Lex Anteinternet: And in other odd news. . .

Friday, January 9, 2015

And in other odd news. . .

ISIL in Syria set up a police force to administer its view of Islamic religious laws.

Which includes not smoking. I don't know that this is actually a tenant of Islam. I'm ignorant on that, but at least the Turks are pretty strongly associated with tobacco, so it strikes me as odd.

And smoking is really popular in the region.

Well, in the last few days a deputy ISIL police commander was assassinated and his severed head left with a cigarette in his mouth. ISIL policemen are getting kidnapped.

I'm not sure what this means, and I don't condone killing or kidnapping anyone. But one recent interview I heard of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq noted that Al Queda banning cigarettes is one thing that really upset the locals. There's some sort of lesson in this, although I am not certain what it actually is.

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Lex Anteinternet?

This blog has been around since 2009. In the very first post, we asked the question: "What the heck is this blog about?"

Our answer to the question was: "The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?"

We also noted: "Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book."

All of this is still true, but the focus of the blog has changed somewhat. It now focuses on the era from 1890 to 1920 in general, rather than on the law and lawyers specifically, although that may be far from obvious. It's also become the location where we comment on anything we feel moved to comment on.

We hope you'll feel moved to comment as well. While we moderate every comment, so as to weed out Spam, we greatly appreciate the comments where they are offered, and hope to see more.

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