Free Republic

Russia is a very disorganized part of the World. In what way have they contributed to humanity? Russia simply isn't fit for life and furthermore lacks true a sense of leadership. How my country could contribute to getting rid of Russia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eENe0bBhvSM

While our greedy authorities, hungry for other country’s territories, passionately cling to some stolen Japanese islands, tiny pebbles in the ocean, the inhabitants of another island, a large and undoubtedly Russian one, are busy collecting signatures. I received a call from a certain local democrat. His name, address and appearance, I will not reveal for anything, lest some terrorist in Guantanamo Bay remember that said democrat, many years ago, equipped for their last mission the Boeings which crashed into the twin towers. Unbelievable, says you? Well, no more unbelievable than what happened to human rights defender Alexei Sokolov, when a...

A group of Sakhalin residents, after a visit to Tokyo, are not only studying Japanese but also collecting signatures for a petition asking that Moscow hand over their island to Japan so that they can live and raise their children in a rich, modern country that is not at war with anyone. This remarkable action surfaced this week when radical Moscow commentator Valeriya Novodvorskaya reported in her Grani.ru column that one of the organizers, who she indicated had to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, had approached her to ask to whom he should forward their appeal. Novodvorskaya said she advised...

Review: How the Byzantines Saved Europe Posted by JOHN COURETAS on MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2009 The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Edited by Elizabeth Jeffreys, John Haldon, Robin Cormack. Oxford University Press (2008)Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin. Princeton University Press (2008) Ask the average college student to identify the 1,100 year old empire that was, at various points in its history, the political, commercial, artistic and ecclesiastical center of Europe and, indeed, was responsible for the very survival and flourishing of what we know today as Europe and you’re not likely to get the...

Italy…I have been traveling as a lecturer on a Hillsdale College Byzantium Cruise (from Venice to Athens, with several stops in the Adriatic, Mediterranean, and Aegean) for the last few days, and here are some eccentric reflections on civilizations of the past. VeniceI spent yesterday in Venice—hot, humid, and crowded, as I had never quite seen it before. So much for the global recession that has supposedly curtailed world tourism.Venice was not a classical city, and one can see why. It was malarial, without natural harbors or any readily identifiable deep ports or surrounding cliffs. It is instead a conglomeration of...

But anyways, for me, it wasn’t that great. At least, for playing “문명” (Civilization, if you don’t have a Korean font installed). But, you see, as an English teacher there I saw a parallel. The funny thing is that you would think that Korea would have the largest market for books teaching Koreans English from a Korean perspective. But, I cannot tell you how many times I came across expensive, no, very expensive textbooks published by large American or British companies that were published to teach the domestic market (Americans or the British) English. In America, the last time I...

In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, President Barack Obama claimed: “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar University — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing.” Obama is not much of a “student of history” if he believes this. Almost every advance he attributes to the Muslims was...

In an interview published April 23, 2009 in the Saudi Daily 'Okaz, reformist thinker Ibrahim Al-Buleihi expressed his admiration for Western civilization. The interview was posted on the same day on the Elaph website.(1) Al-Buleihi calls on the Arabs to acknowledge the greatness of Western civilization, and to admit the deficiencies of their own culture. He states that such self-criticism is a precondition to any change for the better. Ibrahim Al-Buleihi is a member of the Saudi Shura Council.(2) Following are excerpts from the interview: "If It Were Not for the Accomplishments of the West, Our Lives Would Have Been...

Western civilization, having achieved the highest standard of living in the world, is almost alone in having created and nurtured a large intellectual class: a group of people whose professions consist of working with and expounding ideas. This class includes college and university professors, administrators, commentators, a few journalists, activists, writers, artists, cartoonists, and so on, including those of us who do the lion's share of our work in research institutes or "think tanks."  To what can we attribute the high standard of living that gives rise to an intellectual class?  To capitalism, of course. Even to the limited extent expansionist government...

(This first appeared on BIG HOLLYWOOD back in January. Andrew Breitbart asked if I would hold it for a week before posting it on Eject! Eject! Eject! — so I held it for three months out of love for the man.  Just something for the weekend; next week, my new favorite word: Thymos. See you then.)  I. The Heartbeat Step back with me for a minute. Back out of Hollywood, out of America, out of the Western Tradition. Sit in the middle of a darkened crater at the south pole of the Moon. Sit back, look down and back into time, and...

