Liberal-Progressive leaving cable channel Current TV, which has been plagued with problems that the whole fuss with Olbermann's leaving the network brought to light (basicially, they were operating it on less than a shoestring, and oversold to Olbermann about how professional of a setup he'd be coming into, and refused to ante up to do better - ( Read more... )

WIRED magazine on why Special Forces had to land in person and not nail with a unmanned drone aircraft or just bomb the site from a distance.  The site is surrounded by all sorts of high-level Pakistani government / military sites, including their military academy, and drones or sloppy bombing could end up with worse problems than going in with a ( Read more... )

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Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery?

It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the ( Read more... )

America is not a “Christian” nation in the way we think of “Muslim” nations. If it were, birth certificates would automatically indicate “Christian” as the “faith of birth.” It would be illegal to convert to another faith. Jews, Native American religions, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons and atheists would be unwelcome. They would need to ( Read more... )

“When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race - out of every race. America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our ( Read more... )

The 97-year-old heir to the Caliphate and Sultanate of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, died recently in Istanbul…he was the last heir to have been born during the Ottoman Empire (he was a 12 year old student in Vienna when the Empire was abolished) and he spent the rest of his long life in exile, living for sixty years  in a rent controlled apartment in ( Read more... )

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From the Coming Anarchy site: projected maps of Europe in the future and the former Yugoslav areas, along with their tag on microstates.  Personally, I strongly doubt some of this; France has been doing a thorough stomp of its minority groups (linguistics-wise, especially) for the last 100+ years to Make Everyone Parisian, and the Bosniak Muslims ( Read more... )