Historically Irrelevant

Today, a very curious development indeed occurred in the News of the World phone hacking scandal. To those of you who live under the rock of ignorance, News of the World, an English tabloid magazine owned by the Rupert Murdoch and his evil empire, was found to have hacked numerous phones to get voicemails of the British Royal Family, 7/7 London bombing victims, relatives of deceased British soldiers, and others. They were also found to have bribed police in the UK to use a “pinging” technique through mobile phones to find the locations of high profile individuals. Worst of all, these techniques were known to all of the managing staff in News of the World, including its editor.

Today, Sean Hoare, the original whistleblower who outed the fact that most people at News of the World knew what was going on, was found dead in his own home. No details of how he died have been released, but the police did say, “The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious.” Yes. The police (who, may I remind you, were bribed by the staff of News of the World previously), have revealed Hoare’s death to be unexplained, yet they are not treating it as a suspicious death. So the whistleblower that causes News Corp to lose millions of dollars as well as its credibility unexpectedly dies of unknown causes right after the scandal has reached its peak, yet that is totally not suspicious?  Forgive me for sounding like a conspiricay theorist, but there is obviously something more going on here.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time that the police have covered up a crime that involved the elimination of a whistleblower. For example, take the case of Gary Webb. He revealed that the CIA was bringing cocaine into the United States and selling it to raise funds for an operation in Nicaragua. He was later found dead in his home in 2004 with two gunshot wounds to the head. The police ruled the case as a suicide, and it has remained untouched to this day. Let me say that again: a man found with two gunshot wounds to the head was thought to have committed suicide. 

I anxiously await more details on Hoare’s death, and will continue to remain suspicious, unlike the police. This wouldn’t be the first time men killed somebody to hang on to their wealth, and it certainly won’t be the last. 

The story of Marco Polo is one that is widely known across the Western world. His book was a bestseller not only in our time, but in his time during the 13th century as well. The tales of his travels ignited an exploring craze in Europe, eventually leading to the discovery of the New World and the colonization of the better part of the entire world by European adventure seekers. A lesser known contemporary to Marco Polo that attempted a similar feat was one Rabban Bar Sauma. He was what one could call the Marco Polo of the East, for he traveled from Beijing in China all the way to Bordeaux in France. 

Unlike Marco Polo, we know much of Rabban (which is equivalent to rabbi or a similar title) Bar Sauma’s early life. Born in Beijing around 1220, Sauma was a member of the Nestorian faith, an offshoot of Christianity. At the age of 20, he decided to become a monk, and lived in a cave spreading his religious teachings. Around 1260, Sauma and a younger pupil went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, passing through the vast Mongol Empire along the Silk Road, taking a similar route that Marco Polo would also use. Upon reaching Syria, however, they were turned away from their dream of visiting Jerusalem by alleged danger along the route. They instead visited Maragheh in modern day Iran for the selection of the new bishop of the Nestori Church. To Sauma’s surprise, it was his disciple, Rabban Marcos, that was selected. 

With Marcos the new leader of his faith, Sauma was assigned the task of being an envoy to secure a European-Mongol alliance to crush the Muslims and retake Jerusalem in 1287. Had such an alliance been formed, it would have proved decimating for the Muslims, who would be surrounded on both sides by a united foe. Invigorated with his new task, Sauma happily set off to visit the monarchs of Europe, begging them to help the Mongols.

Sauma’s first destination was Constantinople, where he met with the Byzantine emperor Andronikos II. Sauma was amazed at the beauty of the city, and wrote with wondrous prose about his time there. Despite the wonders of Constantinople, Sauma met little success, and soon turned elsewhere. He set off and landed in Sicily in 1287, where he watched Mount Etna erupt. He met with the Sicilian king, where he had no more luck than he did at Constantinople. Sauma traveled to Rome, but too late to see the Pope, who had died just weeks earlier. Instead of talking with the cardinals, he left the city and headed for France.

