CIA gives up the ‘Family Jewels’

The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA’s illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973–the so-called “family jewels.” Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden called the file “a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency.” The papers are scheduled for public release on Monday, June 25.

Download the declassified documents | Read more

What is a Peacock Throne?

The Peacock Throne, called Takht-e-Tavous in Persian, is the name originally of a Mughal throne, later used to describe the thrones of the Persian emperors from Nader Shah Afshari to Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. (read more…)

Dionysus, the Greek God of Wine

DIONYSOS (or Dionysus) was the great Olympian god of wine, vegetation, pleasure and festivity.
He was depicted as either an older bearded god or a pretty effeminate, long-haired youth. His attributes included the thyrsos (a pine-cone tipped staff), drinking cup, leopard and fruiting vine. He was usually accompanied by a troop of Satyrs and Mainades (female devotees or nymphs). (read more…)
Source: Theoi.com

Autumn Harvest Uprising

The Autumn Harvest Uprising was an insurrection that took place in Hunan province and Jiangxi province, China on September 7, 1927, led by Mao Zedong, who established a short-lived Hunan Soviet. Mao led a small army of peasants to fight the Kuomintang and the landlords of Hunan. The uprising was defeated by Kuomintang forces and Mao was forced to retreat to Jiangxi( the east) province, where emerged an army of miners. This was the first armed uprising by the Communists, and it marked a significant change in their strategy. Mao and Red Army founder Zhu De went on to develop a rural based strategy that centered on guerilla tactics, paving the way to the Long March of 1934. (source Wikipedia)

The Monster of Florence

The mystery of the “Monster of Florence” began in August 1968 with the murder of Barbara Locci, a 32-year-old married woman from Lastra a Signa, and her lover Antonio Lo Bianco. Even though Barbara was married and had a child, she was known around town as a promiscuous woman, and had previously earned the nickname “Queen Bee”. (read more…)

Anais Nin

Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) was a French-born author of Spanish, Cuban, and Danish descent who became famous for her published journals, which span more than sixty years, beginning when she was eleven years old and ending shortly before her death. Anais is also famous for her erotica, which not only proves sensual, but also acts as a study of human sexuality in its perfection and flaws. (read more…)

Do you speak Chiwere?

Chiwere (also called Iowa-Otoe-Missouria) is a Siouan language originally spoken by the Missouria, Otoe, and Ioway peoples in Northeast Kansas and parts of Missouri and Nebraska. The language is closely related to Ho Chunk (Winnebago). Today, Chiwere is only spoken by a very few elder people within the tribal communities of the Otoe-Ioway in Oklahoma. The only dialect spoken today is the Ioway dialect. The last fluent speaker of the Otoe-Missouria variety was Truman Washington Dailey who died in 1996. Currently, Chiwere is highly endangered. With the last two fluent speakers dying in the Winter of 1996, only a handful of semi-fluent speakers remain, all of whom are elderly. Although the Otoe-Ioway people themselves have no Chiwere learning programs, a few external sources are working to preserve the language into the next decade. In spite of these efforts, it is likely that Chiwere will become extinct in the very near future. (read more…)

Tillie Olsen, feminist author

Tillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912–January 1, 2007) was an American writer, associated with the political turmoil of 1930s and the first generation of American feminists. Though she published very little, Olsen was enormously influential for her treatment of the lives and thoughts of women and the poor and for drawing attention to why women have been less likely to be published authors (and why they receive less attention when they do). The extent of her centrality to American feminist fiction has caused some critics to be frustrated at simplistic feminist interpretations of her work. In particular, several critics have pointed to a greater role than is traditionally seen for Olsen’s Communist past. (read more…)

Double Fantasy

Strange as it seems now, the last album John Lennon released in his lifetime was intended as a comeback, or rather as a parting wave at retirement: “Watching the Wheels” and “Beautiful Boy” celebrate the joys he found outside the star system, and “(Just Like) Starting Over” is a slightly awkward rocker about rejoining the domestic world that’s also sort of about rejoining the pop world. The studio-pro arrangements are a little too slick, but Lennon rarely sounded happier. Ono, whose songs alternate with his in a series of thematic diptychs, was taking a stab at channeling her artier impulses into pop and is generally less successful–her voice works in a context of art-weirdness, but not as well in conventional tunes. Get Double Fantasy

Prince Otto von Bismarck, the first German Chancellor

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince von Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, Count von Bismarck-Schönhausen, born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck (April 1, 1815 – July 30, 1898) was a European statesman of the 19th century, born to a wealthy family. As Minister-President of Prussia from 1862 to 1890, he engineered the Unification of Germany. From 1867 on, he was Chancellor of the North German Confederation. When the German Empire was declared in 1871, he served as its first Chancellor. Bismarck held conservative monarchical views in the tradition of Clemens von Metternich, the Austrian statesman who devised the diplomatic arrangements which governed Europe after the Napoleonic Wars–arrangements which Bismarck upset. Bismarck’s primary objectives were to ensure the supremacy of the Prussian state within Central Europe, and of the aristocracy within the state itself. His most significant achievement was the creation of the modern German state, with Prussia at its core, through a series of wars and political maneuvering in the 1860s. The final act, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, saw Prussia break France’s power on the European continent. (read more…)