Recent excavations have found more evidences on both Bronze Age and Iron Age in Thazi township, central Mandalay division, Myanmar, proving that the country passed through both Bronze Age and Iron Age in the ancient time. The Archaeology, Natural Museum and Libraries Department under the Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the CNRC of France, excavated the areas around Ywagongyi village in the township for 20 days from Jan. 10 to 30, finding out the site where 44 bodies were buried along with two small bundles of bronze sheets, two iron objects, 14 stone beads of different colors, a fine...

WASHINGTON – Nature turned against one of America's early civilizations 3,600 years ago, when researchers say earthquakes and floods, followed by blowing sand, drove away residents of an area that is now in Peru. "This maritime farming community had been successful for over 2,000 years, they had no incentive to change, and then all of a sudden, boom, they just got the props knocked out from under them," anthropologist Mike Moseley of the University of Florida said in a statement. Moseley and colleagues were studying civilization of the Supe Valley along the Peruvian coast, which was established up to 5,800...

Never have things been better for one half of humankind, and never have things been worse for the other.An old joke divides the world into two kinds of people:those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't. The decisive divide in today's world lies between nations that have a future, and nations that don't. Contrary to the prevailing pragmatism,which demands that we take every society on its own terms,an objective criteria has emerged that does not easily fade in the wash, namely the desire to live. Samuel Huntington, who died last December 27, did the...

Despite the rain, wind and cold weather, several hundred people took to the streets of downtown Louisville on Saturday to demonstrate. They were demonstrating about something that happened on Election Day in California, the passage of proposition 8 which revoked the rights of same sex couples to marry. Even though it’s not an issue that has come to voters in Kentucky, those demonstrating today said it is just a matter of time. Local activist Curtis Morrison used Facebook, e-mails and word of mouth to get straight and gay Louisvillians to the demonstration. “All we want is equality. We don’t want...

Scientists have uncovered the earliest evidence that Stone Age man lived in nuclear families. An international team of researchers, including experts from the University of Bristol, used DNA testing to date the remains from four burial sites discovered in Germany in 2005. The 4,600-year-old graves contained groups of adults and children buried facing each other, which was an unusual practice in Neolithic culture. A group burial of a 4,600-year-old nuclear family, was discovered in Germany One of the graves contained a female, a male and two children and the analysis revealed the researchers were a mother, father and their two...

Hello, I'm Arnold. I teach history - and a bit of das future too, as I view things.. In ze 20th century, America was big. Ja. But not as big and important as you "yanks" seem zu think. SHUT UP!! By now, wir find our selbst in ein totally different world. GM, Ford and America are bancrupt and every sane person today putsch their trust in ze €uro and God bless my grandmutter's überundunterundschwishendieheimatpatriotischen unterwear für that, like I use to say! Ze reason we Europeans decided to break your financial backbone, namely ze dollar (monopoly money manufactured by illegal...

Slavery still stalks the American consciousness, its wounds yet festering in many hearts. If Barack Obama were to set his mind to it, he could heal much of the damage this peculiar institution wrought on our national soul. This great and tragic error that must be given justice. Obama is the best person in the world who can recognize, remember and honor the deaths of 125 million and the enslavement of tens of millions of people. His unique qualifications can be found in his names. Until he was 20 years old, he went by the first name Barry. Then he...

When I first got to college, back in the last few weeks of the Seventies, I finally got a chance to see an ordinary game of Dungeons and Dragons. My immediate inclination was to play as a Paladin: the pinnacle of Lawful Good, a character required to dash in and fight overwhelmingly powerful evil forces anywhere and at whatever odds. These contests were short, depressing and hilarious, but all D&D really came down to in the end was slaying small monsters, taking their gold, buying slightly better gear and then slaying slightly larger monsters. Why not just save some time...

While self confident debaters, politicians and other sorts of experts argue over which country in the world actually is the best example of a guiding light to humanity there ever was (GWB would say it is the US of today, Obama would claim it's the UN, while a proud European like my fellow countryman Hans Blix probably would say it is Saddam Hussein), evidence of the rapid decline of Western civilization is everywhere. Yes, there are still parts of the West that function very well and where most people are well educated and well off, but for how long? An...

I thought of “Sweetness” last week. He was the Drum Major of the Yale Band, back when ice covered the Earth and I was in college. I’m not saying that the Yale Band was inadequate. But they did run onto the field like a rabble, rather than march. The Co-op Book Store did have a card which said on the front, “Today, in your honor, the Yale Band will play....” Inside, it said, “... in tune.” But one part of that organization was absolutely perfect. That was George Levendis, a 6-foot 4-inch Drum Major who bent over backwards until the...

- YES! To begin with, let's try and fully understand what Renaissance Florence actually has accomplished, apart from making tourists feel like this: "I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear...