While in France, he met with King Edward I in Bordeaux in 1288. Edward greeted Sauma warmly, and treated him to lavish feasts. He still refused Sauma’s offer of a military alliance with the Mongols, however, citing domestic issues with the Scots and Welsh. Discouraged, Sauma returned back to Rome to meet with the newly elected Pope Nicholas IV. While equally as gracious as Edward I, the Pope also refused Sauma’s proposal, making Sauma return home empty-handed.

Hand Bar Sauma embarked on his journey just a century earlier, the Pope and the monarchs of Europe would have readily accepted his offer, for they were still caught up in religious fervour over the Crusades. By the late 13th century, however, that excitement had died down. The Europeans had lost most of their land in the Middle East, and were not too ready to send off thousands more of their own soldiers to die in a land they’d never seen. 

Sauma traveled to Baghdad where he lived out the rest of his days. While in Baghdad, Sauma wrote an account of his travels. It was nowhere near as successful as Marco Polo’s book, but provided an interesting juxtaposition to Polo’s travels. In 1928, Sauma’s account was translated and published in English under the name The Monks of Kublai Khan, Emperor of China. Thanks to Sauma, modern day historians are able to see how the West viewed the East, and the East viewed the West. Rabban Bar Sauma will never be remembered and honoured in the same way that Marco Polo is, but it is only just that he too be talked about, and given the title of the Marco Polo of the East. 

Sources: 

• The Monks of Kublai Khan (translated by Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabban_Bar_Sauma
• http://users.ox.ac.uk/~wolf2305/documents/kublai.pdf
• http://www.bookrags.com/research/rabban-bar-sauma-the-reverse-marco—scit-021/
• http://www.worldheritagesite.org/tags/tag696.html
• Image from Wikimedia Commons

In case you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Anthony Weiner is getting a ton of flack from the media and the general public for sending some lewd photos to a few of his Twitter followers. Many are calling for him to resign, and so many of his former supporters are horrified by his actions. I find this sudden outcry of condemnation curious, to say the least. What did Weiner actually do? He simply sent some less than appropriate pictures to a few of his Twitter followers. Did he ever meet these women in real life? No. Did he ever have sex with these women? No. So why in seven hells are we attacking the poor man and calling for his resignation? Yes, he lied to the public by saying his Twitter account was “hacked,” but plenty of other people have lied to the public before and not gotten any condemnation for it at all. Why does Anthony Weiner get attacked whilst men like George Bush, who caused the death of at least 3,000 Americans and many more Iraqis by lying to all of us walk free? Why is there no public outcry over the fact that Wikileaks just released documents showing the United States supported a corrupt election in Haiti? As a species, we need to stop focusing on the superficial and meaningless things such as this “scandal,” and pay attention to the things that actually mean something in the world. 15,000 people have been killed in Libya as Gaddafi has ordered that mass rape be used as a weapon. A 13 year old boy was tortured to death, his penis cut off and sent to his family, and his body mutilated in Syria, where thousands of others are in jail and under torture every day. Yemen is on the brink of war. Japan is experiencing a full nuclear meltdown at Fukushima. There’s an ash cloud from a Chilean volcano canceling flights all across South America in the same way the Icelandic volcano cancelled European flights. And yet, all we hear about is the “atrocious behavior” of Anthony Weiner, who really did not do much wrong. If the American public want politicians to attack for lying, I suggest they find a different target than Anthony Weiner, for there have been much worse lies committed by the US government that have gone unnoticed or simply haven’t garnered enough attention to warrend anybody caring about them. The more I watch and read the news, the angrier I become at the current state of the media of the West. I don’t care about Anthony Weiner’s wiener, and neither should you. 

Yes, my obsession with the Gliese 581 star system continues ever onwards. This time, however, I’m not talking about Gliese 581g! Yes, surprisingly, it is Gliese 581d that I turn my attention to for the duration of this post. Gliese 581d was discovered in 2007, but was quickly written off as not a potential candidate for harbouring life, due to its status as a super Earth (its mass is 5.6 times the size of the Earth), and its distance from its home star. Recent simulations, however, have shown that Gliese 581d lies just in the outer fringes of the habitability zone of Gliese 581, and with a large enough greenhouse effect, could easily support liquid water. 

