NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) — Pirates holding a Saudi-owned oil supertanker off the coast of Somalia have set the vessel free after receiving a ransom payment, a piracy monitor in neighboring Kenya and the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet said Saturday.
Mwangura said all 23 crew members of the Sirius Star, the largest ship ever hijacked by pirates, are safe and in good health. They are citizens of Croatia, Great Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia.
“Anytime a ship is released, it is positive news,” said Commander Jane Campbell of the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet. “But too many people see it as a ship and its cargo being released. When merchant mariners are released, it is always good news.”
The ship is a VLCC, or “very large crude carrier.” According to the Fifth Fleet, the tanker is more than three times that of a U.S. navy aircraft carrier.
Mwangura said it would have been a “disaster” if the pirates had fired guns aboard the ship, harming the cargo or igniting a fire.
“The capture of the Sirius Star raised the specter of an environmental disaster should the hijackers decide to turn the ship into a weapon or foreign navies attempt to release it by force,” he said.
The pirates had been expected to release the supertanker after receiving the ransom payment Friday, but four pirates drowned after their skiff capsized in rough seas while they were leaving the Sirius Star, according to a journalist who spoke to one of the pirates on board.
There were five pirates in the skiff and one survived, the journalist said. The bodies of the other four were recovered, he said.
The pirates told another journalist they received $3 million in ransom money but lost part of it when the skiff capsized.
“Initially, the gunmen were demanding $25 million for its release but the latest reports indicate that the demand had been lowered to below $3.5 million,” Mwangura said.
Hijackings off East Africa are a cause of growing international concern, spurring a number of international navies to patrol the pirate-wracked Gulf of Aden. Dozens of ships have been attacked in the gulf by pirates based in a largely lawless
Campbell said the number of attacks may have gone up in recent months, but the number of successful hijackings has gone down. She attributed that to measures taken by merchant ships, such as vigilant keeping of watch and evasive ship maneuvers, and the increased naval presence in the at-risk areas.
Campbell stressed, however, that they are only preventive measures. “Piracy is a problem that starts on the shore,” she said. “The international community needs to address the situation on the ground in Somalia
Title page of Common Sense by Thomas Paine (Philadelphia, 1776)
Common Sense was a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. It was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolution. Common Sense presented the American colonists with an argument for independence from British rule at a time when the question of independence was still undecided. Paine wrote and reasoned in a style that common people understood; forgoing the philosophy and Latin references used by Enlightenment era writers, Paine structured Common Sense like a sermon and relied on Biblical references to make his case to the people. Historian Gordon S. Wood described Common Sense as, “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era.”
Publication history
Thomas Paine began work on Common Sense in late 1775 under the working title of Plain Truth. With the help of Benjamin Rush, who suggested the title Common Sense and helped edit and publish, Paine developed his ideas into a forty-eight page pamphlet. Paine published Common Sense anonymously because of its treasonous content. Printed and sold by R. Bell, Third Street, Philadelphia, it sold as many as 120,000 copies in the first three months, 500,000 in the first year, and went through twenty-five editions in the first year alone. Paine donated his royalties from Common Sense to George Washington’s Continental Army, saying:
As my wish was to serve an oppressed people, and assist in a just and good cause, I conceived that the honor of it would be promoted by my declining to make even the usual profits of an author.
Sections
Four sections are noted on the title page, which quotes James Thomson’s poem “Liberty” (1735-36):
Man knows no master save creating Heaven,
Or those whom choice and common good ordain.
I. Of the Origin and Design of Government in general, with concise Remarks on the English Constitution.
Paine begins this section by making a distinction between society and government. Society is a “patron,” “produced by our wants”, that promotes happiness. Government is a “punisher,” “produced by wickedness,” that restrains vices. Paine then goes on to consider the relationship between government and society in a state of “natural liberty.” Paine tells a story of a few isolated people living in nature without government. The people find it easier to live together rather than apart and thereby create a society. As the society grows problems arise, so all the people meet to make regulations to mitigate the problems. As the society continues to grow government becomes necessary to enforce the regulations, which over time, turn into laws. Soon there are so many people that they cannot all be gathered in one place to make the laws, so they begin holding elections. This, Paine argues, is the best balance between government and society. Having created this model of what the balance should be, Paine goes on to consider the Constitution of the United Kingdom.
