Was The Great War Inevitable? (Preview)

The First World War could have been avoided, in 1914.

Had Russia not rushed to the aid of Serbia the war would have ended by December in an embarrassing Austro-Hungarian defeat.

Had Germany not rushed to provide blanket support (the "blank cheque") of Austria-Hungary after Serbia was only 20 minutes late responding to the Austro-Hungarian list of demands the chickenhawks in Vienna would have been forced to sit on some ice, and then, in 1916 when the emperor died, the empire would have fallen apart on its own.

Had Britain not rushed to defend Belgian neutrality against the evils of the Hun (7,000 dead Belgians were worth more to the British than 10 million dead Congolese) the war would have ended in 1914 with a repeat of the Franco-Prussian War 40 years earlier.

The war could have been avoided in at least three different ways. The question is should the war have been avoided? If not 1914 would not another casus belli arisen eventually as two bloated and decrepit empires teetered on the verge of collapse and as Germany would inevitably sought its place in the sun? Was it better to preempt a potentially more disastrous future war by charging into war in 1914?



(Coming in July)

The Necessity of a Russo-American Alliance

Americans harbor fantastical racism toward Russians. The easy answer might be to say it is a hold over from the Cold War, but the hatred runs far deeper than that.

It is true that Americans hated Russians during the Cold War, and Russians thought it was because of communism. However, after the Soviet Union collapsed, Americans still hated Russians. Americans hate Russians not because of communism, but because Russians are Russians.

The trouble goes back all the way to the beginning of the Russian state. Russia was always the other, never quite Europe, but not Asia. After four centuries of harassment and repression at the hands of the Turks, the powerful Russian empire stood poised to obliterate the Ottoman empire and deal the Turks reprisal for enslaving half of Europe. The great powers should have cheered Russia on and provided aid and moral support. Instead France and Britain, enemies for a thousand years, joined forces and helped the Turks defeat the Russians in the Crimean War.

Britain and France saw in the Ottoman empire a puppet, where as in Russia they saw a rival. Vast beyond all imagining, with a bottomless supply of resources and manpower, Russia could swallow up the world if given half a chance. It's better to stick to the devil you know than these sub-human sons of Vikings.

America, as heir to the West, inherited hatred of Russia along with British common law and the English language.

Russia is an upstart. They are not an Ancien Régime like Britain or France or even Germany, who, through intermarriage, managed to take control of all the ruling houses of Europe without firing a shot. We can always pretend Germany, or the Holy Roman Empire, is successor to Rome, even though no such entity existed until 1871.

The Russians, on the other hand, they just appeared in the sixteenth century. They are also Orthodox Christians, not good Protestants like the British or Germans. Even the French Catholics with their Vatican voodoo are better than the crazy beards and fur caps of the mad Russian monks.

And Russians were not true full-blooded Europeans, they were Slavic untermensch. They weren't animals like Africans or Asians, they were more sophisticated, more sinister. They were like Neanderthals, animals that masqueraded as men. But the veneer of civilisation was never thick enough to convince the inbred cliques of Western Europe that Slavs were fully human like themselves.

That hatred, along with the insatiable bloodlust of the military-industrial-intelligence-media complex, is fueling a Cold War 2 and threatening to tear apart any detente that President Trump hopes to build with Russia.

The Cold War was fueled by the bottomless desire for money and influence. Where once Uncle Joe Stalin had provided the bulk of the effort to stop the Nazis, with Roosevelt and Churchill happily smoking away with the Supreme Soviet, the end of the war had posed an existential threat to the nascent deep state. Without arms contracts the endless supply of money would dry up. With no enemy to spy on the intelligence apparatchiks would have to take jobs selling carpets or working in a delicatessen. No, they needed to concoct a new war so the party would never stop, and they fell back on the easiest target: Russia.

The military-industrial-intelligence complex, of both super powers, had to get rid of Kennedy and Khrushchev because they faced off eye to eye and found common ground and then turned inward to repair their broken countries. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the missiles were removed from Cuba and Turkey and almost 20 years of hostilities between the USA and USSR began to cool, Kennedy tried to restrain the power of the CIA and the private Federal Reserve, and Khrushchev tried to take resources away from the KGB and the arms manufacturers to improve the welfare of the Soviet citizens. Naturally they had to be removed and two war hawks, LBJ and Brezhnev, put in power.

Militarism, not communism, destroyed the USSR, and it very nearly destroyed the USA. USA just had a head start in terms of money it could lose, having avoided a disastrous civil war and destruction of 20% of its industry in WWII. If both countries started off on an even playing field both would have collapsed around the same time.

Of course the USSR couldn't compete. 3 million dead in WWI, another 4-5 million wounded. Loss of most of Russia's agricultural land. 6 years of civil war, another 3 million dead, at least. 7 million dead in famines in 1921-22, another 5-10 million dead in famine in 1932-33. At least 20-26 million dead in WWII, plus the destruction of at least 20% of all Soviet industry and agricultural land.

The Cold War was like a heavyweight champion fighting against some guy with both legs and an arm tied behind his back, and still, despite all that, in a single lifetime, people in the Soviet Union started basically as slaves living off the land making nothing to ending up making half of what people in America were making in 1991.

Imagine what could have happened if Kennedy and Khrushchev were allowed to make peace instead of being eliminated and having pointless war continue.

Imagine now what a glorious future we can live in if Trump and Putin are able to bring our two nations together. One unified force to eliminate Islamic terrorism, one unified force to chart a path to Mars and the outer moons. American technical know-how combined with the ironclad faith of the Russian Orthodox Church can restore Western civilisation to the glory it once was before materialism, atheism, cultural relativism, and moral nihilism began to eat away at the very heart of the greatest civilisation in human history.

I've spoken on this topic at length. The emptiness that has taken root in the West is the driving force behind Islamic terrorism. Lack of religion in the West, lack of value and meaning to life, is creating a vacuum, both spiritual and physical. Westerners are refusing to breed, so to solve the problem of a rapidly declining population, Angela Merkin, like a reverse Hitler, is flooding Europe with Islamic third-worlders. With no strong Christianity within Europe, there is nothing to stop those migrants from forming rape gangs and burning Sweden to the ground. Merkin is committing genocide against the German people.

The only thing that can keep the West from falling to pieces is strong Christian faith and a desire to breed, providing both the spiritual and physical bulwark against the endless hordes of Islamic migrants who believe women are property, rape is acceptable, homosexuals should be murdered, and all knowledge should be burned except for a single, all-encompassing book that can be interpreted six ways till Sunday by every back alley cleric and self-proclaimed Caliph.

And the only place where Christianity still reigns in Europe is Mother Russia.

We've watched as secular states in the Middle East and north Africa have been decapitated: Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan (the pro-Soviet government the United States destroyed by creating Al Qaeda). Egypt was nearly destroyed, and by every indication it appears that Erdogan of Turkey is an Islamist. The United States has its sights on Syria and Iran, two of Russia's allies. They should be our allies too, in the war against radical Islam. You see, even though the people there are overwhelmingly Muslim, they are ruled by rational actors who fully embrace technology and the twentieth century. Iran provided the US with support in eliminating the Taliban after 9/11. That's not because they are pro-America, Tehran just didn't want radical Islamists at their doorstep. There is also a horrendous heroin problem in Iran, fueled by the vast fields of opium poppies that grow from one horizon to the other in Afghanistan. Just as Britain and America sided with Stalin in World War Two, Iran sided with America against the Taliban because they shared a common enemy.

