When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the [...]

Suddenly, an event manager in London is having a very bad night. Fifty sold-out shows to refund.
Just at this moment, the O2 Arena page reads, “Michael Jackson - THIS IS IT!” I bet it won’t for much longer.

I’ve been asked to crosspost this from my blog…
Resistance - The Essence of the Islamist Revolution is Alistair Crooke’s survey of modern Islamist thought. It would be clearer to say it is a couple of books occupying the same space; one would be a history of Islamist thought since the origins of the Iranian Revolution, [...]

What’s Chinese for cultural destruction?
Over the next few years, [Kashgar] city officials say, they will demolish at least 85 percent of [the city's Old Town, a] warren of picturesque, if run-down homes and shops. Many of its 13,000 families, Muslims from a Turkic ethnic group called the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), will be moved.

An interesting post on the reaction from the late-Stalinist Soviet Union towards what was about to become the ECSC/EEC-and-beyond. It seems that the Soviet leadership was much more concerned about the European Defence Community proposal, an eventual failure, than the economic, social, and administrative/political version. But then, this was Europe ten years after the war; [...]

Just a few short weeks after the end of World War I on the Western Front, Poland and Soviet Russia started fighting again, skirmishing on their poorly defined border that built into full-scale invasions over the next year. Davies’ book White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-1920 tells this complex story clearly and incisively. [...]

I just discovered this amazing document recently. (h/t to Mr. David Tenner — thanks, David.)
Durnovo was Russian, and he was the Minister of the Interior for a while under Nicholas II. (His successor was the much more famous Stolypin.) He was a conservative who disliked democracy and was none too fond of [...]

After spending a bit of time recently in the various battlefields and cemeteries of Flanders, this topic has been much on my mind. It’s one of those simple but non-obvious military ideas that explains a lot more than you’d expect. Basically, the culminating point is the furthest that the attacker can go while still remaining [...]

Though it does have some relevance to the financial crisis, a brief item from the gentleman who brought you the immensely useful crazification factor:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with [...]

You may have known them already:
The Russian word for train station, voksal, is related to the London neighborhood of Vauxhall.
It is considered bad luck in Georgia to take out the trash at night; it is a sign of throwing money away.
In Tbilisi, the Armenian ambassador’s official car was parked outside the residence of the Turkish [...]