State Treaty signed in 1955 ended the occupation, recognized Austria's independence, and forbade unification with Germany. A constitutional law of that same year declared the country's "perpetual neutrality" as a condition for Soviet military withdrawal. This neutrality, once ingrained as part of the Austrian cultural identity, has been called into question since the Soviet collapse of 1991 and Austria's entry into the European Union in 1995. A prosperous country, Austria entered the European Monetary Union in 1999.    Geography Austria  - Location: Central Europe, north of Italy and Slovenia Geographic coordinates: 47 20 N, 13 20 E Area: total : 83,858 sq km water: 1,120 sq km land: 82,738 sq km Area - comparative: slightly smaller than Maine Land boundaries: total : 2,562 km border countries: Czech Republic 362 km , Germany 784 km, Hungary 366 km, Italy 430 km, Liechtenstein 35 km, Slovakia 91 km, Slovenia 330 km, Switzerland 164 km Coastline: 0 km ( landlocked ) Maritime claims: none ( landlocked ) Climate: temperate ; continental, cloudy; cold winters with frequent rain in lowlands and snow in mountains; cool summers with occasional showers Terrain: in the west and south mostly mountains ( Alps ); along the eastern and northern margins mostly flat or gently sloping Elevation extremes: lowest point: Neusiedler See 115 m highest point: Grossglockner 3,798 m Land use: arable land: 16.89% permanent crops: 0.99% other: 82.12% (1998 est.) Irrigated land: 457 sq km (2000 est.) Natural hazards: landslides; avalanches; earthquakes      Environment - current issues: some forest degradation caused by air and soil pollution; soil pollution results from the use of agricultural chemicals; air pollution results from emissions by coal- and oil-fired power stations and industrial plants and from trucks transiting Austria between northern and southern Europe       Environment - international party to: Air Pollution , Air agreements: Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Air Pollution- Sulphur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic Treaty , Biodiversity , Climate Change , Desertification , Endangered Species , Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection , Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling signed , but not ratified: Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Antarctic-Environmental Protocol , Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol Geography - note: landlocked ; strategic location at the crossroads of central Europe with many easily traversable Alpine passes and valleys; major river is the Danube; population is concentrated on eastern lowlands because of steep slopes, poor soils, and low temperatures elsewhere    People Austria Population: 8,169,929 (July 2002 est.) Age structure: 0-14 years: 16.4% ( male 686,205; female 652,840) 15-64 years: 68.2% ( male 2,814,866; female 2,756,777) 65 years and over: 15.4% ( male 484,313; female 774,928) (2002 est.) Population growth rate: 0.23% (2002 est.) Birth rate: 9.58 births/1,000 population (2002 est.) Death rate: 9.73 deaths/1,000 population (2002 est.) Net migration rate: 2.45 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2002 est.) Sex ratio: at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1.02 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.62 male(s)/ female total population: 0.95 male(s)/ female (2002 est.) Infant mortality rate: 4.39 deaths/1,000 live births (2002 est.)        Life expectancy at birth: total population: 78 years female: 81.31 ye


The 1940 book To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson that traces communism refers to the arrival of Lenin at the said railway station in what city?

