|
Why We Hate Hollywood
On the "United 93" homepage, Universal Studios has a site to cover their butts from the lefty crowd: Why Do They Hate America? A few tidbits; Conflicts Past And Present Trade routes and immigration began to make the world more of a global enterprise well before our contemporary period. As a result of these and more stable ways of travel, cultures and religions began to collide. There is a long history of division that is rooted in both politics and religion. Here are several highlights that may help identify the history of the conflicts. The Crusades are a violent episode between Europe and the East. They begin in the eleventh century and last for several hundred years. One notable purpose of the Crusades was to take back the Holy Land (Jerusalem) from the Muslims. Europe succeeded in this endeavor in the first crusade. In the end, history has not looked kindly on this exposition that Pope Innocent II had declared a holy war against the infidels. Islam rebounded and expanded with the creation of the Ottoman Empire. They won back Constantinople (which changed hands several times before the modern day name change of Istanbul) and took Serbia in the key Battle of Kosovo where the Ottoman army met the Serbs Christian forces. The year was 1389. Then, in 1683, the Ottomans went on the offensive again and took Austria in the decisive Battle of Vienna. Well, no, they didn't: At 4 in the morning, on September 12, the Austrian army on the left, and the German forces in the center moved forward, in an attack (which was aimed at preventing another long siege) against the Turks. Mustafa Pasha launched a counter-attack, with most of his force. Then the Polish infantry launched a massive assault upon the right flank. After 12 hours of fighting, Sobieski's Polish force held the high ground on the right. At about five o'clock in the afternoon, four cavalry groups, one of them Austrian-German, and the other three composed of Polish hussars, totaling 20,000 men in all and led by the Polish king, charged down the hills. In the confusion, they made straight for the Ottoman camps, while the Vienna garrison sallied out of its defenses, and joined in the assault. In less than three hours, the Polish forces won the battle, as the Turkish army beat a hasty retreat to the south and east. The Turks lost about 15,000 men in the fighting, compared to approximately 4,000 for the Habsburg-Polish forces. This resulted in even more influence given to the Ottoman Empire in the state of European politics. There were now two equally powerful sides and a widening gulf between what would later be called the East and West. In more modern times there have been several clashes of East and West. The Ottoman Empire quickly declined in the first years of the 1900s due in part to civil unrest. There were also disputes over the British control of the Suez Canal that connected Europe with the Far East in terms of trade. By 1924, the Ottoman Empire came to a close when it was constitutionally abolished internally. Over the decades, with no clear identification with an empire, fundamentalism grew up within Islam with jihad as a focal point. Jihad is an idea that goes back to Muhammad and means struggle. Taken to an extreme, jihad can mean holy war against those who do not adhere to Islamic faith.
the USS Cole blast, the 9/11 catastrophe,
Posted by: Steve 2006-04-27 |
||||
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=149985 |