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POPSDiscovery Journey to the Edge of europe In just two weeks we explore the vibrant city of Sofia, the bustling markets of Skopje, the Rila Monastery and remarkable Roman ruins at Plovdiv. There is also time to enjoy the beautiful scenery surrounding Lake Ohrid, the oldest lake in Europe, nestled on the border between Macedonia and Albania. This trip takes you to the very edge of Europe, well off the beaten track on a fantastic journey of discovery.
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POPSGreek Rocket War This festival is known as "The Rocket War", dating back to the 19th century when the island was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. The object of the festival is for the residents of two opposing villages to hit each others church bell tower with a rocket.
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POPSOctopus and propaganda and octopus and... there are strange and beautiful sites out there, and some of them are interesting and very specific. The representation of the Octopus in propaganda and political cartoons, and influence on, or co-option of, popular culture. The intent behind Vulgar Army is to identify and criticise themes in the use of the octopus as a polemic metaphor, for example, its use as signifying 'action at a distance' or in dehumanising a group.
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POPSMuslims Riot in Greece Greece was occupied by the Ottoman (muslim) Empire for over 400 years. The local pashas would, for Sunday morning sport, pick out a Greek at random in the villages and hang him or her in the town square. They closed schools and churches, and to educate children was punishable by death. When Greece finally successfully revoted and gained their independence, defeating the hated muslim enemy, they burned all the mosques and those that they didn't destroy they turned into cafes and cabarets. Now over a hundred years later, the Greeks have forgotten all this, and a new Grand mosque has been constructed near Athens. To let muslims into a Christian country is to introduce a blight... a cancer. Shame on Greece. Shame on Europe. and Shame on all of us. I say turn the bulldozers loose on the mosques and force these lunatics to return to the pest holes from which they originated.
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POPSBrzezinski, Scowcroft: Obama shouldn't recognize Turkish killings of Armenians as ’genocide.’ ’If Obama uses the word Genocide, the Turkish response will be harsh and trigger a bitter breach in relations,’ the CSIS says --- The true Axis of Evil is forming. US, Turkey, Israel - the Genocide Triad! All we have to do is take down Iran...and we have a nice chunk of Empire to fend of the menacing threat of Russia and China... "The same thing we do every day, Pinky...try to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"
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POPSIs there really an ancient hatred between Jews & Arabs? Zionism as a political movement espoused the idea that the only place Jews could be safe from the history of pogroms, persecution, and murder they had suffered was in a Jewish state. That's fine as far as it goes, except they chose Palestine to establish this homeland, and espoused the motto A land without a people, for a People without a land . That was a lie. Palestine had people living there continuously for generations, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. Was there a country called "Palestine" in the early 20th century? No, up until the end of WW1, most of the middle east was just "The Ottoman (Turk) Empire". Today's map of the Middle East was drawn in the 20th century in the aftermath of WW1. Israel declared itself a state in 1948. But to say that Palestine was, at the beginning of the 20th century, "A land without a people" was a lie. http://ifamericansknew.org
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POPSMahomet II Enters Constantinople May 29, 1453, at the age of 21. The city became the new capital of the Ottoman Empire, and Mehmed II assumed the title of Kayser-i Rûm (Roman Emperor). However, this title was not recognized by the Greeks or Western Europe, and the Russian Czars also claimed to be the successors of the Eastern Imperial title. To consolidate his claim, Mehmed II aspired to gain control over the Western capital, Rome, and Ottoman forces occupied parts of the Italian peninsula, starting from Otranto and Apulia on July 28, 1480. But after Mehmed II's death on May 3, 1481, the campaign in Italy was cancelled and the Ottoman forces retreated.
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POPSCNN's "Scream Bloody Murder" is "Bloody Shame Whisper" Amanpour's failure to mention the "screams" of Henry Morgenthau and others is an unfortunate continuum of a political play. Even worse, when a reputable reporter such as she chooses to silence the calls of equally deserving fine men, then it does create the ultimate hypocritical human-rights rat's nest that no one could ever get out of unscathed. The timing of this matter is specially significant and doubly important as the reporter tries to bring attention to genocides on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the adoption of UN Convention of Genocide and Human Rights , which, by the way, was authored by Raphael Lemkin who coined the word "genocide."
