ISIS AND THE BLONDE YAZIDI BLOODLINE

Images of Yazidi children.

by Max Kaeser

Being a direct descendant of Yazidis, through my paternal lineage, the call of the blood, the call of the Heimat, the call of my own people is strong. My grandfather's last name was and still is El Yazidi, and being the man  I am – a Yazidi born in Africa – it pains me to see and hear all the stories of how the daughters of my ethnicity are enslaved, sold for sex slaves, consumed in their captivity to death because of their religion, because of the way they look, at the hands of Islamic Jihadists.

CRACKS IN THE GREAT WALL

by Ave Maria

The essence of Greek comedies, like most good comedies, consisted of a straight man and a buffoon. The straight man, or ironist, understates his own abilities, eliciting a knowing chuckle from the audience in on the joke. The buffoon, or alazon, overstates his own talents to the point of absurdity. The alazon’s self-deceptive boastfulness, and his inability to see what is going on in front of his face, assures victory to the ironist. He does not even understand the ironist's sly jokes.

In the realm of geopolitics, the West of 2014 is the world's alazon. We have such a wide cast of characters in the role of the ironist that the odds seem rather unfairly stacked against us. Not only are the non-Western countries taking us for fools, but also the non-Westernized populations within our own countries, and sometimes, it seems, the chorus of the cosmic play itself.

THE ONE-EYED 'OMNISCIENCE' OF WESTERN CONSCIOUSNESS

The Western media: Panoptica of veracity or jittery claymation?

by Daniel Spaulding

With yet another bout of violence erupting between the Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza the world is once again being subjected to massive amounts of propaganda, political rhetoric, and sentimental pleading by each side in a perpetual effort to rally popular opinion to their cause. More often than not the propaganda from both sides reaches hysterical and preposterous proportions.