The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the North American theater of the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America.

Jerusalem has come | Kingdom of Heaven

Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII

Charles was crowned King Charles VII of France in Reims Cathedral on 17 July 1429

Alexander the Great - A World of Titans

A discovery by nuclear physicists in a laboratory in Berlin, Germany, in 1938 made the first atomic bomb possible, after Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassman discovered nuclear fission.
The Manhattan Project was the code name for the American-led effort to develop a functional atomic bomb during World War II. The Manhattan Project was started in response to fears that German scientists had been working on a weapon using nuclear technology since the 1930s.
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped its first atomic bomb from a B-29 bomber plane called the Enola Gay on Japanese city of Hiroshima. The “Little Boy” exploded with about 13 kilotons of force, leveling five square miles of the city and killing 80,000 people instantly. Tens of thousands more would later die from radiation exposure.

When the Japanese did not immediately surrender, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb three days later on the city of Nagasaki. The “Fat Man” killed an estimated 40,000 people on impact.

Nagasaki had not been the primary target for the second bomb. American bombers initially had targeted the city of Kokura, where Japan had one of its largest munitions plants, but smoke from firebombing raids obscured the sky over Kokura. American planes then turned toward their secondary target, Nagasaki.

Citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb,” Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender on August 15, ending World War II.

Alexander's parents, King Philip II and Olympias, were certainly memorable, and their extremely fraught union decisively shaped his first 20 years at least. But by themselves neither they nor his teaching by Aristotle when he was 13, nor any other aspect of his upbringing and background in that corner of northeastern Greece could by themselves account for Alexander's truly astonishing 13-year reign (336 - 323 BCE).

He was never defeated in a pitched battle, and in siege or guerrilla operations he suffered only relatively slight reverses at worst. This is not to say he never made a mistake, leading his men as he did over thousands of kilometres through the most formidable terrain for over a decade nonstop. But those mistakes never added up to an outright defeat. 'Invincible' the Delphic priestess had allegedly declared him in advance of his campaigning in Asia, invincible he proved. Death alone (by whatever means...) at Babylon in early June 323 BCE proved him literally mortal.

Late in the afternoon of June 11, 323 B.C., Alexander III—King of Macedon, world-conqueror, self-styled Lord of Asia—died in Babylon at not quite 33 years of age: whether of an unidentified disease (helped by war wounds and alcoholism) or as the result of deliberate poisoning is unknown. There were certainly many who wished him gone. During his last few months, he had purged a majority of his provincial governors—in some cases with good reason—and his always lurking paranoia saw treachery everywhere.

The previous season, after 11 years of campaigning, his battle-weary troops, faced in India with the prospect of a never-ending pursuit of conquest and Homeric glory, had mutinied and forced him to turn back. Undeterred, Alexander at his death was planning fresh conquests: first of the Arabs, then of the whole North African coast as far west as the straits of Gibraltar, and after that back home, picking up Spain, Sicily and Italy on the way.

Alexander designed for his father, Philip, a tomb rivaling the Great Pyramid. He devised plans for racial mingling that involved the wholesale transfer of populations. The most conspicuous symbol of this project had been the mass weddings at Susa in 324, in which large numbers of Alexander's officers were married off to Persians. He also issued a proclamation demanding recognition of himself as a god. None of this, to put it mildly, appealed to the Macedonians he led, but his power and charisma were such that no one dared put up any concerted resistance, while huge cash bonuses from the looted Persian treasuries helped keep his seasoned veterans quiet.

It is thus a striking fact, and one that neither James Romm's "Ghost on the Throne" nor Robin Waterfield's "Dividing the Spoils" sufficiently stresses, that the moment Alexander was dead, almost literally overnight, every single one of his plans was shelved. The campaigns were canceled, the monuments were never built and the Macedonians almost to a man abandoned their Persian wives, along with the whole idea of racial fusion. Nothing shows more starkly what a gulf separated the visionary leader from those he led.

