Historical Fragments

[MacGuffin]

A thread where one can post about bits and pieces of history without starting a brand new thread.

[MacGuffin]

Why have I never heard of this? I've been living in D.C. for years now.

1977 Hanafi Muslim Siege (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Hanafi_Muslim_Siege)


The 1977 Hanafi Muslim Siege refers to an incident that occurred March 9-11, 1977, in which three buildings in Washington, D.C. were seized by 12 African-American gunmen. They were held responsible for taking 149 hostages and the death of two people. After a 39 hour standoff all hostages were released from the District Building (city hall) – now called the John A. Wilson Building, B'nai B'rith headquarters, and the Islamic Center.

One of those killed was 24-year-old Maurice Williams, a young radio reporter from WHUR-FM, who stepped off a fifth floor elevator into the crisis. (The fifth floor is where the Mayor and City Council President have their offices). The gunmen also shot DC Protective Service Division, Special Police Officer Mack Cantrell, who died a few days later in the hospital of a heart attack. Then-D.C. council member, later mayor, Marion Barry walked into the hallway of the District Building after hearing a commotion and was hit by a ricocheted shotgun pellet just above his heart. He was taken out a window and rushed to a hospital.

The gunmen had several demands. They "wanted the government to hand over a group of men who had been convicted of killing seven relatives – mostly children – of takeover leader Hamaas Khaalis. They also demanded that the movie Mohammad, Messenger of God be destroyed because they considered it sacrilegious."

Time magazine noted: "That the toll was not higher was in part a tribute to the primary tactic U.S. law enforcement officials are now using to thwart terrorists—patience. But most of all, perhaps, it was due to the courageous intervention of three Muslim ambassadors, Egypt's Ashraf Ghorbal, Pakistan's Sahabzada Yaqub-Khan and Iran's Ardeshir Zahedi."

It's like no one ever references it, esp. since 9/11.

[C.J.Woolf]

1977 Hanafi Muslim Siege (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Hanafi_Muslim_Siege)
I remember it, and it happened a year before I moved to the DC area. What I remember most about it was:


They also demanded that the movie Mohammad, Messenger of God be destroyed because they considered it sacrilegious."
This was ironic. The Hanafis assumed the film would show the Prophet, but the filmmakers respected Muslim beliefs and the Prophet never appeared in a shot.

[MacGuffin]

I remember it, and it happened a year before I moved to the DC area. What I remember most about it was:


This was ironic. The Hanafis assumed the film would show the Prophet, but the filmmakers respected Muslim beliefs and the Prophet never appeared in a shot.

Yeah, that's actually how I found out about it, I was reading a list of the 25 Most Controversial Movies Ever (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1202224,00.html).

[PenguinHunter]

On the other side of the border, a frequently forgotten (and mostly unknown to people under 30) First Nation's conflict with the Canadian government:

The Oka/Kanehsatake Crisis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis)

It was caused by the expansion of a golf course into Mohawk land that result in an uprising of the Native community. There were ultimately three deaths in the incident and an enormous amount of Canadian, white community racist backlash in Quebec and nationwide. There's a very good documentary called Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/153.html) but it's probably only available in Canadian libraries now.

[Anonymous]

The Potsdam Giants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Giants)


The Potsdam Giants was the Prussian infantry regiment No 6, composed of taller-than-average soldiers. The regiment was founded in 1675 and dissolved in 1806 after the Prussian defeat against Napoleon. Throughout the reign of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia (1688-1740) the unit was known as the "Potsdamer Riesengarde" ("giant guard of Potsdam") in German, but the Prussian population quickly nicknamed them the "Lange Kerls" ("Long guys").

....

The original required height was 6 Prussian Foot (1.88 meters, 5 ft 11 in), then well above average. The tallest soldier, the Irish James Kirkland, was reportedly 2.17 meters (about 7 feet) in height. The king — who was 1.5 meters (4'11" feet) himself — needed several hundred more recruits each year. He tried to obtain them by any means, and once confided to the French ambassador that "The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers--they are my weakness."

....

If the man concerned was not interested, the king resorted to forced recruitment and kidnapping — his agents kidnapped tall priests, monks, innkeepers, etc., from all over Europe. Once they even tried to abduct an Austrian diplomat. He even forced tall women to marry tall soldiers so they could breed more tall boys. If some regimental commander failed to inform the king of a potential tall recruit under his own command, he faced royal displeasure.

Pay was high but not all giants were content, especially if they were forcibly recruited. They attempted desertion or suicide. The king's idea to stretch his troopers to make them taller was met with open rebellion

[Ferrus]

That Cheondoism, a Korean cult has its origins in 19th century peasant revolts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonghak

[outmywindow]

I dunno why, but I think my new go-to phrase is going to be "royal displeasure." I like that.

And my own contribution to the thread: The Great Boston Molasses Flood! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood) In short, 21 people were killed and 150 injured in north Boston in 1919 when a huge vat containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses collapsed, sending waves of the stuff through the streets at upwards of 35 mph.

[C.J.Woolf]

The Cuyahoga River, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River) which runs through Cleveland, was so polluted it caught fire several times:


Fires plagued the Cuyahoga River beginning in 1969 when a spark from a blow torch ignited floating debris and oils. The largest river fire in 1969 caused over $1 million in damage to boats and a riverfront office building.[7] Fires erupted on the river several more times before June 22, 1969, when a river fire captured the attention of Time magazine, which described the Cuyahoga as the river that "oozes rather than flows" and in which a person "does not drown but decays."[8]

The 1969 Cuyahoga River fire helped spur an avalanche of water pollution control activities resulting in the Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and the creation of the federal and state Environmental Protection Agency. As a result, large point sources of pollution on the Cuyahoga have received significant attention from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in recent decades.

[MacGuffin]

I knew about the Cuyahoga (thanks REM!) but not about the molasses flood. That's freaky.

[MacGuffin]

Dead Man's Chest is a tiny isle that forms part of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea. Local history and folklore claims that pirate Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, punished a mutinous crew by marooning them on Dead Man's Chest, which has high cliffs and no water and is inhabited by pelicans and snakes. Each sailor was given a cutlass and a bottle of rum.

Teach's hope was that the pirates would kill each other, but when he returned after a month he found 15 men had survived. This would explain the verse: "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest. Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

As a kid I couldn't figure out if they were standing on a dead man or his treasure chest.

