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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...

Russian Orthodox Bishop Says Christianity is Necessary for Europe to Survive Calls Christianity "a powerful source of support for European civilization" By Meg Jalsevac ROMANIA, September 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an address to the Third European Ecumenical Assembly in Sibiu this week, outspoken Russian Orthodox Bishop Kirill said that in order for Europe to survive the tribulations that have befallen previous civilizations, it must retain its Christian identity. According to a report on interfax.com, Kirill explained that an increasing amount of Europeans Christians and non-Christians alike have come to recognize "Christianity [as] a powerful source of support for European...

Birth rate hits 15-year high in Russia RBC, 03.09.2007, Moscow 17:19:29.The birth rate reached a 15-year high in Russia in the first six months of 2007, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated at a traditional Monday meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with government officials. According to Medvedev, 142,000 babies were born between January and June 2007, a record number since the collapse of the USSR, the radio station Mayak reported. The number of childbirths increased 6.5 percent in the first half of 2007, compared to the same period a year earlier, while the death rate decreased by the...

Public release date: 2-Aug-2007 Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-7088 American Association for the Advancement of Science Beyond Mesopotamia: A radical new view of human civilization reported in ScienceMany urban centers crossed arc of Middle Asia 5,000 years ago A radically expanded view of the origin of civilization, extending far beyond Mesopotamia, is reported by journalist Andrew Lawler in the 3 August issue of Science. Mesopotamia is widely believed to be the cradle of civilization, but a growing body of evidence suggests that in addition to Mesopotamia, many civilized urban areas existed at the same time – about 5,000 years ago...

New research shows us that people around the world, including in the West, are satisfied with their lives and are enjoying a rising quality of life. So why are westerners so pessimistic, asks Nima Sanandaji, of think-tank Captus. Our planet is a happier place these days. That, at least, is what the Pew Research Center is telling us. Their latest survey of global attitudes in 47 nations has found a number of trends that are worth analyzing. According to Pew, people in the developing world are growing ever more satisfied with their personal and financial situations. In Latin America, 59...

Demographers have long acknowledged that the Malthusian population explosion is a myth. The threat of a skyrocketing population eventually sucking up all Earth's resources, leading to rampant starvation and disease is simply junk science. With the modernization of the global economy, worldwide fertility rates have been falling for decades. A more realistic concern is actually the extent to which birth rates have fallen, and may continue to fall. Today in most European and many East Asian countries fertility has sunken perilously low. Economies are bogged down as more retirees depend on fewer workers, as the article acknowledges. At least as...

I've been hanging around FR for a number of years now and for some reason, 2008 seems to be the year that the barbarians have begun to assert themselves. From cats with their throats slashed to home invasion robberies in which people are burned to death, to the couple that was kidnapped on a date in Tennessee, tortured and killed things are starting to seem downright Gazalike here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. William Penn once said, "Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants." It is pretty...

Barbarians at the Gates!A Parable for Our TimesCivilizations rise, and civilizations fall.They rise when all of the varied forces, actions, and influences which move a culture toward a more civilized state are more powerful than those forces, actions, and influences move a culture away from that more civilized state. When that balance changes to favor the “anti-civilization� forces, that civilization will begin to fall.The Myths of The Magic Latinos1MYTH 1: They are NOT “illegals.� Part 2 (to read part 1, go here):http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1841785/posts The reason, the cause, of Latino illegal immigration; and why the way we deal with it (this time)...

Profanity by Reginald Firehammer One reason people of today, who never experienced the fifties, cannot imagine what they were like is because they are immersed in a totally corrupt and uncivilized culture and society. Profanity is one example. It was heard rarely in the fifties, and almost never in polite society or in the presence of women or children. Such profanity as one was likely to hear was the mildest kind, unlike the crudities that fill the mouths of so many people today, including women and children and is heard everywhere, in the 50s were almost never heard. Even those...

TURKMENISTAN: MAKING A BID FOR CRADLE-OF-CIVILIZATION STATUS 5/21/07 Even in mid-spring, a stark landscape greets visitors to the Gonur-depe historical site in eastern Turkmenistan. Standing amid sand and rock at the edge of the Karakum desert, it is hard to imagine that a rich civilization once thrived here, built around a lush oasis fed by the Murgab River. Yet Greek-Russian archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi has uncovered just that since his expedition began in 1972. He says Gonur-depe was the capital – or imperial city, as he prefers to call it – of a complex, Bronze Age state – one that stretched...

Characteristics of Civilized People by Reginald Firehammer While the possiblity of civilization can be curtailed by a political system, it is not ultimately a society's politics, or its economy, or the artifacts of its culture that determines the degree of its civilization. Whether a society is civilized or not is determined by the kind of people that comprise it. American society of the fifties was dominated by young and middle-aged people who were the most civilized of the entire 20th century. The clearest picture of the fifties can be formed by examining the characteristics of the people who dominated it....

The Uncivilizing Revolution of The West by Reginald Firehammer Those living in a society or culture during or after a revolution are often unaware of the nature and extent of that revolution becauase it is nearly impossible to imagine what came before. In his brilliant, "Aliens Cause Global Warming," lecture to the California Institute of Technology, though his purpose was to demonstrate the impossibility of predicting even the near future, Michael Crichton demonstrates the radical changes that have occurred since 1900 that can only be described as a revolution. For example, the main means of transportation in 1900 was horses,...

Mother's Day is, to be honest, somewhat of an annoyance. It's manifestly one of those tedious Hallmark holidays wherein everyone is supposed to run out and support the revenue stream of cardboard manufacturers in the name of expressing gratitude to mothers, fathers, grandparents and anyone else to whom we might be related. I imagine it won't be long until Sept. 18 is declared Anonymous Sperm Donor's Day, which will probably be celebrated by giving matching card sets to one's two mommies and lighting a candle for dear old anonymous sperm donor, whoever he might be. Mothers are not only important,...