Paine finds two tyrannies in the English constitution; monarchical and aristocratic tyranny, in the king and peers, who rule by heredity and contribute nothing to the people. Paine goes on to criticize the English constitution by examining the relationship between the king, the peers, and the commons.
II. Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession.
In the second section Paine considers monarchy first from a biblical perspective, then from a historical perspective. He begins by arguing that all men are equal at creation and therefore the distinction between kings and subjects is a false one. Several bible verses are posed to support this claim. Paine then examines some of the problems that kings and monarchies have caused in the past and concludes they are evil and unnecessary because these systems of government do not work for the good of all men.
III. Thoughts on the present State of American Affairs.
Constitution of the United States as proposed by Thomas Paine in Common Sense
In the third section Paine examines the hostilities between England and the American colonies and argues that best course of action is independence. Paine proposes a Continental Charter (or Charter of the United Colonies) that would be an American Magna Carta. Paine writes that a Continental Charter “should come from some intermediate body between the Congress and the people” and outlines a Continental Conference that could draft a Continental Charter. Each colony would hold elections for five representatives; these five would be accompanied by two members of the colonies assembly, for a total of seven representatives from each colony in the Continental Conference. The Continental Conference would then meet and draft a Continental Charter that would secure “freedom and property to all men, and… the free exercise of religion.” The Continental Charter would also outline a new national government, which Paine thought would take the form of a Congress.
Thomas Paine suggested that a Congress may be created in the following way, each colony should be divided in districts; each district would “send a proper number of delegates to Congress.” Paine thought that each state should send at least 30 delegates to Congress, and that the total number of delegates in Congress should be at least 390. The Congress would meet annually, and elect a President. Each colony would be put into a lottery; the President would be elected, by the whole Congress, from the delegation of the colony that was selected in the lottery. After a colony was selected it would be removed from subsequent lotteries until all of the colonies had been selected, at that point the lottery would start anew. Electing a President or passing a law would require 3/5 of the Congress. The diagram on the left provides a visual representation of the proposed system
IV. Of the present Ability of America, with some miscellaneous Reflections.
The fourth section of the pamphlet includes Paine’s over-optimistic view of America’s military potential at the time of the Revolution. For example, he spends pages describing how colonial shipyards, by using the large amounts of lumber available in the country, could quickly create a navy that could rival the Royal Navy.
Paine’s arguments against British rule
- It was ridiculous for an island to rule a continent.
- America was not a “British nation”; it was composed of influences and peoples from all of Europe.
- Even if Britain was the “mother country” of America, that made her actions all the more horrendous, for no mother would harm her children so brutally.
- Being a part of Britain would drag America into unnecessary European wars, and keep it from the international commerce at which America excelled.
- The distance between the two nations made governing the colonies from England unwieldy. If some wrong were to be petitioned to Parliament, it would take a year before the colonies received a response.
- Britain ruled the colonies for its own benefit, and did not consider the best interests of the colonists in governing them.
Quotations
- “There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required.”
- Hereditary succession has no claim. “For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and thought himself might deserve some decent degree of honors of his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.”
- “Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.” (Opening Line)
- “I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense . . .”
- “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”
- “Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil.”
- Uses Bible as reference. “In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequences of which there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.”
- “Time makes more converts than reason.” (the Introduction)
- “Every thing that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘tis time to part.”
- “Government by Kings was first introduced into the world by the heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry.”
- “But where says some is the king of America? I’ll tell you friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Britain…. so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.”
- “O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her–Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”
- “… have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the event of a few months.”
- “Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for God’s sake, let us come to a final separation.”
- “Small islands not capable of protecting themselves are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”
Even though Paine, like many of the Deistic Founding Fathers, was exceptionally hostile towards organized religion as a political force, Common Sense used many Biblical references to support its assertions, playing to the strong influence of personal religion in colonial America. His views on organized religion would be later clarified in his work The Age of Reason.