[LastRailway]

Also piracy related:
(from Wikipedia's article Golden Age of Piracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Piracy))


Female pirates

Women entered the career of piracy as well (most usually disguised as men). Two of the best-known female pirates were Calico Jack Rackham's cohorts, Anne Bonney (also sometimes spelled Bonny) and Mary Read.

Bonney grew up ferocious, and, unable to leave an earlier marriage, eloped with Rackham, with whom she was in love. Mary Read had been dressed as a boy all her life by her mother, and had spent time in the British military. She came to the West Indies (Caribbean) after the death of her husband, and fell in with Calico Jack and Anne Bonney.

When their ship was assaulted, the two women were the only ones that defended their ship. The other crew members were too drunk to fight. In the end they were captured and arrested.

After their capture, both women stalled their death sentences (the punishment for piracy) by claiming to be pregnant; however, Read died of a fever in jail.

[outmywindow]

A practical joke gone awry, Sir Francis Drake's "plate of brasse" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake%27s_Plate_of_Brass) was "found" in 1936 on the shores of Drake's Bay (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=drakes+bay&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.144864,67.851563&ie=UTF8&ll=37.996704,-122.832642&spn=0.297067,0.53009&z=11) and fought over for years. Even after the fabricators gave very large and very public hints as to its inauthentic origins, institutions and experts soiled themselves with excitement over its discovery. The University of California, Berkeley, eventually acquired the plate through private donation, and despite the plate's clear status as a forgery has kept it ever since.

[meanlittlechimp]

Just watched this fun little film. It was the highest grossing movie in the US for almost 30 years.

Birth of a Nation

The Birth of a Nation is noted for its innovative technical and narrative achievements, and its status as the first Hollywood "blockbuster."
At its premiere the film was entitled The Clansman but the title was later changed to The Birth of a Nation to reflect Griffith's belief that after the United States emerged out of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, ostensibly ended by the Klan, as a unified nation.

Part 2 depicts Reconstruction. Stoneman and his mulatto protege, Silas Lynch, go to South Carolina to observe their agenda of empowering Southern blacks via election fraud. Meanwhile, Ben, inspired by observing white children pretending to be ghosts to scare off black children, devises a plan to reverse perceived powerlessness of Southern whites by forming the Ku Klux Klan, although his membership in the group angers Elsie.

Then Gus, a murderous former slave with designs on white women, crudely proposes to marry Flora. She flees into the forest, pursued by Gus. Trapped on a precipice, Flora leaps to her death to avoid letting herself be raped. In response, the Klan hunts Gus, lynches him, and leaves his corpse on Lieutenant Governor Silas Lynch's doorstep. In retaliation, Lynch orders a crackdown on the Klan. The Camerons flee from the black militia and hide out in a small hut, home to two former Union soldiers, who agree to assist their former Southern foes in defending their "Aryan birthright," according to the caption.

A ticket to the film cost a record $2 (the equivalent of $40 in 2007[4]). It remained the most profitable film of all time until it was dethroned by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

On the evening of March 21, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson attended a special screening at the White House of THE BIRTH OF A NATION, a film directed by D.W. Griffith and based on THE CLANSMAN, a novel written by Wilson's good friend Thomas Dixon. The film presented a distorted portrait of the South after the Civil War, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan and denigrating blacks. It falsified the period of Reconstruction by presenting blacks as dominating Southern whites (almost all of whom are noble in the film) and sexually forcing themselves upon white women. The Klan was portrayed as the South's savior from this alleged tyranny. Not only was this portrayal untrue, it was the opposite of what actually happened. During Reconstruction, whites dominated blacks and assaulted black women. The Klan was primarily a white terrorist organization that carried out hundreds of murders.

After seeing the film, an enthusiastic Wilson reportedly remarked: "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." African-American audiences openly wept at the film's malicious portrayal of blacks, while Northern white audiences cheered. The film swept the nation. Riots broke out in major cities (Boston and Philadelphia, among others), and it was denied release in many other places (Chicago, Ohio, Denver, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Minneapolis). Gangs of whites roamed city streets attacking blacks. In Lafayete, Indiana, a white man killed a black teenager after seeing the movie. Thomas Dixon reveled in its triumph. "The real purpose of my film," he confessed gleefully, "was to revolutionize Northern audiences that would transform every man into a Southern partisan for life."

In 1953, the Directors Guild of America instituted the D.W. Griffith Award, its highest honor. Its recipients included Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, John Huston, Woody Allen, Akira Kurosawa, John Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, and Griffith's friend Cecil B. DeMille.

The website Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews from various sources, indicates the film has a 100% "fresh" (positive) rating.


http://www.intpcentral.com/uploads/birt.jpg

[OrionzRevenge]

As a kid I couldn't figure out if they were standing on a dead man or his treasure chest.

I am under the impression it referred to a Dead Man’s Locker (or chest) as alluded to in Moby Dick. It was the custom to divide a dead man’s belongings amongst his mates. Which IMHO, gives the lyric its jovial purpose for all the YO HO HOs

And jives with my understanding of the democratic methods that the Pirates of the great age (approx. 1700) employed.

The Sea Shanty in question appears in Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” >> 1883
Now, the Island in question is Dead Chest Island >> it looks like a male torso in profile RIPing on the sea surface.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Chest_Island,_British_Virgin_Islands
:):):)

[Mercurial]

Why have I never heard of this? I've been living in D.C. for years now.

It's like no one ever references it, esp. since 9/11.

It's probably been surpressed because such an event occurring in a nation's capitol looks bad and to prevent notoriety from encouraging copycats.

Oklahoma City was so heavily marketed as the first act of terrorism on American soil that nobody bothers to look at the past.

[Sibylla]

On the other side of the border, a frequently forgotten (and mostly unknown to people under 30) First Nation's conflict with the Canadian government:

The Oka/Kanehsatake Crisis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis)

It was caused by the expansion of a golf course into Mohawk land that result in an uprising of the Native community. There were ultimately three deaths in the incident and an enormous amount of Canadian, white community racist backlash in Quebec and nationwide. There's a very good documentary called Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/153.html) but it's probably only available in Canadian libraries now.

We actually learned about that in school. It was in my grade 11 socials textbook. Of course, that doesn't mean many people will actually remember it....

[Ferrus]

It's probably been surpressed because such an event occurring in a nation's capitol looks bad and to prevent notoriety from encouraging copycats.

Oklahoma City was so heavily marketed as the first act of terrorism on American soil that nobody bothers to look at the past.
Modern terrorism actually has its origins in anarchist theory.

http://terrorism.about.com/od/originshistory/a/Anarchism.htm


These assassinations led to fear among among governments that there existed a vast international conspiracy of anarchist terrorists. In fact, there never was one.