The United States went to war in Afghanistan out of revenge. Iran did so because they don't want mad, seventh century barbarians right next door poisoning and murdering their people.

Secular dictatorships in the Middle East are necessary to keep radical Islam from spreading, just as strong adherence to Christianity is necessary in Europe for the same reason. There were no refugees when Gaddafi was in power. He provided his people with free housing, food, water, and jobs, all paid for by the ocean of oil Libya sits atop, and he provided security by eliminating any Islamist barbarian who tried to stir up discord. The same is true with Assad in Syria.

If you sow the wind you will reap the whirlwind. If the United States works with Russia, Syria, and Iran to defeat radical Islam, everyone's lives will improve. There will be no need for anyone to migrate to Europe because Syria and Iraq themselves will be safe once again. Everyone wins except the arms manufacturers and the intelligence agencies.

That is why it is imperative that Trump is able to defeat the chickenhawks in Washington. That is why US troops need to be pulled out of Poland and the Baltic states, why the people of Crimea be permitted to stay in Russia where they voted to be. If the West is to survive, if world peace is truly to be realised, there must be an alliance between the US and Russia. If not then the West is destined to be reduced to dust in the wind.

NATO Delenda Est

Over the years, since 2002, I've intensely studied the First World War, and what we're seeing right now is a repeat of August 1914.

A century ago millions of men died for absolutely nothing, and millions more would survive with their minds and bodies destroyed. A world that had been stable for 40 years, where conflict between the great powers seemed impossible, was overturned, resulting in the rise of fascism and communism, and, ultimately, the death of an additional 150-200 million people over the 20th century.

There was no reason to fight the war. There was nothing to be gained and everything to be lost. And it all started because of the byzantine system of alliances the great powers had entangled themselves in. These alliances seemed to them to mark the end of all war, as war with any one member state would mean war with the whole world, and no rational person would want that. But, in truth, that system of alliances is what dragged the whole world into the war, turning a small regional conflict, no, a small regional incident, into a four year long meat grinder.

We find ourselves today in the same situation. NATO has 28 member states, including the world's only superpower, the United States, along with Britain, France, and some unstable places like Turkey and Albania. Just like those 1914 alliances, an attack on one member state necessitates war for all 28 members, guaranteeing that any regional disturbance will blow up into global war.

Pundits will assure the plebs that such an alliance is a safeguard against all future wars, but they're lying, just like the pundits of a century ago.

If Estonia is invaded, and at this point there is absolutely no evidence that Russia has any designs on the Baltic, that would drag the US into nuclear war with Russia. Nuclear war means death for the majority of people on the planet. Tell me, are you willing to die for Estonia? Are you willing to murder 5 billion people for Estonia? Because I'm not. And even though Russia has no intention of invading, it is the easiest thing in the world for some NATO guys in fake Russian uniforms to kill a few border guards in a false flag attack and spark a war if the neocons wanted one.

NATO was established to counter the Warsaw Pact, a similar alliance involving the Soviet Union and other eastern European communist states. The Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union are long gone. The Cold War is over, and all the cold warriors are approaching their 70s and 80s. Are you, young men, willing to die in some old man's war? Are you, young women, willing to die because some octogenarians want to stroke their egos one last time?

The recent coup attempt in Turkey and their brazen acts of shooting Russian jets should make clear to all rational people that NATO represents an existential threat to the continued existence of humanity on this planet. NATO is a ticking time bomb that, when it goes off, will start nuclear war.

Donald Trump was absolutely correct. NATO is not only obsolete, it is a suicide pact and it should be dissolved.

The Great War Avoided?

What if Russia did not declare war on Austria-Hungary in 1914?

Had Russia decided to stay out of the war then the guns of August would have fired on a much reduced theater. There would be no Great War. Without Russia coming to the aid of Serbia as the great protector of all Slavic peoples, Germany would not have entered the war. No Germany, no France, no intrusion on Belgian neutrality, no Britain, no Great War. One event set off the other in a chain reaction that turned a simple regional tussle into a global disaster that destroyed the old world order and provided the impetus for the birth of communism and Nazism.

So why did Russia go to war? Because they saw themselves as big brother to tiny little Serbia. Serbia is a newcomer on the world stage, and they might seem weak after fighting two wars in the previous two years. Austria was a great power, allegedly, and they were itching for a war with Serbia for years. The death of Franz Ferdinand was just a pretext. The ultimatum that was delivered to Serbia to avoid war was designed to be unacceptable. Austrian brass knew Serbia would never capitulate to so many outrageous demands. Everyone else knew so too, and even the Kaiser begged Franz Joseph to be more reasonable.

What everyone knew turned out to be wrong. Serbia, eager to avoid war, did capitulate to the shopping list of unreasonable demands. Unfortunately they were about 20 minutes late in delivering the telegram, so Austria went to war. The Kaiser pleaded again, but the Austrians would hear none of it.

Now this clearly appears to be a David versus Goliath situation, and I would agree, but one needs to remember that David won with a single shot! The story of David and Goliath is that of a foe who appears to be invincible but is really fatally flawed, versus an opponent who appears to be small and weak but who is really swift and brilliant, and capable of delivering a fatal blow before the enemy has time to react. While on paper Serbia looked hopelessly outclassed, the reality was the exact opposite.

The Austrian military was weak, calcified, and decrepit. There was no cohesion within the empire, that was threatening to rend itself in three directions. Austria-Hungary really was a very sick empire. The Hungarians constantly tried to stonewall every piece of legislation the Austrians tried to pass. Emperor Franz Joseph, then age 84, had sat on the throne for 66 years! The people considered him to be the immortal Emperor, because multiple generations had lived and died under his rule. There was hardly a subject alive who remembered a time before this tired old man ruled. Several times he dissolved the Hungarian government to curb their defiance, and it was only he who could hold the empire together. The moment the emperor took his last breath it would only be months before three nationalities who were constantly at each other's throats would tear the empire apart.

Franz Joseph lived to see Austria's fall from grace in the Austro-Prussian War. Prussia was now the new head of the German peoples, and their military seemed unstoppable. Austria was old, and empire of geriatrics, unable to think outside of the mouldy box that had been stored in an antiquated cedar chest for centuries. Reform was impossible, and, as a result, Austria would never be able to adapt to modern warfare.

Serbia, on the other hand, was just the opposite. The Kingdom of Serbia was young and new, and, unlike most other European nation states, was ruled by a Serb king, not a German! Instead of approaching the Germans on bent knee, begging for an inbred king, the Serbs pulled one of their own out of the mud, a peasant farmer, and made him king. A full-blood Serb ruled over the Serbs, and the people were beaming with pride.

Time and again we see that superior numbers and equipment is no match for superior training and will to fight. Serbia looked weak after fighting to Balkan Wars. Their territory had increased dramatically, and it appeared that they could not sustain a fight against a far superior enemy. The treasury had been drained, and supplies were short. Austria attacked with twice the number of men, with far better equipment and supplies, and a whole war industry to support it. It should have been an easy victory for Austria, which is why Russia decided to intervene on Serbia's behalf.

That intervention might not have been necessary, and, either way, ultimately led to the near total destruction of Serbia by involving it in a larger war.

