I recently bought a Kindle.  That Kindle paid for itself with one International Herald Tribune article.  The article was about a man named As'ad Shaftari.  He was an intelligence officer in a Christian militia during Lebanon's  Civil War (1975-1990).  He is still feared in parts of the Muslim community for the torture and killings that was carried out on his orders and the lives he ended personally.  This is how Shaftari describes his mindset during that time: At the end of the week I would go to church, after killing and torturing, to confess, but it was futile. I didn’t see killing … [Read more...]

A few weeks ago, I heard a discussion of what I would consider one of the most peculiar events in the 20th Century.  The event historically is known as the Christmas Truce of 1914.  Many accounts are greatly romanticized, but certain facts come through in all the stories.  World War I had started a few months prior.  The front lines between the Germans and English were close enough that they could hear each other.  On Christmas Eve, German and British soldiers began singing Christmas carols to each other across no-man's-land.  On Christmas Day, some German soldiers stood up from the trenches, … [Read more...]