Just a quick reminder for all the Cadillac Communists and silk-sheet Socialists who idolize Castro’s cold-blooded killer.

Guevara-worship may be naive or opportunistic, but there is something downright obscene in his promotion by capitalist commerce. Guevara simply was not a nice fellow.

There is nothing benign about the real Guevara, pistol in hand, giving a cold-blooded coup de grace to the Castro regime's enemies at La Cabaña fortress. Or his bloody repression of anti-Castro peasants in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba when the Castroite regime was 2 years old.

Guevara's hands had much blood on them besides his own. In real life, he was a war criminal.

So to all the Rolex radicals and Mercedes Maoists who have adopted Che as an iconic hero, consider this – he personally committed misdeeds that dwarf any abuses committed by American soldiers against the Saddamites imprisoned at Abu Ghraib.

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Just a quick reminder for all the Cadillac Communists and silk-sheet Socialists who idolize CastroÂ’s cold-blooded killer.

Guevara-worship may be naive or opportunistic, but there is something downright obscene in his promotion by capitalist commerce. Guevara simply was not a nice fellow.

There is nothing benign about the real Guevara, pistol in hand, giving a cold-blooded coup de grace to the Castro regime's enemies at La Cabaña fortress. Or his bloody repression of anti-Castro peasants in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba when the Castroite regime was 2 years old.

Guevara's hands had much blood on them besides his own. In real life, he was a war criminal.

So to all the Rolex radicals and Mercedes Maoists who have adopted Che as an iconic hero, consider this – he personally committed misdeeds that dwarf any abuses committed by American soldiers against the Saddamites imprisoned at Abu Ghraib.

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Let me say it clearly -- the Holocaust happened.

Let me be forthright about my belief -- those who deny the Holocaust are intellectually dishonest scum.

But all of that is irrelevant to my next point -- Holocaust-deniers are not criminals.

And that is why I am sorry to see David Irving, one of the more malignant figures in the Holocaust-denial movement, plead guilty to criminal charges related to his expression of that postion in Austria.

A right-wing British historian said Monday he would plead guilty to criminal charges of denying the Holocaust as his trial opened in Vienna.

David Irving, 67, told reporters he now acknowledges that the Nazis systematically slaughtered Jews during World War II. "History is like a constantly changing tree," he said as an eight-member jury and a panel of three judges prepared to hear charges that could put him behind bars for up to 10 years.

Irving has been in custody since his arrest in November on charges stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he was accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of 6 million Jews.

A verdict could come later Monday.

Holocaust-denial is a hateful, dishonest intellectual position -- but it is one easily refuted by recourse to the facts. The verdict should come in classrooms, scholarly papers, and books, not in courtrooms.

And as we face demands for censorship of films, books and newspapers that are found to be subjectively wrong and offensive (not objectively wrong and offensive, like Irving's words) by Muslims, we in the West need to be clear on a simple point -- the proper response to evil or offensive words is not censorship or violence, but rather more speech to uplift and instruct in what is right.

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An interesting find in the Valley of the Kings – an unspoiled non-royal tomb from the 18th Dynasty.

An American team has found what appears to be an intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the first found in the valley since that of Tutankhamun in 1922, one of the archaeologists said on Thursday.

The tomb contains five or six mummies in intact sarcophagi from the late 18th dynasty, about the same period as Tutankhamun, but the archaeologists have not yet had the time or the access to identify them, the archaeologist added.

The 18th dynasty ruled Egypt from 1567 BC to 1320 BC, a period during which the country's power reached a peak.

The Valley of the Kings in southern Egypt contains the tombs of most of the pharaohs of the time but the archaeologist said the mummies in the newly found tomb need not be royal.

"There are lots of non-royal tombs in the valley. It wouldn't be the only one by any means," said the archaeologist, who asked not to be named because the Egyptian authorities are planning a media event at the site on Friday.

"The archaeologists haven't been inside properly yet. It's very small and cramped but it is late 18th dynasty," she added.

A statement from the government's Supreme Council of Antiquities said the tomb was found by a team from the University of Memphis in the United States.

The five sarcophagi, which are carved to human form, have coloured funerary masks and the tomb contains a large number of big storage jars, the statement said.

"For an unknown reason they were buried rapidly in the small tomb," it added.

The tomb, 5 km (three miles) from that of Tutankhamun, was covered with the rubble of workmen's huts dating from the latter part of the 19th dynasty, more than 100 years after the tomb was sealed, it said.

This tomb likely dates from around the time of King Tut. I canÂ’t wait to hear more.

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The oldest cave paintings ever found.

A French caver has discovered prehistoric cave art believed to date back 27,000 years - older than the famous Lascaux paintings.

Gerard Jourdy, 63, said he found human and animal remains in the chamber in the Vilhonneur forest, in caves once used to dispose of animal carcasses.

The paintings included a hand in cobalt blue, he told AFP news agency.

The discovery was made in November, but kept secret while initial examinations were carried out.

Mr Jourdy also said he saw a sculpture of a face made from a stalactite - which would be a scientific first for the era, but experts were dubious about this claim, AFP says.

Neat stuff!

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I remember that day all too well. I had spent the morning at Illinois State University' Bone Student Center, in a giant room filled with teacher recruiters as I desperately sought employment.

I wanted to get rid of my resumes and other stuff before heading to the cafeteria, so my girlfriend and I went up to my dorm room in Watterson Towers to drop stuff off. She turned the television on to catch the news. After all, this was the "Teacher In Space" flight, and there had been much buzz about the impending launch at the teacher job fair.

That's when we saw the coverage.

They were looking for the shuttle.

And then they showed the replay as we watched -- horrified.

I remember shouting at the screen. I was later told that my words were "Where's the f#^%ing shuttle?" I was literally knocked to my knees by the force of what I was seeing as the tears began to roll down my face, brought on by a visceral understanding of images that my brain could not comprehend.

I knelt there and watched. And wept. We never did make it down to lunch, nor did I return to the job fair.

It must have been an hour or two later that the phone rang. It was Tony Zagotta, president of the ISU College Republicans (later the National Chairman) and one of my closest friends on campus. Could I meet him, Eric Nicoll, and the rest of the CR inner circle at the office to help organize a candlelight vigil in the quad.

Before I went to that meeting, I watched what is my favorite Reagan speech.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

"Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But, we've never lost an astronaut in flight; we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.

"For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy.' They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

"We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

"And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

"I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: 'Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it.'

"There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, 'He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.' Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

"The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'

"Thank you."

Apprpriately enough, it was those closing words that floatd into my mind nearly two decades later when Ronald Reagan died.

Today I can drive to Johnson Space Center in 10 minutes, including the time it takes to back out of the garage. A local school and the town youth center are named for astronaut Ed White, killed on the launchpad with Grissom and Chaffee in that flash of fire in the first Apollo capsule. I shared a zip code with one of the Columbia astronauts, and remember seeing the others in local stores. All of those who have lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration have a special place in the heart of this community.

I claim a number of honest-to-God rocket scientists among my friends and acquaintances. Several of them were intimately involved with Challenger, and more were a part of the Columbia team. A few, the old-timers, knew and worked with the Apollo 1 crew. Each of them tells me that they are dedicated to the continuation of manned spaceflight. Why? Because those who have given their lives to push back that frontier would want it to continue.

And so, today, we honor and remember those who died in spaceflight.

X-15 Flight 191
Michael J. Adams

Apollo 1
Gus Grissom
Ed White
Roget Chaffee

Challenger -- 51-L
Dick Scobee
Michael Smith
Judith Resnik
Ellison Onizuka
Ronald McNair
Greg Jarvis
Christa McAuliffe

Columbia -- STS-107
Rick Husband
William McCool
Michael Anderson
David Brown
Kalpana Chawla
Laurel Clark
Ilan Ramon

AND LEST WE FORGET OTHER SPACE HEROES

Soyuz 1
Vladimir_Komarov

Soyuz 11
Georgi Dobrovolski
Viktor Patsayev
Vladislav Volkov

OTHERS REMEMBER: Michelle Malkin, Below the Beltway, Sun Comprehending Glass, Lincoln Logs, Scared Monkeys, Small Town Veteran, MacsMind, Dr. Sanity, Mike's Noise, Oh How I Love Jesus, Right Wing Nut House, Dean's World
, Unpartisan, Sister Toldjah, bRight and Early, Right on the Left Coast, Magnum's Conservative Voice, Right Side Of The Road, SoCalPundit

TRACKBACKS: Stop the ACLU, Wizbang, Samantha Burns, Gribbit, Conservative Cat, MacStansbury, RightWingNation,, PointFive, Adam's Blog, third world country, Bacon Bits, Stuck on Stupid, Real Ugly American, Liberal Wrong Wing, Uncooperative Blogger, Publius Rendevous, Bullwinkle, Voteswagon, Baldilocks

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Here is a cool archaeological discovery from Egypt.

A beautiful black granite statue of Queen Tiye, mother of the monotheistic king Akhnaten, was unearthed last Monday in Luxor, reports Nevine El-Aref. At Karnak's Mut Temple, a John Hopkins University archaeological mission stumbled upon the statue while brushing sand off the temple's second hall.

"The statue is mostly intact," said Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), who added that although the 160cm tall statue has a broken arm and a missing leg, it was still considered very well preserved. It features a standing Queen Tiye wearing a wig and a cobra-decorated crown.

Initial examinations revealed that the back of the statue is engraved with two columns of hieroglyphic text bearing different titles of king Amenhotep III, who ruled for 38 years during the 18th Dynasty. According to Sabri Abdel-Aziz, head of the SCA's Ancient Egypt Department, the inscriptions written on the statue also include a cartouche of a 21st Dynasty queen called Henutaw, which reveals that the same statue was used in a subsequent era.

In other archaeology-related news, the SCA and the Luxor Supreme Council agreed to enlarge the road around the two famous Memnon statues on Luxor's West Bank; they also discussed the possibility of constructing a visitors' centre -- similar to the one at the Abu Simbel Temple -- at the entrance of the Valley of the Kings.

And assuming that presumed family trees are correct, she was also King Tut's grandmother.

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He was always a part of my life.

I was born in California in the early 1960s, and so it is no surprise that the first politician whose name I knew was Ronald Reagan. He became our Governor around the time I as three-years old, and since my father was stationed in California for most of the late 1960s, I heard that name often. He was a giant of a man in the eyes of the boy I was.

Jump forward to the mid-1970s. I was a kid living on Guam. I remember listening to radio commentaries by Ronald Reagan. Twelv-years-old, and I looked forward to hearing that voice, talking common sense about the issues that faced our country. I knew he was right when he spoke of the evils of Communism, for I had watched the refugees from Vietnam flood my island home in the spring of 1975. I cried the day he went off the air, saddened by the loss of a friend and teacher.

My family returned to the US in the heat of the 1976 primary campaign. My parents, of course, were supporters of Ronald Reagan. I hoped and prayed that my hero, my mentor, would snatch the nomination from Gerald Ford. It was not to be. But four years later it would, and I was ready to work on my first campaign -- the campaign of my hero, Ronald Reagan. Reagan's triumph in the primaries, his nomination in Detroit, and his victory in November excited me like nothing before.