The Austrian brass, commanded by General Oskar Potiorek, suffered from impulsivity, lack of imagination, and near incompetence. Potiorek made a disastrous initial move that was so poorly conceived that the Serbians initially didn't believe the Austrian army would commit itself to an attack in the mountains where maneuver was impossible. After four days of fierce fighting Serbia emerged victorious, pushing the Austrians back.

Austria would hammer again, hoping to use their numbers to wear the Serbians down. With little in the way of ammunition, Serbia fell back in a strategic retreat, leading the Austrians into a trap. The Serbian army suffered, to be sure, from lack of supplies, fatigue, and poor weather, but morale held, and the scorched earth policy hampered the Austrian advance. By the end of November the Austrian army found itself in barren countryside, surrounded by mountains and fortifications Serbia had prepared months in advance. Finally, under cover of a heavy storm, the two armies clashed on the banks of the Kolubara River. Like the Spartans at Thermopylae, the Serbian army held its ground in the south, while strategically withdrawing from Belgrade in the north.

Thinking they were winning, and fearing the army would outstrip its supply line, the Austrians halted. Seizing the initiative, the Serbians moved in to encircle the Austrian army, which had failed to prepare for a counter-attack. Serbian morale soared. Serbia advanced behind the Austrian lines, capturing tens of thousands of Austrians in a ten day offensive, suffering few casualties. By 15 December the Austrian army had retreated fully across the Danube.

Austria-Hungary had been soundly humiliated. They had failed in all their objectives. This tiny upstart had routed their massive and majestic army that was once the pride of Europe for centuries. Appalled by the atrocities committed by the Austrians, and inspired by the tremendous victory of so few fighting against so many, nations all over the world rallied to Serbia's cause.

Serbia had suffered tremendous losses, to their army and civilians, but they had emerged victorious against one of the great powers. They were jubilant, proud, and admired around the world. Had this been a regional war Serbia could have rested on its laurels as a rising power who had just won a seemingly impossible victory. Austria-Hungary would be left sulking, and may have to deal with insurrection in Bosnia if the people were rallied by the great Slavic victory. Had this been a regional war it would have ended here, status quo ante bellum.

But this was not a regional war, this was a world war, and it was far from over.

Nearly one year later, in October 1915, Austria-Hungary, backed by Germany and Bulgaria, launched a two-pronged invasion of little Serbia. Unable to fend off attacks from three armies, the Serbian army retreated through a very hostile Albania, losing hundreds of thousands of men to privation, terrible weather, disease epidemic, and constant harassment. Hundreds of thousands more civilians would die under an Austrian policy of genocide. By war's end Serbia had lost one quarter of its population.

Britain Should Not Have Fought in the First World War

Here is a 1 hour 40 minute debate on the issue of whether Britain should have stayed out of the First World War.







I'm very surprised by this outcome. British people, apparently, can be moved by debate. This is in contrast to my own hypothesis that debate accomplishes nothing. What is also interesting is that 10% of the audience did not vote the second time.

Proposition----------------------------Before---After
Britain should not have fought------19-------27
Britain should have fought-----------40-------62
Don't know--------------------------------41-------1

The speakers who thought Britain should have fought constantly made reference to WWII and tried to conflate the Kaiser to Hitler and the Nazis, because the position would have been untenable otherwise. They say that the Germans executing 7000 Belgian civilians was the worst atrocity ever until the Holocaust and was more than enough justification for Britain to go to war, but ignore the millions of Congolese the Belgians murdered under King Leopold's reign. I have no sympathy for the Belgians. They were horrible people in 1914 and they're still the absolute moral anus of the entire universe in 2016. The Belgians are the most immoral people who have ever lived, and if 7000 had to die to assure a quick, largely bloodless war between Germany and France in a repeat of 1870, then so be it. Had the BEF not stepped in at the Marne in 1914 there would have been no WWI. The Ottomans and Italy would not have entered, France would have been defeated in a few months (the German army was very close to Paris in September), and Russia, having lost all its allies, would have sued for peace.

France and Russia have always been the historical enemies of Britain. Russia, in particular, under the Tsar, was the most repressive state in Europe at the time. They were much worse than the Germans, who had the highest standard of living, the highest concentration of scientific and artistic geniuses, and the most freedom of any of the peoples on the continent.

The only allegedly bad thing the Germans did was engage in a very brief arms race in the building of warships, with an explicit goal of far less than the British navy. The Germans never wanted to be a threat, and they quickly abandoned the aim of expanding their own navy. Really, Germany just wanted its own place in the sun. The ancient regimes of Europe had already established their own global empires, and Germany, barely 40 years old by that point, wanted a little something for itself. They didn't want to conquer the world, or even Europe, they didn't want to depose Britain's rule of the sea, they didn't want lebensraum or to exterminate people, the Germans were not a threat to Britain. And if the Germans had political domination Europe in 1914, would that really be such a bad thing? Not for Britain. Germany would have in a stroke defeated Britain's two chief rivals. France would no longer be posturing in Africa, and Russia would no longer be trying to make inroads in Afghanistan. Britain would have come out on top had Germany won a brief European war in 1914!

Furthermore, had Germany won in 1914 the great problems of the 20th and 21st centuries would likely not have happened, certainly not to the scale that they did. The collapse of the European colonial empires led to massive problems that continue to this day. You can't expect to introduce cavemen to the 20th century and have them become modern people in a single generation. Because the colonies in Africa had lasted for such a brief time there was no chance for the African peoples to modernise sufficiently to allow for self-rule in a modern global society. You give modern weapons to cavemen you're going to have a bad time. The Europeans introduce guns and a global economy and then after a generation they leave. It's no surprise Africa is so fraught with corruption and genocide today, the natural violent tendencies of peoples who have been slaughtering one another for millennia had now been given geopolitcal legitimacy and modern weapons.

The partition of India was a disaster. The British knew it would have happened, and they just drew a line on a map, threw up their hands, and left. For 500 years the Muslims had brutally subjugated the Indians. In a free and democratic India, with Muslims outnumbered 10 to 1, their grip on power would evaporate and fear of reprisal loomed. Rather than take responsibility like adults, the British instead split India into Muslim Pakistan, and Everyone else India, and then left knowing 2 million people would be killed in the mass exodus that was to follow.

And let us not forget Arabia. You kick the Turks out and promise the Hashemite dynasty self-rule and then you stab them in the back, give half the land to the French who did absolutely nothing to deserve it, and renege on your promise to defend the Arabs from the vicious, repressive, theocratic Saudi clan who swept in and took control, introducing Wahhabism to the region, creating the second moral anus of the universe and sewing the seeds of global Islamic terrorism.

And that's just the colonies! Had Germany won in 1914 there would never have been a Holocaust. The Nazis would have never taken power and Hitler would have starved on the streets of Vienna. Lenin would have never escaped his exile and communism would never have taken hold in Russia, leading to the disaster of tens of millions of dead and the terror of Stalin. There would have been no Second World War that left 60 million dead if Germany had won in 1914. Without communism in Russia there would have been no rise of Mao in China, with the 500 million dead in the wake of the most repressive regime in human history. Tibet and Turkestan would be free. There would be no Cold War, no divided Korea, no Vietnam, no war in Afghanistan, or in Iraq. Had Britain stayed out of the war and allowed Germany to have a quick victory hundreds of millions of people would not have been murdered and the world would be a far safer place today.

