Ancient Mesopotamia, often referred to as the cradle of civilization, was once home to some of the most influential cities in human history. Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning ‘between two rivers’) was an ancient region located in the eastern Mediterranean bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau, corresponding to today’s Iraq, […]

The quest for peace and justice It is impossible to begin this lecture without again expressing my deep appreciation to the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament for bestowing upon me and the civil rights movement in the United States such a great honor. Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by […]

It seems a bit strange that a well-worn former government employee and sometime philosopher like myself should be asked to address this assemblage on matters of ethics and honor, right and wrong, on the question, “Does Honor Have a Future?” But as Sir Thomas More said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the times.” And what do we make of […]

1. The Impeachment of Donald Trump The impeachment of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, occurred on December 18, 2019, when the House of Representatives approved articles of impeachment on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The president’s impeachment came after a formal House inquiry found that he had solicited foreign interference in the […]

It’s partly out of fear, partly self-flattery, and partly delusion, and it’s been happening for thousands of years. Ira S. Wolfe is a business consultant in Pennsylvania. A decade ago, all his clients were worried about the same thing: millennials. “Millennials at that point were mostly either teenagers or just getting out of college,” Wolfe recalls, “and they were this […]

An affiliate of the Islamic State says it executed 11 Christians in Nigeria in retaliation for the killings of leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his spokesman earlier this year, according to Agence France-Presse. The terrorist group released a video on Thursday through its online news agency, Telegram, that reportedly shows masked militants from the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) […]

Auguste René Caillié was a French explorer and the first European to return alive from the town of Timbuktu. Caillié had been preceded at Timbuktu by a British officer, Major Gordon Laing, who was murdered in September 1826 on leaving the city. Caillié was born 19 November 1799 in western France in a village near the port of Rochefort. His […]

The “war on Christmas” is a concerted effort to disassociate Jesus Christ from the Christmas holiday by removing the word “Christmas” from public discourse. Are we going back to dark ages, like in the 17th century, when the Puritans had laws forbidding the celebration of Christmas? With the atheistic Cult of Reason in power during the era of Revolutionary France, […]

Throughout the day, your mind is getting input from thousands of different sources. I talk about reinventing yourself quite a bit. Part of that process involves changing the way you think. To change the way you think, you can begin to think of your mind as a fortress. If you allow too much garbage into your brain, it will block […]

On a recent national radio program, the host interviewed several Muslims about Islam and terrorism. He asked, “What is it about Islam that seems to attract or instigate violence?” One of the guests immediately responded, “We could ask the same thing about Christianity. After all, the KKK is a Christian organization.” The issue of the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) and […]