Free Republic

Cleopatra's Cosmetics And Hammurabi's Heineken: Name Brands Far Predating Modern CapitalismEgyptian perfume bottle. Could product branding have begun in ancient Egypt? (Credit: iStockphoto) ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2008) — From at least Bass Ale's red triangle--advertised as "the first registered trademark"--commodity brands have exerted a powerful hold over modern Western society. Marketers and critics alike have assumed that branding began in the West with the Industrial Revolution. But a pioneering new study in the February 2008 issue of Current Anthropology finds that attachment to brands far predates modern capitalism, and indeed modern Western society. In "Prehistories of Commodity Branding," author David...

WASHINGTON (March 20) -- A bloody videotape shot by a local Iraqi journalism student has prompted the Pentagon to launch a criminal investigation into an incident that left at least 15 Iraqi civilians dead in the city of Haditha. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The details of what happened four months ago in Haditha are just now coming to light with the release of the videotape by an Iraqi organization called Hammurabi Human Rights. The tape shows the bloodied and bullet-marked homes that had been allegedly stormed by the Marines, and includes comments by local residents. "This is my father," a boy says on...

U.S. Sets Stage for March to Baghdad By PAULINE JELINEK .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - American units began probing attacks in a rim around the southern outskirts of Baghdad in another effort to pave the way for the battle for the capital, defense officials said Monday. A week of heavy bombing has left some of Iraq's Republican Guard units surrounding Baghdad at less than half strength, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday. And U.S. Army troops spearheading the drive to Baghdad on Monday fought their way into Hindiya, about 50 miles from...

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School The Code of Hammurabi Translated by L. W. King When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me,...