Differences Between Soviet Socialism and European (and American) Socialism

• Soviet socialism values the
collective over the individual

• European socialism values special
snowflakes with six self-diagnosed mental illnesses over the
collective

• Soviet socialism has no minorities,
all are equal

• European socialism worships
minorities and grants them special privileges

• Soviet socialism reveres strength
and patriotism

• European socialism reveres
weakness, autism, morbid obesity, and multi-culturalism while seeing
patriotism as racialist

• Soviet socialism has no racialism

• European socialism is nothing but
racialism

• Soviet socialism punishes leeches
and promotes negligible unemployment

• European socialism rewards leeches,
punishes workers, and promotes extremely high unemployment

• Soviet socialism has women be equal
to men

• European socialism has women be far
superior to men with feminist bullshit

• Soviet socialism has freedom of
religion, with people being free to profess belief in any peaceful
religion or "atheist propaganda" (their words)

• European socialism has no freedom
of religion, you are either a cultural marxist or a radical seventh
century islamist; Christianity is outlawed in all but name

• Soviet socialism is proud of its
cultural heritage

• European socialism is ashamed of
its cultural heritage and instead worships cultures of barefoot
hunter-gatherers and head hunters who still live in mud huts and die
at age 30 in 2016

• Soviet socialism promoted
childbirth for the good of the motherland while keeping abortion
legal, which allowed for replacement level fertility rates

• European socialism sees childbirth
as the greatest sin of them all and promotes abortion as the unholy
sacrament of cultural marxism, resulting in well below replacement
level fertility rates

Searching for a Miracle

A few months ago I showed you a video about doing hard time in a Zen monastery. Now here is a look at a Tibetan monastery in Russia where Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov had entered suspended animation nearly a century ago.

You're born, go to school, get a job, make money, get old, and die. Is that all there is to life? Two students disagree and decide to learn the ways of the Buddha to find more in life. Runs 24 minutes.

Ray McGovern on the Ukraine Crisis

Ukranian Trade War

The EU and NATO want to surround Russia to eliminate all threat to their power. They want to take Ukraine for themselves to get the natural gas. This is the same reason they got rid of Gaddaffi, because with him gone they can loot Libya's fuel without a strong nationalist leader to tell the globalists to get lost.

The Third World War

Amidst the global crisis Russia has sent troops into the Crimea to secure its critical naval base as well as the Russian people living in the peninsula. Far from the good, honest, tight-jeaned, freedom loving young people trying to cast off the evil homerphobic Russian yoke, the truth is the CIA and George Soros are paying for these rioters to destabilize the region and cripple Russia. Russia is fighting the New World Order, fighting against the West from imposing its rule, not t'other way round. Think about it. There is no sane reason for Ukraine to join the European Union, whose creates more debt per year than the GDP of Ukraine. Ukraine will not get any money from joining the EU, but Russia has promised money if Ukraine stays away from the EU. Ukraine will not get any freedom from joining the EU, as Greece, Spain, and other countries have already discovered. Trade policies regulate everything from countries not being able to fish in their own territorial waters to the maximum legal bend for imported bananas. Besides, there is no reason to become a member of the EU to enter into trade agreements with the EU.



But there is a natural gas pipeline that passes through Ukraine. And Russia can turn off the tap and leave the eurofascists in Brussels in the dark. The EU wants to develop energy resources in Eastern Europe, and to do this they need to weaken Russia. It's all about the money. (Just like the supposed "anti-gay" laws that the good brainless Western youngsters protested, when in reality Russia is trying to limit the influence of Western media from sexualizing their children, and Hollywood and Madison Avenue, facing the possibility of losing a huge market, put out a campaign to demonize Russia by making up a totally bogus story about "anti-gay" laws. As homosexual activist Brian Heiss points out, the United States has stricter laws against gays than Russia does - just as Mexico has stricter laws against immigration than the US, but that didn't stop the Mexican president from condemning Arizona's border patrol initiative which was positively tame compared to the Mexican laws that allow the deportation of any LEGAL immigrant for any reason without a moment's notice!) You follow the money and you'll find that corrupt, evil elements within the Western governments are trying to destroy Russia because Putin is on a crusade to limit globalist banker influence in his country.



This is the eve of the Third World War. The Crimean government unanimously passed a referendum to leave Ukraine and join Russia again (Crimea is an independent republic within Ukraine. Crimea was paired with Ukraine in the 1950s to "Russify" the region. In 1992 the government of Crimea voted to become part of Ukraine, and just yesterday they voted to leave Ukraine and go back to Russia. This is totally legal. The West hiring snipers at the behest of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is, on t'other hand, totally illegal.). If the United States does not back down this war will turn hot. There is no way to defeat Russia in a ground war, and the only alternative would be a nuclear exchange with the 27,000 warheads that will render large portions of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable for hundreds of years.



Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, one of the leading experts on the region, explains succinctly the gravity of this situation and how we got here. This is the most important 33 minutes of video of the twenty-first century. Watch this video in its entirety. Share it with everyone you know. Only an informed public can  stop the New World Order in its tracks. Rise up, resist.

Here's Why We Win

In
nature, which always triumphs, the one with the most children is able to
out compete everyone else. The progressives who have at best one, or no
children, there is no way they can beat religious people in the long
run, as a central tenant of most religions is to have lots of children
and spread out over the earth. Someone with one child is, genetically, a
loser compared to someone with seven
children. In fact, the only reason progressives still exist in 2014 is
because they spent the 20th century culling the population of religious
people, with the murder of over half a billion (China CELEBRATES 500
million abortions since Mao took over, to say nothing of the 200+
million killed during all the atheistic regimes - with a single Germanic
pagan occult exception). Progressivism can only exist by murdering vast
numbers of religious people.

It doesn't matter if short term
trends indicate a growth of secularism over the past fifty years. Fifty
years is a blink of the eye in terms of natural time scales. Written
history occupies only about 0.0025% of the total amount of time humans
have been around, and that was 5000 years. Secularism is over if it
keeps oppressing religion the way it is, and if secular people keep
trying to bring about their own extinction by not breeding.

It
is the very conceit of these people that will be their downfall. A
culture that values individual pleasure over strong communities and lots
of children is, in evolutionary terms, dysfunctional. It is an
aberration, a disease, a mistake nature will soon correct. That is why
Japan will collapse before the end of the century, as will China. Russia
is taking steps to correct the situation before it is too late, by
curtailing abortions which currently outnumber live births (more babies
in Russia are murdered than are actually born!). Russia is taking the
hard steps necessary for biological survival by telling the children
"your personal pleasure does not trump the needs of society," a lesson
many in the West refuse to listen to (Remember Star Trek, when Spock
sacrificed himself? And we still haven't learned).

The United
States? The Dollar is over. There is absolutely no saving it. Many
countries are already dumping the Dollar when purchasing oil. The
economy WILL collapse, totally, and soon. And when it does all the
fashionable people who love abortions, hate guns, and have eliminated
from themselves all manner of survival instincts while praising their
bestial sexcapades, will be among the first wave to go in the mass
die-offs. Before 2100, and I'm predicting closer to 2064, progressivism
will be over. Secularism in the United States will be over. Nature will
correct itself, as it always does, and to the breeders go the spoils.
They may celebrate the victories they have stolen, the worst generation
in the history of the planet may celebrate their whole childless lives
(unless they purchase children as status symbols) in their progressive
wonderland, but they're it. They will be the last generation to
celebrate their sickness. The future belongs to the religious.