Two days remain linked forever in my mind. The first, twenty-five years ago, was Ronald Reagan's inauguration, and the flight to freedom of the hostages in Iran. I think that day set a tone for the future of the Reagan Administration -- the next eight years would be about a strong America and freedom for captives. The second is that awful day in March -- the man I admired wounded by an assassin but spared by the hand of God. If any of us had doubted that Ronald Reagan was marked for greatness, that day seemed to dispel all doubts. And it was eight years of greatness.

I will leave others to recount the deeds of Reagan as president. What mattered to me was the vision he set forth of America as a shining city on a hill, a beacon of freedom. What inspired me was the call to live out the heritage of liberty imparted by the Founders, and to spread that freedom abroad. It was his ability to move us to seek to do great things, and to comfort us in moments of tragedy, such as the Challenger explosion. In all of this, Ronald Reagan inspired us to be something better than what we were, and pushed us to move beyond ourselves. It is this vision that led me to become an active Republican, and to remain one.

And then came the day when my hero died. I wept for Ronald Reagan that day, and in the days that followed -- tears of joy that his suffering was done, and tears of loss that this man I loved was gone.

But is he? Or does he yet live in the dreams of those who hold fast to his vision?

Let us be faithful to that vision.

It can be morning in America again.

MY FIRST REAGAN POST

GREAT POSTS AT MIKE'S AMERICA

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And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."²

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

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When I can agree with Charles Rangel AND Donald Rumsfeld on an issue, it must be important.

And this one certainly is, as a matter of justice and historical honesty.

The U.S. secretary of defense and one of the most prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus, usually at odds over military matters and just about everything else, are on the same side in an effort to recognize the achievements of the famed Tuskegee Airmen.

The Tuskegee Airmen were an elite group of 450 African American fighter pilots who broke the military's racial barrier in a training program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, the same year the U.S. entered World War II.

Legislation to recognize the Airmen with the Congressional Gold Medal still needs more than 80 votes to achieve a two-thirds passage in the House. The bill was sponsored by liberal Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York and has been endorsed by Bush administration Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Senate version has already passed.

According to the House Office of the Clerk, the Congressional Gold Medal was originally meant to recognize those who participated in the Revolutionary War, but "Congress broadened the scope of the medal to include actors, authors, entertainers, musicians, pioneers in aeronautics and space, explorers, lifesavers, notables in science and medicine, athletes, humanitarians, public servants and foreign recipients."

In order to award a Congressional Gold Medal, a bill must be passed by two-thirds of the House and Senate.

At a time when African Americans were not allowed into combat, "the Tuskegee Airmen inspired revolutionary reform in the Armed Forces, paving the way for full racial integration in the Armed Forces," according to Rangel's bill.

These were men my father held up to me as heroes. They were certainly pioneers.

We need to see this honor bestowed while some of them are still left alive.

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The latest meme sweeping the blogosphere is the 10 Worst American list, courtesy of All Things Beautiful. I find this an intriguing exercise, and hope my contribution to the discussion provides some enlightenment. I've intentionally excluded living individuals, and military and political leaders from the Civil War. Also excluded was Benedict Arnold, the inclusion of whom is simply too trite.

1) Margaret Sanger -- A eugenist who admired Hitler's racial cleansing laws, she started out to make sure blacks, Jews, Slavs, and other "inferior races" didn't outbreed the superior WASP and Germanic stock that she felt merited a privileged place in American society. her legacy continues in the form of the genocidal organization she started, Planned Parenthood.

2) Aaron Burr -- Certainly a murderer, arguably a traitor, Burr was the prototype for the power-hungry politician out for his own interests above those of the US. Had he managed to beat Jefferson in 1800, it might have been the end of the American constitutional system.

3) Julius & Ethel Rosenberg -- One could argue that the Soviets would have gotten the A-bomb in a few years without these spies, but together with Alger Hiss they made the anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s and 1950s seem perfectly reasonable. While their supporters claim that they were framed, the Verona documents make it clear that they were guilty as homemade sin.

4) Alger Hiss -- Betrayed his country to the Soviets for years as he climbed his way through the State Department.

5) Hugo Black -- The only Klansman to serve on the Supreme Court, he is the person responsible for incorporating Jefferson's "wall of separation" analogy into legal dogma. He built his career on the anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic platform of the KKK, and never really renounced the religious bigotry that went with that affiliation.

6) Thaddeus Stevens -- This Radical Republican was among the most malignant of his breed in Washington during and after the War Between The States. He was instrumental in implementing harsh Reconstruction policies that ultimately harmed the freed slaves he sought to help, and he was key to the efforts to hamstring Andrew Johnson, leading eventually to the impeachment of Johnson on charges of violating a law that did not apply to his actions.

7) Alfred Kinsey -- Pervert extrordinaire who paid pedophiles to molest kids as a part of his research. His work provided the scholarly justification for the Sexual Revolution, one of the more harmful social developments of the 1960s.

Richard J. Daley -- His corrupt power in Chicago was such that he could provide graft galore and steal a presidential election with impunity. Not even Boss Tweed could manage the latter.

9) Elbridge Gerry -- Ever wonder why they call it gerrymandering? This is the guy who created the practice of drawing political district lines for partisan advantage.

10) J. Edgar Hoover -- For all the good he did, his rogue operation of the FBI gave that agency inordinate power with little supervision. He is the very exemplar of what we should fear in the way of government run amok.

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS: Elijah Muhammad, John F. Kennedy, Joseph Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Roger Taney, Andrew Jackson, Tim McVeigh, Gus Hall, Al Capone.

Living figures who will be eligible for inclusion five years after their deaths: Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, George Soros, Ibrahim Hooper, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakahn, John Walker, Jr. Johathan Pollard, Bill Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, Ward Churchill, Jane Fonda, John Kerry, Maxine Watters, Cynthia McKinney.

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Confederate Yankee points to this article from the News-Observer about the Wilmington Riot of 1898.

The 1898 riot that killed an unknown number of blacks in Wilmington was part of an organized, statewide effort to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens.

And in the wake of the riot, white supremacists in state office passed North Carolina's Jim Crow laws.

Those laws disenfranchised African Americans until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s.

In a 460-page document released today, the Wilmington Race Riot Commission describes the riot and accompanying coup d'etat as a watershed moment in North Carolina history.

"Because Wilmington rioters were able to murder blacks in daylight and overthrow Republican government without penalty or federal intervention, everyone in the state, regardless of race, knew that the white supremacy campaign was victorious on all fronts," the report says.

Democratic leaders, including News & Observer editor Josephus Daniels, developed a strategic campaign to put white supremacist leaders in the General Assembly and U.S. Congress during the 1898 elections. The Democrats were working to drive out a coalition government of Republicans and Populists, which had the support of black voters.

In Wilmington, Democrats fueled a push against a Republican-controlled city council. The day after the 1898 election, a mob of several hundred white men burned the building of a black-owned newspaper. African Americans in the city fled as the building burned, with families hiding in swamps and cemeteries for days with little more than the clothing on their backs, said LeRae Umfleet, a researcher with the state Office of Archives and History who authored the report.

The white mob overthrew the democratically elected city council and had all black city workers fired. Leading black figures were forced out of town.

No one was arrested for this act of rebellion against lawful authority during time of war (treaty negotiations to end the Spanish-American War were still underway in Paris), and Josephus Daniels, whose active support for white supremacy in the pages of his newspaper led to him being referred to by one historian as the "precipitator of the riot", eventually became Secretary of the Navy for the entire two terms of the Wilson administration.

So the next time you hear Democrats and their allies start talking about the "Bush regime" and "taking back our country", remember that this is their heritage -- they have done it before and will do it again given the chance.

Is it any wonder that they fear the Second Amendment -- for a well-armed citizenry is the bulwark against such nefarious deeds.

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1 The hypocrisy of the Dems knows no bounds. These facts should be known to a lot of people, and let them judge after that. God bless

Posted by: Miguel at Fri Dec 16 23:49:47 2005 (UofLY)

2 As you have pointed out, history repeats itself time after time. With only a few changes, this could easily have been the recorded history of the Mormons being forced to leave Navoo in the middle of winter November, 1838. An extermination order was issued by the governor of Missouri, in effect giving mob rule the power to either kill or force the Mormons out of Missouri.

The point is that even in America, there has been sufficient evidence of hatred run rampant, for the purpose of race or religion it pops up from time to time in some very ugly ways.

Posted by: TF Stern at Sat Dec 17 08:05:55 2005 (dz3wA)

3 Yeah judge a political party on the happenings of 100 years ago. You can do that and we can judge the GOPigs on little things like Teapot Dome, Watergate, and Iran-Contra, difference is your shit happened in order 80, 33, and 18 years ago. G'head make that specios argument you hack ass hole

Posted by: effufucktard at Sat Dec 17 09:04:47 2005 (Sfcu+)

4 Hmmmmm -- so you equate a financial scandal, a second-rate burglary and a policy difference with the murder of 42 blacks and the overthrow of the elected government in a coup d'etat. Nice to know that you hold black lives to be so worthless.

But if you want more recent Democrat shenanigans, might I sugget that you consider the butterfly ballot created in 2000 in Palm Beach County by a Democrat official which is claimed to have disenfranchised thousands, the concerted effort by the Gore campaign to disenfranchise military voters in 2000, a century of Democrat efforts to prevent the passage of civil rights legislation championed by the GOP...

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Sat Dec 17 12:17:03 2005 (E4lNa)

5 While my friend Effie is a little harsh in his language, any sensible person knows that the democrats of today are not the democrats of 100 years ago, and that your run of the mill racist redneck votes republican these days.

Posted by: Dan at Sat Dec 17 13:25:55 2005 (aSKj6)

6 Yeah -- maybe some of them do, but the party denounces them and works to defeat them when they run for office.

On the other hand, very special racists get the title of "elder stateman" and, when the Democrats have a majority, President Pro Tem of the Senate

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Sat Dec 17 13:57:34 2005 (E4lNa)

7 Democrats believe in redemption. Byrd has changed with the times, and cannot fairly be accused of racism in his current behavior anymore than Bush should still be tagged with his leaving the TANG so that he could campaign for a racist.

Posted by: Dan at Sun Dec 18 06:18:39 2005 (aSKj6)

8 That's amusing -- given the fact that a courtly compliment to an old man on his 100th birthday (long after changing his stripes and supporting civil rights) was sufficient to get Trent Lott tarred as a racist.

Oh, yeah, that's right -- racist Democrats only believe in redemption for other racist Democrats. Republicans will be accused of racism without any significant evidence whatsoever. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given that FDR is trumpeted as a friend of the blacks despite refusing to desegregate the military, refusing to push for civil rights or anti-lynching legislation, and putting a known Kluxer on the Supreme Court.

Oh, and by the way, your slur directed against Winton Blount has only one problem to it -- a lack of supporting evidence.

