Are we really drowning in noise? A History of Silence, review
The Orientalist painter Eugène Fromentin adored the silence of the Sahara. “Far from oppressing you,” he wrote to a friend, “it inclines you to light thoughts.” People assume that silence, being an absence of noise, is the auditory equivalent of darkness. Fromentin was having none of it: “If I may compare aural sensations to those of sight, More...
How to lose the president of the United States
Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account.” So went the first tweet from President Obama for his brand new@POTUS “president of the US” account, which More...
Naked ambition: when the Greeks first stripped off
The oddity of ancient sculpture often escapes us. A male nude, a Greek statue, has become very familiar over the past 2,500 years: it is what we expect of ancient statuary, that it show off its muscles. At times More...
Isis shows ‘Oriental studies’ are essential
The University of Manchester could not have chosen a worse time to consider closing Middle Eastern language courses, writes Hugh Williamson. As Islamic State (Isis) plumbed even greater depths of depravity with More...
ISIS (members) have the lowest IQ in the world
Forget airborne PTSD or poverty. Here’s a great new terrorist defense. Imran Khawaja was an ISIS Jihadist who liked guns and severed heads. Non-Muslim severed heads. (via Religion of Peace) In one section of More...
A Middle Eastern ‘Perfect Storm’
In July, the world will commemorate the centennial of World War I, also known as,” The war to end all wars.” In addition to its horrendous human cost of 37 million casualties, the war led to the demise of More...
Why should U.S. arm the Syrian opposition?
In his book “Duty,” former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates narrates the controversy that preceded Israel’s shelling of a nuclear reactor after the 2007 discovery that the Syrian regime had More...
Hacked email reveals Qatar’s devious plans to smuggle chemical weapons in Syria
Earlier this year, a news report revealed an email in which Qatar asked Britain’s arms contractor, BRITAM to ‘transport’ chemical weapons to the Syrian town of Homs. The email was revealed after More...
Terrorist financer in my country allowed to run freely in Britain
One can be sure that arresting one or two terrorists is never enough because as long as the head of them all is still out there operating and recruiting more combatants to join, the venom still remains. I am referring More...
Global terrorism rose 43% in 2013
State Department says 16 Americans killed out of 17,891 totalSurge complicates sprawling counter-terrorism efforts led by US Terrorist attacks rose 43% worldwide in 2013 despite a splintering of al-Qaida’s More...