Still, the idea of Alexander as a god did come in handy when his successors, well schooled in suspicion, refused to take orders from one another: the king's regalia and robes were set up in the council chamber so that Alexander was, in effect, raised from the dead to preside as the "ghost on the throne"

Song: Kingdom Fall Artist: Claire Wyndham

Alexander the Great's Death has been debated by historians as either a process of overextending his body with hard living and the many wounds and wars taking its toll. Others say a disease like Malaria took down the King. And others think he may have been poisoned. A new theory by Dr Katherine Hall, a Senior Lecturer at the Dunedin School of Medicine and practising clinician, believes the ancient ruler did not die from infection, alcoholism or murder, as others have claimed. Instead, she argues he met his demise thanks to the neurological disorder Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS). In particular, none have provided an all-encompassing answer which gives a plausible and feasible explanation for a fact recorded by one source - Alexander's body failed to show any signs of decomposition for six days after his death.
Dr Hall believes a diagnosis of GBS, contracted from a Campylobacter pylori infection (common at the time and a frequent cause for GBS), stands the test of scholarly rigour, from both Classical and medical perspectives.
"The Ancient Greeks thought that this proved that Alexander was a god; this article is the first to provide a real-world answer," Dr Hall says.
Along with the reported delay in decay, the 32-year-old was said to have developed a fever; abdominal pain; a progressive, symmetrical, ascending paralysis; and remained compos mentis until just before his death.

The prison of one's character is painstakingly built to deny one thing and one thing alone: one's creatureliness. The creatureliness is the terror. Once admit that you are a defecating creature and you invite the primeval ocean of creature anxiety to flood over you. But it is more than creature anxiety, it is also man's anxiety, the anxiety that results from the human paradox that man is an animal who is conscious of his animal limitation. Anxiety is the result of the perception of the truth of one's condition. What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression-and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would create such complex and fancy worm food? Cynical deities, said the Greeks, who use man's torments for their own amusement.

Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.

The real world is simply too terrible to admit.
it tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die.
Culture changes all of this,makes man seem important,vital to the universe.

― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

Evolution
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#Halloween #Evolution #Psychology #Scary #Horror

Since civilisation began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages,' 'It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. 'Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason.'
- Stephen Hawking

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.
― Bertolt Brecht

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

Guns Germs and Steel

Music - Hi-Finesse - Probe (Game of Thrones Season 6 - Trailer Music

Poem: Roll the Dice by Charles Bukowski
“Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper, to escape the life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand.” ― T.E. Lawrence

"The sword also means clean-ness and death"
Letter to Eric Kennington, 27 October 1922

“The moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Source: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/201116/lawrence-in-arabia-by-scott-anderson/
History: The Tafilah region has been inhabited since the Stone Age proved by the stone tools found in the area. The Edom civilization inhabited the area and named the city Tophel. The Nabataen capital was Petra but their empire extended to Tafilah. The current city of Tafilah was founded in 1100 BC. It is also well-known for the part it played in the Great Arab Revolt under T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) who fought the Ottoman forces with Prince Zeid bin Hussein.

Geography: Tafilah is located 183 kilometers southwest of Amman. It has very rich and fertile soil with a large number grape-vines and olive and fig trees.

Demography: Tafilah has 6 districts with a population of around 91,400 as of 2013. 26,100 live in rural communities while 65,300 live in urban areas.

Tourism: More than 350 natural springs are found in the Tafilah area, some of which are hot and have high mineral content with therapeutic properties. The nature reserves of Tafilah also attract local and international tourists but their numbers are relatively low since Tafilah is far from the main transport routes.
تاريخيا: كانت المدينة مأهولة بالسكان منذ العصور القديمة ويعود ذلك بسبب تواجد الالواح الحجرية في هذه المنطقه والتي يرجع تاريخها الى العصر الحجري. حيث سكنت حضارة الأدوميين في المنطقة وأطلقوا عليها اسم توفل. تأسست المدينة الحالية في عام 1100 قبل الميلاد. كما تشتهر مدينة الطفيلة بالدور الذي لعبته في الثورة العربية تحت قيادة تي ايه لورانس (لورانس العرب) الذي حارب القوات العثمانية مع الأمير زيد بن الحسين.

جغرافيا: تقع المدينة 183 كيلومترا جنوب غرب عمان. وتتمتع بتربة خصبة غنية جدا مكونه من أشجار الزيتون والتين، والعنب.

ديموغرافيا: يبلغ عدد السكان حوالي 39.000 ولديها 6 مقاطعات.