Let us, for a second then, assume life exists on the surface of Gliese 581d. Further still, let’s assume that intelligent, sapient life exists on the planet. What would it look like to gaze up at the skies of Gliese 581d? What would its star look like in the sky? For one, it would be white, rather than the yellowish-white of our star. Its size, however, is a bit tricky to calculate. To do so, one must employ the small angle formula, which uses the principles of trigonometry to approximate the size of arcs in angles. This is the perfect formula for the size of objects in the sky, at least in astronomical terms, is measured in degrees of angular diameters. For instance, our star, Sol, better known as simply the sun, is about .52º. The formula, after I made some adjustments, was as follows:

θ=360º/2π*d/D

Where:

• θ (the Greek letter theta) is the angular diameter
• d is the diameter of Gliese 581 (the star) in kilometres
• D is the distance between Gliese 581d and its home star in kilometres

With this formula, I simply plugged in the values to the equation, and got an angular diameter of .71º. In terms that we can comprehend, that means that the star in their sky is around 36.4% bigger than ours. Once again, that is a bit hard to visualise, so I did you all the favour of creating a photo comparison between our star in our skies, and their star in their skies. Here is the image as it appears on Earth: 

And here is the image again, this time as if it was taken on the surface of Gliese 581d, looking at Gliese 581:

And there you have it! The star of Gliese 581d, as it appears on its surface. 

President Obama gave a momentous speech today in the State Department in Washington, DC. In it, he outlined all future US policy in the Middle East and North Africa, regions which, if you’ve been paying attention to the news or even have just read previous posts on this site, is undergoing immense change and upheaval. The “Arab Spring,” as it’s grown to be called, is in full force, with people all across the region demanding that their fundamental human rights be met and that they vote for their government. The Obama Administration has been wishy washy when it came to its policy in the region, supporting change in some states and being silent in others. The President hoped to end all that with his speech today. And I must say, I applaud him. It seems that he and his administration really get it. For those of you brave enough to dive into watching the speech itself, you can watch all glorious 50 minutes here. For those of you that would rather not, I’ll break all the points he covered down for you. I’ve divided the speech up into three parts, and considering this was a 50 minute speech, prepare for this post to be a rather long one. 

Read More

5 days ago, Osama bin Laden was wiped off of the face of the Earth by a US Navy SEAL team. It was touted by many as a turning point in the War on Terror and a crippling blow for al Qaeda. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. 

First and foremost, al Qaeda died as soon as Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire all those months ago in Tunisia. The primary purpose of al Qaeda, contrary to the belief of many in the Western World, was not to destroy the West or the United States. Sure, they did try to, but that was simply a means to an end; mainly, the overthrowing of the many Western backed regiemes that dotted the Middle East. Al Qaeda was tired of the autocratic, corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East and wanted them gone. They went about this by targeting the regiemes’ supporters in the West. The attacks on the United States and other European nations were to cripple them financially so they pulled support for Middle Eastern regiemes. With the Arab Spring, however, the entire purpose of al Qaeda is moot. They operated on the idea that only violence and martyrdom could overthrow the regiemes of the Middle East, not peace and civil disobedience. Clearly, the brave men and women of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and others have proven that point wrong. They do not want al Qaeda around any more than we do. The entire idea of al Qaeda is dead, and died when Ben Ali was ousted from his country, not when Osama was killed.

