Showing results by author "Charles Rivers" in All Categories

Yuri Bezmenov was among the first Soviet whistleblowers to attract attention on a global scale, and interest in his story has recently been revived thanks to his surprising cameo in the teaser trailer for Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War in August 2020. This came despite the fact he was far from the first ex-KGB agent or Russian to pull back the curtains on the Russian government and reveal the harrowing “truths” they were once sworn to harbor.

Few things have colored J. Edgar Hoover's reputation quite like COINTELPRO, which has become the FBI's most notorious operation, one that still has lasting ramifications. From 1956-1971, the FBI waged a secret war in America through a series of projects against groups believed to be potentially subversive, including various people and organizations involved in women's rights, civil rights, Native American rights, anti-war groups, and even groups that supported animal rights.

Otherwise known as the “Roma” or by their popular misnomer “the gypsies”, the members of this highly undervalued and grossly misrepresented community have long been considered outcasts. More often than not, the Romani are branded by even those who fancy themselves liberals as “pikeys”, “gyppos”, and “gips”. There's also a regrettably common term “gypped” meaning “to cheat, or swindle” which perpetuates the damaging stereotype that the Roma are dishonest nuisances and societal pests.

Given the abundance of funerary artifacts that have been found within the sands of Egypt, it sometimes seems as though the Ancient Egyptians were more concerned with the matters of the afterlife than they were with matters of the life they experienced from day to day. This is underscored most prominently by the pyramids, which have captured the world’s imagination for centuries.

In the eighth century BCE, one of the most important provinces within the Assyrian Empire was Samaria. Also known as Israel, Samaria repeatedly rebelled against their Assyrian overlords, but in 722, the Assyrians overran Samaria once and for all, killing countless numbers and sending most of the rest of its inhabitants into forced exile.

For much of the past 30 years, Iraq has been one of the world’s greatest hot spots. The 1980s saw Ba’athist strongman Saddam Hussein go to war with Iran as well as the Kurds, who maintained an autonomous region of their own in Northern Iraq. Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait touched off a Gulf War that was followed by biting sanctions. And the 2003 American-led invasion against Hussein’s regime provided the uninformed an all-too-brutal crash course on Iraq’s ethnic and religious divisions and the Middle East’s as a whole.

Anubis: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Egyptian God of the Afterlife looks at the god that had such a decisive impact on the Egyptians’ concepts of death and afterlife. You will learn about Anubis like never before.

The reign of the Khmer Rouge, a Cambodian communist regime, began on April 7, 1975 as Khmer Rouge militants entered the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, ultimately gaining control and forcing out its residents. For the next four years, the regime would remain in power and commit what is now referred to as the Cambodian Genocide. Their reign would result in economic turmoil, cultural destruction, and mass death, impacting Cambodia to this day.

The United States has no shortage of famous military units, from the Civil War's Iron Brigade to the 101st Airborne, but one would be hard pressed to find one that had to go through as many hardships off the field as the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African American fighter pilots who overcame Jim Crow at home and official segregation in the military to serve their country in the final years of World War II.

The spy novel emerged from the intrigues of the mid-20th century for good reason. The war with the Third Reich involved an unseen cloak-and-dagger struggle between the participants, but beyond that, an even larger and longer contest took place in the shadows. The men responsible for this unprecedented leaking of life-or-death information would enter history as the Cambridge Five - though in fact, they may have been only the core of a much larger group.

John Dee was one of the greatest scientific minds of his time, but also one of the most controversial. He was a learned man in fields as varied as mathematics and astronomy, centuries before they became formalized fields of study, but he is better remembered for performing magic and alchemy. Instead of astronomy, he became renowned across England for astrology, and he was one of the country’s most notorious occult writers during his life.

La leyenda de Francisco "Pancho" Villa está saturada de heroísmo, tragedia y romanticismo; es la historia de un campesino pobre que se convierte en bandolero por necesidad, por haber vengado una injusticia sobre su familia; la del genio militar que primero huye del gobierno opresor, y después, frente al ejército revolucionario más grande en la historia de su país, lo derrota y se convierte en el liberador de México, sólo para volver a caer en la desgracia cuando sus tropas lo abandonan o son liquidadas por el enemigo.

On the North American continent, Native American tribes carried out abductions against the new European settlers from the time they first set foot on eastern shores. Some of the women taken in the colonial to early American period went on to become respected figures in their new environments, while others lived out their lives as slaves.

The early history of Earth covers such vast stretches of time that years, centuries, and even millennia become virtually meaningless. Instead, paleontologists and scientists who study geochronology divide time into periods and eras. The current view of science is that Earth is around 4.6 billion years old, and the first four billion years of its development are known as the Precambrian period.

For centuries, Christians and Muslims were embroiled in one of the most infamous territorial disputes of all time, viciously and relentlessly battling one another for the Holy Land. In the heart of Jerusalem sat one of the shining jewels of the Christian faith - the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Legend has it that this was where their Savior had been buried before his fabled resurrection. What was more, it was said to house the very cross Jesus Christ had died upon.

On the morning of November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington led 700 militiamen in a surprise attack against Cheyenne leader Black Kettle's camp at Sand Creek. Chivington was a fire and brimstone Methodist minister who had publicly advocated indiscriminately killing Native American children because "nits makes lice."

Early in 1799, Napoleon advanced against France’s erstwhile enemy, the Ottoman Empire, invading modern Syria (then the province of Damascus) and conquering the cities of Gaza, Jaffa, Arish and Haifa. However, with the plague running rampant through his army and his lines of supply from Egypt stretched dangerously thin, Napoleon was unable to destroy the fortified city of Acre and was forced to retreat. The retreat cost him almost all of his wounded as, harassed by enemy forces, he was forced to abandon most of his casualties to the Ottomans’ mercy, or lack thereof.

People have always been afraid of the dead. Since the dawn of humanity, people have both cared for those who are deceased yet also tried to keep them away. There are a myriad of legends and beliefs about the dead coming back, and one of the more persistent ones is of the vampire.

Hace poco más de cien años un campesino mexicano llamado Emiliano Zapata reclutó un ejército rural de las plantaciones y pueblos del sur de México, tomó por la fuerza las tierras de los haciendas y comenzó a repartirlas entre los habitantes de Anenecuilco, su pueblo natal en Morelos. Indignado y encolerizado por el despojo que los terratenientes habían venido efectuando durante años contra los pueblos indígenas, había decidido tomar la impartición de la justicia en sus propias manos.

Jesús de Nazareth fue un maestro judío de origen rural que vivió en el primer tercio del siglo I de nuestra era. Durante una celebración de la Pascua en Jerusalén fue condenado a la pena de muerte - específicamente crucifixión - por la autoridad imperial de Roma, que en ese momento tenía el control de su país. Muchas cosas más podrían decirse de su vida, pero aparte de este pequeño resumen y quizá uno o dos detalles más, sería complicado que todos los académicos estudiosos de la Biblia levantaran su mano en señal de acuerdo.