H-Net Reviews David Wolff. To the Harbin Station: The Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria, 1898-1914. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press , 1999. xx + 255 pp. $49.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-3266-6. Reviewed by Felix Patrikeeff (Department of Politics, University of Adelaide) Published on H-Russia (October, 2000) The Chimera of Russian Society in Manchuria The Chimera of Russian Society in Manchuria The study of the Russian presence in Manchuria is a complex endeavour. It requires the charting of an often infuriatingly opaque history, an understanding of tortuously-fashioned political equations, a feel for the pathos of a culture-in-exile and, in important respects, a sense of perspective on the economic facets of the question. Was the Russian push into Manchuria in the late nineteenth century the result of politically more benign motives on the part of the Russian court, or the spearhead of a cruder Russian imperialism? Did the Trans-Siberian and Chinese Eastern Railways that were constructed in that period represent a 'bridge of steel' drawing together a European Russia, its underdeveloped Eastern Siberian and Far Eastern regions with the markets of East Asia, or were these the shaft of that spear of imperialism? And what was the part played in this extraordinary adventure by Harbin, a quintessentially Russian city springing up like a mushroom in the relatively desolate heart of Manchuria? A few scholars who have written in English stand out in this area of study. Andrew Malozemoff and his teacher George A. Lensen, John J. Stephan, Peter S.H. Tang and Rosemary K.I. Quested. As Wolff (whose book draws quite heavily on their scholarship) modestly indicates in his generally quite useful book on the subject, he "...aim[s] to complement the North Manchurian aspects of Quested's work by making use of newly released documents from Russian and mainland Chinese archives, both central and local" (p.197). This he does in some ways, but as his only research visit to China for the book appears to have been in 1989 (presumably for his doctoral research), and the work itself was published a decade later, one might ask how "newly released" are the Chinese documents? Moreover, the foreword to the book (by Professor Nicholas Riasanovsky, himself a Kharbinets [Harbinnite]) indicates that the author's task was aided by his polyglot scholarship, employing as he does Russian, Chinese and Japanese archival material. Yet it must be said that it is not at all clear from the images fashioned in the text itself, or from his referencing, how much the Chinese- and Japanese-language sources actually contributed to Wolff's work.. The book is divided, as the author handily points out, into five chapters and an appendix. The first deals with the construction of the Trans-Siberian and Chinese Eastern Railways, and how this "altered Russia's image abroad" (p.9). The second chapter examines the inter-ministerial rivalry surrounding the development of the city of Harbin. Chapter Three looks at the results of this inter-ministerial rivalry, which the author suggests gave rise to "trailblazing policies" that made Harbin "the freest city in the Russian Empire", and uses census data to examine the resulting make-up of the city's population (pp.10-11). Chapter Four analyses Harbin's development during the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 Revolution. The last chapter moves to a discussion of the place of young "orientologists" (Wolff, influenced by Edward Said's work, refuses to use the term "orientalist" because of the negative ideological connotations of that word, and yet confusingly writes "vostokoved=orientalist" on p.156) graduating from Vladivostok's Eastern Institute, and their contribution to the "specialness" of Harbin. Finally, there is a short appendix which examines the "prehistory" of the Eastern Institute. Despite the fact that the title of the book indicates 1914 as the cut-off date for the study, only Chapter Three contains any sustained reference to the post 1905 period, and even here, it would appear, largely to acco


A woman named Pompeia was divorced in 62 BC in Rome after she was suspected of a crime despite there being no evidence of her wrongdoing. Whom was she married to?