"For a long time, humans were pretty dumb, doing little but make 'the same very boring stone tools for almost 2 million years,' says Philipp Khaitovich of the Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai. Then, 150,000 years ago, our big brains suddenly got smart. We started innovating. We tried different materials. We started creating art and maybe even religion. To understand what caused the cognitive spurt, researchers examined chemical brain processes known to have changed in the past 200,000 years.

The building of true civilization has always been exposed to various difficulties. But in the end, periods of unemployment, war and political turboil is nothing but small potatoes. Personally speaking, I'll turn 39 years old soon and one of the things that make me get out of bed and drive off to work each morning - a part from the luxury of driving a wonderful Volvo V70 to the place - is the magnificence of toiling in the company of certain younger Swedish work mates who I daily encounter there; people in their 20s who believe in hard work and...

The "War on Terror" is over, even as combat with terrorists continues. Like the "Wars" on Drugs and Poverty, it lingers on the back pages and the TV equivalent, the highbrow channels like Discovery and History. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense quietly gears up for the "long war" that is essential to countering the enemy.  The gulf between public perception and the grim reality couldn't be greater or more important to bridge. Public boredom with the combat should not displace the importance of understanding and dealing with conflict within the Muslim world. Seven years is a long time for the...

Tomorrow is our nation’s 232nd birthday. Two months ago Israel celebrated its 60th birthday. I feel that more honest arithmetic would have had the small beleaguered country actually celebrating its 3,320th birthday. What happened three millennia ago which brought the people of Israel into existence? Ancient Israel became a nation with an eternal destiny when it received its constitution, the Torah, from God on Mount Sinai and formally adopted it. “And (Moses) took the Book of the Covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said...

Who Were the Hurrians? Volume 61 Number 4, July/August 2008 New discoveries in Syria suggest a little-known people fueled the rise of civilization Excavations at the 3rd millennium city of Urkesh in Syria are revealing new information about the mysterious people who lived there, known as the Hurrians. This view of the city's royal palace shows the service area (left) and living quarters (right). (Ken Garrett) With its vast plaza and impressive stone stairway leading up to a temple complex, Urkesh was designed to last. And for well over a millennium, this city on the dusty plains of what is...

[Book review] Excerpt: Mr. Riemen's Nobility of Spirit is intended as a meditation on the forces that threaten civilization and, no less important, on the forces that are desperately needed to sustain it... The originality of Mr. Riemen's argument resides less in its defense of universal values than in its analysis of the assault they have suffered for so long. If so many intellectuals today find it difficult to utter words like "truth," "beauty," "piety" or "goodness" without mockery or ironic derision, the cause may be traced, in large part, to the abuse of those terms by philosophers and social...

Saul Bellow’s prophetic 1970 novel captured New York’s unraveling and remains a cautionary tale. As Bellow understood, the “anything goes” culture of the 1960s produced an “anything goes” city, where disorder and crime flourished, as in the Times Square of that era.Fear was a New Yorker’s constant companion in the 1970s and ’80s. We lived behind doors with triple locks, some like engines of medieval ironmongery. We barred our ground-floor and fire-escape windows with steel grates that made us feel imprisoned. I was thankful for mine, though, when a hatchet turned up on my fire escape, origin unknown. Nearing our...

A couple of ... readers got together for dinner this week -- both well-educated types -- and chatted about the world for a few hours and what's ahead when present trends are projected and barring some miraculous change for the better. Afterwards, an email:Bottom line we got to, after all was said: OK, so we fortunate oddball ones have advance warning of a coming, indeed impending, broad scale societal collapse/restructuring - on multiple fronts - economic cycles, energy, K-wave, solar energy downturn (sunspot cycles). We can, and have, to the extent of our limited abilities, positioned ourselves individually to survive...

I'd like to say so myself. It's time we realize we're actually in a war together and that all of us who do NOT participate at the front line have a special kind of obligation towards the brave men and women who ARE. I'm 38 years old and one thing I've learned from being alive this long is that a group of people who stand united, devoted to something of eternal value are, virtually, indestructable as such. Apart from being somewhat "old", I'm of Swedish stock (- like food a lot, but I'm not a Swedish chef in fact:D -)...

He walked naked through the Australian outback and died without clothes in a canoe in the jungle - but it was learned yesterday that the so-called 'Naked Nomad' had left behind a £2 million fortune. Eccentric Victor Flanagan wandered the sun-scorched roads of Australia without a stitch of clothing, slipping on a simple sarong when he entered towns, a curious figure with shoulder-length greying hair who had rejected civilisation. Everyone believed he was penniless, but it has now been revealed that Mr Flanagan had left behind land worth £2 million near Busselton, in Western Australia. He had inherited the property...