The Saudi Connection in Syrian Chemical Attack

Interviews with people from Ghouta, the suburb of Damascus that was attacked last Wednesday, reveal that many people believe it was the rebels, not Assad or his minions, who is responsible for the deaths.

Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons
via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were
responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the
weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim,
the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed
inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant,
known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father
described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others
were like a “huge gas bottle.”

Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.

Like with the missing pages in the 9/11 Commission Report, the Saudi connection in Syria has not received widespread attention.

“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”



“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.



A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.

Prince Bandar has close ties with both the rebels and many within the Washington establishment. Elements within the US government may be deliberately hiding his involvement so they can use the incident last week as pretext for getting rid of Assad. He is trying to spread Saudi Arabia's influence within the region. Getting rid of Assad and Hizbulla would mean pro-Saudi thugs will run Syria, not pro-Iranian thugs. In the great war between Sunni and Shia some things never change. This Saudi prince is trying to entangle the US into a millennial struggle for control of the Islamic world.

Bandar has tried making secret deals with the Russians before. He promised safety for the Olympic games to be held in Russia, and would turn a blind eye to Russian bases located in Syria if the Russian military helps to topple Assad. However, if they do not, Bandar threatens Chechen terrorists will attack the games.

This is a war that cannot end well for America. It cannot end well for Israel, it cannot end well for Jordan, or Syria, or the security of the entire world. We must seek a peaceful resolution to the Syrian civil war. Killing more people with cruise missiles is the last thing we should be doing to make things better, especially launching cruise missiles without the approval of Congress and without a single ally fighting by our side. This is a debacle that will make Iraq look like going on a road trip and forgetting to buy gas.

The Eve of World War Three in Syria

Last Wednesday a chemical attack outside Damascus resulted in the death of over 1000 people. The UN was quick to come in and blame Syrian president Assad without evidence. US Secretary of State John Kerry said this was a moral outrage and requires US intervention (war, or "kinetic action" as the Zero regime likes to call it). Sources claim that attack is immanent, maybe even happening sometime today (Thursday 29 August), if not within a week.



None of this makes any sense. Think about it. Assad has killed fifty times as many people using conventional means. He has the upper hand in the war and the backing of Russia, China, and Iran. The quickest way to destroy his own success and alienate himself from his powerful allies would be to use chemical weapons. There is no sane or logical reason why Assad would have ordered that attack. Assad is an evil man, but he's not stupid. He is focused entirely on holding power, which is something he cannot do if he were to use chemical weapons and have the world turn against him.



BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner shares my suspicion: "the timing is odd, bordering on suspicious. Why would the Assad
government, which has recently been retaking ground from the rebels,
carry out a chemical attack while UN weapons inspectors are in the
country?" He does, however, believe a chemical attack did occur.



UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus agrees: "It would be very peculiar if it was the government
to do this at the exact moment the international inspectors come into
the country....at the least, it wouldn't be very clever."







Regarding the attack a US intelligence official commented "We don't know exactly why it happened. We just know it was pretty fucking stupid."



Why would Assad call in UN weapons inspectors then launch a chemical attack in close proximity to where the inspectors would be? That does not make any sense.



And yet we are rushing headlong into another poorly planned war with no exit strategy in mind and no thought as to the consequences of our actions.



Noah Shachtman writing for Foreign Policy states "However, U.S. spy services still have not acquired the evidence traditionally considered to be the gold standard in chemical weapons cases: soil, blood, and other environmental samples that test positive for reactions with nerve agent. That's the kind of proof that America and its allies processed from earlier, small-scale attacks that the White House described in equivocal tones, and declined to muster a military response to in retaliation."



We are rushing into a foolish war that will only end badly with less evidence than there was for WMDs in Iraq a decade earlier! There were years of UN inspector reports and other intelligence that strongly suggested Saddam Hussein had a thriving chemical and biological warfare infrastructure in place and after the invasion nothing was found. With Syria we have precious little evidence that a chemical attack happened at all.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the US intercepted panicked phone calls between defense officials in Damascus and the commander of a chemical weapons unit demanding details about the strike, Foreign Policy reported early Wednesday.

The report comes just days after a report in a major German publication claiming that an IDF intelligence unit had listened in on similar conversations between senior Syrian officials discussing the chemical attack.

US intelligence says that these panicked phone calls prove that Assad or someone in his government was behind the attacks. Now I'm no intelligence expert, but I was right about Egypt and Libya, and I did predict the Benghazi attack two full years before it happened, but these guys know what they're talking about, right? I mean, when the Syrian Minister of Defense demands answers regarding who the hell ordered the attack that proves that the Syrian government was behind it, right? When they start panicking about a move that would mean suicide in the world of geopolitical realpolitik, a move that is "pretty fucking stupid," and then immediately begin working on damage control that means they must be responsible, right?



I mean, it's not like we have members of the Free Syrian Army (the Islamist rebels who ate a man's heart and posted it to YouTube - note, this is a mirror, not the original) on video talking about how they intend to use chemical weapons







Oops! Just ignore that. Didn't happen.



There are only two possible alternatives as to who launched that attack: either it was the rebels themselves or it was operatives from the US or some other country looking for a "responsibility to protect," a casus fœderis, for which to intervene.



Russia and China have warned the United States not to intervene, as has Assad himself. Intervention in Syria will spread the conflict to neighboring countries. A relatively contained problem will grow into a full scale war between, basically, the United States versus Russia and China. China holds the lion's share of US debt. They have the power to economically destroy the country immediately if they so choose. Israel and Iran will be drawn in. There may be a nuclear exchange, or at least the use of a nuclear bunker buster to take out Iran's own nuclear program. Of course, the problems with nukes is when one country uses them it sparks other countries to use them too, resulting in the mutually assured destruction that the world has tried to prevent for six decades.



At the very least a million Syrians will die and the US will be out another trillion dollars.



We cannot go to war in Syria. We cannot help the rebels. If the US gets involved this will be WWIII and it won't end until millions are dead.

The Problem With Bombing Iran

How do you get Iran to stop developing the bomb without bombing their facilities? Why should that even be an issue?


Fig. 1: Iran and its Satellites

First, let's look at a Iran's military.

Their navy is crap. It is tiny (less than 30,000 men) and full of badly outdated equipment. Keeping the Persian Gulf secure depends on closing off the Strait of Hormuz. As was seen in the Second World War naval power is useless without airpower. A single plane with a single bomb can destroy the mightiest warship. What does Iran have to protect it's crappy navy? An airforce that's crap and a half. Their planes are 30-year-old hand me downs. An actual fight between US or Israeli and Iranian planes would last a day and be ridiculously lopsided. However, Iran has been testing new missile systems, and while a lot of the videos of those tests are clearly edited to make them look more competant than they really are, the addition of any kind of surface-to-air missiles does put a chinaman in the armour (oh no I didn't!*) of anyone willing to engage in aerial combat with Iran.

Onto ground troops. Iran has two official armies, the regular army and the Revolutionary Guard, and a paramilitary group called Basij. The regular army had 350,000 men in 2009 and the Revolutionary Guard had about 125,000. Basij has an active duty strength of 90,000 with 300,000 in reserve, but these are regular people who are given guns and some training and they'll fall apart and surrender at the first sign of a real fight like their equivalent in Iraq did.