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

I guess it is your own blind bigotry that leas you to presume that since the man was a Republican and a white southerner that he must be some sort of racist. I guess that makes you a lying liberal sack of shit, dan.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Sun Dec 18 09:24:55 2005 (bSDky)

9 No, RWR, it wasn't blind bigotry that made me call Blount a racist. It was the fact that he was part of the infamous Republican "Southern Strategy", and that he used billboards claiming "A vote for Red Blount is a vote against forced busing . . . against coddling criminals . . . against welfare freeloaders."

You may be surprised that I agree with you that Trent Lott got shafted - it was a stupid thing to say, but it shouldn't have done the damage it did.

And your silly slams on FDR may be answered by the equally silly accusation that Lincoln did not integrate the army, did not support suffrage for women, and was, similarly, a product of his times.

Posted by: Dan at Sun Dec 18 11:50:51 2005 (aSKj6)

10 In other words, you have no evidence to support an accusation of racism against Blount.

Let's look at those three points on the billboard.

1) Opposition to forced busing. A legitimate position, given that such plans broke up community ties and resulted in long bus rides for students based solely on the color of their skin. The major (if unstated) premise of the busing plans was that black students were incapable of learning if not exposed to a sufficient number of white students every day. In addition, it remains a reasonable proposition that the mandate of ending segregation set forth in Brown (designed to get kids sent to the closest school, regardless of race) did not require forced integration (which sent kids away from the closest school because of their race). In addition, the forced busing programs were imposed by judges who took away local control of schools in a fundamentally anti-democratic manner. Opposition to forced busing is therefore not proof of racism.

2) Opposition to coddling criminals. One of the major criticisms of the Warren Court of the 1960s was the emphsis on the rights of criminals and the accuse over the rights of society to punish criminals. The Warren Court revolutionized the criminal justice system in many ways -- but at the cost of making it more difficult to obtain evidence, obtain convictions, and punish criminals. Unless you believe -- as you obviously do, based upon your comment -- that "criminal" and :lack" are synonymous, there can be no case made for calling someone a racist for taking a hard-line on crime and criminal justice issues.

3) Opposition to the welfare state. Lyndon Johnson's great Society programs were controversial -- and, ultimately, a disasterous failure in that they created generational poverty and incentives to avoid getting off the government teat. Exactly as Blount and others warned at the time.

As for the Sputhern Strategy, popular left-wing mythology paints it as a plot to appeal to racism. Actually, it was a plan to strip the Democrats of their southern base by taking a middle ground between the liberal Democrats (Kennedy, et al.) of the North and the racist Democrats of the South (Wallace, maddox, Byrd, et al.). By creating a viable alternative to the racists that controlled the southern Democrats for decades (with the acceptance of the allegedly nn-racist liberal Democrats of the North), the Republicans built a non-racist conservative coalition that dominates American politics to this day.

And as for my points about FDR, i was trying to point out how Democrat Klansmen and other racists have always been embraced byt the Democrat party without really repenting of anything.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Sun Dec 18 12:44:28 2005 (bSDky)

11 Hah. You're still defending the billboard. Umm, sorry, I wish I had a way to break this to your more gently, but, YOU LOSE!!!! Your strained arguments don't pass the giggle test.

I don't mean to prolong your pain any further, and, if I were you, I'd probably ignore all this and tell Bush to spy on more citizens, but, anyhow, why did the republicans apologize for the "sputhern strategy" if it was so noble???

Posted by: Dan at Sun Dec 18 17:16:28 2005 (aSKj6)

12 Gee -- now we are into typo flames? That is the sure sign of a losing argument.

As for defending the billboard, you claimed that the points were racist and I explained that they are not.

And frankly, i don't think there should have been any apology for the Southern Strategy. Mehlman bought into the liberal Democrat mythology about it and pandered.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Mon Dec 19 02:44:56 2005 (vfAbE)

13 Sorry about the ding on the typo - I thought it was a pretty funny typo. But I certainly don't want to be held up for ridicule based on my typing difficulties, either.

You didn't explain that the billboard wasn't racist, you just came out with the same claptrap a racist back then would have used to excuse the positions.

And the fact that you understand the background and motivations behind the Southern Strategy better than Mehlman does is, to use a carefully chosen word, incredible.

Posted by: Dan at Mon Dec 19 04:20:38 2005 (lw0Ed)

14 Those are the arguments that would have been used because they were true three decades ago. I think it says more about liberals that they believe "Criminal=black" and "welfare cheat=black" than it does about conservatives.

By the way -- pat buchanan recently demolished the "racist southenr strategy" argument.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Mon Dec 19 09:09:18 2005 (KJjoZ)

15 Is that the same Pat Buchanan who defends Nazis and admires Hitler? Is that the same Pat Buchanan who called Dr. Martin Luther King a fraud? The same one who thought WMDs were called BLTs? You run in some freaky circles, my friend . . .

Posted by: Dan at Mon Dec 19 10:15:29 2005 (lw0Ed)

16 Defends Nazis -- you must mean the fellow who was "conclusively" proven to have been a sadistic concentration camp guard by the government, only to have that identification thrown out by courts in both the US and Israel.

Admire Hitler? You care to prove that? A quick Google search shows no evidence of that.

As for the King comment, you seem to have taken that one out of context. What i have found is a quote that says others view him that way, not that he does.

And why do I cite him (even though I have little use for him)? Because he was one of the architects of the Southern Strategy. That might give him a certain expertise that we both lack.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Mon Dec 19 12:52:06 2005 (axH3w)

17 He may have expertise in race-baiting in the south, but he doesn't have credibility. Not as much as me or you.

Posted by: Dan at Mon Dec 19 14:16:16 2005 (aSKj6)

18 No, Dan, the only race-baiting I see is yours.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Mon Dec 19 16:19:55 2005 (o9+7O)

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Let me begin by saying I have long been a fan of historian Niall Ferguson. Here is the sort of analysis that leads me to view him as such a gem, pulled from his critique of Nobel Literature Laureate Harold Pinter's recent anti-American screed.

Nobody pretends that the United States came through the Cold War with clean hands. But to pretend that its crimes were equivalent to those of its Communist opponents - and that they have been wilfully hushed up - is fatally to blur the distinction between truth and falsehood. That may be permissible on stage. I am afraid it is quite routine in diplomacy. But is unacceptable in serious historical discussion.

So stick to plays, Harold, and stop torturing history. Even if there was a Nobel Prize for it, you wouldn't stand a chance. Because in my profession, unlike yours - and unlike Condi's, too - there really are "hard distinctionsÂ… between what is true and what is false".

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

Posted by: Greg at 04:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I pass near to her each day, travelling to and from work.

I've seen her declining over the years.

Now there may be a way to save her.

She is the Bstate's last surviving veteran of both world wars

She is a welcome friend and a formidible foe.

She is a battleship.

She is USS Texas.

The Battleship Texas may soon win a battle that few warships survive.

The nearly century-old dreadnought could be raised from the water and displayed permanently in a dry berth to stop rust from eating its hull.

"Rust is the ship's enemy," said Barry Ward, director and curator of the Battleship Texas State Historic Site. "The drier it is, the better it is."

Commissioned in 1914 and a combat veteran of both world wars, the oft-decorated battlewagon rests at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River near the Houston Ship Channel. It was moored there in 1948 after the U.S. Navy decommissioned it and gave it to the state.

It serves as a floating museum at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historical Park and is operated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Help save this piece of American maritime history.

Posted by: Greg at 01:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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We always hear about the evil of the Crusades and the righteous indignation of Muslims over a series of wars that provide a poor witness to the Gospel. However, was Islam an innocent victim, or were the crusades a response to a long series of Muslim religious conquest of Christian lands and oppression of Christian believers?

Take a look at the timeline and decide. I'll put Muslim jihad against Christian lands in bold, and Christian assaults on Islamic lands in italics.

630 Two years before Muhammad’s death of a fever, he launches the Tabuk Crusades, in which he led 30,000 jihadists against the Byzantine Christians. He had heard a report that a huge army had amassed to attack Arabia, but the report turned out to be a false rumor. The Byzantine army never materialized. He turned around and went home, but not before extracting “agreements” from northern tribes. They could enjoy the “privilege” of living under Islamic “protection” (read: not be attacked by Islam), if they paid a tax (jizya).

This tax sets the stage for MuhammadÂ’s and the later CaliphsÂ’ policies. If the attacked city or region did not want to convert to Islam, then they paid a jizya tax. If they converted, then they paid a zakat tax. Either way, money flowed back to the Islamic treasury in Arabia or to the local Muslim governor.

632-634 Under the Caliphate of Abu Bakr the Muslim Crusaders reconquer and sometimes conquer for the first time the polytheists of Arabia. These Arab polytheists had to convert to Islam or die. They did not have the choice of remaining in their faith and paying a tax. Islam does not allow for religious freedom.

633 The Muslim Crusaders, led by Khalid al-Walid, a superior but bloodthirsty military commander, whom Muhammad nicknamed the Sword of Allah for his ferocity in battle (Tabari, 8:158 / 1616-17), conquer the city of Ullays along the Euphrates River (in todayÂ’s Iraq). Khalid captures and beheads so many that a nearby canal, into which the blood flowed, was called Blood Canal (Tabari 11:24 / 2034-35).

634 At the Battle of Yarmuk in Syria the Muslim Crusaders defeat the Byzantines. Today Osama bin Laden draws inspiration from the defeat, and especially from an anecdote about Khalid al-Walid. An unnamed Muslim remarks: “The Romans are so numerous and the Muslims so few.” To this Khalid retorts: “How few are the Romans, and how many the Muslims! Armies become numerous only with victory and few only with defeat, not by the number of men. By God, I would love it . . . if the enemy were twice as many” (Tabari, 11:94 / 2095). Osama bin Ladin quotes Khalid and says that his fighters love death more than we in the West love life. This philosophy of death probably comes from a verse like Sura 2:96. Muhammad assesses the Jews: “[Prophet], you are sure to find them [the Jews] clinging to life more eagerly than any other people, even polytheists” (MAS Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an, Oxford UP, 2004; first insertion in brackets is Haleem’s; the second mine).

634-644 The Caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab, who is regarded as particularly brutal.

635 Muslim Crusaders besiege and conquer of Damascus

636 Muslim Crusaders defeat Byzantines decisively at Battle of Yarmuk.

637 Muslim Crusaders conquer Iraq at the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah (some date it in 635 or 636)

638 Muslim Crusaders conquer and annex Jerusalem, taking it from the Byzantines.

638-650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Iran, except along Caspian Sea.

639-642 Muslim Crusaders conquer Egypt.

641 Muslim Crusaders control Syria and Palestine.

643-707 Muslim Crusaders conquer North Africa.

644 Caliph Umar is assassinated by a Persian prisoner of war; Uthman ibn Affan is elected third Caliph, who is regarded by many Muslims as gentler than Umar.

644-650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa, and establish Islamic rule in Iran, Afghanistan, and Sind.