Ah, plus ca change.

[Anonymous]

Dictatorship 101: When you want your men to fight for you, don't have half of them put to death. The Winter War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War):


The Soviet forces had four times as many soldiers as the Finns, 30 times as many aircraft and 200 times as many tanks.[4] However, the Red Army had recently been subjected to a drastic purge in 1937 that crippled it, reducing its morale and efficiency shortly before the outbreak of hostilities.[12] With up to 50% of army officers executed, including the vast majority of those of the highest rank, the Red Army in 1939 had many inexperienced senior officers.[13] Thus, the Finns were able to resist the invasion of their country with great success and for far longer than the Soviets had expected.

The most incredible thing is the initial strength contrasted with the end result.

Soviet Strength:
1,000,000 men
6,541 tanks[3]
3,800 aircraft[4][5]

Finnish strength:
250,000 men
30 tanks
130 aircraft[1][2

Soviet casualties:
391,783 total casualties
126,875 dead or missing[7]
264,908 wounded[citation needed]
5,600 captured[8]
2,268+ tanks[9]

Finnish casualties:
6,548 total casualties
26,662 dead
39,886 wounded
1,000 captured[6]

[Anonymous]

The Inquisition was never dissolved, they just changed the name and stopped letting them torture people. Their name is now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_for_the_Doctrine_of_the_Faith). The job is still the same though, they hunt down stuff which does not fall in line with Roman Catholic dogma.

Guess who the prefect was up until 2005?

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5342678,00.jpg

[outmywindow]

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5342678,00.jpg
My GOD does the Pope ever look like Emperor Palpatine in that photo!

[MacGuffin]

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."
-John Adams, July 3, 1776, from a letter to his wife Abigail.

July 2nd was the day the Continental Congress voted in favor of the resolution for independence. The final form was approved on July 4, which is the date that appears on the Declaration of Independence.

[outmywindow]

His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States, and Protector of Mexico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton).

A beloved gold rush era San Francisco eccentric who styled himself the Emperor of the United States and consort of Queen Victoria, and who patrolled the streets of the city in an elaborate military costume provided to him by US Army soldiers, and who was given royal treatment by the citizens, officials, and businessmen of the city. In reality he was just a penniless madman living in a small room in a boarding house, but none of that mattered on the day he died, as he was given a lavish funeral by the city, a heartfelt obituary on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, and had 30,000 mourners at his funeral.

[stuck]

Yeah, that's actually how I found out about it, I was reading a list of the 25 Most Controversial Movies Ever (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1202224,00.html).

bully for me. i've seen all of those except caligula, i am curious (yellow), baby doll, and the message.


My contribution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE

I remember this when it happened. It was pretty crazy for my little 9-year-old mind, watching the cops drop bombs on people in my town.

[reb]

fertilizer, again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster

and 'to decimate', as it was used in the roman army for discipline:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)

it's my recollection that napoleon, as a 'minor disciplinary measure' would have a soldier straddle a fence, and have cannon balls tied to their legs-of course, said balls not reaching the ground.

[Curtis24]

My GOD does the Pope ever look like Emperor Palpatine in that photo!

His eye sockets have got to be photoshopped.

[Martavious]

Executive Order 9066

This fragment of history is well known to Americans with any depth of historical knowledge, but such people are among the few.

In 1942, current U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 effectively ordering citizens of Japanese Ancestry to report to "internment camps." The number is speculative, but Wikipedia puts it at 120,000 (no source).

These camps were little better than prison camps. It was rare that anyone be granted temporary permission to leave the camp, and many had to sleep in crowded rooms and crude military style barracks.

http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/wwcod/image8-2.gif

Back in the days before effective deodorant, the eating quarters were also crowded and by all means disgusting.

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/japanese-internment-camp-4.jpg

More information can be found:
http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/eo9066.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=old&doc=74

[Ferrus]

Spy fiction writer John le Carre wrote a surprisingly lucid (in terms of writing) account during the days of the run up to the war on Iraq, and the Bush administrations methods:



The United States of America has gone mad

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives?

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.

Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.

In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: “That man tried to kill my Daddy.” But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.

To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.

If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.

Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair’s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can’t. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can’t get out.

It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain’s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that’s Britain’s tragedy, as it is America’s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair’s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world’s greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant’s head to wave at the boys?

Blair’s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.

There is a middle way, but it’s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.

I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

“But will we win, Daddy?”

“Of course, child. It will all be over while you’re still in bed.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise Mr Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.”

“But will people be killed, Daddy?”

“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”

“Can I watch it on television?”

“Only if Mr Bush says you can.”

“And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?”

“Hush child, and go to sleep.”

Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: “Peace is also Patriotic”. It was gone by the time he’d finished shopping.

[quantumzero]

Did you know that it is widely believed in the Muslim world that the Jews were behind 911 and that "mysteriously" there were no jews killed during the attacks on the WTC, that they were "coincidentally" on vacation.

[nonperson]

Did you know that it is widely believed in the Muslim world that the Jews were behind 911 and that "mysteriously" there were no jews killed during the attacks on the WTC, that they were "coincidentally" on vacation.

No. All I know is that I had a Sun server down on that day and I couldn't get Sun engineer on site.

Supposedly they had been put on standby in case the attacks were global.

Now as I didn't see a Sun engineer on that day do you think they were part of the conspiracy too? I was thinking the sun is bright, it illuminates everything, and illuminates is a hair away from Illuminati. :ph34r:

[quantumzero]

No. All I know is that I had a Sun server down on that day and I couldn't get Sun engineer on site.

Supposedly they had been put on standby in case the attacks were global.

Now as I didn't see a Sun engineer on that day do you think they were part of the conspiracy too? I was thinking the sun is bright, it illuminates everything, and illuminates is a hair away from Illuminati. :ph34r:

Do you suppose Sun is jew owned?!:ph34r:

[nonperson]

Do you suppose Sun is jew owned?!:ph34r:

I know the company that supplied the warehousing system was bought by an Israeli firm. But that run IBM servers not Sun servers. Then again IBM servers are black as in black projects, black helicopters, black triangles.........

[quantumzero]

I know the company that supplied the warehousing system was bought by an Israeli firm. But that run IBM servers not Sun servers. Then again IBM servers are black as in black projects, black helicopters, black triangles.........

...and...men in black! Its an alien/Jew conspiracy!