How many ideas has the US allowed to flourish that would otherwise have withered on the vine? I am happy to report to you that the Oxford Union, in its infinite wisdom, has allowed America to continue existing. After a raucous debate in front of a packed house, the motion - "this House regrets the Founding of America" - was overwhelmingly squashed. My colleague Jonah Goldberg, from the National Review, made a witty and punchy case for the birthright of America, lambasting the Union for a motion that "sounded like a bad joke". Peter Rodman, a former US assistant...

Civilization depends on a stable climate By JOHN KRIST April 26, 2007 If you were to able to travel back in time 50,000 years, abduct a paleolithic hunter from a river valley in southern France and haul him back to 21st century America, would he stand out in a crowd? Depends on the crowd. He probably wouldn't blend in very well at the New York Stock Exchange. But dress him in shorts and flip-flops, hand him a backpack and he could probably stroll across any college campus in the country without attracting attention. Human beings who lived 500 centuries ago...

Tales cities tell DR. T. V. PADMA According to archaeologists Indus cities had an efficient administrative system. Archaeologists have made intelligent guesses about Indus society by carefully studying the cities. Because the cities were so similar, it is reasonable to think that the people living in them shared ideas. How were the Indus cities kept in good condition for centuries? An efficient administration was probably in place to collect taxes for city maintenance. The similarities in the city layouts, home architecture, brick size, well construction and drainage systems also suggest a strong central authority. Peaceful people Yet, if hereditary kings...

When was Chinese civilization born? The origin and formation of Chinese civilization has always been a topic of wide discussion. The Chinese word "long" is an important symbol of Chinese civilization. Wherever there are Chinese communities, there is a "long" history. A sacred symbol of the nation, the Chinese word "long" is completely different from the West's interpretation, "dragon". Long ago a foreign missionary translated "long" into "dragon" by mistake. That mistake has been repeated for 300 years. Now, because of this mistake, some people have proposed abandoning the dragon as the symbol of Chinese civilization and replacing it with...

Political correctness has so disemboweled academic standards that Ph.D. truly means "pile it higher and deeper." Case in point: Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night accused Mel Gibson "of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie" Apocalypto. Estrada, in a superior display of historic ignorance, stated "that representations in the movie that the Mayans engaged in sacrificial ceremonies and had bloodthirsty tendencies were both wrong and racist."Quite to the contrary, archeological evidence of Maya "sacrificial ceremonies" and "bloodthirsty tendencies" are ubiquitous. It all started with the discovery of murals at...

‘Indus Valley civilization was more varied and wider’ Abhay Mishra New Delhi, March 5: Indus Valley civilization was much more varied and wider than historians believed till date,” said Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Management, Boston University, Mohammed Rafique Mughal on Monday. "Extensive exploration and excavation of sites in the upper Indus Valley and the lower Sindh have revealed a widespread cultural phenomena which existed at that time," said Mughal, delivering the Dr I H Qureshi Memorial Lecture, the Harappan civilization, at St Stephen's College. Claiming that field researches at Harappan sites—both in India and Pakistan —are leading to fresh...

Forgotten necropolisAn unknown lakeside civilization reveals its hidden treasures The graves, set in concentric circles, contain artifacts including clothing and jewelry that tell us much about the inhabitants’ way of life. By Iota Myrtsioti - Kathimerini An unknown civilization around four lakes that lasted from 6000 BC to 60 BC has been uncovered in two important excavations of a Neolithic and an Iron Age settlement in the Amyntaio district of Florina, northern Greece. A 7,300-year-old home with a timber floor, remnants of food supplies and blackberry seeds are among the findings in a Neolithic settlement near the lakes of Vegoritis,...

There's a certain aspect of this issue that the article below fails to comment upon, therefore, please read my comments to the article. "Sweden: the world's most modern country? Is Sweden the most modern country in the world? And are Swedes the most insecure people on this planet? These two questions are central to a new series on SVT due to premiere on Wednesday. The programme, 'Världen's modernaste land' (‘The most modern country in the world’), is a reflection on what it means to be a Swede. The presenter, television-friendly linguist Fredrik Lindström, has already notched up two major successes...

Public release date: 19-Feb-2007 Contact: Gregory Harris gharris@ucalgary.ca 403-220-3506 University of Calgary Practice of farming reaches back farther than thoughtArchaeological findings from Panama show agriculture's roots run deep Ancient people living in Panama were processing and eating domesticated species of plants like maize, manioc, and arrowroot at least as far back as 7,800 years ago – much earlier than previously thought – according to new research by a University of Calgary archaeologist. One of the most hotly debated issues in the discipline of archaeology is how and why certain human societies switched from hunting and gathering to producing their own...

A lot of people, attributing the current conflicts in the Middle East to either religion or oil, believe they don’t really have a dog in the fight. What cannot be ignored however is that a paroxysm of religious strife has broken out in the Middle East and it is exporting death and terror in the name of Allah. Still angry over the defeat in 732 A.D. at Poitiers, France that stopped their northward conquest of Europe and the Crusades that followed from 1095 to 1291, the Arabs of the Middle East have taken the temperature of the West today and...

Radical Islam vs. Civilization http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=2/a/v/040220071 Text of Speech at Debate with London Mayor Ken Livingstone, 20 January 2007 By Daniel Pipes Thank you so much. I'd like to begin by thanking Mayor Livingstone for his kind invitation to join you today and I thank the Greater London Authority for the hard work it put into what is obviously a successful event. I am delighted by the interest that you, the audience, has shown. And I'm grateful to my supporters who have come from four different countries to be with me today. The Mayor is an optimistic man. I'm generally invited...