656 Caliph Uthman is assassinated by disgruntled Muslim soldiers; Ali ibn Abi Talib, son-in-law and cousin to Muhammad, who married the prophetÂ’s daughter Fatima through his first wife Khadija, is set up as Caliph.

656 Battle of the Camel, in which Aisha, MuhammadÂ’s wife, leads a rebellion against Ali for not avenging UthmanÂ’s assassination. AliÂ’s partisans win.

657 Battle of Siffin between Ali and Muslim governor of Jerusalem, arbitration goes against Ali

661 Murder of Ali by an extremist; AliÂ’s supporters acclaim his son Hasan as next Caliph, but he comes to an agreement with Muawiyyah I and retires to Medina.

661-680 the Caliphate of Muawiyyah I. He founds Umayyid dynasty and moves capital from Medina to Damascus

673-678 Arabs besiege Constantinople, capital of Byzantine Empire

680 Massacre of Hussein (MuhammadÂ’s grandson), his family, and his supporters in Karbala, Iraq.

691 Dome of the Rock is completed in Jerusalem, only six decades after MuhammadÂ’s death.

705 Abd al-Malik restores Umayyad rule.

710-713 Muslim Crusaders conquer the lower Indus Valley.

711-713 Muslim Crusaders conquer Spain and impose the kingdom of Andalus. This article recounts how Muslims today still grieve over their expulsion 700 years later. They seem to believe that the land belonged to them in the first place.

719 Cordova, Spain, becomes seat of Arab governor

732 The Muslim Crusaders stopped at the Battle of Poitiers; that is, Franks (France) halt Arab advance

749 The Abbasids conquer Kufah and overthrow Umayyids

756 Foundation of Umayyid amirate in Cordova, Spain, setting up an independent kingdom from Abbasids

762 Foundation of Baghdad

785 Foundation of the Great Mosque of Cordova

789 Rise of Idrisid amirs (Muslim Crusaders) in Morocco; foundation of Fez; Christoforos, a Muslim who converted to Christianity, is executed.

800 Autonomous Aghlabid dynasty (Muslim Crusaders) in Tunisia

807 Caliph Harun al-Rashid orders the destruction of non-Muslim prayer houses and of the church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem

809 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sardinia, Italy

813 Christians in Palestine are attacked; many flee the country

831 Muslim Crusaders capture Palermo, Italy; raids in Southern Italy

850 Caliph al-Matawakkil orders the destruction of non-Muslim houses of prayer

855 Revolt of the Christians of Hims (Syria)

837-901 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sicily, raid Corsica, Italy, France

869-883 Revolt of black slaves in Iraq

909 Rise of the Fatimid Caliphate in Tunisia; these Muslim Crusaders occupy Sicily, Sardinia

928-969 Byzantine military revival, they retake old territories, such as Cyprus (964) and Tarsus (969)

937 The Ikhshid, a particularly harsh Muslim ruler, writes to Emperor Romanus, boasting of his control over the holy places

937 The Church of the Resurrection (known as Church of Holy Sepulcher in Latin West) is burned down by Muslims; more churches in Jerusalem are attacked

960 Conversion of Qarakhanid Turks to Islam

966 Anti-Christian riots in Jerusalem

969 Fatimids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Egypt and found Cairo

c. 970 Seljuks enter conquered Islamic territories from the East

973 Israel and southern Syria are again conquered by the Fatimids

1003 First persecutions by al-Hakim; the Church of St. Mark in Fustat, Egypt, is destroyed

1009 Destruction of the Church of the Resurrection by al-Hakim (see 937)

1012 Beginning of al-HakimÂ’s oppressive decrees against Jews and Christians

1015 Earthquake in Palestine; the dome of the Dome of the Rock collapses

1031 Collapse of Umayyid Caliphate and establishment of 15 minor independent dynasties throughout Muslim Andalus

1048 Reconstruction of the Church of the Resurrection completed

1050 Creation of Almoravid (Muslim Crusaders) movement in Mauretania; Almoravids (aka Murabitun) are coalition of western Saharan Berbers; followers of Islam, focusing on the Quran, the hadith, and Maliki law.

1055 Seljuk Prince Tughrul enters Baghdad, consolidation of the Seljuk Sultanate

1055 Confiscation of property of Church of the Resurrection

1071 Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk Turks (Muslim Crusaders) defeat Byzantines and occupy much of Anatolia

1071 Turks (Muslim Crusaders) invade Palestine

1073 Conquest of Jerusalem by Turks (Muslim Crusaders)

1075 Seljuks (Muslim Crusaders) capture Nicea (Iznik) and make it their capital in Anatolia

1076 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) conquer western Ghana

1085 Toledo is taken back by Christian armies

1086 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) send help to Andalus, Battle of Zallaca

1090-1091 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) occupy all of Andalus except Saragossa and Balearic Islands

1094 Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I asks western Christendom for help against Seljuk invasions of his territory; Seljuks are Muslim Turkish family of eastern origins; see 970

1095 Pope Urban II preaches first Crusade; they capture Jerusalem in 1099

So, let's consider these simple questions. Were the Crusades an unprovoked assault by the Christian world upon Islam, or a Christian response to a long train of attacks and assaults upon Christian nations, Christian institutions, and Christian people? Is the anti-Christian rhetoric of Osama and the Islamists a response to the Crusades, or a true expression of Islam that dates back to its foundation?

I believe the above makes the answers quite obvious.

Posted by: Greg at 01:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Words from the great leaders of the past, acknowledging the need for offering thanks to God Almighty for all the good things he has given and done for this most blessed of nations, the United States of America.

George Washington -- 1789

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the provisions of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint committee requested me to "recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many single favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

Now therefore do I recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the Service of that great and glorious Being, who is the benificent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks, for His kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the single and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of His providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, of the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have to acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favours which He hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humble offering our prayers and supplications to the Great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all people, by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Abraham Lincoln -- 1863

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the boarders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battle-field, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our benificent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full employment and peace, harmony, tranquility and union.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand, and cause the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

A Happy Thanksgiving to all, as we lift up our voices in humble praise of God.

Posted by: Greg at 05:59 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Of all the evils that manifested themselves in the Twentieth Century, the evil of Communism is clearly the most insidious.

Even today, this malignant ideology is supported and defended by those who have always lived in freedom. They deny the relaity that was lived and which is testified to by the millions who survived the brutal Communist regimes that oppressed (and which still oppress) billions. Such defenders of Communism are no better than the Holocaust denying stooges who seek to explain away the gas chambers and crematoria of the Nazi death camps.

Such defenses of this ongoing manifestation of oppression must be countered, lest today's generation be fooled and future generations forget the horrors committed by the various manifestations of Communism.

Red State and Chequer-Board (Pejman's new home) are both offering suport to the building of The Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, DC. I wholeheartedly join in their endorsement of this project, and encourage donations to The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Under Public Law 103-199, our Foundation is authorized to design, construct and maintain an international Memorial to the more than 100 million victims of communism. In April 2005, the National Capital Planning Commission formally approved a site for our Memorial at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., New Jersey Avenue, N.W., and G Street, N.W. It is across from the Georgetown University Law Center and only two blocks from Union Station and the Metro.

In October 2005, the National Capital Planning Commission gave preliminary approval to our design--a 10-foot bronze replica of the "Democracy" statue erected by Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and based on our own Statue of Liberty. We will receive final approval at the November NCPC meeting.

Our next step is to raise all the funds needed to build and maintain the Memorial--approximately $700,000. We have raised two-thirds of this amount. We have received challenge grants of $125,000, meaning we need to raise $125,000 from supporters like you.

We rightly remember the millions who died at the hands of the Hitler and the Nazis. Do what you are able to commemorate those who suffered and died from Communism.

Posted by: Greg at 12:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I understand the desire of historians and others to see this article about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Heck, I want to read it – but I have no problem waiting a few more weeks until all the related documents are declassified and free for public inspection.

National Security Agency officers mistranslated interceptions involving the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, and their mistake was covered up by deliberate falsifications, says a researcher trying to obtain an article that lays out what happened.

Now, says researcher Matthew Aid, the NSA is blocking release of the article, by an NSA historian, about the incident that led to a massive U.S. buildup in Vietnam by President Lyndon B. Johnson with the near-unanimous backing of Congress.

Aid, who requested the article last year under the Freedom of Information Act, said it appeared that NSA officers made honest mistakes in translating the intercepted messages about what was reported as a North Vietnamese attack on American destroyers in the gulf off the coast of what was then North Vietnam.

Rather than correct the mistakes, the 2001 article in the NSA's classified Cryptologic Quarterly says, midlevel officials decided to falsify documents to cover up the errors, according to Aid, who is working on a history of the agency and has talked to a number of current and former government officials about this chapter of American history.

Aid said he had been told that the article, written by NSA historian Robert Hanyok, analyzes problems found in interceptions about the events. He said the nature and extent of the mistakes remained unclear, and that some senior officials at NSA who were not involved with the errors had taken issue with the journal article.

Let’s look at this objectively. It takes time to declassify documents – especially if they hint at our capabilities and methods for intercepting information today. Let the process work -- especially given the planned release date of the declassified documents.

In a written statement, NSA spokesman Don Weber said the agency had delayed releasing the article "in an effort to be consistent with our preferred practice of providing the public a more contextual perspective." The agency plans to release the article and related materials next month, he said.
"Instead of simply releasing the author's historical account, the agency worked to declassify the associated signals intelligence ... and other classified documents used to draw his conclusions," Weber said.

In other words, Aid will get the documents sometime around Christmas. There is no critical need to release the documents to the public today, given that we are dealing with incidents that are decades old.

Except, of course, that Aid seems o have a political agenda in his demand for immediate release of the article absent the supporting evidence.

Aid drew comparisons to more recent intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that overstated the threat posed by President Saddam Hussein's arsenal.

"The question becomes, why not release this?" Aid said of the article. "We have some documents that, from my perspective, I think would be very instructive to the public and the intelligence community ... on a mistake made 41 years ago that was just as bad as the WMD debacle."

In other words, he wants to analogize the conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq. He is not particularly interested in the accuracy of the Hanyok article or the analogy. He simply wants a club with which to beat the administration on a matter with which he disagrees.

HereÂ’s hoping the agency sticks to its guns so that everything comes out at once, allowing a full review of HanyokÂ’s conclusions.

Posted by: Greg at 02:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Just a reminder by those who think emote that 2000 lives lost in Iraq are too many.

U.S. military deaths, from combat and other causes during World War II, numbered 407,316. But even World War II did not produce the heaviest death toll.

That distinction belongs to the U.S. Civil War -- 558,052 dead.

Given that Cindy Sheehan is a raving anti-Semite, we know that she would have been horrified at the loss of 400,000 Americans in a war that would help save Jewish lived. But I’m curious – how many dead Americans were too many in a war that had the aim of freeing black slaves and preserving the Union?

Oh, that’s right – Sheehan doesn’t think America has ever been worth dying for.

Posted by: Greg at 01:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I saw the news as i returned home from teaching my night class. Interestingly enough, I had talked about Rosa parks a couple of classes back, using her story as an example of how interest groups (such as the NAACP) can influence public policy.

