Today in history, on July 22, 1456, the West scored one of its greatest victories over the jihad—and, in so doing, inaugurated the ringing of church bells at noon.
Three years after conquering Constantinople, the Ottoman Sultan, Muhammad II, at the head of over 100,000 Turks, marched towards the strategic fortress town of Belgrade, key to Western Europe, in the spring of 1456.
A barrage of statistics makes clear that contemporary Muslims have fallen behind other peoples, whether the topic be health, corruption, longevity, literacy, human rights, personal security, income, or power. But why? Four competing explanations exist, each fraught with implications.
First, the global Left and Islamists blame Western imperialism. For them, today’s tribulations follow inevitably on the two centuries after 1760 when nearly all Muslims fell under the control of 16 majority-Christian states (the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Russia, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and the United States).
Though book banners may try to convince otherwise, students don’t need protection from the passion portrayed in Shakespeare’s classic.
In ninth grade, like high school freshmen all over America, I was assigned Romeo and Juliet to read for my English class. As a longtime literature geek even at the age of 14, I was thrilled to be entering the big leagues. We’d read some Charles Dickens and a little John Steinbeck. But this? This was William Shakespeare. This was serious, complicated stuff.
You’ll have to imagine my excitement as I took the book home to show it to my father, a professor of American literature. The look of irritation on his face as I passed him the book is something I’ll never forget.
How seriously should we take Long Covid?
The usual suspects have been out in force demanding greater health restrictions as the story of rising covid cases is peddled through the media. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been urging governments to employ “tried and tested measures” such as masking and testing, while various luminaries from the UK’s “Independent SAGE” are demanding a return to indoor masking and free lateral flow tests.
On warm summer nights, the park across the street from my house is filled with people playing dribbling soccer balls, playing volleyball, or engaging in aggressive games of Spikeball.
Nearly all of them will have music playing through Bluetooth speakers, usually from the Spotify Top 100. And if I’m honest, none of this music is any good. All I hear is mumbled lyrics tunelessly rendered (well, except for the overuse of Auto-Tune) and beats so quantized that they could be substituted for an atomic clock.
The two Mi-8 helicopters tore across enemy territory early on the morning of March 21, startling the Russian soldiers below. Inside were Ukrainian Special Forces fighters carrying crates of Stinger and Javelin missiles, as well as a satellite internet system. They were flying barely 20 feet above ground into the hottest combat zone in the war.
Ukraine’s top generals had conceived the flights as a daring, possibly doomed, mission. A band of Ukrainian soldiers, running low on ammunition and largely without any communications, was holed up in a sprawling steel factory in the besieged city of Mariupol. The soldiers were surrounded by a massive Russian force and on the verge of annihilation.
The plan called for the Mi-8s to land at the factory, swap their cargo for wounded soldiers, and fly back to central Ukraine. Most everyone understood that the city and its defenders were lost. But the weapons would allow the soldiers to frustrate the Russian forces for a few weeks more, blunting the onslaught faced by Ukrainian troops elsewhere on the southern and eastern fronts and giving them time to prepare for a new Russian offensive there.
Canadians who pay any attention to the world around them are gradually coming to realize they have been living in a fool’s paradise.
In that dreamy world, certain verities stood like granite pillars. Canadian housing was the safest investment you could imagine, a sure thing in an uncertain world. Inflation was a thing of the past, something that our parents or grandparents worried about.
Borrowing lots of money to buy houses and other nice things was only smart and sensible, the cost of loans was so low. The Canadian health system was second to none. Our national defence was in safe hands.
One by one, the pillars have been crumbling.
Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has lashed out against the “mixing” of European and non-European races, in a speech that immediately drew outrage from opposition parties and European politicians.
“We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race … and we do not want to become a mixed race,” said Orbán on Saturday. He added that countries where European and non-Europeans mingle were “no longer nations”.
Orbán has been making similar claims for years, but these comments were couched in stark far-right terms.
Recently, Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary made a significant amendment to its lexicon.
The dictionary’s digital publishers added a new definition for “female” which reads: “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.”
Similarly, the secondary definition of “male” reads: “having a gender identity that is the opposite of female.”
Played by humans, chess is a game of strategic thinking, calm concentration and patient intellectual endeavour. Violence does not usually come into it. The same, it seems, cannot always be said of machines.
Last week, according to Russian media outlets, a chess-playing robot, apparently unsettled by the quick responses of a seven-year-old boy, unceremoniously grabbed and broke his finger during a match at the Moscow Open.
NYT darling Herman Daly has plans for you.
Record inflation that’s forcing us to reconsider a diet of fried bugs and seaweed. Gas prices that are compelling BMW owners to don roller skates. And housing costs that make owning a modest bungalow seem as impossible a dream as living like a Black Lives Matter founder.
You may regard these as ominous developments. But for the green crowd, of course, they’re wonderful tidings — big steps in the right direction. And for one of the kings of that green crowd, Herman Daly — an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland and former World Bank economist who’s the father of something called “ecological economics” — they’re all part of the master plan.
Bettie Page, a ‘50s model and Playboy centerfold who helped set the stage for the sexual revolution of the ‘60s, is finally getting recognized in Nashville.
The Tennessee native, nicknamed the “Queen of Pinups,” is set to receive a historical marker in downtown Nashville. The marker will be placed near Hume-Fogg High School, where Page graduated second in her class in 1940.
About time.
There is no shortage of evidence that residents of homeless encampments often harm surrounding neighbours through harassment, assault and vandalism. Despite this, many politicians and bureaucrats continue to whitewash homeless crime. This needs to stop, because although it’s important to support vulnerable Canadians, communities cannot simply be abandoned to lawlessness.
SCOOP: The Democrats brought a woman who appears to be part of a witches coven and engages in furry play as a witness in a hearing on abortion.
This is who the Democrats bring to represent them.
Bizarre footage and full story here:https://t.co/Nj4Ic9Ri4Q
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 22, 2022
UPDATE: @Vimeo suspended our account after we uploaded this video and published it in our substack. They really don't want you to see the Democrats' star witness who they brought to advocate for abortion. pic.twitter.com/MLeieDg8jN
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 24, 2022
FBI investigators say they have seen a “dramatic escalation” of Chinese espionage and claim Huawei technology ‘threat to national security’
China wanted to build a 70ft pagoda on a hill close to the Capitol in Washington DC but was stopped amid fears the “perfect spot” could be used to spy on the US government, according to leaked FBI documents.
Beijing had also reportedly been attempting to snoop on US military and government facilities using the cover of Huawei installations, according to CNN, which first published the story.