[OrionzRevenge]

And let's not forget the buildings 'Pancaked' like a huge stack of lots-a Matza.
So then, could this be an alien/Jewish grandmother's house at passover conspiracy!

:mellow:

[MacGuffin]

Did you know that it is widely believed in the Muslim world that the Jews were behind 911 and that "mysteriously" there were no jews killed during the attacks on the WTC, that they were "coincidentally" on vacation.

LOL, I know that it false... dude even spoke Hebrew!

[quantumzero]

LOL, I know that it false... dude even spoke Hebrew!

There were HUNDREDS of Jews killed in those buildings. Where dose shit like this come from, and with the advent of the inter webs, it can be refuted at nearly the speed of light, how dose this shit perpetuate itself? Every dumb fucker out there has an internet connection. Why do people so readily embrace a lie?

[Chaselation]

The Halifax harbour explosion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion).


The Halifax Explosion occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, which accidentally collided with the Norwegian SS Imo in "The Narrows" section of the Halifax Harbour. About 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, or collapsed buildings and it is estimated that over 9,000 people were injured.[1] This is still the world's largest man-made accidental explosion.[2]

At 8:40 in the morning, the SS Mont-Blanc, chartered by the French government to carry munitions to Europe, collided with the unloaded Norwegian ship Imo, chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium to carry relief supplies. Mont-Blanc caught fire ten minutes after the collision and exploded about twenty-five minutes later (at 9:04:35 AM).[3] All buildings and structures covering nearly 2 square kilometres (500 acres) along the adjacent shore were obliterated, including those in the neighbouring communities of Richmond and Dartmouth.[1] The explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour and a pressure wave of air that snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and carried fragments of the Mont-Blanc for kilometres.

Professor Howard Bronson of Dalhousie University later wrote that the disaster had damaged buildings and shattered windows as far away as Sackville and Windsor Junction, about 16 kilometres (10 mi) away. Buildings shook and items fell from shelves as far away as Truro (100 kilometres/60 miles) and New Glasgow (126 kilometres/80 miles). The explosion was felt and heard in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, roughly 215 kilometres (130 mi) north, and as far away as North Cape Breton, 360 kilometres (220 mi) east.

[OrionzRevenge]

There were HUNDREDS of Jews killed in those buildings. Where dose shit like this come from, and with the advent of the inter webs, it can be refuted at nearly the speed of light, how dose this shit perpetuate itself? Every dumb fucker out there has an Internet connection. Why do people so readily embrace a lie?

Good question.
And I think at least part of the answer offers a nice tie-in to the recent thread about propaganda construction and the manipulation of denial.

The claim of forewarning to Jews prior to 9/11 was first published in the Islamic press in misquoting the Jewish press shortly after the attack. Thus, it is understandable the unwillingness of most Muslims to accept that this global calamity was perpetrated in the name of Ali.

Further, in the wake of 9/11, reasonable and intelligent people in vast numbers decided an overwhelming military effort to negate the danger of future attacks was prudent.
Yet, as the 2008-election cycle approached, most had grown quite weary of the cost in blood & coin, and many a bright bulb embraced the claims of 9/11 'truth-ers' that they had been manipulated by a vast right-wing conspiracy. Which included such things as a duo of controlled building demolitions a few hours after jet airliners flew into them.

As with JFK, few wanted to accept that a single madman could snuff out the torch after it had been past to the new generation.

[Ferrus]

The story of Karl May:

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/04/books/tales-of-the-grand-teutons-karl-may-among-the-indians.html?sec=&spon=


May is a paragon of what the Germans call Trivialliteratur, or genre fiction. The fantasies of a yarn-spinner who was less than profound but more than facile have been mesmerizing German-speaking readers for just about a century now. It was 100 years ago, in the mid-1880's, that the first of a series of books appeared to whose robust appeal not even the most rarefied intellects were immune. ''My whole adolescence stood under his sign,'' said Albert Einstein. ''Much in his work was imperishable,'' said Albert Schweitzer. ''He represents,'' said Hermann Hesse, ''the most brilliant example of an elemental form of literature, namely the literature of wish-fulfillment.'' By fulfilling a wish no one else had gratified so thrillingly before him, Karl May refashioned the self-image of a nation.

...

To explain the writer's impact, I should start with his life. Perhaps only Karl May, that virtuoso of flamboyant improbability, could have invented such a career. Imagine a boy born in 1842, the fifth child of 14 in a poor weaver's family. Imagine him going blind with malnourishment and staying blind until he was 5. Imagine frail little Karl squinting himself into literacy in grade school and, thanks to his intelligence, into a teacher's training school in his teens. Imagine him, on the brink of respectability as a substitute teacher, arrested for theft - the first of a series of sleazy offenses that saw him in and out of prison for the next decade and a half. And then imagine the paradoxes of his mind-boggling ascent.

May, whose background was so wretchedly unheroic, begins to write about a knight-errant of nonpareil ethics and muscle. Known as Old Shatterhand in Indian territory, he battles desperadoes. As Kara ben Nemsi, he takes on fiendish emirs in the dunes and casbahs of Arabia. May's experience at that point was entirely and provincially Middle European. He had never been west of the Rhine or south of the Alps. Yet he wrapped his hero's bravery in persuasively textured exotica - the weighty spoor of the grizzly bear, the idiosyncrasies of the camel, the rhythm of the muezzin's call, the tempering of a tomahawk blade.

...

As a result, May's fame rose in direct proportion to his characters'. That rise was stupendous. At first his work was serialized in monthlies aimed at juveniles and he instantly eclipsed long-established contributors. The moment his ''Reiseerzahlungen'' were published as books, buyers of all ages con-verged on the stores for the newest May. He outsold, and still outsells, the competition by a staggering margin in German-speaking lands. Other adventure novelists - no matter how great their resonance elsewhere - have never been able to match his mystique. When Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London were translated into German in the 1890's, their publishers packaged them in a format imitating May's. The last decade of his life (he died in 1912) knew controversy and defamation, that final dimension of renown. Headlines screeched his early life as a criminal; he became mired in libel litigation that embittered him while it increased his sales. After his death his popularity swelled still further. Each new crop of German youth read more Karl May than the preceding. A publishing house - the Karl May Verlag - was founded just to print his novels, the Karl May Yearbooks and the proceedings of the Karl May Society as well as endless biographies, appreciations and interpretations of the man.