The Washington post pulled its long-written obituary out of the files and ran it. It is every bit the hagiographic piece that one would expect. I was particularly struck by this analysis.

Parks said that she didn't fully realize what she was starting when she decided not to move on that Dec. 1, 1955, evening in Montgomery, Ala. It was a simple refusal, but her arrest and the resulting protests began the complex cultural struggle to legally guarantee equal rights to Americans of all races.

Within days, her arrest sparked a 380-day bus boycott, which led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that desegregated her city's public transportation. Her arrest also triggered mass demonstrations, made the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. famous, and transformed schools, workplaces and housing.

Hers was "an individual expression of a timeless longing for human dignity and freedom," King said in his book "Stride Toward Freedom."

"She was planted there by her personal sense of dignity and self-respect. She was anchored to that seat by the accumulated indignities of days gone and the boundless aspirations of generations yet unborn."

She was the perfect test-case plaintiff, a fact that activists realized only after she had been arrested. Hardworking, polite and morally upright, Parks had long seethed over the everyday indignities of segregation, from the menial rules of bus seating and store entrances to the mortal societal endorsement of lynching and imprisonment.

She was an activist already, secretary of the local chapter of the NAACP. A member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church all her life, Parks admired the self-help philosophy of Booker T. Washington -- to a point. But even as a child, she thought accommodating segregation was the wrong philosophy. She knew that in the previous year, two other women had been arrested for the same offense, but neither was deemed right to handle the role that was sure to become one of the most controversial of the century.

I wish that the article got more at the truth -- Rosa Parks wasn't some tire woman caught up in events -- given her history of activism, she was intended to be a test case. Her arrest was not a random event, but rather a calculated one. That does not make her any less heroic, and I would argue that it actually makes her more heroic. She intentionally put herself on the line, and was not simply a pawn who let events swirl out of control around her..

Farewell, dear Rosa, rest well, and may choirs of angels sing you to your heavenly reward.

Posted by: Greg at 11:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Asia, in the form that we know it, exists because of the efforts of Douglas MacArthur. Japan is a capitalist parliamentary democracy. The Phillipines are an independent country. And South Korea? It was freed from the clutches of Imperial Japan and saved from the aggression of Communist North Korea through his efforts -- and it is now one of the most prosperous nations in the world.

But what sort of respect does MacArthur get from today's South Koreans?

For the last six months, activists have gathered around MacArthur's statue above Inchon harbor for anti-American/anti-alliance hate-fests, including violent attempts to topple the monument. The latest rally was on Sept. 11, a date plainly chosen to sting Americans.

Just four days before the 55th anniversary of the Sept. 15, 1950 landing, 4,000 anti-U.S. activists, armed with bamboo poles and metal pipes, led assaults on the statue in Inchon's Freedom Park, calling MacArthur "a war criminal who massacred numerous [Korean] civilians."

Outrageous! Actually, he was a war hero whose exertions on behalf of your people ensured your liberty to support the northern neghbors who would take that liberty from you.

Fortunately, there are some who still remember the greatness of the man.

Pro-American Koreans have spoken up, too. Indeed, 10,000 of them, including South Korean Marine vets, headed to Inchon on the 15th to guard the statue on the anniversary — at which point the protestors wimped out, pulling a no-show.

I salute those who remember the wrks of Douglas MacArthur with gratitude.

I have to agree with Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation when he writes

[L]last month's assault on MacArthur's statue won't be the last. At some point, the radicals may actually be able to pull down the monument, offending Korean vets and millions of Americans who have selflessly served — or serve — in South Korea to protect freedom a long way from home and family.

Tha is, indeed, the truth. That grand coalition, perhaps the only time the United Nations ever stood for freedom in the face of Communism, was made up of many brave men and women. And we in the United Sates must prevent that insult. And so I join with Brookes in supporting the removal of the statue to the Korean War Veteran's Memorial in Washington, DC.

And while we are at it, let's bring home all the young soldiers at the same time that the Old Soldier finds a place of honor in our country. After all, it is time that South Korea shoulder the full burden of the freedom that MacArthur was so instrumental in winning for them.

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Gee -- the human population of the palnet would have been inconsequential in 5000 BC. What caused the advent of global warming then?

Archaeologists have unearthed the prehistoric equivalent of the M1, apparently built in a hurry across flooding peat bogs during global warming around 5000BC.

The track of parallel pine logs on Hatfield Moors, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, is one of the earliest of its type to be found in Europe and was described by English Heritage as "internationally significant". More than 50 metres of track has been excavated in the past year.

Findings suggest that the roadway, discovered accidentally by a Doncaster man, Mick Oliver, was laid out hurriedly as rising seas spilled on to the moor.

Would any of you care to rethink the notion that humanity is reponsible for current climate changes -- which are much more likely cyclical in nature.

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Whenever I visit family in the area, I always stop in to visit the replica of Lewis and ClarkÂ’s Fort Clatsop, where they spent the winter after crossing the continent. Much of the fort has burned in a suspicious fire earlier this week.

A 50-year-old replica of the fort where the Lewis and Clark expedition spent the soggy winter of 1805-1806 was destroyed by a suspicious fire, authorities said Tuesday.

Volunteer firefighters worked for hours to try to save Fort Clatsop at the Lewis and Clark National Historic Park after the fire broke out Monday night, park superintendent Chip Jenkins said. But "half of the fort was burned up, and the other half is essentially a loss," he said.

The site was being treated as a crime scene, and investigators said they were looking for a truck seen leaving the area as the firefighters arrived.

State police and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were sending in dogs trained to sniff out the presence of any flammable liquids.

Jenkins said the fort had no electricity or gas source.

The fire happened less than six weeks before a Lewis and Clark Bicentennial event was scheduled to be held at the fort, the culmination of a two-year, national celebration of the explorers' journey West. The expedition had wintered at Fort Clatsop after reaching the Pacific Ocean in November 1805.

"We will rebuild," Jenkins said. "The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial events will go on through the winter."

The current structure was built 50 years ago to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the expedition in 1955. The fort has been the location of interpretive programs that do a superg job of recreating life at the fort during that winter, and has among the best historical programs I have seen at a national park. I hope they catch the perps.

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There have long been questions about the location of Ithaca, the home of Homer’s great hero, Odysseus. Scholars may have found it.

Homer's legendary hero Odysseus wandered for 10 years in search of his island kingdom, Ithaca. Now, a British amateur archaeologist claims to have ended the ancient quest to locate the land described in "The Odyssey."

Although the western Greek island of Ithaki is generally accepted as the Homeric site, scholars have long been troubled by a mismatch between its location and geography and those of the Ithaca described by Ancient Greece's greatest poet.

Robert Bittlestone, a management consultant, said Thursday that the peninsula of Paliki on the Ionian island of Cephallonia, near Ithaki, was the most likely location for Odysseus' homeland. He said geological and historic evidence suggested Paliki used to form a separate island before earthquakes and landslides filled in a narrow sea channel dividing it from Cephallonia.

"Other theories have assumed that the landscape today is the same as in the Bronze Age, and that Homer perhaps didn't know the landscape very well," Bittlestone told a central London news conference. "But what if the mismatch was because the geography has in fact changed?"

Two eminent British academics said they backed Bittlestone's theory. They have co-written his book, "Odysseus Unbound -- The Search for Homer's Ithaca."

James Diggle, a professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, said the hypothesis worked because it explained why in one passage Homer describes Ithaca as "low-lying" and "towards dusk," i.e. lying to the west of a group of islands including Cephallonia and Zakynthos.

The Paliki peninsula is largely flat and connects to Cephallonia's west coast, whereas Ithaki is mountainous and lies to the east. Bittlestone's theory suggests that Ithaki corresponds to the island Homer calls Doulichion.

"I have never for once doubted that the theory is right because it explains all the details," Diggle told The Associated Press.

Cool stuff!

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There have long been questions about the location of Ithaca, the home of HomerÂ’s great hero, Odysseus. Scholars may have found it.

Homer's legendary hero Odysseus wandered for 10 years in search of his island kingdom, Ithaca. Now, a British amateur archaeologist claims to have ended the ancient quest to locate the land described in "The Odyssey."

Although the western Greek island of Ithaki is generally accepted as the Homeric site, scholars have long been troubled by a mismatch between its location and geography and those of the Ithaca described by Ancient Greece's greatest poet.

Robert Bittlestone, a management consultant, said Thursday that the peninsula of Paliki on the Ionian island of Cephallonia, near Ithaki, was the most likely location for Odysseus' homeland. He said geological and historic evidence suggested Paliki used to form a separate island before earthquakes and landslides filled in a narrow sea channel dividing it from Cephallonia.

"Other theories have assumed that the landscape today is the same as in the Bronze Age, and that Homer perhaps didn't know the landscape very well," Bittlestone told a central London news conference. "But what if the mismatch was because the geography has in fact changed?"

Two eminent British academics said they backed Bittlestone's theory. They have co-written his book, "Odysseus Unbound -- The Search for Homer's Ithaca."

James Diggle, a professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, said the hypothesis worked because it explained why in one passage Homer describes Ithaca as "low-lying" and "towards dusk," i.e. lying to the west of a group of islands including Cephallonia and Zakynthos.

The Paliki peninsula is largely flat and connects to Cephallonia's west coast, whereas Ithaki is mountainous and lies to the east. Bittlestone's theory suggests that Ithaki corresponds to the island Homer calls Doulichion.

"I have never for once doubted that the theory is right because it explains all the details," Diggle told The Associated Press.

Cool stuff!

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Look at this find from Creete -- life-size statues of Hera and Athena found in their original setting!

The works, representing the goddesses Athena and Hera, date to between the second and fourth centuries - during the period of Roman rule in Greece - and originally decorated the Roman theater in the town of Gortyn, archaeologist Anna Micheli from the Italian School of Archaeology told The Associated Press.

"They are in very good condition," she said, adding that the statue of Athena, goddess of wisdom, was complete, while Hera - long-suffering wife of Zeus, the philandering king of gods - was headless.

"But we hope to find the head in the surrounding area," Micheli said.

Standing six feet high with their bases, the works were discovered Tuesday by a team of Italian and Greek archaeologists excavating the ruined theater of Gortyn, about 27 miles south of Iraklion in central Crete.

Micheli said the goddesses were toppled from their plinths by a powerful earthquake around A.D. 367 that destroyed the theater and much of the town.

The statues fell off the stage, and were found just in front of their original position, she said.

"This is one of the rare cases when such works are discovered in the building where they initially stood," she added.

Hopes are high that other parts of the theater's sculptural decoration will emerge during future excavations.

"Digging has stopped due to the finds, but we suspect there may be more statues in the area," she said.

The town where the statues were found, Gortyn, has been occupied since around 3000 BC, and was a major center of the Minoan civilization that predated the Mycenaean Greece of Homer. It later served as the Roman capital of Crete, and was one of the cities in which St. Titus would have preached the Gospel.

