No one could call these the best of times - the direst economic figures for fifty years, the grimmest climatic prospects for ten thousand. Troubles that play upon our fear of the unknown, like the potential flu pandemic, and troubles we know all too well: Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, North Korea... We are far away from that blissful era, a mere eighty years ago, when the BBC could announce to a waiting nation and Empire, "the news tonight: there is no news tonight."

Yet, on closer inspection, these are the best of times - or very close to them. Despite the many dangers we see around us, we are, on average, longer lived, better fed, better educated, and safer than we have ever been. Famine, disease, war, natural disasters, industrial accidents, death on the road, rails, or in the air - we have less personally to fear from all of these than at any time in human history. Why, then, are we sleeping so badly?

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You may have been reading the torture memos – and if so, you will be feeling pretty sick. It's all there: the old Nixonian presumption that "it's not illegal if the President does it"; the mealy-mouthed cloaking of horror in the blandest of language (such as the "rare instances" where eleven days of sleep deprivation might produce "abnormal reactions"); the combination of legal strictures with weasel words and let-out clauses that allow the interrogators to do what they want, so long as their "intention" is to comply.

The whole episode is shameful – and not just because was crude, brutal and dishonest. It was also stupid: it's as if, blinded by the promise of limitless support and resources from the White House, the CIA's professionals forgot all their trade-craft and signed up instead to the simpler doctrines of the military's SERE program, in which participants are tortured because – of course – that's what other, less sophisticated, countries do. In particular, they set aside the lessons of what some call the inquisitor's Bible: John Tolliver's The Interrogator, a study of the Luftwaffe's Hanns Joachim Scharff.

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A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up In a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

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In 1827, composer Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna.


In 1958, "The Bridge on the River Kwai" won seven Academy Awards, including best picture of 1957; its director, David Lean, and star Alec Guinness also received Oscars. Joanne Woodward was named best actress for "The Three Faces of Eve."

The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) (Trailer) below:

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On Sept. 12, 1977, South African black student leader Steven Biko died while in police custody, triggering an international outcry. See More Today's Highlights in History
Stephen Bantu Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977)[1] was a noted anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s. A student leader, he later founded the Black Consciousness Movement which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population. At the time of his death clandestine negotiations were in progress sounding Biko out as deputy leader of the Maoist-oriented Pan Africanist Congress. more

The September 11 attacks (often referred to as 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by Islamic extremists belonging to the Al-Qaeda movement upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.. more

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The Munich massacre occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually murdered by Black September, a militant group with ties to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization.
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On Sept. 5, 1972, Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli Olympic team at the summer games in Munich; 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, five terrorists and a police officer were killed. See More Today's Highlights in History

On Sept. 3, 1976, the unmanned U.S. spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars to take the first close-up, color photographs of the planet's surface. See More Today's Highlights in History
The Viking 2 mission was part of the Viking program to Mars, and consisted of an orbiter and a lander essentially identical to that of the Viking 1 mission. The Viking 2 lander operated on the surface for 1281 Mars days and was turned off on 11 April 1980 when its batteries failed. The orbiter worked until 25 July 1978, returning almost 16,000 images in 706 orbits around Mars. more