Persicus Maximus

Political donations by News Corp., its employees and their families were evenly split to Democrats and Republicans, with President Obama the all-time leading recipient, according to a report from the Sunlight Foundation. The transparency watchdog said Tuesday that Democrats received 51 percent of News Corp.'s contributions, while Republicans received 49 percent. News Corp. is the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Fox News, The Sun and The Sunday Times among others. The news company is currently under scrutiny in both the U.S.and in the UK over allegations its now-closed subsidiary News of the World hacked into voice mail accounts and bribed public officials. "Obama being listed as the company's top recipient might surprise some people because of its highly publicized involvement with his political rivals, like Sarah Palin who was the vice presidential candidate in 2008 and reportedly still under contract with Murdoch-owned Fox News as a paid com...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was at it again last week. She was in Turkey attending a NATO gathering dealing with what to do about the succession in Libya, based on the perhaps erroneous assumption that Muammar Gadhafi is on his way out. Clinton and NATO decided, based on their own admittedly partial view of the situation, that the Gadhafi regime is no longer legitimate and that the rebels who are trying to topple him are now to be regarded as the legal government. The “international recognition” will enable them to use the roughly $30 billion in frozen Libyan government assets, mostly located in American and European banks. Hopefully, things will go better than they did in Iraq back in 2003. Washington sent in a proconsul supported by a host of neocon Myrmidons to make sure things would run smoothly. More than $20 billion of Iraqi state “reconstruction” funds were unfrozen and then went missing after liberation took place. The Iraqi people are still waiting for the electricity t...

In the mid 1700's an Iranian Amir took on the military might of Dutch colonials occupying Iran's Kharg Island, capturing their fort and liberating the southern Iranian cities from colonial rule. This Amir, called Mir Mahna, is an Iranian national hero. And now he's a video game hero as well. Shipping this week to local stores courtesy of Iranian developer ESPRIS Studio in collaboration with the Iran National Foundation of Computer Games, Mir Mahna is the first Iran-produced computer game honoring the life of a contemporary Iranian hero. It's Iran's equivalent of Medal of Honor, and perhaps it's also a way to spread the rich historical legacy and culture of Iran to gamers around the globe. The story of Mir Mahna is perfect for a video game treatment. In the mid-1700's the Persian Gulf was a brewing storm. Tension between the colonial forces of The Netherlands and Britain were steadily rising as both competed for influence in the region. It was during the heig...

Even governments can learn from their mistakes. The United States went into Iraq and Afghanistan with Army and Marine divisions and the result has been disastrous, with hundreds of thousands dead and Washington on the verge of bankruptcy. Nor has the result been satisfactory, with Iraq firmly in the Iranian orbit and Afghanistan so corrupt and ungovernable that the daily newspapers are having trouble keeping up with the latest scandal. The Israelis too had their moment of comeuppance when they decided to smash the first Gaza Flotilla a year ago, killing nine Turks, one of whom was also a US citizen, and worsening their already dismal public relations problem. It was hardly worth the effort to stop ship loads of building material and relief supplies and it demonstrated to one and all that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was both ruthless and heedless of the consequences of its actions. Using soldiers to remove regimes and commandos to stop civilian vessels ultimately...

On July 3, 1988, Iran Air Flight 655 (IR655) was shot down by USS Vincennes on the Bandar Abbas-Dubai rout, which resulted in the loss of life of 290 innocent civilian from six nations including 66 children. There were 38 non-Iranians aboard. On the morning of that disastrous day, 3rd of July, the captain and crew of Flight 655 were at Bandar Abbas airfield in southern Iran, preparing for the second leg of their routine 150-mile flight over the Persian Gulf to Dubai. Flight 655 was a commercial flight operated by Iran Air that flew on a Tehran-Bandar Abbas-Dubai route. The plane, an Airbus A300B2, registered EP-IBU, left Bandar Abbas at 10:17am that day, 27 minutes after its scheduled departure time of 09:50am. It would have been a 28-minute flight. At that same time, the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser,USS Vincennes, fitted with the AEGIS combat system, was nearby in the Strait of Hormuz, which the commercial airliner, flown by Captain Mohsen Rezaian, would pass over. USS Vincennes w...