The cult flourished through the two world wars, indeed spread. The actor Lex Barker left a middling Hollywood career to become something of a superstar in Central Europe as Kara ben Nemsi and Old Shatterhand. And recently East Germany caved in to the inevitable: for 30 years it had banned the ''chauvinist'' Karl May, but now Germans East as well as Germans West can wolf down their doses of Shatterhand and Nemsi; each Germany has its own Karl May Museum.

...

Still, the magic of Karl May transcends expertly orchestrated derring-do. It issues as well from the nature of his protagonist. Old Shatterhand is not Wyatt Earp. Earp, like many of his counterparts in American westerns, is a lawman with a touch of the outlaw. He comes to town to clean out the rotters, but is himself on the lam from another town - if not from its sheriff, from its unjust suspicions. He is an outsider: disillusionment feeds his alertness, powers his trigger finger, solicits our sympathy. Old Shatterhand's outsiderdom, by contrast, seems purely superficial. He is a greenhorn and overcomes that stigma with his fists and his marksmanship. He knows no interior corrosion; villainy constantly confronts him, but his motives for traveling are those of a keen-minded, equable naturalist, interested in flora and fauna. Exploits finished, he'll return to his Saxon coziness. BUT - and it's a fascinating but - the prowess of the Karl May hero proved magnetic only in combat with non-German foreigners outside Germany. May novels with a Middle European background have never sold nearly as well as those set in some pungently remote milieu, far from the middle-class blandness of policemen and accountants, the solid kinder-kirche-kuche reality of May's homeland. Readers wanted from him what he was the first to give them in truly popular form: an epos of the German conquistador bestriding the world at large.

It's odd, but the country that was to generate so formidable a nationalism in the 20th century had, until the 19th, few heroic figures to call its own. Britain's ran from King Arthur to Lord Nelson; France had a gallery from Roland to Louis XIV. But Germany? The scattered sagas of the Germanic tribes dramatize the end of Rome rather than the dawn of Teutonia. There is, of course, the story of Frederick Barbarossa, the Hohenstaufen emperor whose red beard grows through a stone table while he sleeps in a cave under Kyffhauser Mountain - until the day he wakes, and with him, German greatness. But it's an inert bit of folklore and purloined at that (originally it applied to Barbarossa's grandson Frederick II, who, half-Sicilian, reigned in Italy and was quite Mediterranean in temper and orientation). By contrast, Frederick the Great, who fashioned Prussia into a redoubtable fighting machine, was a Frenchified epicene who adored Voltaire, called his palace Sans Souci and played the flute on high heels - hardly an icon of German manliness. By the 19th century Germans knew themselves to be respectable, reliable, thorough, knowledgeable and not particularly heroic. At this juncture Richard Wagner and Karl May, born a year apart, went to work.

...

One of the Fuhrer's principal biographers, Joachim Fest, records that the young Hitler liked to dress up as a Karl May character and that later, during his first year as Chancellor, he reread all of May's novels. A tradition that Hitler advised his generals in Russia to carry May as a tacticians' handbook has not been substantiated, but on June 26, 1944, a Berlin newspaper did report that large numbers of German soldiers were grateful to Karl May for providing them with ''the best manuals of anti-partisan warfare.''

How peculiar, then, my instinct on reaching America: that I, a Jewish refugee from German conquest, should write ''Old Shatterhand,'' a name prototypical of the conquering German, on my high school locker. How ironic that today I still catch myself sneaking to the corner in my library where my five volumes of Karl May are tucked away, where sachems and sheiks ride in gothic typeface down yellowing pages.

There's more than irony to that, more than nostalgia. When I packed my suitcase in Vienna in 1939, I put in my Karl Mays along with my soccer ball and my leather shorts as keepsakes of a home to which there would be no return. But the books were not just mementos. They were also charms. I hoped my trip into strangeness, like Old Shatterhand's, would turn into high romance. Never mind that the people I was fleeing were Old Shatterhand's own, whose valor he glorified. The issue of the moment was survival: for me, Karl May was talismanic because of his hero's triumphant escapes.

[OrionzRevenge]

I'm currently reading a recent non-fiction WWII history called: Sealing Their Fate that deals in a global manner with the events over the course of the 22 days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. It's sort of like reading a Tom Clancy Novel where it keeps bounding to and fro around the globe.

Anywho, on 11/25/41 the German Submarine U-331 fired a 4-torpedo spread at a British Battleship (HMS Barham) off of Alexandra Egypt, and being detected had to immediately dive to avoid being rammed by another Battleship in the group. Thus having heard two explosions but denied a visual confirmation, the U-boat commander radioed in a probable hit. Yet indeed the HMS Barham was lost with 862 of the 1258 men aboard.

Of course, none of this qualifies as a 'Historical Fragment' ...Enter Helen Duncan. :p

Page148, Sealing Their Fate


U-331 had dived much deeper than her makers intended, yet lived to tell the tale. With the sea full of British sailors, the destroyers were unable to use their depth charges, and Tiesenhausen made good his escape. He had no certain knowledge of a sinking, and could only report that he had torpedoed an unidentified British battleship with uncertain effect. The British, intercepting his Enigma-coded message, decided on keeping quiet about the disaster.

It was several weeks before next of kin were informed, and several more before they were allowed to communicate their loss. Some, however, were given premature notification. Holding a seance in Portsmouth only days after the sinking, the famous spiritualist Helen Duncan made contact with one of the battleship's dead sailors. A displeased Admiralty made every effort to discredit her, but the facts, when they did emerge, only added to her reputation. In the long run even the authorities must have decided she had the gift, because early in 1944 they arrested, tried and locked her up for nine months under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. Someone was afraid she would tell Hitler where and when the D-Day landings were scheduled to take place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan

[kuranes]

As a kid I couldn't figure out if they were standing on a dead man or his treasure chest.
A Liverpool ship
and a
Liverpool crew.
Yo-o-o !
Ho-o-o !
Blow the man down !

Absinthe was historically supposed to be bad for you, due to the wormwood component of the recipe, I thought. I saw a small bottle of it for sale in the health food store the other day, and it was listed as an aid to developing helpful intestinal flora, like the Activia ads tout. Maybe the absinthe just had a very high proof.

[Zelda]

The Montreal Massacre. I clearly remember the day it happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre

http://archives.cbc.ca/society/crime_justice/topics/398/

[starjots]

The Montreal Massacre. I clearly remember the day it happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre

http://archives.cbc.ca/society/crime_justice/topics/398/

The fact that at least two people committed suicide later due to the psychological trauma of the event makes this even more horrible.

