History Articles

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Friday, 16th May 2008 @ 8:57 AM

Chinese antiques civilization evolved very separately from influences from the west until modern times, and those were more of warships and gunboat diplomacy by the west to intrude itself into commerce of the Orient. The west has much to feel shame about in it's treatment of China, as does Japan, and for which China never ceases to remind all guilty parties. This has become such an ingrained self defence mechanism that China continues to use it to this day, whether it holds the high moral g... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Friday, 16th May 2008 @ 8:32 AM

Chinese antiques have delicacy and intricacy that can amaze and delight. To view such pieces is to deeply appreciate that such an ancient civilization was creating such intricacy when most of the world, including Europeans lived in caves and trees is to appreciate the rich depth of the Inner Kingdom. And yet as the present leaders remind us, this great civilization did not involve democracy, and they see no need to have it intrude into their eastern ways, which have worked so well for so long. ... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Monday, 12th May 2008 @ 1:22 PM

Japanese antiques follow the pattern of their mother China, in that as peoples poured out of Africa some million years ago, they took on various characteristics, whether the golden peoples of the east who also poured over into the America's and became brown, or the Indo European groups that spread west into Europe, becoming lighter skin and blue eyes as their more northern lives now required more sun absorbtion. In original humanity Africa, equitorial peoples retained their dark skins to le... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Tuesday, 8th April 2008 @ 7:43 PM

It will take some brilliant thinking, a collection of diamond minds, to ever hope to bring us back to blue skies, nothing but blue skies, all day long. We enjoyed that in our happy days youth, before all the modern progress. Then, it seems, we matured away from the massive amounts of humanity that traveled by train up into the 1950 era. Never since has America or the world had more people on the move, on the train, on their way from coast to coast with no refrain. We see movies of that era, whic... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Friday, 4th April 2008 @ 11:40 AM

Diamond minds comes to us rarely, and to enjoy any quality lifestyles were a challenge during the lifetime of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Events that unfolded during these years created general boundaries for the modern world new and old. By then a fellow citizen of what would become Italy had opened up a new world, while Leonardo was some times forced to move to Avignon in France while armies of Florence fought off Venice who fought them all off. In fact in one of these flights for a more he... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Saturday, 29th March 2008 @ 7:13 AM

Healthy lifestyles have been on the news today. First we saw a video of a day in the newly created city of ten million people people on the Pearl River delta near Hong Kong in China. We see a before photo of a quiet rice farming valley, and then as it is now. a valley of high tower buildings with a massive harbor, apparently with that vast harbor in Japan, now largest harbor in the world. How did this happen in a decade? China basically recreated and doubled nearby Hong Kong. They allow... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Friday, 28th March 2008 @ 11:56 PM

The power in this story is that this happened 230 years before the birth of Christ and Christianity, and that many more years before before the birth of Mohammed and Islam. But it was within the time that we knew disciples, or followers of Buddha had arrived this far west, and had certainly reached Egypt to Greece, as Aristotle to Alexander, and it trickles down to us. But who was this holy man at an oasis, so respected and revered in Egypt at this time, to cause mighty Alexander to go s... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Friday, 28th March 2008 @ 6:51 AM

So, here you are in a Greek antiques shop far north of Athens but still in Greece, in Macedonia. You Hold two figurines: one of a Greek Amazon Female Warrior, the other a model of an princess from Persia. You wonder what these two have in common, so you ask the shop keeper. It is a quiet moment, so he sits you down and makes you a cup of tea, and tells you his story. His ancestors are of the family of those who were close to Alexander the Great. He leans forward and as if in telli... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Friday, 28th March 2008 @ 6:49 AM

Greek and Chinese antiques history has both had a wise and kind, or arrogantly powerful leadership. However, unlike Greece, China has always been imperial. Emperor or Chairman, all rules come from within the walls of the forbidden city and must be obeyed, or shame, pain, and death will follow you and your family into the grave. Socrates drank his cup of hemlock for saying too much truth, but the people of Athens, disgusted, punished those Ruling 30 and soon all were in disgrace, banned o... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Friday, 28th March 2008 @ 6:49 AM

Greek Antiques heroes, like later American heroes, have always been of a sort who were more a Jefferson or a Lincoln in mind and soul. They seemed to rise to the occasions of most dire need for their times, and speak their truth so clear and clean and pure that all could remember and also bring into their own heart and rise in their own souls, and be and feel the better for it. Tom Jefferson poured his heart and soul into the Declaration of Independence. When I first read this magnificen... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Thursday, 27th March 2008 @ 4:16 PM