The Roman Principate: Gaius Julius Caesar Bona Dea Bona Dea was a divinity in ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility in women, healing, and the protection of the Roman state and people. According to Roman literary sources, she was brought from Magna Graecia at some time during the early or middle Republic, and was given her own state cult on the Aventine Hill. Her rites allowed women the use of strong wine and blood-sacrifice, things otherwise forbidden them by Roman tradition. Men were barred from her mysteries and the possession of her true name. The goddess had two annual festivals. One was held at her Aventine temple; the other was hosted by the wife of Rome's senior annual magistrate, for an invited group of elite matrons and female attendants. No men were permitted to attend, but a young patrician named Publius Clodius Pulcher managed to gain admittance disguised as a woman, apparently for the purpose of seducing Caesar's wife Pompeia. He was caught and prosecuted for sacrilege. Caesar gave no evidence against Clodius at his trial, careful not to offend one of the most powerful patrician families of Rome, and Clodius was acquitted after rampant bribery and intimidation. Nevertheless, Caesar divorced Pompeia, with the famous words -  "the wife of Caesar must be above suspicion." Governorship in Hispania After his praetorship, Caesar was appointed to govern Hispania Ulterior (Outer Iberia) in 61 BC (remember, the dates go backwards at this period !), but he was still in considerable debt and needed to satisfy his creditors before he could leave. He turned to Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of Rome's richest men. In return for political support in his opposition to the interests of Pompey, Crassus paid some of Caesar's debts, and acted as guarantor for others. Even so, to avoid becoming a private citizen and open to prosecution for his debts, Caesar left for his province before his praetorship had ended. In Hispania he conquered the Callaici and Lusitani, being hailed as 'imperator' by his troops, reformed the law regarding debts, and completed his governorship in high esteem. The Latin word imperator was originally a title roughly equivalent to 'commander' under the Roman Republic. Later it became a part of the titulature of the Roman Emperors as part of their cognomen. The English word emperor derives from imperator via Old French Empereür. The Roman emperors themselves generally based their authority on multiple titles and positions, rather than preferring any single title. Nevertheless, imperator was used relatively consistently as an element of a Roman ruler's title throughout the principate (derived from princeps, from which prince in English is derived). By the time Caesar returned to Rome mid-year in 60 BC, the senate had granted him the title of imperator (see above), a title which entitled him to a triumph, however, he also wanted to stand for consul, the most senior magistracy in the republic. If he were to celebrate a triumph, he would have to remain a soldier, and stay outside the city until the ceremony, but to stand for election he would need to lay down his command and enter Rome as a private citizen. He could not do both in the time available. He asked the senate for permission to stand in absentia, but Cato blocked the proposal. Faced with the choice between a triumph and the consulship, Caesar wisely chose the consulship. THE CONQUEST of GAUL Caesar was still deeply in debt, but there was money to be made as a governor, whether by extortion or by military adventurism. Caesar had four legions under his command, two of his provinces bordered on unconquered territory, and parts of Gaul were known to be unstable. Some of Rome's Gallic allies had been defeated by their rivals at the Battle of Magetobriga, with the help of a contingent of Germanic tribes. The Romans feared these tribes were preparing to migrate south, closer to Italy, and that they had warlike intent. Caesar raised two new legions and defeated these tribes. In response to Caesar's earlier activities, the tribe


What European ethnicity marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Golden Spurs (1302) fought in Flanders as its official holiday?

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Belgium, by George W. T. (George William Thomson) Omond CHAPTER XVIII THE VICISSITUDES OF ANTWERP When Napoleon was at Antwerp in 1803, he spoke to the Communal Council about the miserable condition of the place. 'It is little better,' he said, 'than a heap of ruins. It is scarcely like a European city. I could almost have believed myself this morning in some African township. Everything needs to be made—harbours, quays, docks; and everything shall be made, for Antwerp must avail itself of the immense advantages of its central position between the North and the South, and of its magnificent and deep river.' Antwerp was indeed a pitiable sight. Its trade had sunk to nothing. Rows of squalid houses, with wooden gables 300 years old, looked down upon canals choked up with slime and filth. The wharves on the banks of the noble River Scheldt were mere heaps of rotten timber. Half the churches, from which the stained glass and rich ornaments of former days had long since departed, [Pg 244] were closed. Grass was growing in the deserted streets; and the walls of this desolate city contained a population which numbered only some 40,000 souls. Such in the beginning of the nineteenth century was the state of Antwerp, which had once been the centre of European commerce and the greatest seaport in the world. ANTWERP The Cathedral—Chapel of St. Joseph. The position of Antwerp, close to the estuary of the mighty stream which brought it within reach of the markets, not only of Flanders, but of every part of the world which could be reached by water, had made it from an early period one of the chief cities of Brabant. But for a long time Bruges and Ghent, after their formidable rival Ypres had sunk into insignificance, absorbed most of the commerce of the Netherlands. These splendid cities fell; the commerce which had made them great found its way to Antwerp; and by the middle of the sixteenth century, when the waters of Zwijn, which had carried so many costly bales to Bruges, were drying up, the broad expanse of the Scheldt was covered by innumerable ships threading their way up to where the merchant princes of Italy, Germany, and England had established themselves, in a city which was now greater than even Venice or Genoa. [Pg 245] Every week 2,000 waggons heavily laden entered Antwerp. Silk, satin, velvet, and tapestry; gold, silver, and precious stones; spices and sugar from Portugal and Spain, now enriched by their conquest of the Indies; wines from France and Germany—all found their way to Antwerp. The manufactures of the Flemish towns were sent down the highway of the Scheldt to the most distant parts of the world; but England, Spain, and Portugal were the countries to which most of the cargoes were exported, and these were so rich that on one occasion the contents of thirteen ships taken by pirates were valued at 500,000 ï¿½cus d'or. [45] Already, under the Dukes of Brabant and Burgundy, the city had grown far beyond its original limits; but the wealth, the magnificence, and the vastly increased population which the remarkable prosperity of the sixteenth century brought with it, led Charles V. to issue a decree that the walls must be extended, and the boundaries now became those which enclosed it until recent times. The Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, still the glory of Antwerp, was the largest and the richest ecclesiastical building in the Netherlands. Not [Pg 246] far from the Cathedral was the Vleechhuis, now known as the Vieille Boucherie, a solid building of red brick relieved by courses of white stone, with five hexagonal turrets, erected by the Guild of Butchers, the interior of which was in those days ornamented with elaborate carvings, paintings, and marble statues. It is now surrounded by mean houses in the most squalid part of the town; but its massive appearance, even in decay, gives an idea of the power and wealth of what was not the most powerful nor the wealthiest of the guilds. In the Grande Place, as in the Grande Place of Brussels, were other guild houses, distinguished by their q


