Free Republic

A crowd of more than a hundred rowdy teenagers turned violent in Downtown Chicago on Saturday night as dozens torched and smashed cars while blaring music in a 'teen trend' that left two with gunshot wounds. Shocking footage showed some teenagers jumping on top of a bus while others started a massive brawl after descending on Millennium Park and attempting to breach barricades. Gunshots rang out with some rounds striking two teenage boys aged 16 and 17. The two youths were transported to a nearby hospital in fair condition. A total of 15 people, nine adults and six children were...

Much of our detailed knowledge of Attila and the Huns comes from one relatively obscure source, the late 5th century History of Priscus. It’s probable that you’ve never heard of Priscus because his history was considered lost after about the 10th century AD. All that survives of it are fragments that later historians have recovered from other ancient and medieval sources that incorporated or paraphrased certain passages of interest. Excerpts from Priscus may be found embedded within works such as the Gothic History of Jordanes, the Histories of Procopius, the works of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the Suda, the History of John...

The Sack Of Baghdad In 1258 – One Of The Bloodiest Days In Human History MEDIEVALFeb 15, 2019 Jay Hemmings   SHARE:FacebookTwitter When we think of the darkest, most bloody days of human history, our minds inevitably turn to the horrors of modern warfare. We think of battles like The Somme in WW1, or Stalingrad or Leningrad in WW2, or murderous regimes like Pol Pot’s or Hitler’s.As bloody and brutal as these events were, they were often spread over periods of weeks, months, or years. Their huge death tolls accumulated over time.However, when talking about the biggest loss of life...

Trump's renown is rooted in American hero myths. Trump says that women like Carla Bruni lust after him, something that women like Carla Bruni vehemently deny. Trump says he is exorbitantly rich, yet Trump ran himself into the ground with his casinos to the point that he was 295 million dollars in debt in 1990. He was bailed out by the banks and by his father. The greatest myth, though, has to do with Trump's alleged negotiating expertise. This too is nonsense. Trump was never proficient in the art of the deal. As a businessman, he paid far too much...

An ancient mouth harp belonging to the Huns that dates back to around 1,700 years ago has been unearthed in Siberia - and it is still capable of making music. Also known as a jaw or 'Jew's harp', the reed is placed in the performer's mouth and plucked with the finger to produce the note. The instrument - 4 inches in length - was made by a craftsman from the ribs of a cow or horse and dates from the time the nomadic Huns controlled southern Siberia 1,580 to 1,740 years ago.

Germans increasingly see Russia as a more reliable partner than the US, a new study released on Saturday has found. The poll of 1,004 people by research institute Infratest dimap showed that 28 percent of respondents felt Moscow was a reliable partner, compared to 25 percent for Washington. The result is the first time the public’s trust in the US has fallen below Russia in over a decade. An Infratest survey of public trust in Germany’s global partners in June found both countries tying at 21 percent. France and Britain fared far better in the German public’s eyes. More than...

Republican Donald Trump says he'd be fine with Caitlyn Jenner using the bathroom of her choice at Trump Tower. (AP File Photo) (CNSNews.com) - Republican Donald Trump, appearing on Thursday's "Today" show, said transgenders should be allowed to "use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate." "So if Caitlyn Jenner were to walk into Trump Tower and want to use the bathroom, you would be fine with her using any bathroom she chooses?" host Matt Lauer asked Trump. "That is correct," Trump said. Asked for his view on the North Carolina bathroom controversy, Trump said the state has "paid a...

A senior Russian official says Moscow has started delivering S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who spoke on Monday on Ekho Moskvy radio, wouldn’t say how many systems have been delivered or provide any other specifics. […] The S-300 deal has long worried the U.S. and Israel, which see it as destabilizing. …

Reflections on the War on Terror, a century into it... - There are as many truisms in war as there are in peace. Favorites include “The generals are always fighting the last war,” “There is nothing new under the sun,” “An army marches on its stomach.” All are true, to an extent, and can be applied to the study of any war, including the current one. But it’s also worth considering one of the great lies of all time, always cited, rarely true: “But This Time Is Different!” We say it to our parents when we hope for an exception...

The Mongol mysteries: Are 'deer stones' a clue? By Guy Gugliotta The Washington Post Sometime around 1000 B.C., a Mongolian tribesman climbed on the back of a horse and surveyed the windblown steppe that stretched as far as the eye could see. The weather was turning colder, and there wasn't enough grass for his goats. It was time to move. From the moment that decision was made, a tradition was born. Horses — yesterday's beasts of burden — became a means of escape. Soon they would become the tool of conquest, and the people of the steppe — whether Scythian,...