2001 – A large piece of the chalk cliff at Beachy Head collapses into the sea.
How the Beachy Head Lighthouse was built. Photo shows a temporary cable car and iron ocean platform transporting workers and stones to the lighthouse site.
Beachy Head is a chalk headland on the south coast of England, close to the town of Eastbourne in the county of East Sussex, immediately east of the Seven Sisters. The cliff there is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, rising to 162 m (530 ft) above sea level. The peak allows views of the south east coast from Dungeness to the east, to Selsey Bill in the west. Its height has also made it a notorious suicide spot.
Geology
The chalk was formed in the Cretaceous period when the area was under the sea, 65 million years ago and earlier. During the Cenozoic Era the chalk was uplifted, and was later eroded to form the dramatic cliffs of the Sussex coast
The cliffs are constantly being eroded by the sea; a particularly dramatic collapse came in 2001 when, after a winter of heavy rains, a chalk pinnacle known as the Devil’s Chimney collapsed into the sea.
History
The name Beachy Head appears as ‘Beauchef’ in 1274, and was Beaucheif in 1317, becoming consistently Beachy Head by 1724, and has nothing to do with beach. Instead it is a corruption of the original French words meaning Beautiful Headland.
In 1929 Eastbourne bought 4,000 acres (16 km2) of land surrounding Beachy Head to save it from development, costing the town around £100,000.
The prominence of Beachy Head has made it a landmark for sailors in the English Channel. It is noted as such in the sea shanty Spanish Ladies :
- The first land we sighted was called the Dodman,
- Next Rame Head off Plymouth, off Portsmouth the Wight;
- We sailed by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dover,
- And then we bore up for the South Foreland light.
The ashes of German communist writer and philosopher, Friedrich Engels were scattered off the Beachy Head cliffs down the English Channel waters, in 1895.
Lighthouses
The headland was also a danger to shipping. In 1831 the construction of Belle Tout lighthouse was started on the next headland west from Beachy Head, but it did not become operational until 1834. Because its light could not be seen in mist and low cloud, it was superseded by a newer lighthouse, 43 m in height, built in the sea below Beachy Head and operational from October 1902. Until the lighthouse was fully automated in 1983, the red and white striped tower was manned by three lighthouse keepers. Their job was to maintain the light that rotated two white flashes every 20 seconds, visible 26 miles (42 km) out to sea. Belle Tout lighthouse was moved more than 50 feet (15 m) further inland in March 1999 due to cliff erosion.
Beachy Head at war
The third day of fighting in the Battle of Portland, 1653, took place off Beachy Head during the First Anglo-Dutch War. The Battle of Beachy Head, 1690, was a naval engagement during the Nine Years’ War. During World War II, the RAF established a forward relay station at Beachy Head to improve radio communications with aircraft. In 1942, signals were picked up at Beachy Head which were identified as TV transmissions from the Eiffel Tower. The Germans had reactivated the pre-war TV transmitter and instituted a Franco-German service for military hospitals and VIPs in the Paris region. The RAF monitored these programmes hoping (in vain) to gather intelligence from newsreels. There was also an important wartime radar station in the area and, during the Cold War, a radar control centre was operational in an underground bunker from 1953 to 1957.
Tourism
West from Belle Tout, the cliffs drop down to Birling Gap, and beyond that the Seven Sisters. The whole area is a popular tourist attraction, and Birling Gap has a restaurant and, in the summer, multiple ice cream vans.
Suicide
Since the 1600s Beachy Head has been notorious as a location for people to attempt suicide, estimated at 20 each year. There are regular day and evening patrols by the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team, and a special telephone box with a direct line to The Samaritans. After a steady increase in deaths between 2002 and 2005, there was a marked decrease in 2006 with only seven fatalities, a reduction attributed by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to the actions of the Chaplaincy Team and local media. During a recovery effort in 2008, a British coastguard crew were nearly crushed by a second suicide in progress when someone drove off the cliff and narrowly missed rescuers
1949 – Linda Lovelace, American pornographic actress (d. 2002)
Linda Susan Boreman (January 10, 1949 – April 22, 2002), better known by her stage name “Linda Lovelace“, was a porn actress who was famous for her performance of deep throat fellatio in the enormously successful 1972 hardcore porn film Deep Throat. She later denounced her pornography career, claimed that she had been forced into it by her sadistic first husband and for a while became a spokeswoman for the anti-pornography movement.