The French military engineer Vauban (1633-1707) who advised Louis XIV on protecting his country's borders was well-known for his skill in constructing what?

Vauban and the French Military Under Louis XIV Vauban and the French Military Under Louis XIV Flag for inappropriate content Related Vauban and the French Military Under Louis XIV   The French Foreign Legion: An Illustrated History  (2008) German Military Vehicles of World War II: An Illustrated Guide to Cars, Trucks, Half-Tracks, Motorcycles, Amphibious Vehicles and Others (2007) The Fortiﬁcations of Paris: An Illustrated History  (2006)  Medieval Armies and Weapons in Western Europe: An Illustrated History  (2005) Castles and Fortiﬁed Cities of Medieval Europe: An Illustrated History  (2002)


Signed by three heads of states in the later part of the 20th century, what was the result of the Belavezha Accords?

Dealing with Russia - Europe’s World Europe’s World Dealing with Russia Published on March 4 2015, Spring 2015 If the EU accepts the actions of today’s newly assertive Russia, warns Carl Bildt, the solidarity on which the European Union has been built will come under severe strain. That means the Common Foreign and Security Policy must be moved right to the top of the EU agenda Written by Other articles by Carl Bildt › At times like these it seems appropriate to reflect on the state both of Europe and the world. There’s little doubt that the European order, indeed the global order, that we’ve been trying to shape is changing in profound ways. We nowadays see the outbreak of the Great War as the true beginning of the “horrible” 20th century, with all the horrors of the trenches, revolutions, depressions and dictatorships, and then the gas chambers, concentration camps, barbed wire and walls that followed. It wasn’t until a mere quarter-century ago, with the elections in Poland and the fall of the Berlin Wall, that our continent was able to start rebuilding its future and that we could dare to start dreaming of a Europe that would be whole and free, democratic and dynamic. The years since then have seen some very major achievements. And looked at globally, they have been among the best of times for mankind as a whole. What Europe achieved during these few decades was an important part of the international success story. “We must understand that, in contrast to our obviously misjudged reactions after the August 2008 war between Georgia and Russia, the Ukraine crisis is more than an unfortunate episode that will soon pass” Few people predicted Germany’s peaceful reunification, and fewer still the re-establishment of the three Baltic states’ independence. But we also saw the setbacks of a brutal decade of war in the Balkans that were a horrendous echo of a century before. Major wars in Europe’s history normally ended with major peace settlements that sought to regulate matters in a way that would secure peace and stability in the years ahead. That’s why we think of the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 or the Vienna Congress in 1815. And then, of course, there was Versailles in 1919, whose legacy left so much to be desired. It is hardly surprising that it’s so often referred to as “the peace that ended all peace”. It wasn’t until a quarter of a century ago that national leaders could sit down and seek true agreement on the principles for peace for our continent after all the horrors that stemmed from that fateful summer’s day of 1914 in Sarajevo. That’s what they did as they set down exactly such principles in the Paris Charter of 1990, and as a result laid down later in the ambitious concept of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. “If Russia’s actions were to be accepted, we could well see a situation arising where, over time, the solidarity on which the European Union itself is built comes under strain, with all the unpredictable developments that might involve further down the line” What was spelled out at that time was a concept of peace that went far beyond defining an absence of war. It defined peace built on respect for human rights for each and every person in our societies. We Europeans learned the lesson of the 20th century’s bitter experience, which was that the internal order of a state is as relevant to peace as the relationships that exist between them. It was therefore very important that membership of the Council of Europe and of the European Court of Human Rights should be extended to all the nations of our continent. Much of this was, of course, about Russia. It was of paramount importance that we should devise an order that included both Russia and the other states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. A first step was the Partnership and Co-operation Agreement concluded in 1994 between the European Union and Russia, and in 1997 this was followed by the Founding Act signed by NATO and Russia. The Soviet Union might have lost the Cold War, but the n