سياحيا: تم العثور على أكثر من 350 من الينابيع الطبيعية في منطقة الطفيلة، وبعض من هذه الينابيع بها مياه ساخنة وبها مياه معدنية عالية الجودة. ويزور معظم السياح المدينة للاستفادة من الينابيع الساخنة التي لها خصائص علاجية. وتلعب المحميات الطبيعية في الطفيلة أيضا دورا كبيرا في جذب السياح المحليين والدوليين ولكن عددهم قليل نسبيا وذلك لكون المدينة بعيدة عن طرق النقل الرئيسية.
“Rebellions can be made by 2 percent actively in the striking force and 98 percent passively sympathetic” (T. E. Lawrence)

"Lawrence trained himself, throughout most of his youth, to be a great hero," Korda tells NPR's Neal Conan. "He had in mind the liberation of Arabia." Not only did Lawrence strongly advocate for it, "but he also went through every possible training that he could inflict on himself to play that role," says Korda.

"He didn't wander into the desert by accident, and emerge out of it as a hero. He wandered into the desert deliberately."

Researchers at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) in London, curious at the "unprecedented surge in female recruits" to ISIS, are tracking more than 100 of the women through online platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and blogs.

ISD's database, the largest of its kind, provides a unique lens through which to see the daily lives of the women of ISIS.

They hope that by examining the way women are used by terrorist groups, analysts will better understand how the organizations work, and how to combat them.

"It really debunks the stereotypes," said ISD senior researcher Erin Saltman. "The ages range from 13 to 40, with a range of education and professions and families. It's very complicated."

CNN has had exclusive access to the group's new report. It paints a picture of a diverse group of women of different ages and backgrounds who play a variety of roles for the terror group that is now in control of large parts of Syria and Iraq. So who are the "women of ISIS?"

Alexander the Great Documentary

Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.E.), who reigned as king of Macedonia for only thirteen years, set a flame of conquest that introduced the dynamism of Hellenism to the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian worlds. Re-creating their ossified cultures, he established a standard of leadership and military conquest that the most successful of Roman emperors, medieval knights, and steppe barbarians would never truly match. Julius Caesar wept that he could not surpass Alexander, while Napoleon could only dream of such invincibility. Alexander had the great fortune to be born the able son of Philip II, one of the most talented men of war and politics produced by the Hellenic world, who created for Alexander the foundation of the Macedonian state and army that would be the tools of his future greatness. Alexander's invincibility was the product of his profound genius - the perfection of body, boundless energy, imagination, daring, intellect, and vision in one man. He was a master tactician, strategist, logistician, diplomat, and statesman, with an ability to win the affection and quick obedience of others. Even his enemies fell victim to his valor and charm. His personal attributes and accomplishments were so far removed from those of ordinary men that he achieved almost superhuman status within his lifetime. Alexander the Great

(Reuters) - Qatar has moved five Afghan Taliban prisoners freed in exchange for a U.S. soldier to a residential compound and will let them move freely in the country, a senior Gulf official said on Tuesday, a step likely to be scrutinized by Washington.

U.S. officials have referred to the release of the Islamist militants as a transfer and said they would be subject to certain restrictions in Qatar. One of the officials said that would include a minimum one-year ban on them traveling outside of Qatar as well as monitoring of their activities.

"All five men received medical checks and they now live with their families in an accommodation facility in Doha," the Gulf source, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. "They can move around freely within the country."

Following the deal under which freed the last American soldier held in Afghanistan was freed, concerns have been expressed by some U.S. intelligence officials and congressional advisers over the role of the Gulf Arab state as a bridge between Washington and the world of radical Islam.

The Gulf official said the Taliban men, who have been granted Qatari residency permits, will not be treated like prisoners while in Doha and no U.S. officials will be involved in monitoring their movement while in the country.

"Under the deal they have to stay in Qatar for a year and then they will be allowed to travel outside the country... They can go back to Afghanistan if they want to," the official said.

The five, who had been held at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba since 2002, arrived in Qatar on Sunday where U.S. security personnel handed them over to Qatari authorities in the Al Udeid area west of Doha, site of a U.S. military base.

U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl had been held for nearly five years by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and his release followed years of on-off negotiations.

A diplomatic source said Qatar has flown in family members of the five released Taliban men and gave them accommodation paid for by the government.

On Sunday, Qatari Foreign Minister Khaled al-Attiyah told a news conference that Doha got involved in the case because it was a "humanitarian cause". He did not elaborate.