Biography
Childhood and teenage years
Boreman was born in The Bronx, New York City, the daughter of a policeman and a mother she claimed was very strict. Her parents were Roman Catholic, and Boreman attended Catholic schools, including St. John the Baptist in Yonkers, New York, and Maria Regina High School, in Hartsdale, New York. She was nicknamed “Miss Holy Holy” in high school because she kept her dates at a safe distance. When Boreman was 16, her family moved to Florida.
Unwanted pregnancy
In her 1980 autobiography, “Ordeal,” she said she gave birth to a son in 1969 when she was 20, and her mother put the child up for adoption. Boreman said she had been told the child was only being put in foster care until she was ready to care for him, and was heartbroken to learn she would never see him again. Boreman moved back to New York in 1970. She was involved in a violent car crash, requiring her to undergo a blood transfusion which would lead to later health problems. She returned to home to recover.
Pornography career
While recovering at her parents’ home, Boreman became involved with Chuck Traynor. According to Boreman, Traynor was violent and controlling. She said he forced her to move to New York, where he became her manager, pimp and husband.
Boreman was soon performing as Linda Lovelace in hardcore short movies. She starred in a 1971 bestiality film (titled Dog Fucker or Dogarama), and later denied appearing in the film until several of the original 8 mm “loops” proved otherwise.
In 1972, Boreman starred in Deep Throat, the most financially successful pornographic movie ever made.
Media career after Deep Throat
After Deep Throat, Boreman appeared in only two films, both of which were softcore: Deep Throat II (1974), an R-rated sequel to the hardcore original, and an erotic comedy, Linda Lovelace for President (1975). In her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal, Lovelace maintained that those films used leftover footage from Deep Throat. She also appeared in Playboy, Bachelor and Esquire between 1973 and 1974.
In January 1974, Boreman was arrested for possession of cocaine and amphetamines. The same year she published two “pro-porn” biographies, Inside Linda Lovelace and The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace.
In about 1976, she was chosen to play the title role in a big-budget erotic movie, Laure. However, according to the producer Ovidio Assonitis, Lovelace was, “very much on drugs” at the time. She had already signed for the part, when she decided that “God had changed her life,” refused to do any nudity, and even objected to a statue of the Venus de Milo on the set because of its exposed breasts. She was replaced by French actress Annie Belle.
Charges against Chuck Traynor
In her suit to divorce Traynor, she claimed that he had forced her into pornography at gunpoint, and that in Deep Throat itself bruises from his beatings can be seen on her legs. Boreman claimed in her autobiography that her marriage had been plagued by violence, rape, forced prostitution and private pornography. Some of her assertions have been challenged, but others have been verified by witnesses. Traynor would later marry and guide the career of Marilyn Chambers, another major porn star. Traynor himself told Vanity Fair magazine (in Marilyn Chambers’ interview, with Chambers on the cover) that he thought nothing of slapping “his woman” if she said something he did not like. Lovelace wrote:
When in response to his suggestions I let him know I would not become involved in prostitution in any way and told him I intended to leave, [Traynor] beat me up physically and the constant mental abuse began. I literally became a prisoner, I was not allowed out his sight, not even to use the bathroom, where he watched me through a hole in the door. He slept on top of me at night, he listened to my telephone calls with a .45 automatic eight shot pointed at me. I was beaten physically and suffered mental abuse each and every day thereafter. He undermined my ties with other people and forced me to marry him on advice from his lawyer. My initiation into prostitution was a gang rape by five men, arranged by Mr. Traynor. It was the turning point in my life. He threatened to shoot me with the pistol if I didn’t go through with it. I had never experienced anal sex before and it ripped me apart. They treated me like an inflatable plastic doll, picking me up and moving me here and there. They spread my legs this way and that, shoving their things at me and into me, they were playing musical chairs with parts of my body. I have never been so frightened and disgraced and humiliated in my life. I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will to avoid being killed…The lives of my family were threatened.
