Papers by John Brady Kiesling
Spirituality and Health, 2024
The Antikythera Mechanism is the most sophisticated ancient tool ever discovered. The ability to ... more The Antikythera Mechanism is the most sophisticated ancient tool ever discovered. The ability to calculate the position of the sun, moon, and planets for any date in the Greek/Egyptian calendar seemed to make scientific astrology possible, exploiting centuries of astronomical and historical data compiled in Babylon and Egypt. Evidently, metal fabrication technology lagged behind the ingenuity of the mechanism's creators.
ToposText links readers and travelers to Europe’s most ancient literary culture and to the Greek ... more ToposText links readers and travelers to Europe’s most ancient literary culture and to the Greek landscape that inspired it. TT presents 5000 places relevant to the ancient Greek world -- ancient cities and shrines, medieval castles and towers, modern museums, and excavation sites -- primarily in Greece but including major ancient places from Spain to the Caucasus. It links those places to the ancient authors who wrote about them in Greek or Latin. A large classical library married to a detailed gazetteer with hand-corrected geographic coordinates, freely available as a mobile application or this web site.
Athens Insider, 2019
A non-scientific essay on the ToposText website and app, and its inspiration from Colonel Wm. Lea... more A non-scientific essay on the ToposText website and app, and its inspiration from Colonel Wm. Leake and similar early travelers of a topographical bent. Autobiographical.
An unscientific meditation on personal honor and U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era. Most human... more An unscientific meditation on personal honor and U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era. Most human beings embrace a perceived willingness to break the rules in order to win as proof of strength and thus of fitness to lead. "America First" is implicitly or explicitly a statement that the United States is not bound by the rules that apply to other states. Still, in the real world, a president with no concept of personal honor cannot effectively protect U.S. national interests.
Two pages mysteriously absconded from chapter two on the Anti-Junta resistance, dealing with the ... more Two pages mysteriously absconded from chapter two on the Anti-Junta resistance, dealing with the center-left anti-Junta group EMA and LEA's small but noticeable bomb against the U.S. Embassy in Athens. The glitch, and various minor typos and production errors, have been remedied for the second printing, available later in January 2015. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Table of Contents, Introduction, and index to the first detailed history of far-Left political vi... more Table of Contents, Introduction, and index to the first detailed history of far-Left political violence in Greece, focusing on the rise of ELA and 17 November from the anti-Junta resistance, then probing their competition evolution using their feuding proclamations plus the detailed financial records of 17N to reevaluate the official account presented at the various terrorism trials between 2003 and 2010. Lycabettus Press 2014, 429 pages.
Annotated transcript of three notebooks found in Patmous St. safe house of Greek domestic terrori... more Annotated transcript of three notebooks found in Patmous St. safe house of Greek domestic terrorist group 17 November listing detailed payments from September 1990 until May 1997, for use in reading Greek Urban Warriors: Resistance and Terrorism 1967-2014 (Lycabettus Press 2014)
Whirled View blog, Feb 3, 2014
The willingness of the Greek penal system to allow a convicted terrorist out on furlough has a so... more The willingness of the Greek penal system to allow a convicted terrorist out on furlough has a social and institutional logic. Furlough decisions reflect informal adjustments to the imperfections of the Greek judicial system. Christodoulos Xiros, the 17N member who disappeared in January 2014, is unlikely, despite his video proclamation calling for an uprisin, to pose a serious threat to Greek society.
In electoral districts they dominate, local oligarchs have a selfish interest in delivering the m... more In electoral districts they dominate, local oligarchs have a selfish interest in delivering the maximum number of votes for the winning candidate or party. Vote-buying, intimidation, and ballot box stuffing all tend to raise reported voter turn-out as well as the number of votes for the winning candidate, but only in the precincts in which they occur. By aggregating precinct-level election results by voter turnout, one can generate a graph of how far voter behavior diverges from an "honest" bell-curve distribution. This graph gives a good picture of how free and fair an election was.
The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 2006
Abstract: The poor outcome of the Iraq War has highlighted the usefulness of'reality-based... more Abstract: The poor outcome of the Iraq War has highlighted the usefulness of'reality-based'foreign policy. Yet the personal and professional consequences of dissent remain high in the US (and every other) diplomatic service. The Dissent Channel, currently ...
Books by John Brady Kiesling
GREEK URBAN WARRIORS Resistance and Terrorism 1967-2014 (Lycabettus Press), 2014
Two sample chapters of Greek Urban Warriors, covering the period 1985-87, when Revolutionary Org... more Two sample chapters of Greek Urban Warriors, covering the period 1985-87, when Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N) and Revolutionary Popular Struggle (ELA) responded to the austerity programs imposed by/on the PASOK government of Andreas Papandreou. The violence in the wake of the Kaltezas killing has recent parallels in Greece. The dialogue carried out by the far-left resistance through violence and proclamations was directed more toward rival groups than toward the state and the Greek public.
Page 1. Diplomacy Lessons Rmlixmfilr an Unlovzd Suprrrpuwrrr john Brady Kiesling @ Potomac Backs, ... more Page 1. Diplomacy Lessons Rmlixmfilr an Unlovzd Suprrrpuwrrr john Brady Kiesling @ Potomac Backs, Inc. Washington, DC ... Page 5. ★★★★★ Diplomacy Lessons Realism for an Unloved Superpower John Brady Kiesling Potomac Books, Inc. Washington, DC ...
Yerevan: Tigran Mets Pub, 2001
Drafts by John Brady Kiesling
A number of archaic and later temples on the Greek mainland have an axial alignment toward a rela... more A number of archaic and later temples on the Greek mainland have an axial alignment toward a related high-prestige cult site over the horizon. These orientations should be viewed as potentially intentional. As such, they invite reconsideration of the social and political as well as religious considerations underlying a given temple's construction. A cluster of cultic alignments toward Delos might be connected to the role of Apollo and Artemis as plague gods. Other alignments suggest that the Roman habit of coopting local gods before key battles had Greek antecedents. The relative accuracy of these orientations, compared to that of Islamic mosques a millennium later, implies more sophisticated geometric capabilities than we usually attribute to 6 th c. BCE Greece. 1
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Papers by John Brady Kiesling
Books by John Brady Kiesling
Drafts by John Brady Kiesling