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POPSForget Memory Laws "The historian's equivalent of a natural scientist's experiment is to test the evidence against all possible hypotheses, however extreme, and then submit his most convincing interpretation for criticism by professional colleagues and for public debate. This is how we get as near as one ever can to truth about the past. How, for example, do you refute the absurd conspiracy theory, which apparently still has some currency in parts of the Arab world, that "the Jews" were behind 9/11? By forbidding anyone from saying that, on pain of imprisonment? No. You refute it by refuting it. By mustering all the available evidence, in free and open debate. This is not just the best way to get at the facts; ultimately, it's the best way to combat racism and xenophobia too."
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POPS October Surprises In History During October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of war over nuclear-armed missiles that Nikita Khrushchev had shipped to Cuba. Those who believe that this month's collapse of global financial markets is an unprecedented disaster need to study history. In 1987, Oct. 19 became known as "Black Monday," as Wall Street investors watched the market nose-dive 22 percent and lose $500 billion in value in a single trading session -- still the biggest one-day loss of value in history. The 23rd of this month is the 25th anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon -- a radical Islamic suicide attack that killed 241 Americans. Fifteen years ago this month, there was a 19-hour gunfight in Mogadishu, Somalia, which claimed the lives of 18 U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force personnel.
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POPSSupport Obama-Biden ticket Here's the website of Armenian-American committee supporting Obama-Biden ticket. They make a compelling case for Armenian Americans to support Obama, as it is tantamount to supporting US-Armenia relations, whereas McCain is generally silent on US-Armenian relations and issues.
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POPSCIA FactBook: Brief History Of Georgia Progress on market reforms and democratization has been made in the years since independence, but this progress has been complicated by two ethnic conflicts in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These two territories remain outside the control of the central government and are ruled by de facto, unrecognized governments, supported by Russia. Russian-led peacekeeping operations continue in both regions.
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POPSPalestine: The State History Forgot Is it a joke of history that before there was the states of Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Syria, etc there was Palestine? Now they all exist and Palestine doesn't yet. You will read that there never was a Palestine from a certain quarter and how can you miss what you never had. How you know they are lying! They'll say that as they are all Arabs that there's enough room for them all. It's like saying that the Scots Welsh and Irish are all Celts and one state would do them all! Yes, there was a time when such thinking was regarded as valid. If we had the Age of Imperialism back then the Brits might validly have a claim on the USA and most of the rest of the world. In the present imperialism, if the existent holder of the gunboat diplomacy role, the USA, decided to sort out Palestine's present difficulties it could in a breath. Hopefully in a more honourable fashion that the last gunboat holder did.
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POPSThey're Baaack--Juan Coles take on Amerikan Big Oil in Iraq
Thanks to Ratilfar...Maybe he clipped it too but it deserves all the spreading it gets...excellent column by Juan Cole: Bush and Cheney clearly went into Iraq primarily in order to put US petroleum firms in precisely this favored position. The US power elite wanted this outcome and connived actively at it. As Alan Greenspan put it, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Poor Iraq has been looted, occupied, and disrupted by the industrialized West for a century because of the curse of its oil wealth. The Iraqi Petroleum Company was until 1929 the Turkish Petroleum Company since it began in 1912 with a concession from the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Iraq before the 1917 British conquest. The victors of World War I used their victory to leverage themselves into Iraqi oil. The Ottomans had thrown in with Germany and Austria in 1914, and were defeated by the victorious allies. Iraq was considered a s
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POPSIsrael: 60 Years of Denying Palestine refutes the lame argument that no "Palestinian State" existed, when neither did "Israel". Israel has no legally defined borders, no constitution, and is constantly expanding under plea of "divine right", granted by the arbitrary and usurping powers of a United Nations setup to reorganize the world.
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POPSThe ‘Useful Idiots’ Of Militant Islam
Saudi-funded publications admonish Muslims in America “to dissociate from infidels, hate them for their religion, never to rely on them for support, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.” The question: how was it that among the estimated five million Muslim Americans with hugely varied institutions, the president’s advisors picked a Saudi Islamofascist ghetto as a venue? A major New York Times Magazine article argued fervently on behalf of “Islamic democrats” singing the praises of a reborn Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. An essay in Foreign Affairs, a weighty establishment publication titled “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.” Mild Islamism is an oxymoron. Sharia law, which sanctions beating of wives and stoning for adultery, is irreconcilable with human rights. The Muslim Brotherhood founded Hamas, calls suicide bombings a good thing, and is the 21st-century version of the organized fascism of Hitler and Mussolini in the last century.
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POPSIstanbul (Not Constantinople) A remarkable slideshow created by a Turkish tour guide, featuring beautiful Istanbul and accompanied by the delightful, energetic and humorous song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)".
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