The Japanese population is believed to have peaked at about 127.5 million in 2005. Since then the figure has declined, with some estimates suggesting the population could shrink to 105 million by 2050. The drop is feared to have negative impacts on the nation's labor force and grave social and economic consequences. Recent reports seem to indicate that the sexual proclivities of Japanese men are contributing adversely to the situation. More and more men, reports maintain, are turning to masturbation and sex toys rather than to their female counterparts. And further exacerbating an already declining birthrate of 1.29 children per...

WSU Researchers Study Fate of an Ancient American Southwest Civilization Salem-News.com Evidence suggests that the Anasazi fled the region and joined related groups to the south and east. While the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde are easily the best known of these settlements, the region is dotted with some 4,000 known archaeological sites, including communities which supported as many as several hundred families. (PULLMAN, Wash.) - Using computer simulations to synthesize both new and earlier research, a team of scientists led by a Washington State University anthropology professor has given new perspective to the long-standing question of what happened more...

Anthropologists from Wheaton College (Illinois) and The Field Museum have discovered how the ancient Maya produced an unusual and widely studied blue pigment that was used in offerings, pottery, murals and other contexts across Mesoamerica from about A.D. 300 to 1500. First identified in 1931, this blue pigment (known as Maya Blue) has puzzled archaeologists, chemists and material scientists for years because of its unusual chemical stability, composition and persistent color in one of the world’s harshest climates. The anthropologists solved another old mystery, namely the presence of a 14-foot layer of blue precipitate found at the bottom of the...

Civilization depends on the health of the traditional family. That sentiment has become a truism among social conservatives, who typically can't explain what they mean by it. Which is why it sounds like right-wing boilerplate to many contemporary ears. The late Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman believed it was true, but he also knew why. In 1947, he wrote a massive book to explain why latter-day Western civilization was now living through the same family crisis that presaged the fall of classical Greece and Rome. His classic "Family and Civilization," which has just been republished in an edited version by...

The London Daily Mail reports this week that one in four Britons don't believe Prime Minister Winston Churchill actually existed. They suspect he is a mythical character, rather than a historical one. Likewise, they think historical figures such as Florence Nightingale, Sir Walter Raleigh, Mahatma Gandhi and Cleopatra were also fictional personalities created for literature or films.

It would have been unlike Samuel P. Huntington to say “I told you so” after 9/11. He is too austere and serious a man, with a legendary career as arguably the most influential and original political scientist of the last half century — always swimming against the current of prevailing opinion. In the 1990s, first in an article in the magazine Foreign Affairs, then in a book published in 1996 under the title “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” he had come forth with a thesis that ran counter to the zeitgeist of the era and...

The effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 are only too well known: It knocked the hell out of Aceh Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, leveling buildings, scattering palm trees, and wiping out entire villages. It killed more than 160,000 people in Aceh alone and displaced millions more. Similar scenes of destruction were repeated along the coasts of Southeast Asia, India, and as far west as Africa. The magnitude of the disaster shocked the world. What the world did not know was that the 2004 tsunami—seemingly so unprecedented in scale—would yield specific clues to one of...

JEDDAH, 15 January 2008 — The history of science and civilization, as taught by many institutions in the West, often fails to include more than 1,000 years of Islamic heritage and civilization, according to Dr. Salim Al-Hassani of the UK-based Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization. “The Renaissance couldn’t have happened out of nothing,” said Al-Hassani while speaking at Dar Al-Hekma College here yesterday. “In the West, there’s total ignorance of the contributions of other civilizations. Did modern civilization really rise from nothing?” Al-Hassani explained how many Western discoveries are of Muslim origin. There was a lost age of Muslim...

Christmas, they say, is a time to be with your family. From my perspective, 'family' is, in one way, a wider community than most of us acknowledge. Personally, I view not only my parents, my brother and my relatives here in Sweden as 'my family'. 'My family' also includes all the hard working inhabitants of Gothenburg/Göteborg - the city where I live, it also includes the nation of Sweden, it includes Scandinavia, it encompasses Europe and at least to me, it is also the whole of the Western World. When I have visited other great Western nations, be it Italy,...

The clash of civilizations we're living through is widely seen as a battle between Islam and Christendom. I'm convinced it's more basic than that. The reason Iraq and Afghanistan remain unsettled battlefields isn't that our two civilizations can't agree on the nature of God. It's because we can't agree on the nature of man. In the West, we take it for granted that human beings are autonomous individuals. We decide for ourselves how we dress, where we work, whom we marry. Our political system is an atomized democracy, in which everyone is expected to vote according to their own idiosyncratic...

