MUHTESEM YUZYIL-MAGNIFICENT CENTURY- ROCKS TURKEY

People in Turkey, do not care about the tsunami in Japan ,the war in Libya or forthcoming elections if it's Wednesday..

Muhteşem Yüzyıl (English: Magnificent Century) is a Turkish prime time historical soap opera television series broadcast on Turkey's Show TV network. It is based on the life of Süleyman I (also known as Suleiman the Magnificent), the longest reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Hürrem (also known as Roxelana), the slave girl who became his queen.
The show generated controversy and complaints from some viewers, for what they referred to as a "disrespectful", "indecent" and "hedonistic" portrayal of the historical sultan.

About the story;
The magnificent century of the Ottomans begins.
The magnificent ascent of Sultan Suleiman the Lawgiver to sovereignty commences.
At the age of twenty six, when his rule began, sultan Suleiman aimed at such an objective that he was,going to build a sovereignty in this world more powerful and more extensive than Alexander the Great and render the Ottomans invincible...
Throughout his reign that lasted 46 years,Sultan Suleiman became the greatest warrior and ruler of the East and West ,Young Suleiman , who acceded to the throne after receiving the news of his crowning at a hunting party in 1520,unaware that he would be ruling a reign beyond his dreams , leaving behind his wife Mahidevran and his son ,little prince Mustafa,şn his palaca in Manisa,took the road with his close friend and companion,İbrahim to reach the Topkapı Palaca in İstanbul
While they proceeded on their course,an Ottoman ship sailed off of Crimea onto the Black Sea,to bring female slaves as gifts for the Ottoman palace...On this ship was Alexandra La Rossa,the daughter of a Ukrainian Orthodox minister...This young girl,who had been taken away from her family and sold to the Crimean palace, certainly had no idea that in the future she would become Hurrem,the wife of Sultan Suleiman and give birth to princes,ruling his empire together with him whrough bloodshed and intrigue...
As Sultan Suleiman conquered the world,he would be paying the pricefor his great passion for Hurrem with the beheading of his most trusted friend and Grand Vizier İbrahim as well as ordering the death commands for his own sons...For Hurrem,the game of power was bloody and ruthless...Anything was acceptable in order to be victorious in this game...

Hurrem

She quickly came to the attention of her master, and attracted the jealousy of her rivals. One day Süleyman's favorite, the concubine Mahidevran (also called "Gülbahar", Gül meaning Rose and Bahar meaning Spring ), got into a fight with Hürrem and beat her badly. Upset by this, Süleyman banished Mahidevran to the provincial capital of Manisa, together with her son, the heir apparent, Prince Mustafa. This exile was shown officially as the traditional training of heir apparents, sancak beyligi. Thereafter, Hürrem became Süleyman's unrivalled favorite or haseki. Many years later, because of a fear of rebellion (a fear probably incepted by Hürrem), the Sultan ordered Mustafa to be strangled. After the death of her son, Gulbahar lost her state in the palace (as being the mother of the heir apparent) and moved to Bursa.
Hürrem's influence over the Sultan soon became legendary; she was to bear Süleyman five children Mihrimah (daughter), Selim, Beyazıt, Cihangir) and, in an astonishing break with tradition, eventually was freed and became his legal wife, making Suleyman the first Ottoman Emperor to have a wed wife since Orhan Gazi. This strengthened her position in the palace and eventually led to one of her sons, Selim, inheriting the empire. Hürrem also may have acted as Süleyman's adviser on matters of state, and seems to have had an influence upon foreign affairs and international politics. Two of her letters to the Polish King Sigismund II Augustus have been preserved, and during her lifetime, the Ottoman Empire generally had peaceful relations with the Polish state within a Polish-Ottoman alliance. Some historians also believe that she may have intervened with her husband to control Crimean Tatar slave-raiding in her native land.

STOP WAR!!

SAFE

The U.S. and France, and all the allied forces who have chosen to enforce the United Nations Resolution for a No-Fly Zone over Libya have begun air strikes against military targets under Gaddafi’s command.  The Libyan people have suffered enough, it seems, for the World to take action.