Fig. 2: Operation Desert Storm (by Jeff Dahl)

Remember, the 1991 Gulf War had about 180 days of airstrikes followed by just four days of ground fighting. Saddam Hussein had the fourth largest army on the planet. He promised an attack against Iraq would be the "Mother of All Battles," and it lasted four days.


Fig. 3: Operation Iraqi Freedom (by ADuran)

The 2003 invasion of Iraq lasted 21 days and completely destroyed the Iraqi military and toppled Saddam Hussein. Since then no sane person would contemplate engaging the United States in traditional warfare - it's suicide. Iraq had a larger military than Iran and they lasted less than one month against the might of the US.

So what's the problem?

Look at the first map again. The United States has been waging war since 2001, in which time roughly 7,000 Americans are killed or missing, 47,000 wounded, untold thousands having lost their minds, and a financial cost of around $1 trillion (I remember when a trillion dollars was a lot). There is no question that an all out war between the United States and Iran would last two months tops to completely destroy the Iranian military, but then what? What does victory look like? What is the exit strategy? Will the war go on forever because of an insurgency or a quixotic attempt at nation building? Will war weary troops make mistakes? Will worn out equipment malfunction more frequently, costing lives? Will the public ever go along with it, and will Congress actually declare war this time like the Constitution says they're supposed to, not the UN or some coalition? No one knows the answers to these questions, and that's not even addressing the bigger issue.

China and Russia are very pro-Iran right now. The US can destroy Iran no problem, but China and Russia have armies of millions, state-of-the-art equipment, and nuclear weapons, plus China holds most of the US national debt. What are the odds that China will let the US go to war without crippling the US economy? And that's not even addressing yet another important issue!

Invading Iran will alienate the Iranian people who will lend their support to the Mullahs.


Fig. 4: Mahhhhkmōōd I'm A Dēēnarrr Jakēēt

About 80% of the Iranian people as of now are very pro-US and want to get rid of the Ayatolla, Ak-Ma-Deen-Er-Jad, and the whole rest of the government. They rose up in 2009-10 during the election where millions of votes were "counted" in only two hours to declare I'm A Dinner Jacket the winner by divine grace. They rose up again in 2011. Each time they've begged the United States to help them and the US said some pretty words and then went and killed Qadaffi. What will happen if there is a unilateral bombing of Iranian ̶c̶h̶o̶c̶o̶l̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶p̶ nuclear bomb factories? Chances are the people will see this in light of the previous snubs as a US attack against them and not just the government. This is especially true if it is Israel that launches the attack and not the US.

So what's the solution?

If the Mullahs get the bomb that is a game changer. They will probably not use it themselves, not at first, but they do have ties to many terrorist groups. They are building up their power, making threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, sending ships to the Suez Canal, launching missiles, and exerting influence in their neighbors. Just last year the leaders of Iran and Turkey, two countries who have been the bitterest of enemies for 600 years, got together and acted all chummy like good buddies - that's scary. It's scary because politicians don't ever put aside their differences and make peace like Jesus, they do it like Al Capone, to strengthen their own power by playing countries off of one another. The leader in stable secular governance in the Islamic world is now good friends with their oldest enemy and one of the most repressive theocracies on the planet. The Mullahs believe that dying in war against infidels is a career promotion. Who's to say they won't use it to kill the Jews? Who's to say they won't give it to Hizbolla or Hamas or someone else who will in turn nuke NYC or London or Jerusalem?

What is the solution?

That's a tough one, but it will have to be one that doesn't provoke China and Russia. It will have to be one to get the Iranian people to start a revolution like in 1979, and overthrow their own government with any and all US aid necessary as long as they the Iranian people ask for it. It will have to be something that someone thinks up quick, before it's too late and the nuclear genie is let out of its bottle.





*Yes, it's an ESPN, Jeremy Lin, Max Bretos, Anthony Federico thing. The word "chink" as a derogatory term for Chinese people was first used in 1890 and the phrase "chink in the armour", which was used 3,000 different times on ESPN without drawing ire, gained widespread usage in the mid 1600s. Of course, all those people in the 1600s were horrible racists and should have been fired from their jobs. I don't watch ESPN anymore, nor will I until they apologize, rehire Federico, give him and Bretos 6000% raises, and then whoever decided to punish them has to commit suicide in proper Japanese fashion, with a dagger to the gut. It's only fitting since they like to inject racism where it doesn't exist.

Timur's Body

Some people are so evil that not even death can stop them.






Fig. 1: Amir Timur statue, Uzbekistan



Timur was the son of some middle class dude in Transoxiana (modern day Uzbekistan, home of what used to be the Aral Sea, the Sogdian Rock, magnificent architecture, and Khiva, one of the last independent kingdoms of the 20th century to be battled over between the British and Russians in the Great Game. You also can't read the Bible, use the Internet, and prisoners are frequently tortured to death). He had ambitions. Unsatisfied with his prospects, Timur became a warrior and decided to conquer the Mongol empire like his hero Chingis Khan. To achieve this goal he invented a fake geneology linking him to the great Khan and married the Khan's granddaughter.



Timur then conquered the Persian Il-Khanate ("little" Khanate), and half of the Chagatai Khanate. He punished the Golden Horde for overstepping their boundaries as tributary state, permanantly destroying their economy. His greatest passtime during this period was abducting scholars and artists and transporting them to Samarkand, which they were to make into the most magnificent city in the world. He also liked to slaughter tens of thousands of people and make towers out of their heads for no other purpose than because it looked cool.



Timur's next venture was to prove that he is "not a man of blood" and that "God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity." He looked to the Quran for advice whether to slaughter every single person in India or every single person in China for being infidels and India turned out to be closer. He went there with his army and destroyed the Delhi Sultanate because they were the wrong kind of Muslims. He proceededt o ravage India, slaughtering more than a million people and making towers out of their heads. Every time his men would slaughter 20,000 Indians in a single afternoon he would throw a massive two day long feast so they could revel in their own crapulence.



Satisfied that it would take over a century for the subcontinent to repopulate he went West to slaughter the Ottomans for being the wrong kind of Muslim. In a bloody battle, Timur killed the Ottoman sultan and threw the empire into chaos. He also depopulated nearby Christian kingdoms for being infidels as well as other Muslim kingdoms for being the wrong kind of Muslims.





Fig. 2: Timur's Empire at the time of his death in 1405.



Something was still eating away at Timur. He was getting old and he hadn't slaughtered everyone in China yet, nor had he conquered the entire Mongol empire. He saddled up his army and went to China, but the weather was bad and he died. His body was placed in a lavish tomb in Samarkand with a curse: should anyone remove his body a fate more terrible will befall them than if Timur himself would ravish their country. Like the curse of King Tut, Timur's curse had real power to it. Unlike Tut's curse, which only claimed the lives around 20 people (and a dog and a bird), Timur's curse claimed the lives of millions.



Soviet archaeologists/tomb raiders broke into Timur's tomb in June 1941. Two days later Hitler broke the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, launching Operation Barbarosa, the largest single military campaign ever. Eastern Europe would be devastated, millions would die both soldiers and civilians, and the Nazis would take control of an additional 13% of the continent, creating the largest empire in European history. One million people would die in Leningrad, another million in Stalingrad, three million Soviet soldiers would die as Nazi prisoners, and millions of Slavs and other unwanted would be sent to die in the death camps.



