history

If 95% of the people on earth right now were to suddenly die, the total population of the earth would still be higher than it was in the at any point prior to a thousand years ago.

Put another way, in the last thousand years the total number of humans living on earth has increased twenty-fold.

My mother sent me an e-mail of stories and pictures from a website detailing the V-bomb attacks on Antwerp late in World War II.

Imagine this: you are a fourteen year-old girl. It's a couple weeks before Christmas and all your friends want to go to town to see the new movie. They want you to come too. You say you can't afford it and want to save the money for Christmas. They plead with you and try to get you to come along and won't take "no" for an answer. You have a hard time convincing them (and yourself) that you don't want to come, but eventually they give up trying to drag you along and go without you.

The cinema gets hit by a bomb and all your friends die.

That's one of my mother's stories. This is the cinema:

The Rex Cinema, Antwerp, Belgium. December 1944.

This was the cover of today's National Post.

Now bear in mind that the Mongols are to Islam as Nazis are to Judaism. The Mongols wiped-out whole cities in Persia and Iraq, killing millions. In 1298 the invading Mongols slaughtered an estimated 800,000 people in Baghdad and killed the Caliph (more or less Islam's equivalent to the Pope) and all his family and heirs. The event is at the hub of much of the last 700 years of history in the area and the ramifications of it continue today. Saddam Hussein frequently made referrence to the Mongol invasions in his speeches against the United States. As an occupying force in Baghdad right now Bush is not making it easier for his troops by posing for a picture like this. Even the Crusaders are less reviled in the Muslim world than the Mongols. I can't even think of a more historically myopic and just plain blatantly stupid photo opportunity for the man. He wouldn't be any more in-your-face if he were to paste horns on his head, paint himself red and parade around Baghdad holding a sign saying "Great Satan"... Only in this case he's not the one that is going to have rocket-propelled grenades launched at him. Way to go Peace Duke.