[Zelda]

The fact that at least two people committed suicide later due to the psychological trauma of the event makes seem even more horrible.

Yes, a lot of PTSD as the killer went on a rampage through the school. That event had a huge impact on Canadians because aside from it a spree killing, which rarely happens here, the killer's motivation was to shoot every woman he could find. Our gun laws changed as a direct result of the Montreal Massacre.

[Resonance]

Holy shit.

I never even heard about that.

W T F

I'm angry.

[jyng1]

There's a multi vessel reenactment of early Polynesian voyaging going on at the moment, but the Polynesian colonisation of the Pacific is one of the greatest explorations in history. It's also something that was mis-represented in generations of history books and has only recently been rediscovered. I've sailed on a modern multi-hulled waka built traditionally and it's an awesome vessel.


At a time when many European sailors were navigating by keeping a watch for the shoreline in daylight or relying on dead reckoning by compass, Polynesians were navigating a vast extent of the Pacific Ocean. Polynesia comprised islands diffused throughout a triangular area with sides of four thousand miles. The area from the Hawaiian Islands in the north, to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the east and to Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the south west was settled by Polynesians. It is theorized that Polynesian navigators reached the Americas at least a century before Europeans, made contact with Native Americans in Southern California, introduced chickens to South America and took back sweet potatoes to Polynesia.
Between about 3000 and 1000 BC speakers of Austronesian languages spread through island South-East Asia – almost certainly starting out from Taiwan, as tribes whose natives had thought to have previously arrived about from mainland South China about 8000 years ago– into the edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia. In the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with a degree of certainty. In the mid 2nd millennium BC a distinctive culture appeared suddenly in north-west Melanesia, in the Bismarck Archipelago, the chain of islands forming a great arch from New Britain to the Admiralty Islands. This culture, known as Lapita, stands out in the Melanesian archeological record, with its large permanent villages on beach terraces along the coasts. Particularly characteristic of the Lapita culture is the making of pottery, including a great many vessels of varied shapes, some distinguished by fine patterns and motifs pressed into the clay. Within a mere three or four centuries between about 1300 and 900 BC, the Lapita culture spread 6000 km further to the east from the Bismarck Archipelago, until it reached as far as Tonga and Samoa. In this region, the distinctive Polynesian culture developed.

[JamesGold]

These are stylized portraits of US Presidents from my US History class. I think they're trying to say something.

http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/8489/presidents.jpg

[Ferrus]

'The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure. The same sort of assurance is demanded, in later life, of those who undertake to lead populations into the Promised Land. 'Liquidate the capitalists and the survivors will enjoy eternal bliss.' 'Exterminate the Jews and everyone will be virtuous.' 'Kill the Croats and let the Serbs reign.' 'Kill the Serbs and let the Croats reign.' These are samples of the slogans that have won wide popular acceptance in our time. Even a modicum of philosophy would make it impossible to accept such bloodthirsty nonsense. But so long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.' - Betrand Russell

[giegs]

1964 Wilderness Act:

“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

[Rincon]

Just ran across this article on "peak wood" (http://www.miller-mccune.com/environment/peak-wood-nature-does-impose-limits-16596/) and found it interesting. And filled with many unintentionally amusing wood references (like Englishmen being "forced to follow the wood").

[Ferrus]

Moose jaw in Canada:

'There are two theories as to how the city got its name. The first one is that it comes from the Plains Cree name moscâstani-sîpiy meaning "a warm place by the river", indicative of the protection from the weather that the Coteau Range provides to the river valley containing the city and also the Plains Cree word Moose Gaw meaning warm breezes. The other is that on the map of the city the Moose Jaw river is shaped like a moose's jaw.'

[Flatchett]

His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States, and Protector of Mexico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton).


Currently reading a book about this guy. He's cool.

[MacGuffin]

War of the Triple Alliance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Triple_Alliance)

I know nothing about this war.

[Ferrus]

War of the Triple Alliance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Triple_Alliance)

I know nothing about this war.
I liked this guide: http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=15578&IBLOCK_ID=35

Edit: Actually I found it in Wikipedia but in spite of that I'd say viewer be wary of the site and only look with discretion. But it's well written anyway.

[OrionzRevenge]

Not a perfect fit for the threads concept, but some really cool global animations of historical importance and whatnot.

http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Democracy.swf
http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf
http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Religion.swf
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/world/20070622_CAPEVERDE_GRAPHIC.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/animations/western_front/index_embed.shtml

[Walalaaa]

War of the Triple Alliance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Triple_Alliance)

I know nothing about this war.

This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuadorian%E2%80%93Peruvian_War) happened during WWII

South American Wars are really obscure (to us in the West anyway)

[Ferrus]

This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuadorian%E2%80%93Peruvian_War) happened during WWII

South American Wars are really obscure (to us in the West anyway)
And thse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Civil_War

[MacGuffin]

The woman that was the face of the Rosie the Riveter has died (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101230/ts_alt_afp/ushistorywwiifeminism).

Ironically, she only worked at the factory job for two weeks before quitting.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/We_Can_Do_It%21.jpg/220px-We_Can_Do_It%21.jpg

[Works]

The woman that was the face of the Rosie the Riveter has died (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101230/ts_alt_afp/ushistorywwiifeminism).



A handful of my friends dress up as her for Halloween every year and do the Rosie pose. I like the look.

[Ferrus]

The Aztec equivalent of Turbotax:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=aztec-math-uses-hearts-and-arrows

[Tlalocone]

The Aztec equivalent of Turbotax:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=aztec-math-uses-hearts-and-arrows


Thanx Ferrus; I am grateful to you for posting that post...I am fond of Aztecs and threads, post movies, cartoons, comics and ebooks and real books about AZTECS...:P :P :P

Even I am interested in Aztec maths, too...:P :P

[D33P7HR047]

Influence of Freemasonry preceding American Civil War until the current day (http://www.trosch.org/for/masonic-sym.html)

http://ezinearticles.com/?Masons-on-Both-Sides-of-Civil-War&id=2611932

[Zelda]

Jack Layton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Layton) has lost his battle with cancer and died today at age 61 (http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/08/22/pol-layton-last-letter.html).

[gator]

Jack rides his bicycle into the sunset. I've broken down and cried multiple times today.

I think this deserves it's own thread. Layton, not my tears.