On the second commentator’s track of the DVD of the documentary Inside Deep Throat, “Deep Throat 2″ co-star Andrea True said that Chuck Traynor was a sadist and was disliked by the Deep Throat 2 cast. Similarly, a Deep Throat staff member who roomed next door to Boreman and Traynor during the filming of Deep Throat said Traynor beat Boreman viciously after hours and sexually tortured her into obeying him in public.
In The Other Hollywood, by Legs McNeil, witnesses, including Gerard Damiano, the film’s director, confirm that Traynor beat Boreman behind closed doors, but they also question her credibility. Adult film actress Gloria Leonard is quoted as saying, “This was a woman who never took responsibility for her own [...] choices—but instead blamed everything that happened to her in her life on porn.”
Eric Danville, a journalist who covered the porn industry for nearly 20 years and wrote The Complete Linda Lovelace in 2001, said Boreman never changed her version of events that had occurred 30 years earlier with Traynor. When Danville told Boreman of his book proposal, he said she was overcome with emotion and saddened he had uncovered the bestiality film, which she had initially denied making and later maintained she had been forced to star in at gunpoint. In The Other Hollywood, Eric Edwards, Boreman’s co-star in the bestiality film, disputes this claim.
Boreman maintained she received no money for Deep Throat, and that the $1,250 payment for her appearance was taken by Traynor. In 1979 she retained Victor Yannacone, a controversial attorney more frequently associated with environmental lawsuits, to sue for a share of the several hundred million dollars the film had earned. The suit was dismissed without trial by the Nassau County Supreme Court in Mineola, New York and was never appealed.
Marchiano marriage
In 1974, Boreman married Larry Marchiano. They had two children, Dominic, in 1977, and Lindsey, in 1980. In The Other Hollywood, Boreman painted an unflattering picture of Marchiano, claiming he drank to excess, verbally abused her children, and was violent with her. They divorced in 1996.
Family and friends reaction
Boreman’s immediate family was said to have been outraged by her involvement in porn. But her sister, Barbara Boreman, suggested that the family later forgave and supported her.
Anti-pornography activism
With the publication of Ordeal in 1980, Boreman joined the feminist anti-pornography movement. At a press conference announcing Ordeal, she leveled many accusations against Traynor in public for the first time. She was joined by supporters Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and members of Women Against Pornography. She spoke out against pornography, stating that she had been abused and coerced. She spoke before feminist groups, at colleges, and before government hearings on pornography.
There was controversy over her allegations, and her objections to the pornography industry as a whole. Pornographer and writer Hart Williams coined the term “Linda Syndrome” to refer to women who leave pornography and repudiate their past career by condemning the industry.
In 1986, Boreman published Out of Bondage, a memoir focusing on her life after 1974. She testified before the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography in New York City, stating “When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped. It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time.” Following Boreman’s testimony for the Meese Commission, she gave lectures on college campuses, decrying what she described as callous and exploitative practices in the pornography industry.
In The Other Hollywood, Boreman said she felt “used” by the anti-pornography movement. “Between Andrea Dworkin and Kitty MacKinnon, they’ve written so many books, and they mention my name and all that, but financially they’ve never helped me out. [...] They made a few bucks off me, just like everybody else.”
Last years
Boreman contracted hepatitis from the blood transfusion she received after her 1970 car accident. She underwent a liver transplant in 1987. In 1996, Boreman divorced Larry Marchiano. In 2000, she was featured on the E! Entertainment Network’s E! True Hollywood Story. The following year, she did a pictorial as Linda Lovelace for the magazine Leg Show. She said she did not object to this, because “there’s nothing wrong with looking sexy as long as it’s done with taste.” In response, Hustler named her the “Asshole of the Month” for March 2001.
On April 3, 2002, Boreman lost control of her car, which rolled twice. She suffered massive trauma and internal injuries. On April 22, 2002 she was taken off life support and died in Denver, Colorado at the age of 53. Her ex-husband, Larry Marchiano, and their two children were present when she died. Boreman was interred at Parker Cemetery in Parker, Colorado.