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse. Honest. This isn't a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God. Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their "common faith" (Christianity) and told him: "Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. ... The biblical prophecies...

Who were Hunnu? Huunu artisan medallion with yak image engraving For many decades the study of ancient history of Mongols was subject to ideological directives and politics. And therefore, with the removal of political and ideological restraints after political reforms of 1990, archeology now experiences a boom.One of the hottest areas is the history of Hunnu, a nomadic tribe that ruled the vast stretches of Central Asian steppes and forced China to go into extreme effort of building the Great China wall in attempt to protect against devastating raids.The name of Atilla, the Hunnu king who led his men...

No one represents the unbridled fury and savagery of barbarism as much as Attila the Hun. Even in the twentieth century one of the worst names that could be found for the Germans was to call them Huns. Attila, as the greatest Hun leader, is the stereotypical sacker of cities and killer of babies. In his own day he and his Huns were known as the "Scourge of God," and the devastation they caused in Gaul before the great Battle of Chalons in 451 AD became a part of medieval folklore and tradition. The clash at Chalons was one of...

In 1984 a German scholar worked out that 210 reasons had been advocated for the fall of the Roman empire. Peter Jones enjoys a "fine narrative history" that concentrates on just one.Peter Jones reviews and The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather and The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-PerkinsIn 1984 a German scholar worked out that 210 reasons had been advocated for the fall of the Roman empire in the West in the fifth century AD - from bureaucracy to deforestation, from moral decline to over-hot public baths, from female emancipation to...

Archaeologists start digging for Hun settlements in Russia LIPETSK, June 22 (RIA Novosti) - Major archaeological excavation work has started in the Lipetsk region's Zadonsk and Khlevnoye districts (Central Russia), where Hun settlements used to be in ancient times. "Four archaeological expeditions, involving a hundred people each, have started excavation work on the banks of the Don and the Voronezh rivers on the sites of former settlements of the Huns," Mikhail Ryazantsev, an archaeologist at the State Department for Cultural Heritage Protection, told RIA Novosti. The Huns were nomadic tribes between the second and fourth centuries A.D. Experts of Lipetsk's...

Germans accuse skiing hooligansBayern police say that a large cow made of synthetic material on display in connection with the skiing world championships in Oberstdorf has been stolen, and "Norwegian cowboys" are suspected.Police said that the 1.4 meter (4'7") high cow was on show at the cross-country skiing stadium for the world championships recently staged in the city.Newspaper Abendzeitung München reported that the defenseless cow was abducted on the last day of the championships.The cow was last seen at the railway station in Oberstdorf in the company of two people the newspaper described as "norwegischer Cowboys" (Norwegian cowboys). Local police...

Siberian Graveyard's Secrets YEKATERINBURG, Russia In a medieval Siberian graveyard a few miles south of the Arctic Circle, Russian scientists have unearthed mummies roughly 1,000 years old, clad in copper masks, hoops and plates - burial rites that archaeologists say they have never seen before. . Among 34 shallow graves were five mummies shrouded in copper and blankets of reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Unlike the remains of Egyptian pharaohs, the scientists say, the Siberian bodies were mummified by accident. The cold, dry permafrost preserved the remains, and the copper may have helped prevent oxidation. . The discovery adds...

"It was a hard book to write. Parts of the book were very painful to write. If there was a fury, it was a fury at all the lies that are used to justify war, all the myths of war -- all of the things we're told about war that I had to find out the hard way and very painfully are not true. And if there's a fury at that, it's the mendacity of the entire enterprise." - C. Hedges This book is not about military war, as it pretends. It's about political war, and is the opening salvo...

Sand-covered Huns city unearthed 10/08/2002 XI'AN: Chinese archaeologists recently discovered a unique, ancient city which has lain covered by desert sands for more than 1,000 years. It is the first ruined city of the Xiongnu (Huns) ever found, said Dai Yingxin, a well-known Chinese archaeologist. The Xiongnu was a nomadic ethnic group, who for 10 centuries were tremendously influential in northern China. The unearthed city occupies 1 square kilometre in Jingbian County, in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, adjacent to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the north of the country. It is believed that the city was built by more...

The Goths and Later Germanic Invaders Little is known about the early history of the Goths before they came into contact with the Romans. What little evidence we have indicates that they probably came from Scandinavia. In the first millennium B. C., they crossed the Baltic Sea and migrated into Northeastern Europe in the area occupied by Poland today. Later, they moved again and made their home in the area north of the Black Sea. Nobody knows for sure what caused these migrations but they became known as the Wanderings of the Peoples. Anthropologists speculate that changes in climate caused...