 

 

 

Spectacular Turkey

Are you OK ?

Is your temper under control?
Do stress and anxiety interfere with your life?
Are your emotional highs and lows normal?
Do you stand up for yourself?
Are you suffering from depression?


Check out the tests and have an idea...
 Psychology Today

日本の地震及び津波被害者の方々へ

special thanks to: thingsweforget

Her Morning Elegance-Oren Lavie

The Insulted and Injured- Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Insulted and Injured is that tale of a love quadrangle -- an improbably unpossessive and uninvidious love quadrangle, at that -- told by a young novelist not to unlike Dostoevsky himself. (A young author who has just published a novel so much like Dostoevsky's Poor Folk, in fact, that we find ourselves tempted to wonder over the author's private life. But we'll refrain.) Vanya (the narrator and fictional author) has a crush on Natasha, who has left her family to live with her new lover, Alyosha. Alyosha is a sweetheart, but he's also a little dim; he's the son of Prince Valkovsky, a Machiavellian character who's the villain of the tale. Prince Valkovsky hopes to gain wealth and stature by marrying Alyosha off to an heiress -- Katya. The Prince's machinations make him one of the most memorable "predatory types" in the Dostoevsky ouvre.

LET IT SNOW!!! thumbs down for the Mayor

A cold front that hit Turkey on Wednesday brought heavy snowfall that paralyzed traffic and shut down schools in the capital Ankara while disrupting road and air travel in other cities..

   Residents blamed the Ankara Municipality for not taking the necessary precautions, causing   Mayor Melih Gökçek to release statements defending the municipality, and joking that at least the city’s children get to enjoy a break from school to play in the snow. Some took to Twitter to criticize Gökçek for not taking action before the storm hit. “How can I convince you that we have salted the roads? Maybe you should lick the roads,” the mayor wrote in reply on the social-networking website. (!!!!!)

 

European court asks Turkey to explain its Internet bans - Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review

EXPLAIN IT!

European court asks Turkey to explain its Internet bans - Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review

Currently watching-MOTHERHOOD :)

The Place I want to be right now..

İstanbul,Taksim

Stuffed grapevine leaves

Ingredients
(4 servings)
½ kg grapevine leaves
1 potato, medium size
2 onions, medium size
4 tomatoes
½ bunch parsley
½ teaspoon ground white pepper
1 cup rice
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ cup olive oil
Preparation
If you are using fresh grapevine leaves, blanch, drain and rinse. If you are using preserved leaves, drain them in a colander and rinse under cold water to reduce salt.
Clean parsley and onion. Finely chop. Peel and dice three tomatoes.
In a mixing bowl, combine parsley, one onion, tomatoes, ground white pepper, rice, lemon juice and olive oil. Toss well. Set aside.
Peel potato and slice finely. Slice remaining onion and tomato. Place potatoes, onion and half of tomato slices on bottom of a pot in which you are going to cook.
Place a grapevine leaf, veined side up, on a wooden board and nip off stem.
Top with one tablespoon of stuffing. Roll up leaf, folding in ends to prevent leaking. Repeat filling with all remaining leaves.
Set rolls in pan side by side, pressing to make compact. Place remaining sliced tomatoes on top. Pour one cup of water over rolls. Set a heatproof plate upside down on top to keep them from unfolding while cooking. Reduce heat to low after boiling, let simmer for 45 minutes.
Remove from heat. Let cool. Serve at room temperature. Enjoy..

Taken from

This may be my last post... -God knows-

Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself.  It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.  ~Potter Stewart

Blogger becomes latest victim of Turkish Internet bans

 A spat over rights to broadcast Turkish football matches has led a local court to issue a blanket ban on the popular blogging platform Blogger, angering Turkish Internet users with what experts said was a disproportionate response.