Despite starring in the most profitable porn film ever, “Linda Lovelace” died poor.
Lasting influence
Boreman was the focus of a 2005 documentary, Inside Deep Throat.
Plans for a biopic entitled “Lovelace” and starring Courtney Love were never completed. Comedian Anna Faris was rumored to have been involved in the a similar movie titled “Inferno” in 2007, but this has failed to materialize.
In 2008, “Lovelace: A Rock Opera”, based on two of Boreman’s four autobiographies, debuted at the Hayworth Theater in Los Angeles. The score and libretto were written by Anna Waronker of the 1990s rock group that dog. and Charlotte Caffey of the ’80s girl group, the Go-Go’s.
Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi 10 January 1883 — February 23, 1945), nicknamed the Comrade Count, was a Russian writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels.
Early life
He was born in Nikolaevsk (now Pugachyov, Saratov Oblast) in 1883 into an impoverished branch of the Counts Tolstoi. His father was a retired hussar and landowner, Count Nikolay Alexandrovich Tolstoi, and his mother was a children’s writer Alexandra Leonievna Bostrom (born Turgeneva, also known as Alexandra Tolstoi). Aleksei was the fourth child in the Tolstoi’s family. When his mother was two months pregnant, she fled the family with her lover, Aleksei Apollonovich Bostrom. In accordance with the divorce law of the time, the guilty party (Alexandra) was forbidden to remarry, and the only way for her to keep her newborn son was to register him as a son of Bostrom. Thus, until the age of thirteen, Aleksei had lived under the name of Aleksei Bostrom and had not suspected that Aleksei Bostrom Sr. was not his biological parent. In 1896 both Tolstoi and Bostrom families went into bureaucratic pains to re-register Aleksei as count Tolstoi. Still, he considered Aleksei Bostrom his true father and had hardly ever seen Nikolai Tolstoi and his older siblings.
In 1900 Nikolai Tolstoi died, having left Aleksei with 30,000 rubles and a famous family name. Later, he assumed a rather humorous attitude towards the Tolstoi’s heritage. He was known for filling the walls of his apartment with darkened portraits and telling newcomers tales about his Tolstoi ancestors; then he would explain to his friends that all the portraits were purchased at random from a nearby secondhand store and that the stories were complete fiction.
Literary career
Tolstoi’s early short stories were panned by Alexander Blok and other leading critics of the time for their excessive naturalism, wanton eroticism, and general lack of taste in the manner of Mikhail Artsybashev. Some pornographic stories published under Tolstoy’s name in the early 1900s were purportedly penned by him; however, most critics remain sceptical as to whether Tolstoi is the real author.
Aleksei Tolstoi left Russia in 1917 during the Bolshevik October Revolution and emigrated first to Germany and later to France. In 1923, he repatriated and accepted the Soviet regime, having become one of its most popular writers. He became a staunch supporter of the Communist Party to the end, writing stories eulogizing Stalin and collaborating with Maxim Gorky on the infamous account of their trip to the White Sea-Baltic Canal.
He published two lengthy historical novels, Peter the First (1929-45), in which he sought to liken Peter’s policies to those of Stalin, and The Road to Calvary (1922-41) tracking the period from 1914 to 1919 including the Russian Civil War. He also wrote several plays.
A 1927 Soviet poster advertising the 1924 movie Aelita: Queen of Mars, based on the novel by Aleksey Tolstoy.
Aleksei Tolstoi is usually credited with having produced some of the earliest science fiction in the Russian language. His novels Aelita (1923) about a journey to Mars and The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (1927) have gained immense public popularity, the former having spawned an pioneering sci-fi movie in 1924. Besides Aelita (1924), several other movies released in the USSR are based on Tolstoi’s novels.
Tolstoi also penned several books for children, starting with Nikita’s Childhood, a memorable account of his early years (the book is sometimes mistakenly believed to be about his son, Nikita; in truth, however, he only used the name because it was his favorite – and he would later give it to his eldest son). Most notably, in 1936, he created an adaptation of the famous Italian fairy tale about Pinocchio entitled the Adventures of Buratino or The Golden Key, whose main character, Buratino, quickly became hugely popular among the Soviet populace.