"""I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."" Whose words that preceded a 1973 coup in a South American country?"

Unsealed Documents Show Pinochet 'Directly' Involved in Capitol Hill Assassinations - Democratic Underground Unsealed Documents Show Pinochet 'Directly' Involved in Capitol Hill Assassinations Pinochet was Poppy's friend. Unsealed Documents Show Pinochet 'Directly' Involved in Capitol Hill Assassinations Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt became 'symbols of the broader human rights catastrophe of the Pinochet dictatorship' by Sarah Lazare, staff writer CommonDreams, Oct. 8, 2015 Loved ones have long charged that U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet had a direct hand in the 1976 assassination of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his Institute for Policy Studies colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Now, they may finally be vindicated. The administration of President Barack Obama on Thursday publicly released documents that appear to show that Pinochet was behind the murders of Letelier and Moffitt, who have become "symbols of the broader human rights catastrophe of the Pinochet dictatorship," Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at IPS, told Common Dreams. The materials, which include CIA papers, were given to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet on Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. SNIP... Letelierï¿½s son, Chilean Senator Juan Pablo Letelier, is one of the few people who has reviewed the trove and confirmed to the Guardian that they conclusively show Pinochet directly ordered the killing. In addition, the documents reportedly reveal that Pinochet had intended to cover up his role in the assassination by killing his spy chief. "In (Pinochetï¿½s) predisposition to defend his position he planned to eliminate Manuel Contreras to keep him from talking," Senator Letelier told the Mesa Central show on Tele13 Radio. CONTINUED... Replies to this discussion thread 48 replies Unsealed Documents Show Pinochet 'Directly' Involved in Capitol Hill Assassinations (Original post) Octafish Oct 2015 #3 Oct 2015 #26 Oct 2015 #4 Oct 2015 #6 Oct 2015 #29 Octafish (55,745 posts) 2. The sadness about all this is only alleviated by the thought of justice. "The efforts of family members, human rights activists, bold lawyers, and a handful of committed elected officials have changed the course of history," said Cavanagh in a statement released Thursday. "They have charted new ground in international human rights, including the 'Pinochet Precedent' established when British courts stripped the former dictator of his 'sovereign immunity' and ruled that Spain could extradite him for torture." The book Orlando Letelier: Testimony and Vindication charged that Pinochet ordered the murder. And in 1999, The Clinton administration released over 16,000 documents regarding the Pinochet dictatorship, but withheld those related to the Letelier-Moffitt case, claiming they were necessary for an ongoing federal investigation. However, a draft indictment for the killings prepared under the Clinton administration was ultimately dropped by George W. Bush. Octafish (55,745 posts) 5. The Last Man of the Junta: Open Letter to Henry Kissinger from One of Pinochet's Political Prisoners An Open Letter to Henry Kissinger from One of Pinochet's Political Prisoners The Last Man of the Junta by FERNANDO A. TORRES CounterPunch, DECEMBER 12, 2006 All of the original members of the military junta that overthrew Allende and his government with the knowledge and the direct support of the US government, are now gone. Nixon is gone and Kissinger is left alone on this earth. Now we will never know the number of secrets or the details that they took to their graves with them. Nor will we ever know the whereabouts of the missing onesï¿½ every single one of them. I also wonder if justice will prevail and will catch up with Kissinger, the last man of the Junta? F.T. "I donï¿½t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." ï¿½ Henry Kissinger An open letter to Henry Kissinger I was not an "ir


What word, also linked to President Kennedy's liking for a Broadway musical, was used for the first time in a 1963 Life magazine article to describe a 60's era?