[D33P7HR047]

George H. W. Bush -- Former Member of Murdered Satanic Brownsville Cult -- pardons Henry Lee Lucas whom allegedly carried out the mass murders

And Bush Jr. was a prime suspect until his father got involved. Brownsville is a major drug smuggling town, and considering Bush Jr's involvement with the clearly satanic inspired Skull and Bones, it is possible Bush had joined this cult and may have said something to the effect of his involvement in secret activities and then framed Henry Lucas. It seems he did have a cover-up of his involvement.

The Onion wrote an article about this so I'm not entirely sure how much was possibly mislead by it, though some of what Bush has responded to reporters inquiry would corroborate some of the Onion news quotes about an event that "may or may not have happened" (which is the quote the Onion obviously took a spin off from.)


6-27-98--

TEXAS:

The Press Statement given by Texas Governor George W. Bush
regarding his decision to accept the recommendation of the Texas
Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute the death sentence to
Henry Lee Lucas to life imprisonment is available on the web at:

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
George W. Bush

For Immediate Release
June 26, 1998

Contact: Karen Hughes or Linda Edwards 512.463.1826

Statement from Governor George W. Bush regarding the Henry Lee
Lucas case:

"I take every death penalty case seriously and review each case
carefully. The first question I ask in every case is whether
there is any doubt about the individual's guilt or innocence.
This is the first case since I have been the Governor when the
answer to that question is yes.

"The jury in this case had the opportunity to review much of the
evidence which has been used to cast doubt on whether Henry Lee
Lucas committed the crime for which he was sentenced to die. I am
reluctant to second guess a verdict of a jury and the courts.
However, the clemency process is intended as a fail safe for
unusual or exceptional circumstances.

"In this case, at the time it made its decision, the jury did not
know and could not have known that Henry Lee Lucas had a pattern
of lying and confessing to crimes that evidence later proved he
did not commit. His confession, now recanted, was the only
evidence which linked him to this crime. Today's knowledge about
his pattern of lies raises doubt.

"Henry Lee Lucas is unquestionably guilty of other despicable
crimes for which he has been sentenced to spend the rest of his
life in prison. However, I believe there is enough doubt about
this particular crime that the State of Texas should not impose
its ultimate penalty by executing him. I concur with the
recommendation of the Board of Pardons and Paroles and hereby
commute his sentence to life in prison, which shall begin after
all five of his other life sentences are served.

"As a supporter of the death penalty for those who commit
horrible crimes, I feel a special obligation to make sure the
State of Texas never executes a person for a crime they may not
have committed. I take this action so that all Texans can
continue to trust the integrity and fairness of our criminal
justice system."


This gives a broader picture (http://www.konformist.com/2000/henry.htm)

Odd Bush Snr. pardon of Orlando Bosch a passenger plane "terrorist" that killed 76, revolving Cuba (http://www.tribemagazine.com/board/politics/35130-little-perspective-cuba.html)

Maybe Bush Jr. was just proving himself or he had no connection to the incident? Henry Lucas was a compulsive liar that claimed attention through admitting guilt. Brownsville would still have an unsolved mystery, and I do find it extremely questionable that Bush Snr. got involved and had influence, which could be considered perjury even if Bush Jr. wasn't guilty. I'll still be looking into it as usual.

[Ferrus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoolball

Ancestor of modern ball games.

[pesquisa]

I just saw the fantasy history film 300 (2007) and the History Channel's Last Stand of the 300. This thread is probably more appropriate than my original intention of posting in the "I Just Saw" thread.

I found both videos captivating in their own and in similar ways. The latter is the more worthwhile to see, but I probably wouldn't have seen it if not for the interest generated by the first. And I enjoyed the Western exceptionalism propaganda in 300.

One of the tidbits I learned by watching the History Channel documentary is that Themistocles (son of a merchant who became a general and the leading politician in Athens,) rather than the Spartan King, Leonidas, was the architect of both the land and sea defenses against the Persian invasion. Themistocles foresight in strengthening the Athenian navy against a second Persian invasion was laudable; while his lying to the public and inventing another threat to achieve that state of preparedness was of more ambiguous merit. As Leonidas made a larger Persian force take heavy losses on the land, Themistocles did so on the sea.

The degree to which a nation should be militarily interventionist/proactive seems to be a recurring debate in history. Payback for Athens support of the Ionian revolt against Persian rule is cited as the root cause for the Persian invasions of Greece. Perhaps the Persian King Darius and later Xerxes wouldn't have invaded Greece if Athens hadn't incurred their wrath? Or perhaps they would have invaded anyway; and supporting the Ionians was a worthwhile risk to help allies and weaken an encroaching empire?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NHmOG11vLQ

[pesquisa]

Winson Churchill's 1941 Christmas Eve Address (http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/802-christmas-message-1941)from the White House (audio (http://www.audiomicro.com/free-winston-churchill-sound-clips-christmas-eve-address-to-us-1941-download-672680)):

I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother's side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart. Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

And so, in God's mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.

[Ferrus]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/dec/15/books.guardianreview?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

The strange history of the Jewish autonomous region.

[OrionzRevenge]

Tonight (9PM EST) NOVA on PBS will look at the role of areal recon stereoscopic photography in the strategic moves by the allies to thwart Hitler's V weapons development.

From the PBS website...

During World War II, Hitler’s scientists developed terrifying new weapons of mass destruction. Alarmed by rumors of advanced rockets and missiles, Allied intelligence recruited a team of brilliant minds from British universities and Hollywood studios to a country house near London. Here, they secretly pored over millions of air photos shot at great risk over German territory by specially converted, high-flying Spitfires. Peering at the photos through 3D stereoscopes, the team spotted telltale clues that revealed hidden Nazi rocket bases. The photos led to devastating Allied bombing raids that dealt crucial setbacks to the German rocket program and helped ensure the success of the D-Day landings. With 3D graphics that recreate exactly what the photo spies saw, NOVA tells the suspenseful, previously untold story of air photo intelligence that played a vital role in defeating the Nazis.

Having personally developed a passion for Astronomy and Microscopy at an early age, I give a lot of credence to Holmes' credo: The Power of Observation.

[Domino]

PBS also re-ran the American Experience episode about Wyatt Earp. A very good profile of him, from a more humanizing angle. I've seen it twice and liked it a lot, though I wish the running time had been longer.

[pesquisa]

One historian's extrapolation from history if the U.S. loses its predominance (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213262856669448.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories)is more war and less free trade.