His supernatural short story Count Cagliostro inspired the 1984 film Formula of Love.
Tolstoi became a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1939. Writer Tatyana Tolstaya is his granddaughter.
Legacy
A minor planet 3771 Alexejtolstoj, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1974 is named after him.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/
Bruce Bartlett helped develop supply-side economics while on the staff of Rep. Jack Kemp in the 1980s. In 2006 he was fire
AP Photo; Getty Images 
.JPG)
.svg)
The Battle of Princeton (January 3, 1777) was a battle in which 
.JPG)
OK I AM COVERED UP!
)
Full details of the sentence weren’t immediately clear.
The Cult of Sol Invictus
The Cult of Sol Invictus
by D.J. Love, Minister, TSN, SBC
(Upgraded 3-4-2002)
The Roman Empire began their official recognition of sun worship during the time of Aurelian when he instituted the cult of “Sol Invictus“. There is virtually no difference between the cult of Sol Invictus and that of Mithraism or for that matter catholicism.
In the year 307 A.D. Emperor Diocletian, a Sun Worshipper, was involved in the dedication of a temple to Mithra, and was responsible for the burning of Holy Scripture (which made it possible for later emperors to formulate Christianity, and thus began the Roman version of the “Universal Christo-pagan Mystery Religion.”) After the rein of Diocletian, the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was an early Christo-pagan (Christian) maintained the title “Pontifus Maximus” the high priest of paganism, and remained a worshipper of Apollo. His coins were inscribed: “SOL INVICTO COMITI“, which is interpreted as “Committed to the Invincible Sun”. During his reign pagan Sun worship was blended with the worship of the True Creator (syncretism), and officially titled “Christianity” by the (less than holy) Roman Empire and its’ official church the (less than holy) catholic (universal) church.
Cybele, the Phrygian goddess, known to her followers as “the mother of god“, was closely related to the worship of Mithra. Just as Mithraism was a man’s religion, the worship of Cybele was practiced by women. The priests of Mithra were known as “Fathers” and the Priestesses of Cybele as “Mothers”. After baptism into the Mysteries of Mithra, the initiate was marked on the forehead. The sign of the cross formed by the elliptic and the celestial equator was one of the signs of Mithra. Sunday (Deis Solis), the day of the Sun, was considered by Mithraist a sacred day of rest. December 25th (the birthday of Mithra) was celebrated as the birth of the Sun, given birth by the “Queen of Heaven” – “Mother of god.” The Mithraists celebrated a mithraic love feast. This feast consisted of loaves of bread decorated with crosses with wine, over which the priest pronounced a mystic formula. Mithra was considered mediator between god and man (does this sound like Jesus?).
Mithraists, also, believed in eternal life in heaven, and in the torture of the wicked after death. Many of these beliefs and rituals were exclusive to Mithraism and up until the fourth century were not an official part of the Christo-pagan faith. In the 4th century, through confusion and deliberate manipulation by the Roman Empire and its’ official universal (catholic) church, rituals of “Sun Worship” were legitimized, under the guise of the “Authority of the Church” (Yahweh Never Granted Any Such Authority) to be “Christian” in nature. There is no Biblical support for the inclusion of Mithraic rituals (pagan Worship) into the worship of the Yahweh of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Creator of heaven and earth, and the Only Duty of the True Church is one of Obedience To The Authority of Yahweh. It is a Satanic scheme of deception to disguise the transgression of Yahweh’s laws under the title of “Christianity” (Christo-pagan syncretism). This same system, characterized by the shrouding of truth in secrecy and the manipulation of the truth in order to achieve its ends, has been working for two millennia to perfect the Christo-pagan religion of Christianity. The mystery of iniquity is at work and it only takes a little leaven to leaven the whole lump. The next step is the actual forced taking of the “Mark of the Beast,” however, millions have already taken the “Mark of the Beast” voluntarily.
from → Uncategorized