How Jackie Kennedy Invented the Camelot Legend After JFK’s Death - The Daily Beast JFK How Jackie Kennedy Invented the Camelot Legend After JFK’s Death While the nation was still grieving JFK’s assassination, she used an influential magazine profile to rewrite her husband’s legacy and spawn Camelot. James Piereson 11.12.13 10:45 AM ET Few events in the postwar era have cast such a long shadow over our national life as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy fifty years ago this month. The murder of a handsome and vigorous president shocked the nation to its core and shook the faith of many Americans in their institutions and way of life. Those who were living at the time would never forget the moving scenes associated with President Kennedy’s death: the Zapruder film depicting the assassination in a frame-by-frame sequence; the courageous widow arriving with the coffin at Andrews Air Force Base still wearing her bloodstained dress; the throng of mourners lined up for blocks outside the Capitol to pay respects to the fallen president; the accused assassin gunned down two days later while in police custody and in full view of a national television audience; the little boy saluting the coffin of his slain father; the somber march to Arlington National Cemetery; the eternal flame affixed to the gravesite. These scenes were repeated endlessly on television at the time and then reproduced in popular magazines and, still later, in documentary films. They came to be viewed as defining events of the era. In their grief, Americans were inclined to take to heart the various myths and legends that grew up around President Kennedy within days of the assassination. Though the assassin was a communist and an admirer of Fidel Castro, many insisted that President Kennedy was a martyr to the cause of civil rights who deserved a place of honor next to Abraham Lincoln as a champion of racial justice. Others held him up as a great statesman who labored for international peace. But by far the most potent element of the Kennedy legacy was the one that associated JFK with the legend of King Arthur and Camelot. As with many of the myths and legends surrounding President Kennedy, this one was the creative contribution of Jacqueline Kennedy who imagined and artfully circulated it in those grief-filled days following her husband’s death. On the weekend following the assassination and state funeral, Mrs. Kennedy invited the journalist Theodore White to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis for an exclusive interview to serve as the basis for an essay in a forthcoming issue of Life magazine dedicated to President Kennedy. White was a respected journalist and the author of the best selling chronicle of the 1960 campaign, The Making of the President, 1960, that portrayed candidate Kennedy in an especially favorable light and his opponent (Richard Nixon) in a decidedly negative light. White had also known Joseph Kennedy, Jr. (John F. Kennedy’s older brother) while a student at Harvard in the late 1930s. Mrs. Kennedy reached out to White in the reasonable belief that he was a journalist friendly to the Kennedy family. In that interview Mrs. Kennedy pressed upon White the Camelot image that would prove so influential in shaping the public memory of JFK and his administration. President Kennedy, she told the journalist, was especially fond of the music from the popular Broadway musical, Camelot, the lyrics of which were the work of Alan Jay Lerner, JFK’s classmate at Harvard. The musical, which featured Richard Burton as Arthur, Julie Andrews as Guinevere, and Robert Goulet as Lancelot, had a successful run on Broadway from 1960 to 1963. According to Mrs. Kennedy, the couple enjoyed listening to a recording of the title song before going to bed at night. JFK was especially fond of the concluding couplet: “Don’t ever let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was Camelot.” President Kennedy, she said, was strongly attracted to the Camelot legend because he was an idealist who saw history as something made by heroes like


700 private boats sailed from Ramsgate in England to what place in France between 26 May and 4 June 1940 as part of Operation Dynamo?