[Roger Mexico]

Japanese fart scrolls prove that human art peaked centuries ago (http://io9.com/5886529/japanese-fart-scrolls-prove-that-human-art-peaked-centuries-ago)

[D33P7HR047]

George Washington on the Illuminati (http://leadershipbygeorge.blogspot.com/2011/09/george-washington-on-illuminati.html)

http://s2.hubimg.com/u/30457_f260.jpg

[Zelda]

Truth.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women.html

My experience has been quite the opposite but nonetheless equal in receipt of such venomous delivery. If I'm not a man-hating feminazi then I'm a frigid bitch who deserves to be stalked and threatened with rape. Can't win either way.

I put this here because I'm optimistic we'll see the elimination of sexism, discover we're all truly equal and experience egalitarianism at its finest. An ambitious but entirely possible undertaking if we all work together to make change.

[MacGuffin]

Truth.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women.html

My experience has been quite the opposite but nonetheless equal in receipt of such venomous delivery. If I'm not a man-hating feminazi then I'm a frigid bitch who deserves to be stalked and threatened with rape. Can't win either way.

I put this here because I'm optimistic we'll see the elimination of sexism, discover we're all truly equal and experience egalitarianism at its finest. An ambitious but very possible undertaking if we all work together to make change.

Oh, that's a good article.

Cracked comes up with some of the best stuff for humor website.

This is one of my recent faves:

6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying (http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/)

[Zelda]

^ Great article. I definitely agree that people are way too attached to stuff, regardless of income. Scaling down lifestyles by living as simply as possible and giving as much as possible to charities and causes you believe in is the way to achieve happiness if you're rich or even middle class, imo. Cut out the excess that you don't need. It's liberating for everyone to be freed from those chains by focusing on what truly makes one happy, like making art or whatever. It's something I'm working on myself.

[C.J.Woolf]

Oh, that's a good article.

Cracked comes up with some of the best stuff for humor website.

This is one of my recent faves:

6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying (http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/)

David Wong wrote both articles. He's good.

[Ferrus]

http://www.newint.org/features/1981/07/01/phoenix/

This is a bizarre story from the land of bizarre happenings - Vanuatu (see John Frum, the Prince Phillip cult and the President Johnson Cult).

[Ferrus]

Scotland's 'anthrax island':

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1457035.stm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1359420/Legacy-of-fear-on-blighted-anthrax-island.html

[MoneyJungle]

Throughout the US war with Afghanistan, I've heard people list all of the superpowers who were turned back from Afghanistan. They always top the list with Alexander the Great. I was lightly reading about Alexander today, and it appears he pretty much strolled through Afghanistan and turned around at the Ganges. Am I missing something or are these people just full of shit?

[giegs]

What most people that say that seem to mean is that nobody has ever successfully occupied and governed Afghanistan as part of an empire. It gets "conquered" fairly regularly, just not held. Topographically speaking, it's a bitch.

[MoneyJungle]

What most people that say that seem to mean is that nobody has ever successfully occupied and governed Afghanistan as part of an empire. It gets "conquered" fairly regularly, just not held. Topographically speaking, it's a bitch.

OK. I get that. I just had this experience of reading about Alexander's march east and kept aniticipating something actually happening over there. Alexander passes through, conquers. Dies at Babylon with the region as a part of his empire. It's misleading to throw his name in there. I expect better of rhetoric, damnit!

[C.J.Woolf]

I understand Alexander lost some men to ambushes, that's all. But he was smart to pass through and keep going. The Afghans aren't strong enough to expel invaders, but they can sure outlast them.

[MoneyJungle]

I understand Alexander lost some men to ambushes, that's all. But he was smart to pass through and keep going. The Afghans aren't strong enough to expel invaders, but they can sure outlast them.

Yah. Is there a worst place to occupy in the world?

[MarkovChain]

Vietnam perhaps...

[Ferrus]

What most people that say that seem to mean is that nobody has ever successfully occupied and governed Afghanistan as part of an empire. It gets "conquered" fairly regularly, just not held. Topographically speaking, it's a bitch.
This was actually achieved after a fashion by his successors (minor ones, no the Selucids).

See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Bactrian_Kingdom

[giegs]

Quite short lived, but interesting. I'll have to read up on this. Thanks for the info.

[Ferrus]

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/engen.greece

The Ancient Greek economy.

[starjots]

Throughout the US war with Afghanistan, I've heard people list all of the superpowers who were turned back from Afghanistan. They always top the list with Alexander the Great. I was lightly reading about Alexander today, and it appears he pretty much strolled through Afghanistan and turned around at the Ganges. Am I missing something or are these people just full of shit?

Most people talking about history are full of shit. Yes, they could read the damn wikipedia article if nothing else, but I sense to most that the past is just some mystery full of wars.

Anyway, I think there's a fallacy at work in the minds of all of us that just because things are this way now, they've always been this way - to wit- Afghanistan has always been full of wily Muslims in turbans who live in caves when needed and outlast any invader. This probably started with the difficulties the British Empire had in Afghanistan and was radically reinforced when the Soviets invaded and we armed everyone in the country to the teeth.

Casual reading tells me Afghanistan didn't exist as we would think of it until after the locals threw out the descendants of Genghis Khan, who definitely had a habit of making folks submit to long term occupation or get annihilated. Before that the area was part of various empires including the Seleucid Empire which was a successor state.

[MoneyJungle]

As a math-stupid feeler, I'm not aware if the Josephus Count (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_problem) is common knowledge among those into basic programming or math for which I must remove my shoes. I found it to be a fun historical fragment.

Josephus and 40 of his men were hiding in Jotapata during the Roman sack of the city in the first century. Eventually they were found out and the Romans were outside their hidey-hole. Against the wishes of Josephus, the men decided that suicide was the honorable solution (people arrived at that conclusion A LOT back then). They were all about to commit suicide when Josephus started preaching about how suicide is sinful.

"And now," said he, "since it is resolved among you that you will die, come on, let us commit our mutual deaths to determination by lot. He whom the lot falls to first, let him be killed by him that hath the second lot, and thus fortune shall make its progress through us all; nor shall any of us perish by his own right hand, for it would be unfair if, when the rest are gone, somebody should repent and save himself."

The luck of the draw and math worked out that Josephus and another guy wound up being the last two men alive. Josephus convinced the other guy to surrender and I haven't kept reading but I assume they both lived happily ever after. Can we arrive at any other conclusion than that he rigged the whole thing and saved his bacon with math?

[Ferrus]

As a math-stupid feeler, I'm not aware if the Josephus Count (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_problem) is common knowledge among those into basic programming or math for which I must remove my shoes. I found it to be a fun historical fragment.
It usually comes up as a standard homework question for circularly-linked lists.