The Triumph of Evil - Rwanda Genocide (Frontline)

Adolf Hitler speech - To the bitter end

In September 1937, Mussolini visited Germany. Hitler put on a major display of military power for Mussolini and by the end of the visit, Mussolini became convinced that Germany was the power he should ally with. He was sure that an alliance with Germany would lead to Italy becoming more powerful throughout Europe.

As Germany had left the League of Nations in 1933, so Mussolini left the League in 1937 after the League had imposed economic sanctions on Italy for the invasion of Abyssinia.

In 1938, Germany occupied Austria in the Anschluss (forbidden by Versailles). Hitler did not forewarn Mussolini about what he was going to do and this upset Mussolinis belief that he was an equal partner. However, there was nothing Mussolini could do about the Nazi occupation of Austria and it was clear from 1938 on that Mussolini was definitely the minor partner in the relationship.

However, Mussolini achieved real fame for the part he played in the Munich agreement of September 1938. War seemed a real possibility in the autumn of 1938. The major powers took the opportunity to meet in Munich an idea suggested by Mussolini. The outcome was the "Piece of Paper" which at the time seemed to everyone to guarantee European peace. Mussolini got the credit for this. After Munich, Mussolinis reputation was at its peak. To many he seemed to be Europes saviour a reputation that he assumed made him Europes premier statesman.

Hitlers invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 angered Mussolini because it was clear that Germany was carving out its own empire and Italy was not.

To compensate for this, Mussolini took over Albania on Good Friday 1939. To him, this was a sign of Italys expanding power in Europe. King Victor Emmanuel was offered the title of King of Albania. Italian propaganda made a great deal out of this but in reality Albania had been under the influence of Italy for years and this was barely an Italian military success.

Mussolini made it clear to Hitler that he expected Italy to have the Adriatic Sea as a sphere of influence.

In May 1939, the Germans and Italians cemented their friendship with the Pact of Steel. This pact committed both countries to support the other if one of them became involved in a war. The Italian Foreign Minister, Galleazo Ciano, Mussolinis son-in-law, realised that this pact was potentially very damaging for Italy but Mussolini was more concerned with the prestige of allying with Europes most potent power rather than the politics of it.

Mussolini also considered that Hitlers Non-Aggression Pact with Communist Russia meant that somehow that involved Italy and he saw it as a three-nation treaty though Italy never signed it (nor was Italy even told that it was going to take place).

Germany's invasion of France culminated in France's surrender in a formal ceremony held in a railroad car in Compiegne Forest on June 22, 1940 (see France Surrenders, 1940). The terms of the surrender called for all hostilities to cease on June 25. Shortly after this ceremony, Hitler summoned Albert Speer - his favorite architect - to join him at his headquarters in a small village in northern France. The village had been cleared of its inhabitants and many of its homes commandeered as living quarters for Hitler and his staff.

Upon arrival, Speer was informed by Hitler that he intended to take a tour of Paris in a few days and wanted the architect to accompany him. Speer remained in the village and joined Hitler and his entourage in a peasant's cottage on the evening of the formal end of hostilities between France and Germany. As the time of the armistice approached, 1:35 AM June 25, Hitler ordered the lights in the home turned out and the windows opened. Sitting silently in the darkness, Hitler and his entourage listened to a thunderstorm in the distance and to a bugler blowing the traditional signal for the end of fighting. Hitler then ordered the light turned back on.

Three days later, Speer accompanied Hitler as he flew in the early morning hours to an airfield near Paris.

Albert Speer: In the course of the tour Hitler raised the question of a victory parade in Paris. But after discussing the matter with his adjutants and Colonel Speidel, he decided against it after all. His official reason for calling off the parade was the danger of its being harassed by English air raids. But later he said: 'I am not in the mood for a victory parade. We aren't at the end yet.'

That same evening he received me once more in the small room in the peasant house. He was sitting alone at table. Without more ado he declared: 'Draw up a decree in my name ordering full-scale resumption of work on the Berlin buildings. . . . Wasn't Paris beautiful? But Berlin must be made far more beautiful. In the past I often considered whether we would not have to destroy Paris,' he continued with great calm, as if he were talking about the most natural thing in the world. 'But when we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. So why should we destroy it?' With that, I was dismissed."