The court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır banned the website, a property of Google Inc., in response to a complaint by the satellite television provider Digiturk, which owns the broadcast rights to Turkish Super League games. Matches broadcast on Digiturk’s Lig TV channel had been illegally posted by several Blogger users on their blogs.
“This is a disproportionate response by the court and undoubtedly has a huge impact on all law-abiding citizens,” cyber-rights activist Yaman Akdeniz told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday, adding that millions of Turkish bloggers and blog readers would be affected by the Diyarbakır court decision.
“[I understand] there is a legitimate concern [regarding Digiturk’s commercial rights] but banning all these websites will not solve the issue. The decision opens the way to collateral damage,” said Akdeniz, who is also a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University.
There are more than 600,000 Turkish bloggers actively using Blogger and some 18 million users from Turkey visited pages hosted by the site last month, Akdeniz said. The ban is expected to fully go into effect within a few days unless it is successfully challenged in court.
“If two people plan a criminal activity on the phone, should we ban the use of telephones all over the country?” asked Deniz Ergürel, the secretary-general of the Media Association.
“We believe this is a wrong approach to the issue and deprives millions of bloggers and Internet users from writing and sharing ideas online,” Ergürel, who is also a regular blogger, told the Daily News on Wednesday. He added that while the violation of Digiturk’s commercial rights should not be ignored, other solutions had to be found. “Even cursing, threatening or cheating over the phone is considered a crime, but this does not imply access to phones all over the country would be banned if there is a case against them,” he said.
In a press release Wednesday, Digiturk said illegal broadcasts of the league games had not stopped despite many warnings about the issue.
“Digiturk has spent $321 million in order to get the right to broadcast Spor Toto Super League matches. However, matches [whose broadcasting rights] belong to Digiturk and Lig TV are broadcasted by certain websites, disregarding all relevant laws,” the company said in its statement. “Thus, we applied to court to ban these websites, and the court decided to ban access to them, after it was proved that although all legal procedures were conducted, the violations were not stopped.”
Bloggers and their readers reacted angrily and quickly to the court decision, with nearly 9,000 users of the social-networking website Facebook joining a group called “Do not touch my blog” in less than two days after the decision was announced. Similar campaigns have also been created on other websites, such as Twitter.
“I can understand that a company tries to protect its rights when they are violated. But I cannot make sense of the banning of all blogs for content illegally used on only a few blogs,” regular blogger Gülşen Çetin, 24, told the Daily News on Wednesday. “The company that is involved says it couldn’t handle the issue with Google. Of course, everybody is responsible for their own claims, but this is not an excuse for them to cause such a big censorship event.”
In addition to harming innocent parties, the court decision is unlikely to solve the copyright problem, said another regular blogger.
“The people doing pirate broadcasting are skilled in this. Shutting down only one or a few [sites] will not solve the problem because they will find other ways to do it,” said Güldem Zeybek. “How about us, the innocent bloggers? Here, without doing anything, we face the charge of [being] criminals and have to [find ways to work around the ban]. No company’s copyrights should come before me expressing my thoughts.”
Cyber-rights activist Akdeniz drew a differentiation between regular websites and platforms for user-generated content such as Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, saying the courts must be sensitive to this distinction when they make decisions. “In my view, access to such platforms should not be banned, whatever the cause,” he said, adding that other technical solutions could be found to address issues of property and intellectual rights.
“The [impact of the decision] will be censorship, although it might not have been the court decision’s final purpose,” said Ergürel of the Media Association. He added that depriving millions of people of a way of communicating and sharing with each other could be considered a kind of censorship.
“We would not see such a phenomenon [like this court decision] in more developed democracies, such as in the EU countries,” Akdeniz said.

 

Six Word Stories for ESL learners..

 Dear Colleagues,
Please check out this great idea... :)

Six Word Stories

A very interesting website NeoAGRIPPA.com

 I found this interesting website whilst surfing on the net..

http://www.neoagrippa.com/

Angelic Magick, Astrology, Tarot and Theurgy.

This website is about Magick, Angels and angelic magick, astrology, tarot, qabalah, neoplatonism, occult philosophy, hermetics and theurgy and its actual application today. As its name says, it pretends to do some kind of work like what Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa did in the renaissance, I.E., a complete system of magick but actualised for the actual XXI century, so it will also treat new ways of doing magick like chaos magick, modern magick, radionics and experimental magick.


Here in NeoAgrippa.com you can also find horoscopes for all the 12 astrological signs.