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A group of old soldiers gathered the other day to keep alive the memory one of their own -- 2nd Lt. Robert Ronald Leisy, who gave his life in Vietnam at age 24 so that others might live.

The day Leisy died, a reconnaissance squad of eight or nine men scouting a valley strayed into a North Vietnamese regiment of several hundred men and were being cut to pieces.

"We aren't going to leave those guys down there," Leisy said.

In the face of withering fire, Leisy raced to position his men and was moving with Baillargeon, calling in artillery, to the front of the line.

" 'Bernie, this is like the valley of the Little Big Horn.' That's the last thing he said to me," Baillargeon remembers.

And then Leisy saw a North Vietnamese sniper in a tree aim and fire a B-40 rocket at them.

In a fraction of a second, he smothered Baillargeon with his body. Gene Clark, 57 and a retired Macomb, Ill., police officer, was the medic who braved bullets to save lives that day. He saw that one of Leisy's hands was gone, his leg and abdomen shredded.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make it, am I?' " Clark recalls.

Yet Leisy continued to direct the fight, waving off Clark to help others.
Leisy was strapped into a litter, but the fighting was so intense no helicopter could approach, and he died within three hours.

LeisyÂ’s heroism was recognized by a grateful nation when he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1971.

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The seminal account of the "Middle Passage" of African blacks to America for enslavement was written by Olaudah Equiano. His claim was to have been an African who survived the journey, and his story was purported to be a first-hand account in 1789.

But new evidence raises a question about the facts of Equiano's life -- and whether the story he told was true. And lest you think this is simply an obscure academic debate, please realize that Equiano's account is the basis for much historical thinking on the Middle Passage. I include Equiano's account when I teach about slavery, and it is either explicitly or implicitly a part of most textbooks used today.

Things began around 15 years ago, when Carretta, a professor of English at Maryland who had long been enamored of Equiano, ever since he started teaching his autobiography to undergrads, hopped a plane to England and started hunting. At Westminster Abbey, he stumbled on the documents that recast Equiano's beginnings in a completely unexpected light.

"No one had ever looked at his naval records," Carretta says, still sounding a little surprised. "He tells us the month and year and place he was baptized.

"I was indeed shocked. I said, 'This does not make sense, this shouldn't be. What do I do with it?' "

Carretta decided to test the waters: He edited a new edition of "The Interesting Narrative" for Penguin in 1995 -- and listed his discovery in a footnote. No one noticed.

So in 1999, feeling a little more adventurous, he printed his findings in a history journal, Slavery and Abolition. People noticed.

Some academics in African American studies saw Carretta's findings as an attempt to discredit Equiano, to depict him as the pawn of white abolitionists.

At an academic conference in 2003, scholars debated whether Equiano's claims of his origins were "most likely rhetorical exercises," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which first reported on Carretta's biography.

Carretta sees his findings as a twist in the narrative, one that intrigues but, he argues, in no way diminishes Equiano's authority.

"No one raises these questions about Ben Franklin," says Carretta, whose book is titled "Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man."

"No one believes Franklin's biography is absolutely unvarnished, true. Everyone selects, elaborates, enhances, embroiders. We expect that. To not, is to assume that someone is a transparent auto-Dictaphone, and can't shape anything, which is more demeaning.

"My Equiano is a literary genius. Other people's Equiano is more like a literary tape recorder: He says what he says."

Actually, I would argue that this could seriously undermine Equiano's authority. This is not a question of a self-serving varnish on one's autobiography, but instead is a question of complete fictionalization of one's life. Carretta is corrects in labeling him a literary genius -- but the problem is that his account is held up as a work of history. If what we have is a novel rather than a memoir, this important narrative of the Middle Passage loses much of its historical importance.

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A month back, I linked to a story about the possible discovery of King David's palace in Jerusalem.

Well, now there is another article, this one somewhat more scholarly and not tinged with the subtle and implicit anti-Semitism of the first.

The evidence is remarkable. It includes a section of massive wall running about 100 feet from west to east along the length of the excavation, and ending with a right-angle corner that turns south and implies a very large building. Within the dirt fill between the stones of the great wall were found pottery shards dating to the eleventh century b.c.e.; this is the earliest possible date for the walls’ construction. Two additional walls, also large, running perpendicular to the first, contain pottery dating to the tenth century b.c.e.–meaning that further additions were made after the time of David and Solomon or during their reign, suggesting that the building continued to be used and improved over a period of centuries. The structure is built directly on bedrock along the city’s northern edge, with no archaeological layers beneath it–a sign that this structure, built two millennia after the city’s founding, constituted a new, northward expansion of the city’s northern limit. And it is located at what was then the very summit of the mountain–a reasonable place indeed for the palace from which David “descended.”

This immediate evidence fits well with other archaeological finds from the site, as well. In 1963, the renowned archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon reported finding a Phoenician “proto-Aeolic capital,” or decorative stone column head dating to the same period, at the bottom of the cliff atop which the new excavation has taken place. Kenyon wrote that this capital, along with other cut stones she found there, were “typical of the best period of Israelite building, during which the use of Phoenician craftsman was responsible for an exotic flowering of Palestinian architecture. It would seem, therefore, that during the period of monarchic Jerusalem, a building of some considerable pretensions stood on top of the scarp.” In the early 1980s, Hebrew University’s Yigael Shiloh uncovered the enormous “stepped-stone” support structure which now appears to be part of the same complex of buildings. And in the new excavation, Mazar has discovered a remarkable clay bulla, or signet impression, bearing the name of Yehuchal Ben Shelemiah, a noble of Judea from the time of King Zedekiah who is mentioned by name in Jeremiah 37:3–evidence suggesting that four centuries after David, the site was still an important seat of Judean royalty. This matches the biblical account according to which the palace was in more or less continuous use from its construction until the destruction of Judea by the Babylonians in 586 b.c.e.

So, is it David’s palace? It is extremely difficult to say with certainty; indeed, no plaque has been found that says on it, “David’s Palace”; nor is it likely that such definitive evidence will ever be found. And yet, the evidence seems to fit surprisingly well with the claim, and there are no finds that suggest the contrary, such as the idolatrous statuettes or ritual crematoria found in contemporary Phoenician settlements. The location, size, style, and dating are all right, and it appears in a part of the ancient world where such constructions were extremely rare and represented the greatest sort of public works. Could it be something else? Of course. Has a better explanation been offered to match the data–data which includes not only archaeological finds, but the text itself? No.

If this discovery stands up, it will put to rest the revisionist school that claims that Jerusalem was an unimportant town and that the history of Israel contained in the Hebrew Scriptures is a pious fiction forged centuries after the fact.

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I had a kid in my class wearing a Che Guevara shirt last week. He didn’t know anything about the man whose face he was displaying, or the fact the man was a part of spreading and perpetuating the ideology that killed more people than any other in the 20th century.

Now the famed commie’s family wants to control marketing of the iconic photo that turns up just about everywhere.

With his picture on rock band posters, baseball caps and women's lingerie, Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara is firmly entrenched in the capitalist consumer society that he died fighting to overturn.

The image of the Argentine-born guerrilla gazing sternly into the distance, long-hair tucked into a beret with a single star, has been an enduring 20th century pop icon.

The picture -- taken by a Cuban photographer in 1960 and printed on posters by an Italian publisher after Guevara's execution in Bolivia seven years later -- fired the imagination of rioting Parisian students in May 1968 and became a symbol of idealistic revolt for a generation.

But as well as being one of the world's most reproduced, the image has become one of its most merchandised. And Guevara's family is launching an effort to stop it. They plan to file lawsuits abroad against companies that they believe are exploiting the image and say lawyers in a number of countries have offered assistance.

"We have a plan to deal with the misuse," Guevara's Cuban widow Aleida March said in an interview.

"We can't attack everyone with lances like Don Quixote, but we can try to maintain the ethics" of Guevara's legacy, said March, who will lead the effort from the Che Guevara Studies Center which is opening in Havana later this year.

"The center intends to contain the uncontrolled use of Che's image. It will be costly and difficult because each country has different laws, but a limit has to be drawn," the legendary guerrilla's daughter, Aleida Guevara, told Reuters.

Now let’s wait just one minute here. This is no different than the bin Ladens trying to profit off of pictures of Osama, or of the Hitlers trying to ensure that Adolf’s image is used only in ways consistent with his principles. So while I would be thrilled to never have to look at some smug middle class brat in Old Navy jeans and a pair of Air Jordans ignorantly displaying the visage of an old commie who would have gladly executed the kid as a class enemy, I would don’t want to see the family succeed. After all, allowing th4 family to make money off of Che would be a repudiation of the very principles they seek to uphold – and the fact that the face of the revolution is so commercialized is the ultimate in ironic rejections of the hell-spawned ideology of communism.

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I had a kid in my class wearing a Che Guevara shirt last week. He didnÂ’t know anything about the man whose face he was displaying, or the fact the man was a part of spreading and perpetuating the ideology that killed more people than any other in the 20th century.

Now the famed commieÂ’s family wants to control marketing of the iconic photo that turns up just about everywhere.

With his picture on rock band posters, baseball caps and women's lingerie, Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara is firmly entrenched in the capitalist consumer society that he died fighting to overturn.

The image of the Argentine-born guerrilla gazing sternly into the distance, long-hair tucked into a beret with a single star, has been an enduring 20th century pop icon.

The picture -- taken by a Cuban photographer in 1960 and printed on posters by an Italian publisher after Guevara's execution in Bolivia seven years later -- fired the imagination of rioting Parisian students in May 1968 and became a symbol of idealistic revolt for a generation.

But as well as being one of the world's most reproduced, the image has become one of its most merchandised. And Guevara's family is launching an effort to stop it. They plan to file lawsuits abroad against companies that they believe are exploiting the image and say lawyers in a number of countries have offered assistance.

"We have a plan to deal with the misuse," Guevara's Cuban widow Aleida March said in an interview.

"We can't attack everyone with lances like Don Quixote, but we can try to maintain the ethics" of Guevara's legacy, said March, who will lead the effort from the Che Guevara Studies Center which is opening in Havana later this year.

"The center intends to contain the uncontrolled use of Che's image. It will be costly and difficult because each country has different laws, but a limit has to be drawn," the legendary guerrilla's daughter, Aleida Guevara, told Reuters.

Now let’s wait just one minute here. This is no different than the bin Ladens trying to profit off of pictures of Osama, or of the Hitlers trying to ensure that Adolf’s image is used only in ways consistent with his principles. So while I would be thrilled to never have to look at some smug middle class brat in Old Navy jeans and a pair of Air Jordans ignorantly displaying the visage of an old commie who would have gladly executed the kid as a class enemy, I would don’t want to see the family succeed. After all, allowing th4 family to make money off of Che would be a repudiation of the very principles they seek to uphold – and the fact that the face of the revolution is so commercialized is the ultimate in ironic rejections of the hell-spawned ideology of communism.

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Two archaeological discoveries, only a few hundred miles apart. Both shed light on the region's rich heritage and importance. Notice how differently they are reported.