The mother of all civilisations 16 Dec 2007, 0001 hrs IST,Shobhan Saxena,TNN The ruins were so magnificent and sprawling that some people believed that the aliens from a faraway galaxy had built the huge pyramids that stood in the desert across the Andes. Some historians believed that the complex society, which existed at that time, was born out of fear and war. They looked for the telltale signs of violence that they believed led to the creation of this civilisation. But, they could not find even a hint of any warfare. It was baffling. Even years after Ruth Shady Solis...

Major Archaeological Find in Puerto Rico Published: 10/28/07, 4:25 PM EDT By LAURA N. PEREZ SANCHEZSAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - U.S. and Puerto Rican archaeologists say they have found the best-preserved pre-Columbian site in the Caribbean, which could shed light on virtually every aspect of Indian life in the region, from sacred rituals to eating habits. The archaeologists believe the site in southern Puerto Rico may have belonged to the Taino or pre-Taino people that inhabited the island before European colonization, although other tribes are a possibility. It contains stones etched with ancient petroglyphs that form a large plaza...

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Lebanon's top Shiite cleric asked Britain on Sunday to adopt the European approach to the region rather than an American one which is using Lebanon to pressure on Syria and Iran. Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah made his comments during a meeting at his office with visiting British envoy to the Middle East Michael Williams, according to a statement released by the cleric's office. "We want Britain to be European and not to be American or work on the side of America's foreign policy in the region," the black-turbaned cleric said.

I am listening to one of the courses from The Teaching Company these days, this one The Wisdom of History by Prof. J. Rufus Fears, David Ross Boyd Professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma. He is absolutely the best speaker, professor, I have ever heard, both brilliant and eloquent. One of the points he keeps making, and making, and making, is that the rise and fall of nations and empires very often hinges on the decisions, or indecisions, of one man (or woman), that history is not made by grand sweeping social forces and so forth, so much...

Editorial Reviews Review Allen West, coauthor of The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes : “Graham Phillips argues persuasively that Earth encountered a massive comet 3,500 years ago around the time of the Exodus from Egypt. The object appeared twenty times larger than the full moon and was by far the largest comet sighting ever recorded by ancient historians. The worldwide consequences for mankind were devastating. Our own scientific research confirms that the author’s theory is completely credible.” Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, authors of The Templar Revelation and The Sion Revelation : “an extraordinary tour de force . . . ”...

VATICAN, October 5, 2007 (CWNews.com/LifeSiteNews.com) - By denying the existence of natural law, secularism is undermining the very foundations of democratic society, Pope Benedict XVI argued in an October 5 private audience with members of the International Theological Commission. Disregard for natural law, the Holy Father said, has caused "a crisis for human-- even more for Christian-- civilization." In response to that crisis, he continued, Church leaders should mobilize "both lay people and followers of religions other than Christianity" to reclaim a common moral tradition. The International Theological Commission had gathered in Rome this week to discuss a forthcoming document...

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Explains Stand on Homosexuality to Council of Europe "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin" By John-Henry Westen STRASBOURG, October 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In his first visit to the Council of Europe on a     mission to discuss inter-religious dialogue, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, gave a spirited defence of Christian morality. He noted that the notion of human rights in Europe stems, at least in part from Christian morality. "Yet today there occurs a break between human rights and morality, and this break threatens the European civilization," he warned. "We can see...

frontenac — Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., asserted Friday that his anti-immigration message, which brought a crowd here to its feet, is also dragging down his Republican bid for the White House. Why? "Money," or rather, lack of it, replied Tancredo, as he mingled with the audience of activists with Eagle Forum, a social conservative group holding a national meeting this weekend at the Frontenac Hilton. The major presidential fundraisers, regardless of party, "are taking money from executives with corporations that have a very big stake in this,'' Tancredo said. They oppose his candidacy, he said, because big business favors "massive...

Scandinavia has been rated as the best place to live, that’s according to a ranking by Reader’s Digest. Using a range of environmental and social indicators based in part on the UN’s Human Development Index, the survey rates countries on care of the environment and quality of life for their citizens. Finland tops the 141-nation list, followed by Nordic neighbours Iceland and Norway, with Sweden coming in at fourth place. And the Swedish capital comes top of the Reader’s Digest ranking of 72 world cities when it comes to quality of life. Cities were rated according to quality of public...