Realising the gravity of the situation the Soviets reintered Timur's body in November 1942. A few days later they launched Operation Uranus, the decisive counteroffensive that would push the Nazis back from Stalingrad and pave the way for the fall of the Third Reich.



Some might scoff and say that it is merely coincidence that within days of Timur's tomb being disturbed the largest military operation ever was launched and laid waste to the Soviet Union. They will say it is mere coincidence that within days of his body being put back the tide of the war turned and the Soviets were able to gain an iron grip on Eastern Europe for the next half century. I ask, "what is the measure of coincidence?" In the scientific method you make an injunction, follow it through to collect data, and check it against the results of others who have done 1 and 2. Timur's curse is the same. There's an injunction: "remove my body and your country will be devastated." Performing the injunction leads to the data: what he said would happen happened. The experiment was done in reverse with the reverse results: Timur's body was put back and the enemies of the Soviet Union were devastated and the Soviet Union grew in power undreamed of previously. The only thing missing is step three, repeating the experiment, which is a very bad idea in this case as the intended result is millions of people dying.



What we're left with is a mystery. Timur's curse did exactly what it said it would when it said it would, which is strong evidence in its favour. Unfortunately morality prevents us from testing his curse again so we can't be 100% certain. Still, for what it's worth, it's made a believer out of me.

Asymmetric Warfare, Afghans, and Aliens

People say the Soviet Union and United States lost in Afghanistan and Vietnam, respectively, because of asymmetric warfare. This is not true in either circumstance.



Russia succeeded in its goals in Afghanistan and left the country because they had more pressing concerns elsewhere. The pro-Soviet Afghan government faired very well for several years after the Soviet withdrawl in 1989, the Mujahideen had largely been crushed by 1986 when the Soviets began to leave, allowing the Mujahideen to return from Pakistan, and the Soviets learned valuable lessons from testing new field tactics. 1 million Afghans were killed, 2 million internally displaced, and 5 million fled to Pakistan and Persia, and all at the cost of 15,000 Soviet troops.



The United States never set out to win the war in Vietnam in the traditional sense. US goals involved defending the South from communist invasion. US forces could have invaded Hanoi, destroyed the DVR and left the VC to wither away after having the support kicked from under them, but Washington saw the risk of escalation with China as too great and decided to play small ball and eventually pull out, never having been defeated on the field.



The lessons learned from the Soviet-Afghan War and the Vietnam War can be applied to an hypothetical alien invasion of the earth to understand why asymmetrical warfare against extaterrestrials is doomed to fail.



Runs 12:30

Rumors of War I

An hour long documentary on why a nuclear Iran should scare you.

The Kamchatka Expeditions: Russia's Lewis and Clark

The following was written in April 2008, so it is not as good as it could be today. I remember one day I was half asleep while watching a program on the television about a group of men who got lost in the White Sea for several months and most or all of them died. This inspired me to investigate this situation, but instead of learning anything about them I discovered


Danish explorer Vitus Bering (for whom the Bering Strait is named) and thus began my fascination with Russian history. The unfortunate fact is that there are only about two books in English about Bering. The rest are in Russian and the only copies I could find were in the Moscow University library, neither of which is very helpful. Here is what I could glean from those two sources. This is probably the most detailed English language page on Vitus Bering on the Internet.



The image to the left is Vitus Bering, who for years had been given the wrong portrait and was not correctly identified until his body was dug up centuries later. The image on the right is a French map (interestingly enough) of the Chukotka region, where Bering launched several expeditions. The name "Chukotski Nos" means "Holy Cape," with "Holy" meaning "impossible to circumnavigate." The caption (too small to read in the reduced image) reads "It is not known whether this mountain chain terminates somewhere or joins another continent."



The popular view of the First Kamchatka Expedition, launched in 1725, was that Emperor Peter the Great of Russia ordered Vitus Jonassen Bering to discover whether or not Asia and America were joined by a land route or were separate land masses and to explore the possibility of a sea route between the Arctic and Pacific oceans. The importance of a Northeast passage to the Far East for purposes of trade seems undeniable in light of the undeveloped status of most of the Eastern regions of Siberia and the difficulty of crossing the terrain by land; answering the question of the land connection between Asia and America was a necessary corollary to the more important question of the Northeast passage. Over three centuries dozens of scholars have held this view including Gerhard F. Müller, one of the first to write on Bering's voyages, Johann G. Gmelin, William H. Dall, Frank A. Golder, and Stuart R. Tompkins.



Gerhard Müller taught history and geography at the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences along with working in the library. He was one of the main translators of documents and correspondences for Vitus Bering during his explorations of Siberia. Müller first wrote about the expedition in 1730 and was possibly the first person to advance the view that the purpose of the voyage was to search for the Northeast passage. According to Carol Urness it is no surprise that Müller advanced such a view as it suited his interests quite well. Had the first written account of the voyages been written by someone not interested in geography the problem of the connection between Asia and America would not have played so prominent a role in such a person's writing. None-the-less, for whatever reason Müller chose to emphasize the geographical problem, this would become the prevailing view of the purpose behind the voyages and would not be challenged until after the Second World War.



Since then new views arose questioning the traditional view. This reexamination was in part due to evidence that proof of the separation of the continents had already been established much earlier, eliminating the need for such an expedition as proposed by the traditional view of the Kamchatka Expeditions. In 1648 a group of merchant vessels in search of walrus ivory became lost at sea and sailed around the Chukotsk Peninsula, which was believed to have continued on to join with North America. This accidental voyage proved that the two continents were separated. In light of this discovery why then did Peter the Great commission the two Kamchatka Expeditions?



Raymond Fisher proposes that there were four possibilities as to why these expeditions were commissioned: 1. Peter wanted better proof of the separation of the continents from more credible explorers; 2. The significance and details of the discovery had not reached Moscow and Saint Petersburg by the time the explorations were commissioned; 3. Knowledge of the accidental voyage had been forgotten over the 77 years since it had taken place; 4. Peter had much grander goals in mind, namely designs on colonies in North America, than solving a seemingly unimportant geographical question. [1]



There is no evidence that Peter or his officials knew of the previous voyage 77 years earlier. "Knowledge of the voyage in Moscow and European Russia seems to have disappeared by the end of the Seventeenth Century." [2] This discredits the first possibility. Fisher feels that while the second and third possible reasons for the voyage are still viable, in the light of evidence for the fourth one being true the other two are reduced to being irrelevant.



According to Boris P. Polevoi, the real objective of the expeditions was to create accurate maps of North America so Russia could exert dominance over the continent and further the Russian Empire. However, Peter feared a voyage explicitly directed toward America would provoke European powers in America to forestall Russian expansion and so he "circulated the story... that Bering was being sent into the North Pacific for the purely scientific purpose of ascertaining whether an Arctic-Pacific passage between Asia and America exists." [3] The Western European powers had been interested in the existence of such a passage for centuries by this point and would see any investigation of the passage to be to their benefit, as oppose to the establishment of future sites for Russian colonization which would be met with hostility.