British Ship Building - Wooden Boat Building 1943 - After Dunkirk - YouTube British Ship Building - Wooden Boat Building 1943 - After Dunkirk Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on May 5, 2013 The Little Ships of England - the traditional craft of wooden boatbuilding, and the important roles those little ships play. They are made of British timber; oak, ash and elm. The same ship types that went to Dunkirk to rescue the many soldiers (see more below). Skilled shipwrights at work in a West- country shipyard, and shifts again to the exciting rescue of a fighter pilot by a launch on patrol. From Looe, Cornwall with opening shots in the Cornish fishing village of Polperro. The little ships of Dunkirk were 700 private boats that sailed from Ramsgate in England to Dunkirk in France between 26 May and 4 June 1940 as part of Operation Dynamo, the rescue of more than 338,000 British and French soldiers. This film has been made available for non-commercial research and educational purposes courtesy the British Council Film Collection. http://film.britishcouncil.org/britis... Category


Charter 77, a petition by writers and intellectuals demanding basic human rights played a big part in the anti-communist movement in what erstwhile country?

Human Rights and American Foreign Policy A Symposium - Commentary Magazine Commentary Magazine What role, if any, should a concern for human rights play in American foreign policy? Is there a conflict between… William Barrett 1981-11-01 Facebook Twitter Google+ Email Print A Recently, the editors of COMMENTARY addressed the following questions to a group of American intellectuals of varying political views: What role, if any, should a concern for human rights play in American foreign policy? Is there a conflict between this concern and the American national interest? Does the distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism seem important to you? If so, what follows from it in practice? If not, what distinctions would you make in judging and dealing with non-democratic regimes? Does the approach of the Reagan administration, to the extent that it can be inferred from statements of the President and other high officials, compare favorably or unfavorably with the Carter administration’s human-rights policy? The responses—eighteen in all—are printed below in alphabetical order. William Barrett: Human rights would certainly seem to be an important part of foreign policy, since the present struggle for the world is about liberty, and indeed the survival of liberty for the conceivable future of our civilization. Yet a separate human-rights policy as such, the more we think about it, does not appear to be one from which we can expect to get much mileage. In the first place, the violations of rights that will get into the news and attract attention are likely to be those by right-wing governments. They are cruder and more impulsive in visiting punishment and oppression upon their victims—and they make the news. The totalitarians of the Left are more systematic, deliberate, rational, “scientific”—and they escape notice. The Soviet secret police must have sneered contemptuously at the amateurishness with which Jacobo Timerman was manhandled. They know other and quieter ways of breaking a man down. After all, they have had more practice at it. The Soviet Union has been perfecting its techniques of oppression against its own people for the last sixty years. Go back to 1941 and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon to see how the inquisitor wears away and destroys his victim without laying a violent hand upon him. Indeed, the perfection of the totalitarian state will have arrived when its oppressiveness is so effectively managed that it becomes the universal and accepted tenor of life for its citizens, and there are no wayward incidents to be reported to any world body. In part, this has already come about for large portions of the Soviet population. But the second and more formidable reason why we cannot expect much mileage from a separate human-rights program lies in the ideology of the Communist countries themselves and the fact that this ideology places the matter of human rights in a perspective altogether different from our own. The Communists are the practiced users of a double-speak that can take what we deem to be violations of personal liberty as steps toward a more ideal social system. Their violations of human rights are always redeemed in the ultimate vistas of history, the secret truth of which they are in sole possession. No case of ordinary human rights could be presented strong enough to dent the self-righteous armor of their apocalyptic vision of the socialist future. _____________   Obviously, in the above I accept the distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, as I think we should. But I am uncomfortable with the word “authoritarian” in this connection. “Authority” is a word we might hope would come back into less unfavorable use in our political vocabulary. It connotes, or should connote, legality, legitimacy, and stability—qualities of a society that are at the farthest remove from the capricious will of a dictator. Eighteenth-century England, for example, did not know certain democratic liberties that we do, and thus might be called authoritarian. Yet within the framework of its authority,


Velupillai Prabhakaran, whose death in 2009 ended a bloody civil war in Sri Lanka sought to create an independent state for the people of what ethnicity?

