The United States is the last country in the world which should be speaking out about human rights abuses when it continues to torture people at military bases and inside its military, federal, and state prisons across the country. The US has the world’s largest prison population by a huge margin. There are nearly 2.2 […]
The Saga of the Greenlanders and the The Saga of Eirik the Red tell of the Viking discovery of North America. The two accounts were written independently, but the stories are ‘interlaced’ (they reference each other). Both tell of events which took place in the early 11th century and passed down by word of mouth […]
The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi (Author unknown; late 13th century). The Saga of Hrafnkel, Priest of Frey, is one of the best known of the Old Icelandic legends dealing with a feud, as most sagas do. Hrafnkel’s Saga is unusual in its directness and for its simple, forthright structure which focuses directly on the feud […]
What is happening in Gaza is not new. Misguided religious beliefs and simmering, deeply entrenched racism each play a role in creating the conditions for genocide. In many cases, violence is perpetrated by one ethnic group upon another based solely on religious affiliation. In Cambodia, organized religion was considered a threat to civil order, and […]
According to J. Samuel Walker in Prompt & Utter Destruction, the five fundamental considerations which led to the use of the atomic bomb grew out of circumstances that existed in the summer of 1945, when an especially brutal island-by-island military offensive was still being waged in the Pacific. The battle of Okinawa had sacrificed tens […]
The government of Japan had many reasons to resist the Potsdam Declaration initially. As discussed in J. Samuel Walker’s Prompt & Utter Destruction, The Declaration – also known as the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender – was a document outlining the conditions for Japan’s surrender in World War II issued by the US, Great […]
Federalist Paper #10 is a continuation of Federalist Paper #9, entitled, The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection, in which James Madison argues for the need of a successful Union to “break the control and violence of faction.” According to Madison, these factions are “diseases” born of dangerous vices. […]
According to “Publius” in The Federalist Papers, a faction is “A number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or a majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the […]
As the Commander in Chief, the President has the ability to send US armed forces into combat without Congressional approval – as long as he informs Congress within 48 hours – like former President George W. Bush did when he authorized the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Another formal power granted to the President […]
Civil Rights and civil liberties: a discussion that begins and ends with the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was a noble, pyrrhic attempt to limit the “tyranny of the national government,” however it says nothing about limiting state’s rights. An individual state’s ability to ignore or refuse to legally implement federal laws is […]
Jason Darensburg's Blog-o-rama 