This fictitious story being propagated to distract the Western European powers reached Bering before Peter's actual instructions did, because he did not send them until the last minute to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. When Bering read the instructions he mistakenly combined them with the story he had heard about the phony reason for the expedition and combined them into his own interpretation of the instructions. It is clear from this why Bering turned his ships back and ended the first expedition after sailing around the Chukotsk Peninsula believing that he had completed his assigned task.



Fisher disagrees. He thinks that the original goal Peter had in mind was to find out where Asia and America are joined by land, and, from there, to explore farther to locate the nearest European settlement in America. Bering did not reach any European cities but instead turned back after finding that the Chukotsk Peninsula does not extend to America. Had his goal been to discover a passage between the Arctic and Pacific oceans, Bering would not have turned back but instead would have kept sailing onward into the Arctic ocean. Fisher bases his argument on the original instructions given to Bering by Peter the Great. Peter's original instructions for Bering read (paraphrasing from multiple translation):

1. At Kamchatka or elsewhere you are to build one or two boats.

2. You are to sail along the coast of the land which goes north with these boats. It is expected that since the end of this land is not known that it appears to be part of America.

3. You are to search for where the land is joined with America, and go from there to any European possessions, or if you find a European ship, find out from it the name of the coast, and go ashore and obtain any information you can; write everything down and bring it back so a map can be constructed from the information.



It is clear from the original instructions that they are not supportive of the traditional interpretation of the voyage. The instructions say nothing of a Northeast passage or determining the relationship between Asia and North America. In fact, Peter assumes the two continents are joined as one and he does not ask Bering to further investigate into his assumption.



Though Bering discovered no land connection between the continents it is likely he believed such a land bridge existed farther West of where he had explored.



Yet another proposed reason behind the first expedition, argued by Carol Urness, involves settlement of a problem relating to the Russian maps at the time. The map made by Johann Homann in 1723 was the chief map of Siberia used at the time. Urness argues against Polevoi and Fisher's interpretations of the reasons behind the expedition. She argues that Bering was to discover whether or not a land labeled "incognita" on the Homann map (to the Northeast of the Eastern end of Siberia) was part of America. Having found that the land in question was part of Siberia and not America Bering figured he had completed his objective for the mission and decided to turn back, as he was only to go on to America if there was such a land connection as the one in question.



There is ample documentation regarding the destination and purpose of the Second Kamchatka Expedition, unlike the first. Bering proposed the second expedition to develop the land and infrastructure of Eastern Siberia in order to pave the way for large scale exploration necessary to establish trade between Japan and the native populations of North America and to exert better control over Russia's borders in the East. Fisher asserts that Bering was not interested in solving the problem of whether Asia and America are connected by land or not. The overland routes across Siberia were difficult to traverse and transporting goods and materials by land took too long. Finding the Northeast sea route was important for trade, not to quell scientific curiosity.



The Russian government added further objectives to the second expedition. Included in these further reasons were voyages from Kamchatka to America and Japan, looking for undiscovered islands between Russia and America and to bring them under Russian control, to explore the resources of these new lands so that they can be exploited later on, and to write a natural history of all the lands discovered. They also planned to extend the Russian Empire to all the native populations that would be discovered, the area that would become Alaska. [4]






References



[1] Page 5. Raymond H. Fisher, Bering's Voyages: Whither and Why. Seattle and London, University of Washington Press,1977.

[2] Page 5. Fisher.

[3] Page 73. Fisher.

[4] Page 34. Gerhard Friedrich Müller, Translated with Commentary by Carol Urness, Bering's Voyages: The Reports From Russia. Fairbanks, The University of Alaska Press, 1986.

The Man From Heaven

In 2008 I was writing a short story called "The Man from Heaven" about a Buddhist monk who tried to prevent the First World War in 1889, warning the world leaders of the impending disaster, but had an accident and entered suspended animation. He wakes up in the present day and becomes a minor media sensation for a while, then, realizing not only he failed to prevent the war but that the world did not come to an end, must struggle to adapt to a world radically different from his own. After writing 19 pages and realizing that I was less than a quarter done with the story, it became apparent that this would not be a "short" story by any stretch of the imagination. An 80 page story occupies a sort of limbo. It is too short to be published on its own, but too long for the few remaining literary magazines to accept it. I supposed it could be adapted to a film script, but seeing as how the only audience the studios care about is 15 to 30 year old men who only like tits and explosions, no one would green-light a script about a 19th century Buddhist monk trying to adapt to 21st century life (not to say tits and explosions are bad, just that they are different from confused monks wandering around searching for answers to troubling questions). For that reason the project was scrapped.



Anyway, the idea for the story came from this real life example, Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, a high level Siberian Lama whose body has been preserved for over 80 years (other wiki warning!). In 1927 Lama Itigilov told his monks to perform funeral rituals on him. He warned of the coming of communism and for all the monks to flee Russia (Stalin would try to exterminate them). One source I read says he told the monks that in 100 years (or 75 years, according to other sources) he would awaken from his hibernation to save the world, just like the fictional monk from "The Man from Heaven." Whether or not he's coming back, 84 years without any sign of decay with no form of preservation is amazing.





Stories of miraculous preservation are well known from the lives of saints. The bodies of some saints remain in very good condition without any preservation for centuries, despite being subjected to conditions that should rapidly decay a body (exposure to mositure, air, or chemicals). What makes Lama Itigilov interesting is that his skin remains soft, his joints flexible, and liquid blood remains in his veins. A medical examination revealed his body to be similar to that of a person who died between 12 and 36 hours ago (judging from the few available pictures, his moustache seems to be missing though, and his nose has deflated). His body's proteins have not denatured in any way.



The 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, died in a hospital in Zion, Illinois in 1981. The doctors allowed his followers to perform the traditional three day Tibetan death rituals in the hotel room. During that time, while the Karmapa's body was in lotus posture, his heart remained warm, just like in a living person. The chief of staff at the hospital, Radulfo Sanchez, admits that there is no medical explanation for the Karmapa's heart remaining at body temperature for three days after death. When his body was cremated the Karmapa's two perfectly healthy dogs died and a rainbow appeared over the monestary where the cremation was being performed. Tibetan tradition speaks of the rainbow body, a body made of pure light which only those who reach highest enlightnment assume following the death of their physical body. The ranibow body is completely indestructable, and some say it can even be constituted into a new physical body at will (perhaps as Jesus did during the resurrection?). Yogananda's guru Sri Yukteswar said the same thing in Autobiography of a Yogi (Chapter 43: The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar), that perfected beings possess bodies of light that can materialize and dematerialize at will.



Is Lama Itigilov really in a state of suspended animation? Will he awaken in 2027 to save the world, or did he realize the rainbow body, leaving his earthly form intact merely as a relic, a symbol to demonstrate to the world the veracity of the path of spirit? We'll have to wait 16 years to find out. In the mean time we can watch this clip from Al Jazeera of all sources. Runs 3 minutes 19 seconds.

Chess Match from Beyond the Veil

Michael Tymn writes about an interesting chess match between a (then) living grand master and a deceased grand master; two of among the greatest in the world. Viktor Korchnoi played against Géza Maróczy through the help of automatic writer Robert Rollans. The match was arranged by Swiss stock broker and occasional psychical researcher Wolfgang Eisenbeiss. The match lasted seven years and eight months. I won't give away the winner.

This is a marvelous story that would make a great movie, if done right. Until a producer finds this story and decides to take it to a mass audience we'll just have to settle for the written word.

-Dee