American antiques history has shown before how America has expanded confidently into the world, and then shrunk back in on itself, becoming fearful of the outer world. That fear helped make of a market hiccup in 1929 a lost decade for the world. Many studies have concluded that most of the silliest decisions possible had been made by all parties involved. During this less than necessary contraction, each nation shrank itself and each neighbor. By 1933, the economy of the world, and Ameri... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Thursday, 27th March 2008 @ 12:32 PM

The times they are changing, daily, as events around the world arrive to us so much more than ever before. Events of protest in Tibet come to us live, as does activities and horrors from everywhere on earth now. We have today watched the British channel interview, from the back, three women who live in that hell hole on earth run by a hateful fool, Zimbabwe. One of these women is a teacher, we a re told. Another is a female police officer, the other is a judge. They have large families, ... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Thursday, 27th March 2008 @ 11:59 AM

To watch the news from the middle east can be so painful. We can feel our hearts ache for those dying and being blown apart each day, we can despair, or still search for ways to stop the bloodshed. How we can best apply a kind and wise use of compromise and decision to create fair agreements that all can abide by is still nowhere in sight. Perhaps it is near time that we all take one step back from their wall building actions, which do not seem to be working as hoped for. The Biblical o... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Thursday, 27th March 2008 @ 11:14 AM

The mind can imagine all that which we have seen and known of, and this is an honest leap of imagination into what could well be. And I will lead us from point of fact and logic to a point of projected logic: we know that if you keyboard certain words, such as democracy, or Tibet, that a certain tracking system may have been kicked into place, to attach itself as a bug to your system, and follow you wherever you may go. If you get to be a guest aboard a modern marvel of technology, as I h... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Thursday, 27th March 2008 @ 10:46 AM

When Greek antiques met the incoming Roman warriors, what usually was left of the library was in shambles and flames; there was always much blood on the floor and the walls, and after not as much book learning as sword contests forever and a day ever after. And such fine minds who could bring others together in a common goal based on mutual discussion leading to what seemed a meeting common ground between two very opposing views. And in that regard we see the senior President Bush as not ... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Wednesday, 26th March 2008 @ 9:35 PM

The great irony of Egyptian antiques history and how the Jews fled north and under Moses, wander in the Sinai desert for forty years. As they moved north they found dry but arable land and this surely, after the desert, and the swords of Egypt, was the land of milk and honey. Their promised land. Which now many others dispute, and many European descendants of Moses seem as fully arrogant as they create homes and walls around lands occupied by others since they were sent away as troubleso... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Wednesday, 26th March 2008 @ 6:11 PM

The words of that great classic American antiques shop hero Henry David Thoreau are underlined deeply in my university English text under many words of Thoreau. Thoreau first appeared to me, and many, just as the war in Vietnam was heating up, and to be on a university campus was to experience many new events during that era. From 1960 and the hope of President Kennedy, through his 1963 death, and all our despair as new President Johnson from Texas with almost no foreign policy experienc... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Wednesday, 26th March 2008 @ 5:20 PM

Greek ancient democracy grew into old Europe, the tight cluster who began all this forging a United States of Europe did this at the insistence of America after 1945. Germany and France had bankrupted each other several times in the past century,, time to stop this red ant and black ant madness. Even so, it was the core small Benelux three who first frightened Germans and French when they took down border patrols between Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. For quiet long months the... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Wednesday, 26th March 2008 @ 5:19 PM

Each morning telecast from other time zones now tells us who decided what where and why, and which ways the money will flow as a result. We can pause, but not for long at the varieties of riots and fatalities and train wrecks of the day, and seek out the wheat from the chaff. Again, further discussions in Europe make it clear that at least talk goes on while events unfold. This applies to the fact that a vast swath of Europe now extends from the Atlantic all up through the North Sea and ... more...

Politics » History | By Derek Dashwood @ Wednesday, 26th March 2008 @ 4:28 PM

The rich irony of our ever more wired world is to watch the fabled Greek antiques Olympics Torch being lit on the original grounds in a ceremony just now. It and each speaker speaks of the vital touch of humanity that comes from us all out of these games. They were a fair and honest test of the best athletes from all over Greece, and now over the world. All wars would be put aside, and honest civil rights to all was really the point of this, as much as the scholarly debates brought forw... more...