Furthermore, bin Laden’s main purpose was already fulfilled by the time of his death. Princeton defines terrorism as: 

the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear

Obviously, bin Laden and his agenda fits this definition perfectly. He committed acts of terror to scare the American public so that they wasted away enormous sums of money fighting wars and eventually self destructing, ending the rule of the corrupt dictatorships of the Middle East. Osama stated on a few occasions that his strategy wasn’t to commit hundreds of acts of terror upon the United States. It was to commit only one, and then watch as the nation self destructed. Thanks to one simple act, Osama has caused us to plummet trillions of dollars into debt, get dragged into two separate wars, and destroyed many of our core civil liberties, all for naught. Because Osama never intended to attack the United States again (the new reports that Osama was planning an attack on the train system of the United States on September 11, 2011, are insignificant; surely there are thousands of planned attacks found on those hard drives that never came to fruition, and there is no reason to believe this would have suffered a different fate), the reign of the TSA over airports (and soon trains) is pointless and just a baseless affront on our civil liberties. The United States’ international reputation, so high after the end of the Cold War, was virtually destroyed after our conduct of the Iraq War, thanks to Osama. The plight upon this nation cannot be squarely placed on Osama, of course; one man cannot make that much of a difference; but he is a huge contributing factor. 

Osama bin Laden may be dead, but his legacy lives on. He completed his goal: that is, he dragged America to its own self destruction. He has instilled terror in the American public and destroyed our civil liberties. He watched as the regiemes of the Middle East crumble (of course, Osama played no actual part in this, had no affect on the protests, and was probably very disappointed at their secular nature). And because of this, I can confidently say that Osama died with a smile on his face, content with the knowledge that he helped contribute to the United States’ own self destruction. 

The day is December 17, 2010. In the bustling square of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, a simple street vendor by the name of Mohammed Bouazizi set out for another day’s work. For seven years, he had sold vegetables from a street cart, making around 10 dinars a day (the equivalent of around $7) to support his mother, uncle, siblings, and pay for his sister’s university fees. While he was only 26 years of age, Mohammed had been working since he was around 10, and never even graduated high school. His life’s goal, at least for the moment, was to save up enough money to buy a pick-up truck, which would make his work a lot easier. He was loved by most in Sidi Bouzid, for he frequently gave some of his produce to the poorest families in the town totally free of charge. 

Mohammed, and many others in Tunisia, had been tormented by police forces all his life. They would frequently confiscate his cart of produce, citing he held no license to sell from a street card. However, no such license existed; it wasn’t illegal to sell from a street cart. But of course, the corrupt regime that held its iron fist over Tunisia paid of no mind to the constant turmoil it put Mohammed and the rest of Tunisia’s youth through. 

But on December 17th, Mohammed decided that enough was enough. His cart was once again confiscated by the police, but worse still, the officer who confiscated it also decided to slap Mohammed, spit at him, insult his father (who died when Mohammed was only three of a heart attack), and have her aids beat him to the ground. Outraged, Mohammed stormed over to the governor’s building and demanded to meet with him to tell them about the police brutality. They refused to see him. Why would they see him, anyway? He was simply common riffraff, a lowly street vendor. What could he do? Well, he did the only thing he could do in the face of so much injustice on a day to day basis; Mohammed doused himself in gasoline and set himself alight, right in front of the local government office. 

He was quickly taken to the hospital, but his act of defiance did not go unnoticed in Sidi Bouzid. Within hours, the members of the town were protesting against the Tunisian authorities for the unfair treatment of Mohammed. The dictator of Tunisia, Ben Ali, deployed troops to quell the protests (for that is the only thing totalitarian regiemes know how to do) which only helped to fuel the burning fire that had been ready to spark for decades. By the time of Mohammed’s death in the hospital on January 4th, the protests had spread far past just Sidi Bouzid. They had even reached the capital of Tunisia, Tunis. They grew and grew, until eventually Ben Ali was forced to leave the country on January 14th. And rest is, quite literally, history. 

Today, March 29th, Mohammed Bouazizi would have turned 27. Instead, he simultaneously set himself and the torch of freedom alight. His act of self immolation may have ended his life, but it freed the lives of millions of others. Bouazizi is already a symbol amongst the brave revolutionaries in the Arab world, but it’s time we honour him as well. So today, I ask you all to honour the legacy of Mohammed Bouazizi, and remember that no matter how meager you may think you appear, you can still change the world.