Velupillai Prabhakaran – Ramani's blog Si Lankan Tamils Killing Fields Full Video I post her the full video of the Killing Files by Channel 4 This is in addition to the excerpts I posted in 2011, where the full Video was not available then Initially there were restrictions. This is necessitated by the n ew evidence showing that LTTE Chief Prabhakaran’s son Balachandran Prabhakaran was killed in cold blood after being offered snacks. Video analysis has proved the authenticity of this and Sri Lanka can not escape under the ruse that it is doctored. Curiously till the writing of this post here are no comment from the Government of Sri Lanka. The Posts of mine on Sri Lankan Tamils is to present and document the atrocities in one place as I have not been able to find a source that contains all the information relating to Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Here is the Full Video of the Killing of the Tamils by Channel 4.


The magnificent Ishtar Gate constructed around 575 BC served as one of the entrances to what ancient city?

Ancient Babylonia - The Ishtar Gate Ancient Babylonia - The Ishtar Gate The Ishtar Gate at Babylon Reconstruction Glazed Brick Total Height�47 Feet, Width-32 Feet Neo-Babylonian Dept. of the Near East "Is this not Babylon that I have built�" �Daniel 4:30 The Ishtar Gate, one of the eight gates of the inner city of Babylon, was built during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (604- 562 BC). Only the foundations of the gate were found, going down some 45 feet, with molded, unglazed figures. The gateway has been reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, from the glazed bricks found, so its original height is different in size. Reconstructed height is 47 feet. It was one of the eight gates of the inner city of Babylon. It was built in about 575 BC, the eighth fortified gate in the city. It is one of the most impressive monuments rediscovered in the ancient Near East. The Ishtar gate was decorated with glazed brick reliefs, in tiers, of dragons and young bulls. The gate itself was a double one, and on its south side was a vast antechamber. Through the gatehouse ran a stone-and brick-paved avenue, the so-called Processional Way, which has been traced over a length of more than half a mile. King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon dedicated the great Ishtar Gate to the goddess Ishtar. It was the main entrance into Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar II performed elaborate building projects in Babylon around 604-562 BC. His goal was to beautify his capital. He restored the temple of Marduk, the chief god, and also built himself a magnificent palace with the famous Hanging Gardens, which was reported by the Greek historian Herodotus to have been one of the wonders of the world. The Bible records that it was Nebuchadnezzar who destroyed Jerusalem, brought the kingdom of Judah to an end, and carried off the Jews into exile. The Ishtar Gate was the starting point for processions. The Babylonians would assemble in front of it and march through the triumphal arch and proceed along the Sacred Way to the 7-story Ziggurat, which was crowned near the temple of Marduk. The gateway was completely covered with beautifully colored glazed bricks. Its reliefs of dragons and bulls symbolized the gods Marduk and Adad. Enameled tiles of glorious blue surrounded the brightly colored yellow and brown beasts. In front of the gateway outside the city was a road with walls decorated with reliefs of lions and glazed yellow tiles. The Ishtar gate was reconstructed in Berlin out of material excavated by Robert Koldeway. The Dedicatory Inscription on the Ishtar Gate reads: Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, the faithful prince appointed by the will of Marduk, the highest of princely princes, beloved of Nabu, of prudent counsel, who has learned to embrace wisdom, who fathomed their divine being and reveres their majesty, the untiring governor, who always takes to heart the care of the cult of Esagila and Ezida and is constantly concerned with the well-being of Babylon and Borsippa, the wise, the humble, the caretaker of Esagila and Ezida, the firstborn son of Nabopolassar, the King of Babylon. Both gate entrances of Imgur-Ellil and Nemetti-Ellil following the filling of the street from Babylon had become increasingly lower. Therefore, I pulled down these gates and laid their foundations at the water table with asphalt and bricks and had them made of bricks with blue stone on which wonderful bulls and dragons were depicted. I covered their roofs by laying majestic cedars length-wise over them. I hung doors of cedar adorned with bronze at all the gate openings. I placed wild bulls and ferocious dragons in the gateways and thus adorned them with luxurious splendor so that people might gaze on them in wonder I let the temple of Esiskursiskur (the highest festival house of Markduk, the Lord of the Gods a place of joy and celebration for the major and minor gods) be built firm like a mountain in the precinct of Babylon of asphalt and fired bricks. Ancient Babylonia by R. Russell 2 Kin 24:13-14 "And Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon carried out from there all the treasures of the house of