The first comes from Israel, where a possible palace or fortress from the time of David and Solomon has been discovered in East Jerusalem.

An Israeli archaeologist says she has uncovered in East Jerusalem what may be the fabled palace of the biblical King David. Her work has been sponsored by a conservative Israeli research institute and financed by an American Jewish investment banker who would like to prove that Jerusalem was indeed the capital of the Jewish kingdom described in the Bible.

Other scholars are skeptical that the foundation walls discovered by the archaeologist, Eilat Mazar, are David's palace. But they acknowledge that what she has uncovered is rare and important: a major public building from around the 10th century B.C., with pottery shards that date to the time of David and Solomon and a government seal of an official mentioned in the book of Jeremiah.

The discovery is likely to be a new salvo in a major dispute in biblical archaeology: whether the kingdom of David was of some historical magnitude, or whether the kings were more like small tribal chieftains, reigning over another dusty hilltop.

The find will also be used in the broad political battle over Jerusalem - whether the Jews have their origins here and thus have some special hold on the place, or whether, as many Palestinians have said, including the late Yasir Arafat, the idea of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is a myth used to justify conquest and occupation.

Notice that the report is loaded with questions about the nature of Israel three millenia ago, its importance, and whether that presence has any real significance. The article even goes so far as to implicitly question the roots of Jews in the region -- something that requires a blind anti-Semitic streak and an ignorance of history. The Jewish presence in the region 3000 years ago is clear, and certainly predates the presence of the Arab jihadi horde that conquered the region some sixteen centuries later. The subtext here is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the discovery of evidence supporting the Hebrew Scriptures as supporting Israel's claim to the a covenant right to the Land of Israel. And given that this discovery is in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, there are those who want to discredit the discovery.

On the other hand, this Christian era discovery in Egypt receives only slight coverage.

The remains of an ancient church and monks' retreats that date back to the early years of monasticism have been discovered in a Coptic Christian monastery in the Red Sea area, officials said Saturday.

Workers from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities found the ruins while restoring the foundations of the Apostles Church at St. Anthony's Monastery. The remains are about 2 or 2 1/2 yards underground, said the head of the council, Zahi Hawass.

The monastery, which is in the desert west of the Red Sea, was founded by disciples of St. Anthony, a hermit who died in A.D. 356 and is regarded as the father of Christian monasticism. A colony of hermits settled around him and he led them in a community.

The remains include the column bases of a mud-brick church and two-room hermitages.

The remains of a small oven and a stove for food were found in one hermitage room, Hawass said. Another room had Coptic writing on the walls and a small mud-brick basin.

"These hermitages are the oldest in Egypt and they cast light on the history of monasticism in Egypt," Abdullah Kamel, the head of the council's Islamic and Coptic Antiquities department, told The Associated Press.

Kamel could not offer a precise date for the hermitages.

Christians account for an estimated 10 percent of Egypt's population and belong mainly to the Coptic Church, an Orthodox church that traces its origins to St. Mark.

Notice, there is no question of denying the Christian heritage of Egypt or that Christians have a legitimate place in Egypt. This is a significant find, potentially telling us much about the development of the early monastic tradition within Christianity. Having studied the Desert Fathers and Mother of the fourth and fifth centuries, I can tell you that there are great gaps that could be filled in by the research conducted at this site.

Why the difference in coverage? I would like to suggest that it goes back to the relationship between Islam and the two communities whose presence is revealed by the discoveries. In Egypt, Christians have meekly accepted dhimmi status, living as second-class citizens in their own homeland. Their presence, and their historical place, are therefore accepted by the Muslims. But the Jews of israel have deared to stand on their own feet and challenge the right of the Arabs to dominate them. Rather than wilt in the face of some eighty years of Muslim terror and murder (dating back well before independence to the time of the Balfour Declaration), the Jews have fought back and carved themselves a country after being dhimis in their own homeland for over a millenium. The discovery of evdence which legitimized their presence must therefore be delegitimized by the opponents of Israel and the partisans of the Palestinians.

(Hat Tip: The Anchoress)

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BUMPED DUE TO UPDATE & ANNIVERSARY

One of the worst naval disasters of World War II was the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. Some 900 men made it into the watter after it was hit by two torpedoes on July 30, 1945. Only 316 survived to be rescued five days later -- their shipmates the victims of injuries, exposure, and sharks.

Sixty years after he narrowly avoided death in the U.S. Navy's worst sea disaster, World War II veteran Loel Dene "L.D." Cox is haunted by a dream.

He's with buddies somewhere — the faces and places change from night to night — and suddenly they disappear.

"I turn around and they're gone. I hunt for them, and I may accidently find one of them, and I lose him again," he said. "It's that way every night."

The nightmare forces the 79-year-old West Texan to relive an unforgettable ordeal. Cox was among 316 survivors of the sinking of the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis between Guam and the Philippines on July 30, 1945.

Of the 1,199 crewmen, about 900 lived through a Japanese submarine attack, but they abandoned ship in shark-infested waters and were left for dead until rescuers arrived almost five days later.

By then, nearly 600 more crewmen had perished. In all, about 880 Indianapolis sailors and Marines lost their lives.

"They don't hardly talk about it in the history books. They talk more about Marilyn Monroe than the Indianapolis and it's a crying shame," Cox said last week.

The retiree from Comanche is among 93 living members of the Indianapolis crew. Sixty of them gathered in the ship's namesake city last week to mark the 60th anniversary of its sinking and the recent exoneration of Capt. Charles Butler McVay III of Navy charges of putting the ship in harm's way.

"We thought it was a travesty — every crew member who survived," said Cox, who in 2000 helped persuade Congress to posthumously clear the captain. McVay survived the sinking but took his own life in 1968.

When survivors put aside memories of their harrowing experiences, they take solace in having accomplished a crucial top-secret mission. Four days before the Indianapolis went to the bottom, the ship delivered the inner workings of the first atomic bomb, which was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6.

The Indianapolis returned from near Japan to San Francisco after a kamikaze attack off Okinawa on March 31, which killed 13 sailors. After repairs, mysterious crates were put aboard, and with record speed, the ship delivered the bomb components to Tinian Island.

Before that mission, Cox was aboard the ship for two other historic missions. The Indianapolis was the command ship during the assault on Iwo Jima and assisted in the first air raids on Tokyo.

There is more to read about this naval tragedy, one more chapter about the lives -- and deaths -- of the Greatest Generation.

UPDATE: Dave Goodman from eMusings at Chez Goodman shares the story of one member of the crew of USS Indianapolis. I think I've found my non-council nominee for this week's Watcher's Council. Prepare to be touched.

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As we approach the sixtieth anniversaray of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I suspect we will see more articles discussing the decision to use the weapon. This morning I've come across two that strike me as grist for the mill.

"Why Truman Dropped the Bomb" author Richard B. Frank offers a persuasive rebuttal of those historians who take a critical or revisionist view of Truman's decision to drop the bomb. In it, he argues that the traditionalist view of the decision is more accurate and better explains why Truman used the bomb.

There are a good many more points that now extend our understanding beyond the debates of 1995. But it is clear that all three of the critics' central premises are wrong. The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood--as one analytical piece in the "Magic" Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts--that "until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies." This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.

The displacement of the so-called traditionalist view within important segments of American opinion took several decades to accomplish. It will take a similar span of time to displace the critical orthodoxy that arose in the 1960s and prevailed roughly through the 1980s, and replace it with a richer appreciation for the realities of 1945. But the clock is ticking.

In "What would you have done? ", Max Hastings argues that a decision that may be easy to question in hindsight was the one which seemed most reasonable to those charged with making the decisionin 1945.

The decision-makers were men who had grown accustomed to the necessity for cruel judgments. There was overwhelming technological momentum: a titanic effort had been made to create a weapon for which the allies saw themselves as competing with their foes.

After Hiroshima, General Leslie Groves, chief of the Manhattan Project, was almost the only man to succumb to triumphalism. He said: "We have spent $2bn on the greatest scientific gamble in history - we won." Having devoted such resources to the bomb, an extraordinary initiative would have been needed from Truman to arrest its employment.

Those who today find it easy to condemn the architects of Hiroshima sometimes seem to lack humility in recognising the frailties of the decision-makers, mortal men grappling with dilemmas of a magnitude our own generation has been spared.

In August 1945, amid a world sick of death in the cause of defeating evil, allied lives seemed very precious, while the enemy appeared to value neither his own nor those of the innocent. Truman's Hiroshima judgment may seem wrong in the eyes of posterity, but it is easy to understand why it seemed right to most of his contemporaries.

I raise a question with my students each year, one which brings out the stark calculus Truman faced.

"You are the president duing time of war. Your military advisors present you with a weapon that could end the war at the cost of a few hundred thousand enemy civilian lives. Failure to use this weapon will likely cost the lives of up to a million American troops and at least an equal number of enemy lives, both military and civilian. What do you do?"

I've had only one student ever argue against dropping the bomb -- and even then, she questioned how she would be able to justify that decision to the families of a million dead American soldiers.

That is why I really think the question is not "How could Truman justify dropping the bomb?" Rather, the appropriate question is "How could Truman justify NOT dropping the bomb?" And i think the answer is that he could not have justified a negative decision, regardless of what evidence there was of Japanese disarray. He had a primary responsibility to safeguard the lives of American soldiers.

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The city of Galveston is looking to ensure the preservation of one of the few structures to make it through the 1900 hurricane. The city will begin a fundraising effort toraise $5 million to purchase the "Bishop's Palace" from the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and refurbish the structure. In the process, it will also make possible the renovation of one of the island's other historical structures, St. Mary's Cathedral Basilica, which was built in 1847.

As mayor of Galveston, Lyda Ann Thomas will spearhead a $5 million fund-raising campaign for the city to purchase and refurbish the 112-year-old Chateauesque home, which towers above Broadway, the island's main street. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston has owned the historical home since 1923 and operated it as a museum since 1963.

Thomas and Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza have agreed in principle to the sale of the structure to the city, they said Wednesday.

"Historically, it is one of the most important buildings in the country," Thomas said. "It attracts more visitors than any of our other house museums on the island."

The city and the archdiocese have not yet agreed on a sale price for the building, which is in need of repairs, including work to stop a leaking roof. No tax money will be used for the purchase or restoration, the mayor said.

"We can see from the street the deterioration that has been occurring," Thomas said. "I just decided to go up and talk to the archbishop and see if the archdiocese would be willing to let the citizens begin to raise money to restore the building, since the church was struggling with it."

Fiorenza conceded that the Bishop's Palace is a financial burden on the archdiocese, adding that running a museum is "not particularly our mission." He said he thinks the city can do a better job of maintaining it.

"The city has great experience in managing historical homes and museums," Fiorenza said. "We feel under the direction of the Galveston Historical Foundation that beautiful architectural gem will be better preserved as a great tourist attraction for the city of Galveston."

Although the foundation operates several Galveston attractions, including three home museums, it has not been determined whether it will run the Bishop's Palace.

