Stephen Torres was meeting with a client at his law office, in downtown Albuquerque, on April 12, 2011, when he received a call from a neighbor, who told him that police officers were aiming rifles at his house. He left work and drove to his home, in a middle-class suburb with a view of the mountains. There were more than forty police vehicles on his street. Officers wearing camouflage fatigues and bulletproof vests had circled his home, a sand-colored two-story house with a pitched tile roof. Two officers were driving a remote-controlled robot, used for discharging bombs, back and forth…

Les Tatars de la Volga pratiquent un islam particulier qu’expliquent, pour commencer, les conditions géographiques bien spécifiques de cette région, lesquelles imposent des variantes dans l’accomplissement de certains rites islamiques. Ainsi le célèbre Ibn Fadlân, secrétaire d’une ambassade du calife de Bagdad al-Muqtadir, constata à son arrivée, à l’été 922, chez les Bulghares de la Volga, l’impossibilité de pratiquer les cinq prières quotidiennes selon les canons classiques ; pendant les courtes…

  There used to be the notion that Keats was killed by a bad review, that in despair and hopelessness he turned his back to the wall and gave up the struggle against tuberculosis. Later evidence has shown that Keats took his hostile reviews with a considerably more manly calm than we were taught in school, and yet the image of the young, rare talent cut down by venomous reviewers remains firmly fixed in the public mind. The reviewer and critic are still thought of as persons of dangerous acerbity, fickle demons, cruel to youth and blind to new work,…

  President Obama’s neo-Cold War is not about ideology or respect for borders. It is about money and global power. The current battle over control of gateway nations - strategic locations in which private firms can establish the equivalent of financial boots-on-the-ground - is being waged in the Middle East and Ukraine under the auspices of freedom and western capitalism (er, “democracy”). In these global gateways, private banks can infiltrate resource-rich locales fortified by political will, public aid and military support to garner lucrative market advantages. ISIS poses a threat to global gateway control that transcends any human casualties. That’s…

In his final address to the troops, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned Thursday against "micromanaging" the military in what could be seen as veiled criticism of the White House. "You cannot micromanage or even attempt to micromanage" the Defense Department, Hagel said in a town hall meeting with senior enlisted soldiers at the Army Sergeants Majors Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas. "If you think you've got the right leaders, then let them do their jobs," said Hagel, who abruptly announced his resignation Nov. 24 after reportedly clashing with an overbearing White House staff on national security issues. Hagel also appeared to…