"That is a possibility down the road," said Marsh Davis, head of the historical foundation. "It's going to take some time to gauge the feasibility of it all. But the foundation will be part of the planning process."

The foundation wants to ensure covenants attached to the deed in perpetuity "protect every square inch inside and out" of the structure, Davis said.

The Friends of the Palace campaign, announced at a news conference Wednesday, intends to raise approximately $5 million during the next five years.

"Initially, we will be looking for around $3 million, part of which will be for the purchase," Thomas said. "Part of that $3 million will be used for immediate repairs."

The Bishop's Palace began its life as a private home, and was given as a gift to Bishop Christopher Byrne in 1923. Besides Byrne, no other Bishop ever lived in the structure.

According to Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza, proceeds from the sale of the Bishop's palace will be used to aid in the renovation of St. Mar's Cathedral Basilica, the oldest Cathedral in the state of Texas and the oldest church building on Galveston Island.

All in all, this sounds like a win for everyone.

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All archaeological and anthropological research on ancient man in America could be stopped by an amendment proposed to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act by Senator John McCain. An editorial in today's Seattle Times does a fine job of explaining what is at stake.

EIGHTY years after the Scopes trial dealt a blow to the anti-evolution movement, a similar face-off between science and religion is slated tomorrow in the U.S. Senate.

This time the issue is whether to preserve the right of science to discern the stories of the earliest Americans or to accede to beliefs of some Native American tribes that all ancient remains belong to them — even when there is no provable connection.

An action against science could stall the court-ordered study of Kennewick Man, the 9,300-year-old remains stored at the University of Washington's Burke Museum.

Science should win again.

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing likely won't draw 1,000 spectators, as crowded around the Dayton, Tenn., courthouse for the trial of high-school teacher John Thomas Scopes, accused of illegally teaching evolutionary theory. But the debate no doubt will be as passionate as that rendered by William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution, and Clarence Darrow, for the defense.

At issue now is whether to amend the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act with the addition of two words: "or was." So the act would redefine Native American to be "of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is ... or was ... indigenous to the United States."

That means modern-day tribes could claim the remains from ancient tribes that long since moved on or died out — even remains of their ancestors' foes.

The proposed change is in response to last year's unequivocal federal rulings that scientists should be able to study Kennewick Man. When the skeleton was found in 1996 on federal land, the government quickly moved to repatriate the remains to four tribes that claimed them. Eight leading scientists sued and won. This month, they are studying the remains for the first time.

The tribes argued their oral histories say they always have been in the Northwest and contain no references to visitors — contrary to scientific evidence of widespread migration.

The federal courts sided with science, finding none of the Act's required proof of a connection to the tribes. Republican Sen. John McCain's proposed amendment would remove that burden of proven affiliation.

In other words, science would be stopped based upon the unsubstantiated claims of native American rligious traditions.

This would be like preventing the excavation and study of dinosur fossils because some whack-job points out that T-Rex isn't mentioned in Genesis.

Before anybody says "stem cells", please recognize that this is not about denying federal funding -- this is about preventiing all research.

And, of couse, the sponsor of this lousy legislation is John McCain. has he ever sponsored a worthwhile bill?

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Burning of Rome.

Czar murdered.

Man whose name is synonym for traitor born.

Hitler publishes Mein Kampf.

Ted Kennedy takes Mary Jo for a drive and leaves her to die so he can sober-up and cover-up.

And it all happened today!

Makes you sort of wonder about Intel, though.

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This past week, scientists began a new round of study of the bones of Kennewick Man, the 9000 year old skeleton found in 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River. The oldest human fossils ever discovered in North America, the results of the study could tell us much about the migration of human beings to the Americas during the Ice Age.

The skull's dimensions are very different from existing and historic Native American populations, suggesting the Northwest might have been colonized at different times by people from different parts of Asia, anthropologists say.

The nine-year delay in being able to examine the bones has actually provided a kind of scientific advantage, [Smithsonian Institution forensic anthropologist Doug] Owsley said, displaying clear plastic models of the skull and portion of the man's hip bone with a stone spear tip embedded in it.

Only in the past five years has high-powered CT-scanning technology been able to produce the detailed, three-dimensional images used to create the models.

The hip model already has revealed that the tip of the spearpoint had broken off, possibly when the man tried to snap off the spear shaft. Closer analysis should determine what direction the blow came from, how bad the wound was and how long it took to heal.

The high-tech approach and painstaking analysis being used to probe Kennewick Man's past will set a new standard for working with such rare and old skeletons, Owsley predicted.

The work is being done under tight security at the University of Washington's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. But the atmosphere is electric, said C. Wayne Smith, artifact-conservation specialist from Texas A&M University.

"We've brought this massive set of resources together to be able to see the story these bones can tell us," he said. "It's very exciting every day."

Hugh Berryman, a forensic anthropologist from Middle Tennessee State University, put it another way: "This is like working with a Rembrandt. It's one of a kind."

This study is an important part of coming to understand the history of not just North America or of Native Americans, but of the human race in general. I look forward to learning the results of the study.

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London will have this neat archaological display from the Middle Ages on permanent display in a new office building in the city. Rather than raze the ruins or stop the development, the remnants of a medieval charnel house will be on permanent display to the public.

A rare, medieval charnel house will go on public display for the first time in 300 years this month in a visually striking reminder of the past beneath our feet.

The 14th century bone store has been preserved and incorporated in the heart of a multi-million-pound office and retail development.
Dan Cruickshank in the Spitalfields charnel house

Visitors and office workers will be presented with the stark contrast of a vaulted crypt dating back almost 700 years set immediately beneath the glass front of the new headquarters of the law firm Allen & Overy.

Now how, exactly, is this to be accomplished? How do you have a modern office building and a historical site dating back several centuries coexisting together?

The Spitalfields charnel house in central London will be visible from above through ground-level glass panels and from the side via a Norman Foster-designed sunken courtyard containing a small yew tree.

It provides a remarkable window into the history of a site that was the burial place of wealthy inhabitants of Roman Londinium, one of the country's largest hospitals dating back to the late 12th century, a cemetery that has yielded the remains of more than 10,000 medieval Londoners and the market founded in the 17th century.

The 700-year-old building has been removed from English Heritage's buildings at risk register, a list of the nation's most vulnerable grade I and II* buildings and monuments published annually.

Steven Brindle, an English Heritage ancient monument inspector, said: "This is a remarkable design achievement. I really like the metaphorical way it allows an appreciation of the juxtaposition between the past down below and the modern up above."

Yeah, I'll say it is one heck of a juxtaposition. I especially like, though, the observation of the senior architect for the project.

John Drew, a partner at Foster and Partners, and senior architect on the project, said: "I often wonder what it would be like if the ground in London was transparent and we could see the remains of the city's 2,500 years of history beneath our feet.

"I find it rather exciting that someone can be just walking across the square and suddenly find themselves on the glass panels, looking down at 700 years of history."

We Americans do not really appreciate what often lies beneath our feet, because our country is so young. The earliest of the English settlements is only 400 years old, and much of the country is much younger. Little is left of the pre-Columbian period, becaause most of the indigenous people were nomadic or did not build long-lived structures. That means we don't think much of what came before us. the British (and most Europeans), on the other hand, are acutely aware of their history -- and it resonates with them. That is why preserving this charnel house was so important to them.

The medieval bone store was rediscovered in 1999 during excavations by the Museum of London archaeology service for the new development planned at the site.

Working on advice from English Heritage, the Spitalfields Development Group instructed the architects Foster and Partners to incorporate the structure into their scheme.

Dan Cruickshank, a historian and local resident, said: "To ponder the charnel house, below which bodies remain interred, is to confront the beliefs of medieval Londoners. This is a beautiful house of the medieval dead, where bones were preserved against the Day of Judgment when the righteous would enjoy paradise while the damned were consigned to hell."

And so the living and the dead will coexist together in one space. If I ever get to London, this is someplace I would like to see.

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I was browsing over at Bad Example and read a neat post about the meme Harvey got tagged on by GBFan of SpottedHorse. He tagged Mike the Marine of From the Halls to the Shores. The lists are interesting -- you ought to go take a look.

Here is GBFan's challenge.

What ten events would you care to witness if you could travel in time and observe them.

Rules: First my version of the Prime directive you can only observe you cannot change anything no changing of the time line. You can interact to a point ie stand in a crowd or talk to people you cannot do anything that will change time. So sorry no going back and putting a bullet into Hitler's head in 1929 or offing OBL back in the 80's. You can stay as long at an event as you like remember this is a Sci Fi Meme.

Now, for this history teacher's list of 10 times and places I would like to visit in history -- in no particular order.

1) Jerusalem -- about 33 AD -- How could I possibley not include the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Word Who Became Flesh For Our Salvation?

2) Constantinople -- 1054 -- I'd like to be able to observe the events that brought about the Great Schism between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East. So much of it seems to be personal rather than theological -- but was it?

3) Japan -- 1595-1605-- The events that led to the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate by Tokugawa Ieyasu are fascinating. By starting the observaation while Toyotomi Hideyoshi (the Taiko) still lived, one would have be able to observe the political and military intrigues that led to the establishment of the shogunate that would rule Japan for the next two-and-a-half centuries at the height of samurai culture.

4) Egypt -- 1360-1325 BC -- Why those years? Akhenaten and Tutankhamun reighned at that time, the two most fascinating and mysterious pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. One a religious radical, the other the boy king whose death and tomb remain mysterious. And can you say "shinxes and temples and pyramids -- oh my"?

5) Rome -- 50-40 BC -- Caesar vs. Pompey. Caesar and Cleopatra. The assasination of Caesar. Octavian and Antony vs. Brutus and Cassius. Octavian vs. Antony. Ain't Rome grand?

6) London -- 1599 -- During my time as an English teacher, I grew to love Shakespeare. I would love to be able to see a performance -- especially the opening -- of any one of several of Shakespeare's plays. Given that 1599 saw the first productions of Henry V, Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, and As You Like It, as well as possibly The Merry Wives of Windsor, it seems like it would have been a very good year.

7) Athens -- 433 BC -- The Age of Pericles was in full bloom by this time, and the Parthenon was finally complete. I'd also have to take in a performance of Sophocles' Antigone.

Philadelphia -- 1787 -- How could I not include the Constitutional convention. Many of the greatest minds in America were there, shaping a document which is still the foundation of American government.

9) Tibet -- November, 1950 -- The enthronement of Tenzin Gyatso as the 14th Dalai Lama may well be the last such ceremony to ever take place in Tibet.

10) St. Petersburg -- 1720-1725 -- This monument to Tsar Peter the Great was rising on the shores of the Baltic Sea, part of his attempt to transform Russia into a European power. The final five years of Peter's life were ones in which he made great strides towards his goal.

Well, now you see what sort of things interest the "history geek" in me. I'll pass this one on, in the hopes that some folks will pay attention and respond. Are you up to the challenge, Jim (Snooze Button Dreams), Crystal (Crystal Clear), Dolphin (Where The Dolphins Play), and Mike (Mover Mike)?

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